Orange Beach, Alabama, was a seaside town, forty-five minutes southwest of Pensacola, just west of the Florida line. Condos lined the white sand beaches, but Frank and I headed a few miles inland, where residential streets were curved and there were no sidewalks. Intermittently, between houses, a grassy area sprung up. In the center was a man-made pond with a sprinkler feature shooting water eight feet into the sky.
We pulled up outside a light blue cottage with a red door. There were white-framed windows to the left and right of the entrance, and a lawn that measured no more than ninety square feet, the edge of the grass lined with a low picket fence.
I had caught three hours of sleep on the drive, and it was after 10 a.m. My phone showed three missed calls from Cassie, and I presumed they were about my behavior in the office last night.
“This boat captain’s gonna remember you?” Frank asked.
“People tend to.”
“But you never met him here?”
“I met him on his boat,” I said. “The Lady Saint Jean.”
“Well, he lives on Easy Street,” Frank said, glancing at the stop sign. “Literally—9087 Easy Street. You know what a red door means in these parts?”
“Mortgage paid,” I said.
“I got ten years to go on a fifteen,” Frank sighed. “Okay, let’s do this.”
We got out and walked along the path that bisected the tiny lawn. Rang the bell and heard movement inside.
The man who opened the door was white and in his sixties, with a patchy gray-brown beard and a baseball hat turned backward. He wore torn jeans stained with paint and a gray T-shirt that looked like it might’ve once been white.
“Aaron Pecun?” Frank asked.
The man glanced from me to Frank.
“This is Special Agent Frank Roberts,” I said. “I’m Special Agent Gardner Camden. You and I have spoken before.”
Frank was holding out his badge, but Pecun was studying me. The smell of dead fish hung in the air.
“Sure, I remember you,” he said, taking a pair of eyeglasses that hung around his neck and putting them to his face. “It was some years back.”
“Six years, three hundred and one days,” I said.
“Now I definitely remember you.”
Still, it was a long time. Fidelity on his memory was critical.
“You called your local police department about something you heard on a trip,” I said. “Do you still recall what that was?”
“A fella was on the boat, bragging to a second fella about using human body parts for bait.”
“Specifically?” I asked.
“A human liver,” Pecun said.
Frank asked if we could come inside, and Pecun nodded. We sat down at a wooden table made of reclaimed wood, painted white. It wasn’t clear whether seeing the darker wood under the white was an aesthetic choice, a sign of age, or a mistake.
“I followed up with my buddy at the PD a month later,” Pecun said. “He told me you boys caught the guy. Or he died or something.”
“We’re here today about the second man,” Frank said. “The one he was bragging to. What do you remember about him?”
“White guy. Paid in cash,” Pecun said. “Met me down at the docks.”
This was old information. Data points I already knew. I glanced around Pecun’s home. The place was cluttered with furniture, the couch behind us threadbare.
“And the trip?” I asked.
“Early-morning departure, standard six hours. A hundred bucks a person back then. Plus fuel and tip.”
“What about the man?” Frank asked.
“Fifties or sixties,” Pecun said. “Knew his way around a boat.”
Frank glanced at me, then back at the captain.
The detail of the man’s age was consistent with my notes from the investigation years ago. But it was also a detail that had not matched with everything else last night as I eliminated clues. In fact, it was on one of the two Post-its I’d left behind, still stuck to the window in Jacksonville.
A Post-it I’d avoided telling Frank about, lest he not agree to take the trip with me.
In 2013, Pecun had consistently described the man Tignon told about the livers as in his fifties or sixties—and that was seven years ago. Same as he’d done just now.
We knew Mad Dog was much younger. Midtwenties.
“You’re sure about that age?” I asked Pecun. “Could he have been younger and you confused him with another boat trip?”
“I don’t reckon so,” he said.
Pecun sat down across from us, placing his coffee cup on the table. It had been filled too high, and brown liquid spilled down the sides of the ceramic, onto the wood. I counted eleven other coffee rings on the table, the marks of each one eating away at the white paint.
“Any identifying marks you recall the man having?” Frank asked. “Scars and such?”
“None of the above,” Pecun said. When he spoke, he used his hands, and the smell of cleanser wafted in the air, mixed with a briny odor.
My mind drifted. If the guy fishing was too old, then nothing worked here. I was out of ideas.
