Page 5

Ella thought that Marcus Thornton's office looked like a history museum had vomited up its rock collection. Rocks lined every available surface; they perched on filing cabinets, lurked in glass cases, dominated entire shelves. Some were polished to a mirror sheen, while others remained rough as sin.

The walls told their own story. Geological maps and cross-sections covered every inch of space, layered like the strata they depicted. A massive periodic table dominated one wall, and beneath it sat a collection of minerals arranged by atomic number. The whole setup screamed of a mind that found beauty in order, even when that order was buried under millions of years of chaos.

‘Olivia wasn't kidding. Guy really loved his rocks. You could say he was a rock star.’

‘Not rocks.’ Luca lifted a chunk of something gray and crystalline. ‘These are specimens.’

‘There's a difference?’

‘According to the twenty labels I just read, yes.’ He set the stone back in its exact spot. ‘Check this out – he's got them organized by age. Precambrian over here, Paleozoic by the window. Even the dust looks cataloged.’

Ella's laptop hummed on Thornton's desk, which was the only surface not covered in geological specimens. She'd cleared a space between a chunk of rose quartz and what looked like a fossilized snail shell. ‘Don’t pretend like you know what any of those words mean.’

‘Maybe not, but I know what Jurassic and Cretaceous are. You know there could be dinosaur DNA on these things?’

Ella checked her new message. It was from the Surveillance team back at HQ. They’d attached the last sighting of Marcus Thornton’s vehicle. Ella clicked the attachment and waited the annoyingly-long time for it to load.

‘DNA? On a rock?’

'Yeah, that's how they clone dinosaurs. I watched this documentary called Jurassic Park once, and-'

‘Here, Hawkins, look.’ The picture popped up. It was a grainy CCTV shot of a black Mustang – the kind that would make Edis weep – cruising north on I-684, timestamped 12:17 PM on Saturday just gone. Luca leaned in for a closer look.

‘Nice ‘Stang,’ he said. ‘So Marcus was heading north. Then where?’

‘He could have gone anywhere after this. There's a dozen exits between there and Connecticut.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Luca tapped the screen. ‘The 684’s got cameras every ten miles or so. If we didn't get another hit, he must have exited before the next one picked him up.’

‘So there’s what, five exits he could have taken?’

‘Well, no. Look at the positioning.’

‘What about it?’

‘He's in the right lane. Empty stretch of highway, clear day, muscle car that probably purrs like a tiger. What kind of person drives a restored Mustang in the slow lane?’

Ella studied the image again. The Mustang hugged the right lane like it was magnetized there. No drift, no swagger, no muscle-car attitude. ‘He was getting ready to exit.’

‘Exactly.’ Luca reached for his own laptop. ‘Let me pull up a map.’

Ella bit back a smile. She hated how easily Luca did this – slipped inside people's heads, saw the world through their eyes. Well, perhaps not hate. More like professional jealousy with a side of admiration. She'd spent years honing her profiling skills; Luca just seemed to absorb other people's perspectives like some kind of psychological sponge.

But sometimes, that innate ability led him down paths she couldn't follow. Paths that left marks, both seen and unseen.

‘Okay, smart guy. Let's say you're right. Where'd he go after?’

‘Here.’ Luca turned his screen. ‘This is where the camera caught him, just past the Croton Falls exit. If he was planning to get off at the next exit, that would put him...’

‘Around Brewster.’ Ella leaned in. ‘What's out there?’

‘Industrial park, couple of warehouses, some office complexes.’ Luca's fingers flew across the keys. ‘But chances are at least one of their cameras is maintained by the same company as the highway’s cams, meaning Surveillance would have got a hit.’

Ella followed his train of thought. His irritatingly-sound train of thought. ‘But they didn’t.’

‘But they didn’t. Which means he didn’t go past them.’

‘Let's work this methodically.’ Ella pulled her chair closer. ‘If he got off at Brewster, where can he go from there? ’

‘Route 6 splits east and west.’ Luca zoomed in. ‘West takes you toward Mahopac. East goes to Danbury.’

'And he'd have been caught on camera if he took any highways in those directions. Same as if he circled back southbound. So it's like he drove into a black hole.'

They studied the map in silence. The area spread out like a spider web of smaller roads branching off the main arteries. Old farm roads, service routes, private drives. A hundred places to disappear.

‘Wait.’ Ella pointed at a tangle of thin blue lines. ‘What are these?’

‘Local roads. Mostly residential.’ Luca zoomed in closer. ‘Though this one... Barrett Road. Looks like it used to be a major throughway before they built the highway.’

‘Used to be?’

‘Yeah, runs parallel to 684 for a few miles then dead-ends at...’ Luca trailed off, his cursor hovering over a pale brown patch of terrain.

‘At what?’

‘Bedford Quarry. Abandoned since '86.’ He ran a quick search. ‘They used to mine limestone here. Supplied most of the building material for downtown Manhattan back in the day.’

Ella felt the pieces click together. A geology professor with a missing rock hammer. An abandoned limestone quarry with no surveillance. And a road that wouldn't show up on any modern traffic system.

‘What kind of stone did you say Marcus specialized in?’

‘According to the labels in here...’ Luca gestured at the office's mineral menagerie. ‘Limestone was his thing. Wrote his dissertation on New York limestone formations.’

Ella's pulse quickened. The thrill of the hunt sang through her veins – that perfect moment when disparate pieces snapped into a picture that made horrible, beautiful sense. A geologist with a passion for limestone. A quarry that helped build Manhattan. A road that time forgot.

‘Think that's worth checking out?’

‘Better than canvassing industrial parks.’ Luca shut his laptop. ‘Though I gotta ask – what kind of research project needs a rock hammer and radio silence?’

‘Let's find out.’ Ella stood, her legs reminding her that Oregon's flames weren't done with her yet. ‘How's your climbing?’

Luca inspected the burns on his forearm. ‘Better than yours right now. ’

‘Funny guy.’ She headed for the door and paused to examine a particularly wicked-looking chunk of obsidian. ‘Let’s go see what was worth breaking a twelve-year routine for.’

Ella cast one last look at the organized chaos of Marcus’s geological kingdom. Somewhere between these carefully cataloged specimens and that abandoned quarry lay the answer to his disappearance. She just hoped they'd like what they found.

But hope, like limestone, had a way of eroding under pressure.