“My eyes are crossing.” Cage leaned back in the chair at the table.
He would have liked to have sat on the couch and sunk into the plush cushions. The one here was relatively comfy. But he couldn’t. Four drones sat across it, like invited guests. There was no room for an exhausted, nearly cross-eyed, and ready-to-tap out human.
The twins had downloaded the footage from all four of the drones. Though they had all watched the tiny screens and looked at the ground they covered as they worked, it wasn’t enough. The point of the drones was to go farther than they could cover on foot. So, they were watching it all again.
They’d watched all their own footage already. Even at a faster speed, it took forever. Now they’d moved onto the footage from the Walkers’ drones.
“I need a drink.” Joule’s tone let him know she meant alcohol, and not just something liquid. That wasn’t her usual.
“But if I do,” she continued, “the footage from Malcolm's drone will make it all come back up.”
Cage agreed. The man’s footage had been shaky at best. It was part of what was making him cross-eyed.
Joule’s surreptitious pictures of the entire parking lot at Sarah’s apartment building had already paid off. There had been ten other cars in the lot besides theirs. It was evening and a weekend day and many of the residents had been home.
Joule had pictures of all their cars. Matching tire tracks was not in his normal job description and after watching shaky drone footage for several hours then trying to match imprints to tires, the tension at the back of his eyeballs was beginning to get to him.
Dr. Murasawa had called another search that night. Though Cage had wanted to go, he voted against it.
“They'll send us pictures,” he’d argued.
Joule replied, “Pictures suck.”
He agreed. “But we're about dead on our feet.”
Just having to wait for the police to provide results or the phone company to give them the phone data alone was exhausting. And that didn’t count yesterday’s trip to San Antonio. The shopping for supplies, and playing detective in the parking lot. Then today, they’d spent the day out in the desert, in the heat.
He’d gone through more bottles of water than he imagined possible. The fact that he’d only peed a normal amount told him he’d been losing it at a high rate. They couldn’t afford to go back into the heat tonight.
Joule sighed heavily, but she must have agreed, even though she didn’t say all of it out loud. Because she didn’t argue back.
He went back to trying to watch the image on the screen and scan it for any small detail in the endless scape of monotone color. Even the bright white and pink shoe hadn’t popped when they’d found it. The focus that was required was more than he had to give right now.
He couldn't maintain this level of fight or flight much longer. It was wearing him down, even though he’d lived with it off and on for a long, long time now.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and stood in the middle of the living room. He stretched and turned, wondering if he was old enough to be feeling his joints pop the way he did.
The chairs at the table weren’t really made for relaxing, more for eating or working. But the twisting and jumping didn’t help much. He couldn't shake the tension from his shoulders or the back of his neck. He couldn't stop the clenching of his throat every time he thought about Sarah.
And when he tried to stop thinking about Sarah, it only worked partly.
The evening wore on and he tried to focus. The search started without them, and he tried to remind himself that he wasn’t responsible for it, and he was allowed to take a break. He had to take a break. So did Joule.
But part of his argument to his sister was that they had to return the drones before they were discovered missing. Which was best done at night, when no one would be at the job site to catch them. He didn’t want anyone to see them and be put in the position of keeping the secret, small though it might be.
Another task wasn't a win. It wasn't rest.
He turned and faced Joule, whose eyes were still glued to her screen. “When we get back, we'll get out the microwave popcorn and get some drinks and watch a movie.”
Another screen, but in the distance and one that wouldn’t matter if he cataloged every lizard and every piece of trash.
It would be late, but there wasn't anywhere they had to be in the morning. Only that they had agreed they should call the police and explain that they had matched Salvador Torres’ tires to the tracks in the desert. And that another car in the lot had matched to another set of prints a little farther away.
He hoped they could sleep in a little bit. Though he desperately wanted to keep going to find Sarah and do everything he could, and he knew it would hurt for the rest of his life if they found her body. He couldn’t keep going.
What if they missed her by only a day? Or even a couple of hours?
What if Sarah was still alive now, but they weren’t fast enough to save her?
He pushed the thoughts away, unable to even process them now.
“All right,” Joule agreed from where she still sat at the table. “I think we have about thirty more minutes of this drone footage. Can we just get through it? Then we'll return them.”
He would have taken a break now even despite the fact that there was so little left. His eyes and his brain were done. “Fine, but I get to watch Aurora’s footage. I can’t watch Malcolm's anymore.”
She shook her head and moved her shoulders. Not a shrug. Not a yes. Not a no. But she quietly got up and shifted into his seat, looking at his computer where the footage was pulled up, and began tapping at it. “Shit, there’s more than an hour left.”
Joule agreed to take the break now. He was grateful, his body letting go of more tension than he’d known he was holding.
Closing both the laptops, she headed to the couch and began loading up the drones. They'd carried them in cloth grocery bags, so it didn't appear they had contraband evidence. Not that anyone should really see them, but hauling them in and out of the cars might be an issue. Did this little house have cameras outside? He hadn’t found any, and he’d looked, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Just that they weren’t obvious.
They put them into the backseat this time, putting the bags down into the footwells. If they got pulled over, or somehow anyone looked in, they wouldn't look like they were running around with a pile of drones.
In a short while they were out of town, though El Indio hardly even qualified as that. They pulled up the long gravel road that he could see had been laid by the Helio front team that cleared the site for construction. The gravel was too new, too clean, too thick to be the same as what existed in town.
Though he’d only been on this particular job site a couple of times, it still looked like all the other Helio System Tech sites. The twins put the drones in a neat row on the table across the back of the room, trying to leave them exactly as they'd found them. The footage was erased, fingerprints wiped down, double-checked, and then they were out.
The dark night and the still air seemed to cover for them when there were no trees, woods, or anything to take up the view. Anyone who showed up would see their car. Technically, they were still employees, so he didn’t think they could be prosecuted in any way other than internally.
But then they were back home, despite not speaking the whole way back. That alone told him how much this was wearing on them. They talked constantly. He and his sister argued. They tried to outdo each other. But only sometimes were they silent, and it usually meant something.
He punched in the code to the front door and thought again how much he did not want to watch the last of the drone footage. He wanted a movie, but he was even beginning to question the sanity of that.
He wanted popcorn and to pop the lid on a hard lemonade that he didn't really like the taste of but he almost needed the buzz from. It said something that he and Joule had even bought them in the first place.
“You have to watch it.” Joule was reading his thoughts. “We have to finish this.”
He nodded, glad that he bartered for Aurora’s footage. The room was quiet for twenty minutes as he checked his watch and the time stamps on the video consistently, hoping it would soon be over.
“Hey!” Joule suddenly tapped at the table beside him. “Hey, look at this!”
She pointed at her screen. His eyes focused.
Did Mr. Walker catch this, too?
Cage didn’t think he had.