Jordan wished he had escorted the Fetzes back to their car before questioning LaDonna. Though they had backed away, they’d obviously overheard the exchange and were now talking to each other. Whatever they knew would probably be on Facebook as soon as they stopped for lunch in the next town.
He closed the door and hurried back to Beto, who was watching two deputies tramp around in the brush off the shoulder of the road by the back half of the prison van. Smoke was rising, but Jordan couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“LaDonna says she didn’t call 911,” he said. “Did we recover all the phones from the victims?”
“No idea, but I’ll find out.”
“Contact CDCR and get the names of everyone who was in that van. And issue an APB for the second escaped prisoner, Cara something. She’s famous.”
As Beto tilted his head and began speaking into the handset clipped onto his shoulder, Jordan heard shouts. His deputies stumbled back as flames erupted from the dry brush.
“And alert Cal Fire. We need water tenders and fire engines now!”
NINE
CARA
Deer me! Love you, deer! Oh my deer!
—@thedeerestwildlife
The shadows had grown longer, the temperature was dropping, and the sweat on Cara’s neck was drying more quickly. She needed to get to a lower altitude before nightfall. She also desperately needed water. Therehadto be something drinkable somewhere—half the bottled water she’d ever bought was named High Sierra, Sierra Blue, or Sierra something-or-other.
She weaved her way downhill in the waning light, keeping close to trees and shrubbery for cover and longing for the convenience of, well, a convenience store. As she stopped and crouched to retie her shoe, a trio of deer ambled into the small clearing in front of her. They stopped so close that she could nearly touch the coarse brown fur on the flank of the largest one, a doe. A white-spotted yearling and a spindly-legged fawn stood beside her, nibbling shoots growing at the base of a nearby tree. For an exhilarating moment, Cara didn’t move a muscle and just watched while the large doe foraged and crunched contentedly.
The magic of being in such close proximity to such beautiful wild creatures was broken when the yearling twitched her ears and grunted, and the doe responded with a loud snort.
Cara had barely allowed herself to breathe, but the yearling must have smelled her and sent a warning to her mother, probably,Don’t look behind you...
In an instant, they loped away uphill.
I’m nice. I swear, she almost called after them.
She sensed movement across the clearing. Almost before she understood what she was seeing, a mountain lion—tawny brown with a whitish belly and a long, whipping tail—catapulted past her in the direction of the deer.
She covered her ears in a futile attempt to block out the growling, snorts, and high-pitched squeals that accompanied the thrashing in the brush just above her.
And then, as quickly as it had started, the forest quieted, resuming its eerily peaceful hum.
Cara forced her trembling legs downhill.
No matter where she went, death was following.
TEN
JORDAN
Unconfirmed reports say convicted murderer Cara Campbell was involved in a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transport accident in Madera County.
—KALZ FM
Jordan knew he should wait until morning to restart his search with a full array of resources. The K9 unit had been tied up all day, assisting with the search for a missing toddler in Dairyland—fortunately, they found the kid—and the handler told him the dogs would be useless without a good night’s sleep. The helicopter he’d requested was needed for wildfire spotting: the Irrigosa Fire now covered a thousand acres and was only 40 percent contained, while the Coarsegold Fire was a hundred acres and growing. While he had no idea how much the latter would limit access to the search area, tomorrow he would be able to borrow warm bodies from a handful of agencies, including the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force, who had already been in touch to offer their assistance if the prisoner was not recaptured.
So why was he out here? Cara Campbell—Gracia, who had followed the trial as a former fan, came up with her full name—was a wealthy woman who snapped and killed her husband. It wasn’t like he had the Zodiac Killer on the loose.
One possibility that Jordan would not have admitted to anyone, maybe even Amber, was that it had to do with his Troy Silverman encounter earlier that day. Single-handedly capturing the fugitive would be the only advertisement his campaign needed—and would play even better, now that he knew the fugitive was famous.
Another possibility was the fact that he wasn’t quite ready to face Sydney. The last time he called in, Bree had been in her fifth hour of surgery to repair massive internal bleeding from a fractured skull, a broken back, and a host of other injuries. If she didn’t make it, how was he going to explain to his daughter that her best friend, the girl who had talked a blue streak through the family’s Monopoly game last Friday night, would never come to the house, or school, or anywhere, ever again?
