"She was right," Paul continued."About a lot of things, as it turns out.I should have listened to her when I had the chance."He straightened."I'll keep my ears open.If Ben surfaces anywhere in the federal system—a hospital, a police report, anything—I'll know about it.And I'll keep pushing on Devco, quietly, see if I can find any cracks in their wall."
He moved toward his SUV, then paused with his hand on the door."Go home, Kari.Get some rest.You won't help Ben by running yourself into the ground."
She didn't answer.They both knew she wasn't going to rest, wasn't going to stop searching, wasn't going to do anything except keep pushing until she found him or until—
She cut off the thought before it could complete itself.
Paul drove away, his SUV shrinking into the desert until it was just a smudge on the horizon, then nothing at all.Kari stood alone beside her Jeep, staring at the fence that had become the focal point of her nightmares.Somewhere beyond it, or somewhere else entirely, Ben was waiting for rescue that might never come.
The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and red that would have been beautiful under other circumstances.Now it just meant another day was ending.Another day without answers.Another day of not knowing whether her partner—
Her phone rang.
Kari's heart seized.She ripped it from her pocket.
Unknown number.
She answered before the second ring had finished."Hello?"
Static.The hiss of a bad connection.Then breathing—ragged, labored.Winded?
"Kari."
Her knees nearly buckled.She knew that voice.Even weak and distant, even filtered through whatever ancient phone line was carrying it, she would know that voice anywhere.
"Ben."His name came out as half-whisper, half-prayer."Where are you?Are you hurt?I'm coming to get you, just tell me where—"
"Gas station."The words were slurred, barely intelligible."Old payphone.Couldn't...couldn't risk a cell."
"Which gas station?Ben, I need you to tell me which one."
But the line had already gone dead.
CHAPTER TWO
The darkness swallowed Kari's headlights as she pushed her Jeep faster than was safe on roads she could barely see.
Gas station.Old payphone.That was all Ben had given her before the line went dead.In the vast emptiness of northern Arizona, that description could fit a dozen places—most of them abandoned, their phone lines long since disconnected.
Kari's mind raced through possibilities as the miles disappeared beneath her wheels.Ben had sounded weak, disoriented—the voice of a man running on empty, using his last reserves to make a call he wasn't sure would connect.Three days of… what?Torture?Food and water deprivation?
She had already concluded that he must have been captured—Ben was far too competent to simply get lost in the wilderness.So had he escaped?It seemed the most likely scenario.If they'd released him willingly, he would have called from his own phone.He would have gone to the station or to a hospital.
Instead, he'd found a payphone—ancient technology, almost extinct.They weren't untraceable, but that could take hours.And by the sound of it, Ben might not have that kind of time.
The highway stretched empty ahead of her, a ribbon of asphalt cutting through land that had looked the same for thousands of years.Kari had driven these roads her entire life, had learned their rhythms and their secrets the way other children learned the streets of their neighborhoods.She knew where the washes flooded during monsoon season, where the elk crossed at dawn, where the old trading posts still clung to existence despite decades of declining traffic.
And she knew the gas stations.The real ones, with their fluorescent lights and corporate logos, and the other ones—the remnants of an earlier era, when Route 66 had been the main artery of American travel and every small town had sprouted businesses to serve the endless stream of cars heading west.
Most of those places were gone now, abandoned when the interstate bypassed them, their buildings crumbling slowly back into the desert.But a few still operated, stubbornly refusing to die, serving the handful of locals who preferred the old roads to the new ones.
One of those places was thirty miles ahead.A combination gas station and convenience store that had been old when Kari was a child, run by an elderly Navajo man who kept a payphone outside because he didn't trust cell towers.She and Ben had stopped there once, months ago, during a long drive back from a case in Flagstaff.Ben had been charmed by the place, by its defiant persistence, by the old man's stories about the travelers who used to pass through.
If you ever need to disappear,Ben had joked,this is where to do it.Middle of nowhere, no cameras, and a phone that doesn't keep records.
Kari pressed the accelerator harder.
She reached the gas station in twenty-two minutes, a drive that should have taken thirty.The place looked exactly as she remembered: a low building with peeling paint, two ancient pumps, and a flickering sign that read "GAS" in letters that had once been red.The payphone hung on the exterior wall near the entrance, its metal cord glinting in the weak light from inside the store.
