“We didn't find anything useful,” Jacob told her over the phone, and Joule hated the answer. She needed these calls to yield more, to move more information or tell her they’d found her brother and Cage was coming home.
She'd wanted to go with them but understood why the Maverick County Sheriff's Department was not going to let her help them serve a warrant in the middle of the night.
The footprints in the desert that David and Dr. Murasawa had followed via satellite led to a small town—maybe just a cluster of homes. Though the footprints didn’t do them the favor of leading directly into one home, there was a house right near there that had a history of criminal activity.
The sheriff's deputies had served the warrant and searched the place.
“What did they find?” Joule asked. She had to at least know the pertinent follow-up information. She wouldn’t lose her brother because she didn’t dot her I’s or cross her T’s.
“Only the Lopez family. Father, mother, high school aged daughter, junior high age son.”
“There's a school out there?” Joule asked.
“No. They bus to one of the schools at the edge of San Antonio.”
“Damn.” The word slipped out, but Jacob McQueeny murmured along, agreeing with her.
That wasn't the issue, Joule knew. The Sheriff’s Department was only allowed to look for what was listed on the warrant; they were constrained by what they could convince a judge they might find. She wasn't.
Joule tucked away the name Lopez for future reference. She'd found the address herself when Jacob refused to give it to her. He must know that, with all the technology available today, she would do exactly that. If necessary, she would go visit the Lopez family herself.
“Other footprints?” she pushed.
“There was nothing there. Nothing out of the ordinary. We had the warrant, and the warrant is limited,” he reminded her, “But even beyond the warrant, we didn't see anything.”
“There are other houses in the area,” Joule added.
“But we can’t just get a warrant to search them. And it doesn't help that we served a warrant and didn't find anything.”
Her heart sank. It was 3am and she’d been hoping for good news.
No, she’d been hoping they’d tell her they had her brother, and she was to come collect him. But she’d have settled for good news.
This was her fault. She’d told Jacob to call her when it was over. She'd known they were waiting until the middle of the night to serve it.
“We woke the Lopez family and bothered them for nothing.” There was a shrug in his voice.
Assuming the Lopez family weren't involved in this, she thought. Maybe they were just better at hiding it than the Sheriff’s Department was able to find. Right now, to Joule, everyone looked like a suspect. Everyone would be treated like a suspect until she found her brother.
With so little information to be had, Joule found she didn’t even have more questions. She thanked McQueeny and hung up, angry at yet another failed avenue.
The phone had woken her from a deep sleep—the first in several days. The little search team had been out again last night following footsteps again.
The tracks were fainter now, much fainter. It was just enough to find reminders that they were on the right path when they followed the images and locations from David’s satellite hack. Joule tried not to draw conclusions between the fading footprints and the likelihood of ever seeing her brother again.
They were simply trying to see if they could find any information along the way—anything they could take to the sheriff or the DEA or . . . anyone. But they’d not gone the whole distance. It was too far, and Jacob, Kathryn, and Maeve all suggested that they not give indications of where they were headed. They shouldn’t trek up as a group and give the houses at the other end of the footsteps any warning that they were coming.
It wasn’t like the HST workers could do much of anything if they found it. Though Joule was more than content to think she and Malcolm would just be angry enough to break laws and break their family out, the others wouldn’t be so rash. But who knew what was there?
Joule sighed into the dark. She was awake now and her brain was churning even though she should be going back to sleep.
She’d spent part of her day following along as they brought Gretchen Mueller in for questioning. But the woman had given up nothing. The Sheriffs had let Joule watch through the window into the interrogation room, though she’d not been allowed to say or do anything other than observe.
She'd been impressed with Jacob. He pushed. He'd said, “We know that you know Sarah,” and he’d slid Sarah's picture across the table.
Gretchen calmly shook her head. “I don't know her. I've not seen her before.”
For a moment Joule had wondered if Jacob might have been able to catch the woman. If he'd said, “We know that you know Tara,” and let Gretchen correct him. But he hadn't done that, and the opportunity was gone. So, all Joule had to go on was the flicker in the woman's eyes as she looked at the picture. She looked sad, as if she regretted what had happened to Sarah. Joule wondered if she might have been able to bank on that sadness in a way that Jacob McQueeny had not.
Had she been able to go to the woman herself, slap her hands on the table and say, “my brother is missing now too!” and beg for help finding him, it might have worked. Joule was not above begging at this point. Cage had been gone too long. They passed out of the “Golden Window,” and they’d passed Sarah's golden window a long time ago. So Joule was more than willing to leverage her fear and her need to reunite what family she had left to make Gretchen Mueller talk. But she hadn’t been allowed and the moment had slipped away.
Jacob said he'd consulted with his DEA sister Lindy. Though he'd not handed the case over to the agency, Joule was glad that at least the DEA was involved. Any advice they had might be put to good use. Joule began to wonder if letting the sheriff’s department handle the case was truly the best track. In fact, she decided it wasn't. It couldn't possibly be. But it was 3am and there was nothing she could do about it right now.
She punched the pillow, partly because it was flat, and partly because she was. She needed to hit something, to feel the smallest pushback from something real. She wanted to believe that she would know if Cage had left this world. He was after all, her twin. She should know if something had happened to him.
She'd had a bad feeling the night her mother had died. But it was no evidence of any psychic ability. The family had been hiding from the Night Hunters, the twins down behind the washing machine. When her mother had said, “I've got this.” How could she not have had a bad feeling?
The answer was that Kaya had gotten it. She'd saved them all. But not herself.
Then, even when their father had gone missing, he'd gone off to protect his children. He'd been absolutely crazy, his grief utterly obliterating his decision-making process. His choices had come from a twisted combination of revenge for his wife and love for his children.
But with Cage being missing, there was no purpose to it. There was no greater good that anyone was trying to serve.
Her brother was simply gone.
Joule had already given Jacob McQueeny forty-eight hours. Looking over at the clock, she saw it now had a four on the front of the number.
Excellent. McQueeny had two more hours, and then she was taking matters into her own hands.