“But we don’t know for sure,” I pressed. “I can take my truck and…”
“Fuck no,” he cut me off. “One loose cannon is enough right now. I don’t need you runnin’ around all Twilight Zone too. Besides, Woodcrest PD is gonna be lookin’ for her too.”
“Dammit, Ben, she’s my wife.”
“No shit,” he snapped back. “I was there, remember? You ain’t goin’ off alone, end of story. Now lock it up and let’s hit the road. Maybe we can catch up to her before she pulls another Rowan.”
Neither of us had said a word since getting into the van. I don’t know if it was because discussing the possibilities only served to make both of us sick to our stomachs; or, if it was simply because there was nothing more left to say on the subject. In any case, silence had become the rule, and we were making no move to break it.
We were winding down Woodsbend Road toward Piper Valley, shrouded in darkness by the tall stands of trees on either side of us. Technically, we were cutting through one edge of the park itself, even though there was a sparsely populated residential area to our right. Still, there was no actual access to the interior roads until one went through the main entrance at the end of Piper Valley, so that was where we were headed.
Slightly better than twenty-five minutes had passed since we had set out from my house, and I still hadn’t relaxed. In fact, the closer we came to the park without any sign of Felicity the more stressed I became. Now that we had all but arrived, I had become a knot of nervous energy with no place to go.
Every muscle in my body was aching, almost certainly from being tensed for what seemed like forever. My head was throbbing, and while I suspected that some of it was ethereal in nature, a good portion was nothing more than plain old stress combined with a lack of sleep.
I was almost certain that I was going to have a bruise across my chest from where I had been straining against the safety harness. I had been pitching myself forward every time we spied a set of taillights, and then I would remain there, staring intently through the windshield until we came close enough to identify the vehicle we were approaching. Invariably, when the necessary details came into view, it would not be Felicity’s. I would then slump back into my seat, even more agitated than I had been the moment before. But, even sitting back, I couldn’t force myself to relax because we would almost immediately spot yet another pair of red, glowing pinpoints in the distance, and I would begin the cycle anew.
Ever since we had exited the highway and continued our trek along the serpentine, downward slope of Woodsbend, we had been the solitary vehicle in the darkness. There was nothing for me to crane my neck or strain my eyes to see, except the reflective dividing line down the center of the asphalt before us. Still, proximity to the park kept me wrapped so tight that I felt as if I was about to burst out of my own skin at any moment. And, I almost did just that when Ben’s cell phone chirped then moved immediately into its ever-increasing warble.
“Storm,” he said after fumbling the device off-hook and placing it to his ear. “Yeah… Yeah… Okay… Yeah, I think we’re pretty close right now… Uh-huh… Thanks…” He reached over to the passenger seat and handed me the cell phone. “Hang that up, will’ya?”
“What?” I demanded as I took it, thumbed it off, and then dropped it back into the center tray. “Who was that?”
“That was Marshall,” he replied. “She says they found Felicity’s Jeep on the shoulder of Woodsbend.”
“Is she okay?” I asked with a note of relief.
“All they found was the Jeep, Row,” he replied, keeping his voice as businesslike as he could. “We should be comin’ up on ‘em in just a sec…”
The phone began warbling again, and Ben repeated his earlier grope. “Storm… Yeah, Marshall just called me… Yeah, be there in a minute… Bye.”
He handed the phone to me again, this time without a word, and I simply disconnected the call. My fleeting moment of relief had now become alarm. “Who was that?”
“Calm down. It was Mandalay. She just got there.”
“Ben, if Felicity isn’t with her Jeep, she’s already in the park,” I told him.
“Yeah, Row. I know.”
“Then we’ve got to get in there,” I implored.
“We’re workin’ on it, Row. Calm down.”
We continued down the sloping road, easing slowly into a particularly tight bend of which we had been forewarned by a yellow caution sign emblazoned with a sharply twisted arrow. As we started into the switchback, we could see an undulating glow against the trees. The farther into the turn we went, the brighter and more frantic they became. Finally, we hooked around the opposite side of the angle and were greeted by flickering emergency lights atop a patrol vehicle.
Ben slowed the van and brought it to a halt behind the squad car then levered it into park and switched off the engine. I was already unbuckling my safety belt before we had come to a complete stop.
Ben grabbed my arm as I began to shoulder the door open. “Let me and Mandalay do the talkin’. Understand?”
“Yeah, whatever,” I answered absently.
“I’m serious, Row,” he told me.
“Yeah, fine,” I barked back. “Let’s just find Felicity before it’s too late.”
“That’s the plan, Row.”
The bright beam of a flashlight hit Ben as soon as he was out of the vehicle and then slid over into my face, effectively blinding me. Ben called out to the uniformed officer as we walked toward the Jeep. “Detective Storm. I’m the one who called.”
The light came down out of my eyes, and I blinked to re-acclimate my sight to the darkness. I could hear Agent Mandalay talking to the officer and verifying our identities.
“You the one who found it?” Ben asked, continuing forward.
“Yeah,” the officer said as we approached. “Found it a few minutes ago, just like this.
The door of the Jeep was hanging open, and though the engine was switched off, the keys were still in the ignition. The officer shone the flashlight around the interior of the vehicle and then aimed it toward the nearby tree line.
He nodded toward the point no more than a dozen feet away where the light fell against a chain link fence, then played it upward to the strands of barbed wire across the top. There, hanging across the barrier was what looked to be one of the floor mats from the Jeep.
“Looks like your suspect might have gone over the fence there.” he said.
“Suspect!” I blurted, starting forward.
Ben’s hand clamped onto my shoulder and pulled me back. He stepped forward himself, interposing his huge frame between the officer and me.
Agent Mandalay was already on the defense. “She’s not a suspect.”
“Listen,” Ben spoke, voice calm but adamant. “Let’s get one thing straight right now, she’s a consultant, and if she gets hurt I’m holdin’ you responsible.”
I’d had enough. Standing here bantering with the Woodcrest cop wasn’t accomplishing anything other than raising my ire. Not to mention, every moment that passed was taking Felicity closer to a possibly fatal decision, if she hadn’t arrived there already.
I glanced around and saw that the three of them were intent on one another at the moment, so I began moving toward the fence.
Behind me I could hear the officer talking to Ben. “Yeah, okay, so what’s a consultant doing trespassing in a state park in the middle of the night?”
“Makin’ my life hard, obviously,” Ben returned.
“What case are you working anyway?” the cop demanded.
“Nothin’ that concerns you right now,” Ben shot back.
“It’s got to be something big,” the officer pressed. “A city homicide detective and a Fed out here in the dark…”
“Look, Officer…” Constance started.
