‘I doubt that,’ she’d said.
She scrolls down the articles now.
POLICE SEARCH TEAM REACHES HOUSTON IN HUNT FOR FUGITIVE MOM AND DAUGHTER, says the headline.
She scrolls down, trying to close pop-up ads. There’s a photograph of two county police and next to them is Damien. Doing exactly what they agreed.
Simone can’t help but admire the brazenness of it. Her husband, huge form, dark beard, kind gaze. Wearing a T-shirt she washed last week, one she remembers buying him for Christmas.
There he is, helping the search while messaging her on the side. His punishment might end up worse than hers.
A pixellated box below the article suddenly becomes the still of a video, and Simone is horrified to realize it’s also of him.
It loads agonizingly slowly. One second of speech, then two. Simone pauses it, lets it buffer on the poor desert connection, then plays it. It’s of a reporter asking Damien questions.
‘And do you have any idea where your wife and child are?’
‘No, none,’ Damien says. He’s blurred, the video lo-fi, but Simone can fill in the details: the set, tight, rueful smile, the self-conscious shrug.
‘And I’m gathering you’d never think she could do such a thing?’
And there’s a beat. Just one. No one would be able to spot it except Simone, but she knows it’s there, that it isn’t the video buffering. ‘No,’ Damien says, after that infinitesimal pause, the one that Simone knows meansactually, yes, the one that also means that although Damien must put a front on to the press, some things he says are other types of lies, too. Kind lies, ones that hide marital dissatisfaction. The thought makes Simone wince.
She googles stupid, flimsy things instead. How to find someone who you can only describe. How to find someone from a coach or holiday. All the solutions are things unavailable to Simone, like sending a tweet, says one website.
Lucy turns to look at Simone, and she’s pointing to an impossibly smallsomethingon the horizon that could be a mirage. A tiny toy town of structures.
‘That’s Terlingua!’ she shouts to her mother.
‘I can hardly see it,’ Simone calls back weakly.
‘Old eyes!’ Lucy says. She begins walking backwards, the sign for the town behind her. Her arms are spread wide, and she’s jubilant. To her, they have made it. To her, everything is going to plan. They have found their suspect and now they are going to seek out Moody. It’s simple in that way things are sometimes when all that has happened is a downwards trajectory has momentarily righted itself, leading to an artificial high. For the young and naive, anyway. Simone goes to close the phone, but that’s when she remembers last night. Lucy had it. What was she looking at? She searches the history – but it’s gone.
Does the burner phone clear it? Or did Lucy?
CHAPTER 43
The sign is red retro font on cracked cream which says:TERLINGUA:GHOSTOWN.
Simone’s amazed they made it here at all. Lucy’s navigated them seamlessly. Imagine, they can stay somewhere with an actual roof. Imagine, they can sleep in a real bed. Eat real food. Are they risking capture to do so? Maybe. But something some people don’t realize is that doing nothing is also sometimes a risk, and often the biggest one: of complacency.
Simone stares up at the sign for a moment, her hands on her hips, thinking about the phone’s missing internet history. But she can’t ask Lucy. It’s an accusation when it could easily be a tech error.
Lucy stands right underneath the sign; it’s at least six feet off the floor. It looks from the outside like a tourist photo, Lucy leaning a slender arm against the wood.
And then she sees the writing under the sign.POPULATION180.
One hundred and eighty people?
Simone’s mind goes into overdrive. One hundred and eighty people is – nothing. Thisisa ghost town. They will stick out more than they would anywhere else. It’s the worst place to have come. As difficult to hide in as the desert, but with one hundred and eighty witnesses.
She gazes down the street and she’s half amazed the police don’t swarm right for them.
The Terlingua high street is that only in name: a collection of spaced apart and squat buildings, their bottoms sandy. A small shop built from rough stone with a hand-painted sign readingTERLINGUA TRADING COMPANYand a wraparound porch. A motel, sign in both English and Spanish, with benches outside made from tree logs and clusters of stools and high tables sitting in the dust. A bar with proper old-fashioned saloon doors, with some sort of office above it. High above them the skies are holiday blue, the desert sand near to white. It is a wilderness, a one-horse town.
It is no place to hide.
Simone feels frozen, first with confusion and then with indecision. Lucy led them here and, clearly, was mistaken.
