Every Precious Thing (15 page)

“I’ll get on it.”

“Thanks, Callie.”

“Logan?”

“Yeah?”

“Stay safe.”

__________

T
EN MINUTES LATER
he got a call from Dev. “They’re headed east on the interstate, just about to pass into Arizona.”

Northern Arizona was a collection of small towns separated by large areas of nothing. Small towns, and one that was a bit larger than the others.

Flagstaff.

Diana had left Braden, and now her friends were heading out, too, in the direction of a town Diana had once lived in. Were they meeting up with her there? Maybe even with Sara? The possibility seemed too great to ignore.

 “Stay on them,” he told Dev. “I’ll catch up with you.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

S
ARA HAD BEEN
trying the number for hours, but every single time she’d been greeted with the same message: “The caller you are trying to reach is not currently within our coverage area.”

Where are you?Why aren’t you answering?

Her panic had been caused by a call she’d received from Diana four and a half hours ago.

 “Sara…Sara, can you hear me?”

“Yeah. You’re breaking up a little, but I can hear you,” she’d replied.

“Can you hear me? Sara?”

“I’m right here. I hear you.”

“Oh, good. There you are.”

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?” They hadn’t been scheduled to talk again until the next day.

“I screwed up.”

Sara froze. “What…what are you talking about?”

“Have you seen anyone? Anyone at all?”

“No,” Sara said. “Not since Richard came by two weeks ago. Why?”

“Stay inside. Don’t go out.”

“Diana, what’s going on?”

“I’m taking care of it. That’s all you need to know. Just hold tight.”

Hold tight?
“What happened?”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Diana! What happened?”

Dead air.

“Diana? Diana?”

Nothing.

“Dammit! Diana, can you hear me?”

It was no use. The line was dead.

Immediately she’d called Diana back. That was the first time she’d received the out-of-service-area message. She’d lost count how many more times she’d heard it since.

Movement through the window caught her eye. Panic almost choked her as she stared out at the trees that surrounded the cabin. If someone was that close already, what would she do? Run? Hide? Could she really hope she wouldn’t be caught?

There it was again, a few feet above the ground.

She let out her breath and closed her eyes in relief. A deer. It was only a deer.

She quickly walked over and pulled the curtain shut, temporarily denying the existence of anything beyond the cabin walls.

Even though they had stuck to the plan, something had obviously gone wrong. It should have worked. It
had
worked to this point.

Not knowing what else to do, she tried Diana again.

“The caller you are trying to reach is not—”

She hung up, waiting five seconds, then hit redial.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

N
OT WANTING TO
leave Harp and Barney without transportation, Logan arranged for a rental car through the manager at the Desert Inn, then headed east on I-40, fifty minutes behind Dev. As he passed through Kingman, Arizona, his father called.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Logan? Barney and I want to go back to the hospital. You’ll need to give us a ride.”

“Just take the Cherokee.”

Harp paused. “I thought you said we weren’t supposed to drive it.”

“It’s fine now, Dad. The others are gone.”

“Gone? Where did they go?”

“Not sure yet.”

“Well, do you want to meet us for dinner?”

“I’m…um…following them. Not sure exactly when I’ll be back.”

“Following them? When were you going to tell me this?”

“Sorry. Had to move quickly. Didn’t have time.”

“Still not an excuse.”

“You’re right.”

Harp said nothing for a moment. “What about the letter?”

Logan cringed. “I said I’d give it to you the next time I saw you. I haven’t seen you yet.”

“It’s still with you?”

Logan could tell his father’s anxiety level was rising. “It’s still in the glove compartment. No one’s touched it.”

“It’s just…okay, the next time I see you.”

Logan hesitated, then said, “Do you want to talk about what’s inside it?”

“You didn’t look, did you?” Harp said quickly. “That’s my property. You shouldn’t look. You didn’t, did you?”

Out of reflex, Logan said, “No, of course not.”

Harp took a couple of loud breaths. “All right. Sorry. Um, if you need our help, you know where we are.”

“Thanks.”

An hour later Dev called.

“How far does this thing go when the needle’s on empty?” he asked.

“I try not to let it get there,” Logan said.

“Well, I’m about a hair’s width away from it. Kept hoping they’d pull over, but their car doesn’t eat as much gas as this one.”

“Where are you?”

“Almost to Flagstaff.”

“You still have them in sight?”

“At the moment, but I’m going to have to stop soon.”

Logan frowned. “You’ve got probably about twenty miles. Will that get you to Flagstaff?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay with them until you know if they’re stopping there, or heading farther east, then fill up.”

“Got it.”

Logan inched the rental’s speed up a few miles an hour, knowing it would never be enough to catch up with Dev in time.

Fifteen minutes passed before Dev called back.

“They got off in Flagstaff.”

Logan could feel some of the tension in his shoulders easing. “You know which way they went?”

“Yeah, not that it’ll do us much good. This place isn’t huge, but it’s big enough to get lost in. I’m filling up now. When I’m done, I’ll see if I can spot them, but I’m not holding my breath.”

“Don’t waste your time,” Logan said. “Turns out Diana used to work in Flagstaff. I have the address where she used to live. Give it a drive-by and see if there’s anything interesting.”

“You think that might be where she is?”

“I doubt our luck is that good, but we have to check.”

“Want me to knock on the door?”

“No. Not until I get there. If you have time, try to get an address for Harkin Services. That was her employer. I should be there in forty minutes or so.”

__________

A
S THE LIGHTS
of Flagstaff came into view, Logan checked in again with Dev, who suggested they meet at Diana’s old address.

