“Footprints!” Gisela announced excitedly over the walkie-talkie. “It's a path. Lots of prints!”
Joule looked to Kayla and David. “What do we do?”
How had they done all this planning and they weren’t ready for a find like this?
The three little groups had headed off in different directions. Now Joule wondered, should they double back? Find the others and follow the footprints? Or stay where they were and give themselves more opportunities in case the footprints lead to nothing?
She didn’t have the brainwaves to answer it.
Kayla was looking at Joule, but she lifted her walkie talkie to her mouth. She had an answer. Thank God. “I think we all stay where we are until they see someone or something that you need more eyes to investigate.”
Joule nodded to Kayla, a silent agreement that she understood and that it probably was the best path.
Who knew? What if her brother was a mere five hundred feet in front of her and they turned around and went the other way?
The hidden ramifications of her decisions haunted her every night. What if they had just gone a little bit further? What if she had just gone out and met Gretchen Mueller and her group earlier? What if? What if? What if?
David nodded along, his drone still up in the air under expert control. Even though they had paused to talk about the other team’s find, they themselves hadn't found anything like footprints. They had seen a cluster of snakes and Joule had no idea if they were mating or eating or what. They’d seen a large cat with something in its mouth, something smaller and less lucky than the cat.
The three kept moving, heading forward. How long would they stay out? Technically, half of this search endeavor was still on the job for Helio Systems Tech. Would they need to tap out, saying they had to get up early? They needed to get some sleep before attempting to work at least part of a day tomorrow.
Joule didn't know how many working hours Dr. Murasawa would be able to get them out of. Her own drone was being controlled by one of those people—David.
She was trying to think if Malcolm would stay out late with them, or if he even could. Surely his sleep schedule was all fucked up like the rest of theirs. And Kayla and Ivy? Theirs would be too given another good twenty-four hours of this.
“Look,” David said as he pointed at the screen showing what his drone captured. The machine itself was just a dot in the sky. Joule could barely keep an eye on it in the dark. They had turned off the lights on the little machine, not wanting it to alert anyone that it was there. Surely, if it passed in front of the moon or ran across a path where someone else was looking up, they would spot it, but they weren't going to make it obvious.
Joule and Kayla gathered in close.
“Footprints.”
“We’re so far away from the other group, they can't be the same,” Kayla said, but Joule was already holding the walkie talkie up.
“We've got footprints too.”
“Who's prints look fresher?” Amber asked.
A valid question that Joule hadn't thought of yet. Was she just brain dead? Or did this thing have that many moving parts?
She thought again of what Ivy had told her. She had a dream team here. She almost thought if anyone could find Cage it would be them. But the answer wasn't if anyone could find her brother it was that they would find him.
The teams talked for a little bit, trying to figure it out without Kathryn or Maeve McQueeny here to give them any tracking tips. They tried to remember what they had learned the first time.
“Ours are a little faint. Sand has blown across a few of them, and I can see animal tracks crossing them in two places,” Joule said. It wasn’t a great indicator of time, but of a greater likelihood that time had passed since the tracks had been left.
Thinking that the tracks the other team was following would be newer, and might lead them to actual people, she opened her mouth.
Then she heard Ivy on the comm. “Keep following your own tracks. We've got enough people we can follow all leads.”
Joule thought again that they were doing the right thing, even if it felt as if a fork had been pushed into her stomach and twisted like spaghetti. She could do this. She could do anything if it meant finding Cage.
They kept going.
This path veered, and they followed along, the drone tracking overhead and the three trailing behind. As they got nearer to the footprints, David turned the drone to the left and tracked further away. This trail was out into the open space of the desert.
Joule had no idea what they might be following. Migrants? Hikers? Her brother? There were too many options. Most of them wouldn't lead her to anything good.
“What's that?” David asked, pointing to the screen again.
Something had been left.
“It could be a plastic bag. We’ve seen plenty of those blowing around. Also, water jugs. Lots of empty bottles out here.” As Joule watched, the drone tipped giving the camera a wider view than just what was directly below it.
“It’s not moving like something lightweight. There's nothing near it. I'm going down.” Using a series of controls as if he were playing a video game, David deftly maneuvered the machine.
Joule watched as the image became clearer and clearer.
“It’s definitely not a bag,” David said as they got close enough to see. “Is it clothing?”
“Is there something wrapped in it?” Kayla leaned in close, too.
“It's a sweater.” Joule grabbed her own phone, then quit, angry that she couldn't take a picture and send it to Malcolm.
“Honestly,” Joule said, “It looks like the sweater Aurora was wearing the night she went missing.”
David blinked at her. “It does.”
The three of them took off running, the drone wobbling in the sky as David lost his very careful control.
The machine had been farther in front of them than she’d estimated, and Joule wasn't prepared for the exertion to her lungs and the buildup of the lactic acid. But she couldn’t care. It was ridiculous, there was no way it was Aurora’s sweater, but they all ran toward the mystery object anyway.
Eventually, she could see it with her own eyes. She wanted to run even faster, to go and grab it, but it wasn't a person. She couldn't afford to hurt herself for what she now saw was in fact, a pale sweater. The sand had blown over it just a little, a tiny lizard sat on top. As Joule reached down to grab for it, he darted away faster than she could have snagged him. She didn't want him anyway.
Lifting it, she saw it moved oddly, making her brows pull together. Something about the sweater was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Aurora’s. Her sweater hadn't looked like this: bumpy and nubby, almost homemade looking. But the sleeves . . . They were manufactured.
Joule held it up stretching the shoulders wide to see it. “I need light,” she said to Kayla.
Though they had tried to stay incognito out here, none of the three said anything as Kayla flipped on her phone. Only David kept in touch over the walkie talkie telling everyone else. “We've got it. It's a pale sweater, almost white.”
If one of the others responded, Joule didn’t hear. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”
Kayla held the light. David was still awkwardly keeping the drone afloat, as he held his own walkie talkie out to capture her voice. “This is Aurora’s sweater. And I can read it!”