Instead I pulled forward.
Chain-link fencing. Gateposts. Short paved drives. Everything passed by mirrored in long shadows at their bases. Crane had disappeared. His car was nowhere to be seen in the deserted parking lots or wedged up behind any of the buildings.
I’d lost him. I was so bad at this.
In a textile manufacturer’s turnoff, I spun my car around and paused, waiting, thinking. Could this be where he was keeping them, in an abandoned building? Or maybe he’d seen me and only pulled into the complex to shake me loose. Maybe he’d doubled back somehow and I’d missed him. Who knew? After a few minutes of sulking, I pulled up to the street and caught a flash of taillights near the loading bay of a building across the way.
A light-colored truck had drawn to a stop, and a man climbed out, giving a half wave to someone I couldn’t see. Then, in the low light of a distant security lamp, Crane appeared.
I doused my headlights.
Crane and the unknown man shook hands. They leaned against the guy’s truck and looked down at whatever was in the back. A few minutes of talking, then mystery man pulled something from inside his coat. At the distance it was mostly undefinable, but with a gun against my head, I would’ve said it was an envelope. Crane put it in his pocket. Another handshake. They went back to their vehicles.
My hand found the shifter, and I threw the car in reverse, backing farther up the drive until the car was enshrouded in the shadow cast by the company’s sign. On the street, first Crane appeared, then the truck following closely behind. When they were two blocks away, I rolled back onto the street and turned on my lights.
Deep breath. In and out.
Stay far enough back so they don’t see you, don’t suspect anything, because maybe, just maybe, you’ve stumbled onto something useful. If the stars align, maybe you’ve hit on something like salvation.
I trailed so far from them, their taillights nearly vanished at the next intersection. More fog lifted from the ground and encroached the road. Another car joined our little procession, and I relaxed a bit. When the street emptied out onto Main, my cover turned left while Crane and the truck went right. I waited at the stoplight, but no more vehicles presented themselves. Soon I’d lose them. No choice.
At the bottom of Main, we crossed a canal and entered a livelier part of town. More fast-food neon, a movie theater, bars. Just when I was thinking of turning off to try to rejoin them a few streets over, the truck swung hard into a burger joint. Crane kept going.
Decisions, decisions.
There was only one car in the burger place’s lot. I’d stand out like a sore thumb. I kept going.
Crane guided his Lexus out of town, heading east again toward the mountains. Fewer and fewer streetlights sprouted from the roadsides until there were none. Vast emptiness broken only by the occasional home set back from the highway and the fog rolling up and across fields like something alive.
Ten miles from the city limits, Crane slowed and turned onto a county road. Dirt and a single sign marking its vein into the foothills. No pretenses of anything civilized beyond.
I never touched the brakes, flew past at sixty and kept going. When I’d rounded the next curve, I swung a U-turn and headed back, inching up to the road Crane had disappeared down until I could see.
At least a mile away, his taillights flared before fading around a bend.
I turned in.
Black, skeletal trees crowded the ditches, snuffing out any ambient light from the sky. Dirt pecked and snapped at the undercarriage like a hungry bird. I flipped the headlights off and turned the running lights on, staining everything a yellow orange.
Digging out my cell, I threw looks from the dirt road to the screen over and over. Call the cops? Kel? At least let someone know where I was so they have an idea of where to look for the body?
Not yet. I didn’t know anything for sure. But I could see it unfolding in my head.
A few miles in and a single overgrown lane would appear, the last trailing lights from the Lexus disappearing. I’d park the car and head after Crane on foot. Deeper in the woods, the drive would open up to a clearing holding a ramshackle farmhouse with only candle glow from inside. I’d sidle up to the nearest window, and Crane would be there, standing over Rachel and the boys, who would be terrified but unharmed. I’d make the call and bring in the cavalry.
Game over. Day saved.
The other possibilities were too much to envision.
Around the curve Crane had disappeared behind—nothing, darkness. He was still ahead of me quite a bit. My foot pressed down; the trees fled past on either side. I watched for a break in them, some indication of a driveway leading off to the dilapidated shack, but there was only the forest and the indifferent stain of the mountains beyond.