Far Gone

by Laura Griffin

  She glanced up at him. His gaze was trained on the rugged landscape in front of them.

  “He probably cut west to get away from the highway, then turned south. That means this section.”

  She stared out the window, suddenly getting his meaning. He’d divided up the sections so that they would have the greatest likelihood of finding Gavin, not some hotshot who couldn’t wait to whip out his gun.

  He drove silently as she scanned the bone-dry landscape dotted with boulders and cacti and skeletal-looking plants. She searched all of it without seeing her brother’s car—without seeing anything, really, but desolation.

  Jon’s handheld radio crackled, and he picked it up. “Yeah?”

  Andrea couldn’t make out the garbled words, but Jon seemed to catch them.

  “Roger that. We’re on our way.”

  “What is it?”

  Jon swung into a turn, throwing a spray of rocks up behind them. “Our CBP friend spotted the car.” He looked at her. “It’s empty.”

  ♦

  He floored the gas, and they bumped and lurched over the rocky earth as Andrea’s mind reeled. He cut a straight line north, pushing the speedometer to fifty.

  “There.” She pointed at the two white vehicles near a clump of mesquite bushes. A patch of blue flashed in the mid-morning sun. She saw the glimmer of a windshield peeking out from beneath the foliage.

  Jon jammed to a stop. Andrea jumped out and rushed up to the car. The driver’s-side door stood open.

  “We’re running the plates now,” Torres said.

  “It’s his.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  “You sure?” Jon asked.

  She ignored his question as she ducked under the branches to peer inside. It was Gavin’s, no doubt about it. Two oversize fast-food cups were stuffed in the cup holders. Wrappers littered the floor. In the backseat was a wadded T-shirt.

  She stood up and whirled around. “No sign of him?”

  Torres traded looks with Jon. They weren’t telling her something. She turned back to examine the car again, looking for what she’d missed.

  Blood.

  On the steering wheel, two dark smears. Andrea’s heart lurched.

  She glanced up at Torres, then darted a look at the CBP guy who was inside his vehicle on the radio, presumably running the plate. “Is this how it was, with the door open? He found it this way?”

  “That’s right.”

  Her pulse spiked. Maybe they had it all wrong. Maybe Gavin wasn’t speeding toward Mexico but away from something else. Maybe someone was pursuing him.

  And now his car was abandoned in the desert, with the door hanging open. She glanced at the blood on the steering wheel and looked at Jon, who was crouched beside the back tires, searching for something on the ground. Spent cartridges? Blood trails?

  “No shells,” Torres said. “We already checked.”

  Andrea knelt down to see for herself. She leaned into the front seat, careful not to touch anything as she searched for further signs of violence. Her chest tightened as all the possibilities flooded her brain.

  “Footprints?” She looked at Jon, who knelt nearby, examining the ground.

  “Too rocky.” He glanced east toward the highway. “Same for tire marks. We can backtrack, see if there’s a patch of sand between here and the road, maybe get something.”

  “I’ve got another unit on the way,” the CBP agent said, climbing out of his truck.

  Jon stood up and looked at him. “We’re going to need at least two more. And a helicopter, ASAP.”

  “You think your suspect’s still out here?”

  Suspect.

  Andrea looked at Jon, who was watching her.

  “If he is,” he said, “we’ll find him.”

  ♦

  The sun inched high in the sky as they trudged over the arid land. Jon cut a path through the thorny brush, pushing forward while trying to dodge the worst of it. He could hear Andrea behind him, quietly keeping up with his long strides. The few times he’d suggested a break, she’d simply ignored him and kept going.

  “How much have we covered?” she asked tersely.

  “About five square miles.”

  They’d divided up the search area, and once again, Jon had chosen the highest-probability section for him and Andrea, figuring they had a better chance of picking him up without resistance. Now Jon regretted the strategy. They’d been out here more than three hours, and the odds of finding Gavin were rapidly fading.

