Page 156 of You Found Me
“I care.” He made the exit at military speed.
Spencer swore and clutched the Oh God handle.
“Quit complaining,” Ward said. “You’re fine. The equipment’s fine. I know you have it all locked down back there.”
“Electronics don’t like to be jiggled,” Spencer muttered.
“Electronics or you?”
“Both,” Spencer squealed as they swerved onto the two-lane highway.
An hour later, they were still speeding through a portion of upstate New York that time had forgotten. On the plus side, nobody was in his way, including cops.
“How far now?” Ward asked.
“There’s a serious lack of infrastructure in some parts of this country.” Spencer sounded indignant.
“I don’t give a shit about the infrastructure. Am I still heading the right way or not?”
“Hang on. I’m boosting the signal.” Spencer pulled a keyboard out of the glove compartment and started typing. “Ah. They got off the highway and appear to be headed east now. They took a service road that…” Spencer trailed off, then the sound of him furiously typing filled the van. “Oh…shit.”
“Shit?” Ward glanced at him for half a second. “What’s ‘oh shit’ mean?”
“I can’t get a lock on her.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s…I’m not sure.” Spencer’stap-tap-tappingsped up. “I need to boost the signal.”
“You just did that.”
“I need more. We need to pull over,” Spencer said.
Ward hit the steering wheel. “We don’t have time to pull over.”
“We have to.”
Ward’s need to argue drained away at the quiet panic in his tech expert’s voice. “Where?”
“There’s a convenience store up ahead at the intersection.”
"There’s no intersections out here. There’s cow trails and fields.” Ward resisted the urge to stop right there in the middle of the road. Barely. They were on what the map called a farm tomarket, but it was more like an abandoned strip of asphalt. It didn’t see a lot of traffic.
They were nowhere. He knew it. Spencer knew it. The crows feeding on roadkill knew it.
It had been two hours and thirty-six minutes since Della had been taken, and the clock in his head kept ticking louder and louder.
“Trust me. There is.” Spencer pointed at the road. “Farm to Market 321 crosses Highway 22 in less than half a mile and there’s a gas station that supplies farm equipment. They’ll have internet. We can boost off them.”
“What good does that do us ifhersignal isn’t showing up?”
“If we stop somewhere, I can piggyback a signal. It’ll let me access my secondary routine to get a more accurate location. I’ve been running probabilities ever since—never mind. Just…try not to take the bumps too fast.” Spencer released his seat belt and slid into the back of the van. “I need the hard drive for this.”
Ward forced himself to take a deep breath as he eased off the accelerator.
The “convenience” store was so overgrown with weeds that he almost missed it. There was one regular gas pump in front, one to the side that sold diesel, and a single car parked at a diagonal on the left that probably belonged to the shadowy figure he could see through the grime-covered shop window.
“The fifties want their store back, Spence.” Ward pulled up at the front pump and parked but kept the engine running.