“Okay, why don’t you follow us in, and we’ll have a look around.”
The deputy nodded and raised his window. Beth continued on to the guard shack and barrier blocking the entrance. She put the car in park and lowered her window.
“Um, I’m guessing you’re not here to camp,” a woman said. “What can I help you with?”
I leaned forward a bit and cocked my head so I could get a look at her from my seat in the car. She sat just inside the building. Her hair was white and just past her shoulders. The woman wore a pair of large, thick, red-rimmed glasses.
Beth flashed her credentials to the woman, who squinted and peered down her nose at them.
“What’s that say?” the woman asked.
“FBI,” Beth said and stuffed her credentials back into an inner pocket of her gray blazer. “We’re searching for a man and woman in a late-model white Toyota. Did you see anyone matching that between yesterday and today?”
“Well, I wasn’t on yesterday, but that doesn’t ring a bell for today. Let me check the log and see what we have for yesterday.”
“Thank you,” Beth said.
The woman went back into the guard shack and reappeared a moment later with a clipboard. “A white Toyota, you said?”
“Correct.”
“Do you have a plate number?”
I pulled my notepad from my pocket, flipped to the page, and read it off.
“Well, I’m not seeing that or a white Toyota at all, for that matter.”
“We have reason to believe they are on your grounds here and are going to need to search,” Beth said.
“Oh, um, okay. I’m guessing the two sheriff’s department cars that have been sitting here are with you as well?”
“Correct,” Beth said.
“Let me get the gate for you.”
“The two cars behind us are with us as well,” Beth said.
“Sure.” The woman lifted the gate.
Beth clicked the car into drive.
“Wait a sec,” I said. “Ma’am,” I called to the woman in the guard shack.
She leaned back out of the window.
“Is this the only way in and out?”
“It is,” she said.
I gave her a wave, and we passed through.
“Hell, where do we start?” Beth asked.
“Check every site,” I said. I looked through the windshield and saw the road coming to a T a ways up. As we got a little closer, I saw that half of the campsites were to the right and the other half to the left. “Hold on. Pull off to the side here.”
Beth did, and I stepped out.
Bill and Scott, as well as Agents Makara and Gents, pulled to the edge of the road behind our rental car, and the two sheriff’s cruisers did the same. I walked back to Bill and Scott. Bill, who was driving, lowered his window.
“Hey, the woman at the front didn’t have anything on our car. We’re going to need to split up here and start searching.”
“Ball said the twins had a GPS signal that was here, right?” Bill asked.
“Yeah.”
Bill pulled his cell phone from his pocket and clicked a few buttons. He held the phone to his ear and spoke to me. “I’m calling back to Manassas to have them give me the GPS coordinates. I have an app on my phone that should be able to lead us straight to the signal.”
I nodded.
Bill said a few words to whoever he was speaking with—I figured it was one of the twins. Then he clicked off from the call.
“The signal is still active and still here. Marcus is sending me the coordinates now.” Bill stared down at his phone’s screen. He clicked a few buttons, and a map came up. “We’re headed right. I’ll lead,” he said.
“Hold on. If they’re still here, I want to make sure they don’t get out. The woman at the shack said this street was the only way in and out. Let me go ask those deputies if they can keep an eye on this point here.”
I walked back to the other agent’s car. Gents dropped his window.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“We need to lock this point down. This is the only way in and out. I’m going to ask the deputies if they mind holding this area down while we go in. You guys follow us. We’ll be heading to the right at the turn,” I said.
“Got it,” Agent Gents said.
I continued on to the sheriff’s cruisers. The deputy I’d spoken with when we were arriving had his window down and his arm resting outside.
“Hey, this is our only point in and out,” I said. “Do you guys mind making a little block here to make sure these two don’t slip past us?”
“Absolutely,” the deputy said. The name embroidered on his brown shirt read Kelly. “Do you want us to make stops on everyone heading out?” he asked.