“It’s not exactly what you’re expecting,” Dev said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

The first thing Logan spotted as he turned onto Diana’s old street was the El Camino parked at the curb with Dev standing next to it on the sidewalk. As Logan got out of his rental, he checked the addresses on the buildings until he found the one Diana had used.

It wasn’t a house. It wasn’t even an apartment building.

It was a business called Burrage Copy Box.

He walked over and looked through the window.

“Told you it wasn’t what you’d expect,” Dev said, coming up behind him.

Though Copy Box was closed for the night, there were enough security lights on to see inside. The place’s main features were half a dozen photocopy machines, several racks of shipping supplies, and a wall of private mailboxes, one of which had undoubtedly been used by Diana at one point.

“Just great,” Logan said.

“I’ve got something else you’ll want to see.”

“What?”

Dev tossed the El Camino’s keys to Logan. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Following Dev’s instructions, Logan drove to the end of the block, turned right, and went two more blocks.

“Park anywhere,” Dev said.

“Where are we?”

As soon as they were stopped, Dev pointed at the office building beside them. In bold, white letters affixed to the brick exterior were the words
HARKIN SERVICES
.

“Checked out their website when I looked up their address,” Dev said. “They’re a contractor for the National Park Service.”

“Doing what?”

“Basically running some of the parks—concessions, tours, in-park motels, that kind of thing. El Portal is right outside Yosemite. And Flagstaff is only an hour or so from—”

“The Grand Canyon,” Logan finished for him.

The corner of Dev’s mouth moved up a bit. “Bet she worked as a bartender at motels in both places.”

Annoyed, Logan looked down the street toward where Burrage Copy Box was located. He was willing to bet a majority of the company’s mail service clients were Harkin employees who worked at the Grand Canyon. A small part of him had been hoping this was Sara’s hiding place. No such luck.

He got out and gave the building a once-over. Somewhere inside, either in a cabinet or on a server, would be a folder with all the information the company had on Diana Stockley—rather, Diana Baudler—including the address where she’d actually lived while working at the Grand Canyon. Maybe that would be another dead end. Still, he would love to get a look at the file.

For a second, he considered breaking in, but while he was sure he could get through the door, he was equally positive there would be an alarm system he wouldn’t be able to figure out how to deactivate in time. There were other ways to get the info, though. Perhaps Callie could help on that front.

Hearing Dev take a step behind him, he turned. “I think maybe we should—”

It wasn’t Dev.

In fact, it wasn’t just one person. It was two.

And both were aiming guns at his chest.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
IVE

W
ITH EACH PASSING
hour, Diana’s sense that she’d missed her opportunity to find out what Logan and his friends were doing grew, but then the truck returned to the Desert Inn parking lot—not only with the tough guy inside, but Logan, too—and all those thoughts of failure disappeared.

After Logan got out, the other guy took off again. She didn’t even consider following the El Camino. Logan was the one who’d been asking questions about Sara. That’s where her focus needed to be.

She watched as he went up to the second floor and into one of the rooms. For a few seconds, she considered following him up and confronting him, but she knew that would give her no more than temporary satisfaction. If he
was
involved with whom she thought, best to just observe for now.

For a while nothing happened, then Logan exited his room carrying a duffle bag and walked downstairs. On the first floor he entered another room, came out holding a second bag, and went into the motel lobby. He stayed there until a white, generic-looking sedan pulled into the parking lot. As he exited the office, the man who’d been driving the car climbed out. The driver was wearing khakis and a bright blue golf shirt, and he was holding a tablet computer. Using a stylus, Logan wrote something on the computer screen, and the man handed him a set of keys.

A rental, she realized.

As Logan threw the bags in the trunk, Diana started her car.

Her weak point was obviously following people, but she knew if she lost him this time, she might never find him again. Given that he’d brought the bags, she guessed he was probably leaving town, and the only way to do that was via the interstate.

The freeway entrance was a straight shot down Center Street. She pulled out of the lot and headed in that direction before Logan even got behind the wheel of his car. A block shy of the overpass, she pulled into a gas station to wait.

Thirty seconds later, the rental sped by. When its blinker came on indicating it was about to make a right turn, the skin on her arms went numb.

East. He was heading east.

Sara was east of here. Could he know that?

Having no choice, Diana shifted the car out of park and took off after him.

She quickly found that freeway following was a hell of a lot easier than doing so in town, and she was able to keep Logan in sight with little trouble. As they headed through Arizona, she tried willing him to turn down US 93 to Phoenix, but he blew right past the transition, staying on the I-40.

Every mile her concern increased. When they neared the exit to Williams, she could feel her pulse pounding in her neck and arms. But Logan kept going, driving right by the off-ramp that would have taken him to the cabin where Sara was.

Could it just be a trick? Did he know she was following him, and was trying to throw her off? Having no confidence that the situation was any better than it had been, she stayed with him.

When he exited at Flagstaff, she felt her blood pressure rise again. She had a connection in this town, a connection that could possibly lead in Sara’s direction. She tried to follow him into town, but once more was defeated by her lack of experience and lost him within minutes. Worse, Flagstaff was at least a dozen times bigger than Braden, so he would be much harder to find.

Her only choice was to do a methodical search for his white sedan. At least she’d been able to memorize his license plate number, making her task of spotting his amongst the hundreds of other white sedans marginally less impossible than it could have been.

When she did find the sedan within the first fifteen minutes, she didn’t know if she felt lucky or horrified. It was parked in front of Burrage Copy Box. The very same Copy Box outlet she had used as a mailing address when she worked at the canyon. Oddly, Logan didn’t seem to be around.

Could he have…?