The Endless Road to Sunshine - Nicky James Page 0,147
adding Skylar to that list, to that folder I kept hidden away.
My heart beat a rapid tattoo as I took the stairs three at a time down to the parking level. I had a lead, and I intended to get away before anyone stopped me. If I waited, if I didn’t figure out where Skylar was immediately, it would be too late. Reggie thought he was doing Morgan a favor. His intentions were clear.
I revved the engine of Levi’s SUV and burned rubber out of the parking lot. I didn’t know where I was going, but as I drove, I scanned the horizon in the distance, searching for a water tower. It was hopeless. Everywhere I looked, tall buildings blocked my view. I couldn’t see anything. It didn’t matter how tall a water tower might seem in a picture or when you stood in front of it, compared to the high-rise structures littering downtown, it was insignificant.
After a few blocks, I pulled to the side of the road and googled Windsor and water tower, hoping I could pinpoint its location. In a flash, images appeared on my screen, familiar ones I’d seen in the background of Reggie’s picture of a stray dog. Along with the images were articles talking about its reconstruction almost a decade earlier. It took opening and scanning a few sites for me to find the intersection where it was located.
I typed the street names into Google Maps and waited while it calculated directions. Time felt like it was slipping through my fingers. As Maps spat out the fastest route, my phone rang. Levi’s name flashed across the screen.
I dismissed it and darted back into traffic, breaking the speed limit as I cut around slow-moving vehicles, earning a few bleats from horns as I narrowly missed causing accidents in my race to get to Skylar.
A distant part of my brain knew I was being reckless, but I couldn’t stop. My chest was heavy with enough guilt because of men Morgan had killed. I wouldn’t survive if Skylar died too.
It took ten agonizing minutes to get to the location where the Windsor water tower loomed on a vacant lot. The neighborhood was rough. The houses were in disrepair, and the fencing surrounding most of the properties consisted of nothing more than broken boards with slats missing and peeling paint. The few cars sitting on the road were rusting away. Garbage blew down the cracked and pitted asphalt in the fall breeze, swirling into the gutters and along the curbs. There were no signs of life.
I parked and hopped out of Levi’s car, spinning in place as I tried to remember what I’d seen in that picture. Reggie was right. I hadn’t been paying attention. I spun again, trying to determine at what angle the photo had been taken.
I focused on houses, looking for one with white clapboard siding and a rundown garage. My heart pounded through my ribs, my blood racing so quickly through my body I was dizzy and on the verge of passing out.
I wanted to fall to my knees and cry.
When none of the houses on that block looked familiar, I ran down the street parallel to the tower, trying to judge distance and background and angle. Where had Reggie been standing? Farther away, I thought. From where I stood, the tower was too big to have been a background image in a picture. I needed distance.
I veered through the dying grass of an abandoned lot. The houses on either side had sagging roofs and weathered siding. There was a tricycle tipped on its side in a gravel driveway, its wheel dented and rusting away. A deflated basketball lay beside a hoop with no net.
I scanned, my lungs burning as I tried to find a white house. There had to be a white house nearby.
I retreated and took the other intersecting road, my sneakers pounding on the pavement as I put distance between me and the tower again.
Then I saw it. At the far end of the street was a house with a clear view of the tower at the opposite end of the road. I cranked up my speed. The service bay of an old and decrepit garage sat beside the property, the door rusted shut and the glass window so dirty it would be impossible to see inside. In the gravel drive sat a black sedan. I didn’t know what Reggie drove, but someone was there.