“Probably wouldn’t hurt. We’re going to the right up here at the split. Just keep your eyes open.”
“Yeah, no problem,” he said.
I walked back to where Beth was waiting and got inside again. Bill and Scott pulled from the side of the road and took the lead. We pulled out behind them with Makara and Gents following. We turned right, and I glanced back the way we came. The two sheriff’s cruisers were blocking the street with their cars. We continued on, following Bill and Scott down the snaking two-lane road. Each intersection of the connecting streets off to our left and right had a wooden sign staked into the dirt, listing the numbers of the campsites down that road.
Bill and Scott’s car slowed ahead of us. They pulled to the side of the road. We parked behind them, as did Makara and Gents. Scott and Bill stepped from their car, so Beth and I did the same. My feet crunched the pea gravel on the side of the road. The smell of campfire smoke filled my nose. Campers and travelers could be heard talking in the distance. We walked toward Bill and Scott. Makara and Gents came to us as we gathered.
“The location is up here—next street on the right,” Bill said. “I figure walking up ready might be our best move here.”
“Right,” I said. I looked up and to the right where we were going to be headed. I spotted a number of tents and RVs, with people rummaging about. “What the hell are we going to do about all the campers? If those two are up there and we come up on them, well, a number of things can come into play.”
“Yeah, I would say hostage campers, or worse, is probably something that we should avoid,” Gents said.
“How far up that road is that signal coming from? Can we tell?” Beth asked.
Bill looked at the screen of his phone. “I’d say it’s toward the back.”
“Someone could go as a scout,” Makara said. “Well, except none of us is really going to pass as a camper wearing a suit.”
“Let’s just head up. We’ll try to get a view from a few spots down. If we can clear people out as we approach, we should be fine,” Scott said.
We had a loose plan, but a plan nonetheless. We made the corner and started up the street.
Agents Makara and Gents split to the sides and made contact with a group of campers on the left and an older couple traveling by RV on the right. Both groups were instructed, for their safety, to leave the area for the time being. We continued up to the next pair of sites, and Beth and I asked the people occupying those sites to do the same.
Just past the community restrooms, we came upon an empty campsite on our left and another empty site on our right. I spotted a bit of a white vehicle through the trees that separated the sites on our left.
“Is that our car?” I asked.
Bill quickly looked at his phone and then stuffed it into his pocket. “That’s it,” he said.
We pulled our service weapons and approached. Our group stopped at the tree line. Through the trees, we had a clear visual on the backed-in vehicle. The front of it, facing the road that led to the individual campsites, had a blanket stretched over it. From my view of the back half of the car, I could tell it was the one from the rest area. I didn’t spot a tent on the site nor people.
“See anyone?” I as
ked, leaving the question open for any of the agents to field. I received nos and head shakes from everyone.
We rounded the tree line and entered the site. The picnic table was empty. I glanced into the fire pit—a few logs and a pile of coals smoldered at the bottom. Scott and Bill went to the vehicle and quickly confirmed it was unoccupied. Scott tried the driver’s door, which was open. He reached into the car for a moment and then came back out with a phone in his hand. “Damn phone was in the center console,” he said.
“Let’s get a couple more people from the sheriff’s department here, spread out, and start searching,” Beth said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nick piloted the RV north on I-29. They’d left the campground an hour prior. He looked back over his shoulder at Molly dancing on the galley’s white tile floor. She had her maroon-dyed hair pulled back in a ponytail and was wearing a tiny green T-shirt and a pair of little tan shorts—both articles of clothing had belonged to the dead woman riding below and were taken from the bedroom closet in the back of the RV. Some pop song on the radio was blaring through the rear speakers.
“Can you turn that down?” Nick asked.
“What’s the matter? Headache?” Molly asked. She went to the rear radio controls and lowered the volume. Molly walked to Nick, wrapped her arms around him from behind, and gave him a kiss on the top of his bald head. “You need to shave that,” she said and rubbed his head. “And this too.” She rubbed his cheek. “You’re prickly.”
