Roadside Crosses

pause.
    She leaned toward him.
    The guard looked down. “He said . . . he said he didn’t trust you. And he didn’t like you.”
    Dance stoked her smile as best she could. “Well, that’s the good news, I suppose. He’s the last person in the world I’d want a thumbs-up from.”
    THE TIME WAS now 5:00 p.m.
    From the hospital lot, Dance called the office and learned there’d been no significant developments in the hunt for Travis Brigham. The Highway Patrol and sheriff’s office were running a manhunt, focusing on the traditional locales and sources for information about runaways and juvenile fugitives: his school and classmates and the shopping malls. That his transportationwas limited to a bike was helpful, in theory, but hadn’t led to any sightings.
    Rey Carraneo had learned little from Travis’s rambling notes and drawings, but was still sifting through them for leads to the boy’s whereabouts. TJ was trying to track down the source of the mask, and calling the potential victims from the blog. Since Dance had learned from Caitlin that Travis liked the shore, she gave him the added task of contacting the parks department and alerting them that the boy might be hiding out somewhere in the thousands of square acres of state land in the area.
    “Okay, boss,” he said wearily, revealing not fatigue but the same hopelessness that she felt.
    She then spoke to Jon Boling.
    “I got the boy’s computer. That deputy dropped it off, Reinhold. He sure knows his stuff when it comes to computers.”
    “He shows initiative. He’ll go places. You having any luck?”
    “No. Travis is smart. He’s not relying on your basic password protection alone. He’s got some proprietary encryption programs that have locked his drive. We may not be able to crack it, but I’ve called an associate at school. If anybody can get inside, they can.”
    Hmm, Dance thought, how gender-neutral: “associate” and “they.” Dance translated the words as “young, gorgeous female grad student, probably blond and voluptuous.”
    Boling added in techspeak that a brute force attack was under way via an uplink to a supercomputer at UC–Santa Cruz. “The system might crack the code within the next hour—”
    “Really?” she asked brightly.
    “Or, I was going to say, within the next two or three hundred years. It depends.”
    Dance thanked him and told him to head home for the evening. He sounded disappointed and, after explaining that he had no plans for that night, said he’d continue to search for the names of posters who might be at risk.
    She then collected the children from Martine’s and they all drove to the inn where her parents were hiding out.
    As she drove, she was recalling the incidents surrounding young Juan Millar’s death, but in truth she hadn’t focused on them much at the time. The manhunt had demanded all her attention: Daniel Pell—the cult leader, killer and vicious manipulator—and his partner, a woman equally dangerous, had remained on the Peninsula after his escape, to stalk and murder new victims. Dance and O’Neil had worked nonstop pursuing them, and Juan Millar’s death had not occupied her thoughts, other than to engender a piercing remorse for the part, though small, she’d played in it.
    If she’d guessed that her mother might have become entwined in the case, she would have been much more attentive.
    Ten minutes later Dance parked the car in the gravel lot of the inn. Maggie offered, “Wow,” bouncing on the seat as she examined the place.
    “Yeah, neat.” Though Wes was more subdued.
    The quaint cottage—part of the luxurious Carmel Inn—was one of a dozen stand-alone cabins separate from the main building.
    “There’s a pool!” Maggie cried. “I want to go swimming.”
    “Sorry, I forgot your suits.” Dance nearly suggested Edie and Stuart could take them shopping for swimwear, but then recalled that her mother shouldn’t be out in public—not with Reverend Fisk and his birds of prey on the loose. “I’ll bring them by tomorrow. And, hey, Wes, there’s a tennis court. You can practice with Grandpa.”
    “Okay.”
    They climbed out, Dance collecting their suitcases, which she’d packed earlier. The children would be staying here tonight with their grandparents.
    They walked along the path bordered with vines and low, green chick-and-hen succulents.
    “Which one’s theirs?” Maggie asked, bouncing along the trail.
    Dance pointed it out and the girl launched