Placing the pen down, Annie reached for the Rolodex on Jake’s side of the desk and flipped it open. When she found the number she washunting for, she punched it into the handset and lifted the phone to her ear, listening as it rang once, twice.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Doctor Porter, this is Annie Heston. I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of the workday, but I’m calling to see if the results have come back from the lab yet… results from the water in Jamie Boyd’s lungs, I mean.”
The doctor chuckled. “Your timing is impeccable, Annie. As a matter of fact, I was just about to give the station a call. The results came in a few minutes ago. Is Jake around to hear this?”
A wave of blood surged past Annie’s ears, making her lightheaded.
“No, he’s out for the day, but I’m happy to relay the message.”
Annie heard the rustling of paper as an envelope was peeled open and pages pulled out.
“One second here, let me find my glasses…”
Come on!she wanted to shout as her fingers tightened around the phone.Come on!
The phone was set down, then lifted again, and paper rustled once more as a page was turned.
“Well?” Annie asked, breathless.
“Ah, here we are… Goodness, it’s uh… it’s remarkable, really. You’ll never guess what they found in the sample of water, still living, still swimming around in there.”
Annie’s face went slack. She knew.
She knew what they’d found. And she forced herself to say the words out loud.
“Bioluminescent plankton.”
“That’s right. Seems there’s no question about it; Jamie was drowned in Lake Lumin.”
Chapter 34ANNIE
It was torture for Annie, lying in bed with the window open, listening to the soft song of crickets outside, knowing that Jake could drive past at any moment on his way to rip Daniel from his home. It was torment, watching the sand in the hourglass run out.
Jake hadn’t given much weight to the tattoo theory when Annie called him at the garage to give him the update. Stephanie was a troubled kid, he’d told her, unreliable, one of the teenagers who regularly skipped school and made up stories when he caught her smoking pot. And besides that, he’d pointed out, now that they knew with certainty that Jamie had been drowned in Lake Lumin, they had every reason in the world for Daniel’s arrest.
Annie rolled onto her side to stare at the minutes passing by in ruby light on the face of the digital clock: 11:47. 11:48. 11:49. 11:50.
Even if Jake didn’t buy into what Stephanie had said, Annie did. The trouble was that there were simply too many young men in town who had tattoos. Ian and every single one of his friends, for starters, and plenty of other guys she’d seen down at the rodeo of the rugged, truck-driving variety. Even Jake had that tattoo of a cross on his arm.
Annie sighed in frustration at the endless circling of her thoughts as the minutes ticked past: 12:02. 12:03. 12:04.
It would have been right about now that Jamie ran past the driveway on her way up to the lake that fateful night. What had she thought about during that jog? Daniel, or someone else? Or had she simply enjoyed the cool night air on her skin, completely unaware that it was the last run of her life?
Annie tried to close her eyes, but they stayed stubbornly open. There had to be something else up there in the briars. Something she’d missed at the scene of the crime.
Five more minutes passed, and Annie gave up, pushing the blankets aside. She’d never find sleep tonight, and if she was up anyway, she might as well make use of the hours.
She was a tracker. That’s who she was, so that’s what she’d do.
Switching on the lamp, Annie rose from the bed and changed quickly into leggings and a T-shirt, then found the old pair of running shoes she’d tossed in the back of the closet and slipped them on, knotting both tightly.
Plucking her headlamp from the nightstand, she left the room and stepped lightly down the stairs into the night forest beyond the garage.
It was quiet outside, the trees tall and black as a chilled breeze whispered through their boughs. Annie started to run, the cool night air burning her lungs as she jogged up the first hill in the dark.
For a minute or two, she was barely able to discern the edges of the dirt road from the ferny little ditches that lined it on both sides, but slowly, her eyes adjusted to the blackness, and she kept her headlamp off. If Jamie had run up to the boathouse in the dark, so would she.
