Dr. Murasawa’s team had not been asleep at the wheel. Though they hadn’t been at the search, they’d been working just as hard at finding the missing.
David had sent reams of satellite pictures. Joule was grateful there were as many of them around the table as there were. It would take everyone just to sort the data.
They ordered burgers and a few got salads. She got a sugar laden soda, fries with cheese, and a double cheeseburger. She needed every calorie to counter all the shit she was burning.
Pulling out her laptop, she connected to the hotspot Kathryn McQueeny offered up.
Though Jacob had started to connect in, Kathryn held her hand out and stopped him. The McQueenys once again stayed any contact that would link this work to a specific investigative unit.
Kathryn reminded him, “Anything that runs through you might get filed with the Department.”
Soon, they were up and running.
Joule had the large screen to look at the pictures. David had hand drawn a line through the pictures following the tracks he'd been able to hone in on. The fact that satellites were able to distinguish footprints—which were simply varying shades of shadow in the desert—was simply mind-boggling.
David had even commented in his email that because they’d been able to tell him where to start, he had been able to follow the tracks himself and had still gone cross eyed trying to trace it.
Joule could not have been more grateful for his work, but as she held the picture from the tracking app on Cage’s phone up next to it, everyone crowded around.
She didn't have to say it. The others did.
“They're identical.”
“Looks like he had his phone on him for quite some time after they got caught up.”
“Look where it ends.”
“Jesus Christ. How far did they walk?” Gisela exclaimed.
“I don't know how far that is,” Joule said. There were no landmarks really to judge by and the path had direction, but it meandered.
“Look when the phone was turned off. It's almost four hours after the last time we checked in.”
“What is that app running on?” Jacob asked. “Did you not check it before now?”
Joule explained that she’d tried it before, “So I don’t know why it loaded now.”
It was Maeve who told them, “It means he pinged another cell tower before the phone got turned off and the data finally registered.”
“Did the phone get turned off or did it get destroyed?” Jacob asked.
Joule hated not knowing. “It’s hard to say. The app doesn't track that kind of information. At least not that I know.”
She could see that her brother had 32% battery when the signal stopped and that he'd gotten two of her text messages, asking where he was. But there was no reply typed out to her.
Jacob was leaning over her, looking back and forth between the multiple screens. The others all crowded in but let him have the prime territory.
“Send me that picture?” Kathryn asked.
“Of course.” Joule then asked the woman if she wanted the login to Cage’s tracking app.
Kathryn McQueeny readily agreed. Her brother would have no secrets, but right now, Joule couldn't care less.
She would want them to do the same if she ever disappeared. She had to make the same call for her brother.
It was Brooklyn who turned to Malcolm, “Do you have anything like this on Aurora’s phone?”
“Possibly, but I'm not the tech guy. It's more likely Aurora was tracking me than that I'm tracking her.”
If and when they found Aurora, he would be learning all of the things that Aurora knew. He would never again be stuck like this. Joule could read it in his face.
She hated the if part of the if and when. She told herself, when they found the missing ones.
Dr. Murasawa had sent information as well. Hers was radically different. She'd started with the drones at the job site, which wasn’t that far away from where they were out in the desert.
The solar array was getting installed beyond the town of El Indio. While it was south of where Sarah had initially disappeared and where Cage and Aurora had disappeared last night, the drones could cover some space.
Unlike when Cage and Joule had gone out with them, and had stayed close, keeping the drones in sight for fear of losing them, Dr. Murasawa seemed to have put together a little team that had no such concerns. Even her notes said, “I flew them as far as I could, until I was no longer certain I could get them back with the power that I had remaining.”
They zigzagged, sending drones out in multiple directions, grabbing high quality images of the ground beneath them. Again, Joule saw nothing but sand and shadow, brush and rock. However, the images caught a group of five people heading north.
Through the video, Joule watched them trudge slowly through the desert. She put her finger on her own screen, motioning to Maeve and Kathryn. “Are they important?”
“I don't think that they're in the same situation that your brother Aurora and Sarah are,” Maeve dismissed the group.
Joule understood. These weren’t people with one of the local cartels.
“These are just migrants,” Maeve said with such conviction that Joule had asked, “How can you tell?”
The woman pointed out the clothing and the lack of organization, though none of it seemed any different to Joule. But what did she know? Maybe her brother was out in the desert tonight in full tactical gear.
Kathryn had been busy on her own phone. Though Joule had assumed she was cataloguing pictures, it appeared she'd been in Cage’s tracking app.
“He got two text messages from you before the phone turned off.”
“Yes,” Joule agreed. She'd already seen that. It wasn't like he'd answered.
He would have had he been able to, she knew. So, the phone had been taken away from him or something.
The look in Kathryn McQueeny's eyes as she held the phone up was more severe. “If they destroyed the phone, then they lost this information. That would be good.”
Joule didn’t understand. But Kathryn wasn’t done.
“If they kept the phone . . .”
Something about the tone told Joule what McQueeny suspected. Her breath sucked in, and her eyes closed as Kathryn asked.
“He has the same tracking app on his phone for you?”
Joule nodded and her heart almost stopped beating.
“Yes.” The word slid out slow and low as the implications of that sunk in.