Page 139 of Whistle

“I would ask that you return, Ms. Blunt. Your presence is necessary as we continue our investigation.”

It struck Annie that Standish might be able to track where she was through her phone. And if she could, wherever Annie happened to be, Standish might send the police after her and bring her back.

Anne couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Okay,” Annie said. “I should be back in half an hour, tops.”

“That would be good,” Standish said, unable to hide the skepticism in her voice. “I’m holding you to that.”

“Of course,” Annie said. “Talk soon.”

She hit the button on her steering wheel to end the call, then pulled over to the side of the road so that she could take her phone from her purse and shut it down completely. Once that was done, she tossed it back into her bag and hit the road.

She was clipping down a country road and sped past something that caught her eye for a millisecond. She glanced in her mirror, hoping for a better look, but whatever it was could not be determined from a distance. She hit the brakes, careful to make sure no one was behind her, put the SUV into reverse, and backed up about a hundred yards. She put the car in park, got out, and walked over to the shoulder to see what had drawn her attention.

A bicycle on its side.

She knew instantly that it was her son’s. A girl’s bike with thesloping center bar, the banana seat, the angle handlebars. She felt her legs go weak and then she went down, gravel digging into her knees and one palm as she grasped one end of the handlebars for support.

“Oh God, oh God,” she said.

And there, in the ditch, was her son’s backpack. She gasped for air, wondered whether she might faint.

Hold it together.

This did not have to be bad news. The abandoned bike showed that Charlie had somehow made it this far. Aside from a busted chain, the bike was more or less intact. It wasn’t mangled, as it would have been if Charlie had been hit by a car while riding it. There was no blood. Not on the bike, not on the road.

She managed to get to her feet and edged her way down into the ditch to get the backpack. She looked inside, found a bottle and a knife from a cutlery set and not much else. She surveyed the landscape in all directions and shouted: “Charlie!Charlie!”

No reply.

Annie tried to think it through. The bike broke down. Charlie had decided to start walking, and didn’t want to be weighed down by the backpack, so he pitched it. It was possible. And if that was the case, he might be up ahead somewhere.

She got back into the car, kicking up gravel from all four wheels as she hit the gas.

“I’m coming, Charlie. I’m coming.”

Looking for more upsides, she told herself that she’d been right all along. Charlie really was heading to Lucknow. She’d interpreted the message from that upturned toy train correctly. The invitation had been real.

But for the first time a question that had been lingering in the back of her brain moved to the forefront.

Why?

Why did Charlie want to go to Lucknow? Did he imagine his toy train world to be that town? He had told his mother that this was where his father now lived. When he’d said that, Annie had written it off as the wishful imaginings of a heartbroken child. But what if he hadn’t so much imagined it, as the idea had somehow been implanted in him?

What if Charlie, and now Annie, was being lured to Lucknow? And if that was true, by whom, and for what possible reason?

It didn’t make any sense. But so many things that had happened lately fell into that category. After a while, you almost started to get used to it. In fact, there was a small comfort in believing she and Charlie were being drawn to Lucknow for an unknown reason. It meant that something was looking out for them, that Charlie was okay.

She had just crossed the New York–Vermont state line when Sherpa informed Annie that she was nearly to her destination, and that the exit was ahead on her right.

She saw a sign that saidlucknow6, but nailed over it was a narrow yellow strip with black letters readingclosed. She took the right anyway, and a mile later she found the road barred by a ten-foot-high stretch of chain-link gate from which similar fencing ran off in both directions, into the forest. More than the road to Lucknow was closed off. There’d clearly been a perimeter fence established around the entire town.

There were several signs attached to the gate.

keep out

no trespassing

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