  Jon pictured the car again, with the blood-smeared steering wheel and the door hanging open. When he’d first seen it, he’d immediately imagined the driver being chased down, dragged from the car, and shot, then either left for dead or hauled away. Andrea had probably imagined that, too, which was why she’d had that bleak look on her face when they set out on the search.

  Sweat trickled down Jon’s back as he picked his way over the uneven ground, trying to find firm footing so they wouldn’t turn an ankle. He listened to Andrea’s footfalls behind him and wished she would say something to break the silence. She was strong and resilient, and somehow he knew that she was too proud to talk to him about what was really hurting her right now.

  The sound of her phone made him stop and turn.

  “Hello?”

  Hope filled her voice, but then her face fell.

  “Oh, hi.” She looked at him and gave a slight shake of her head. “No, I’m actually . . . pretty tied up at the moment. I can’t really talk.” She went still. Her gaze dropped to the ground, and she turned away. “Okay, thanks for the info . . . Yeah, I know . . . Say again? You’re breaking up.”

  Jon glanced around, surprised she was even getting a connection out here. Cell-phone coverage was spotty throughout the area. If they got much farther away from the highway corridor, it would probably disappear completely.

  She stood with her back to him, shoulders tense, and he could hear the tinny sound of someone on the other end yelling at her. He studied the back of her neck, pink with sunburn, as she talked on the phone.

  “Nathan . . .” Her tone was defensive. “I don’t expect you to tell them anything.”

  Jon eased closer.

  “Yeah, well, I never asked you to. I can take care of myself.”

  A moment later, she huffed out a breath and stuffed the phone into her pocket as she turned around.

  “Who was that?”

  “Friend from work.” She brushed past him and plunged ahead through the thicket of mesquite. Jon followed.

  “He sounded upset.”

  “I’m supposed to be in today. I have a hearing at four.”

  Jon halted. She kept going. “The hearing? That’s today?”

  “I’ll reschedule.”

  “You could lose your job.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  He checked his watch. She had four hours, which was still doable if she caught a flight out of Midland. “Andrea, we can cover this here. If you go back now, you could still make it—”

  “Drop it!” She whirled around. “I’m not going!”

  She strode ahead, and he watched her for a moment, a bundle of nerves and determination plowing through the bushes. She was intent on seeing this through, no matter what the outcome.

  He caught up to her and cut ahead, taking the lead. He’d had a lot more practice tromping around the desert than she had. He picked his way over debris and around rock piles, shifting his gaze from the rocky ground to the distant horizon, trying to keep them on track while scouring the area in front of them. The desert was littered with all sorts of clues, both human and non-human, and Jon mentally cataloged everything. They passed deer and jackrabbit droppings, cigarette butts, food wrappers, empty water bottles discarded by people on the move. They passed spiny canes of ocotillo and spiky agave bushes and bony animal carcasses picked clean by scavengers. Jon trudged past all of it, keeping his mental map fixed firmly in his head.

  And with every step deeper into the parched
wilderness, he became more and more pissed off.

  Andrea’s boots clomped over the ground behind him. He heard her heavy breathing as she strained to keep up. She was intensely worried and intensely focused, and he knew she wouldn’t stop until she had tracked down her selfish, no-good brother, no matter how much it cost her.

  Her worry was justified. However this played out, the kid was in deep shit, and despite her determination, Andrea wasn’t going to be able to dig him out.

  Jon’s gut tightened as he thought of Jennifer McVeigh, who’d been put on the witness stand at her brother’s trial. The woman had idolized her older sibling. It was her obvious reluctance to testify that had made her such a compelling witness.

  Jon pictured Andrea in the witness chair, with twelve jurors riveted by her words.

  Gavin Finch hadn’t masterminded anything. Jon knew that. But he had provided technical support, as Jon had suspected since the day he learned the identity of Lost Creek Ranch’s newest arrival. It was going to be difficult, if not impossible, for Gavin to make anyone believe he’d set up Shay Hardin’s communications and yet knew nothing about his schemes. Jon didn’t believe it, and he wasn’t even sure Andrea did. He doubted a jury would, either.

  And a trial by jury was the good scenario.