“What about equipment he fished with?” Frank kept up. “This guy supply his own?”
“Yup.”
“Anything you remember about his gear?”
“It’s a good question,” Pecun said. “A nice rod I’d remember, more than a person. And I don’t at all.”
I was experiencing something unusual. I found myself unable to concentrate. I pictured my mother. A trip we took to the shore every spring when I was a child. Kiawah Island, South Carolina. I would sit on the berm of the sand and tell Mom I was going to count the whitecaps. She agreed that it was a good idea and crowded behind me, her legs extending around my small frame, staying silent while I murmured numbers into the hundreds.
“You can’t count them all, Gardy,” she’d say, “just like you can’t count all the people in the world. Everyone’s different. Everyone takes a different approach to get through life.”
Pecun was still talking. “The equipment was pretty standard that trip. It was a small charter.”
I blinked and was back. Pecun had previously described the trip as “two men on a boat.” Now it was a charter?
“There were others?” I asked. “That day on the Lady Saint Jean?”
Pecun shifted his gaze in my direction, his hand in the messy curls of his beard. “I do a hundred trips a year, Agent Camden.”
He got up and walked to the kitchen.
“Well, we take the information when we can get it and how,” Frank said in a folksy voice. “If you recall something now that you didn’t before, that’s fine by us, Aaron.”
Frank was trying to connect with Pecun. To build rapport.
The boat captain stirred sugar into his coffee. “The guy had a kid with him,” he said.
“The guy Tignon bragged to?” Frank cocked his head.
Pecun nodded, and I bit at the edge of my lip. This is how Frank must have felt, being surprised in that hotel room in New Mexico by Cassie’s interview with Fisher’s brother. Of asking the same question and getting two different answers.
Except I was not Frank. I had grilled Pecun years ago. We’d talked for three hours back in 2013.
“If I didn’t mention it before,” Pecun said, “it was probably because I was referencing the specific conversation about the liver and all. Which was between Tignon and the older man.”
“Do you keep records of your charters?” I asked.
“I did,” Pecun said.
Past tense.
“Couple years ago Hurricane Michael made landfall close to here. Flooded basements, tore down homes. We didn’t get hit,” he said, “but the city encouraged everyone to clean up. I took most everything in the basement and tossed it.”
“Maybe we could take a look at what’s left,” I said. “Just in case—”
“I’m sorry, Agent Camden. All that paper got hauled out of here. I rented a dumpster for the week.”
I studied Pecun. I was not ignorant that different people achieved rapport in different ways. But was the boat captain locking up on account of me?
“Mr. Pecun,” I said. “Like Agent Roberts mentioned, it’s okay if you didn’t say something before. I’m not sore, I promise.” This came out stiffly, but it was the best I could manage.
“Well, I appreciate that,” Pecun said. “From what I remember, the kid was a teenager. And kinda acting like one around his dad.”
“In what way?” Frank asked.
“At first, the kid followed the old man around like he was his shadow. I remember ’cause the dad got upset. Hollered at the kid to give him some space. That’s when the kid went down and hung out with your guy fishing with the liver.”
“The boy was fishing as well?” Frank asked.
“As much as he could. His shoulder was in some sort of…” He motioned with his hand against his chest.
“A cast?” I asked.
“More like a homemade sling. Fashioned out of stuff you’d have in your hunting tent.”
“How old was this boy?” Frank asked.
“Nineteen, maybe?” Pecun guessed.
I looked to Frank. A nineteen-year-old would be midtwenties when Kagan was investigating. The right age.
And suddenly it hit me. Their connection.
“Arrowhead and Mad Dog,” I said. “Father and son.”
Frank met my gaze.
“That’s why there were two MOs,” I said. “Years ago and now. It’s also why Mad Dog knew about Arrowhead’s crimes, but didn’t take ownership of them.”
“He told you that you shouldn’t talk about people you don’t know,” Frank said.
I nodded. When I had spoken about Arrowhead, I had been talking about his father.
“The RV,” Frank said. “The family vehicle. And the son is the one who interacted with the buyers. Who sold the flint-knapped arrowheads at the fairs.”
It was also why he’d gone after my mom. When we went to the press and insisted the crimes Kagan had uncovered were the acts of a cold-blooded murderer, I’d insulted his dad. And Mad Dog had snapped. Devolved from an organized killer to a disorganized one. To a state of chaos.
