“We get it, darling,” Henry eventually took over, realising that she wasn’t listening to Timo’s insistent words. “But did Dan get anything else out of this?”
“Not really,” Emma said. “Cole thinks the triangles are real but I don’t take that as absolute proof that Ding does, and we still need to find out what Poppy’s thinking before we consider our next move. The world still doesn’t even know about the GeoSov plot to take Slater hostage, what with the end of Focus 20/20 being interrupted by the second triangle right when Dan was about to bring that up, and I think it should stay like that until we know where we’re going next. But speaking of Poppy… did Timo’s team find anything on her?”
Henry answered in the negative.
“Okay, well we’re getting ready to fly to Honduras so we can get a real sleep overnight, so I’ll go in a second. How’s Tara doing?”
Clark, hearing everything easily through his phone’s overloud speaker, took hold of it again. “Great,” he said, perking up. “She’s been spending time with friends — ones who are good for her — and my dad was just saying how she seems a lot more like her old self.”
The news about which particular ‘friend’ Tara had been spending a lot of time with wasn’t Clark’s to share, so he didn’t get into any specifics.
“You mean Jayson?” Emma asked, taking it out of his hands. “Don’t worry, she already told me about that! And yeah, I think you’re right… with everything he’s been through, he could be good for her. Keep an eye on her until we’re home, though; not like spy on her, but just make sure you know roughly where she is. Her head can’t be totally clear after just a few days, so… you know, it’s a ‘give her space but not too much space’ kinda thing.”
“Got it,” Clark confirmed.
“And you guys give us a call when you land in Honduras,” Henry interjected, almost yelling towards the phone to be heard from several feet away.
“Will do,” Emma said, having along with Dan deliberately neglected to mention his short-term memory issues and the headache that was only abating now with the help of some fairly strong medication. “Everything will be a lot clearer tomorrow night… I promise.”
V minus 36
ELF Headquarters
Beijing, China
“Well…” Maria Janzyck excitedly spoke into her camera, “within the next hour or so we expected to be introducing live coverage of the triangle’s public unveiling, but that much-anticipated event is no longer on the cards.”
The hubbub behind Maria, with international reporters fighting for position and raising their voices to be heard, strongly suggested that there was more to this story than an event being cancelled.
“And we’ve just been told by the ELF’s press office that this postponement — delaying the triangles’ presentation — has been agreed in light of the GCC’s recent efforts to find common ground. It was stressed to us in no uncertain terms that scientific access to the triangles will not be extended to scientists from GCC member states quite yet, but Ding Ziyang is willing to sit around a table with William Godfrey to discuss the regrettable divisions that have been exposed in recent days.
“There is a natural sense of anti-climax here on the ground in Beijing,” Maria continued, ready to conclude her short bulletin before handing back to the ACN in-studio analysis team, “but when the dust has settled, relief may well sink in. Around the world, interest in these triangles is understandably sky-high and the desire to see them with our own eyes is something we haven’t felt since the hoaxed plaques were revealed in Argentina. But these triangles are not lost; they are still in our possession, with the greatest hope of all perhaps being that ‘our’ possession will soon mean the collective possession of humanity as a whole, rather than the possession of one of two pretenders to a global throne which many believe should be filled by a certain and apparently reluctant third party.
“For ACN at the ELF, I’m Maria Janzyck.”
V minus 35
GCC Headquarters
Buenos Aires, Argentina
A broad smile crossed William Godfrey’s lips, the first in a long time.
President Slater, seated at his side, appeared more cautiously relieved.
“He’s done it again,” Godfrey beamed. “Whether McCarthy meant to or not, he’s put Ding on the back foot and spared our blushes.”
“This is a long way from over,” Slater cautioned. Internally she was itching to hear what Dan had garnered from his conversation with Cole using an ability the rest of the world was entirely unaware of, but she knew that he and Emma were on a tight schedule and had made it clear that they would debrief only after both interviews were complete. “Let’s see what happens in Honduras before we pop open the champagne.”
Godfrey nodded slowly. “Find a nice glass, Valerie,” he said in a smugly satisfied tone, “and I’ll keep the bottle on ice until this time tomorrow.”
WEDNESDAY
V minus 34
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Clark awoke from a sound sleep and spent the first four hours of Wednesday catching up on some administrative work that had slipped by in recent days. The urgency of the reports he had to file acted as a welcome distraction from the complicated issues that had ironically distracted him from this work in the first place: chiefly the two recently discovered triangles, but also Dan’s safety during the final leg of what had turned into something of a whistle-stop Latin American tour.
When it came time to leave for work, Clark called on Rooster to take him back to his next-door home. “Come on, Tara’s there,” he said, sensing the dog’s reluctance to return to a house that had been empty when he left it. Clark opened the door. “See, her car is… huh?”
To Clark’s surprise, Tara’s car wasn’t there.
