“This shouldn’t come as a shock, people,” Decker reminded them. “Based on what the auto body shop owner said, it sounds like Robinson intended to drive into the desert. So, we shouldn’t have any expectation of freeway footage. The questions now are how long was she driving and how far did she get?”

  Before anyone could offer a suggestion, one of the La Paz County deputies poked his head in from the other room.

  “Sorry to interrupt, detectives, but we may have something,” he said.

  “What?” Ryan asked.

  “We just got a 911 call,” he said. “There was a sighting of two women entering a country and western bar called the Gold & Silver Mine just west of Tonopah a few minutes ago. One was blonde. The other was wearing a baseball cap and looked scared. According to the caller, they matched the descriptions of Robinson and Hunt that have been on the news.”

  “Are you hearing this, Captain?” Ryan asked, who had put his cell phone on speaker.

  “Yes, where’s Tonopah?”

  “It’s about an hour west of Phoenix,” the deputy said, “and ninety miles east of here.”

  “Ryan,” Susannah said, a thought springing into her exhausted brain, “do you remember what Corinne Bertans said when she was being questioned about where Andy might take Jessie—‘all mine’? What if that wasn’t a possessive thing? What if it was more literal than that—the actual name of the place that Robinson intended to take Jessie?”

  “But why would she show up somewhere so public, where she could be identified?” Karen Bray asked from back in L.A.

  “Maybe she didn’t think anyone would notice,” Susannah suggested, “or maybe she didn’t care.”

  “What do you mean?” Decker asked.

  “What if this is her last stand? What if she wants to go out in a blaze of glory? What better place to pick than public bar with lots of people with cell phones able to beam the show out to the world?”

  Ryan turned back to the deputy.

  “You said it’s ninety miles away?” he confirmed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That means the helicopter can get us there in a little over a half-hour,” Ryan said. “I’m calling the pilot.”

  *

  Hannah watched the helicopter lift off into the sky.

  She was seated at the table in the coffee shop with Kat and Callum, where the three of them had been reviewing everything that they could find on 1992 Mitsubishi Galant VR-4s, the town of Quartzsite, and what connection Andy Robinson might have to either. So far, they’d come up empty.

  Seconds later, Kat got a text.

  “It’s from Ryan,” she said. “He says there was a possible sighting of Andy and Jessie at a bar near a town called Tonopah, about ninety miles east of here. They’re taking the chopper to check it out.”

  “What makes him think this is any more legit than all the other false leads we’ve been chasing?” Callum asked.

  “Apparently the bar is called the Gold & Silver Mine and they think it might be connected to what Corinne said about ‘all mine.’”

  “That seems like a stretch,” Hannah said, surprised at her own cynicism in the face of the only positive news they had since the sandal lead fell through two hours ago.

  “All the same, maybe we should go check it out,” Kat said, starting to get up from the table.

  “Come on, Kat,” Callum said, gently grabbing her wrist, “you said it was ninety miles away. By the time we get there, the validity of the sighting will be borne out or not. Don’t you think our time is better served here, looking for alternatives in case that falls apart?”

  Kat sat back down, acknowledging that he was right without saying so. Hannah felt bad for her. She’d rarely seen the detective so down. She wished she could think of the right thing to say to buck her up, but as she didn’t feel any more optimistic about the situation, she knew it would come across as false.

  Mixed in with her despondency was a slow-bubbling frustration that Ryan, of all people, would really buy the idea that “all mine” could be a reference to some random bar in central Arizona. She understood the desire to latch on to something, but that just felt desperate.

  Then again, they never had determined what the phrase meant. It clearly wasn’t referring to Andy’s Hancock Park mansion or Corinne’s apartment, where they initially thought Jessie might have been stashed. Was it just about Andy’s possessive feelings toward Jessie?

  Dr. Lemmon had specifically said that she asked Corinne if Andy ever said where she planned to take Jessie and that Corinne’s answer was “all mine.” Maybe they had all been too dismissive of that response.

