The drive was solemn, and Cage felt the weight of it. It had taken a while to get all of them into the Walkers’ car.
The phone company had provided a map of where Sarah's cellphone had gone and Malcolm—being his old school self—had printed all of it out.
At first, the exercise had been academic. It was easy enough to look and say this is where Sarah's phone had been, without tying it to the fact that Sarah remained missing. But the first startling information was that the phone had been off since Sunday night just after eight—the night she’d disappeared.
What “volunteering” had she been doing that she’d lied to her mother about?
None of them knew at this point.
The phone had moved well past the spot where her car had been discovered, but they already knew that it wasn't with the vehicle. Had Sarah traveled further out along a road or a walking path?
Now he sat in the back of the Walkers’ nice Buick, his sister next to him, usually the one to ask questions. Even Joule was quiet, this morning. Maybe everyone was on the same page. They all understood there was a possibility that they were following this map to a set of coordinates where they would find Sarah's cell phone . . . and that they would find it on Sarah's body.
No one had spoken those words out loud, though. No one had to.
Cage admired Malcolm Walker's too steady hands on the steering wheel, as he accomplished such a horrific task calmly. They were all likely assuming that the others wanted the same outcome: It would be best if they didn't find anything at all.
Then they could wish that the phone had been turned off, or the battery had run out, and Sarah was still out somewhere with it, trying to make contact.
Even though it was a harsh outcome, he and Joule had discussed the possibilities the night before. After the police had let the search party go, they’d headed back toward the rental house, ready to crash.
“What if she's lost in the desert?” Cage had asked last night, but Joule had just shaken her head.
“It's been too long.”
Joule was right. It had been days, and Sarah hadn’t taken the week off work, so she almost definitely had not expected to be out this long. She wouldn’t have been prepared, and even he knew that being in the desert unprepared could easily mean death.
The car turned off the main road and Cage imagined it was relatively easy for Mr. Walker to trace the route from the night before back to where Sarah's car had been. Cage had no doubt the location was forever seared in his mind. Only this time, crime scene tape hung, dead and heavy in the too-still air.
Sarah’s car was already gone. Other deeper, fresher tracks lined the area, almost definitely indicating where a tow truck had come in. Her car had been hauled to San Antonio as promised. Cage could only hope that they'd done their job and preserved all the evidence they could. They didn’t seem to be out here scouring the area now.
Brooklyn had had no issues handing over her phone because she checked her service and found all her pictures were uploading to the cloud and that she would retain access. Dr. Murasawa had given the group a two-hour later start at work the next morning, but it was the best she had been able to do.
Looking at his watch now, Cage was relatively confident that the Helio Systems Tech people would only just now be rolling into the job site, ready for another day in the heat—but with heavier hearts. Finding the car, and not finding any real evidence of Sarah, hadn't helped anyone. Though maybe, he thought, maybe some of them had found hope. Because there hadn't been any signs of a struggle, they could still believe she was out there somewhere waiting to be found.
“I guess we just drive around it,” Cage said, as he craned his head to look out the front window, looking for some semblance of a path.
It had been easy enough up to this point, particularly in the daylight, to follow the ruts that had been worn when someone else had cut their way through here. But now, with everything blocked off, it became more difficult.
Conversation suddenly bloomed in the car, with Aurora suggesting they go right and Cage suggesting they try to drive around it on the left.
Joule began tapping on her phone. “There's nothing really out here. There aren't even GPS trails left by other cars who came before us. Not past this point anyway.”
That, Cage thought, was odd. He pulled up his own phone and checked the map. Let the others figure out how to get around the blockade.
When enough people drove the same track, the GPS system they used added it as a trail. But why did the lines come here and then stop? They all came to the same point where they’d found Sarah’s car and never went any further. When he actually looked at the ground, he could see the ruts in the distance. People did drive through here, more than one of them had to.
Did people not come out past here in GPS capable cars? The systems didn’t forget that a person had driven on a road, they cataloged location and even speed to report things like traffic jams and find new roads that hadn’t yet been uploaded by mapping companies. But the trails didn’t extend beyond here . . . so had the drivers all stopped here?
Or had they turned off the tracking, not wanting their movements traced? And what would be the purpose for that?
The car rocked and bumped as Mr. Walker finally uttered “Fuck it.” A phrase Cage had not expected to come from the older man's mouth.
He’d simply pulled around to the side, letting the tires and the undercarriage of the nice blue Buick take the brunt of the damage as they bumped up and over the shrubs and rocks. Cage held on, but a few minutes later they were back on the tracks.
Mrs. Walker continued navigating and Joule and Cage leaned back and went quiet again. It took another twenty minutes to go what felt like only a hundred feet. Between the information that the phone company had offered them in coordinates, their own GPS, and the Buick that was not suited to this kind of terrain, the going was slow. Honestly, it was entirely possible no one actually wanted to arrive at their destination.
Then, suddenly, they were stopping. They had arrived but there was nothing obvious, nothing anyone could see from their seat in the car. No movement grabbed their attention, even in the distance, just the hot sun beating down.
The four of them turned inside the car and faced each other. Mr. Walker seemed to have taken it upon himself to lead the group, and Cage was more than willing to let him.
“Now we get out and we look on foot. We try not to mess up anything that might be evidence.”
Cage nodded, trying to keep his expression neutral though his heart cracked at the idea of this man talking about his daughter's things as “evidence.”
It was Joule who said, “We each go out our respective doors, then we trace an outward spiral in a counterclockwise path . . . So we don't miss anything, we keep each other in sight . . .”
His sister trailed off as if she’d been ready to tell them when they should stop but couldn't quite bring herself to do it.
Aurora, braver than anyone should have to be, simply said, “Yes,” and opened her door, the first to put her foot down into the harsh desert sand.
The four each began their slow careful steps, marking their pace off the three others as they wound their way outward from the car in a ring.
Keeping their eyes on the ground, they searched. Cage saw nothing, just felt the hot air filling his lungs and stealing the water he’d drunk that morning.
Though he walked farther and farther, he found nothing but small scrubs and the occasional prints left by tiny desert animals he couldn't identify.
Then Joule began shouting. “Over here! Over here!”