records? Anybody? Jeez Louise…”
One of the other squad members picked up a stack of papers and waved them as he wove his way around the desks. “We’re going over them now. So far the only thing we’ve got just verifies the general location. The guy got gas at a station off I-15, right around the time he made that call to Ms. Farrell.”
“Would you mind if I take a look?” Holt asked quietly.
“Have at it,” Vogel said, and the other detective handed over the printout with a shrug.
Holt scanned down the list, then went over it again, while the briefing went on, suggestions and questions and reports fading to background noise.
“Find something?” Wade asked in an undertone.
Holt looked up at him, frowning. “Maybe.” He tilted the sheet so Wade could see it and pointed. “Look how many times he stopped for gas. Here, here and here.”
He and Wade looked at each other, then at the rest of the group.
“Got something?” Vogel asked.
“I don’t know,” Holt replied. “Seems like he’s using an awful lot of gas. What kind of vehicle burns that much gas? And might be found in a state park?”
“An RV,” Vogel said, swearing under his breath.
There was a brief little silence, then everybody shifted into Drive at once. The room seemed to crackle and hum with activity, and Holt felt the excitement like a current of electricity under his skin.
Vogel was spouting orders in a rat-a-tat-tat voice, like an arcade popgun.
“Sanchez-find out if there’s camping in that park. Everybody-find out whether the suspect has an RV registered to him. If not, find out if he’s got any friends or relatives, neighbors who own an RV. Find out if there’ve been any reports of stolen RVs in the past forty-eight hours. Come on, people, let’s go! Clock’s ticking!”
It was late when Holt got back to Billie’s place, but even so, he beat her there. He parked on the street and looked at the dark house and empty driveway and told himself that was a good sign, that it meant she hadn’t gone out of the tournament yet. At least, he hoped that was what it meant.
He didn’t have a key to her house, so he turned off the engine and headlights and settled down to wait.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had to sit in his car and wait for someone to show up…for something to happen. He’d been doing stakeouts since his early years on the force. To pass the time back then, he’d think about the case in progress, go over every detail, much the same way he did now when he was battling imsomnia, only in his mind. This time, though, instead of cold facts and hard details, his mind kept filling up with images. Faces. Some of them were hazy and indistinct, some soft-edged, like old photographs. Some were painful, stark and vivid.
He wasn’t sure what woke him…hadn’t been aware of falling asleep. He sat up straight and stared at the dark windows of Billie’s house, and the cold seemed to seep into his bones. A cold that wasn’t only from the temperature outside, which was definitely dropping, but also the chill of what he understood was loneliness.
He was staring at those dark windows when headlights came sweeping across the white rail fence and the still, gray branches of the olive tree, and Billie’s car pulled into the driveway.
She got out of her car and waited while he climbed out of the Mustang and walked up the driveway to meet her. The chilly desert night reached into the collar of his jacket and coiled around his ears, but he didn’t feel it. She didn’t say anything, just reached for his hand, and he walked with her along the pathway between the flowerpots. His heart was beating hard and fast, and he tried to think of what he could say to her to make her feel better. To let her know whatever happened, it wasn’t her fault, and she hadn’t failed.
They reached the bottom of the porch steps. She caught a quick breath and turned to him.
“I made it. Tomorrow…round two,” she whispered, and came into his arms in a rush that left him without breath.
Chapter 10
“It’ll be a lot different the second night of the tournament,” Billie said. “Quieter.”
“Hmm…” Holt’s hand was stroking up and down her back, keeping a lazy rhythm with the slow up and down movement of his chest beneath her cheek.
Her eyelids drifted down, and she had to fight to make her lips form words. “There’ll still be a crowd, just… most of ’em will be in the spectators’ gallery. There’ll be…I forget how many tables-around twenty, I think-each with nine players. The winner at each table advances to the next round.”
“So,” said Holt, “I guess there’s twenty players left for that round. How many tables?”
She managed a feeble head-shake. “Four tables, usually. But that’s when some of the big-name poker stars sit in, so it comes out to six players per table. And from that point on it’ll probably be televised.”
“And that’s tomorrow night?”
“Yup. So…even if by some miracle I make it to the semi-final round, that’s still only…”
“One more day.” His chest lifted, then slowly settled with a long sigh. His arms tightened around her and she felt a stirring in her hair and then the warm press of his lips. “Give us that, love, and we’ll find her.”
“Promise?” she whispered, smiling because she knew how silly a thing it was to ask. And aching in her throat because he’d said the word
He responded, “Yeah, I promise.” But of course it wasn’t a sure bet and not even in his hands, so how could he make such a promise?
And yet…it was good to hear, and she felt her eyelids suddenly floating on a film of moisture she didn’t understand at all. It couldn’t possibly be tears, because for one thing, she never shed tears, wasn’t even capable of it. And for another, what she was feeling right then was his nice, solid chest under her cheek and the steady thump of his heartbeat in her ear, and his arms strong and warm around her. So why would something so sweet and good and wonderful make her cry?
Holt left Billie sleeping and stole out of the house at zero-dark-thirty the next morning. He’d asked Billie for one more day, and he didn’t want to waste a minute of it if he could help it. He picked up some fast-food drive-through breakfast biscuits and coffee and went straight on to police headquarters, figuring he’d be the only one of the team working the kidnapping in the squad room at that hour. Instead, he found Vogel and Sanchez and a couple of the others already there, sitting on desk corners scarfing down doughnuts and slurping coffee out of disposable cups. He handed around the sack of bacon-and-egg biscuits and helped himself to one before he picked a roosting spot on a desk opposite Vogel. He waited while the detective took a huge bite of his sandwich, chewed, then swallowed it down with coffee.
“Caught a break,” Vogel said, waving what was left of the biscuit in its paper wrappings in the general direction of the rest of the squad. “Sanchez managed to track down a cousin of Todd’s who says she loaned her RV to him the day before the kidnapping. Also gave us his current address.” He took another bite. “Evidently, he’s been bunking with his girlfriend. This cousin said he and the lady showed up asking if they could borrow the RV because they wanted to ‘go camping.’”
“You’ve been busy,” Holt said, sounding a lot calmer than he felt.
Vogel nodded as he chewed. “We got a unit sitting on the girlfriend’s place. Car in the driveway, no sign of the RV.”
