Maybe both possibilities were true. He wasn’t proud of either one.
Nailed to a lodgepole pine up ahead were two wooden signs with family names and route numbers. He turned and began to climb a long dirt road.
With the APB, every uniform with the authority to arrest would be on high alert for signs of the escaped murderer—the main roads would be well covered. And he knew she wouldn’t be headed for the hills. Cara Campbell wouldn’t survive twenty-four hours without lip gloss, much less food and shelter.
The only question was whether she would be dumb enough to use her stolen phone to post on Instagram, as Gracia believed, or call a friend for help, before Jordan could find her. Gracia considered herself something of a social media expert since she had volunteered to run the department’s Facebook page, thenbeen drafted into handling the X account before drawing the line at Instagram and TikTok. Jordan knew Beto had already filed a request with the cell phone provider for data and tracking, but they’d be lucky to get anything for at least twenty-four hours.
His rearview flashed red as he climbed out of the trees onto an unshaded turn in the road. The fiery setting sun was losing its battle with the smoke from the valley floor and the new fire that had flared up next to the crash site. He was angling the mirror down when his cell phone rang.
The caller ID read AMBER ALERT. Sydney had programmed that into his phone as a joke.
“Hey, honey,” he answered.
“I know you’re not coming home for dinner,” his wife said, her voice tight with worry. “Is there any update on Bree?”
He’d texted her earlier, right after he called Steve and Joanne, Bree’s parents, asking her to keep the news from Sydney until they knew more.
“It’s still touch and go.”
“You mean she might not...” Her sentence ended with a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob.
Neither of them said anything for a while. Bree had been a hot mess with terrible grades, tragic taste in boys, and an unfortunate habit of spending money that wasn’t hers. But she was also sweet, hilarious, and awkward—in other words, a perfectly normal teenage girl. A living, breathing, laughing best friend to their daughter. Jordan had seen enough death to know that if she didn’t make it, the hole in her family’s lives would be deep and dark, that for a while it would swallow everything, and even after it shrank almost out of sight, it would never, ever go away.
He steered carefully out of the red glow into deep blue shadow as the road entered a ravine.
“We can’t put it off any longer,” Amber finally choked out. “Sydney has to know. I’ll tell her.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m here, you’re there. Maybe you’ve got enough to deal with right now. On the news, they’re saying five people died in the crash and two prisoners escaped.”
“You’re never going to believe who?—”
“Cara Campbell.”
“That was fast. We haven’t even announced it.”
“Social media. You will not believe how quickly this thing is blowing up. People on Nextdoor in Fresno are like, ‘Lock your doors!’ Some idiots are out there driving around and looking for her. There’s already a Facebook group called, ‘Where Is Cara Campbell?’”
“That’s what I aim to find out. Tonight, if possible. Hug Sydney for me.”
“I will.”
Jordan sighed, grateful for his amazing wife. “I love you.”
“Love you, too. Stay safe.”
She hung up. Jordan gunned his engine up a steep driveway and braked to a halt below a three-story alpine-style lodge with a half-dozen SUVs parked in front.
He knew it didn’t make sense to blame Cara for Bree. Then again, if Cara hadn’t killed her husband, she wouldn’t have been transported to prison, and maybe that prison van wouldn’t have left exactly when it did, and Bree—even if she had been stupid enough to use her phone behind the wheel—would have steered safely back across the center line. And five other people would be alive right now.
It seemed possible, anyway.
ELEVEN
CARA
@carasloveisgold blocked me on Insta for saying she’s guilty as sin. How much more evidence do you need?
