When Love Walked Away novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Lot C
The valet moved the car to one of two overflow lots; Gabe arrives with a water jug; Lot C is empty.
"911, what is your emergency?"
"A five-year-old girl is locked in a silver Audi somewhere near Copper Ridge Country Club."
"What's the plate, ma'am?"
"I don't know the plate."
"Is the child conscious?"
"She was twelve minutes ago."
"We're dispatching the nearest unit. Stay on the line."
"I can't stay on the line," I said.
"I have to find the car."
I hung up and ran back to the valet stand.
Three boys in black vests stood there with their arms at their sides, and a woman in a pink blazer was talking fast at them.
She was the club manager, and she looked at me.
"Mrs. Dalton, I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding."
"A silver Audi, child seat in the back, came in at about twelve-thirty."
"I need to know which of your boys parked it."
The three boys looked at each other.
The tallest one raised his hand.
"I think that was the new guy's," he said. "But he went home sick at one."
"Where did he take it?"
"Overflow, probably. We shuttle to Mesa Road when the front is full."
"Which lot on Mesa Road?"
"There's two. C and D."
"Which one?"
"I don't know, ma'am. It depends who's running that hour."
"Does he have a phone?"
"He's, uh, not supposed to carry it on shift."
I wanted to scream, so I put it in my fist instead.
"Give me the address."
"It's just Mesa Road, ma'am, past the hospital site. You can't miss the lots."
I was turning toward my car when a white pickup came up the drive too fast and stopped crooked behind it.
It had DESERT LINE FREIGHT on the door in blue letters.
Gabe Stadler climbed out, and his shirt was soaked through.
Gabe ran our night dispatch, and in four years I had never seen him run.
He carried a five-gallon water jug in one hand and an orange cooler in the other.
"I heard you in the hallway," he said. "I told the boss he could finish the rate sheet without me."
"Gabe, you don't have to."
"I've got ice in the cooler. Where's the car?"
"Mesa Road. Two lots. I don't know which."
"Then we take them in order." He nodded at my car. "Leave it here. Mine has the bigger tank."
I looked at him for one second.
Then I got in the pickup.
The A/C hit my face, and I realized I had been sweating through my blouse the whole time.
He pulled out of the gate so fast the guard jumped.
"Brodie?" he asked.
"At lunch."
"At lunch."
"With a woman."
He didn't say anything to that, which I was grateful for.
The road turned to a two-lane strip of beige gravel.
On the left was a dry wash and a row of dead mesquite trees.
On the right was a long dirt lot behind a chain-link fence, with a faded sign that said OVERFLOW C.
Gabe pulled through the gap in the gate.
Forty cars sat in rows, baking.
We drove up and down the rows with our windows open and our heads out.
Sedans, SUVs, a delivery van.
A silver Audi would have caught the sun.
There were two silver cars and neither one was an Audi.
I got out and ran along the fence anyway, looking in every back window.
I looked in every one of them, and nothing was inside any of them but heat.
"Tilly!" I screamed. "Tilly, it's Mommy!"
A tin can rolled in the wind and stopped.
I came back to the truck with my hair stuck to my face.
"It's not here," I said.
"Okay."
"It's not here, Gabe."
"Okay. We go to D."
"Where is D?"
He looked up the road, then back at me, then at the dashboard clock.
It said 2:09.
"I don't know yet," he said. "The sign only says C. D could be anywhere on this road."
A patrol car finally rolled in behind us with no siren.
A young officer got out with one hand on his belt.
"Ma'am, I'm told you have a child in a vehicle."
"Silver Audi, a child seat, somewhere on this road."
"What's the plate?"
"I don't know the plate!"
"Ma'am, calm down. I'll need a make, a model, a plate, and the last place the child was seen."
I looked at him and understood that the system was going to take time I didn't have.
Gabe stepped between us.
He put the water jug down on the dirt.
"Theresa," he said quietly. "Say her exact words again. Everything Tilly told you on the phone."
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