I can’t see a van. Any van. In these conditions, they couldn’t get that far ahead of us. They can’t disappear.
I feel sick now, and I’m sweating. The flashing lights of the police car paint everything in lurid splashes.
“Could be just ahead of the truck,” Mike says. His control isn’t as perfect now, and I can hear the worry. “Son of a bitch, where is he?”
“Just go,” I tell him. “Push it.” I sound desperate. I am.
We take off, moving faster now. We match the black Jeep’s progress, which takes us past both the sedan and the cops; the latter give us cold looks, but I don’t give a shit if we get stopped now. I put Gwen at risk. I stood by and watched her get abducted. I will fight anybody, badge or no badge, who gets in my way right now because we have to find her.
There’s no van in front of the tractor trailer.
There’s no van anywhere.
There’s no signal.
There’s no Gwen.
We’ve lost her, and I can feel panic closing in, cold as sleet.
“Go back,” I tell him. I hear the edge in my voice. “They must have pulled off. Maybe they took a side road. Changed vehicles.”
“Sam—”
“Just do it!” I feel like cut meat inside. I remember the rubber Melvin mask and taste bile. I manage to swallow it back. “We have to find her!”
We do. We turn back on the slick road, find a way back. We check every side road, every lay-by, every building.
The van is gone. I feel his hand roughly pat my shoulder, but I don’t want comfort. I want this not to happen because if I’d done this, if I’ve killed her . . .
The tablet I’ve almost forgotten lights up. A message has come in. I grab for it, and Mike puts the Jeep in park in the empty lot of a closed restaurant as I thumb the device on.
The text is from Absalom. It says, You cheated. You think we wouldn’t know? But we keep our word.
A link comes in the next message. I click it.
A map opens. It zooms in, and with shaking fingers, I pinch in to get an overview. What am I looking at?
It’s a map of Kansas. There’s a pin in the map, in a rural area outside of Wichita.
I look up at Mike. His face is blank. I wonder if he feels the same deep, scorching guilt, or if this is just a goddamn maneuver to him. A gambit that didn’t pay off.
I switch back to the message window. Where is she? I can’t scream it at them in a text, and the letters look stark and desperate. Fuck you, you assholes, what’s in Wichita? It makes an awful kind of sense that Melvin would go back to his old hunting ground. And that he’d take Gwen there.
There’s no response for a long moment, and I want to break this thing, destroy it into pieces too small to find, because there’s no one else to punish. No one but myself.
The reply suddenly pops back. Forget the bitch. She’s not your problem anymore.
I let out a shout and punch the dashboard so hard that I feel something pop in my hand with a firecracker burn, but I don’t give a shit. No, goddamn it, no, not like this, not like this . . .
I type back, Wrong, assholes, she is my problem, and I’m going to find her. You hurt her, I’ll make it my mission to put bullets in every one of you.
That’s my rage talking. I don’t have a clue how to find any of them. It’s an empty threat, but I can’t help making it.
There’s another long pause, and then a message comes back. You want to play? We told you where to find Melvin Royal. Get him fast enough, maybe she lives.
The breath goes out of me. You’re lying.
No. We want you to be there. To see.
My hands are aching. I’m panting for breath, and I want to break the tablet in half, feel that glass shatter and splinter like breaking bones.
But that’s what Absalom does. Taunt. Misdirect. Threaten.
“They want us to go to Wichita,” I say aloud. Mike’s looking at me with real concern when I turn to look at him. “Why?”
“Keeps us from looking somewhere else,” he says. “I’ve been smelling a rat since Atlanta. They’ve been playing you and me. Sending us where they want us, getting rid of their deadwood, like Suffolk; son of a bitch was already on the FBI’s radar anyway. We got too close, and all of a sudden they’re working on dividing us up. Sam, we need to think right now.”
I don’t want to think. It’s the last damn thing I want. But deep inside, I think Mike’s right. They’ve got Gwen. We can’t stop that by chasing bait. We have to get ahead of them.
I take in a deep breath, hold it, let it out. “Okay,” I say. “What first?”
“We rewatch that video you got at the cabin,” he says. “Because I think that’s where they got us heading the wrong direction.”
I stare at him. “You think they meant for us to find that?”
“No. I think they didn’t, and everything since then has been countermeasures. We get that lead and suddenly there’s a video implicating Gwen. Then a second one, when we grab Suffolk—and I’m pretty sure Absalom wanted to get rid of that rank bastard anyway, because he was careless. Somebody’s leading us on a pretty little path, and we need to get off that trail, now.”
I force down the need to argue, to kick Mike out and grab the wheel and drive until I find her. Because he’s right.
Slow down. Cut loose. Reset.
Because that’s the only way we’re going to find Gwen now.
We need to get ahead of them.
21
CONNOR
I hear Lanny go into the bathroom. She likes to take a shower at night, and I wait until I hear the water running before I shut and lock my door, pull out the Brady phone, and turn it on. It takes a full minute to come up and search for a signal, and I get a barely audible chime when it’s ready. The sound of running water will cover my voice, as long as I keep it quiet.
I go in my closet and shut the door. The clothes and blankets in here will muffle things more. I don’t want anybody hearing me. The dark feels comforting, and when I put in the battery and turn on the phone, the TV-blue glow of its screen throws everything into sharp shadows around me. I sit down, cross-legged, and lean against folded blankets in the corner. The closet’s made of cedar, and the warm, sharp smell of it makes me want to sneeze.
I can’t do this, I think, but the bad thing is, I know I can. I know I have to. I have questions, and I want to hear his voice when he answers them. Lying in texts is easy. Maybe it’s not so easy on the phone.
I dial the only number in the phone book. My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts.
It rings, and rings, and then it goes to a voice mail that just has a mechanical voice that says, Please leave a message, and I hang up. I feel hot and sweaty and disappointed, and at the same time, I feel relieved. I tried, and he didn’t even answer. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it again. That was hard enough.