Worthington’s phone was on, but he wasn’t moving. Luke, Jimmy, and John had all been watching the blip for the last hour. It sat stationary on I-495 near Tyson’s Corner. It wasn’t a house or hotel, just some random spot on the interstate.
“Maybe he parked the car and left the phone to lead us away.” Jimmy said.
“Are you sure you have the right phone number?” John said.
“Yes,” Luke said. “Bodey told me how to work the software and I watched Q use it too. The numbers that came up were just like when Q did it. He’s waiting for something.”
“Let’s go to him,” Jimmy said.
“Not yet,” Luke said. He wasn’t convinced Worthington meant to stay there. He would wait until they watched him move to a house or some other place they could approach without him knowing it.
His cell phone rang and Luke picked it up. He looked at Jimmy and John and they knew what he knew. Worthington.
“Hello.”
A deep voice, not the electronically altered irritation Luke had heard before, came over the speaker.
“Where are you?” he said, mockingly. “I’ve been waiting for you and you haven’t shown up.”
This voice, though normal, was somehow worse than the other one. This voice was human and Luke couldn’t seem to link it to anything human at all. The man was a monster and it bothered Luke that the monster could sound so normal. “Is she alright?” was all he managed to get out.
“Listen.”
Luke heard rustling and then a moan. Then her voice, sleepy, as if he was trying to wake her and she didn’t want to wake up. “No. I don’t want to eat,” she mumbled. “You can’t make me,” and her voice trailed off. The relief he felt was so great, he almost started to cry. Worthington stopped that.
“She won’t be alive much longer,” he said. “You’d better hurry.”
“Don’t touch her! I swear I’ll…”
“You’ll what!” he shouted. It made Luke jump. “I don’t see you here! I doubt you have it in you to even find me much less stop me. Bring it on, kid! Bring it on!” The line went dead.
“He’s moving,” John said.
Jaxon and Victoria sat in his car two blocks from the Harrison house. They were right by the pool complex with the laptop open and the tracking software running. So far, the Harrison boy was still in his house.
“You don’t think he left his phone at home, do you?” Victoria asked.
“I doubt it. Kids don’t go anywhere without them nowadays.”
“Still, what if he did?”
“We’re screwed.”
She sat silent for a moment and he knew her wheels were spinning. They had been spinning since they left the Hoover building. “What are you thinking?”
“About the pictures,” she said.
“What about them?”
“They bother me.”
“They bother me too, but we found his clue. He made it easy.”
“We’re missing something.”
“We’re missing a lot.”
She gave him a look and he turned away. The Harrison kid was still there.
“Why all the family shots? Why show us how his life was when he was with them?”
“Maybe he liked them.”
“Then why did he leave them for us?”
“He wanted to show me how I ruined his life.”
“Could be,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t believe that. “Or, he wanted us to see his house.”
“But we already know he lived there. That’s common knowledge. I’ve been there before and hell, I almost removed him from it.”
“But his house was in every picture,” she said, turning to him.
He thought about this and a little tumbler fell into place. Click. He jerked back to her and she was smiling.
“Every picture,” she said again.
“Shit!”
Just then he noticed Harrison’s cell phone moving. He pointed to it and she said. “He’s on the move! He must be on foot because he’s not moving very fast.”
“It has to be the house!”
“Let’s go!”