Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
W hile he was waiting for Spencer to catch the hell up, Ward paced the parking lot of the Burger Barn. He’d been at the roadside dive in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, for over an hour and he’d worn a path through the asphalt and his patience.
He checked the time. Nope. Not one hour. Almost two hours.
Two fucking hours while Della’s tracking dot moved farther and farther away.
It was time for something drastic.
He eyed one of the three cars in the parking lot, a blue Volvo. He could “borrow” it.
He walked slowly behind it, temptation pulling at him like a dog on a leash.
It would be a stupid thing to do. It wouldn’t do any good in the long run.
He clenched his teeth and went through all the reasons why stealing a ride would actually slow him down, not speed him up.
People tended to object when their cars were stolen. They called police. The last thing he needed was cops chasing after him or worse, catching him. Winding up in jail could get Della killed.
Despite his urgent desire to get on the road, he knew he didn’t need just any ride. He needed the equipment in Spencer’s van if he was going to have any hope of finding her because the tracking app was broken. The dot that represented his life-line to Della would disappear, then reappear in the middle of a field or a pond or a building, then blip off again, only to show up several miles down the road.
Still. The Volvo sat there. Waiting.
“Dammit.” He paced closer to it, impatience clawing at his better judgment.
The door to the dive opened and a middle-aged woman came out, keys in hand. She watched him with suspicious eyes as she hurried to the car, got in, and pulled away.
He scowled at the spot where her car had been parked, then checked the time. Again.
Then he texted Spencer.
Again.
Ward — ETA?
He waited a few seconds, but Spencer didn’t respond.
Ward — I’m taking a car if you're not here in five.
As if summoned, Spencer’s black van pulled into the parking lot and up next to him like an ocean barge, slow and cautious.
Ward crossed to the driver’s side door and gestured for Spencer to get out. “You drive like a hedgehog going to church.”
“I exceeded the speed limit the entire way.” Spencer circled around to the passenger side and climbed in. “Besides, this mobile unit contains a lot of sensitive equipment that we need. You were the one who threatened me with dismemberment if I broke any of it.”
Ward flicked through the dashboard touchscreen map. “What’s up with the tracker? It keeps glitching.”
“It’s the signal.” Spencer picked up a tablet from the center console. “It works off cell towers, which are scattered farther apart out here in the rural areas. The last solid signal places her north of Albany on I-87.”
“When was that?”
“A little over an hour ago.” Spencer tapped on the tablet. “They were halfway through town, then. Good cell coverage there.”
“What about now? How long would it take to drive through town?” Ward studied the map. They were on a loop that didn’t go through downtown.
“About fifteen minutes.”
“So what you’re saying is they’re now an hour and a half ahead of us, on the other side of Albany, New York, heading north. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No, I’m saying that’s where they were when the app traced a solid ping. If you calculate their rate of speed at the time, traffic conditions, plus…”
“Spence. We need a plan, not a math problem."
“Oh…right.” Spencer blinked at him. “Take the exit for Highway 9 up ahead. We should be able to cut them off near Clayton Springs. Especially since you’re driving and you don’t care about the expensive equipment in the back.”
“I care.” He made the exit at military speed.
Spencer swore and clutched the Oh God handle.
“Quit complaining,” Ward said. “You’re fine. The equipment’s fine. I know you have it all locked down back there.”
“Electronics don’t like to be jiggled,” Spencer muttered.
“Electronics or you?”
“Both,” Spencer squealed as they swerved onto the two-lane highway.
An hour later, they were still speeding through a portion of upstate New York that time had forgotten. On the plus side, nobody was in his way, including cops.
“How far now?” Ward asked.
“There’s a serious lack of infrastructure in some parts of this country.” Spencer sounded indignant.
“I don’t give a shit about the infrastructure. Am I still heading the right way or not?”
“Hang on. I’m boosting the signal.” Spencer pulled a keyboard out of the glove compartment and started typing. “Ah. They got off the highway and appear to be headed east now. They took a service road that…” Spencer trailed off, then the sound of him furiously typing filled the van. “Oh…shit.”
“Shit?” Ward glanced at him for half a second. “What’s ‘oh shit’ mean?”
“I can’t get a lock on her.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s…I’m not sure.” Spencer’s tap-tap-tapping sped up. “I need to boost the signal.”
“You just did that.”
“I need more. We need to pull over,” Spencer said.
Ward hit the steering wheel. “We don’t have time to pull over.”
“We have to.”
Ward’s need to argue drained away at the quiet panic in his tech expert’s voice. “Where?”
“There’s a convenience store up ahead at the intersection.”
"There’s no intersections out here. There’s cow trails and fields.” Ward resisted the urge to stop right there in the middle of the road. Barely. They were on what the map called a farm to market, but it was more like an abandoned strip of asphalt. It didn’t see a lot of traffic.
They were nowhere. He knew it. Spencer knew it. The crows feeding on roadkill knew it.
It had been two hours and thirty-six minutes since Della had been taken, and the clock in his head kept ticking louder and louder.
“Trust me. There is.” Spencer pointed at the road. “Farm to Market 321 crosses Highway 22 in less than half a mile and there’s a gas station that supplies farm equipment. They’ll have internet. We can boost off them.”
“What good does that do us if her signal isn’t showing up?”
“If we stop somewhere, I can piggyback a signal. It’ll let me access my secondary routine to get a more accurate location. I’ve been running probabilities ever since—never mind. Just…try not to take the bumps too fast.” Spencer released his seat belt and slid into the back of the van. “I need the hard drive for this.”
Ward forced himself to take a deep breath as he eased off the accelerator.
The “convenience” store was so overgrown with weeds that he almost missed it. There was one regular gas pump in front, one to the side that sold diesel, and a single car parked at a diagonal on the left that probably belonged to the shadowy figure he could see through the grime-covered shop window.
“The fifties want their store back, Spence.” Ward pulled up at the front pump and parked but kept the engine running.
He joined Spencer in the back of the van and studied the array of monitors. One showed the tracking app, another showed a satellite map of the Pennsylvania/New York area, while another showed a confusing string of text that moved so fast he couldn’t focus on it. “You got a solid lock now?”
“Not…exactly.” Spencer shifted to the second monitor and typed furiously on one of three keyboards. The map zoomed out to show more of the country, then started zooming slowly back in.
“Not exactly?” Ward stared at the tracking app display. There should have been five dots, but the two representing Annie and Diggs had been knocked out in the crash. “Where’s her dot, Spence? I only see two. Yours and mine. I thought you said stopping here would make it easier to find her.”
“It would. It did. Except it’s not there.” Spencer pointed at the scrolling text. “I’ve piggybacked onto the signal from the convenience store and have the satellite link up and running. With it, I should be able to triangulate the tracker’s general location based on random grid strikes as it…she…travels through populated areas. But the system’s unable to process the current trajectory due to incomplete parameters.”
“English, Spencer.”
“This isn’t a blip or fluctuation or malfunction. Her signal is literally gone.” Spencer looked up at him. “I don’t know where she is.”