Pecun could tell we’d discovered something, but wasn’t sure what.
“This is good?” He squinted. “You guys figured something out?”
I pulled out my phone and showed him the sketch we’d presented at the press conference. “Could this be the boy—as an adult?”
The boat captain stared, his shoulders turned up. “I’d just be wild-ass guessing.”
“Poor?” Frank asked. “Rich? Maybe based on how they spoke?”
“They weren’t poor,” he said. “But I’d remember if they were loaded. I get those types, and they let you know it.”
“Did Dad have any tattoos?” Frank asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“So the boy was with Tignon?” I asked, clarifying this point. “You said he left his dad and—”
“Yeah,” Pecun said. “I guess both he and his dad spent time with your suspect, just at different times during the trip.”
I considered what we knew of Mad Dog. If he and his dad were from Houston, it would be a seven- or eight-hour drive to Orange Beach.
“Your charters leave at six a.m.?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” Pecun said.
“People who come from far away,” I said. “Do they stay the night before … somewhere in town?”
“Back then,” Pecun said, “the Red Horse was clean and close to our dock. They’re kind of a mom-and-pop place, so not sure how good their records are, but you could check.”
We asked him more questions, but got nowhere.
Ten minutes later, Frank and I hurried out to the car. The late-morning air was brisk, and I was doubtful that the hotel lead was strong. But something important had clicked for us. The theory I’d concocted in the middle of the night was accurate. Tignon and Mad Dog had intersected years ago, just differently than I’d thought.
Frank turned on the ignition, and I spoke before he could.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I doubt that’s true, even for you, Gardner,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. You can’t be here with—”
Before Frank could finish, Pecun was rapping on his window. Frank rolled it down, and the captain leaned his head in.
“You need a license,” he said, out of breath. “If you catch something. The kid did, so I sold his old man a license on the boat. I’m authorized to issue the paperwork. I turn the money over to the county once a quarter.”
“So the county would have records,” I said.
“I couldn’t tell you. But it’s a duplicate form, and my copies are in my attic. Some old boy downtown scared me into thinking I’d be fined if I didn’t hold on to them, so I never stored them in the basement.”
Frank turned off the car, and we got out.
“It’s a mess up there,” Pecun warned. “But I didn’t toss nothing—I can tell you that.”
We followed the boat captain back to his house. In the kitchen, he pulled on a cord, and a makeshift ladder folded down, revealing an opening twenty-four inches square that led up to his attic.
Frank and I put on gloves.
“Somethin’ else,” Pecun said. “The dad was kinda old for a dad. I don’t think he was his grandpa. I didn’t pick up on that. But he was a bit old to have a teenager.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “Appreciate that.”
I moved up the wooden ladder, peeking my head around as I got to the top. Pecun had built a catwalk from plywood to store file boxes. I counted sixteen in total.
I pulled my body up and crouched, my hair brushing against the angled pine that made up the inside of the roof.
Frank came up behind me. He glanced around, looking from his pleated four-hundred-dollar slacks to the dirty catwalk, before giving in and sitting down on the wood.
We got to work, opening boxes, many of which were filled with personal tax returns and receipts. Others held the fishing licenses.
“I don’t see dates on these,” Frank said.
I had the second box open and was holding up a stack of three-by-eight-inch slips of paper. They were canary-yellow in color and looked like the third copy of something that was originally triplicate. “It’s on the individual permit,” I said. “Upper corner.”
The slip I held read February 2016. I put that packet back in the box. The top back on.
About eight boxes in, I saw a ticket with a March 17 date in the right year. From there, I found a permit for March 24, 2013, the day before I’d arrived to talk to Pecun years ago.
Under persons, it read: 1.
I moved to the top of the ladder and glanced through the open hole at Aaron Pecun, who was washing his dishes in the kitchen below.
“Anyone else catch anything that day?” I asked.
“Tignon may have, but he had his own permit already,” Pecun said. “So if you find the ticket, it’ll say one person.”
I moved back onto the catwalk and held the ticket out for Frank. Under NAME was scribbled “itc nolan.” The ink was faded and barely legible on the yellow duplicate. No other information was listed. The address line was empty. Beside the name, it read PAID.
I pulled out my phone to call Cassie, then stopped. Stared at Frank. I wasn’t supposed to be working. I was suspended or worse.
