She hated the heat, Joule thought.
In the past, she'd been glad it was a dry heat, just like everyone else. But she wasn't sure this would be worse with humidity. She wasn't sure it could be worse.
Maybe it was the news that bothered her more than the heat. She looked at her brother and Brooklyn, still crouching down. Brooklyn had considered taking the entire tiny shrub in the box with them. Cage had finally convinced her not to. Though Brooklyn had tried to call her sister to settle the argument, there hadn't been cell service out here.
Joule's phone had been hard pressed to hook up to anything either. In fact, they'd walked a while when they left the car with all three of them waving their phones around until she finally caught a signal. They'd realized then that they were heading in slightly the wrong direction before turning and aiming back for the jacket.
But once she caught a signal again and looked at where she was now, she recognized what she hadn't seen before. They’d only entered the coordinates to get here. She hadn’t put them on the map when they were leaving the car.
Now she pointed at one dot on the phone screen. “This is the shoe.”
Cage nodded, not liking the conclusion they were all seeing.
Still, Joule pointed to the next dot. “This is where Sarah's car was.”
It made almost a disturbingly straight line to the jacket.
If they put the clues together logically, then Sarah had likely left her car and headed first to where the shoe was. She’d lost it somewhere in the vicinity of that spot, it couldn’t have traveled far . . . at least Joule didn’t think so. Then Sarah must have headed here to where the jacket was, losing it, too.
“This means,” Cage pointed out into the open space as he stood up, “we need to be searching that way.”
But he didn't quite point in one direction, he swept his hand across a swath of land.
“We don't even have the drones anymore.” She wished she did, but it was growing late on Sunday. They couldn't just go get them back and borrow them anytime they wanted.
She was confident the whole thing had worked this weekend because they picked the drones up on a Friday evening. She and her brother knew from experience that, on Friday, people tended to leave the job site as soon as the last hour rolled around. But on a weekday, these people were far more apt to stay late to complete some kind of task. Maybe some experiment they were running that needed another hour or data that would just take a little more crunching to finish.
So, the likelihood of the twins running into someone if they tried to pick up the drones tonight was probably fine. But how would they return them? In the middle of the night? No one seemed to be on the roads late; they’d be obvious. If they tried to pick up or return the drones on a Monday or Tuesday, the odds were even worse. And they needed daylight to use them.
Joule had her sunglasses on, but still she held her hand over her forehead. As light as it still was now, the sun was starting to move down. There wasn’t time to get the tech they needed anyway. “It will be the weekend before we can get the drones.”
“If we can even get them again.” Her brother nodded along, but they might have to risk it.
They were Sarah’s only line of defense now. The police weren't doing more or couldn’t. Even if the jacket was Sarah's . . .
Her brother seemed to have the same thought at the same time. “How sure are you that this is Sarah’s jacket?”
The whole issue of the line pointing them in the right direction depended on both these pieces of clothing actually being Sarah’s. “I’ll know more if I can see what's in the pockets.”
“If there’s even anything there,” Brooklyn added, still crouched down, taking care of the last of the evidence. She’d tried to make sure they didn't have any high expectations.
“If it's Sarah's—and I'm pretty sure it is—” Joule said, still scanning the bright horizon, “—There will be something in the pockets.”
Brooklyn nodded along, catching up. The team hadn't been here at this job site that long and Sarah apparently hadn't been hanging around with her roommates much. They hadn't bonded—not the way they had when the roommates had been Sarah, Dev, Cage, and herself.
But Sarah was a woman who appreciated being useful. When there was a task, she always seemed to have something that would work right there in her pocket. A can opener, a Swiss Army Knife, a screwdriver, a quarter . . . something.
“Why don't you guys go do a preliminary search out there?” Brooklyn asked. “I'm going to stay here and take care of this. I want to be sure I have it all packed in as well as possible, because I'm not going to be able to call my sister until we get back into range.”
“I don't think we should lose sight of each other.” Cage looked between them.
Brooklyn agreed. “I didn't mean go out of sight but . . . it's flat.” She motioned them to go, the irritation in her voice conveying something beyond what Joule recognized. But it didn't seem to be aimed at them, at least. “I think you can go a good distance without us losing sight of each other.”
The twins headed out, Joule noting the position of the sun again. It was no longer high. Had it moved since she last checked it?
Cage pulled the compass from his pocket, wanting to be ready. It had already saved them once.
“So, the car was back there. Then shoe, then jacket,” Joule pointed loosely.
“We go this direction,” Cage started moving. It was the same place he pointed originally, but Joule thought it was just like her brother to double check.
They walked out, slowly moving apart from each other, knowing that they could cover more ground that way. Their footsteps traced a V in the sand behind them, but her eyes were glued to the ground in front of her. Lifting the sunglasses, she tried to focus more. At least they were headed away from the sun.
It was a strain, searching for the tiniest clue. Periodically she turned around, looking over her shoulder, checking to make sure she could still see Brooklyn who became smaller and smaller in the distance. She was about to say this was as far as they should go, when she heard a tiny sound.
“What?” she called over to her brother, who was suddenly farther away than she’d realized. He wasn’t as far away as Brooklyn, but far enough that she had to call out.
“It was Brooklyn. She said she's done!” he called back.
Joule nodded and made a loop, not wanting to simply turn around and trace the same steps back. Once she was aimed back toward Brooklyn, she'd moved ten or fifteen feet to her left, but she only made it five feet before she saw the thing that the desert had almost consumed.
A lump.
Long and lean, it lay in an awkward position.
She almost didn't process it. It was desiccated, dried, and partially naked.
Then her brain turned on.
She sucked in a deep breath and yelled, “Cage!” quickly followed by “Brooklyn! There's a body out here!”