But now, nothing. Had Jack lost track of time, as Lana suggested? Had she deliberately left, paddling away to do God knows what, something Jack had kept from Beth? Or had she been taken, snatched from the slough?
She had to pull herself together. Beth took out her phone and started dialing, calling anyone who might have seen Jack. No one picked up at the Kayak Shack. Same at the yacht club. She texted Kayla, who hadn’t seen Jack before school or in the break after first period. She texted Jack again. And then she stopped. She had no one else to call.
She stared at her phone, wondering. How was it possible she didn’t know more people in Jack’s life? Her connection to Jack suddenly felt paper-thin, the surface of a dark body of water. Jack was paddling out, into the deep, and Beth had no idea where.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Beth drove east into the hills, faster than Lana would have liked. Not that she was going to say anything. Beth’s mouth was ironed shut, arms locked, her hands about to rip the wheel from the steering column. She careened up and over the train tracks, eyes locked to the window and the reedy bank along the road. The car slowed by the abandoned dairy, and Beth and Lana surveyed the crumbling barns, their doors blown off, big chunks of roof caved in. There was no movement. No Jack.
They kept going, past Kirby Park, to the trestle bridge that separated artichoke fields from the swampy water. They crossed over to the north bank in silence, staring out at the rolling hills of the land trust property and the Rhoads ranch that blocked their view of the slough.
They stopped outside the entrance to the paintball range and got out of the car. Lana handed Beth her binoculars, and Beth looked down toward the water, tracing the curlicued creeks that linked the vernal ponds and irrigation ditches to the slough. A crew in white plastic jumpsuits was spraying rows of future strawberry plants in a low-laying field. Otherwise, it was pickle grass and pelicans as far as the eye could see.
The wind picked up, biting at Lana’s flimsy sweater. She felt Beth shift her weight beside her.
“Let’s go,” Lana said. She put a hand on Beth’s forearm, as if to guide her. “There’s a lot more places she could be.”
By the time Beth’s car bumped over the cattle guards at the entrance of the marina, both women were fried. Beth stared at the college boys in Kayak Shack sweatshirts dragging boats from the water to the shop. Her eyes followed each kayak as it disappeared behind the aluminum fence.
“Let’s split up,” Lana suggested. “You go to the Kayak Shack. I’ll take the docks. Maybe I’ll find a fisherman who saw her.” Lana watched Beth stride over to the boys, then turned, her low heels planting divots in the gravel as she headed in the other direction.
The docks were labeled alphabetically, laid out in rows and right angles like an urban street grid. Each dock held slots for twenty-four boats, a mix of kayaks, fishing skiffs, and small sailboats, their jibs clinking in the breeze.
Lana tackled the rows methodically, starting at M and working her way north to A. By F, her right hip ached. Her toes were curling inside her squared-off mules. And the cutesy names painted on the sides of the sloops—“Seas the Day,” “A Wave We Go,” “Back That Mast Up”—were starting to piss her off. She met three fishermen on the E row who politely looked at the photos of Jack on her phone. One of them took the time to look a little less politely down her braless sweater before lifting his eyes and opening his mouth to tell her he was sorry. They hadn’t seen Jack. His buddies broke out giggling as Lana stomped away.
While she was limping along the C corridor, Lana heard someone paddle up. A man in a double kayak pulled alongside the B dock, loaded down with a cooler, a shovel, and an enormous black duffel bag. The bag was sticking out in front of him, the cooler wedged behind his denim jacket like a high-backed chair.
Lana recognized him as soon as he stepped up onto the dock.
“Paul!” she called out.
“Lana? What are you doing here?”
“Beth left you a message. Jack is missing. We think somewhere out on the slough. Have you seen her?”
“What? I’ve just been in the marina taking care of a few things . . .” Paul put a proprietary hand on the cooler.
“We’ve been all over. Beth’s probably tearing apart your office right now looking for her.”
“No. Let me . . .”
He cast a nervous glance around. There was no one else on the dock.
“Let me help you.”
He flung the duffel over one shoulder and threw a ragged sweatshirt on top of the cooler in the kayak. “Dock L,” he said. “Tell Beth to meet us there.”