Nick grumbled.
“Aw, is my baby hungover?” she asked. “Last night was fun, though.”
“Yeah, it was,” Nick said. “I’m paying for it today. I’ll have to thank that guy for the beers when I drag his ass out and toss him in a ditch.”
Molly chuckled. “His shirt looks good on you, by the way.”
Nick smirked. He was wearing one of the dead man’s hooded sweatshirts.
“What do you need, baby? What can I do for you?” She rubbed his thigh.
Nick’s mouth turned to a smile. “Maybe just look to see if these two have any aspirin or something in the bathroom?”
“Ooh, you’re no fun. Okay, ask and you shall receive.” Molly disappeared into the back of the RV. She returned a moment later with a few orange pills in her hand. “Here, I found some ibuprofen.”
After she handed Nick the pills, he swallowed them dry.
“Can we get there on the gas we have?” Molly asked.
“Diesel, baby.”
“You know what I mean.”
Nick glanced down at the fuel gauge. “I don’t know. This thing is pretty full, but I couldn’t tell you what the range is. We have about eleven hours until we get there, though.”
“I should probably make a call to Red soon and see if he’s going to be at his house. We don’t want to get there and have to wait around before we can grab him, you know? We’ll need to find a pay phone or something.”
Nick nodded. “We’ll find one.”
“We have another problem too,” Molly said. “I’m starving, and these two don’t have anything for food in the refrigerator.”
Nick rocked his head from side to side. “What are you thinking?”
“Well, we could just grab something fast, but then we’d have to do it again and again, you know? If we hit a grocery store, we can get ourselves enough food for a week or more—limit our amount of exposure.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “How long can you wait?”
“My stomach has been growling since we woke up. I’ll let you make the call, though. I don’t think I’ll actually starve to death for another few hours.”
Nick sat quietly, staring out the windshield at the freeway while he thought. He glanced at the time. “Okay. We’ll stop in the next few minutes and find a grocery store. We’ll grab whatever we need to make the rest of the trip. Start putting together a list.”
Molly nodded and walked to the back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two more deputies joined our makeshift search team scouring the campground. We’d been showing photos of the couple to anyone we came into contact with, but none of the campers had seen Nick Frane or Molly McCoy. In the half hour we’d been searching, we hadn’t found anything. Beth and I stopped at the two sheriff’s cars that had been blocking the road to the exit.
“Any sign of them?” asked Kelly, the deputy I’d spoken with as we were coming in.
“Not yet. Anything here?” I asked.
“No. We’ve stopped everyone that has tried to exit and kind of gave each vehicle a bit of a look through the windows. Nothing seemed off, and no sign of our couple.”
“No one remembered seeing them?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Okay, the guys are still searching the grounds. We’re headed to speak with the woman at the shack there.”
Deputy Kelly nodded.
Beth and I continued to the guard shack at the front gate. I wanted to know if the campground had any kind of video surveillance and wanted to see if they had any kind of a checkout process.
I pulled open the guard shack’s door and held it open for Beth to enter. Then I walked in behind her.
The woman we’d spoken with when we came in stared at us from behind the counter. She pushed her thick glasses up her nose. “No luck?” she asked.
We walked over and stood before her. Attached to her shirt, on the breast pocket, was a nametag that said Mary. Below her nametag was a round button with a yellow smiley face.
“No,” Beth said. “Can I see your sign-in sheet?”
“Um, sure,” the woman named Mary said. She grabbed a clipboard from behind the desk and handed it off to Beth.
“What site were they at?” I asked.
“Fifty-four.” Beth ran her finger down the page. She shook her head and rolled her eyes when her finger landed on the number. “Fifty-four was taken by an Amanda Huginkiss. Vehicle listed is white Mazda with, get this, license plate number of FAK-PL8.” Beth looked at the woman. “Seriously, you guys obviously don’t even look at these things. What’s the point?” She handed the clipboard back.
