Page 38 of The Fix
Rex locked the door of their rental and walked behind Cami as she headed to the car.
Despite the choice of fourteen bedrooms, they’d each taken turns sleeping on the leather couch in the basement, where they passed the time playing pool.
He massaged his shoulder, working out the kink born of the position he’d been in when he’d finally drifted off at about four a.m., only to wake an hour and a half later.
But Rex had become used to catching an hour here and an hour there while working, and he knew he’d be fine.
He’d watched Cami toss and turn under the blanket at the end of the couch, but she’d managed to get about four hours of sleep as Rex had mapped out the exact routes they’d take from place to place on their list to best use the time they had.
The morning air was crisp and clean and scented with salt and pine.
He got behind the wheel as Cami pulled the seat belt across her chest, and then he backed out of the driveway and turned onto the street.
She set the fully charged laptop up on the center console so they could keep watch over Cyrus, who was currently sitting on the bed, waiting for his pancakes.
Rex let out a breath of relief as they pulled up in front of the shop fifteen minutes early and saw that the lights were already on. They exited the car and made their way to the door, Rex knocking when they found it locked.
A slender man wearing jeans and a mustard-yellow T-shirt came toward the door, flipped the lock, and pulled it open. “We’re not quite open yet. Come back in fifteen.”
Rex held his hand out so the sunburned guy couldn’t close the door. “Sorry to bother you before you’re open, but we spoke to your daughter yesterday, and she told us to come back in the morning and talk to you. It’s an emergency. Joel, right?”
He looked at Rex skeptically, but then pulled the door open wider and invited them in. “We just need to know if a man was in here at some point last week. We have a photo.”
“What kind of emergency is this?”
“It’s involving a kidnapped child. We’re not at liberty to share more than that.”
Joel looked briefly alarmed and gestured to see what they had to show him. Rex was grateful that he didn’t ask for some ID, not because he cared about lying to the man in this instance, but because it would have wasted a few more minutes they didn’t have.
Cami showed him the photo on her phone, and Joel leaned in. “Yeah, that dude was here. Saturday, I think. He was kinda rude, so I remember him.”
“You do?” Rex felt a flare of hope. “Did he say anything memorable? Or about where he was staying?”
“He asked if kids like Spider-Man comics, and I said yes and suggested a few other choices too. He kinda just grunted and then walked out without saying thank you and let the door close right before another customer got to it.”
“Okay, great. Hey, thanks,” Rex said. “You’ve been really helpful. Can I give you my number in case he comes back in again? Don’t tell him someone’s looking for him, but if you could call me, you’d be helping a kid out.”
Joel grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from the counter behind him, and Rex jotted down his number, and then they thanked him again and left the shop. They practically ran back to the car, glancing at Cyrus and then looking at each other. “This is it. He’s within twenty miles.”
“If that man with Cyrus was being accurate. And truthful.”
“It’s all we have to go on.” Rex didn’t believe the kidnapper had known he was being watched or listened to. If the guy was being untruthful in any way, it was more likely that he was exaggerating the distance and hoping to scare Cyrus into compliance.
She nodded jerkily. He saw the pulse at her throat thrumming steadily.
“It’s less than a mile to the ocean from here, so he’s obviously not in that direction.
” But that left them three more, and there were cabins everywhere here.
Woods everywhere. And the sound of the ocean traveled and curved around the cliffs.
Not only that, the one cabin they were looking for might be private property and not listed publicly.
Rex picked up his phone and dialed Joaquin. His friend picked up on the second ring. “Any more luck?”
“Nah, man. I’ve been running this every which way I can. I’m sorry. That’s as close as I can get you without a view of the horizon directly from the location.”
“Hey, you got us here, and we just got confirmation that we’re close. Thank you, Joaquin.”
“I’ll text you if anything more comes up.”
“Thanks again. I mean it.”
Rex fisted his hand on his thigh. He was tempted to punch the windshield but blew out a slow breath as he stretched his fingers.
The shattering of glass might feel good for a millisecond, but he’d likely break his hand and scare the hell out of Cami.
