3 WEEKS, 6 DAYS

Riley poked at her forehead with a pencil eraser, waiting impatiently for something to alert her to either facial recognition on Mac, or his Jeep VIN, or his phone if it hit any cell network.

"Damnit!" Riley hissed, throwing her pencil at the wall. It stuck into the wall, along with the other eleven she'd already thrown.

She sighed, looking down to pick up another pencil. There were no more. She slid out of the tall chair and collected the pencils from the wall. She heard her computer beep.

Riley ran back, throwing the pencils on the counter. There was a hit on his Jeep's VIN! Riley ran out of the room to find Matty.

/_\

Two hours later, Matty and Riley stood in the Klamath Falls, Oregon, police station. The police chief came out from the back, staring at the two.

"We need a Jeep that was impounded by Officer Gary Ramone," Matty said before he could speak. And then she flicked a warrant at him.

The chief eyed her as he took the paper. He unfolded it and read the paper.

"You know it had been abandoned, right?" he asked. "It had been sitting in the Pilot Travel Center parking lot for over three weeks."

"Thank you for telling us that, but we need access to it immediately," Matty told him. "The owner is missing. There may be evidence inside that can help us find him."

"It was pretty torn up."

"Torn up?"

"Yeah. Someone had slashed up the inside and spilled bleach everywhere."

"Probably whoever took him," Riley said.

"Thank you, Chief. I would like our crime scene unit to see if we can find anything."

"Jim," he said to someone behind him. "Can you take these ladies to the impound lot?"

An officer walked up and led them back outside.

/_\

From the passenger seat of a rental car, Matty watched Riley come out of the Pilot Travel building. She sat down behind the wheel and stared at the building. It didn't appear she was going to tell Matty anything about what she'd learned inside.

"Well?" Matty finally asked.

Riley sighed slowly, looking at the convenience store. "They don't keep recordings for more than seven days. A clerk who worked that night told the manager in the morning that a blonde woman came in and told him that she'd blown two tires, and she'd be back in two days to pick it up. Obviously, she didn't come back. And—" Riley looked at Matty. "The night clerk is dead. The manager said he died of a meth overdose. He said the guy had been clean for three years, but just fell off and OD'd three nights later. We can't even ask him for a description."

"Maybe there are other cameras around here." Matty started looking around the area.

"I asked the manager that. He said no one here has cameras. He said sometimes he gets regular truckers in the back that have dash cams, and he'll ask them if they caught anything that day, but he couldn't promise anything. It's a dead-end, Matty." Riley hit the steering wheel several times. "Another God…" Riley laid her forehead on the steering wheel. "Dead end."

Matty watched her in silence.

"He was here, in America," Riley quietly said. "He's an experienced outdoorsman, he was packed for the changes in weather, he told us where he was going and when he'd be back, but somehow… Somehow he just dropped off the face of the planet. And whoever took him, tried to erase him." Riley sat back.

"We'll keep looking. We have to."

Riley looked at her. "But why erase him? I keep coming back to that, Matty. The only time I've ever erased someone was because we were sending them into WitSec."

Matty stared at her. "Maybe, Riley, that's what it is."

"Yeah, but who? Our enemies wouldn't care if we just disappeared and left a digital footprint. Fairly sure most would relish in it."

"I agree. So then this is someone who didn't want us looking for him or make it impossible to find him."

"But why?"

"We'll figure out why after we find him. We're going back. We have some leads here. And yes, the Jeep was trashed, but we have the best CSU in the country. We may find something in it that will lead us to who the woman was that dropped it off."

Riley started the car and backed out. She didn't feel as positive as Matty sounded, but she was willing to try anything right now.