Jordan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
Then the radio crackled. “This is Deputy 504, I’m at the substation. Just had a couple of walk-ins report that somebody stole several items from their campsite.”
Back at the station, Steve Symonds, the night dispatcher, said, “Go ahead.”
Jordan considered muting his radio. He was amped up and impatient, with too much stuff already buzzing around in his head. Five-zero-four was the call sign of Germán Lopez, who was new. All Lopez had to do was fill out an incident report and create a new case file for the detectives to review in the morning. There was no need to call the station over pilfered coolers and beer.
“Somebody stole a pair of shoes,” continued Lopez.
“Crime of the century,” chimed in some wiseass, probably Osman.
Jordan almost laughed—but something tickled the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Yeah? Well, get this,” said Lopez. “They left their own footwear behind. Want to guess what they were?”
Jordan grabbed his mic. “If it was a pair of jail-issued orange Crocs, then let’s quit playing games and share the information. The clock is ticking.”
“Yeah, orange Crocs,” said Lopez sheepishly. “One of them has a torn strap. Looks like someone tried to run an obstacle course in them. That you, Sheriff?”
“Bag them and get them to K9,” Jordan said. “We’re going to want those in the morning.”
“Roger that.”
Jordan’s phone vibrated as a new text from Sydney appeared on the dashboard screen:Here she is! Are you close dad???
He expanded the image. Campbell was still moving. The latest signal appeared to be less than a half mile away but was nowhere near the road.
He put his vehicle in gear and drove forward. Houses were few and far between on this road leading to state forest land. If she was a survivalist, the route would have made sense, but his panicked quarry, running blind, couldn’t have realized she was heading away from civilization.
He hoped her recapture wasn’t going to turn into a body recovery.
When he’d gotten as close as he could in the car, he parked and got out. He pulled on his tactical vest and tightened the Velcro straps until they were snug, then zipped a windbreaker over the top of it. He retied his bootlaces, put on a headlamp, and looped a six-cell Maglite into his gun belt. He grabbed his shotgun from the dashboard mount but didn’t rack a shell into the chamber.
Standing outside the trees, he checked his phone, feeling a tug as he studied the location of Bree’s smiling, purple-haired bitmoji. It felt like seeing a ghost.
Then he texted Sydney again.Give me one more screenshot? I’m close.
It’s still in the same place,she answered after a moment.
Thanks, honey. I’m going to go look.
Be careful dad!!!
I’m not your dad right now, he didn’t reply.I’m the goddamn sheriff.
FIFTEEN
CARA
Does everyone lose that little ejector tool they give you for the SIM card slot or is it just me?
—@macgyverjr
After several failed attempts to trip the SIM card door with blunt, flimsy twigs, Cara found a thin, hardwood stick and frantically shaved its tip with a sharp-edged rock.
In second grade, her class went on a field trip to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. After touring the Native American dioramas, they were led into a learning room where a docent taught them how to make their own arrowheads using two shiny black pieces of obsidian. Their hands-on learning experience was short-lived, lasting only until Tommy Monroe realized he could “burn” the girls on their arms and bare shoulders with heat caused by the friction. Mrs. Johnson shut down the experiment and sent them outside to eat their brown-bag lunches.
While no one had honed a rock into anything remotely resembling an arrowhead, the memory was reassuring. If a rockcould sharpen another rock, it could certainly sharpen wood into a point precise enough for her needs.
