forty-eight

As we near Reeve’s End, I direct Jude to the bus stop. I don’t know what he expects to find there. Signs of a scuffle, like Lennon did with Edie?

When I tell Jude to pull over, he stops at the side of the highway. I get out and he follows.

“What are we doing here, Winter?” he says in a careful tone, as if I’m upset and he doesn’t want to question.

“The bus stop,” I say, pointing at the sign. I don’t blame him for missing it—the metal is rusted and riddled with pellets; locals use it for drive-by target practice, as if by obliterating the one sign of public transit they can forget that there is a way out of Reeve’s End.

“Wouldn’t she get off at the terminal in town?” he asks.

I look at him. He turns toward the town lights, less than a half mile away.

“Why is there a stop right outside…?” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Shit. This is the stop. I’m sorry. I didn’t think—” He shakes his head. “I didn’t think.”

“You expected a bus station? Like in the city?”

“Yeah. I figured she’d get off at a terminal, and the clerk on duty might have seen her or…” He looks at the empty highway, the forest closing in on both sides.

“She’d get off here and walk along down the highway, which as you’ve noticed isn’t exactly a busy expressway. She’d have turned off down there to take the back way to the trailer park. There’s no need to even pass through town.”

“Shit. I wasn’t thinking. Okay, so plan B. Is there anyone she might have called as soon as she got to town? Maybe for—”

His phone rings. He looks down at it and murmurs, “Thank God.” Then he answers with, “Tell me you’ve got something.”

Jude jots down numbers on his notepad. They look like GPS coordinates.

Please let them be coordinates.

He thanks Roscoe profusely, hangs up, and flips screens on his phone. “Cadence made a call. Or she tried to. I’m guessing she managed to start dialing, and her captor realized what she was doing. But Roscoe’s contact could get rough coordinates. He’s confirmed that the phone is shut off now, so it can’t be tracked, but he knows where it lost signal. The call coordinates and final coordinates are about a quarter mile apart. Like her captor took the phone and then walked farther before he realized he should shut it right off. But the trajectory between the points shows the direction they were heading.” He turns and gestures. “The first set is about a half mile that way.” He pauses. “That’s the direction of your cabin, isn’t it?”

I nod, and I’m holding myself so still, against every urge to run to my cabin and save Cadence. That’s not how this works. That can’t be how this works.

“This is bullshit,” Jude says finally. He walks to the car and climbs in, and I’m left standing there, staring, and there’s part of me that thinks he’s done, just done, had enough and is ready to give up. But I know better. I know him better. So I stand there and watch as he starts the car and hits buttons on his phone. Then he says to me, “It’s not 911, right?”

“What?”

“You said the local police number isn’t 911, right?”

I give him the number. He punches it in, and when it connects, I hear the answer over the car speakers.

Jude says, “To whom am I speaking?” in a tone straight from his mother’s playbook. Not cold or loud, but sharp, each word snapping off.

“Sheriff Ronald Slate,” the respondent says, with no small amount of superciliousness himself. “Reeve’s End sheriff’s department.”

“This is Jude Bishop. My father is Congressman Peter Bishop. I met your deputy last night—”

“You’re that boy that’s been bothering Winter Crane, selling her that cock-and-bull story. Well, I’m sure Congressman Bishop’s office would like to speak to you, son, about a little issue of misrepresentation.”

“I am Jude Bishop. My father is Peter Bishop. If you would like to notify him, I will happily provide you with a number. His direct number. Here. Write this down.” He rattles it off. “Would you like that again?”

“I don’t know who this is—”

“I just told you, sheriff. I’m calling to report an abduction. Winter’s sister, Cadence, returned to Reeve’s End late this afternoon. I can provide the details so you may verify that she purchased a ticket online. She hasn’t been seen since, and Winter received a message indicating she has been abducted.”

The sheriff snorts. “Of course she did. The message went to Winter—the same person who’s been part of this mess all along. First your brother, now her sister…”

“No, first Edie Greene. Then my brother. Then Winter’s sister. My father’s security team managed to track Cadence’s last call to the woods west of Reeve’s End. We have two sets of coordinates, providing a trajectory.”

“Providing a what? No, never mind. You’re telling me that your daddy’s security people tracked this, but you want us to investigate?”

“You are the local police. If I go over your head—which you will not appreciate—you still must be involved, and the delay in sorting jurisdictional issues will endanger Cadence Crane’s life.”

“Is this a prank, son? You get bored and dream this up with your brother? Convince poor Winter that her sister’s missing, when the truth is that her sister just doesn’t want nothing to do with her?”

“Sir?” I say. “It’s Winter. This is not a prank. My father contacted my sister this afternoon. He can confirm that. I can provide the bus ticket and her ring, both of which came from the man who has abducted her, which proves—”

“Which proves nothing but that your new boyfriend has deep pockets and a good imagination, enough of both to carry out this crazy scheme. Tell him I don’t care who his daddy is, if he keeps scaring you with these crazy stories, I’ll have him charged with obstruction of justice.”

“That would require me stopping you from investigating a crime,” Jude says, his voice brittle. “The problem, sir, is that we can’t get you off your ass to investigate one.”

The sheriff hangs up. Jude drops his face into his hands and shakes his head.

“You tried,” I say. “You did the responsible thing, and it failed. Now I have to do the irresponsible thing, and go after my sister.”