Blood Will Tell (2 page)

Mitchell scanned the circle of volunteers. “Temperatures are forecast to drop below freezing tonight, so if she's out here, it's important we find her.”

Nick thought of the two nearby freeways. Somebody could have snatched Mariana and be a hundred miles away by now.

“Does anyone have any questions?” Mitchell asked.

Alexis raised her hand. “What about Mariana's dad? Could he have taken her?”

Chris answered. “Good question, Alexis. We always have to consider if it's a custody situation. But in this case I've spoken to him. He's in Ohio, and he hasn't seen his daughter for two years.”

When no one else spoke up, Mitchell said, “Some of these people are probably sleeping. Remember, not everyone is going to react well to being woken up, especially if they hear someone pounding on the door and yelling ‘Sheriff's office!' Just say you're with Search and Rescue and keep it at that. Most people will want to help if they know you're looking for a lost child.”

Chris cleared his throat. “Of course it's possible that someone who lives in these apartments took Mariana. That's why you need to keep your eyes and ears open as you go door-to-door. But do not intervene. Just observe and report back to Base. And whatever you do, don't go inside, even if they invite you in. If you see anything that makes you the least bit suspicious, don't let on. Just get out of there, come back to Base, and let us know. If someone is holding this little girl against her will, we don't need to give them another hostage.”

 

CHAPTER 4

NICK

SUNDAY

GLEAMS OF WHITE

Mitchell quickly broke them up into teams of two or three. Nick and Ruby were put on the same team as Dimitri, who was a certified. Alexis was teamed up with Ezra and Max, also certifieds.

Each group was given four buildings to clear. Dimitri decided their group would work left to right, top to bottom. Together they went up the stairs. He knocked at the first door with a heavy fist. Nick and Ruby stood behind him. Ruby had a notebook to record anything they learned. With nothing to hold, Nick clasped his hands awkwardly in front of him. He felt like the missionaries his mom was always turning away. Except they only came in pairs. “Search and Rescue,” Dimitri called in his heavy accent.

An old woman opened the door. She was pulling an orange cardigan over her maroon flannel pajamas. “Yes?” She looked curiously at their red helmets and SAR backpacks. Her front teeth were missing.

Nick ran his tongue over his teeth.

“Hello, ma'am, we are from Search and Rescue,” Dimitri said. “We are looking for a girl. Her name is Mariana Chavez and she is seven years of age. She has dark hair and she is wearing dark clothes and rubber rain boots.”

“Oh, I know Mariana!” The old woman clutched her cardigan tighter. “She's missing?”

“I'm afraid so,” Nick said as Ruby scribbled something. “But if you do see her or have any information, there will be someone from Search and Rescue in the parking lot you can talk to.”

At each new apartment, they met the same lack of success. No one had seen Mariana, although many of them knew the girl or recognized her description. Four of the apartments they tried were dark and no one came to the door.

Lights glowed behind the curtains in the next apartment, but there was no answer to their knock. Did Nick hear movement deep within? He held his breath. What if Mariana were being held captive? Despite what Chris had said, he imagined bursting in, decking the dude with a right hook to the jaw, and then sweeping the little girl up in his arms.

But after a pause, Dimitri just moved on to the next door. When they had canvassed all their assigned apartments, they reported back. Nick tried to tell himself that knowing where Mariana wasn't was as important as knowing where she was.

“Put on your reflective vests and headlamps and take the west side of that road.” Mitchell pointed at a dark street bordered by ditches. “Check all open spaces. Backyards if you can see into them. But don't go into any garages or outbuildings.”

They crossed the dark street. Ahead of them, the freeway sounded like a river. Nick was beginning to think there was no girl, at least not here, not anymore. Someone had taken her and maybe they would never give her back.

Their flashlights and headlamps probed the darkness as they slowly walked along the empty road next to a vacant scrap of land. The first houses were farther down the road. Nick lifted his flashlight and played it over the dark tangle of weeds, blackberry bushes, and pieces of windblown garbage.

“Mariana!” he yelled, and Dimitri and Ruby joined in. “Mariana! Mariana!”

