Remi looked at her husband, her eyes narrowed. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
He nodded, jaw clenched. “Just a feeling. Hope I’m wrong.”
“Me, too. You’re scaring me a little, Sam.”
He reached over and gave her thigh a squeeze. “Now, have I ever gotten us into trouble—”
“Well, there was the time—”
“—without getting us back out again?”
“No.”
“Do we have a signal?” he asked.
Remi pulled out her cell phone and checked the reception. “Nothing.”
“Damn. We still have that map?”
Remi rummaged through the glove compartment, found the map, and opened it. After thirty seconds she said, “Sam, there’s nothing out here. No houses, no farms—nothing for miles.”
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
Ahead, the Lucerne’s brake lights flashed once, then again, then turned right and disappeared behind some trees. Sam pulled up to the turn and slowed just in time to see the Lucerne’s taillights turn again, this time left into a driveway about a hundred yards down the road. He turned off the engine and rolled down the passenger window. Through the trees they could see the Lucerne’s headlights go out, followed by the sound of a car door opening then closing, followed ten seconds later by another.
Then a voice: “Hey . . . don’t!”
Frobisher’s voice. Clearly agitated.
“Well, that settles it,” Sam said.
“Yep,” Remi said. “What do you want to do?”
“You drive to the nearest house or wherever you can get reception and call the police. I’m going to—”
“Oh, no, you’re not, Sam.”
“Remi, please—”
“I said no, Sam.”
Sam groaned. “Remi—”
“We’re wasting time.”
Sam knew his wife well enough to recognize the tone in her voice and the set of her mouth. She’d planted her feet and that was that.
“Okay,” he said, “but no stupid chances, okay?”
“That goes for you, too.”
He grinned at her and winked. “Am I anything but the epitome of caution?” Then: “Don’t answer that.”
“In for a penny—” Remi started.
“In for trouble,” Sam finished.
They had little hope of following any footprints in the mud so he and Remi dashed across the clearing and began picking their way through the paths and tunnels formed by the boiler graveyard. Sam found two pieces of rebar and gave the shorter one to Remi and kept the longer one for himself. They’d gotten only fifty feet or so when they heard a faint voice through the falling rain.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . what piece?”
It was Ted.
A male voice said something in return, but neither Sam nor Remi could make out the words.
“That thing? It was a piece of a bottle. Nothing important.”
Sam turned his head, trying to catch the sound and narrow in on where it was coming from. Using hand gestures, Sam pointed ahead and to the left, under an arch formed by a boiler that had half collapsed against its neighbor. She nodded. Once they were through the arch the voices became more distinct.
“I want you to tell me exactly where you found it,” the unidentified man was saying. The voice was accented, either eastern European or Russian.