Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(108)

She punched in Allison’s cell number and the unforgettable password HUMAMA, hoping to get a location on her missing friend.

The search resulted in the message Signal Inactive.

Seeing that there was an option to be notified if there was a change in status, Randi punched in her phone number.

Now, she returns to the locator site and enters the password once again, then holds her breath as the search gets under way.

Moments later, she finds herself looking at a large, pulsating blue dot on a map. It’s somewhere on the water—New Jersey, she sees, quickly pressing the minus sign button to scroll out on the map.

It’s somewhere on the Jersey Shore, just north of Salt Breeze Pointe, where she knows Mack’s sister has a house.

So what do I do with this information?

Remembering the business card Detective Manzillo handed to her on Sunday morning, she wonders whether she should call him.

The blue dot is moving really quickly. Almost as though . . .

Is Allison being chased?

Maybe she should call Ben at work and ask him what to do.

No. He mentioned that he had a client meeting this morning. He’ll never pick up his phone, and she doesn’t want to wait for him to call her back.

It’s all right. I don’t need to ask Ben.

Detective Manzillo said I should call him if there’s anything else he should know.

It’s just like with the story Allison told me when she was drunk, about finding Mack in the kitchen with the knife.

I knew Detective Manzillo should know about that, and . . .

Yes. He should know this.

In the small upstairs bedroom where the girls slept, Allison finds both twin beds empty, covers thrown back.

Hudson would have made her bed. She does every morning, without fail, the moment she climbs out of it.

Racing back to the kitchen, Allison struggles to contain the fear that swept through her when she realized Mack and the kids and the car are missing, refusing to allow it to erupt into full-blown panic.

She needs to keep her wits about her.

Yes, they’re gone. But that doesn’t mean something is wrong.

Maybe he took the kids and went out to buy . . . cereal or jackets or . . .

Or maybe he went out looking for her . . .

J.J.’s car seat is gone—but so is the stroller base. Why didn’t Mack detach it? Why take the whole thing? Did they go out walking?

No, the car is gone, she reminds herself, raking a hand through her wind-tangled hair and trying to think straight.

When she left, the stroller was parked beside the table, and Mack was sitting in a chair facing it, spoon-feeding J.J. Now she sees that the chair he’d occupied is tipped over backward, and her purse, which she’d left dangling from the stroller handles, lies beside it, the contents scattered across the floor.

Even if Mack had been willing to leave it that way, Hudson wouldn’t have allowed it . . . if she had a choice.

So they left in a hurry.

Where did they go?

Allison quickly kneels to find her phone on the floor. She’s going to turn it on, regardless of what Mack said, and she’s going to hope he did the same thing so that she can reach him.

He wouldn’t just abandon her here . . . not by choice.

The gnawing doubt of the past few days now begins to tear at her like shark teeth, gnashing jagged holes into her reasoning.

She quickly rummages through her belongings on the floor: wallet, packet of wet wipes, keys . . .

Everything that had been in her purse is here—except for her phone . . .

Where is her phone?

Did Mack take it with him?

Why would he do that?

So that you wouldn’t be able to use it to call him.

But why? He’d have to know she’d be beside herself with worry, coming back here to an empty house . . .

Even if turning it on for a few minutes might send off a GPS beacon, and anyone searching might be able to find them . . .

Mack still wouldn’t want me to be here alone and frantic, isolated, without a car, and unable to call him, or call for help . . .

She remembers the knife in his hand, and the empty look in his eyes, and cold dread slithers over her.

Again, she claws through her belongings on the floor, and presses her cheek to the worn linoleum to see if the phone could have skittered under the stove or refrigerator or . . .

What the hell is that?

On trembling hands and knees, she crawls toward the object that lies a few feet away, well apart from the emptied contents of her purse.

Dear God.

Dear God.

It’s an empty syringe.

Allison scrambles to her feet, staring at it.

Maybe . . .

Maybe one of Daryl’s kids is a diabetic.

Maybe a junkie has been squatting in the house.

But that would mean the syringe was here when they arrived yesterday, and somehow they overlooked it . . .

It’s lying squarely out in the open, in the middle of the floor.

And it couldn’t have been there yesterday, Allison remembers, because I crawled around looking for mousetraps and marbles and anything J.J. could find and hurt himself or choke on, and . . .

This can’t be happening.

It isn’t happening, she assures herself. Her always-active imagination has gotten the best of her and she’s jumping to conclusions instead of considering the possibilities.

Like . . .