“We need a phone.” She looked at the first officer.
The guy handed over his cell phone. “The code is 22789,” he said.
“Thanks.” She turned and limped down the hallway. Huck caught up to her at the outside door.
She pressed the phone to her ear. “Nester, what do you have? Okay, hospital. Then what?” She groaned. “Okay, then what? Come on. We have to find her somewhere. All right. Think, damn it, think.”
They ran out to where Monty Buckley was jumping out of his rig. “Hey, what are you two doing out of the hospital?” he asked, a bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“We need your truck,” Huck muttered.
Monty looked from one to the other of them. “You two are certifiable. I’m driving.” He tossed the flowers in the back seat.
“You’re in front, Laurel.” Huck walked around and lifted her in. “I want the heat on you.” He was about as pissed off as pissed off could get, and so he slammed her door before jumping in the back seat.
It was going to take him awhile to process this loss, if that’s what people did. Processing. He’d never understood the damned word. But right now, the only thing that mattered was keeping Laurel safe.
“Where are we going?” Monty asked.
“North.” Laurel listed off different CCTV cameras that had caught Abigail.
Huck thought through what he knew of the area. “There’s nothing out that way.”
Laurel partially turned to look at him. “I know, but there’s a gas station that confirmed the spotting of Abigail’s car. She’s easy to identify with her hair, and she would’ve known about the cameras. She wasn’t hiding—she wants us to follow. Go there, Monty.”
Monty mumbled under his breath the entire time but drove the fifteen minutes to the gas station.
“Stay here,” Huck ordered, jumping out of the truck and striding inside. Thankfully, she did as he said. His arm ached like knives kept stabbing him. He couldn’t imagine how she felt right now. And Monty should be in bed as well. The guy looked like death had finished knocking and now had entered his front door.
Huck walked up to the clerk behind the counter. The kid was young with a lot of pimples. “Hey, the FBI called you earlier, and you said you had a sighting of a redheaded woman in a black SUV.”
“Yeah, man. She stopped for gas.”
His shoulders straightened. “Great. Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know.” The kid pointed north. “She went that way.”
Huck looked into the darkened night. “Is there anything out that way?”
The kid chewed on a toothpick. “There’s a real crappy apartment complex, but other than that, no. I guess you could go several miles farther and hit a campsite or two.”
“This apartment complex, people live there?”
The kid’s head hung. “Only real sad people, dude.”
“Okay, thanks.” Huck jogged back outside. “There’s an apartment complex, but there are also camping areas farther up.”
“Morons,” Monty muttered, putting the truck into Drive again. They drove for about five miles until they came to a dilapidated eightplex that might’ve been cream colored at one time. The paint had either rusted or peeled off. The stairs on the side to the top floor appeared as if ready to fall down.
“Looks like it used to be some type of motel,” Monty muttered.
Laurel pointed to the far end. “Drive around it. There’s parking on the other side.”
Monty drove around the back, and Huck caught his breath at seeing Abigail’s black SUV. “Holy shit,” he said. “All right, you two stay here.”
“No way,” they both snapped.
“We need guns,” Huck muttered.
