But wasn’t that a trap someone set themselves?
As he drove downhill, the smoke thickened, rising up the slopes of the Sierra with a steady push from the prevailing west winds. The blaze at the crash site had flared up and started spreading in a matter of minutes. The fire rescue truck, ironically, didn’t carry water, only fire extinguishers that hadbeen deployed to no avail. The weather this spring had been weird: rivers were still roaring with melting snowpack from record-setting winter snows, while so little rain had fallen that fire season had arrived early. Now Cal Fire, already warring against a suburban wildfire on the valley floor, had to battle on a second front. How bad it would get tomorrow was anyone’s guess.
Jordan’s cell rang again. His stomach dropped when he saw it was Sydney.
He answered and heard her racking, convulsive sobs.
“Honey, I’m so sorry.”
“Dad, are you sure it was her?” Sydney snuffled, her voice wet with snot and tears.
“I’m sure.”
“So, you, like,sawher?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Maybe you didn’t recognize her,” she insisted, her voice cutting in and out due to the spotty cell service. “Maybe she loaned some other girl her truck. It can’t be her. Breenevertexts and drives. I made her promise!”
Jordan’s chest felt ripped wide open. Once again, his eyes blurred with tears as he pictured the blood on Bree’s pretty, freckled face.
“It was her,” he said. “But maybe she’ll be OK.”
Silence. The call had dropped. No bars.
Swearing, he backed up the road until a lone bar appeared on the dashboard screen. He shifted into park and called her back.
“The call dropped. I’m sorry. I’m up in the hills.”
“Mom said you’re looking for Cara Campbell.” Sydney sounded a tiny bit more composed.
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you look for Bree instead?”
Jordan took a deep breath. “Honey, Bree’s in the hospital. Her folks are with her.”
“But I looked at my Snap Map,” Sydney sniffed, “and her phone is moving.”
THIRTEEN
CARA
OMG! Cara Campbell is loose in the forest!#NotGoingCampingThisWeekend
No matter how often she slipped and stumbled as she zigzagged down the hillside, Cara didn’t turn on the phone’s flashlight. The glow would give away her position, and she didn’t want to run down the battery. Every so often, she peeked down into her bra and checked the screen for cell coverage, but other than one fleeting bar at the peak of the ridge and a heartbreaking text that flashed on the spiderwebbed screen—Bree, Bree, where u be?—the device was nothing more than a flat, hard security blanket.
Her own phone, certainly dead by now, was probably still zipped into the outer pouch of the sensible Coach bag she’d carried with her to court. Early in the trial, when Abel believed there were at least two sympathetic jurors, both female, in their twenties, with enough social media savvy to know Cara’s brand as an influencer was about honesty and self-worth, not greed, she had real hope of being acquitted. She planned the moment perfectly: as soon as the verdict was read and she’d hugged her lawyer (for the photo that would hang on his Wall ofExoneration), but before he escorted her out of the courtroom to make a statement to the press, she would pressshareon the one-word post she’d written in preparation.
INNOCENT.
Hours earlier, when she’d allowed herself to indulge in pie-in-the-sky manifestation, she’d fallen on her face. But as she trudged into a grassy meadow bordered by dots of light, she couldn’t help feeling hopeful when she peeked at the phone and saw not one, but two bars.
Three bars and the connection would be strong enough to get online. She’d be able to google herself and see what was and wasn’t being reported about the accident, her escape, and how and where they were looking for her. She could start to figure out what to do next. Did she still have any supporters besides Aunt Evelyn now that she’d been convicted? Now that she’d escaped? She needed to see what her best friend, Stephanie van der Lind, was posting. Cara wasn’t sure if she wanted to ask for a ride back to civilization or somewhere she could permanently escape it.
The smoky, moonless sky provided concealing darkness as she took cautious steps in the direction of what she hoped was a rural farm—and not, for all she knew, the outskirts of downtown Fresno. She stopped when she was close enough to make out stables, a barn, outbuildings, and the lighted windows of what was indeed a farmhouse, keeping her distance so she wouldn’t spook the livestock or arouse the attention of any guard dogs.
The first thing she saw as she pulled the phone out of her cleavage was four bright bars. Then her throat tightened. She had been refreshing the phone at regular intervals to keep it from locking, but she had waited too long, and now the screen—which displayed a picture of kittens in a basket—demanded a passcode.
