Page 39 of The Fix
Rex stood. “I’m going to reach out to a few people who might have some ideas I’m not thinking of, including the buddy I mentioned. I’ll be back so you can take a nap.”
She took his hand and tilted her head to look up at him, and he gave an almost imperceptible startle at the skin-to-skin contact. “Thank you again.” He nodded and she let go of him, instantly feeling the loss of his large, callused hand in hers. “I wrote my number right there,” he said, indicating the pad of paper. “Call me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll be back in a few hours.” He started to turn, but then paused. “Forward me the stills of that room if you would too.”
“Okay, sure.” She walked Rex to the door and said a quick goodbye, then returned to the kitchen, where she used his number to text him what he’d asked her to and programmed him into her phone. Laptop in hand, she headed to the living room, where she sat against the pillows with the computer on her lap.
The child had given in to sleep and was now snoring softly. Her heart constricted, and she picked up her phone from the coffee table and took a photo of the video and then used it to zoom in on his face. She stared at his features, more certain by the moment that he was hers. And Hollis’s. She saw herself, mostly, but she also saw Hollis as he’d looked as a little boy. She recalled the gallery of photos in his home that she’d stared at fondly once upon a time and was certain this boy partially resembled his father as a child. Her emotions were in turmoil, the longing she’d carried like a quiet whisper since the day she’d handed him over rising up as a clanging of bells inside her. This boy was hers. And he needed her. And she vowed not to let him down this time.
A do-over.
Something nagged her about the phrase. The sound of it ...
But she couldn’t figure out what bothered her, at least not with the fear of failure a quiet buzz in the background of her mind.
She’d turned the sound in the video down to mid-volume, and when something caught her attention, she put her phone down and turned the volume up on the video on her laptop. Was that ... a bird or ... crickets? No. She leaned in and listened to the sound just outside the window, slightly muffled but loud enough that she could hear it distinctly. She took another picture of the window and then used her phone again to zoom in. “A frog,” she whispered. There was a small green frog sitting on the windowsill. She zoomed in on it and took a picture and then opened the browser on her computer and did a search.
God, there were a lot of small green frogs in America.
She went through them one by one as the child slept, sliding down the wall and crumpling onto the mattress, where he brought his hands into the prayer position and tucked them under his cheek.
She cross-checked the frogs that looked like the one in her picture by listening to the recorded sounds of each one. Some were confusing, and some she was able to reject immediately.
After an hour, Cami got up and took the computer to the kitchen to make herself a strong pot of coffee. Yawning, she returned to herposition on the couch and kept searching. It took her another hour to narrow her search down to the Pacific tree frog. “Gotcha,” she whispered, the feeling of victory temporarily overriding her exhaustion.
She recognized the same black stripe outlined in yellow across its eyes, and when she played its sound, the chorus was identical to that coming from outside the window where her little boy slept behind bars.
She picked up her phone and texted Rex’s number and attached the picture of the tree frog.
The Pacific tree frog has a range spanning the PNW, N. Cali, Oregon, and Washington.
If they were assuming California, then that beautiful little frog had just narrowed their search down to the northern part of the state.
A few minutes later, her phone dinged with a text from Rex:
Nice work. See you in an hour.
Cami breathed out a smile as she set her phone down. It’d been less than twenty-four hours, and, with Rex’s help, she now knew her child was in Northern California, near the ocean. It was still a vast area geographically, but it was closer than she’d been the night before.
And she had a partner. One she’d never in a million years have expected, but a partner all the same.
The thought sent her spinning. She’d been in a terrifying, precarious position before, a threat hanging over her head where she’d been sectioned off from her mother and sister. Alone. To have someone there—even if in this case the threat was not to her directly—was a relief so all-encompassing she almost wept with gratitude.
Movement at the window broke her from her muddled thoughts, and she turned in that direction. A bird had landed on a nearby branch, and before it could lift off, Cami took a photo of it and zoomed in. It had a small head and bill with a topknot of feathers that made her thinkit was some type of quail. She opened her browser again and did the same type of search she’d just done for the frog, going back and forth between quails on her laptop and the one on her phone.
She finally stopped scrolling at one that looked almost identical and found that it was a California quail, which lived all over California, but primarily in foothill forests.
The bird didn’t narrow things down a lot, but she was now convinced that the cabin they were watching was somewhere in Northern California.
She sat back again and continued to watch the boy sleep, safe for the moment, lost in his dreams. Or, more likely, nightmares.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cyrus had dreamed of his parents, of the way they’d laughed as his dad made pancakes that were supposed to look like reindeer with bacon antlers, but instead resembled blob-like sea creatures.
That morning, three years before, Cyrus had woken to find that the entire backyard was covered in shimmery white. The dry grass was a sparkling field of icy crystals. The tree branches that sometimes scraped across his window like witches’ fingers were bent toward the ground and dripping with icicles.
Before the pancakes, his mother had burst into his room excitedly and told him to put on his snow gear so they could sled down the back hill. And then his father had helped him build a snowman with rocks for eyes and his 49ers ball cap.
Later that day, they’d headed out to a movie, his mom turning up the volume on the car radio when “Jingle Bell Rock” came on. It was the last thing he remembered before he’d woken in the hospital and been told his parents “didn’t make it.” He hadn’t understood at first. Didn’t make what? But then the nice nurse had held his hand and told him that she was there to help him. She’d told him everything would be okay.
