Page 9 of Tracked
Rachel was alive. She had to be. Even with my science background and medical degree, I still held an unwavering belief that if something truly bad had happened to my sister, I would know it. Deep down, I’d know if she was dead.Wouldn’t I?
“If she went camping, she could also have no service.” Calder’s voice broke through my tangled thoughts. More than the suggestion, his soothing tone settled my unease.
I’d always appreciated Calder’s steadiness, especially for Rachel, whose emotions tended to swing wide. Unfortunately, she hadn’t felt the same; his composure had only aggravated her, to the point where she did things only to try to get a rise out of him. Lying. Partying. The more she did, the greater the wedge between them. The greater the wedge, the more she did to try to make him fly off the rails to prove he cared. It spiraled and it wasn’t good, and it had ended even worse.
Calder’s unwavering calm when he’d broken up with her, even in the face of her devastation ... she took it as he’d never cared. Maybe if he could’ve fluctuated just a little, the damage wouldn’t have been so deep. So lasting.
“Can you still track it, if that’s the case?” I asked, shoving the past back into the recesses of my mind where it belonged. All that mattered now was finding my sister.
“Sometimes.”
Calder finished his message to Callum and set his phone down.
“I take it you’re not as averse to technology as your dad?” The work they did would be nearly impossible to do without it.
“He has his reasons—his rules for the way he is. For the way we grew up.” A shadow passed over his face.
I repeated his caution from earlier with a nod. “Any technology that can find you can be used against you.”
“Rule number seven.”
“He’s not wrong,” I murmured, willing to bet that if I opened any social media app on my phone right then, I’d be bombarded with ads for Airstream campers and French press coffee makers.
“No, he’s not. He’s also not wrong that a weapon you can’t or don’t know how to control is a weapon that controls you,” Calder stated simply, running his thumb along the handle of his mug. “Cassius refuses to accept the middle ground between those two things. The rest of us don’t.”
“You call him Cassius.”Not Dad.And for all the insight into Calder’s childhood, it was this that intrigued me the most.
“That’s his name.”And the only answer I was getting.“What can you tell me about the boyfriend? Brandon?”
“They’ve only been dating a few months, I think. At least, it’s only been a few months since she’s told me about him, though it couldn’t have been too much before that, because she broke up with her previous ex six months ago.”
I’d never regretted more not pushing Rachel to give me details about Brandon—even a last name.
Calder slid a notebook out from underneath the crossword puzzle; it was the same as the ones that filled his bookshelves. He unclipped the pen from its cover and opened it to a blank page.
“And the camping trip they were going on—she didn’t tell you where specifically?” He began to scribble down notes.
I shoved aside the tinge of awkward irony, talking about my sister’s ex-boyfriends with one of them, and answered, “No.”
“Was it tent camping or camper camping?” he probed, and at my confused expression, clarified: “Many of the parks around here, you’d need a permit to camp with any kind of camper, but not for a tent.”
“Oh.” That made sense, though I didn’t know anything to make it helpful. “She didn’t say what kind of camping,” I admitted and shook my head. “It’s my fault. When she told me, the first thing I did was caution her. She hasn’t known Brandon for that long, and to go into the wilderness ... I just ... I don’t know. Maybe I’ve watched too many documentaries, but it didn’t seem like a good idea.”But that was Rachel: jumping headfirst into relationships with guys who were bad news.
I blew out an exhale of frustration and took another gulp of my coffee.
“You said she FaceTimed you?”
I nodded and picked up my phone again, searching for the screenshot I’d taken during the call.
“They were at some diner I didn’t recognize. I assumed it was around here, but who knows—they could’ve been anywhere, going anywhere.” I tapped on the image of Brandon’s angry face.
Rachel’s boyfriend had a thick beard and a scar on his cheek. His features were heavyset, but it was hard to make out anything else about his face from underneath the obnoxious red hat he’d continued to wear even though they were inside.
“Here.” I showed my phone to Calder. “He wasn’t at the table when she called, because it seemed like he’d overheard only the last bit of our conversation when he grabbed the phone and ... hung up on me.”
“What exactly did he say?” He scrutinized the image.
I swallowed. “Does it matter?”
