Shit!
Her fingers were cold and stiff as she pecked out the first combinations that came to mind: 1234, 1122, 2026. If she were a teenager, she knew she’d have used her own birthday year, but 2007, 2008, and 2009 didn’t work. She moved on to high school graduation years. After 2026, the screen locked. Too many attempts.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Now more than ever, getting online was her lifeline.
A horse whinnied from inside the barn, as though laughing at her stupidity. The animal wasn’t wrong, considering she’d overlooked the most obvious issue of all: if the phone had service, even spotty service, the authorities could find her. She had been carrying around something that couldn’t get her online, with a flashlight she shouldn’t use, that was effectively a tracking device.
It seemed stupid to cry, and even more so to hyperventilate, but she began to do both.
Her chest was heaving. She needed air but couldn’t get any, no matter how quickly she gasped for breath.Paper bag, she thought, which panicked her more and left her gasping.
In desperation, she reached down and grabbed the neck of her baggy jumpsuit, pulled up the fabric, and plunged her face inside, recoiling at the nauseating stench of smoke, industrial detergent, and her now overpowering BO.
“Get your shit together!” she growled into her chest.
Forcing herself to keep breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—Cara slowly sank to the ground. She could barely feel her hands and feet, and numbness crept up her arms and legs, but slowly, she brought her breathing under control. She let go of her lapels and transitioned into four-count box-breathing, then into deep and slow belly breaths. Finally, her heart stopped palpitating, and the squeezing panic loosened in her chest. She’d stopped crying.
As she lay in the dirt, feeling slowly returning to her limbs, she considered tossing the phone, or better yet, burying it. But she was going to need the flashlight at some point. And if she was too hurt or too hungry or dehydrated and had no choice but to give up, she had to be able to contact 911. Both features worked, even on a locked phone.
What she needed to do was to get rid of the SIM card.
ASAP.
Cara had no idea how to bypass a locked Android, but popping out a SIM card was standard procedure. All she needed was the conservative gold-post earrings she’d been forced to surrender after the verdict, along with her bag, phone, and all of her courtroom clothing. Believing she’d never need any of it again, she’d asked Abel to donate her outfit to Dress for Success. Better it be worn by a woman who needed a Zimmermann suit for job interviews than sold to a true-crime memorabilia collector on eBay.
Now dressed in torn prison garb that would sell for even more, she started feeling around in the dirt for a small stick, twig, or bramble, something with a tiny protuberance that might open the SIM card tray.
Headlights swept the field. A truck was bouncing up the farmhouse driveway.
Feeling a surge of adrenaline, Cara popped up and ran, gripping the phone tightly as she headed back toward the hills. She didn’t stop until she was in a dark tangle of trees where there were absolutely no bars of service at all.
FOURTEEN
JORDAN
Social media influencer and convicted murderer Cara Campbell has reportedly escaped following an accident with multiple fatalities on State Highway 41 outside Coarsegold, CA. Campbell is not known to be armed but should be considered dangerous. This is a developing story.
—AP Wire
Gravel sprayed like buckshot off the bottom of his vehicle as Jordan sped down an unpaved road, checking his position against the screenshot Sydney had sent fifteen minutes ago.
Apparently, she and Bree had enabled location sharing through Snapchat, which allowed them to see each other’s whereabouts at all times with caricatures of each other—bitmojis—on surprisingly accurate Snap Maps. According to the screenshots Sydney had been sending, Bree’s phone had traveled some distance from the crash site, in a completely different direction from where Jordan had been searching. He had gone west while Cara Campbell turned east.
He’d wasted time chasing his gut instinct when the safer play would have been to wait for more information. Cursing himself—once again, he’d done something he would have been angry with his deputies for doing—he reversed course. But now she had a big head start.
Campbell had covered a lot more ground than he expected, climbing up into the hills before dropping down over a ridge, almost as if she were heading for Bass Lake. If she made it to the mountains beyond that, it was going to take a large-scale operation to bring her in. Was she trying to lose herself in the woods, or was she just lost? He probably shouldn’t have been surprised by her endurance, though. She was the type who punished herself on a Peloton and in high-energy gym classes, so she had probably been in great physical shape when she was taken into custody following the trial. He wondered if she planned to make use of the free weights in the yard at Chowchilla.
Although most of Campbell’s outdoor experience consisted of what Amber called “fake camping,” the fact that she ran instead of waiting for rescue indicated that she was highly motivated to avoid recapture. And if she had killed once for money, she would likely kill again for her freedom.
He hadn’t told Beto or anyone at the department about the screenshots yet—departmental policy was fuzzy on whether or not he could accept his daughter’s help. But it gave Sydney something to do and kept her from worrying about Bree. He had to catch Cara Campbell before he lost her signal in the hills.
He pulled over near a house with a barn and a sign that readHoof and Paw Pet Boarding, the location of Campbell’s last digital footprint. Was she still there?
He picked up his phone and texted Sydney.Anything?
Waiting for a new signal,she answered.I think she’s going in and out of range.
