Lena — Tuesday, November 17, 2026, late morning
The car was exactly where Mercer had said. Lena had thought it might be. Seeing it still gave her a lift. A road, a bend, something she could put her hand on if she needed to, instead of another answer to a telephone call.
A local officer stood by the driver's door. He had put on a bright vest over his jacket and looked like a man whose mother had won an old argument. The shoulder was narrow. Cars went by close enough to stir the hair beside Lena's ear.
“She wasn't driving it anywhere,” he said.
The hood was still up. A roadside examination supported the breakdown; the rest would wait for the people who could examine it properly.
Lena stood back from the car while the officer took his photographs. A school form lay folded beneath an empty bottle in the passenger footwell. She recognized the blue border. Last night Tessa had brought out another copy and laid it in front of Alma, fiercely careful to make the point that the trip itself was still happening. Lena asked the officer to include the form in the photographs. She'd tell Alma where it was.
Her phone rang. Owen had begun the bus-stop checks. The information available so far didn't confirm the drop, and neither of them expected a record of every person who stood beside a road.
“He's good on the car,” she said.
“I'll take the bus stop.”
They divided the remaining calls, and she went back to the service station.
The manager had a counter to run and a delivery blocking his doorway. He listened while moving cartons with his foot. Lena had to follow him to finish her question, and ask the last part again when a customer called him back to the counter.
He had already given police what the camera showed. Nadia with Mercer, nine thirty-two Monday morning. Yes, the two of them had bought things. No, he couldn't remember the woman's voice. He knew another man who might have seen her later, because the man had come in that morning and said he knew the face from the appeal.
“Where?”
“Farm supply. He does the counter there.”
“Can you call him?”
“He'll be getting a delivery about now. Let it ring.”
She took the number. Before she left, she moved the delivery carton the manager had been trying to get around. It weighed more than she expected. He pointed to where he wanted it, and she put it there. He was already talking to the next customer.
The farm-supply clerk answered between customers. Lena told him why she was calling, and he said he had wondered whether she was the person he ought to talk to.
“You saw the woman?”
“I thought I had. It's a little picture.”
She let him tell it. A pickup outside. A man he recognized as a driver, though he didn't know the name. The woman had stayed in the passenger seat for part of the stop; the clerk had seen her through the glass before she got out. He thought it was the woman in the appeal, but thought was the word, he wanted that understood.
“What time?”
“Later in the morning.”
“Can we work out how much later?”
“I can look for the sale. Hang on.”
She heard a cash drawer open, a thank-you delivered to somebody else. He came back and asked for a few minutes. They had a camera too. He wouldn't promise anything about what was on it until somebody looked.
“That's fine,” she said. “Please don't guess.”
She called Owen. He was quiet while she repeated the account.
“I'll go,” he said. “You finish there.”
She wanted to go herself. She wanted to hear the clerk hesitate, or not hesitate. Owen would give her the words; she'd want the space around them. She was already reaching for her keys.
“Ask him to preserve what he's got,” she said.
“I was thinking I'd wipe it with a magnet.”
“Fine. Yes.”
“Go get something to eat.”
She bought a roll that had gone hard at the edges and ate it in the car, then called Alma to say they had found Nadia's car.
Alma asked the obvious question, and Lena had to say no, no Nadia. Just the car. She tried Alma again to tell her about the form, but this time the number was busy.
Lena put the roll away and wrote down the time she had promised to call again.