They'd been out here forever.
Joule knew she couldn’t let herself get discouraged, though.
All four of them had stuck together this time, following the pair of footsteps until they’d arrived here. Suddenly, more footsteps came in. A lot of different sizes. Some old shoes, some flat soled, some sneakers leaving treads and what looked like a pair of cowboy boots.
The tracks messed up a large patch of ground around a large rock. Though Joule first gazed off into the distance, trying to see where the two tracks they wanted continued, all the tracks screwed up her brother's and Aurora’s prints and she couldn't pick them out anymore.
When they got home, and she told herself they would, she would take up tracking skills. Animal or human, she would learn to hunt it.
“This time they interacted with someone,” Gisela declared, clearly thinking the same thing as Joule.
“The footprints all overlap,” Amber agreed. “Do we think they joined up with somebody?”
“It looks like a decent sized group,” Malcolm added in.
Joule could only think how odd that was. All of it. Why would Cage and Aurora join some other group and stop checking in? Who were they? These were all questions she couldn’t answer. She tried for one she could.
“Where do the tracks come from?”
They all understood and began tracing paths outside the cluster they could see. One by one, they whipped out their phones, activating the flashlight feature and aimed it at the ground.
Joule no longer cared if she attracted attention. Something had happened to her brother. The clues were here, she needed to see them. If someone spotted them, maybe right now that would be good. But she didn’t find the tracks she wanted.
On the other side of the mess, Gisela called out. “Over here! I think I have incoming footsteps.”
“Here,” Amber replied, at almost the same moment, from the opposite side of the mess.
Joule stood up straight and looked between the two of them instead of at her own feet. “Don't mess them up with your own footprints.”
She shouldn’t have said it. Though Gisela humored her and nodded, Amber looked at her as if to say “duh.” She should have known they would handle everything with care. It was good traveling with people who might be able to find her brother.
“Keep looking,” Gisela told her. “They seem to come in from a bunch of directions.”
So, Joule headed away from her new friend.
“Over here!” Malcolm called out from yet a different spot.
Fifteen minutes later, they had determined that all of the footsteps had originally come from south of the mess. But, at some point, they had moved out and around and come in from different sides. Joule refused to think of what kind of ambush that might mean.
“I have no training in any of this,” Gisela offered her caveat, “but my best guess from the ways the toes are pointed, it looks like they came in from there.” She lifted one finger toward the south. “It then seems they made a circle around this rock, then they left that way.”
This time she pointed east.
“Agreed,” Joule said.
Malcolm nodded.
Though Amber was still looking at the ground. “The rock looks wrong.”
Joule hadn't paid much attention. She'd been so much more concerned with the footsteps—where they came from, where they were aimed, which direction her brother had likely been taken.
She had not let the thought pass that they might be looking for a pair of bodies. She was simply grateful they hadn't found any.
She watched as Amber jabbed at the rock with the toe of her sneaker. “It's fake!”
Her tone indicated she was almost angry at the discovery of exactly what she'd suspected. Reaching down, she curled her fingers under the edge of it and lifted it easily.
Was it paper mache? Joule thought even as Amber cried out, “It’s foam!”
After she messed with it for a moment, she added, “It's anchored just enough to not blow away in the wind. Holy shit!”
The four of them moved quickly, and it occurred to Joule then that they'd all been looking at the ground, then looking at each other. And not looking off into the distance. Something wasn't right out here, and they needed to be watching out for surprises.
Amber held the fake rock up, tipped onto one edge. They all looked under it, but no one aimed their flashlights into the space, as if something told them not to look too closely.
But it didn’t matter. Her eyes had adjusted again, and she saw it.
Holy shit. What had they run into here?