Chapter 4

“Jason, tell me what's happened. Quickly!”

“Diane, I think Alyssa's run into the wrong people. A man with bleached hair picked her up, and since then I can't get through to her.”

Diane Bell's voice shook.

“Then we call the police.”

“We can't. It's only been a few hours. They'll tell us to keep trying her number.

“But I think I know roughly where they are. I'll drive over and get you.”

On the way to the Bells' house, Tyler put two more videos in the group.

The first was a celebration. The drone had gone up far enough to bring back a wide, cold, beautiful view — and a commercial airliner passing not far off.

That was flatly illegal, and yet in writing he played it down.

“Twenty-six hundred feet, challenge complete. Those who know, know.”

Twenty-six hundred feet does not put you level with an airliner. He'd gone five times that and he knew it.

The second video was a different kind of problem.

“Here! Right here! You nearly had it!”

“Blind man's bluff. Whoever gets caught takes something off!”

The tent wasn't large, and there was exactly one woman in it. Win or lose, every man in there came out ahead.

Then a few more photos, with nobody in them at all.

Somehow that was worse.

A pile of clothing, everything that had been lost in the game, and sitting on top of it a piece of women's underwear nobody could mistake for anything else.

“That's me offline for a while, gentlemen. Time for the real business.”

By the time I got to the Bells' house, they'd already called in relatives.

“We should take plenty of people,” one of the relatives said. “More of us looking, more chance of finding her.”

I called a carload of my own friends and told them to record from start to finish. That closed the last exit her family had.

Nobody was going to tell me afterward that these people were only messing around and nothing happened.

We set out, two cars behind mine.

A little over half an hour later we came to an empty stretch of country, and there was the tent, sitting in the middle of it without a care in the world.

Laughing, back and forth. Men, and a woman.

The tent was shaking hard, and there was a man breathing behind it. You didn't need to be clever to know what was going on inside.

Diane Bell stopped walking.

“Jason. Are you certain this is the right place?”

I nodded at Marcus Webb to keep the camera up, and slapped the side of the tent.

Everything inside went still.

After a few seconds the zipper came down and a man somewhere in his forties pushed his head out.

“You want to start something? I'm in the middle of enjoying myself.”