He was right. It was Lundy’s car.
He thought about going back to the Caprice and calling it in, but just then he heard footfalls down the road, the crunch of shoes on dirt. A hundred yards up the road he saw a figure almost obscured by darkness—just the white of his shirt. Walking north.
Headlights appeared at the other end of the road, lighting up the weeds along the side of the road. Buddy watched as the man ducked behind a palo verde tree until the car had passed. Then he was walking again, heading up to the street Buddy knew from his previous pass was a dead end.
He flashed his MagLite on the back of the GEO, approached it at a slant, gun trained on the driver’s window. Adrenaline pumping, knowing he should identify himself, but aware that the man walking up the road might hear. With every step, he saw more of the interior of the car.
Empty.
Relief like a douse of ice-cold water. Summer wasn’t there. But where was she?
Buddy looked up the road. The man was almost to the cross street. Buddy watched as he crossed the street and walked along the chain link fence on the other side, then stopped. Too dark to tell, but Buddy assumed there was a gate. The man just stood there, peering in. Even from here Buddy could tell he was scared. It was in the way he hung back, the nervous movement of his head as he looked around.
Laura was able to hobble from the car to the warehouse door, every muscle screaming. Her toes clenched, her teeth aching, her nerve endings shrieking like the high strings on a violin. Every shuffling step was an agony. She wanted to lie down. She wanted to curl into a ball. But Mickey had taken off the handcuffs so she needed to test her limits in case she had a chance to get her weapon back. Otherwise, she knew the end of her pain would also be the end of her life.
Once inside, her freedom ended.
“Carry her, Mick,” Galaz said, his voice impatient. “Otherwise it’ll take all day.”
Mickey slung her over his shoulder.
The warehouse was empty except for broken glass. In the huge, cavernous space, their footsteps crunched on glass and concrete, echoing in the rafters high above. The last light of the day poked through the jagged holes in the many windowpanes. The intact windows had been painted over dark green, giving the place a murky, aqueous cast.
They didn’t have far to go. Half of one side of the warehouse was a suite of offices—cheap wallboard painted mint green, doors removed. Their destination was the corner office, closest to the back door.
“Who’s there?”
The voice belonged to a girl. It sounded creaky, as if she wasn’t used to speaking. Just inside the door, Harmon set Laura down.
She was facing into the room, but her mind balked. She stared at her feet, at the floor, a kind of disconnect. She didn’t want to see what had been done to Summer. Her job was finding the bad guy. Her job was to pick up the pieces. Her job was to comfort the families. There was nothing she had ever done that had prepared her for this.
She couldn’t do anything for Summer. She was helpless.
Galaz said, “What’s the matter, Laura? You’ve been looking for her all day—aren’t you the least bit curious?” At the same moment, Mickey Harmon poked her in the back.
She couldn’t see this. It would do her in. She couldn’t help Summer, she couldn’t help herself. For the first time in her life, Laura wanted to give up.
One more push from Harmon and she was in the room.
She smelled the stale air, fear riding on it. Fear and sweat and tears. And the coppery smell of old blood.
She squeezed her eyes shut, the way she did sometimes when the alarm went off and she insisted on sleeping a little longer, knowing that once she opened her eyes it was all over, she’d have to get up.
“Please …” the girl said, her voice drifting off. So pathetic that Laura felt a warm surge of emotion, tears climbing up into her throat.
When she heard Summer’s voice, her resolve came back.
She willed her eyes open.
When Buddy was a kid, he was obsessed with American Indians. He read books about them, watched movies, pestered his parents to take him to Indian ceremonies— especially the Apaches, who were the toughest people on earth. During the Indian wars, an Apache could cover seventy miles a day on foot. The Apaches trained their infants not to make noise because they might alert the enemy. They lived on stealth because otherwise they would be eradicated. Now his days of stalking the low-rent neighborhood in south Phoenix where he grew up came back to him.
He was quiet. Like air, threading through the cracks of the world.
Silently he tracked Lundy through the dark parking lot of the Chiricahua Paint Company. Adhering to his training: Always find cover. Cover was something a bullet couldn’t go through, like the engine block of a car. That was something that had been hammered into his head over and over. Find cover. If you can’t find cover, find concealment. And if you can’t find concealment, look for an escape route.
Lundy was a lightweight: A guy who picked on little girls. Watching him creep along the warehouse wall, flinching at every noise—it could have made Buddy complacent, but it didn’t. The minute you let your guard down, that was when fate got you. He’d seen it many times in his twenty-three years in law enforcement. Just a little bit of inattention, and you were dead.
So he did not underestimate this man. Hated him, yes, but even the hate he had to push down deep inside. He had to clear the fear for his daughter out of his mind if he wanted to help her.
Not much cover around here, so he went for concealment.
