The vague wash of light subsided. Darkness. Dryden counted to ten and risked another glance at the beach. The searchers had moved on to the north, inspecting the boardwalk as they went. It was time to swing down and try for a quiet getaway, whatever the risk. Every moment he delayed increased the chance that he’d simply fall, which would be anything but quiet. He was starting to slide his feet out of the gap when a sound stopped him.
Footsteps. Heavy and slow, on the boardwalk above. They approached from the south, the direction the searchers had come from. Dryden remained frozen. The man on the boardwalk stopped directly above him; traces of sand fell in Dryden’s face.
“Clay,” the man called out. It was the leader. The guy with the voice. He’d remained on the boardwalk while the others searched.
One of the men on the beach, Clay apparently, turned and approached, his flashlight playing haphazardly over the ground. He stopped at the edge of the boardwalk, looking up at the leader. Had he lowered his gaze and looked straight ahead, he would have locked eyes with Dryden, no more than eighteen inches away. Dryden dared not even turn his head upward again; the slightest movement could give him up. He hoped the shuddering of his muscles didn’t show as intensely as it felt.
Of Clay’s features, Dryden could see almost nothing. The man was barely a silhouette against the black ocean and sky. Only the backscatter glow from the flashlight beam offered any detail: medium-length hair, dark clothing, a weapon hanging at his side by a shoulder strap. A submachine gun—something like an MP-5 with a heavy sound suppressor.
Above, on the boardwalk, the leader said, “This is out of hand already. Go back to the van, set up coverage of police channels in a twenty-mile radius. Call Chernin, get him working on personal cell phones of officers and whatever federal agents are based in the area. Gold-pan the audio for keywords like girl and lost. Try psych ward while you’re at it.”
“You think if she talks to anybody,” Clay said, “they’ll think she walked out of a mental hospital?”
Dryden suddenly felt his fingertips slipping from their hold on the fog-dampened wood. No amount of exertion could stop it; he was going to lose his grip in a matter of seconds.
“Solid chance of it,” the leader said.
Dryden’s fingertips held by a quarter inch. He felt that margin shrink by half in the span of a breath.
“And if we lose the trail anyway?” Clay asked.
For a second the leader didn’t answer. Then he said, “Either she gets buried in the gravel pits, or we do.”
Dryden tensed for the fall, trying to imagine any way he could get on his feet and escape with the girl.
At that instant he felt her move. Without a sound, she took her arms from around his chest, reached past his head to the beam, and clamped her hands as tightly as she could over his fingertips. The minor force she could apply was enough to make the difference; his grip held.
Above the clamor of thoughts demanding Dryden’s attention, one briefly took precedence: How the hell had she known?
A second later Clay pocketed his flashlight, climbed onto the boardwalk, and ran off in the direction the group had come from. Dryden waited for the leader to move off as well, but for a moment he only stood there, his breath audible in the darkness. Then he turned and thudded away to the north, following the searchers. When his footsteps had grown faint, Dryden at last slipped his feet from the beam and swung down. Blood surged into his muscles like ice water. The girl got her balance on the rocks and leaned past him to look up the beach. Dryden looked, too: The searchers were a hundred yards away.
The girl sniffled. Dryden realized she was crying.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice cracked on the first word. “I’m sorry you had to do that for me.”
Dryden had a thousand questions. They could all wait a few minutes.
He turned and scanned inland for the best route away from here. There was a comforting span of darkness between the boardwalk and the harbor road. A block north along its length, the back streets of El Sedero branched deeper inland, into the cover of night. He and the girl could take the long way around and circle back to his house, half a mile north on the beach.
Taking a last look to make sure the searchers were still moving away, Dryden guided the girl under the boardwalk and into the long grass beyond.
CHAPTER TWO
Neither of them spoke until they were three blocks in from the sea, moving north on the dark streets of the old part of town. Even there, Dryden kept watch for Clay, on the chance he’d gone this way en route to the van—the marine fog wasn’t dense enough to provide them cover. For the moment, though, they seemed to have El Sedero to themselves.
Dryden spoke quietly. “Who are they? What is this—are you a witness to something?”
He couldn’t imagine what else it could be.
The girl shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t really know.”
“You don’t know if you witnessed something?”
“There’s more to it than that,” she said.
Dryden could still hear a hitch in her breathing, though she’d stopped crying a few minutes earlier.