It occurred to him that their fingerprints were all over this house, but since none of them had their fingerprints on file anywhere—yet—that probably wouldn’t make any difference.
Thinking of the police made him wonder if Williams had attempted to call or leave a message. He pulled out his phone and quickly checked his in-box. There was a single message, left earlier this evening, and he replayed the voice mail, putting the phone to his ear.
“Gary! I’m—”
He nearly dropped the phone. It was Joan! She was screaming and out of breath, frightened and frantic. The message cut off almost as soon as it had begun, as though someone had caught her just as she’d started talking, yanked the phone from her hand and immediately hung up. He closed his eyes. Horror, worry, relief, anger and fear swirled within him, each vying for supremacy but none gaining a toehold as the competing emotions alternated like the spinning compartments of a roulette wheel.
Gary! I’m—
He imagined her planning for days, carefully working the knots on the ropes that bound her until she was finally free, picking exactly the right moment to make a dash for the one connected phone in the otherwise abandoned building in which she was being held, dialing, calling—
—and then being caught.
Had she been beaten after the phone had been wrenched from her hand?
He glanced down at the small screen of his cell phone, hoping to see the number from which the call had been made, but it was blocked and the only thing displayed was the simple scary word Unknown.
Gary played the message again, listening carefully. He was crying, though he didn’t realize it at first, didn’t notice until he tried to play the message yet again and discovered that his vision was too blurry to see the keys on his phone. He was trying to determine whether there was any identifiable background noise, whether he could hear something behind Joan’s aborted plea that would give him any indication of her whereabouts.
His friends gathered around him. He felt a hand on his shoulder, though he wasn’t sure whose it was. Without speaking, he held the phone out so they could hear it and played the message again.
“She’s alive,” Reyn said, and it was the surprise in his voice that cut, that made Gary realize his friend had not believed it until this moment.
“You have to go to the police with this,” Stacy said.
Gary, wiping his eyes, nodded in agreement. “I know.” Even as they spoke, they were heading toward the garage door through which they’d come in, hurrying faster with each step until they were outside and sprinting toward the car. Brian was a few steps behind the rest of them, and, keyed up, Gary turned and yelled, “Come on!” He was surprised by the anger in his voice.
Then they were in the car and speeding through the darkened streets of the nearly empty neighborhood toward Lancaster’s business district and the highway beyond.
No one slept on the way back, but no one spoke, either. They were all lost in their own thoughts, so it came as a jolt of surprise when the car began to slow down and Reyn put on his blinker, glancing quickly in his rearview mirror. “I have to pull over,” he announced.
“What’s wrong?” Stacy asked worriedly.
“I don’t know. It’s overheating for some reason. I have to stop before we stall out.”
“Shit!” Gary yelled, slamming his hand on the back of the driver’s seat.
“Sorry,” Reyn told him.
“So much for your great, reliable car,” Brian said.
“It’s still better than your hunk of junk!”
“Mine made it all the way from the Bay to UCLA. And back again. Four times. And it’s still going strong. It may look—”
“What do we do?” Gary demanded.
Reyn was guiding the car onto the shoulder. “Call Triple A, I guess.”
They were in the middle of nowhere. Gary wasn’t sure exactly where in the desert they’d stopped, but there were no lights, no buildings, no nearby off-ramps. He looked between the two front seats at the temperature gauge on the dashboard. The red needle was pointing directly at the H. Through the windshield, he could see steam escaping from the sides of the hood, vaporous mist eerily backlit by the car’s headlights.
Reyn switched off the engine and took out his cell phone. They could hear only one side of the conversation, but polite civility gave way to annoyance and finally hostility as it became clear that it would be some time before a tow truck was dispatched. He terminated the call angrily. “An hour. And it’s going to cost big bucks. My card only covers a tow of up to five miles. It’s at least another fifty to civilization.” He shook his head. “Maybe there’s a gas station or a garage somewhere between here and there.”
“Let it cool off,” Brian suggested. “Then we’ll check it out. Do you have a flashlight?”
“Yeah,” Reyn said. “In the glove compartment. But I don’t know anything about cars.”
“I do. It could be just a thermostat. We might be able to let it cool down and then take it back slowly. Is there any water in your trunk? Are there any big hills we have to climb?”
“I’m not taking a chance with my engine.”
“Maybe a cop’ll come by,” Stacy said hopefully. “They have to assist stranded motorists, don’t they?”
“What’ll we do with the car?” Reyn asked. “Leave it here?” He shook his head. “I’m waiting for the tow truck.”
“Just give me the flashlight and let me take a look,” Brian said.
“Fine.”
Stacy turned around in her seat toward Gary. “You can call the detective and tell him about the message. You don’t have to talk to him in person.”
Gary shook his head.
“He kind of does,” Reyn said. “He’s under suspicion.”
Outside, Brian was shouting for Reyn to pop open the hood. Reyn reached down under the dashboard, there was a metallic click, and seconds later Brian was lifting the hood, blocking the view out the windshield.
“I’d better see what he’s up to.” Reyn opened the driver’s door, stepped out and walked to the front of the car.
“That call’s a good sign,” Stacy told Gary. “I think they’ll be able to find her.”
Gary nodded. His emotions were still on a roller coaster. Moments before, he, too, had felt optimistic, but right now, stranded by the side of the road, all he could think about was the emptiness of the Smiths’ house and how quickly the family must have evacuated it once they’d received his call. That, and how, right after recapturing Joan, her captors had probably moved her to a new, more hidden location.
Once they’d beaten and restrained her.
And every minute that passed allowed them to get farther away.
He checked the message again, looking at the time when it had been left. What had he been doing then? Putting his room back in order, probably.
Why hadn’t he had his phone on? He would have answered the call. He could have heard her live. He could have spoken to her… .
The hood remained up, but both Brian and Reyn returned to the car. Neither of them was speaking, and it seemed clear that they had had words outside.
Brian shook his head, disgusted. “We’re always ending up in the desert, aren’t we?” he said, then glanced guiltily over at Gary. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Let’s just be quiet and wait,” Reyn said.
“Can you at least leave the radio on?” Brian asked.
“No. It’ll run down the battery. I thought you said you knew about cars.”
“Forget I even asked.”