Cage clicked the buttons on the walkie talkie and then handed it over to Aurora. They'd been out for thirty minutes, and it was time to check in.
The walkie talkie hadn’t buzzed at him, meaning the others hadn't contacted him, so he was reaching out.
The first buzz earned them a pickup.
“Hey, honey,” Aurora said as Malcolm's voice came over the line. “We’re doing the check in.”
“We haven't seen anything,” he answered. “You?”
“Just tracks. It’s clear there's a lot of movement of all kinds of things through here, but we haven't seen anything in and of itself.”
She was right. There were foot trails and Cage had seen other prints, maybe from bikes, even motorcycles. There were animal prints everywhere, some in groups. Aside from general classifications, he couldn’t say exactly what was out here, and the two of them didn't see much of anything until they almost stepped directly onto it.
They had flashlights but weren’t using them. All three groups had decided to let their eyes adjust to the dark, afraid that waving one around would draw attention to them, while blinding them to anything beyond the radius of the artificial light. And a flashlight might shine on something it shouldn't. When it did, it would alert everyone what they were looking at. So, they’d left them off. So far, it had worked for him and Aurora.
“Well,” Malcolm sighed. “Consider Gisela and me checked in.”
A moment later, Joule’s voice came over the line.
“Same,” she told him, “all kinds of tracks. We actually came across a jug full of water as if someone had just set it down and left it.”
Strange that someone would abandon their water out here.
“Did you take it with you?” Aurora asked.
“Oh no!” Joule and Amber immediately replied in tandem.
“We have our own water and we're not touching anything. Not unless it's obviously Sarah's,” Amber filled in.
For a moment, the distance hung between them, and it was clear nobody had seen anything that was Sarah's. Not tonight.
“Okay, then we're all checked in for the next half hour. We’ll talk again at one.” He didn't like the feeling of releasing the button to end the call. But he did feel better having heard everyone’s voices. Mostly, it was talking to his sister and knowing that she didn't sound disturbed in any way that settled his feelings.
He kept moving in the same direction. Again, his eyes scanned the ground at his feet. A scared lizard, who'd managed to keep himself hidden until the last moment, scurried away before Cage squashed him. In the distance, a bush shuddered and a rabbit bounded away, a shadow hopping through the night.
At one point, they'd heard a rattle—the almost plasticky sounding shake of a snake tail. Aurora’s hand shot out as if he was a child in the car seat next to her. As if her hand were enough to stop his forward momentum. It didn’t matter, both of them froze.
They stood silently waiting, trying to pinpoint the sound without turning their heads. At last Cage managed to find it though the low light made all of it difficult.
“Over there,” he whispered as softly as he could. He stayed as still as possible, moving only his eyes to direct Aurora where to look.
They stayed that way, in a standoff with the snake, for a good five minutes. Eventually it grew bored with them turned and slithered away.
They shouldn't be out here like this. Him and Aurora. The snakes were home. He was the intruder. And the wildlife was hard enough to spot in the daytime.
They could have been bitten before they even knew it was near.
Aurora had a similar thought. “We're lucky this one decided to warn us first.”
Did Amber even have any antivenin in that kit, and why would she? It was a forensic kit and an evidence kit so at best they could save things that were already not alive.
“Malcolm has a medical kit on him,” Aurora assured Cage, but he didn't feel very assured.
Malcolm and Amber were the farthest away. Could they get to any of the others in an emergency? He didn’t know.
When dividing up into pairs, they'd made sure to get a gun in each party. They'd made sure to split up their little already formed partnerships, too, hoping that they could share information and that a person coming from a different perspective on this would lead to better cooperation rather than echo chamber ideas.
He and Aurora crossed another set of trails and he felt like they’d covered no ground. They’d stopped and stood still for so long for the snake, that when the walkie talkie buzzed this time, it startled him.
He had forgotten to set the timer to make the call himself. What if the digital sounds of the walkie talkie had startled the snake?
Cage was beginning to think this was all a bad idea. Though he hated to admit it, maybe the police officer was right. Or maybe he just had a bad feeling about being out tonight.
All three groups checked in again, and Cage didn't want to say we should turn around and go back this isn't working.
Luckily, he didn't have to.
It was Gisela who huffed an irritated sigh and said, “Let’s check in one more time and then we go back. I don't think we're finding anything of value out here tonight.”
Looking at each other, Cage and Aurora nodded. Cage spoke their agreement into the handheld system.
“Joule and Amber agreed, too,” Gisela told him and again they disconnected.
He set the timer on his cell phone, turning down the volume of the alarm and the volume on the walkie talkie as well. At least he was trying to think ahead.
They only had thirty more minutes to go forward. They didn't even have to go that far. Maybe because it was the last leg of the trip, or maybe because it was so late at night—he didn’t know—he felt the twist of his stomach as he stepped.
Aurora at least had turned out to be a better companion than he'd expected. Her ample shape disguised the fact that she was fit. It was his mistake, he knew, for not recognizing that. But for all the walking and all the ways the desert night stole from the people who walked through it, she hadn't broken a sweat. She hadn't breathed heavily, and she had not once complained.
She was smart enough to wear good shoes. And Aurora was the one who'd suggested the bright colors, her own white sweater gleaming in the moonlight. Now, for whatever reason, maybe because it was the last leg of the trip, she started talking casually. Even if the topic wasn’t casual at all . . .
“I felt that something bad had happened to Sarah when we didn't hear from her. I just knew it. But now I'm looking back at all the times I talked to her right before she went missing, all the times since she started the job here, and I'm trying to think what did I miss?”
“What could you have even missed?” Cage asked. “Unless she dropped big hints?”
“No, nothing like that. Sarah sounded happy here. She said she was volunteering at the Y and doing good work. And I had no reason not to believe her. Now I don't know if we'll ever know. But I'm starting to think that Sara got herself into something and I hate to say it, but her disappearance may not have been entirely innocent.”
Cage had wondered that, too. There were now two people in town who recognized Sarah and wouldn't admit it. At least two, maybe they just hadn’t found the rest.
He was pondering that problem when he stubbed his toe on a rock. Frowning, he looked down, thinking it should have hurt more than it did, and realizing that the rock had moved. Too easily.
As he and Aurora looked at each other, questioning the oddity, they reached down in tandem. Even in the pale moonlight, up close it became clear: It wasn't even a rock. Just a plastic molding of one. The fake kind people used to hide pipes in the yard or small outdoor appliances.
Curling his fingers under the edge, he lifted it slightly. But before he could see anything, he heard shuffling noises and froze.
People. He heard people. Many of them. From all directions. Close.
He heard the snicks and clicks of guns being readied.
Across from him, he saw Aurora. Fear or shock or something was holding her unnaturally still.
Whatever was under the fake rock, someone was willing to kill to protect it.
All around him, people of different sizes held guns aimed at them. Some were handheld, semi-automatic. Some were assault rifles that would make it completely unnecessary for the handguns to even be here. One was a battered silver Colt revolver that glinted in the night.
His heart hammered in his chest.
The bad feeling hadn’t been for Joule. It was for them.
But as he looked up, trying to make out the people at the ends of the barrels pointing at him, his mouth fell open as he recognized a face.