Nick's flashlight beam picked up a flash of red. His breath catching, he swung it back. But it was just an old McDonald's french fry box.

“Wait!” Dimitri raised his hand. “Are you hearing that?”

Across the street, the blackberry bushes were rustling. Something burst out and ran away. In his headlamp, Nick caught a glimpse of a something small and striped.

“Hello, Mr. Kitten!” Dimitri called out, laughing. He and Ruby turned away.

But farther back, Nick saw a pale flash. “Mariana?” He squinted. Ruby and Dimitri whipped back around. “We're from the sheriff's department. Your mom asked us to look for you.”

“I got lost.” A girl's voice, thick with tears.

She pushed her way out of the bushes on the far side of the road. The beams of their lights revealed her pale, scratched face and tangled hair. Her eyes were gleams of white, and her rubber boots looked too big for her, bending at the ankle at every step.

“Well, you're not lost now,” Ruby called. “We'll take you back to your mom. She's waiting for you.”

Suddenly, the girl pushed her way out of the bushes and darted across the street, her arms spread wide.

Just as a pickup barreled around the corner.

 

CHAPTER 5

LUCY

SUNDAY

GOING IN FOR THE KILL

It was three minutes past eleven when Lucy Hayes started walking toward the Last Exit. A little unsteadily because she had pregamed at her apartment. Sometimes a girl just needed to sing karaoke, especially Journey's “Don't Stop Believing.” But karaoke wasn't nearly as much fun if you were sober, and even the well drinks at the Last Exit were five bucks.

Lucy wasn't stupid. She didn't need a DUI, so she was walking in the freaking cold. Balancing her need to look cute with the reality of walking fourteen blocks, she had gone with her black John Fluevog boots with their decorative buttons and hourglass heels. A really stylish girl might have rocked them in some alternative cyberpunk version of 1890.

In just a few blocks the wind turned her ears into chips of ice. She tried pulling up her scarf, but it didn't help. It even hurt to breathe, the cold air pulling her lungs inside out.

Finally, Lucy climbed the three steps of what had once been an old house, crossed the front porch (empty now, but crowded in the summer), and pushed open the door with fingers that were numb despite her mittens. Inside it was warm and steamy, and she immediately began to thaw. Up on the tiny stage, a bald guy with long orange sideburns was singing “Billie Jean” while doing a very bad impression of Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

After shoving her mittens into her coat pocket, Lucy took off her purple-and-white-striped scarf. Then she blinked in surprise. Cooper! Cooper was here. He'd said that he thought he was coming down with a cold, that he was going to go to bed early, but here he was, sitting with his shoulders against the wall, laughing at whatever the person facing him had just said.

Before Lucy could call out, wave her hand, hurry over, his eyes began to close and his mouth began to open. And then he was going in for the kill. Leaning in to kiss the girl who had her back to Lucy.

Lucy wanted to rewind time, to put herself back in her apartment, to make it so this was not happening. Because this was not—this couldn't be happening to her.

She didn't remember walking across the room, but suddenly she was right next to them. Cooper and that stupid Jasmine from their econ class, the one with the long waterfall of blond hair, were still locked in a slobbery kiss. When Cooper had told Lucy he didn't like PDA.

Their beers hadn't even been touched. They had probably been too busy kissing.

Lucy's mom had once turned the hose on two strange dogs in the yard. Something like that needed to be done to Cooper and Jasmine.

Leaning past them, she grabbed up the two beers, the glasses slick in her hands, and lifted them high. Their eyes opened just as she upended them. Jasmine squealed and managed to dodge most of hers, but Cooper's plastered his hair to his head.

“What the hell, Cooper!” Lucy shouted. People's heads turned, but she didn't care. Michael Jackson had finished protesting his innocence. The bar was completely silent except for the sound of beer dripping onto the floor.

“Lucy! I can explain.” Blinking rapidly, Cooper swiped beer from his eyes. Did he really think there was something he could say that would magically make this all better?

“Explain! I think what's going on is pretty clear!”

Jasmine gave Lucy a sulky look, not even bothering to protest. Her mouth looked swollen. How long had they been kissing tonight? How long had they been kissing in general?

