Chapter 10 Jordan
TEN
JORDAN
Unconfirmed reports say convicted murderer Cara Campbell was involved in a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transport accident in Madera County.
—KALZ FM
Jordan knew he should wait until morning to restart his search with a full array of resources.
The K9 unit had been tied up all day, assisting with the search for a missing toddler in Dairyland—fortunately, they found the kid—and the handler told him the dogs would be useless without a good night’s sleep.
The helicopter he’d requested was needed for wildfire spotting: the Irrigosa Fire now covered a thousand acres and was only 40 percent contained, while the Coarsegold Fire was a hundred acres and growing.
While he had no idea how much the latter would limit access to the search area, tomorrow he would be able to borrow warm bodies from a handful of agencies, including the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force, who had already been in touch to offer their assistance if the prisoner was not recaptured.
So why was he out here? Cara Campbell—Gracia, who had followed the trial as a former fan, came up with her full name—was a wealthy woman who snapped and killed her husband. It wasn’t like he had the Zodiac Killer on the loose.
One possibility that Jordan would not have admitted to anyone, maybe even Amber, was that it had to do with his Troy Silverman encounter earlier that day.
Single-handedly capturing the fugitive would be the only advertisement his campaign needed—and would play even better, now that he knew the fugitive was famous.
Another possibility was the fact that he wasn’t quite ready to face Sydney.
The last time he called in, Bree had been in her fifth hour of surgery to repair massive internal bleeding from a fractured skull, a broken back, and a host of other injuries.
If she didn’t make it, how was he going to explain to his daughter that her best friend, the girl who had talked a blue streak through the family’s Monopoly game last Friday night, would never come to the house, or school, or anywhere, ever again?
Maybe both possibilities were true. He wasn’t proud of either one.
Nailed to a lodgepole pine up ahead were two wooden signs with family names and route numbers. He turned and began to climb a long dirt road.
With the APB, every uniform with the authority to arrest would be on high alert for signs of the escaped murderer—the main roads would be well covered. And he knew she wouldn’t be headed for the hills. Cara Campbell wouldn’t survive twenty-four hours without lip gloss, much less food and shelter.
The only question was whether she would be dumb enough to use her stolen phone to post on Instagram, as Gracia believed, or call a friend for help, before Jordan could find her.
Gracia considered herself something of a social media expert since she had volunteered to run the department’s Facebook page, then been drafted into handling the X account before drawing the line at Instagram and TikTok.
Jordan knew Beto had already filed a request with the cell phone provider for data and tracking, but they’d be lucky to get anything for at least twenty-four hours.
His rearview flashed red as he climbed out of the trees onto an unshaded turn in the road. The fiery setting sun was losing its battle with the smoke from the valley floor and the new fire that had flared up next to the crash site. He was angling the mirror down when his cell phone rang.
The caller ID read AMBER ALERT. Sydney had programmed that into his phone as a joke.
“Hey, honey,” he answered.
“I know you’re not coming home for dinner,” his wife said, her voice tight with worry. “Is there any update on Bree?”
He’d texted her earlier, right after he called Steve and Joanne, Bree’s parents, asking her to keep the news from Sydney until they knew more.
“It’s still touch and go.”
“You mean she might not . . .” Her sentence ended with a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
Bree had been a hot mess with terrible grades, tragic taste in boys, and an unfortunate habit of spending money that wasn’t hers.
But she was also sweet, hilarious, and awkward—in other words, a perfectly normal teenage girl.
A living, breathing, laughing best friend to their daughter.
Jordan had seen enough death to know that if she didn’t make it, the hole in her family’s lives would be deep and dark, that for a while it would swallow everything, and even after it shrank almost out of sight, it would never, ever go away.
He steered carefully out of the red glow into deep blue shadow as the road entered a ravine.
“We can’t put it off any longer,” Amber finally choked out. “Sydney has to know. I’ll tell her.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m here, you’re there. Maybe you’ve got enough to deal with right now. On the news, they’re saying five people died in the crash and two prisoners escaped.”
“You’re never going to believe who—”
“Cara Campbell.”
“That was fast. We haven’t even announced it.”
“Social media. You will not believe how quickly this thing is blowing up. People on Nextdoor in Fresno are like, ‘Lock your doors!’ Some idiots are out there driving around and looking for her. There’s already a Facebook group called, ‘Where Is Cara Campbell?’”
“That’s what I aim to find out. Tonight, if possible. Hug Sydney for me.”
“I will.”
Jordan sighed, grateful for his amazing wife. “I love you.”
“Love you, too. Stay safe.”
She hung up. Jordan gunned his engine up a steep driveway and braked to a halt below a three-story alpine-style lodge with a half-dozen SUVs parked in front.
He knew it didn’t make sense to blame Cara for Bree.
Then again, if Cara hadn’t killed her husband, she wouldn’t have been transported to prison, and maybe that prison van wouldn’t have left exactly when it did, and Bree—even if she had been stupid enough to use her phone behind the wheel—would have steered safely back across the center line.
And five other people would be alive right now.
It seemed possible, anyway.