Neither of them said anything for thirty seconds. There was no sound but the rushing static. An exit came up on the right. Dryden took it and pulled to the shoulder at the end of the off-ramp.
Even as he coasted to a stop, he heard the static falter again. What came through was the same message, no doubt from some other radio station. The same man’s voice, speaking the same words clearly and slowly. The message looped back to the beginning, and then it cut out; an automated recording announced that the station was experiencing technical difficulties. A moment later it all faded into the hiss.
Dryden was already doing the math in his head. It was just past 4:00 in the afternoon. That allowed five hours to reach the place in the Mojave where he and Claire had been attacked. He could get there with time to spare—if he turned around and headed south right now.
“You know you can’t just do it,” Marnie said. “You can’t just show up out there, like they want. And obviously not with the machine.”
“I know that.”
Dryden shut his eyes and rubbed them. He considered the problem, and all the jagged edges of it that he could feel.
“What are you thinking?” Marnie asked.
“That it’s still a lead. That I can’t ignore it.”
For a third time, the hiss from the speakers withdrew; Dryden heard another transmission of the message. He felt a grudging admiration for the Group’s thoroughness.
“Going up against these people blind is suicide,” Marnie said. “We’re an hour from talking to Hayden Eversman. What if that ends up telling us something that changes everything? There’s some reason they’re afraid to make a move on the guy.”
“There’s no time to meet with Eversman and still reach the Mojave before the deadline,” Dryden said.
“Not by road there isn’t, but I have some discretion to use FBI assets, including choppers. I’d have a bit of explaining to do later on, but I can make it happen.” Marnie turned in her seat and leaned closer. “If we come up empty with Eversman, you can still reach the meeting site in time to do … something. If you can think of something.”
Dryden stared forward. Way out on the flat farmland ahead of them, a combine harvester made a turn at the end of a field. Its metal edges and panels winked in the sun.
Dryden hardly saw it; all his focus had suddenly gone back to the message from the Group, the audio replaying in his mind. One line stood out from all the rest, revealing maybe a bit more than the Group had intended. Dryden almost smiled, but didn’t.
“What is it?” Marnie said.
Dryden turned to her. “I don’t have to think of anything. I know exactly what I’m going to do in the Mojave, no matter how things go with Eversman.”
He put the Explorer in gear and rolled across the two-lane to the on-ramp, accelerating north, back onto the highway.
“Turn your phone back on and make the call about the chopper,” he said. “Arrange a pickup in Carmel, two hours from now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Three times, during the rest of the drive, they switched off the machine and listened to the Explorer’s radio for news reports. Coverage of the quake was everywhere, and already the central story was the stranger who’d shown up yelling about a bomb threat just before Mission Tower came down in the tremor. So far, the word miracle hadn’t been appended to the story; most newscasters were treating it with skepticism, though the fact that a bomb threat had also been phoned in to 9-1-1 lent some credibility to it.
They reached Carmel just before five o’clock. Dryden already knew where to go. After arranging the helicopter, Marnie had used her phone’s map application—set to satellite imagery—to find Eversman’s house. There were only so many neighborhoods with fifteen-million-dollar homes, and only so many fifteen-million-dollar homes with solar panels covering their roofs; in fact, there was just one. Marnie had found it in less than five minutes’ worth of dragging the map around, without ever risking a text search.
*
They rolled up to the gate, a heavy wood-and-iron structure hung on massive hinges. To its left and right, the brick property wall blocked all view of the estate beyond.
There was an intercom mounted on a post beside the entry drive, with a small camera atop it. Marnie traded places with Dryden at the wheel, then held her badge out for the camera and pushed the talk button. She identified herself by name to the voice that answered.
After that, nothing happened for a long time. Minutes passed. Dryden pictured someone inside calling the FBI field office in Santa Monica and verifying her information. He thought of the digital paper trail generated by those kinds of calls. Database entries. Computer records.
There was no obvious reason to think the Group could connect any of these dots. Up to now, they knew nothing of either him or Marnie.