  Maybe Corinne was telling the truth, in her own messed up way. Hannah opened the file again, sensing that she was missing something—something that she’d seen before but overlooked because it hadn’t seemed important.

  She pored over several pages before giving up. There was no way she’d ever find what she was after when she didn’t even know what it was that she needed. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack when you didn’t know what the needle looked like.

  She stopped, mid-page-turn, frozen by small epiphany.

  Suddenly Hannah glanced up, gazing at the top of Kat and Callum’s heads, who were both staring down at documents of their own. It wasn’t true—she did know what the needle looked like. And if she was right, she knew how to find it too.

  “Kat,” she said, trying to keep the excitement she felt from spilling out into her voice. “You scanned all the documents related to Andy Robinson, right? All the hard copies we’re reviewing, you have in your laptop too?”

  “Of course,” Kat said, picking up on her tone, despite her best efforts, “why?”

  “Can you run a keyword search?”

  Kat nodded, her fingers waiting in anticipation just above the keyboard.

  “What word?” she asked.

  “Mine.”

  Kat looked at her quizzically but did it anyway.

  “I come up with thirty-seven instances.”

  “Let’s go through them,” Hannah said.

  They did, carefully and methodically. The first fifteen occasions didn’t bear any fruit. But the sixteenth was interesting.

  “It looks like the family has something called Rintoo Mining, just like the ranch,” Kat said.

  “Why didn’t we come across it earlier, when we were searching the family holdings?” Hannah asked.

  Kat studied the paperwork for a few seconds before answering.

  “Because, just like the ranch and that house on Natucket, its ownership was passed through several holding companies, so unless you knew that the name ‘Rintoo’ was affiliated with the family, deciphering this stuff would require the help of a forensic accountant. If Erin Reed hadn’t mentioned the origin of the name “Rintoo’ to Ryan and Valentine, we still wouldn’t know the connection.”

  “So, is that how their family got so rich?” Callum asked.

  “Not initially,” Kat explained. “Andrea’s father, Thoreau, invented some polymer back in the nineties. That set them up for life. But apparently his brother, Dan, used some of that money to start this mining company. It looks like he died a few years back, but the business is still running. Four of the five mines are still working today. According to their financials, the whole operation brings in close to seven figures annually.”

  Hannah felt that same prickling sensation that she had gotten earlier in the evening when she realized that the ranch that Andy had spent her childhood summers at was somehow significant. It was a strange rush, not unlike the one she got when she’d killed the Night Hunter, only somehow lighter and less overwhelming.

  “You said four of the mines were still operational,” she noted. “What about the fifth?”

  “It’s called the Sunkist Mine,” Kat said. “It looks like it was a bust. They shut it down in the late 1990s. It’s been abandoned ever since.”

  “Does the family still own it?” Hannah asked.

  “On paper, yes,” Kat said. “They take it as a tax loss every year.”

  “Where is the mine located?” Hannah asked, the tingling now threatening to make her fingers and toes go numb.

  Kat looked at the screen, then up at Hannah. It was clear that she was starting to get excited too.

  “According to the documents, it’s near where Plomosa Road and Sunkist Trail meet, not that far from the Quartzsite Rock Alignment.”

  “What does that mean in English?” Hannah asked.

  Kat turned her laptop around. The red dot indicating the Rintoo Mine was in an isolated stretch of desert almost equidistant between the towns of Quartzsite and Bouse, where the Rintoo Ranch was.

  “That’s crazy,” Callum said. “We’ve been hunting all day. Do you mean to tell me that Andy might have taken Jessie to an abandoned mine less than fifteen miles from here?”

  “That might explain why she’s been sending us all over the place,” Kat suggested. “She distracts everyone by having them chase leads up to Nevada or over near Phoenix. Meanwhile, she finds a shady spot to hole up for most of the day, waits for everyone to go by, then slowly moseys her way up to the mine in a beat-up, thirty-year-old car that no one pays any attention to. All she needed was for the clunker to get her over some tricky terrain without dying and she was happy.”

