Joule turned suddenly at the sound of the other group getting excited. She was surprised that she could hear them even from over here, letting her know that something had happened.
She looked to Kathryn. “Can I go join them?”
She was barely able to make out the group if not for their excited twitters given the way the sky had darkened. Maybe it was a desert thing, but it had happened fast.
To a certain extent she would have liked to have made the decision to join the others or hang back herself. But, on this very first night—hopefully the only night they would have to look—she wanted to trust the experts.
These people had come out of their own free will to find her brother, to find Aurora and, hopefully, Sarah, too. God help her if they weren't all three in the same place.
“Yes, let's go,” Kathryn said even as she stayed crouched down, snapping a few last pictures of the fake rock itself.
Malcolm and Joule were already cutting across the desert, heading back toward the others. They cut as straight a path as they could, veering only around rocks and small shrubs. Gisela and Amber were waving them over excitedly. Despite their cheer, Joule felt a shiver and reached down to pull her jacket from around her waist and slide her arms in.
“Look!” Amber called out, even before they were really close enough to look. She pointed out through the desert. “The tracks head this way. We checked everything.”
Joule turned to look behind her at Kathryn who was bringing up the back.
Brooklyn turned their way and chimed in. “Maeve had us check footprints, and there aren't enough of us to follow all of them. So that's interesting.”
Maeve stayed back, arms folded, letting the young protege take over the discourse.
“Maeve talked us through,” Gisela added, just as excited. “So, it looks like this group of people came up from that direction.” She pointed from the south, much the same direction as Joule and Malcolm had just now come from.
It was what they had suspected last night—or early this morning—when they’d first seen the tracks. But Gisela kept going.
“They came most of the way as a group, walking all together, although not in any noticeable formation.”
Amber butted in, waving her hand to demonstrate as Joule got close enough to really see what they were talking about. “They spread out as if specifically to encircle your brother and Aurora.”
She looked first at Joule, then at Malcolm.
It was Malcolm who said the words. “We’re confident now that they were kidnapped.”
Behind Amber, the other searchers and Maeve nodded. The agent added, “It wouldn't be the first time.”
“What?” Malcolm asked, surprised, putting voice to Joule’s sudden morbid curiosity. Who was kidnapping people out in the desert?
For a moment the expression on Maeve’s face told her you don't want to know.
But that was a luxury that Joule no longer had. Maeve seemed to quickly understand that.
“Illegal factions, as Kathryn mentioned. The drug, gun, illegal animal trade . . . it all runs through here.”
Joule had hoped that wasn't the case with her missing family and friends. Honestly, she'd hoped her brother had just wandered off and they would find him and Aurora lost in the desert somewhere. They would need water and help getting home, maybe an IV at the hospital, but that would be the worst of it.
It was very sad in her mind that near starvation and being lost in the desert had been her best case scenario. She nodded to Kathryn, accepting what was likely true. She hung back at the edge of the group, her heart on pause as she waited for someone to tell her that they wouldn't be able to get Cage and the others back, that they were lost to a system too big to fight.
But no one said it, and for that Joule was grateful.
Brooklyn missed the underlying horror of the conversation, and she filled in the gaps, at least with a little less enthusiasm. “So, the group surrounded your brother and Aurora.”
There was a moment as they all had to stop for a moment and think about what the larger implications might be.
“Then Cage and Aurora head off that direction with the group. There are enough of them that following this set of tracks should be easy enough,” Amber added in.
Joule felt a lift in her chest. They had done the initial work, the necessary set up. Now she could follow the tracks and trace her brother. Right?
Hope burrowed its way into her soul, though she tried to stop it with her own information. “We found evidence of guns under the other rock over there.”
“I'm sure there's plenty more around here,” Maeve added.
“That's enough for ATF, isn't it?” Kathryn moved to stand beside Joule and Joule was watching the conversation as if it were a tennis match. Where was this going?
“Do you want to call it in?” she asked her mother.
“I don't think so,” Maeve said.
Joule almost blurted out “why not!” but managed to hold her tongue. The two women had clearly done this before. The conversation had an undertone that she couldn't read, but she hoped if she waited it out, they would help her understand.
It was Kathryn who looked to Jacob. He wore an expression indicating that he wasn't so fond of the idea of handing the case over to his mother. Joule caught on then: This was his ticket into the FBI. If they handed it to his mother, he'd have to find another ticket.
She had to ask, “Shouldn't it go to the agency best suited to bring the missing people home?”
She emphasized the last three words. As much as she was more than willing to help Jacob achieve his dreams, she was not going to sacrifice Cage, Aurora, and Sarah for an FBI badge he could get later. She wouldn't sacrifice even one of them.
“Actually,” Maeve said, standing back even as she pulled out a satellite phone that made Joule jealous, “ATF isn't the best place for finding missing people. It's not in our jurisdiction. Though it is something that happens as a side effect of our work far more often than you might expect, it's not what we're trained for.”
Joule nodded along, but she wondered how much of that was true and how much of that was about keeping the case with her son.
Maeve turned to Kathryn, surprising Joule. From the looks of it she even surprised Malcolm.
“I think you should take it.”
“What?” Joule asked again, though Kathryn was already nodding.
Maeve explained. “If I call it in, it’s a case. The ATF takes over from here. If Kathryn takes it, it's a research paper. We can all be involved, and we don't have to worry about any agency sending in new investigators and we don't have to hand things over if jurisdictional lines get crossed.”
Interesting, but was that the right thing to do? Was the best-case scenario for finding her brother having the work of his rescue be part of a university research paper?
Still, as she watched, the three McQueenys looked at each other, seeming once again to have a conversation underneath the conversation—one Joule could not yet read.
Whatever it was that they didn't say, they all understood. They looked to each other and nodded in agreement. Joule shivered, though whether that was from the rapidly dropping desert temperature or something she didn’t realize she was picking up on, she didn’t know.
Whatever Cage’s fate was, Joule thought, it had been decided without her.