33
“Gotta find that boy,” Eagle’s Nest officer Ben Cooley muttered to himself as he drove out of town. “Emma too.”
He didn’t know Emma as well as Ollie. He’d first met her when she’d found a dead body a couple of months back, but he’d known Ollie for a few years, and the young man was like another grandson to him.
His heart hurt that those kids were missing.
When he’d met Emma, he’d thought of her as a delicate little shadow, someone trying her hardest to not be seen, wanting to fade into the woodwork.
Quiet, shy. Definitely not a talker. But she’d blossomed under Noelle’s care.
Last time he’d bought a cup of coffee at Kaylie’s place, Emma had chatted with him for a solid two minutes.
Her eye contact strong and her smiles frequent.
At the station, when Lucas shared the news that Ollie had asked her out, he’d heartily approved.
“Those two are like peas and carrots. Perfect together,” he’d told Lucas, Samuel, and Royce, who’d gathered at the police department’s front desk.
Then Royce accused him of stealing the phrase from some movie, but Ben’s wife, Sharon, had said it about them ever since they’d married more than fifty years ago.
“Gotta find that boy. And Emma,” he repeated to himself, automatically scanning the countryside as he drove.
He’d wanted to help search last night, but Sharon wouldn’t let him because his night vision was crap.
Driving in the dark would be taking his life into his own hands—and everyone else’s life.
So he’d impatiently waited until the sun came up, determined to do his share in the search.
He only worked a couple of shifts per week for the Eagle’s Nest PD, but he knew everything that went on in the town.
He might not be as fast as he once was or even as he was five years ago, but his brain was still agile, and he had nearly forty years of police work under his belt.
Looking for someone? First step was to start where they were last seen.
The entire Eagle’s Nest PD and a number of county deputies had done exactly that last night, returning to where Emma had once lived.
But it was dark.
No streetlights or even good moonlight last night.
Ben might have horrible night vision and the absolute worst close-up vision without his readers, but in the daylight, he could see the eyeball of a bird at a hundred yards. A large bird.
Ben spent an hour walking the lands around the Chamberses’ old property.
He studied the pile of rubble, remembering that he’d once dropped Emma off there when it’d been a house.
He found the grave that had been excavated yesterday, the police tape still in place.
He stared at it awhile. It was a quiet green area with many trees; he could think of worse places to be buried.
After that he got back in his patrol SUV and drove toward Noelle’s home, which was on the main road a few miles away.
He watched the shoulders of the road and the landscape beyond, letting his vision skim, stopping when anomalies caught his eye.
By the time he’d reached Noelle’s big security gate, he’d collected eight beer cans, one hubcap, two work gloves—which didn’t match—and a man’s filthy Carhartt sweatshirt, which looked like it’d been in the dirt for months.
Probably not Ollie’s.
He reversed direction, taking his time along the rural highway.
When someone came up behind him, he pulled over to let them pass and received odd stares.
One passerby even called the station to report that an old police officer was driving twenty miles per hour out in the boonies.
Lucas got a good laugh out of that one when he radioed Ben.
Ben was slightly annoyed that this person hadn’t bothered to stop and ask if he needed help.
Society today . . . just keep moving. Let someone else handle the problem.
He’d pulled aside again for a pee break—old-man curse—and was tossing two more beer cans in the back of his vehicle when something in the road caught his eye.
He let his gaze wander back across the highway’s surface, where a black streak cut across the dotted yellow center line.
He was currently on a long stretch of highway that had been repaved a month ago, the blacktop still new and fresh looking.
He had negative opinions about blacktop on rural highways; it didn’t last long enough. Parts of the roads were always being repaired or repaved. He preferred a good concrete that would last thirty to fifty years. But it was much more expensive up front.
Money was always the bottom line.
His knees creaked as he crouched to see from a better angle the black mark, which was about thirty feet away.
That’s part of a skid mark.
His first thought was that blacktop somehow had been slopped over the yellow paint—which made no sense.
But now that he had a tighter visual angle, he saw the skid mark was a long one that went from lane to lane.
It was visible as a difference in the road’s texture instead of the black of a typical skid mark.
He put a hand on his bumper and levered himself up out of his crouch. Sure enough, suddenly the skid mark was harder to see. But now that he knew what he was looking for, his eyes followed it for fifty yards until it sharply veered left and seemed to vanish.
But there was a long rut tight to the edge of the road.
Like tires sank into the shoulder.
He got back in his vehicle, his heart pounding, and flipped on his flashers.
He drove up to the rut. Something had recently dug it out, sending dirt and gravel flying.
He parked, partially blocking the lane because the shoulder was too narrow.
It dropped off abruptly. His hands shook as he opened his door.
Please, dear Lord. Let those children be okay.
Ben Cooley had responded to countless accidents over his career, and each deadly one was currently cycling through his brain.
The steep bank was covered with tall dry grass, sagebrush, and the occasional small pine interspersed with big boulders. But something violent had happened here. The ground was chewed up, dirt exposed, and two small pines had been knocked flat.
This is the spot.
Where’s the truck?
Ben didn’t dare step down the bank. It was steep, and his balance was as good as his night vision. He walked farther up the road, trying to see from a different perspective. He stopped.
“Dammit.”
He’d believed the bank eventually flowed into trees farther down the hill. But now he saw there was an abrupt drop-off, invisible from where he had stood near the rut. He took a few more steps up the road and saw tires and the underside of a truck past the overhang.
His heart pounded in his head, his mouth going dry.
That’s Ollie’s truck.
Ben tore back to his SUV, nearly tripping over his own feet, and grabbed the mic. He yelled at Lucas over the radio, his voice shaking.
Please, Lord. Let them be safe.