The closed curtains made it clear that she hadn’t just gone out, either, and rather that she hadn’t come home. Given the strength of her insistence that she would, Clark was understandably concerned. He grabbed his phone and dialled her number, but the concern only grew when a recorded voice informed him that the number was currently unavailable.
Rooster looked confused when Clark re-closed the door and sat down with his phone still in his hand, but Clark’s was a look of anxious focus.
He navigated to his friend-finder app in the expectation that it would show her current location as either her own place in the city or wherever Jayson Moore lived. This expectation went disconcertingly unmet, however, when the app revealed that Tara’s phone was last active in the woods west of town and had cut off abruptly at 3am. Because Tara was a primary friend who shared the maximum possible amount of linked information with Clark, he could also tell that the smart lock on her home’s front door hadn’t been used in over twenty-four hours.
Whatever happened after 3am, she hadn’t gone home. With his heart-rate ever increasing, Clark urgently switched out of that app and checked first Tara’s social media and then Jayson’s. He was extremely concerned to see that neither had been active all day.
“What the fuck…?”
Clark rapidly searched the internet for a satellite view of the woodland area that was shown in a small image within his friend-finder app. He lucked out in finding not only a satellite image but also a full ground-level view of what turned out to be a popular walking route. To his dismay, however, there was no cabin in the vicinity. Either Tara had lied, or Tara had been lied to.
Following his instincts, Clark began an intensive search for Jayson Moore’s home address so that he could stop by to find out just what the hell was happening. The rational part of his mind told him that Tara would be there and wouldn’t thank him for showing up, but that wasn’t what mattered; what mattered was making sure she was okay, and in doing so keeping a promise he had made to Emma and one he had a boundless urge to see through.
Very frustratingly, however, Clark couldn’t find any address or direct contact for Jayson. Even an indirect contact proved elusive; from what he
could tell, the former TV star no longer seemed to be officially represented by any talent agencies. Calls weren’t connecting to Emma’s phone, either, or Dan’s or even Kyle Young’s, which Clark could only put down to a lack of coverage or a temporary signal issue on the Honduran island of Roatán.
When he needed help more than ever, he was on his own.
The sole lead Clark did find was the nearby address of Jayson’s parents, listed in a year-old news report about Jayson’s father posting bail after his son’s arrest for petty larceny. Frustratingly there was no phone number listed, which was all he would have needed to reach them as a means of getting in touch with Jayson, but fortunately their home was so close that it would take only a few minutes of driving to visit them in person.
With this in mind, and with a sound alibi for stopping by in the form of his role in the police force, Clark got ready to follow through on the only lead he had. Before leaving he sent a quick text to his friend and colleague Zack, explaining that he’d finished his reports but asking if Zack could cover his shift since he didn’t feel in the right frame of mind for a half-day at the precinct.
The uncertainty around the triangles, not to mention the inevitable stress that went along with Dan’s high-profile absence, provided sufficient context for Zack to take this highly uncharacteristic request at face value. He replied within seconds to say it would be no problem at all — Clark had done the same for him, more than once — and made a point of encouraging him to take it easy.
Taking it easy wasn’t on Clark’s agenda, at least until he figured out what was going on with Tara, but he appreciated the sentiment. He then texted his boss, which he hadn’t wanted to do until the shift was covered, and was glad to receive another rapid reply along the same supportive lines as Zack’s.
“Coming or staying?” Clark asked the dog while he walked out of his bedroom, ready to go. He wasn’t too surprised to see that Rooster was already standing at the door.
With Rooster in the back, the car sped out of Birchwood at a borderline irresponsible pace.
At the edge of town, Clark pumped the brakes at the old drive-in. He caught sight of Phil Norris’s car and ran to the entrance of New Kergrillin’ Bar & Grill, pausing at the door only to compose himself. He hoped to find Phil alone somewhere so that they could talk quickly, and was relieved to see him right away behind the bar. He walked over without delay.
“Thirsty already?” the rough-around-the-edges proprietor asked, surprised to see Clark in the bar at this time of day rather than at a table in the adjoining restaurant.
“All this alien shit might be getting the better of me,” Clark replied quietly, eyes darting around to make sure no one else was listening in, “but I think Tara might be in some kind of trouble and I need you to check out a spot in the woods. I need you to see if her phone is actually there or if it just stopped working there, and I need you to do that because I need to spend the next ten minutes finding out where she is now. This is on the down-low, it could get messy, and you’re the man I need.”
“What kind of trouble do you think she could be in? And what spot in the woods?” Phil asked. Even as he spoke, he was clicking his fingers to beckon a relatively senior staff member he could entrust with the running of the bar in his absence. He laid out some brief instructions and headed for the door.
Clark talked as they walked. “She didn’t come home last night and her phone lost signal in the woods at 3am. I’ll give you the coordinates. I need to find the guy she was with last night, because he’s either with her or he knows where she is. I’m thinking all kinds of shit, Phil, but this is the only way to do it.”
“Woah,” Phil said, stopping in his tracks. “Jesus… Clark, why are you bringing this to me instead of the police?”