  “Well, if she can do it, so can we,” Hannah said. “Looking at that map, I’d say we can get pretty close in the car. Then we can hike the rest of the way. It shouldn’t take us more than thirty minutes.”

  “At night? On poorly marked desert roads?” Callum challenged. “You’re kidding yourself. It’ll take way longer than that. Let’s call in the cavalry and let them lead the way.”

  “Not a chance,” Kat said. “If we’re right and Andy is there, the cavalry is the worst possible option. If she hears sirens, do you think she’s going to come out with her hands up? Or is she more likely to take herself out and Jessie along with her?”

  “Kat’s right,” Hannah said, her resolve never stronger. “We have the element of surprise. Let’s take advantage of it.”

  “What about Ryan?” Callum asked.

  Hannah glanced at Kat before turning back to the retired detective.

  “We’ll call him, but not until we’re closer. Helicopters are loud too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Jessie ignored her heavy eyelids.

  For the last few hours, she’d ignored her body’s demand that she give in to sleep for one main reason: Andy was talking.

  As her captor unpacked the last duffel bags of supplies into the various plastic cabinets, she had shared all kinds of details about her life. She talked about her time in juvenile hall, her year at a European boarding school, and another one at a military academy. She talked about trying to follow in her father’s footsteps by pursuing her master’s in chemical engineering at Caltech, but how she dropped out after he died.

  Jessie let her go on about all these things with a sympathetic, understanding ear. But the whole time, she was also carefully twisting loose the screws from the flat plate attaching the metal ring to both the mine rock and her handcuff. She had removed two screws entirely and was well on her way to finishing the third. The fourth screw was still embedded about halfway into the rock and would require several more minutes to come free.

  “All done,” Andy said as she snapped a cabinet closed.

  “What?” Jessie asked, taken aback.

  “Everything is finally in its proper place. Now we can just relax.”

  Andy came over and plopped down heavily in the patio chair opposite her, leaning back into it. Jessie looked at the woman, now dressed in blue jeans and a casual work shirt, with her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, and tried to imagine that she could fall for her.

  She tried to block out all the murders and manipulations, the kidnapping, drugging, and delusions. She tried instead to focus on Andy’s charm, on her sense of humor, when it didn’t involve cruelty, on the childhood pain that must have contributed to the person she was now. She tried to find a way to make herself care for Andy, so that her abductor would believe it.

  “Can I tell you something?” she said quietly.

  Andy’s eyes, half-closed, popped open. The blue intensity bore into her.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you to jump on this or make more out of it than it is, okay? Promise me that you’ll hear me out without any typical Andy Robinson snark.”

  Andy sat up, interested.

  “I promise,” she said.

  “Okay, well, sitting here for the last few hours, I’ve had some time to think. And I’ve started to wonder if I was being a little hasty in my wedding planning—.”

  “Wait, what?” Andy asked, her tone scoffing.

  “Forget it,” Jessie said, looking away.

  “No, go on,” Andy insisted, sounding amused more than anything.

  “You promised you wouldn’t make fun,” Jessie protested, pretending to be offended.

  “But you’re obviously screwing with me.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Jessie retorted indignantly. “I’m not justifying you kidnapping me from my bridal suite. That was criminal and proof that you never should have gotten out of that psych ward.”

  “Ah, there’s the Jessie Hunt I know.”

  “I can hold two competing ideas in my head, Andy. What I’m saying is that you are unwell and should spend many years behind bars. But also, maybe, perhaps, it’s also a tiny bit possible that I was so focused on the details of my big event that I didn’t stop to ask myself if I really wanted it to happen at all.”

  “Do you really expect me to take any of this seriously?” Andy pressed, though her tone had lost its mocking, sarcastic edge.

  Jessie put her head down, like she was uncomfortable with the topic and struggling to find the right words. But in her mind, she pictured herself losing Ryan for good and channeled that anxiety into the moment. When she looked up, she had tears in her eyes.