Cooper looked ridiculous. His skull was oddly lumpy. How had Lucy never noticed? Jasmine picked up a napkin and dabbed at her face.

The bartender, an old guy with long, stringy hair, was walking slowly toward them, twisting a once-white bar towel in his hands. “I'm sorry, miss, but you're going to need to leave or I'm going to have to call the cops.”

“Don't worry. I'm already going.”

She turned on her heel. People were murmuring to each other. Two or three already had their phones pointed in their direction. Lucy lifted her head. If this got posted someplace on the Internet, she did not want to look like a loser. She stalked out of the bar, not even turning when she heard footsteps hurrying behind her.

 

CHAPTER 6

RUBY

SUNDAY

STILL AS DEATH

What happened after Mariana called out took only a few seconds, but to Ruby, it seemed to last forever.

The girl. Running toward them. Her eyes wide.

Lights rounding the corner. Coming up fast. Too fast. A pickup. Big and black.

Mariana stretched out her arms as if she wanted someone to catch her. Snatch her up and hold her close.

Instead it was the pickup that caught her. Caught her midstride. One moment Mariana was running toward them, and the next she disappeared.

Ruby didn't see the impact, but she heard it. A sickening, meaty thump.

The pickup stopped just past where Mariana had been, so hard it rocked back. Smoke from burning rubber hung in the air.

Mariana was gone, but one of her boots remained in the street. Somehow still standing upright. One red-and-black boot, rocking gently. But where was Mariana?

As the three of them ran around the pickup, toward the place where they had last seen the girl, Dimitri fumbled the radio from the rat pack. “Team Three to Base! Team Three to Base!”

Nick stopped short, and Ruby almost ran into him. He was staring down at the bramble-lined ditch. The girl lay on her side. She was as still as death. One arm flung to the side, the other over her head. One pant-clad leg ended in a white sock. The other ended in a black-and-red boot.

Above the boot was more black and red—and white. The black was her torn pants. The red was her mangled thigh. And the white was a broken bone.

Next to Ruby, Nick suddenly clapped his hand to his mouth, then bent over and threw up on the road.

Ruby pushed past him, already pulling on purple vinyl gloves from the first aid kit in her pack.

Dimitri's radio crackled. “Go ahead, Team Three.”

Behind her, someone flung open the truck's door. Hip-hop music spilled out. A young man dressed in jeans and a blue down coat ran around the pickup and stopped short. He was screaming, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Ignoring him, Ruby slid down into the ditch.

“We are needing an ambulance right away,” Dimitri said in a high-pitched voice. “We found the subject, but she has just been hit by a pickup.”

Nick wiped the vomit from his mouth and then lurched toward the girl.

“Talk to me!” Ruby commanded.

The girl didn't move. Was she dead?

With her knuckles she rubbed the girl's sternum. It was painful but not harmful, designed to provoke a reaction. Only she didn't see one.

She closed her attention to the blood, to the bone, to the guy's denials, to Nick's frightened face, and focused only on the girl's face. She rubbed again, harder.

And was rewarded with the faintest of groans.

“Copy Team Three.” Mitchell's voice sharpened. “What's her condition?”

Ruby turned to him. “She's responsive to pain.” That meant she was breathing and her heart was beating.

“Oh my God! Did I kill her?” The driver's voice broke. “I killed her!”

Dimitri's words were meant for both Mitchell and the pickup driver. “She is still alive, but her leg is broken open. Perhaps greater injuries. We need an ambulance right away.”

“Copy,” Mitchell said. “We already made the call. ETA is about five minutes.”

Even though they got plenty of first aid training, SAR wasn't what most people considered a fast-response group. It could be hours before they located their subjects, and according to Jon, at that point their main medical concerns would usually be hypothermia or frostbite, not traumatic injuries. By the time SAR showed up, patients were usually either stable—or dead. This situation was nearly unprecedented. But Ruby's parents were doctors, even if they were just dermatologists; and when she was a kid, she had liked looking at their old medical textbooks the way other kids liked looking at Dr. Seuss.