Frank took out his cell and put Cassie on speaker. “Where are you?” he asked.
“Houston,” she said. “Shooter was running down a few leads, and I joined her.”
“I might have something,” Frank said. “I need you to look into the name itc nolan.”
He spelled the letters out, with the name break.
“Is that a first name or…?”
“I don’t have more than that,” Frank said.
Behind him, I stayed quiet.
“Well, where’d you get it from?”
“I’m sorry, Cassie,” he said. “Can you just trust me and check it out?”
She agreed, and he told her he’d call back in an hour. We got through the last box of permits and found nothing else.
“Let’s head to Texas,” I said. “Everything’s pointing to Texas.”
Frank put the top back on the last box. “I agreed to go with you to Alabama,” he said. “Which is more than I should’ve. And we’re in Alabama.”
“I could just observe,” I said. “Throw out ideas.”
Frank stood up. Brushed the dust off his pants. He grabbed a Ziploc we’d gotten from Pecun to preserve any prints on the fishing permit, and we headed out to the car.
“I’ve never pulled rank once,” I said as we walked. “I got sent to El Paso years ago and took it like a man. At PAR, I never demanded credit when I cracked some big case for the LA or New York office. But after what happened to my mom, Frank, I’ve earned this.”
I opened the door. Got in the driver’s seat. Not taking no for an answer.
Frank opened the opposite door and got in. He pulled out his phone and found a photo on it. Laid it down for me to see. “Look,” he said.
I stared at a photo of the office kitchenette. Paged forward to the next photo.
There were holes in the walls from a fist. Not the single hole I remembered making, but three or four. A toaster oven and microwave lay broken on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said, staring down at the cuts on my knuckles.
“This guy here”—Frank pointed at Pecun’s house—“he doesn’t know anyone we know. But I can’t show up at a real crime scene with you right now, Gardner. Poulton’ll have my head.”
I lowered my chin, nodding. Realizing this might not just affect me, but the future of PAR.
On a more personal level, though, it could also end my chance to find Mad Dog.
“Now in the time it takes to get a charter flight—or fly commercial—I could drive to Houston,” he said. “If you want to join me on the road, we can talk more. Think about this “itc nolan” clue. If we figure something out, you gotta trust that I’ll follow it up. But at some point, I need to drop you at an airport, Gardner. You need to go home. Take care of your mom. See your little girl. Clear your mind.”
It was seven hours to Houston, presuming Frank averaged seventy-five miles an hour.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay on as long as you’ll let me.”
I fired up the engine then, and we got onto the Baldwin Beach Expressway out of Orange Beach.
Around us, the cypress trees slowly gave way to farmland. Which gave way to horse ranches and back to cypress. Then cotton and peach farms. Frank moved my shield and weapon to the center console and laid his head on the side window.
“I did this,” I said to Frank.
“Did what?” he mumbled.
“I had a witness in a box,” I said. “March twenty-fifth, twenty thirteen. And in comes this lead about Tignon fishing. I sat on it for a day.”
“Why didn’t you send Saul?”
“It was my first time leading a case,” I said. “I had to do everything myself.”
“And you think what?” Frank smiled. “You woulda come to Orange Beach years ago? Said some magic words to this kid and stopped him from doing what he was gonna do?”
The road began to curve in a northwest direction. Out the window, stalks of corn filled a field.
“I’m gonna say something,” Frank said. “And I don’t mean any harm by it, Gardner.”
“Okay?”
“The level of intelligence you got … the confidence that comes with how you are … there’s an arrogance there, too. A feeling that knowing something equals solving it. That logic … equals truth. Those two are not the same, Gardner.” Frank paused, then said, “Now I don’t know what the future holds for you. But if you don’t ever learn what I’m saying, you’re never gonna realize your own potential.”
I nodded, but couldn’t speak. It was the kind of advice my mother would give.
“If that kid is following his dad around that boat,” Frank continued, “after he’s seen Dad shoot people with an arrow? Hell, maybe he even sent the kid down to collect the arrows after he shot those guys. Either way—that process was underway. That boy was being trained to kill.”
I wondered about Mad Dog as a boy, being sent away by his dad on that boat trip. I pictured a teenager with a homemade sling on his shoulder. Had something happened between father and son, causing the boy not to want to spend time with his dad? Sending him to eavesdrop on Tignon, who spoke of fishing with human liver? Did the boy hear Tignon discuss other places he’d fished? Like Ashland, Texas?
