“It’s not too late for you to keep yourself out of this,” she said. “What you’ve already done is more than—”
“I’m not leaving you out here by yourself. I’m taking you somewhere safe. We can still go to the police, even if these guys can listen in.”
The girl shook her head again, more emphatically this time. “We can’t.”
“There are police stations that have a hundred officers in them,” Dryden said, “even this time of night. You’d be protected, no matter who knows you’re there.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
The girl was quiet again for a moment. She looked down at her bare feet, padding silently on the concrete.
Dryden said, “My name’s Sam. Sam Dryden.”
The girl looked up at him. “Rachel.”
“Rachel, I’m not going to think you’re crazy. I saw them. I heard what they said. Whatever this is, you can tell me.”
She kept her eyes on him as they walked. If Dryden had ever seen a kid look more lost, he didn’t know when.
“Where would you be safe?” he asked. “You must have family. You must have someone.”
“I don’t know if I do or not,” she said. “I don’t remember.”
She seemed about to say more when an explosion of sound cut her off, ripping through the mist in front of them. Rachel jumped and grabbed Dryden’s arm, but already they could both see the source of the noise. A cat had knocked a metal trash can lid to the sidewalk, seeking some unseen quarry among the garbage inside. Rachel calmed, but kept hold of Dryden’s arm as they started forward again.
“All I can remember is the last two months,” she said. “In that time, no, I don’t have anyone.”
There was a worn-out quality to her speech that no kid’s voice should have. It would’ve fit a soldier, months or years into combat deployment. The spoken counterpart to the thousand-yard stare.
“Where did you come from tonight?” Dryden asked. “Where were they chasing you from?”
“From where they were keeping me. Where they had me the whole time I can remember. They were going to kill me tonight. I got away.”
They passed the cat in the trash can. It paused from its hunting to regard them warily, then went back to business. Dryden stepped over the lid in his path, and then a thought came to him. It skittered like fingertips down his spine. Even as the notion took shape, Rachel froze and stared at him with wide eyes, seeming to react to something in his body language.
Dryden looked at her, briefly distracted by her uncanny perception, then let it go. He turned his attention back on the fallen lid.
“We need to get off the sidewalk,” he said.
He was moving even before he finished saying it. He guided Rachel into the shadows beside the nearest house and around to the back side. Here, the adjoining rear yards of two rows of homes formed a channel that paralleled the street. Dryden picked up their pace, north through the channel, determined to get away from the trash can as quickly as possible.
“They’ll come to that sound, won’t they,” Rachel said.
“Yes.”
He’d no sooner said it than running footsteps thudded on concrete, somewhere nearby. He shoved Rachel behind a shrub and ducked in alongside her; they were sandwiched between tiny branches and the foundation wall of a house. Staring out through the gap between the shrub and the concrete, Dryden had a limited view to the south, back the way they’d come from. He saw a shape flash by, two houses away. Seconds later the searcher’s boots stopped on the sidewalk Dryden and Rachel had abandoned a moment before. Silence. Then came the beep and hiss of a communication device. In the still, dense air, the man’s voice reached Dryden with clarity.
“Three-six, north of three-four’s position. No contact.”
A voice came back over the communicator, distorted but perceptible as Clay’s. “Copy, this is three-four, on my way back from the van.”
Now a third voice came in; Dryden recognized it as that of the leader. “Three-six, continue the street search. We think the girl doubled back. Resweep of the beach picked up a lead.”
“Copy, what’d you find?” the nearby man asked.
“A man’s wallet,” the leader said. “Under the causeway, right where we lost the trail.”
Dryden shut his eyes and exhaled. He didn’t even need to check; his ass against the foundation wall told him what was missing from his back pocket. He checked anyway. His wallet was gone.
Over the communicator, the leader said, “Double set of tracks in the sand, inland from the wallet toward your position. The team’s coming to you now. Coordinate with them and sweep the neighborhood. Three-four, meet me at the van; the wallet’s owner lives just north of here.”
CHAPTER THREE