“Over there,” she said, and pointed to their left.
He turned and slowed down even more. He saw the vehicle right before Annalise pointed it out. There was an empty space next to it, and Evan pulled in and parked.
He and Annalise both jumped out of the car at the same time. He headed for the driver’s side door and she went to the back door. The side of the van had a couple of bullet holes, and he was vaguely surprised to find it unlocked.
If the police officers who were tasked to keep the van from leaving the school had done their job right, then there would have been bullet holes in the front of the vehicle. The fact that they were on the sides told the whole story of incompetence that Evan had suspected, and it infuriated him.
He’d only just begun to search it when Nick and Davis arrived. He got out of the van and instructed Annalise to do the same. “I want you two to go over this with a fine-tooth comb. As you know, we’re looking for anything that might indicate where they were going from here and what kind of vehicle they might be driving now.”
As the two agents got busy checking out the van, Evan got back on his phone to check in with some of the others, including Chief Cummings. Everyone had a job to do, and it was Evan’s job to coordinate all the efforts to find the fugitives.
Unfortunately, the fact that Annalise believed so strongly that Sadie would contact her by using some sort of code made her an important piece of this whole puzzle. She was especially important right now since they had absolutely no leads on where the three had gone or how they might be traveling.
Before he’d fallen asleep, he’d contacted Rowan to get Annalise a cell phone she could use for the time being. Annalise got on the phone and checked the secret page, then then shook her head. Apparently Sadie still hadn’t made contact.
“Hey, I’ve got something here,” Nick said from the backseat of the van. “It looks like something has been scratched into the back of the front seat.”
Evan looked to where Nick pointed. Sure enough, it looked like a fingernail or something had been used to scratch letters, numbers and symbols that made no sense.
“Annalise, take a look at this and see what you think,” he said. He backed out and gave her room to look.
She leaned in. “It’s...it’s from Sadie.” Her voice was thick with emotion as she straightened. “It’s in our secret language. It says ‘Sadie was here.’” Her eyes filled with tears as she gazed at him. “She wanted me...she wanted everyone to know that she was here.” She began to cry.
There was something particularly heartbreaking about a kidnapped little girl wanting her teacher and law enforcement to know that she was in the van, that she was still alive.
As Evan saw the emotion ripping through Annalise, he couldn’t just stand by and watch. He pulled her into his arms and held her.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she swiped her cheeks in obvious embarrassment. “I don’t seem to have much control over my emotions right now.”
“It’s okay,” he replied. “I’m sure you’re still functioning on a lack of sleep and your worry about Sadie. At least we know now why they want her and they aren’t going to harm her. If they were going to dump her somewhere, this would have been the perfect place. Apparently, they still need her and won’t hurt her.”
“Unless she can’t do what they want her to, or she accomplishes what they want and then what are they going to do with her?” Annalise’s tense question hung in the air.
Evan didn’t have an answer to give her, but the possibilities of what might happen tortured him. He knew Jacob and his wife had no respect for human life. The man had already proven that. It was absolutely vital they find Sadie before Jacob and Gretchen decided the little girl was nothing more than a liability to them.
“I’ve got something,” Davis said from the very back of the van. He pulled on something and then held up a license plate. “It was hidden in a slit in the carpeting.”
“Good work, man.” Evan took the license plate from the fellow agent. “Maybe this is the break we needed. Maybe finding out the registered owner of the van will give us more information.”
Evan immediately got on the phone to Hendrick. He told the tech agent that the plate was a North Carolina plate, and he read out the numbers and letters.
“Arrange for the van to be taken into custody,” he told his two men as he waited for a call back from Hendrick. He and Annalise got back into the rental car.
“We’ll drive through someplace and grab some breakfast on our way back to the hotel.” He shot her a quick glance. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’m okay, but that message from Sadie really gutted me.”
“At least it tells us she’s still okay,” he replied.
He swung through a drive-through, and they both ordered breakfast sandwiches. He’d just paid and received their order when Hendrick called back.
“The plates come back as belonging to an eight-seat black passenger van registered to Sandhurst School.”
For just a moment Evan was speechless. He’d expected the name of a person, but this was definitely a shock. “I made a few calls and found out that the school owns three of these vans,” Hendrick continued. “They are kept in a garage at a nearby vehicle rental lot, and I spoke to the owner who told me one of the vans went missing.”
“There’s no sign that the van has been hot-wired. Is the garage secure?” Evan asked.
“According to the owner, the vans are under lock and key. Only somebody with a key to the garage and the van could have driven one off. He