Rex had never been one to give in to violence when he was frustrated, but damn, he’d never felt quite so helpless, and he’d never had a small, innocent victim counting on him, whether the boy knew it or not.
Still, he refused to give up now.
“Let’s go back to the house. Now that we have confirmation that we’re in the right place, I’m going to start mapping out all the areas where there are cabins.
” There were a few maps among the visitor guides and whatnot in the kitchen drawer, and he’d start with those so they’d have something physical to mark up.
Cami brought her buckle around herself, and Rex pulled away from the curb.
As they were turning up the driveway to the house, Rex glanced at the video of Cyrus, his heart giving a jolt when he spotted something out the window.
“Holy shit.” He stopped the car in front of the house and shut it off, leaning in to get a better view.
Yes. Yes. It was just what he’d thought it was.
“What is that?” Cami asked as she unbuckled herself and leaned in, too, her brow wrinkled as she squinted at the screen.
“It’s a plane contrail. And I might be able to find the cabin’s location from this.
Let’s go.” He grabbed the laptop, and they both got out of the car, walking quickly to the front door.
Rex handed Cami the computer while he unlocked the house, and then they rushed inside, hope swelling in his chest based on two tiny lines of barely visible vapor.
Rex set the laptop on the kitchen counter and pulled a stool up in front of it while Cami did the same next to him. “Is that like exhaust from a plane?”
“Basically, yes,” he said as he made the video of Cyrus smaller and opened up a browser. The plane that made the contrails was most likely commercial, but not necessarily.
“How is that going to help us find him?” she asked. She sounded dubious, but also excited, her words streaming together.
“Every plane that’s in the air right now, except high-profile aircraft, can be tracked via flight radar.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh my God. You can see that exact one and know its path.”
“Hopefully. Not all planes have transponders that can be detected by radar, but most do.” He opened the site, and the world map came up, small yellow planes covering it, indicating all the flights that were currently in the air.
“Holy shit,” Cami breathed.
The site was currently over Germany, and he let out a frustrated grunt as he figured out how to move the cursor on the screen and zoom in and out.
Cami put her hand on his wrist. “Slow and steady wins the race,” she said, her voice full of calm.
“You’re right,” he said. It only took him several seconds to get the hang of navigating the world map, and then he scrolled to the United States and then homed in on California.
Cami sucked in a breath, bringing her hands to her mouth. “There’s only one,” she said.
“I was hoping that was the case.” He clicked on the plane that was currently flying over Carmel Valley, north of them, and read the available information.
It was a Southwest flight heading to San Jose from Santa Ana, and there was a purple line that told him its exact path.
“Grab me the pad of paper by the refrigerator, would you?”
Cami jumped up and brought the pad to him, the one he’d been using to list the information he could locate on the cabins in the area in the hope that they’d get lucky with the comic book shop this morning.
Half of him had thought he might have just been engaging in an exercise of futility last night, but it’d helped him stay awake, and he was glad as hell he’d done it now.
Not that the cabin was even necessarily on his list. But it might be.
“I just need a few minutes here,” he said, laying out the list of locations within thirty miles from where the shop was.
He was working with a few maybes. But he was also now working with some definites.
Rex had always been gifted with numbers.
He just got math. He’d never had to work at algebra or geometry, or even advanced calculus.
To him it all seemed straightforward and simple, and he couldn’t understand how others practically went cross-eyed when an equation was put in front of them.
But estimates required a little more creativity and some out-of-the-box thinking.
They required knowledge of all the variables that might be involved in getting as close as possible to a target.
And Rex had gotten damn good at that, too, in his work over the years.
Much like the map he’d just used to narrow in on a small part of the world, his brain had become adept at zooming in and out of the larger picture at hand.
A frog and a bird and his brilliant buddy’s app had gotten them this far. Some good assumptions and a stop at a bookstore had gotten them even closer.
Now he was looking to narrow in on a cabin about twenty miles from a comic bookstore, and a couple of restaurants that packed to-go items in paper bags that also happened to be located just slightly to the east of Southwest flight 4010’s path.
