Laura heard gravel popping outside and ducked her head out the door. It was Buddy Holland in his plain- wrapped.
She understood why he was here, but couldn’t let him in. He wouldn’t do himself any good, and he sure wouldn’t help Summer.
“Buddy,” she said. “Two people in here is enough.”
“What did you find?” Fear and hope warring on his face.
“She’s not here.”
His relief gave way to by worry. He rubbed his hand over his eyes and then squinted into the sun. “Was she here? Did you find anything?”
“Nothing definitive,” Laura lied. “We’ll have to get prints—you know the drill.”
“Where are we going to tow it?” Victor asked Laura from inside the RV.
Laura excused herself and went back inside.
Buddy peering in at her.
“We’ve got a problem. We need to use Luminol—” Victor said. He saw her look and lowered his voice. “The DPS lab’s too small.”
In order to use Luminol to look for more blood, the motor home would have to be in complete darkness. The DPS lab would not be able to enclose a super-sized vehicle like this.
“The sheriff’s has a big room,” Victor said.
“Door’s too small. We’ll have to wait until tonight, I guess, unless we can find an airport hanger nobody’s using.”
She punched in the number for Charlie Specter. “We need to put an APB out for a 1994 white GEO Prizm with either a white male or a white male and a 12-year-old girl. Get a picture of the make and model and Lundy’s picture and get them to the media.”
She closed the phone. She would always wonder if she’d made the wrong call not going to the media. One consolation, though, was that up until an hour ago, they didn’t even know about the white GEO.
“I wonder if he bought that car here,” she said.
“The GEO? It’s got Colorado plates.”
Laura just looked at him.
“Oh.”
“Whether or not he changed the plates, we need to know the history of this car. He might have had it all along, or he might have bought it from around here.”
“If he bought it from a private party, it would be hard to find.”
“Buddy.” Laura hopped down from the motor home. “Can you get me the
He gave her a dirty look, but got back into his car and took off.
It kept him away from the motor home, and the blood. For now anyway.
51
Breathing hard now, Summer ran into the subdivision. The houses looked new, a cheaper version of her mom’s townhouse in the foothills. The problem was they didn’t look moved-in yet. She heard power saws and hammering, though. Up the street, she saw construction workers up on a roof.
“Hey!” she called out, slowing to a walk.
One guy, up high stapling something to the wood frame of a house, looked in her direction and shouted something. She wasn’t close enough to hear, but at least he knew she was there.
She’d escaped. Hard to believe that she’d done it, but she had. Her heart started to slow. Her legs felt like lead now that she didn’t need them for running.
Tires squealed. She looked back and saw Dale’s car coming around the corner.
Desperately, she looked at the man on the roof, thinking she could climb the ladder up to him—but the house was too far away. She did the only thing that made sense—she darted between houses onto the next street.
The car kept going to the next corner. She knew he’d try to head her off.
This street was empty—she was all alone. The houses were unfinished, sitting on a pavement of dried mud. Feeling scared again, she took a deep breath and almost choked on the smell of sawdust.
He’d be driving up this street any minute. She had to figure out what to do. Hide? There were plenty of houses around here to hide in, but she discarded the idea—she’d be trapped. No, the best thing was to let him start up this street, then run back through to the street she was just on.
Heart thudding in her chest, she squinted up the block, first one direction, then another.
Suddenly, she heard a car coming behind her. It sounded different from Dale’s. It was a white van. It must be a construction van because the back part didn’t have windows. She stepped out onto the new asphalt of the street and waved her arms.
