"And where are you now?" Jill suspected that he already knew, whoever he was. She wasn't a spy or a secret agent or a private investigator, she didn't know how to spot someone tailing her, but she didn't think that the person on the other end of the phone was working alone. And she felt absolutely certain that he wasn't going to leave something as important as making sure she was following instructions to chance. She had to assume that someone was watching her at all times. And that meant she had to play along. For Leeann's sake, if nothing else.
She looked around, taking in the wide, bustling lobby full of people. "I'm at the bus station," she said, the back of her neck itching as she tried to ignore the feeling of being watched. "I'm standing on the Arrivals platform. The bus I was on just pulled out, maybe... two minutes ago?" Jill felt a sudden stab of anxiety in her gut, as though she expected at any moment for him to call her on her estimate and accuse her of lying to him. It was just the latest in a string of similar panic attacks that had turned the last week into a nightmare of paranoia and sleeplessness. If it wasn't for Leeann...
But it was. Jill waited patiently, her long bony fingers trying to massage the itch away from the back of her neck until she practically rubbed it red from stress. Waiting for the reply. Waiting for them to decide that she'd jumped through the latest of the seemingly endless series of hoops, that she was ready to receive the next set of instructions and run deeper into the maze they'd set for her. They wouldn't just leave her hanging here, would they? Not when she'd done everything they asked. Not when she was so close.
Closer than she'd been in years, at least. Definitely closer than the morning she woke up and texted Leeann asking where they wanted to meet for breakfast, only to receive no reply. It was astonishing how quickly the trail went cold; the police tracked Leeann's phone to a drainage ditch three miles outside of Akron, found nothing interesting or incriminating on it, and put her name and photo into a database for the next thirty-six months while ignoring Jill's phone calls. Without a body or a witness to her disappearance or any sign of her, they were absolutely stymied. The Canadian authorities were no help either-Leeann might have come in on a student visa, but that didn't give them the authority or the ability to do anything about the possible crime.
Jill tried everything in those two and a half years. She got a true crime show to do an episode on it-Jill and Leeann were both pretty and blonde and (she hated to admit it, but..) white and upper middle class, exactly the kind of thing that would tug at the heartstrings of audiences. They were happy to interview her. But it didn't result in any leads. She crowdfunded a reward for any evidence leading to Leeann's return, but it just sat in the bank collecting interest. She handed out flyers to every business in the area where Leeann was last seen, hoping that one of them had a security camera that might have picked something up, but it was all pointless. Leeann had simply disappeared off the face of the earth.
Until now. "Go straight back to the far wall. There's a row of lockers there. Look for Locker #Z00, that's Zed and two noughts. There's a combination lock on it. The combination is 12-22-47. Open the locker and wait for further instructions." The part of Jill that had spent most of three years scrutinizing the tiny collection of evidence for even the most minute clue made a little mental note of the use of 'zed' for 'Z'. The voice didn't sound British-underneath all of the deliberate distortion, she couldn't even be really sure if it was a man. But there were others who used that word, anyone who inherited their English from England, and every little detail helped piece together a picture of Leeann's kidnapper.
And murderer? Jill felt that yawning pit of uncertainty open up beneath her again as she crossed the lobby and began to work her way down the row of storage lockers. The woman in Kansas City sounded so certain that it was Leeann she saw getting into a limousine downtown a month ago, but a month was a long time for someone who was being held against her will. Maybe even a lifetime. If the kidnappers had gotten antsy when Jill flew into town and started showing her flyers, maybe they'd decided to cut their losses and get rid of a potential risk to their operations.
But if they had just... if they had... if they weren't worried about being discovered anymore, why send Jill the burner phone? Why tell her to pack a set of spare clothes and withdraw the contents of the reward fund before directing her to a coffee shop in the Power and Light District? Why leave an envelope taped to the underside of one of the tables with bus tickets to Santa Fe? If all they wanted to do was get Jill out of the way-they must have been watching her all this time to know so quickly when she started getting close, a fact that sent chills down Jill's spine every time she thought about it-they could have just left her floundering in frustration in Missouri. This... this meant something. And Jill had to hope it meant Leeann's return.
She opened Locker #Z00, her brain still whirling with fevered speculation, and found a metal water bottle on the floor along with an MP3 player, a pair of earbuds, and another envelope. The bottle looked like the kind of thing that joggers carried with them, one of those sports bottles with a flip-top straw, and Jill almost reached down to see if there was anything in it before she remembered that she was supposed to wait for instructions. She didn't want to give them any cause to doubt her commitment now. Not when she'd already left her phone at a way station in Oklahoma City and her laptop back at the hotel room.
Instructions weren't long in coming. "Take the items. There's another ticket in the envelope, for a bus leaving in five minutes. You've got enough time to get there if you run. I don't need to tell you what happens if you try to stop at a payphone, do I?" The distortions made the voice sound even colder than it really was. Jill gulped, her throat closing up for a moment as she tried to force an answer past thick, constricting terror.
