Page 56 of Fallen Creed

Maggie dropped to the edge of the bed as her pulse ticked up.

“Did you find it?”

“Got a couple pings. One was just before noon yesterday. The cell tower isn’t far from where you’re staying. About twenty miles.”

“That must have been when Hannah called him.”

“The other ping was earlier this morning. Around five-thirty.”

She glanced at her watch. She hadn’t realized it was after six.

“Was it the same location?” she asked.

“Different tower. Which is good. Multiple towers allow us to track the location of the phone by measuring the time delay. You know, the time delay that a signal takes to return to the tower from the phone.”

“Right.” She left those things to the experts.

“The problem is the second tower is almost thirty miles away from the first. And the antenna that’s picking it up is clear in the opposite direction. I’m checking other towers,” he told her.

“Wait. That was this morning?”

“Yup. About five-thirty.”

“Can you tell if it was a phone call?”

“Registered activity. It was brief.”

“What about in-between Hannah’s call and the five-thirty activity?”

“Nothing. It went dark shortly after the first phone call. Right now we’re trying to triangulate the information from the towers.”

Maggie stood straight up and began pacing. It could mean Ryder had simply found shelter some place after he talked to Hannah. But why so far away? He and Grace wouldn’t have walked that far in the snow. Immediately, her mind conjured up scenarios of them being thrown into the trunk of a car and whisked off.

And why hadn’t he contacted her? Or even Hannah? If he had enough battery power at five-thirty, he could have at least sent a text. The panic gnawed at her. Of course he didn’t text. Because he couldn’t.

“You can still track it even if it’s shut off, right?” she asked.

“When you turn off your phone, it usually stops communicating with nearby cell towers.”

“Don’t give me that ‘usual’ crap, Alonzo.” She let him hear her frustration. “You can still track it if it’s off. Please tell me you know where it is.”

“I can give you the longitude and latitude using the information we have, but with only those two intercepts, it’s still going to be about a two-mile square area.”

“You’re still tracking it, though, right?” Maggie asked again.

“No. We can’t. Not after the second intercept. It’s not just powered off. My guess is the battery’s been pulled.”

“You mean the battery’s gone dead?”

“No, pulled. Removed. Disconnected. Usually if a battery dies, there’s still enough juice. If the battery’s been pulled, this is the best we’ve got.”

She asked him for the coordinates and jotted them down while she told herself this was more than they had yesterday. At the same time, Maggie tried not to think about what it meant if Ryder’s battery had been disconnected. He wouldn’t have done it. And once again, it pointed to someone else controlling his phone.

Controlling him.

As soon as she finished with Alonzo, she called Tommy Pakula. He answered on the second ring and sounded like he had been awake for hours. She told him what Alonzo had discovered. He listened without interrupting. When she finished, she paused long enough for him to ask questions.

“You realize that’s still a lot of ground to cover,” he told her. “And speaking of ground, that might be exactly where the phone is. On the ground and covered by eight inches of snow.”