  “Listen, it’s just really confusing,” she said. “Ryan saved my life many times. I felt tremendous loyalty to him, and yes, a certain kind of love. So, when he proposed, it felt like the natural thing to say ‘yes.’”

  “What are you telling me, Jessie?”

  “I don’t know,” Jessie replied, letting the frustration in her voice take center stage. “Do you know how difficult it is to concede that I might have made a mistake? Especially to the person who removed me from that mistake against my will?”

  “You’re just messing with me, to try to get me to lower my guard,” Andy said again, with a half-smile frozen on her face. But her eyes seemed to suggest that she wasn’t so sure anymore.

  “Never mind,” Jessie said, sensing that pushing at this point would be counterproductive. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m tired. I just want to go to sleep. If I have to sit in this chair all night, can you please at least get me a pillow?”

  Andy looked at her curiously, then got up and went to the supply area. As she did, Jessie hurriedly undid the third screw on the metal plate with the ring. She hid the screw, then gave a tug. The contraption was definitely loose but would probably require another smoothie session to come completely free. Andy returned with the pillow and a blanket and handed them over.

  “Sorry I don’t have the cot made up for you, but the bedding for it is way in the back of the supply closet, and I just don’t have the energy to get it tonight. But you’ll have it tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine,” Jessie said with a hint of petulance in her voice.

  “Don’t give me that,” Andy said irritably. “You can’t really expect me to believe that after a few hours of being here, you’ve suddenly seen the light? That you know that you shouldn’t have been marrying that lunkhead and that I rescued you from a life of suburban boredom. That’s awfully convenient.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Jessie shot back. “I don’t think you rescued me. I still think you’re seriously unhinged. You killed an innocent man this morning. You had other former inmates commit unspeakable acts on your behalf. And I haven’t forgotten that you tried to poison me a couple of years ago. But does that mean I can’t also admit, in the isolation of some mine in the middle of nowhere, that I had doubts about my wedding? Is that not allowed?”

  “What kind of doubts?” Andy demanded, unable to hide her interest.

  “Look,” Jessie said, leaning in, staring at the woman across from her, unblinking, “have you ever wondered if you’re on the right road? Or if you’re just following it because it’s the one with the signs?”

  “What do you mean?” Andy asked.

  Jessie hesitated, as if what might come next was too personal to share even in the privacy of a cave.

  “This is hard to say, but we both know there’s always been a…connection between us. I felt it that first time we talked at the country club that day. And then that night, when I came to your place for drinks, I don’t know what I expected exactly—obviously not for you to try to kill me—but I was…curious.”

  “For the record, I didn’t want to poison you,” Andy said, pushing the conversation away from the intimate. “I would have preferred you be a little dumber. If you’d never have figured out what I did to Victoria Missinger, who knows where we’d be now?”

  “Yeah,” Jessie said, “but if I was a little dumber, you probably wouldn’t have found me so interesting.”

  “True,” Andy conceded.

  “So here we are now,” Jessie said, “in this untenable situation.”

  “How so?” Andy asked, leaning in despite herself.

  Jessie shrugged.

  “I’ve acknowledged…interest,” she said with a little lilt in her voice, “But I don’t know what to do with that, especially since you’re a murderer and I’m a law enforcement official. I’ve conceded that I’m drawn to you, which I’m ashamed of because you are an almost irredeemably bad person, Andy.”

  “That feels harsh,” Andy muttered.

  “But I don’t know how to explore that organically when I’m your prisoner,” Jessie said, pressing ahead, sensing she was finally getting somewhere. “I want to open up but how can I do that when the lives of my loved ones are under threat? You clearly want to spend more quality time with me, or you wouldn’t have set up this whole arrangement, but you don’t trust me. You want to believe that I’m sincere but fear that the second you let down your guard, I’ll try to escape. How do we find a way past this?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24