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Why?
Finally, I came to a fork in the road. Fresh tire tracks went in both directions. I came to a full stop.
“Well, good job, Miss Banks,” I muttered, shaking my head. I’d officially lost her—or she lost me was probably more appropriate.
My cell phone had zero bars, so I reached into the glove box and retrieved the SAT phone.
Leo answered on the first ring.
“She ran.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Does she know who you are?”
“Impossible. We didn’t even get that far. Something about me spooked her and she ran.”
“She thinks you’re a Fed.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Which pretty much confirms that she’s working with Black Cell and has something to hide. Did you tail her?”
I shifted in my seat, moderately embarrassed. “I lost her. Best I could tell, she went northwest of her home. But there are so many damn random roads out here, who knows where she came out. I need you to watch the airports in the area. If she checks in, let me know.”
“On it. Let’s hope she doesn’t alert the cell that someone’s poking around Falcon Creek.”
“I don’t give a damn who she alerts. My job is to get Kusma’s location from her. That’s it.”
“What ifheruns?”
“Then she’d better know where to look.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone.
“Remember, you have seven days, Justin.Sevendays.”
11
Justin
Isearched for Sophia’s truck for hours, getting lost no fewer than three times while driving through the snowy Alaskan backwoods.
The roads were like mazes, intersecting randomly with no signs. Half of them came to dead ends, and the other half were almost impassable. Not only due to snow but also because of deep potholes and debris—literally downed trees in some cases.
I found myself bouncing between anger that she ran and worry that she’d slid off the road somewhere. At every steep ravine, every lake or pond, I’d park the SUV, get out, and survey the area, looking for the red truck and that honey-blond hair.
The only positive thing was that I gained a clearer understanding of the layout of the area.
Eventually, I returned to the diner to see if Sophia had come in for her shift. Ron, the heavy-handed cook, informed me that he hadn’t seen her, and that it was extremely abnormal for Sophia to skip out on her shift like she did, especially without explanation. She was nothing if not reliable, he said.
I got the sense that Ron was very worried about her, and I caught myself wondering if there was more to their working relationship.
I waited until nightfall to revisit Sophia’s house. She wasn’t there, so I decided to circle back to an overgrown access road that I’d discovered during my search earlier. It was about fifty yards from her front door and offered broken views of her home.
I hid the SUV behind a copse of trees and then used a pine branch to sweep away my tire tracks, ensuring concealment. Finally, I slid behind the wheel and settled in to wait.