“I am the fucking police! And I don’t have time for any crap, so if you don’t want to do this I’ll find—”
“I’ll do it,” Phil interrupted. “Coordinates?”
Clark held out his phone as Phil jotted it all down. “This is probably nothing to worry about, just a dropped phone, but she said she would definitely be home last night. She did tell me she would be checking out a cabin with this guy she’s been staying with, and he’s supposed to be clean after a drug thing he fell into a few years ago, but there’s no cabin anywhere near this spot. I dunno, Phil,” Clark gulped uneasily. “They’re almost definitely sitting in his house right now, but she parties hard when she’s with the wrong people… so I’m worried this guy’s not clean and they were maybe heading out there for a deal. If she dropped her phone and that’s it, we can handle that. But what if there was a deal and it went wrong?”
“I’ll be there in no time,” Phil said, noting how nearby the spot was. “Whether I find a phone or not, do you want me to join you wherever you’re going?”
“Yeah, here’s the address… but stay at a safe distance,” Clark replied. “We’ll stay in touch, and if I have to go anywhere else after that I’ll make sure you don’t lose me.”
Phil nodded. “She’ll be okay, Clark. She is okay.”
“All I want to do is find out where she is and make absolutely sure,” Clark said, gratefully shaking Phil’s hand before opening his car door. “And for that, I’ve gotta find this fucking guy…”
V minus 33
Moore Residence
Archway, Colorado
Clark reached the small neighbourhood of Archway within ten minutes of leaving Birchwood, and he hoped beyond hope that his stay would be even shorter. He was here for one reason: to get in touch with Jayson Moore as a means of finding Tara.
With Phil Norris set to hang back in his own car at a distance of around one hundred feet when he arrived, Clark parked right outside Jayson’s parents’ house and walked up the short path to their door. He didn’t like the fact that he was having to do this, but he shook away his doubts and played the only card he’d been dealt.
“Clark McCarthy!” a sixty-something man beamed from the doorway. His hair was white rather than grey but his skin and posture aged him safely under seventy in Clark’s eyes. “Honey, it’s Clark McCarthy!”
Within seconds, Mr Moore was joined by his wife. And although she also smiled instinctively at the up-close-and-personal sight of a figure as well known and well liked as Clark, her happiness faded very quickly. “Is something wrong? Something with Jayson?” she asked.
The first thought in Clark’s mind was that he wished he shared Dan’s advantage of having Emma’s voice rattling around, feeding him the right lines. Lacking in such a gift, he kept it simple: “Probably not, but I am trying to reach him. Trouble is, his contact information is harder to find than answers about these damn triangles!”
Clark’s jovial tone, which took no small effort to maintain, appeared to ease Mrs Moore’s mind slightly despite his implication that something might be wrong. That had been his intention, to make her think he wouldn’t be wise-cracking with one-liners if he was majorly concerned about something.
“He changes his number pretty often,” she explained. “Things have been okay lately, but in the past few years he’s had a lot of problems with debts and with hangers-on looking for handouts. Have you tried reaching him through Tara? Now that was some nice news, wasn’t it? Those two.”
“I think Tara’s busy,” Clark said, not entirely sure why he felt driven to avoid the truth at this stage but convinced it was the smart move. “The only thing I’m worried about is that Jayson might be involved with some of the bad types you’re talking about, Mrs Moore. Partly for his sake and partly for Tara’s, I need to see him as soon as possible to ask him about some individuals I have reason to believe he’s been associating with. He’s not in any kind of trouble — yet — and an intervention is the only way we can make sure he stays out of trouble. If he is in with the crowd I’m worried about and we don’t manage to reach him, things could get very bad as early as this afternoon. There’s only so much I can say, but it really is important that I see him.”
Mr
Moore sighed ruefully. “That boy…”
Clark didn’t care about lying in any ethical or personal sense, but it did cross his mind that he could get into serious trouble for implying that he, and by extension the police force, were worried about Jayson. In the context of his immediate and genuine concern about Tara’s wellbeing, though, this particular worry faded as quickly as it had shown up.
“You see,” Clark went on, “I’m a friend in this, but I’m also a cop. So if it’s not too much to ask, it would really help me out if you could call him here without saying it’s to see me. Is that okay? I can hang out in my car until he arrives or I’d be delighted to come in and wait with you, but I can’t stress how important it is that Jayson doesn’t know I’m here; if he does, he won’t come. Think of a good reason for him to hurry over here — and I mean hurry over here — and this’ll end well. I wish I could say I would be confident of a good ending if you can’t get him to come here, but unfortunately I can’t.”
“Oh, I’ll get him,” Mr Moore insisted, setting off into the kitchen to pick up his phone. He then called to invite Clark inside and walked out back with the phone in his hand, his wife following close behind.
Clark, anxious and impatient but at least feeling like he was getting somewhere, looked around the Moores’ living room at the old family photos that adorned most of the walls and surfaces.
The Final Call Page 24
