Survival Clause, стр. 70
Grimaldi had the car moving practically before I’d shut the door, and I turned to her. “You look worried.”
“I don’t like it,” Grimaldi said. “It should have been an easy walk from where we were to the road. It didn’t take you and me long. A bit longer for her, maybe, since she wasn’t dressed for hiking. But even if she veered off course, she should have hit the road before we did. And she’s nowhere.”
The car was picking up speed as she was talking. I scanned the trees along the side of the road for any sign of Yung, or sign that she’d been there, and didn’t see any. The small cairn of stones and Grimaldi’s blue T-shirt flashed into view and then out again as we zoomed past.
“How far did we walk after Yung left us?” I wanted to know. “Five minutes? Ten? A football field or two?”
“No more. It was heavy going through the woods.” She kept her eyes on the road as we traveled back toward town. “She ought to have hit the road right around the time we stopped to look at the bones. God, what was I thinking to send her off on her own in that suit and those stupid heels?”
“That she’s a federal agent who’s used to taking care of herself?” I suggested. “Besides, you were trying to do her a favor, so she wouldn’t have to walk back through the woods in those heels.”
Grimaldi nodded, but she still looked grim. After another minute she glanced over at me, with reluctant amusement curving her lips. “When I got there this morning, your brother was looking at her like he liked what she looked like. Guess I thought it wouldn’t hurt to make her look a little less pretty.”
And a little more sweaty and disheveled. I nodded. I got it. “What’s going on with you and Dix?”
Normally, when I ask that question, Grimaldi tells me it’s none of my business. This time, maybe because it took her mind off Yung, lost in the woods, she sighed. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”
She glanced at me. “It means I’m not sure.”
Obviously. “Can you be, maybe, just a little more specific?”
“When your sister-in-law first died,” Grimaldi said, driving the car down the road toward town, “your brother was mourning. Then he had to learn how to be a single parent to two girls who were going to grow up without their mother.”
I nodded.
“I lost my mother young. Not as young as Abigail and Hannah, but young enough that I felt the loss.”
I nodded.
“We talked a lot during the first six months or so after Sheila died. And it felt like—I don’t know—like things were moving forward. But very slowly, because Dix was in mourning for his wife and not ready for another relationship, and then there were the girls, and what kind of stepmother would I be to two little southern girls, anyway?”
“A fine one,” I said firmly. “You gave them Police Barbies for Christmas that first year.” And it had freaked my mother out, which had been lovely to behold. Almost as lovely as her reaction to Rafe, when I informed her he’d be spending the night in my room. “You’d open up possibilities that I certainly didn’t get to see when I was their age. You’d be good for them.”
She shrugged, as houses started to crowd in around the car as we got closer to town. I kept watch, but there was no sign of Agent Yung.
“I don’t think he’s ready for another relationship,” Grimaldi said eventually. “It hasn’t been that long since your sister-in-law died.”
“A year and a half.”
“Less than the shrinks usually say it’ll take.” She scanned the road and changed the subject. “No sign of her. God, I hope she’s not back there with a broken leg.”
“Maybe we should have stopped and called out,” I said. “We could go back and try to find her.”
She shook her head. “We were close enough that we would have heard her if she’d yelled. And she had her phone. And my number. She could have called.”
“Maybe she got lost,” I suggested. “Not in the woods, but when she got out. Maybe she got turned around and started walking the wrong way.”
“If she had, we’d have found her by now. Unless someone picked her up.”
“And gave her a ride?” Someone might have. This is the south. People are friendly here, and a young, pretty woman in a fancy suit and high heels walking down the road away from a stopped car would rouse the protective instincts in everybody. “She might be back at the police station with her feet up, sipping a Coke.”
“Let’s hope so,” Grimaldi said, and put her foot on the brake to slow down as we hit the first stop light in Columbia proper.
She wasn’t, though. Yung. Sitting in the lobby at the police station with her feet elevated and a cold drink. And no one had seen her, either.
Grimaldi, looking quite grim now, dialed Bob. “Have you heard from Agent Yung?”
“Not since she left with you this morning,” the sheriff’s voice came back over the speaker. “Something wrong?”
“Not sure yet. We lost her in the woods. She was supposed to walk to the road and up to the car while Savannah and I made our way back through the woods, but she wasn’t there.”
Bob hesitated for a moment. “You look for her?”
“Not in the woods. Along the road, yes. But we figured, since we’ll have to take a team in there anyway, we’ll find her if she’s there. It isn’t cold enough to worry about exposure, and I doubt she’s suffered anything worse than a twisted ankle.”
Or a broken leg, possibly, but I wasn’t going to say it. I focused on Carrie, who had woken up, finally, and indicated that she was hungry. At the moment I