Rex used the business locations, the map of the area, what he knew of contrails, and the radar information to zone in on a latitude and longitude.
Then he used the map and pointed to the location. “Here,” he said.
Cami had watched silently as he’d gone through his calculations, and he could practically feel her energy thrumming next to him. “McWay Falls,” she murmured. “Oh my God, could that be the sound from the window and not the ocean?”
He nodded slowly. When he recalled the sound, he thought it might have been more of a steady roar rather than a crash and recede, even if the sound had been far enough away not to have stood out at the time.
Rex quickly went over his list of cabins.
There were two possibilities, but one was a small grouping of cabins that had been built near several hiking trails.
The other one was a lone cabin deeper in the woods and far off the beaten path. He turned to the computer, checking that Cyrus was still okay, and then pulled up a satellite view and zoomed in on the location of the cabin.
It looked like your average cabin, rustic and charming, with a tiny porch on the front. He dragged his cursor to see all sides but, because of the trees, could only view a small sliver of the back. “I don’t see any bars on the window,” Cami said.
“Satellite images aren’t in real time, though,” he murmured.
He typed in the address of the rental cabin and scrolled through the available information.
“It looks like it’s a corporation that rents it out,” he said.
Then he typed in the site where they’d rented the property they were currently sitting in.
“And it’s currently unavailable.” He turned to her. “I’m going to go check it out.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, I think you should stay here and monitor Cyrus. And text me if—” His words died as the door to Cyrus’s room opened.
“The pancakes,” Cami said.
Rex enlarged the view of the room where Cyrus was being kept prisoner, Cami letting out a gasp as simultaneously the door swung open and Cyrus turned away, his arms grasping the bedframe before he jumped to his feet.
“What the—” Rex breathed.
It happened in an instant. Cyrus turned, a piece of the metal frame grasped in his hands as he seemed to fly from his higher ground on the bed, the man with the Styrofoam boxes caught off guard, food flipping into the air.
Cyrus let out a roar as the piece of bedframe—now a weapon—made contact with the man’s stomach.
The man screamed, right before Cyrus pulled something from his pocket and jabbed it in the man’s eye.
Another piercing scream made Cami grab Rex’s arm as the wounded man on the screen doubled over, simultaneously cupping his bleeding eye and clutching his midriff.
Then Cyrus jumped off the bed and clubbed the man over the head. The guy went down to the ground in the mess of pancakes and bacon with a soft oof as Cyrus raced out the door.
“Oh my God!” Cami said with a small sob, clutching at Rex’s sleeve. Rex was used to unexpected turns of events, but this one he hadn’t remotely seen coming.
The whole thing had looked highly choreographed. Was that what the kid had been doing as he sat there staring into space? Practicing every move of his upcoming escape in his head?
“The guy will be after him,” Rex said as he turned. “I need to get there first.” He ran for the door, Cami behind him.
“I’ll text you when he gets up and goes after Cyrus,” she said. He heard the fear in her voice, but he also heard her steadiness.
Rex ran for the car, jumped in, and turned the ignition. Goddamn, he wished he had a firearm. But he’d had to leave his at home to board a plane, and even if he’d gone directly to a gun store, California had a ten-day waiting period.
He’d have to improvise if push came to shove.
The car’s tires spun on the gravel, and he went flying out of the driveway, holding the wheel with one hand while he input the address into the GPS with the other.
About a mile up the road, he spotted a small service station, the logo that had once been red now a faded orange on the side of the sun-bleached building.
Walker’s . Rex shot by it. The man he’d just seen Cyrus attack had bought cards and candy from this location.
The letter they’d only seen half of had been a W .
His phone dinged with an incoming text from Cami.
Guy is up and pissed. He just went after Cyrus. Please help him.
Rex gripped the wheel, punching on the accelerator. He planned to do just that. But first, he’d have to find Cyrus, because the enraged man after him had just been beaten and humiliated by a child. Pissed probably didn’t describe the half of it.
Run, Cyrus. Hide.