Joule laid the sweater on the table. So many hands touched it, read it, and tried to figure out what it meant, but she didn't mind.
They’d stopped back at the original parking lot, picking up Malcolm's Buick. Then they’d caravanned all the way back from San Antonio.
They might have to go right back out, Joule thought. But here she had laptops and equipment. Kayla could log into satellite feeds with fast download times, and she was already doing exactly that.
Joule read off the first lines of the sweater again. “Thirteen men, and eleven women.”
“Given the footprints, it might be all ages.” Amber added in.
Joule read the second line. “C S A all okay.”
Even the order of the letters told Joule that Aurora had knitted it, putting herself last.
Her heart had instantly let go of some of the terror she’d carried for the week when she’d first stood in the desert and read that line.
Folding the sweater over with the light on in the back of the SUV while Kayla drove them home, she had deciphered the whole message for the first time. And promptly broke into tears. It had taken a while to get past line three.
“Here,” Joule said now. How many times had she read it so far? She didn't think she could count. “Five houses in a rough line. They are in the Westernmost one.”
It wasn't exact. He didn't have an address. She was certain he would have given it if he did.
“It says they were taken to this place the first night. And that the bosses stay in the house, but they've been shuffled between there and several caves.”
“You are shitting me!” Brooklyn pushed her way forward. “Hold on . . .” She was tapping on her tablet, frantically looking things up. “We just have to find caves, probably near the house, big enough and deep enough to hide ten-plus people.”
“Can you even do that?” Malcolm asked.
Joule bust out with near glee. She almost yelled. “She’s a hydrospeliogeologist!!”
Everyone stared at her, but Brooklyn didn’t even look up.
“She finds caves! She has a P H fucking D in this!” She really did have a dream team.
“There are caves in Texas?” Malcolm asked.
Brooklyn looked up. “Yes, but only around this area. It’s part of why the hydro plant is getting installed in El Indio. It’s why I’m on this project.”
“Then we start with where the footprints led,” Amber chimed in. “I mean it's possible that they walked through there and to an entirely different area, but . . .” she paused, “they probably lead back to the house or the caves.”
“He says the house is at the edge.” David pointed. He also could read it.
“It’s got to be one of these.” Kayla pointed on the satellite image she had pulled up. Joule couldn’t match the roofs to the facades.
Had they been there already? Passed by with their thermal guns earlier tonight?
Had they simply just crossed paths at odd times? Or had they been at another location. The desert was so vast and dark that they might have done that and just not seen each other. Had her brother and the others been just beyond the horizon and not realized how close they had been?
She would never know.
But she felt she was finally seeing what the puzzle could look like. She hadn’t been this happy since before . . . since before Dr. Brett had died.
Though the others looked to the map and Kayla’s pointed out suggestions, or to Brooklyn’s hasty red dots on her tablet, Joule’s eyes stayed on the sweater—the precious lifeline that she had to her brother. It told her that he was, in fact, still alive, or at least had been when the sweater was knit. There had been no attempt to correct it though. She told herself he'd been alive when it was dropped.
Let the others figure out where the house was, where the caves were. She thought about the sand and how there had been very little of it over the edges of where it lay as if it had just been dropped. The sweater couldn't have been there long. Cage was still okay.
“It could be these.” Brooklyn was pointing at nothing on Kayla's screen.
Kayla, of course, had the largest laptop available. It could hardly be considered a laptop, and it had a full ten key on the side, but it was wonderful for looking at these images. She marked the spots their resident expert thought there might be caves.
“What about these?” Amber asked, pointing to another cluster of houses.
“It could be that, too.”
There were barely fifteen houses in the area. “Is that a line of five? The message says five.”
“Agreed.” Kayla didn’t look up. “I think it's these.” She pointed again. “There are two here that could be the farthest west.”
“How is your brother with directions?” Dr. Murasawa asked Joule directly.
“Passable?” she answered. West would be west, but he might not have realized there were two western ones to distinguish. That would be totally like Cage. But it meant it could be either of them.
She almost laughed. Almost chuckled as if she wasn't desperately clinging to an abandoned piece of poorly knit clothing she'd found in the desert. Thank God for the drones. Thank God, she thought, for the dream team.