Had he been inspired in some new way?
I went quiet, and Frank put his seat back. Soon, I heard him snoring. I picked up speed, bringing the Crown Vic up to eighty-five.
Within an hour, the Mississippi Sound was on my left. After that, I passed Gulfport.
As I drove, I thought about Arrowhead. I had taken apart Kagan’s file, but nothing in it indicated how the father got started. Arrowhead’s crimes began out of nowhere. A vigilante, avenging petty offenses.
Eventually, Frank stirred. I’d been trying to let him sleep, but we were below an eighth of a tank of gas and would have to pull over soon.
He glanced around, rubbing at his face. “Where the heck are we?”
“Over the border into Louisiana.”
“Jesus,” he said. “You gotta make yourself scarce.”
We drove northwest to Baton Rouge, and I followed the signs to the airport. I thought of asking Frank about the future of PAR. About my future, with or without PAR.
“What are my chances?” I said finally. “Give it to me straight.”
“If the case gets solved?” he said. “Happy ending all around. You explain about your mom, and we stand up for you … Fifty-fifty maybe? Otherwise, I dunno, Gardner. I dunno.”
I pulled off the interstate and onto a highway that looped around the airport. As I did, Frank’s phone chirped with a text.
“Cassie?” I asked.
Frank nodded, studying it. “Nothing on itc nolan.”
A minute later he dropped me at the airport, and I walked inside. I had my ID with me, but no badge and gun. For the first time in years, I felt like I had no identity.
I stared at the board of flights and wondered if I should make my way to Miami for Camila or fly to Dallas and see my mom.
In the end, I found a flight to Dallas and bought a ticket at the desk. Walked through the airport without a suitcase or a carry-on.
Settling in at my gate, I stared at the planes taking off in front of me. Maybe it was the fatigue of so many days without sleep, but I felt like I was in a trance state, watching as the metallic birds lifted off and landed.
Time passed. An hour. Then ninety minutes. When I broke free of it, an idea was blooming in my head.
I used my phone’s browser to look up something. Then took ten minutes to do more research and make sure I was right.
I called Frank. “I have his name,” I said.
“You need to stand down, Gardner,” he said. “Listen, I just got off the phone with Poulton. He told me you’ll get a chance to explain yourself. A review board.”
“I could catch up with you,” I said, “tell you what I found out.”
“I’m hanging up,” Frank said.
“Creighton Emwon.”
“The name Mad Dog used when he posed as that realtor?” Frank asked.
“Emwon is the clue. Literally becomes M dash one.”
“M one?”
“As in the tank,” I said. “Also known as the Abrams Tank. Named for Creighton Abrams.”
“Okay?” Frank said, a question more than an answer.
“Creighton Abrams was the commander of U.S. Forces in Vietnam, from sixty-eight to seventy-two. He implemented the strategy to win the hearts and minds of the rural population.”
“What the heck does that tell us?”
“It’s part of a puzzle,” I said. “Come back, and I’ll tell you the rest.”
“I ain’t coming back, partner,” Frank said. “But if you have a good lead, I know you’re gonna tell me, so I can get the hell after it.”
I exhaled loudly. Frank wasn’t going to turn around.
“The Creighton Abrams detail told me that Mad Dog’s father was military and served in Vietnam,” I said. “From there I realized it was not itc nolan. It was LTC Nolan.”
“Lieutenant Colonel?” Frank said.
“Specifically, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Nolan of Houston, Texas. Two tours in Vietnam between sixty-seven and seventy.”
“Son of a gun,” Frank said. “You looked him up?”
“He has a son named Ethan Nolan,” I said. “Twenty-six years old.”
“Anything on the kid?”
“I’m just working off a phone browser,” I said. “Only thing I can find is some hackathon in Houston when the kid was twelve. He’s some sort of tech prodigy.”
“Get on a plane,” Frank said. “You rest up, partner. We got this.”
I flashed to a moment two days ago in Georgia. Agent Kagan telling me his whole life was the Bureau. Was I any different?
More than that, could Frank do this alone?
“Frank,” I said. “Doing the detail work I do—it’s not something you can just tack on to the big picture work you’re so good at.”
“Funny,” he said.
But I wasn’t joking.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Channel my inner Gardner.”