The woman shrugged. “I wasn’t here yesterday.”
“We’re looking for a man and woman, the man has a bald head, in his thirties. The woman is a bit younger with purple hair,” I said.
“Maroon,” Beth said.
“Maroon hair,” I said. “See anyone matching that description around here?”
“I can’t really say I have,” Mary said. “Then again, my vision isn’t what it used to be.”
I stared at her giant eyes behind her inch-thick glasses. “Right.”
“Ma’am, do the grounds here have any kind of video surveillance?” Beth asked.
“Sorry, no,” she said. “We never really had a reason to have anything like that. We’re kind of low tech around here.”
“What about any kind of a checkout process?” I asked.
“Sorry,” she said. “People come, which we make them sign in—um, I guess we need to do a little better job there—and leave when they are supposed to leave. The duration of their stay is listed on the sign-in form. Checkout is at noon.”
I thought for a moment and realized that if the couple were not on the grounds, they needed to secure some other form of transportation. Stealing someone’s car, truck, or motor home in the middle of the night sounded plausible. “You think I could get a list of campsites that are supposed to be filled currently?”
“That I can do for you,” she said. “Let me make you a copy of this.” She pulled another clipboard from behind the desk and slid the sheet from the top. She held it up to Beth and me. “We use this for the campers to select their sites. All the highlighted ones are filled.”
“Can you make us some copies of the sign-in sheet as well?” Beth asked.
“Yeah, sure,” the woman said. She turned around and went to a copy machine at the back of the room.
Beth turned to me. “With a couple of those sheets handed out to every
one searching, we should be able to see who is unaccounted for pretty quick—call the ones who aren’t and see what we get.”
I nodded.
The sound of the copy machine kicking out copies filled the small guard shack. The woman yanked them from the tray and handed them to Beth.
“Thank you,” Beth said. “If we need anything else from you, we’ll be back.”
“Okay,” the woman said.
We headed for the door, which I pushed open and held again.
“Such a gentleman,” Beth said.
“Years of training from my wife.”
She handed me a few of the papers from the stack the woman had given her. I turned them in my hands and looked at them as I walked.
“Let’s start closest to where they were camping and work from there,” I said.
Beth nodded.
We stopped at Deputy Kelly and his fellow deputies blocking the roadway and handed them a few copies of the papers with the instructions to check off anyone leaving, on the sheet. They agreed.
Beth and I then made our way back toward the original campsite that the couple had booked. We found Bill, Scott, Gents, and Makara still in the area, searching around. We called everyone to a group near the white Toyota.
“Get anything from the front gate?” Bill asked.
“Aside from a walk and a few sheets of paper, no,” I said. “No signs of them anywhere?” I asked.
“That would be correct,” Scott answered.
“Okay,” I said. I started passing out some of the sheets, and Beth did the same.
“We have a sheet here that lists all the booked campsites and a copy of the sign-in form,” I said. “If they’re not on the grounds, they had to leave somehow, and well, we know what they’ve been doing. We’re thinking we can go through and confirm which campers are still on site and which aren’t. Those that aren’t, we’ll try to contact. Phone numbers are on the sign-in sheets.”
“Got it,” Agent Makara said.
With sheets in hand, our group spread out and began searching. Two campsites up the road, I found the first campsite that was supposed to be occupied but wasn’t. A group of four camping chairs, one tipped over, stood around the ring for a campfire. Miscellaneous garbage and beer cans littered the lot. I glanced down at my sheet at the name for who was supposed to be there—Joey Brolin. I ran my finger to the check-in and checkout dates. He’d checked in the night prior and wasn’t set to leave for a week. My eyes went to the vehicle information line, which just said “RV” and listed the color as “B&W.” I looked to my left and saw Scott walking from the end of the street back toward me.
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