The Executioner

Hundred and Eighteen

Hunter took a moment to rearrange his thoughts. There were four possibilities swimming around in his head. One – Mollie had been too spooked by her new vision and was now wandering the streets of LA with no real objective. Two – she’d decided to leave Los Angeles; after all, she’d thought about it before. Three – she’d looked up a friend, possibly the Susan woman she’d mentioned in passing. And four – she’d been abducted.

Mollie didn’t have enough cash for an air ticket, and there was no rail or bus station anywhere around Downey. If she was thinking about leaving LA, she had gone to the wrong part of town. Downey was also too far for her to have aimlessly walked there in a panic. There had to be a reason why her call to Hunter had come from a place seven and a half miles away from where the hotel was.

‘Robert,’ Garcia called again. ‘Are you OK? What do you think we should do?’

‘We’ve gotta go to Downey. According to Trevor, that’s where she was when we got disconnected.’ He instinctively checked his watch. ‘That was no more than twenty minutes ago. She wasn’t indoors. I heard traffic noise through the phone, and Trevor said the call was made from Firestone Boulevard. She might still be there somewhere.’

‘OK, let’s go.’

Firestone and Lakewood are two large and very busy boulevards in Downey, southeast Los Angeles. Garcia made the journey in less than twenty minutes.

‘Shit!’ he whispered as they got to the junction.

They were looking at Stonewood Center mall – a massive shopping complex of over a hundred and seventy stores. But that wasn’t all. Moving west from the junction, up Firestone Boulevard, was a carnival of smaller malls and stores – a shopper’s paradise.

There was a long line of cars at the entrance to Stonewood Center’s parking lot. Garcia slowed down, as if he was about to join the back of it. The streets were heaving with people carrying bags, packets and different-size boxes. Two days of shopping left until Christmas Day – every shop was open late, and the malls looked like an ant house at mealtime. They didn’t know what Mollie was wearing and they had no picture of her. Even if they did, who’d they ask? With the number of people Christmas shopping at this hour, they were looking at the proverbial needle in a haystack situation.

Hunter massaged the rough, ugly scar on his nape. Their best shot of finding Mollie at the moment was if she switched her phone back on. He’d asked Trevor to keep trying to pick up a track signal on it. If it came back into the grid, they’d know. But why had it been switched off?

Impulse was telling Hunter to search the crowds, but reason told him it would be a waste of time. There was nothing they could do from there. Hunter told Garcia not to join the line of cars.

‘We’ve gotta go back to the RHD and coordinate from there.’

As Garcia swerved his car away from the parking lot line and rejoined traffic, Hunter closed his eyes. Mollie’s last words still echoed in his ears.

‘He’s coming after me tonight.’