“We need to get ahold of Annie Domingo. She’s not answering her phone.”
“I’ll try calling. I know her neighbor, I’ll call her too, have her knock on the door of her house—”
“No,” Cormac said, holding out a hand. “No one goes into her house. No one gets close. Just keep calling, maybe she’ll answer.”
“Okay. Okay, yeah. I’m sure everything’s okay—”
“And Elton Peterson. You have any idea where he is?”
“He lives south of here, out on the highway. I don’t have his number, I mean who’d want his number—”
“You think you can find out where he is right now?”
She nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I think I can do that.”
“Good. You find out, and call me. Don’t talk to him, nobody goes near him. Call me, got it? Here’s my number—”
“I already have it. It’s on your registration card.”
He smiled back. “You think that’s my real number, you got something to learn about paranoia.”
Her eyes widened. Then she grinned. “Yes, sir.”
The missing director wasn’t his problem. Let the cops deal with that.
Except he disappears, and the warning alarm at the cabin goes off?
Amelia didn’t believe in coincidences. Worry about the cabin first, then Bellamy. The cabin was the center of it all.
“So tell me this,” he said out loud, as they roared up the service road toward Weber’s cabin. The alarm had been triggered; the slip of paper in his pocket had burned to ash. Whatever had gotten to Weber had returned. “Bellamy and maybe Domingo are both missing. Peterson’s pissed off at both of them, which means he’s also pissed off at me. So why are we okay?”
I told you we’d need that protection magic someday.
He gripped the steering wheel, wrestling the Jeep around curves, and was still half a mile from the cabin when he put on the brakes and skidded to a stop. In the headlight beams the dirt road ahead showed ruts where the tires of a vehicle had kicked up trenches of gravel as it lost control and skidded. The tracks disappeared into the trees.
“You don’t think. . . .” Cormac murmured.
Be careful, Amelia murmured. His first impulse was to snap that he didn’t need reminding. On consideration, he appreciated the reminder. He needed an extra set of eyes. A sixth sense. Clairvoyance. The ability to channel the dead. Omnipotence.
I am a mere magician, she said.
Cormac walked a little ways from the truck, keeping his gaze soft enough to catch unexpected movement in his peripheral vision, but focused enough to notice details that didn’t fit. Anything out of place, from a recently fallen tree to a newly dug ditch. If he knew what he was looking for, he wouldn’t need to search.
A soft breeze rocked the pines above him. Living wood creaked, a perfectly natural if ominous sound. An owl grumbled a little ways off. The world around him appeared perfectly ordinary, except for the place where a car had obviously skidded off the road, suddenly and violently.
He left the road and followed the tracks through the pathless forest.
He didn’t have to go far. The ground dipped, sloping into a shallow gulch, and a black SUV sat innocuously shored up against a big pine. It hadn’t been moving fast enough down the track to do more than crunch the bumper when it hit the tree.
This was Ford Bellamy’s car.
This is not good.
Maybe the driver had lost control, managed to brake hard enough to keep the crash from being a total disaster. And then what, walked away? Then where was Bellamy? Why hadn’t the cops found this? Cormac approached, still looking around for. . .whatever.
He reached the driver’s side door and looked in through the tinted window. Someone
was sitting inside; Cormac could only see the driver’s shape. He pulled a pair of gloves out of his jacket pocket, slipped them on. Old habit, but even now he wasn’t willing to leave behind any confusing prints that would have to be explained. He let out a breath, hoping the door would be unlocked.