Chapter 12 Jordan
TWELVE
JORDAN
Texting While Driving Is Not That Dangerous (Reddit thread)
I’m texting and driving rn and I’ve never had an accident.
—/u/Dull_Pickle
Charles Darwin would like a word with you.
—/u/Rationalvoice
Jesus.
—/u/Jesushimself
The extended family in the rambling alpine lodge was having some kind of a boozy reunion and had not seen Cara Campbell.
True, they probably would have been too drunk to notice even if she had pressed her face against the glass and peered in their windows, but the sheer noise and size of their gathering would have likely caused her to give the place a wide berth anyway.
If she had even made it this far away from the highway.
After warning them to extinguish the fire burning in the pit on their back patio, Jordan moved on.
The next house was smaller, a single-story modernist box nestled into the trees, obviously very expensive. He imagined it was the kind of place Cara Campbell would have felt very at home, live-streaming her wine-and-cheese cocktail hour from the Brazilian Ipe wood deck.
No cars were outside, and when no one answered the door, he circled the place on foot, checking the windows for breakage and the dusty ground for signs of her presence in the glare of the motion-triggered security lights.
He was tempted to stake the place out for a while and see if she showed—there was a more or less natural path to it from the crash site, if she was smart enough to follow the folds of the land—but he decided to keep moving.
He hated searching blind. He was covering ground as methodically as he could, but the odds of finding her while they were both on the move were getting smaller and smaller, especially while darkness was falling.
The bougie cottage made him wish there was some kind of trap he could set.
He could bait it with a gourmet gift basket from Whole Foods or that place down in LA with the twenty dollar smoothies that Amber was always going on about in mock horror.
Which reminded him of that term Amber had explained to him: thirst trap.
But wasn’t that a trap someone set themselves?
As he drove downhill, the smoke thickened, rising up the slopes of the Sierra with a steady push from the prevailing west winds.
The blaze at the crash site had flared up and started spreading in a matter of minutes.
The fire rescue truck, ironically, didn’t carry water, only fire extinguishers that had been deployed to no avail.
The weather this spring had been weird: rivers were still roaring with melting snowpack from record-setting winter snows, while so little rain had fallen that fire season had arrived early.
Now Cal Fire, already warring against a suburban wildfire on the valley floor, had to battle on a second front.
How bad it would get tomorrow was anyone’s guess.
Jordan’s cell rang again. His stomach dropped when he saw it was Sydney.
He answered and heard her racking, convulsive sobs.
“Honey, I’m so sorry.”
“Dad, are you sure it was her?” Sydney snuffled, her voice wet with snot and tears.
“I’m sure.”
“So, you, like, saw her?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Maybe you didn’t recognize her,” she insisted, her voice cutting in and out due to the spotty cell service. “Maybe she loaned some other girl her truck. It can’t be her. Bree never texts and drives. I made her promise!”
Jordan’s chest felt ripped wide open. Once again, his eyes blurred with tears as he pictured the blood on Bree’s pretty, freckled face.
“It was her,” he said. “But maybe she’ll be OK.”
Silence. The call had dropped. No bars.
Swearing, he backed up the road until a lone bar appeared on the dashboard screen. He shifted into park and called her back.
“The call dropped. I’m sorry. I’m up in the hills.”
“Mom said you’re looking for Cara Campbell.” Sydney sounded a tiny bit more composed.
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you look for Bree instead?”
Jordan took a deep breath. “Honey, Bree’s in the hospital. Her folks are with her.”
“But I looked at my Snap Map,” Sydney sniffed, “and her phone is moving.”