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“I got a glimpse of the car,” Max said, pounding his fist against his palm as he circled the room. “I couldn’t see the exact make or model and it was too muddy to read the license plate, but I could tell it was a dark burgundy van.”
“Late model?”
“No. Sort of boxy, so it’s got to be a few years old. I drew a picture of it and also sketched the tire tracks.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out on the dining table.
“Are you sure these are the tracks of the same van?”
“Hell, yeah. I went ru
“Brilliant, Max,” Derek said, patting him on the back. “The police should be able to match this drawing to one of the survivalists’ vehicles. Smart of you to think of it.”
Max shrugged. “I had nothing better to do once you talked me off the ledge.”
Earlier, I could barely get Max to come up from the canyon floor. When he did finally hike back up to the house, he was enraged, out of his mind with fear, and frantic to go after Emily. He was threatening to take out his rifle and shoot someone—and I couldn’t blame him. But I also couldn’t let him go off half crazed, so I got Derek back on the phone and begged him to talk Max down.
Whatever Derek said to him had worked. Max wasn’t exactly calm, but he was willing to wait for Derek and Gabriel to join him in the fight.
Gazing across the room at Derek, who’d been scowling ever since he arrived at the house, I said, “You’d think we all had tracking devices planted on us with the way they find us so fast.”
“It does seem that way, love,” Derek said. “But I’ve checked my car each time. It’s clean.”
It was a very good sign that he called me love, because I knew he had to be furious with me for going into the canyon. But I couldn’t let Max go down there alone. Not that I had been much help to him. My hand still smarted from the stickers I’d collected from that prickly bush. I’d slathered it in antiseptic cream as soon as I got back to the house.
It was also good to know that Derek had actually been checking for tracking devices regularly. I never would have thought of that, but we’d already established beyond a doubt that his mind worked differently from mine.
“Hey, maybe they planted a device in the book,” I said, then shook my head. “No, that’s just stupid.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “At this point, nothing is out of the question. Bring me the book and I’ll check it.”
I had to bring it to him in pieces. He sat at the dining room table and went through every inch of every page, explaining that there were now tracking devices on the market that were as small and thin as a piece of tape.
“The book is clean,” he said finally.
“So these guys are just good trackers,” I said.
“Seems to be the case,” Derek said, still scowling. It had to be irritating as hell to know he was being bested by a group of local yokels. I was right there with him, and couldn’t wait to nail whoever had been dogging us all over northern California.
I gathered up the pieces of the book and carried them back to the desk in our bedroom. I took a minute to arrange them neatly on the desk, then pulled out my cell phone and took a photograph of the display. Under normal circumstances in my bookbinding studio at home, I would’ve been documenting every step of my work on Beauty, so it was time to play catch-up.
By the time I came back into the living room, Gabriel had arrived. He was dressed from head to toe in black, and I had to say, he looked almost as good as Derek did.
The four of us regrouped around the dining table as we had so many times before, regardless of whose house we were in. This gathering was different, though. Tonight we would finally take action. We made a plan.
The search would center around the Hollow. Gabriel had already copied a Google Earth map showing every home and outbuilding in the area. Then he and Derek divided the map into ten approximately equal-sized sections. Gabriel brought out his notebook computer and coordinated directions into the individual areas.
Derek called my father and put him on speakerphone, then asked him to round up ten or fifteen commune members who were good with guns and tracking. I knew Austin would be the first one on his list.
“I’ll get on the phone and call some others,” Dad said, and I could hear the excitement in his voice. He didn’t talk about it much, but he’d apparently been involved in a few dangerous operations in his past.
“And, Jim,” Derek continued, “can you recommend a discreet meeting place for all of us, around seven o’clock this evening?”
There was a pause; then Dad said, “Sava
“Excellent suggestion,” Derek said, then noticed my eyes widen, and thought fast. “Would you mind approaching Sava
I gri
After we hung up from talking to Dad, it was time for me to bring up a thorny subject.
Dharma didn’t have its own police force, but a number of the commune members were proficient at tracking and shooting. Guru Bob handled most smaller skirmishes within the confines of the commune, but if things got out of hand, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department could be called in. We’d rarely had a need to call them in before, but this was a whole different ballgame.
“We should call Jaglom and Lee,” I said, “and probably the Sonoma Sheriff’s Department.”
“No cops,” Max said immediately.
“But we’ll need them to arrest the bad guys when we find Emily.” I touched Max’s shoulder and felt him tense up, but I went ahead and said, “Look, she might need an ambulance, Max. I’m sorry, but we’ll need the authorities on hand at some point.”
“Emily will be fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “Solomon’s just using her to get to me.”
I prayed he was right.
Derek squeezed my hand. “I’m afraid I agree with Max, darling. I’m hesitant to bring in law enforcement too early.”
“Me, too,” Gabriel said. “Sorry, babe, but they could try to pull the plug on the whole operation. Let’s just say my confidence level in them finding Emily is low to zero.”
I understood their feelings. We’d done all the groundwork and knew the players. We’d been the ones keeping Max safe, scoping out the survivalists, ru
I understood all that. And I felt for Max, too. The police had never helped him before. Why would they start now?
And how strange was it that I, not Derek, was the one who was insisting on a police presence? Times had certainly changed. Or maybe I’d just grown tired of ru
“I can see you’re struggling with this, love, so I propose a compromise. We’ll call the police after we begin the search.”
I thought about it for half a second. “Okay. I’ll make the calls.”
The others agreed. The key would be in the timing of the phone calls. Our San Francisco detectives would need at least an hour to get up here, so I would alert them sooner. The sheriff was close enough to get here quickly, so I would make the call to him later.
With any luck, they would all descend on Dharma at precisely the right time to arrest and drag off to jail the vicious creeps who’d snatched Emily.
“Are you ready?” Derek asked as the sun set over the canyon ridge. He pulled his gun from the holster beneath his arm, slid the magazine back to double-check that it was fully loaded, then slipped the gun back into its holster.