42

As they traveled down the highway, Sam silently made deals with the universe. He swore that if Emily was okay, he’d devote his life to helping people.

Sick people.

Poor people.

All kinds of needy people.

He would be a priest or a minister or whatever was the highest calling.

If it meant giving up music, he’d do that.

He’d move away. He’d leave everything behind. He would sacrifice anything to have Emily be all right. He’d give his own life.

Sam’s lips moved as he spoke the words out loud: “Just let her be all right.”

This day, he thought, needed to end with the discovery of Emily reading a book in a library. She’d fallen asleep. Her cell phone was off. There had been no reason to panic.

There would be no connection to Robb’s car or Destiny.

It would all be a big mix-up.

But he said over and over again to himself:

Just let her be okay.

Robb Ellis was staring at Rabbit Ears.

That was what the strange rock formation was called.

He was in the driver’s seat, looking out the window at the two rocks that jutted up from the sea of pine trees.

And then suddenly there was a siren behind them with swirling lights and a voice commanding that the car pull over.

Robb put his foot on the brake. “If we were in my car, this wouldn’t be happening. I have a radar detector.”

Sam looked at him. “We’re trying to find your car. So if we were in your car, of course this wouldn’t be happening.”

Robb exhaled as he shut his eyes, mumbling to himself: “Man up.”

Moments later the state trooper had his head in the window. “I just need your license.”

The ticket was for going eighty-seven miles an hour in a fifty-five-mile-an-hour zone.

After the ticket they didn’t get far, because Robb had to take a leak. He pulled Sam’s car over to an area along the roadway.

Standing there, doing his business under the heavy canopy of old-growth trees, Robb suddenly heard high-pitched squeaking.

He realized that the sound was above him. But just as he raised his head, something fell from a treetop nest.

And it landed right in his face.

The baby bat, nocturnal, only two weeks old, was not yet able to do more than eat and sleep and squeak. The little animal had been positioned poorly in the nest, and gravity had won the only battle being waged.

But when the baby bat hit Robb’s head, his freak-out was so extreme that he took off in a sprint, lost his balance, and slid on moss.

His ankles, he immediately realized when he went down, were always wobbly.

Sam waited in the car for ten minutes, which felt like an hour, before he opened the door to see what was taking Robb so long.

Was he doing more than just taking a leak?

The idea of finding Robb Ellis squatting somewhere out in the ferns was more than disturbing.

Maybe Robb had encountered a bear or a wolf or a mountain lion. Or maybe he’d stepped into an old, rusty hunting trap and was now thinking of gnawing off his own limb.

Whatever he was doing, it was keeping them from heading after Robb’s car and possibly finding Emily.

And nothing else mattered but her disappearance, his bad behavior, and the threat that was a girl named Destiny.

It was incredibly quiet when Sam opened the car door and started down the slope into the dense woods.

The undergrowth of moss and ferns made a kind of carpet, and Sam knew how to spot where it had been disturbed.

He found the baby bat before he found Robb. It lay on its back at the base of a towering tree. It was tiny, with immature, limp wings that were translucent even in the half-light.

The little baby’s perfect body was so fragile that Sam found himself transfixed at the sight.

Only moments before, the small animal had been alive. Sam forced himself not to connect what he was seeing to Emily.

The world wasn’t a big web where everything had a reason for being or meaning in a greater context.

Bats carried rabies.

Clarence had always warned about that.

Sam felt the panic full on. It gripped his throat and made breathing difficult. His father should be the last of his problems right now. The man was locked up and had nothing to do with what was now happening, and any thought of him was just ridiculous.

And then he heard a voice: “I’m over here.”

Only forty feet away, crumpled in a hole, was Robb Ellis. Sam dropped to his knees. “What happened?”

Robb tried to pull himself to a seated position, but he was still dazed. “I’m not sure.”

“Just take a breath. Take it easy.…” Sam nodded, adding, “Did you see a bat?”

It was all coming back to Robb now.

“Yeah. It flew down and hit me in the face. I freaked out.”

Sam shrugged. “Stuff happens.”

Robb started to get up. “You must think I’m the biggest dork.”

“Not really.”

Robb was suddenly very coherent. “I am. That’s the truth.”

Sam helped him to his feet. “Maybe you think too much about what everyone else is thinking about you.”

Robb considered the possibility. “You say the most simple things, and somehow it’s like you’re a prophet.”

Sam shook his head. “Only to you, Robb.”

“Call me Bobby. That’s my name.” He started up the incline to the road. “The Robb thing is so pretentious.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “I’m not really sure what pretentious means.”

Robb/Bobby shook his head. “Of course not. That’s perfect.”