“How did you get this number?” the woman demanded.
“I—”
The line went dead. He tried calling back, but the line was busy, and after ten minutes and at least five times that many tries, he finally decided that the woman had taken her phone off the hook.
But why?
She’d sounded scared, he thought now. The surface belligerence had initially struck him as anger, but, reflecting upon it, there’d been fear there as well. And he was pretty sure it had been the mention of Joan’s name that had triggered such a response.
He stared down at the page. He was going further and further afield with these tangents. The likelihood that one of the people listed as Friend in her parents’ address book had driven out to Burning Man and kidnapped Joan was slim, to say the least.
But there was a connection. Like the lines of a spiderweb, all of these threads crisscrossed and wove together, and somewhere in the middle of them was Joan. Although he had no factual basis for such a belief, Gary was convinced that if he followed every lead he came across, he would eventually discover who had taken Joan and why.
He started to dial the number of the next friend on the list—and stopped. What if the next person hung up on him the same way the woman had? He didn’t want to frighten off the people who might be able to help him, and he didn’t want to set off any alarm bells among the Danielses’ circle of acquaintances.
He looked at the list of numbers, looked at the phone, thought for a minute.
And called Reyn.
Nine
They met in the student union, the only ones there save for a gaggle of drunk, giggling sorority types passing through on their way to yet another party, and a handful of dozing, geeky young men with textbooks on their laps who’d obviously planned to pull all-nighters but had fallen asleep in their chairs. Stacy was there, too, with Reyn, and the expression on her face did more to frighten Gary than even his ransacked room. He realized that it had been three days since Joan had disappeared.
She could have been raped hundreds of times since then.
She could be dead.
He tried to focus on the most positive possibility: that she was being treated well, held for a specific purpose and kept safe from harm until that purpose was realized, but as time passed with no word, it was getting harder and harder to buy into such a scenario.
Brian arrived seconds later, wearing Levi’s and a pajama top, his long hair even more wild and unruly than usual. It seemed obvious that he’d been asleep before being awakened by Reyn’s call.
They all had a rough idea of what had happened, but Gary showed them the address book and spelled out the specifics. Before he was even finished speaking, Brian was taking his BlackBerry from the front pocket of his jeans. “What’s that number?” he asked. “I’ll check the area code.”
Gary told him, and Brian started typing. He looked up from the device. “Lancaster.”
“Where’s—” Gary started to ask.
Reyn answered. “It’s just north of here, maybe an hour or two away. Out in the desert.”
“Let’s check the area codes of the other numbers,” Brian suggested. “See where they are.”
One by one, he used his BlackBerry to look up the location of the other six area codes. One was in Maine, two in New York, one in Colorado, one in Illinois and one in Alaska.
“I guess we’re not going to be visiting any of them,” Reyn said.
“Do you think you can find an address for the one in Lancaster?” Gary asked.
Brian grinned. “I’ll call our buddy Dan.”
“Is he still working?”
“We’ll find out.”
He was, and though Brian gave another bullshit explanation of why they needed an address to go with the phone number, Dan bought it and provided the information without question.
Stacy shook her head. “Between this guy and those detectives, I’m rapidly losing faith in our law enforcement agencies.”
Brian was slowly repeating aloud everything he was being told, while Gary wrote it all down. He’d had a pen in his pocket but no paper, so he used the back page of the Danielses’ address book to copy the information. “Joe Smith,” he said after he’d finished, and shook his head.
Reyn smiled. “You don’t think that’s his real name?”
Brian was thanking Dan and saying good-bye. He terminated the call and looked down at the address. “Let’s go,” he said.
Stacy looked at him. “You don’t want to go back and change first? Maybe get out of your pajamas?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
She rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself.”
“My car,” Reyn announced. “I don’t trust those death traps the rest of you drive.”
Stacy put a light hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you should get some coffee first.”
“I’m fine,” he told her.
She shot Gary an imploring look, and he nodded. “Let’s all get some coffee,” he said.
There was a pot on a table near the study area, with a stack of white Styrofoam cups next to it, and though ordinarily Gary wouldn’t go near that thing—he’d seen those YouTube videos of psychotic assholes spitting and pissing into punch bowls and coffeepots—he didn’t want to waste time going to a Starbucks or even a Mc-Donald’s. He just wanted to get some quick caffeine and be off.
Ten minutes later, they were heading west on Wilshire toward the 405 freeway. Even at this hour, the 405 was crowded, and it wasn’t until they were past Newhall that traffic finally thinned out. They were all wide awake, and though everyone except Brian had had coffee, Gary didn’t think it was the caffeine that was keeping them alert. He himself was running on pure adrenaline, as he had been since Monday, and though he’d probably crash at some point, right now he felt as though he could go for another week without sleeping.
They passed Vasquez Rocks, jaggedly black against the purple star-filled sky, and the Universal tour guide in Reyn prompted him to point out the fault-raised cliffs and mention that they had been used in numerous science fiction movies and TV shows over the years, including two separate Star Trek films and an episode of the original series. No one was really interested, no one was really paying attention, but the sound of his voice reciting entertainment industry facts was soothing somehow, and it comforted Gary to know that Reyn was along.
There was a loud, sustained honk from behind, and he turned to see a white Dodge pickup riding their tail. Suddenly, it swerved into the right-hand lane and sped past them, going well over the speed limit, twin American flags attached by plastic rods to both the driver’s and the front passenger windows fluttering crazily.
“If that guy loves America so much,” Stacy said drily, “why doesn’t he obey its traffic laws?”
“Yeah, and what’s with those flags?” Brian wondered aloud. “We’re all Americans here. Is he trying to let us know that he’s more American than we are?”
Gary couldn’t follow the conversation and didn’t want to. He was thinking of Joan, wondering what she was doing right at this second. Sleeping, hopefully.
The truck disappeared into the darkness.
According to the clock on the dash, it was one minute after midnight when they passed the green sign announcing LANCASTER CITY LIMITS. Reyn’s car didn’t have a GPS, but Brian had used his BlackBerry to find the location of “Joe Smith’s” address, and he acted as navigator from the backseat, telling Reyn which exit to take and which streets to turn down.
The house for which they were looking was a newer tract home in an unfinished neighborhood that appeared to have been a victim of the recession. Completed dwellings sat next to partially completed frames of houses and flat, empty desert lots. Lights were on in the “Smith” residence, as though the owners were still up at this hour, but the garage door was wide open and there was no vehicle in either the driveway or the garage.