‘If somebody comes up to you, yell for me,’ she tells her daughter, and Lucy doesn’t scoff, despite the retort being easy. The streets are deserted, the houses not at all close together. There could be nobody for miles.
She merely nods instead, and Simone misses her mocking teen, this new adult, changed by circumstances and trauma. ‘It was obvious we were going to come here,’ she says suddenly to Simone. ‘The drone – it’s the nearest town to where we were.’
‘I know.’
‘So how come no one is here waiting for us?’
‘I don’t know,’ Simone lies. She wants to tell Lucy not to worry, that the police think they’re in Houston, but can’t, because it will involve telling her about her contact with Damien, something she’s not yet going to do, not until she has a concrete plan formed with him. And even knowing this would not explain it fully. Police must be on their way here. They just must.
‘Head in,’ Lucy says. She waves an arm. ‘I’m just – I don’t know – worrying.’ Another pause. ‘You shouldn’t use your accent.’
‘I’m no good at accents.’
‘Just pretend you’re onFriendsor something,’ Lucy says, like it’s that easy.
‘They will work it out.’
‘They won’t. Loads of people have weird accents. Don’t overthink it.’
‘Fine. I’ll go in. I’ll talk American. As best I can.’
Lucy nods, then says ‘Go get ’em’ in perfect Texan.
The lodge is called Equity. The key is indeed underneath a mat that says bothWelcomeandBienvenido. She inches it out, a surprisingly large silver one, weighty in her palm like it might match a period property.
She slides it into the lock, eases open the door and steps inside.
CHAPTER 44
The Kidnapper
I’m almost sure she’s in Terlingua.
Someone like me shouldn’t be out in the daylight, but I am here, at the very beginning of my search for her, my new obsession. I walk along the bleached road, past the theatre, past the motel. It will be manual work, but it will be worth it if I find her. Or, rather, if I find her again.
It is easiest when the emotion is taken out of these things, so here is a list of things that I know:
She is likely to be in Terlingua.
What she looks like (obviously).
I have no other information, so I have been forced into good old-fashioned trial and error: watching houses and seeing who comes out of them. These people, with their varied lives and clothes and cars and jobs and habits, they have no idea they’re being watched by me, across the street, usually in plain sight.
I earmark four houses today. They are set way back from the road and from each other. These ones stand opposite a run-down cafe and a church, and I take a slow stroll down the street and begin to watch.
One is occupied, a car outside it, and I stand, ostensibly casual. I can pass for a lost tourist, looking this way and that.There’s movement within, but it doesn’t take long to work out that it’s a man. I flick my eyes down again, and walk on by, moving on to the next houses.
The other three look unoccupied, which makes sense in the middle of the day. I walk around the side of one, nevertheless, and to the back, peering in, my hands cupped around my face, thinking that somebody could be in there, that I’d never usually behave this recklessly, but I suppose it’s a kind of desperation.
I have to find her. And she’s got to pay the price.
There are a couple of clues in two of the houses – a pair of men’s trousers slung on the door of a washing machine out the back, and a man’s watch on the arm of a sofa – so I discount them, but earmark the fourth to revisit on the plan I have made of every house in Terlingua.
It won’t be long before she is mine.
CHAPTER 45
Simone