Frank hung up, and I watched two more planes take off.
Why were we being left these clues? I thought of Richie’s statement—a paper in Tignon’s mouth—an insect in Fisher’s heart … put a normal team at the FBI on this and you find those three months from now.
I stood up and left my boarding pass on my chair. Walking downstairs, I found the rental car center past baggage claim and got a car from Avis.
Out on the interstate, I pushed the sedan to eighty. Soon, I was more than halfway through Louisiana. Signs for the Sabine National Refuge directed traffic south, but I kept west, crossing the border into Texas.
After a while longer, I made the decision to call Cassie. I needed to know if Mad Dog had been caught.
“It’s Gardner,” I said when I heard her voice.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I’ve been calling you. How are you?”
From her tone, I could tell that Frank had not mentioned our visit to Orange Beach.
“I’m fine,” I said. “You know…”
Cassie made a noise with her nose. “I do.”
I swallowed. “I’m trying not to think about her, but…”
“Yeah.”
There was a long pause, and then Cassie jumped in to fill the space. “It was weird, but I thought you were with Frank earlier,” she said. “He called and had this lead. Then he called again with more information.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
It was her turn to hesitate.
“Cassie,” I said. “I just want this guy to get justice. Jail time.”
“Shooter and I are at a house, east of Houston.”
“Owned by the Nolan family?”
“So you are with Frank?”
“No,” I said. “But I know about Nolan. Did you arrest them? The family?”
“Ethan Nolan was gone before we arrived, Gardner,” she said. “A neighbor confirmed the family owned a white RV. But there’s no them. The mom died in childbirth. And the dad is dead. Had a heart attack last year.”
“When?”
“December first,” she said. “There was a mass card under a magnet on the fridge.”
I added this event to the timeline in my head.
Two weeks later, Ethan Nolan showed up at Banning’s book launch in Houston. The killings started twenty-six days after that.
“Per the neighbors, there were lights on in the house last night,” Cassie said. “They heard the RV come in around one a.m. It left an hour or so later.”
“What’s their property like?” I asked.
“Marshy,” she said. “Forested. It’s a bit … off-the-grid cable show. They have their own water storage. Two dozen solar panels. The neighbor down the road told me he kept thinking Nolan Senior was about to start a farm.”
“Based on what?”
“One year the old guy would use his tractor to create giant dirt berms. Dam up the stream. Next season he’d pile up logs. There’s trails, too, Gardner, moving through this whole place. Kinda sus. Two feet wide, five feet high. More like tunnels with heavy growth around them. Like some kind of maze.”
A place to hunt. To play chase games.
Cassie had used present tense when she first answered. She’d said, “you are with Frank.”
“Frank is on his way there still?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her voice suddenly registering concern. “He told us he was chasing a lead. Said he’d check in an hour ago. We figured you two were together.”
I considered the last twenty-four hours. At four o’clock yesterday afternoon, Mad Dog had been in Dallas at the Sparrow coffeehouse, logging into our system. By five o’clock, he’d been in Woodrell, with my mom. By two in the morning, he’d left Houston and made his way somewhere else.
Where?
“Did Ethan Nolan live there with his dad?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “The kid’s got a shrine to his father. There’s also a roomful of computers, taken apart and half built. Puzzle and riddle books. Volumes on computer coding.”
In our first conversation, Mad Dog had said he liked me. Had he read up on PAR? On me?
“What do you mean ‘shrine’?” I asked.
“Pictures of the two of them,” she said. “Some hand-drawn maps. They’re weird, though.”
“Weird how?”
“All the maps have a red L on them, Gardner. As in ‘loss.’ Except for one. The son covered the walls with them. Shooter called them a mix between a hunting map and hide-and-seek.”
Ahead of me, in Beaumont, Interstate 10 turned south toward Houston, where the team was.
Except Frank was not there.
“Text me pictures of those maps, will you?” I said. “I’m going stir-crazy not working on this.”
Cassie told me she would, and we hung up.
A minute later, my phone dinged. Then dinged again. The maps were hand-sketched, as Cassie had said. Topographic.
An interstate sign loomed ahead, indicating a turn for Route 287. I was nearly past the off-ramp when I slammed on the brakes. Swerved to make the turn.
I steadied the rental car.
I knew where Ethan Nolan had gone.
And so did Frank.