Ty smiled. “It might not be as bad as you think. Your human blood may be enough to buffer you from the draining effects of the river’s energy.”
Caleb couldn’t help noticing how Ty had said, “May be enough.” Nothing seemed to be certain here, and he knew he’d just have to roll the dice and go with it.
But he’d find Delia even if he had to crawl on his hands and knees to get to her.
“Do you know why the Colorado in particular?” he asked. “I know it isn’t all rivers, because I spent plenty of time on the White River in Indiana when I was growing up. It didn’t have any effect on me.”
“I can’t say for sure,” Ty said. “You might not want to believe this, but I certainly don’t know everything. I haven’t lived in Las Vegas my whole life, only the past seven years, and I haven’t had much need to get out and explore.”
“Because you were assigned to Las Vegas?” Caleb asked. He had a feeling the other man wasn’t about to give him a straight answer, but he figured he would try anyway.
“I’m not sure if that’s the best way to describe the situation.”
Of course not. Caleb sent a sideways look at Pru, but now she was staring forward, her expression distracted, as if she was already mentally running through the methods she might employ to track down her missing friend.
And really, that was what he should be doing, too. While he hated to have Ty dodge every single question regarding his past, that wasn’t the important thing here. If he wanted to keep his secrets, so be it.
“We’re getting close,” Pru said as a sign for the turnoff to Davis Dam flashed by.
Yes, they were. He’d looked up the route on his phone, so he knew they needed to keep going but then take the first exit in Laughlin and head north to the park.
They didn’t have to cross the Colorado River, and yet Caleb could still sense it as they approached, its strength pulsing in the background like the bass beat of music playing off in the distance. He didn’t feel particularly debilitated, but maybe that was because they hadn’t gone over the water yet.
With any luck, they wouldn’t have to at all. On the other side of the river was Bullhead City and Arizona, and it didn’t sound as if any of Delia’s business had taken her there.
He followed the signs to Heritage Park, and within a few minutes, they were pulling into one of the parking areas. Sure enough, there was Delia’s little white Hyundai Kona, although he noticed that she’d removed the magnetic signs from the front doors that advertised Dunne & Dunne Realty.
That wasn’t so strange, though. The whole point of them being magnetic was that she could put them on and take them off as needed…and he guessed she would have wanted to maintain a low profile on this trip.
The spaces on either side of the little SUV were empty — the park didn’t look too busy on this hot Tuesday afternoon — so Caleb pulled into the one on the right and turned off the Range Rover’s engine.
As soon as he opened the car door, a blast of warm air caught his hair. It was windier than he’d been expecting, but he assumed that had something to do with the way the park sat high above the river, giving a spectacular view of the Colorado as it wound its way past the casinos and restaurants that clustered on its banks.
He wasn’t here about the view, though. Pru and Ty had just emerged from the SUV, so Caleb directed his next words to her.
“What should we do first?”
“Let me take a look at the car,” she said. “I’ll try dusting for fingerprints and see if I can find any that don’t look like Delia’s.”
“You can tell which fingerprints are hers just by looking at them?”
Now Pru grinned, even as she opened up her satchel and started hunting around inside. “Actually, yeah,” she replied. “But that’s only because I used her as a guinea pig when I was first teaching myself how to do this.”
Caleb looked over at Ty, whose shoulders hitched almost imperceptibly.
All right, he’d just stand back and see what happened.
Prudence produced a small vial of powder and a brush from her satchel, and then went over to the driver’s door and dusted some of the powder around the handle. “These are all Delia’s,” she announced after a moment. “Let me check the passenger side.”
Again, Caleb and Ty watched as she used the brush to apply the powder to the door. It didn’t seem as if she’d found anything of note, because when she looked up, her expression was noticeably annoyed.
“Nothing over here, either. I’ll check the back hatch and the rear doors, too.”
Those must have been a no-go as well, since Pru came back to the spot where she’d left her satchel sitting on the ground and placed the fingerprint powder and brush back inside.
“All the prints on the car are Delia’s,” she said, although Caleb had already gathered as much. “I suppose the person who took her could have been wearing gloves, but none of the prints I found are smeared, so I’m not sure about that.”
Ty looked away from her to the signage at the far end of the lot, which appeared to show a diagram of the park’s trails and amenities. “I’m going to explore,” he said. “Maybe Delia didn’t stay in the parking lot. It’s possible she might have been confronted somewhere else on the park grounds.”
