But Caitlin’s heart sank as Caleb told her Scarlet had left the previous night and he hadn’t been able to find her since. He’d been trying her cell for hours, and had called all her friends again, and had been unable to get through to anyone. He’d also called the cops. He said he had a wide net out looking for her, but nothing yet. He was more panic-stricken than he’d ever been.
Caitlin’s mind swarmed with the possibilities, and she felt a greater urgency than ever to find her.
She pulled back and looked at him.
“Have you heard anything at all? Anything?” she asked.
He shook his head, disappointedly.
“All I have is a text from one of her friends. She said she thought she saw her at the school dance. And that she saw her leave. Alone. That was about an hour ago.”
“Where would she have gone?” Caitlin asked.
“I have no idea.” He looked at her. “That ritual. Do you really think it’s authentic?” he asked.
Caitlin reached into her bag and pulled out the folder. She extracted the delicate halves of the paper, lining them up on the table before them.
Caleb looked down and examined them, and his eyes opened wide in surprise.
“It looks ancient,” he said. “What language is that?”
“Latin,” she said. “But it won’t do us any good if we don’t find her—soon.”
Caitlin’s cell suddenly lit up, and her heart skipped a beat, praying it was Scarlet.
But then she looked down and was crestfallen to see it was just Polly.
“Polly, what’s up?” she asked curtly. “Have you heard anything?”
“Listen,” Polly said excitedly, “I was able to get through on text to a friend of hers, who texted a friend of hers, who answered back and said she knew how to find Scarlet.”
“How?” Caitlin asked excitedly, as Caleb crowded in.
“Apparently, Scarlet has an app called Loopt. A lot of these kids have it these days. If you’re logged in, it lets you track your friends via GPS. And her friend’s logged in and says she saw Scarlet’s logged in, too. She might have logged in manually or she might have not turned off her settings to be logged in by default.”
“Wait a second,” Caitlin said, trying to understand as Polly spoke so fast. “What does this mean?”
“I’m saying we can track her phone. We don’t know if she has her phone or if someone stole it, of course, but at least we can get to the phone. At least until the battery dies or it powers off. We have to hurry.”
Caitlin’s heart skipped a beat in anticipation.
“Where is her phone right now?” Caitlin asked. She prayed it wasn’t someplace dangerous.
“The app shows her on Route 99. About 3 miles south of town. At a roadside bar. Pete’s.”
Caitlin’s was panic stricken. Scarlet? At Pete’s? What on earth would she be doing there? That place was a gross little roadside bar in a bad part of town, in a trailer park about a mile down the road from the local jail. It was a haven for freshly-released convicts, looking for their first drink out. It was a place where the worse misfits gathered, a place you didn’t even slow for when you zoomed by it on the highway. Scarlet’s being there could only mean danger. Real danger.
“Pick us up on the way,” Polly said. “We’ll track her.”
“We’re on our way,” Caitlin said.
Caleb was already in motion, heading for the door, and within moments he had the car started and Caitlin jumped in. He peeled out and they took off down the quiet side streets, blowing stop signs, doing 80 miles an hour. They would stop at nothing until they found her.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Kyle stepped through the open gates of the prison and took his first step to the outside world, as the gates slammed close behind him. They slammed them extra hard, Kyle realized, as if wanting to rattle him, to take away his joy. It was the final insult of this merciless institution, of these sadistic guards, who had done everything to break him over the last five years.
But he wasn’t going to let anything bother him now. Now, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he was on the other side of these gates, on the other side of the barbed-wire tower. Now, for the first time, he didn’t have to answer to these cretins. He was a free man. Free. He could hardly believe it.
Kyle grinned from ear to ear, breathing in the crisp October air, relishing what it felt like to be outside. It was amazing not to have to hear his fellow convicts screaming and hollering reverberating all around him, all the time. To not have to fear for his life. And most of all, he thought, as he turned slowly and glared at the guards behind him, not have to answer to anyone. Least of all these pigs.
Kyle grinned wide as he slowly raised his middle finger right at the guard standing a few feet from him, close to the gate.
In the past, this guard would’ve taken his baton and beaten Kyle down, thrown him in isolation. But now, there wasn’t a thing the guard could do. Now Kyle was a free man, an upstanding citizen, just like anybody else.
Well, maybe not so upstanding. But then again, Kyle never had been. From the time he was young, he had taken a pleasure in torturing small animals, in bullying his classmates, in beating anyone younger than him. It had all stemmed, the shrinks told him, from his abusive father, who had beaten Kyle so badly and for so long that one day, when Kyle finally grew big and strong enough, he beat this dad back. That was the day his dad left—and he had never seen him again.
But by then, the damage had been done. Kyle had been 16, already huge for a boy his size, six foot five with shoulders as broad as a tree trunk, and hardened enough to beat his six foot father to a pulp. After that moment, Kyle had never looked back. The 16 years of taking a beating had infused in him an insatiable rage. He had to let it out on the world.
Everywhere he’d looked, he’d seen a target. Highly paranoid and over-sensitive, he imagined people were staring back at him, insulting him, ready to abuse him in the same way his father had. And he lashed out. He beat others up before they could get anywhere near him, whether they deserved it or not. He left quite a trail, and by the time he reached 19, he’d already been in and out of dozens of juvenile detention centers.
Now, at 35, Kyle was a hardened convict. He’d spent more of his life behind bars than outside them, and true to form, he was already dreaming of his next crime. The next store he could rob. The next cop he could beat down. The next girl he could attack. The next bar fight he could get into. His need for violence was insatiable—and the last five years had only hardened it.