  Jon’s gaze scanned the desert floor as he focused on a more likely one: Gavin Finch slumped under a mesquite bush, gut-shot and bleeding. Or dragged from his car, murdered, and tossed into a trunk to be disposed of somewhere no one would ever find him.

  Was Hardin capable of executing a man who’d once been his friend? Absolutely. Andrea knew it, too. Since the moment she’d burst into the trailer with the news about Carmen Pena and her child, Jon had seen the shift in her. She’d suddenly realized they were dealing with a sociopath.

  A faint buzzing noise made Jon stop in his tracks and squint at the sky. A chopper appeared like a gnat on the horizon and hovered over the site of the abandoned car.

  “Who’s that?” Andrea looked at him.

  “Reinforcements.”

  ♦

  Andrea trekked over the rocky terrain. She skimmed her gaze over the bushes and boulders and cacti. The very sameness of it all was unnerving, and she’d stopped a few times to ask Jon to confirm that they weren’t going in circles. But he assured her that they were moving in a steady crisscross pattern over their designated search area.

  The now-familiar thrumming overhead made her shoulders tense. It was the ninth pass. She’d been counting. If a helicopter didn’t spot him, what were the odds Gavin was actually out here? She’d been holding out hope because she couldn’t stand the alternative. But with every passing hour, that hope diminished, and the stark realization of what had likely happened began to take its place.

  “You’d be surprised how much a chopper misses.”

  She glanced up at Jon, whose broad shoulders she’d been following for miles now. She’d memorized his gait, his posture, the heels of his boots. He’d set a ruthless pace out here, and she liked him better for it.

  “People get low,” he said, “especially when they’re injured. He could be under a bush or huddled up against a rock. Chopper could do a dozen flyovers, never catch a glimpse of him.”

  Andrea’s response came out as a grunt. She’d hardly slept last night, and she’d skipped breakfast. Her legs felt like noodles. Despite all her jogging, her knees weren’t used to so much up-and-down, and her boots were giving her blisters. She studied the surrounding trees but saw nothing except the same monotonous pattern of rock piles and cacti and thorny bushes she’d been seeing for hours now.

  “Water break.”

  Jon stopped, but she simply went around him.

  “Andrea.”

  The sharp tone of his voice made her turn around. She was too tired to argue, so she trudged back. He set his pack on a rock and pulled out a fresh bottle. By some unspoken agreement, he was carrying all the heavy gear—the water, the walkie-talkie, the first-aid kit. She had only her phone and a granola bar stuffed in her pocket, alongside the black-tipped bullet she’d been carrying like a talisman. For days, it had bolstered her motivation.

  “Here,” he said.

  She accepted the water and tipped her head back for a gulp.

  “You need sunblock.”

  “I’m good.” She lowered the bottle from her lips and squinted up at the sky.

  “No, you’re not. But I don’t have any anyway, so you’re outta luck.”

  She looked him over, noting his sun-browned skin and muscular forearms. His T-shirt clung to his skin, but he wasn’t breathing heavily, which told her he did a lot more than pump iron to keep in shape.

  Andrea stretched her muscles. Everything ached, and she wanted to collapse into a heap on the ground. Or better, collapse against Jon and just let it all spill out—her worries, her fears, her darkest “what ifs.” She had the impulse to pour it all out to him, as if he could be her confidant, her friend in this situation—which, of course, he couldn’t.

  Frustration burned inside her. How had she ended up here? How had Gavin brought her to this? She couldn’t stop thinking about the freckled little boy who used to call out to her when he had night terrors and how she would sit up with him and scratch his back and tell him everything was going to be all right. Andrea looked around at the boundless desert. Sweat trickled down her neck, and a lump of fear rose in her throat.

  She handed back the water bottle, but at his disapproving look, she took another swig.

  “We’re losing a pint an hour out here.”

  “I’m not even sweating, really.” Which wasn’t true, but she didn’t want to ease off the pace.

