Page 33 of South of Nowhere

Never banter.

A careful frisk revealed no weapons.

But curiously Bear also didn’t have on him a wallet or any identification. Money, yes—five hundred or so in rumpled bills—but nothing else. Not even car keys, and this was a place where no one was without a vehicle. Odd too: Shaw smelled aftershave that he happened to recognize as expensive, not of the drugstore variety.

“Now. You’re going to tell me. What’s this all about?”

A little more pressure.

And a resulting groan. “You going to fucking torture me?” A scowl. As if Shaw were the bad guy.

“I don’t have time for this,” Shaw said in a matter-of-fact voice. “If you don’t talk to me, yes, I will break the wrist—and that’s a long recovery time.”

Yet more pressure.

“Ah, all right. You’re trespassing.”

Was he joking? “Twenty-five feet in woods, on land that’s not posted? I want the truth.”

“It’s private property. And we don’t want you here. Trespassing’s a crime.”

“So is assault with a deadly weapon and battery. I need a better—”

Shaw’s phone dinged.

Bear took this as a welcome distraction he might use to escape. But Shaw instinctively tightened his grip. “Settle.”

“Ah,” he groaned in pain. “You’re in so much trouble…”

Fishing out his phone. Reviewing the screen.

The drone had made another sighting. About two miles south.

He looked down at his captive.

Shaw was without zip ties. He often carried them but hadn’t thought they’d be necessary on a search-and-rescue job.

In his pocket was his locking knife. He might have sliced the man’s jeans into strips and tied him to a tree for Tolifson and TC McGuire. But this was no time to play cop.

He would have to let the matter go. He released his grip and lifted his phone to take Bear’s picture, but realizing what was coming, the man leapt to his feet and sprinted away fast.

Was he in a facial recognition criminal database?

That too was curious.

Even if he was not, Shaw’s private eye in D.C., Mack McKenzie, had access to some of the best facial rec databases in the world, and she could get him an answer within an hour. But the missing family was his priority and he let Bear vanish.

Shaw fired up the bike and shot back onto Route 13.

In just a few minutes he was at the site where the red dot told him the nimble algorithm had identified what might be an SUV in the water.

The visual image suggested the vehicle was just underwater, like the refrigerator he’d spotted.

He leaned forward and twisted the throttle for the final sprint, glancing into the river at his left.

There!

He could see it from the road.

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