“Are you sure you don't want to fly? It would be faster,” Cage pointed out as he stood next to the packed car. He knew his argument was already too late.
Joule was shaking her head. “I don't know that it is faster, given layovers, delays, or just getting a rental car once we get there.”
“True. And we won't be able to take as much.” He accepted that they were driving down to Texas. They’d tried to think of everything they might possibly need, and they had no idea what that would be.
The job Sarah had disappeared from was just outside El Indio, a small town just east of the border in Texas. Helio Systems Tech was installing a solar panel array and, this time, adding a water power plant. It would take advantage of a small tributary of the Rio Grande.
Cage loved HST’s forward thinking and that he and Joule had gotten to be a part of it—that they were helping add new, sustainable technologies all the time. Change had happened a little slower than he'd expected, but he gave them credit: They were doing it.
None of that mattered if his friend was gone, though.
Joule climbed into the passenger seat, leaving him to slide behind the wheel. As they pulled down the long driveway—once again having locked up their childhood home to a feeling of a vast emptiness—the words kept ringing in his head, It wasn't supposed to be this way.
His parents should have still been alive. The house should have been warm and vibrant even as he and Joule left. They shouldn't be looking for a missing friend.
The twins had been constantly checking in with Deveron as he seemed the most reliable source, but no new information had turned up about Sarah, other than the fact that the police didn't consider her case a high priority.
That had disturbed Cage maybe more than anything. A woman who didn't ever miss work had missed work. A woman whom all her friends said would never do anything like this, had seemingly done something like this. A woman who always answered her phone wasn’t answering.
Or, more likely, something had made her do those things. But, because there was no blood and no sign of a struggle and her car hadn't been found, the police saw no reason to treat it as a priority. Given that her purse had not turned up, nor her wallet or any other identifying items, they were operating under the assumption that she'd willingly taken them all with her and that there wasn't much they could do.
Cage turned on the engine. The first portion of the drive was the easiest. They only went three houses down and pulled up to the garage. As they climbed out, Ivy came out the front door with a long hug and a reminder to stay safe and check in often. Kayla shoved a bag of snacks at them, which he knew would be packed Tetris-style from both the weight of the bag and the person handing it to him.
Ivy eventually let go of him and turned to Joule, who somehow managed to look as if they were going on vacation. Kayla came to him next. Her arms wrapped around him tight, not even lasting a full second before she stepped back. But given that when they'd first met several years ago, she had blatantly said, “I don't hug,” this was a huge gesture. It was over too soon.
Then, once again, the twins drove away from what little safety and normalcy seemed to exist in their life.
He still hadn't gotten over the stunning blow of losing Dr. Brett, he didn’t think Joule had either. That was maybe why they jumped into action so quickly. Action was easier to deal with than the slow, steady thrum of grief.
Cage couldn't lose anyone else, but he had a sinking feeling he was going to.
It seemed to be the way the world went these days. No one emerged unscathed. His college friends had lost family, parents, and often homes. Whole neighborhoods were sometimes abandoned, and no one thought it was odd anymore. No one asked “why?” because no one wanted to hear the answers. It was always a different version of the same story, anyway—something had gone horribly wrong, and the place had become uninhabitable.
He drove on, Joule mostly staying quiet, his brain locked on the droning of tires on pavement and the whir of passing trucks. For a while, the roads were familiar and then they were simply long. He traded the wheel to Joule and slept for a while as she cut through another state on their way.
They stuck to the major highways as best they could. The road changed beneath their tires multiple times. The gas prices increased. The billboards changed and so did the food offerings.
His stomach felt terrible. Was it anxiety or his diet? Probably both.
Cage kept waiting for word that Sarah had been found. Though he hadn't asked his sister if there was a plan for that, he’d already decided that they would simply continue the trip. Hug their friends, tell Sarah how happy they were that it wasn’t anything major, just a misunderstanding. They could stay for a few days and call it some kind of vacation.
Not that they'd been doing much of anything productive when Dev's call had come in. Still, breathing was productive, he knew—productive in the necessary sense.
They had new cell phones because the last set they'd had were cloned by the Sheriff's Department. For obvious reasons, the twins didn't feel like running around with a law enforcement tracker in their pockets anymore. They also had burners—one of which belonged to Dr. Brett. Life had taught them to have every possible layer of communication.
They had clothing for all kinds of weather. Beyond that, there wasn't much more to plan for. He had no idea what they would find. And—as Dev said—they weren't investigators.
Just over the Texas border, the phone rang while he was driving. Joule fumbled for it, her eyebrows rising as she whispered “Dev!”
Hitting buttons, she answered without any formal greeting, just, “Any news?”
“Not really.” Dev’s voice came over the speaker she’d put on automatically. “No one seems to know anything.”
“I don't understand.” Joule looked at Cage and he saw the confusion there. “She has so many friends. How did she not tell anyone?”
“She and I are the only ones on this job who already knew each other. At least well enough to talk regularly.”
Cage felt his eyes squeeze shut at the thought. Then he purposely opened them, reminding himself to keep his gaze on the road. Of course, the call came in while it was his turn to drive. Long drives always felt like it was his turn the whole time.
“What did you find out today?” He leaned a little closer to the phone, the road long and straight and not requiring much effort.
“They all went to work,” Dev answered, a bite in his tone.
Joule frowned, her expression carrying through to Cage. He knew they were thinking the same thing. Was no one looking for Sarah?
“I called everybody I could once I got home tonight, including her parents. I was hoping, you know, maybe she just had a breakdown and had gone home.”
That was wishful thinking. Cage was about to ask what they said, but Dev was filling it all in.
“That call sucked ass, by the way. Her parents didn't know she was missing.”
“No?” Joule’s voice echoed the surprise that gripped Cage’s limbs.
“No one had told them!” Dev sounded frantic.
“The team didn't take the day off to look for her?” Joule finally asked what Cage had been thinking.
“They can't.” The bite in the tone was back. “Unlike you, the rest of us don't have trust funds. Dr. Murasawa is working to get time to do a search, but she’s not the top of the food chain. And the police report isn’t helping her case.”
An interesting term, Cage thought, but said, “I'm sorry, Dev.”
Like his sister, he hadn't thought that through. He also didn't correct his friend. The twins didn't have trust funds. Their family hadn’t been wealthy enough for that kind of thing. His parents had simply set up good life insurance. Unlike many others, the twins had been in a position to collect it.
“I’m sorry. It's okay.” Dev's voice was softer, weary. He'd been doing what he could, Cage knew.
That was why they were coming down here. Because no one else had the opportunity to drop everything and spend all day looking for someone the police declared “not a concern.”
“We're still a good handful of hours away,” Cage told him. “We won't be there until dark, but we're going.”
“Thank you, man.”
They said their goodbyes and ended the call. It occurred to Cage for the first time that they might be Sarah's only defense.