  “Don’t be fooled by the temperature.” He dug into his pack and came up with some packets of table salt. Andrea had used them before when she was training for a marathon. He handed one to her, and she downed the contents as he opened one for himself.

  “I got dehydrated once in twenty-degree weather,” he said. “Nearly passed out, too.”

  “Was this when you worked the Canadian border?” she asked, alluding to the lie he’d told her the night they met.

  “This was in Chicago. I was sledding with Jay and Missy.”

  “Missy’s your sister?”

  He smiled. “Our golden retriever. We were out all day, no water, surrounded by snow, but Jay and I were too stupid to eat any. We came home wrecked.”

  She took another gulp and passed the bottle back. Then she looked around. He was trying to distract her, and it was working. But they had more ground to cover.

  Jon shouldered his pack, saving her from nagging. She pulled out her phone to check her messages again.

  “Anything?”

  She shook her head “I don’t have a signal anymore, so—” A flash of white caught her eye. She squinted at it and stepped forward.

  “What?”

  “There! Through the trees!”

  She dodged past him. Was it a T-shirt? A person? She scrambled over a pile of rocks and sprinted to a clump of mesquite trees. She dropped to her knees beside the white cloth and yanked the branches away . . .

  “A jacket.” She stared down at it, crestfallen. It was thick and puffy and streaked with dirt. It looked like a woman’s size, and she pictured someone shedding it here as she moved furtively through the desert, desperate to blend in and remain unseen.

  Andrea gripped the jacket in her hands.

  She stood up, suddenly furious. She flung the jacket away. Then she picked up a rock and flung it, too.

  “God damn him!” She picked up a bigger rock and hurled it into a clump of trees. “Where the hell is he?” Her voice sounded shrill, and she turned to Jon. “I’m sick to death of this!”

  His look was wary as he walked closer. “You’re tired.”

  “I’m not tired, I’m pissed! Why did he get into this mess? What is he doing in this godforsaken place?” She picked up another rock and hummed it, and it made a satisfying thunk as it ricocheted off a boulder. She reached for
another one.

  “Andrea.”

  Her gaze snapped up. He was watching her with complete intensity.

  “Do not move.”

  “What . . .” Her voice trailed off as something shifted in her peripheral vision. A faint noise filled her ears, soft at first, like a tambourine, growing steadily louder as her most primal instincts identified the sound.

  Rattlesnake.

  It was coiled on a rock, mere inches from her foot. It lifted its head slowly as if sniffing the air.

  Andrea’s gut clenched. The sound of that rattle filled her head, her universe. She reached for her gun.

  “Don’t.”

  Jon eased forward, Sig in hand.

  The rattle intensified. It saturated the air, making every molecule vibrate with warning. She felt the tremor in her body, starting with the soles of her feet and working its way up through her knees, her thighs, her chest. She shifted her weight to step away, and the noise grew louder.

  “Andrea, please don’t move,” Jon said tightly.

  She made a small, high-pitched noise as he slowly eased forward, aiming his gun.

  He got within ten feet of her without taking his eyes off the snake.

  “Are you going to shoot it?” she croaked.

  “Not unless—”

  The head lifted high above the giant coil of snake flesh. The rattling intensified, drowning out all other sound.

  Andrea’s knees quivered.

  “Please tell me you’re a decent shot.”

  He didn’t answer, but his arm was rock-steady as he pointed the gun, seemingly right at her kneecaps.

  She closed her eyes. She held her breath.

  She heard a deafening bang.

  chapter twenty-two

  JON STOOD BESIDE THE SUV, listening to Torres’s half of a conversation with their boss. At last, he hung up.

  “Maxwell is back with reinforcements,” Torres informed him. “They’re going to set up in the trailer near the oil derrick.”

  “How many?” Jon asked. Budgets were tight everywhere, and you could tell how much priority an investigation had by how many agents were staffed to it.

  “Maxwell plus two.”

  Jon shook his head. He looked at Andrea seated on the bumper of her dusty Cherokee, wiping rattlesnake guts off her jeans with a paper towel. His ears were still ringing from the gunshot, which meant hers were, too.