For the first time, the hope that had lived as the cold hard kernel bloomed and was crawling higher in her chest. They could do this.
What she told the group was, “We have to do this right away. We have to get back there before they get moved. We already have multiple locations.”
It was David who nodded once again citing his if I ran a cartel ideas. He weighed invisible ideas between his open palms. “I don't think I would keep my people in the same place very long. But multiple locations means they can stay longer. And moving is a lot of effort . . .”
“Then we need to get there first.” She wouldn't allow herself to think that she had gotten so close, and that her brother had slipped through her fingers. He wouldn't. He couldn't.
Joule looked around the group, waiting to see exhausted faces. Waiting for one of them to tell her they needed to get a good night's sleep. When no one spoke, she filled the air.
“Anyone who needs to rest can stay here in one of the beds or go home.” They all did have cars.
No one moved.
“We have the thermal imager guns.” It was Gisela who offered that and shrugged as if she did this every week. “It’s possible we were there at the wrong time.”
“We need to check out those caves now, too.”
“So, we go back out now?” Joule asked, her heart fluttering at what she saw.
But a few faces moved for “no.”
“We need to charge the drones,” Dr. Murasawa told her. They had already been plugged in once they all reached the house, but they weren't fully recharged, given the time they'd spent out in the desert.
“I have a charger in my car,” Kayla said. “It has enough outlets to plug them all in.”
Of course, it did. Joule thought. Kayla would have three prong outlets, too.
“I prefer not to plug them into square wave chargers,” Dr. Murasawa said.
Around the table, the crowd nodded. Joule appreciated that they all seemed to understand that the square wave charging would likely shorten the drones’ overall lifespan.
As she watched, Dr. Murasawa shook off the idea and started to concede. Drones versus her people was a stupid debate and she was seeing that.
But Kayla was faster. “It's not square wave. And the drive back to San Antionio to park is several hours. Is that enough?” But she didn’t wait for all the answers, she probably just assumed they’d calculated it for themselves, or they simply agreed that her numbers were correct.
“It should be.” David agreed.
“I'm bringing my laptop.” She told them without segue. “I recommend everybody else bring theirs as well. Is everybody charged?”
It was David who held out his tablet. “Um, I could use the charger too.”
He'd been using it a good portion of the evening off and on with the drone, downloading screenshots and more.
“I've got you,” Kayla said. She even smiled but she did it at the screen she was looking at. “In fact, if you want you can ride with us so you can work on the way.”
They all started to move but it was Ivy who stalled them. “We need food. At least snacks with carbs, and Gatorade or caffeine . . . And a restroom break, now and one when we get there.”
“Okay, Mom,” Kayla answered a smile on her face. This time she looked at Ivy and the kind grin was matched with a sparkle that told everyone else this had been teased before.
Joule hoped she would one day find that in her own future partner.
“It’s your house, you go first.” Gisela swept a hand indicating the short hallway.
Amber piped up. “Yeah, just make sure there's enough toilet paper for all of us!”
It took far too long for everyone to cycle through the lone bathroom. As if sharing it in the mornings wasn’t enough. Joule was itching to get back out on the road, wondering if it'd be worth sending the cars off in waves and let the ones who were ready faster get a head start. But if anyone was looking for them on the satellite, they would find them anyway. They were better off sticking together.
Nothing was open in the middle of the night. Not here in the tiny town. There were no drinks to buy. Ivy handed out the remainder of the glass soda bottles and bottled water that she'd already stocked into the fridge.
Bless her, Joule had thought. Ivy was always ready for anything.
Not soon enough, but eventually, they were all back in the cars, caravanning down the road. Kayla, Ivy, Joule, and David were in the lead car, David tapping away on his iPad.
Joule had been quiet a bit when her phone pinged.
Interesting. “We must have passed the cell tower. I'm getting service for a moment . . . Wait a minute!” Joule looked at the phone again and watched what was happening.
“You either liked what you saw or you’re scared.” Ivy pointed out as she twisted around in the front seat.
Joule couldn't decide which it was.
Ivy pushed. “Tell me.”
“My tracking app just pinged.”