Бентли Литтл - The Disappearance

Stacy held out her hand. “Thank you, Officer Sanders.”

“I’ll keep my eye out for these people,” he promised her. “And I’ll tell everyone else to watch for them, too. They probably are the ones who set off the alarm.”

“We’ll take my car,” Gary said, leading them away from the library toward the north parking lot. A few students were still hanging around, watching the firemen and policemen, and a young woman with a camera, probably from the school newspaper, was crouching down on the cement, trying to find the right angle for a picture, but by now most of the crowd was gone.

They hurried. The walkways leading between the buildings to the parking lots were not very crowded, but that would change in a few minutes when classes got out, and they didn’t want to get caught in the rush. Gary cast a quick glance toward the Communications building. None of them had made an effort to call Brian again since all of this had started, and though he knew why, he didn’t want to think about it.

Reyn still had the directions he’d accessed displayed on his phone, and as they strode quickly toward the parking lot, he was describing the route they needed to take. The sidewalk wound between two grass-covered mounds, and far off to the left Gary saw the tree-lined memorial path where they’d set a trap for the Homesteaders who had come to abduct him. Although the area before them was clear and open, for some irrational reason he kept expecting the tables to have been turned, kept waiting to be jumped by a gang of Father’s followers, but they made it to the parking lot without incident. “I’m over there,” Gary said, pointing.

They hurried down the main aisle, past several rows of vehicles.

“Oh my God,” Stacy said as they approached.

Gary’s car had been vandalized. All of the windows were smashed and the tires were flat. He ran forward and looked inside. The seats had been slashed.

They knew his car.

What else did they know?

His parents’ address .

The thought chilled him. The important facts of his life were all listed online, he realized, and the Homesteaders’ hacking had gained access to that. They knew almost everything about him.

Now they were acting on it.

He wanted to call his parents immediately, but there was no time. Joan was his first priority right now, just as she was Father’s, and he needed to find her and get her away from those lunatics.

“They’re here somewhere,” Stacy whispered, looking around the parking lot. “I can feel it.”

Gary could, too, and he looked about, seeing pools of darkness in the gaps between the evenly spaced lights. The parked cars and trucks offered far too many hiding places for his liking.

“We need weapons,” Reyn said all of a sudden.

He was right. Gary mentally kicked himself. How stupid could they be? If Brian were here, he would have brought weapons. He recalled the comforting heft of Brian’s swordlike knife in his hand. If only he had something like that right now…

But it was back in the duplex, along with Joan’s baseball bat.

Reyn had taken the ring of keys from his pocket and was holding it in his fist, individual keys protruding from between each knuckle. Gary thought of an idea. He hurried around to the trunk and opened it, rummaging through the wheel well until he found a tire iron. He saw in his mind the crazed, grimacing face of the bearded gas station attendant, and though the recollection of that encounter made his stomach knot up, he knew that the heavy tool would be an effective weapon. Closing the trunk, he swung the length of tempered steel back and forth, hearing it cut through the air with an audible swish .

“Gary?” Reyn said.

Gary could tell from Reyn’s tone of voice that he’d seen something, and he quickly turned. Reyn was staring down the row at a figure standing several car lengths away.

It was a man with a whip. He had emerged from between a beat-up Honda Civic and an old Chevy and was flicking his wrist, the whip in his hand cracking loudly several times in quick succession. The man was wearing the handmade clothes of a Homesteader, and his gray hair was cut crudely in a style Gary had never seen before. Behind him, from between the same cars, came another Homesteader, this one wielding a large knife.

“Back up slowly,” Gary said, and the three of them did just that, not wanting to turn their backs on the men.

The old guy advanced, cracking his whip again, and Gary swung the tire iron in front of him, his heart pounding.

“You! Put that down! Now!”

At the sound of the voice, Gary turned to see a campus policeman getting out of one of the electric vehicles used to patrol the parking lots. He came from behind Stacy, walking quickly, pointing a nightstick at the Homesteader with his right hand while his left hand unhooked a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Martinez,” he said. He’d obviously been notified about the Homesteaders, probably by Officer Sanders. “North lot. We have two of them, one with a whip, one with a knife, threatening three students.”

The Homesteaders ran.

“Wait there!” the policeman ordered Gary, Reyn and Stacy, and took off after them, shouting into his walkie-talkie. Seconds later, the Homesteaders and the policeman were nowhere to be seen.

“Do we wait?” Stacy asked, confused.

“No,” Gary said.

“We’ll take my car.” Reyn told them. “I parked in the east lot. Let’s go.”

Stacy called the police station again as they ran, trying to get ahold of Williams. He was not in his office, was already on campus, but by the time they reached Reyn’s car, the dispatcher had put her through to the detective, who was with a forensics team on the fifth floor of the Communications building. Gary listened in on her side of the conversation, his eyes meeting Reyn’s over the roof of the Focus, neither of them liking what they heard.

Stacy swung the phone away from her mouth, an expression of shock on her face. “It’s Brian,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “He’s been stabbed. He’s… dead.”

Gary had suspected that already, had known that already, but it was another thing to have it confirmed, and hearing the manner of his friend’s murder took the breath out of him. He had to inhale deeply just to keep his respiratory system functioning. Involuntarily, his gaze shifted toward the center of campus, toward the Communications building, though it could not be seen from this angle. He tried to remember the last thing he’d said to Brian or that Brian had said to him but couldn’t.

Stacy continued to talk on the phone as they got into the car, explaining to Williams what had happened and where they were going. It was clear from her side of the conversation that the detective was trying to talk her out of it, but whether that was because he didn’t believe Father and his followers were actually out in the desert or because he thought it was dangerous for them to go there alone was considerably less clear. Even Stacy wasn’t sure, she admitted, after terminating the call, but she hoped the fact that she’d hung up on Williams before he could finish would cause him to at least send some other cops after them.

“We can’t do this alone,” she told them.

Gary and Reyn said nothing.

The official name of their destination was the Mojave-Abrego California State Preserve, and there were several ways to reach it, although even the quickest route took two and a half hours, which meant that they wouldn’t arrive until after midnight. Gary told himself that that meant it was a two-and-a-half-hour drive for the Homesteaders as well, but rather than reassure him, the thought tormented him. That was a long trip. Did it really seem plausible that they would transport Joan so far? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to take her to a hiding place closer by?