Page 72 of A Future To Remember

Travis’s eyes darted from my phone screen to me, then back again. Finally, he said, “We get a few of the percenters traveling through here for the Kaczynski thing at the end of October.”

“Kaczynski? The Unabomber Kaczynski?”

Travis nodded. “Yeah. There’s a meeting of anti-government groups every year in Lincoln from mid-October to the end, right before Halloween.”

Mid-October. That’d been before we’d arrived in Montana. Then again, Travis had said that the guy who abducted my wife smelled like he’d been camping for a couple of weeks.

“Where do these groups get together?”

Travis pointed toward the highway. “The campground by the Blackfoot River.”

“The Lost Moose Campground?” That was the camp grocery store where Abby had gone for grilled cheese and tomato soup supplies the day she vanished.

“Yep.”

I tapped the counter a few times, thinking. We’d interviewed everyone at the campground in the days following Abby’s disappearance. And we’d interviewed the campground manager and owner. It’d been like pulling teeth, and they seemed far more worried about being linked to an abduction than about what might’ve happened to my wife.

“What went down after this tattooed Three Percenter and my wife came out of the restroom, Travis?” I asked. What I didn’t ask was how long they’d been in there, or if there’d been any indications that Abby was being raped inside the restroom. I couldn’t handle that thought right now.

He shrugged. “He bought a couple of packs of smokes, some chips, and a Coke. Then they left.”

“You seem to remember him well, Travis. Why?”

“The dude made me nervous. And I remember his tats, like, ‘Yeah, that explains it.’”

“What did he do or say that made you nervous?”

“I dunno. Just had bad news written all over him, you know?”

“I do. Do you remember what he was driving?”

“Nah. Sorry. He left and I tried to forget about him.”

“And my wife went willingly with him?”

“She sat down on the floor while he paid for his smokes, then he pulled her up and made her walk out with him.”

“Did she speak?” I couldn’t help the way my voice broke in that moment. Or the way my eyes watered.

He looked at me intently, and I knew he finally got it. “Naw, man. Sorry. Like I said, she was really out of it.”

I felt my fist clench. I wanted to punch Travis. Hard. If he’d done even the barest minimum that a concerned citizen might do—call the sheriff to report the notably suspicious pairing of a Three Percenter and an obviously drugged-out female—Abby might be next to me at home on the couch right now. But he hadn’t, and because he hadn’t, I had no idea where she was, if she was even alive, and if she was still alive, if she’d been sold into some sex-trafficking ring.

Standing there, looking at this piece-of-shit coward, hiding behind his counter, not wanting to “get involved” was almost more than I could stomach. Somehow, though, I managed to push my phone at him without clubbing him with it, and said, “Your deets, Travis. Don’t make me pull them out of you the hard way.”

He eyed me in alarm, but he didn’t argue or hesitate longer than a moment before he lifted the phone and plugged in his name and a number. Handing me back the phone, I took it, looked at the screen, then clicked the number he’d put in, also hitting the speaker function.

It rang. And rang. And rang, then a voicemail picked up. “Hey, it’s Shyanne. Why’re you calling me when you can text?”

I clicked off the call and curled my lip. Travis’s face had gone beet-red.

I pivoted the phone back to him. “That was your one and only freebie, bub.”

He held out his hand for my phone, and I gave it to him. He tapped quickly, then tapped the number he’d loaded, and a moment later, his back pocket began buzzing. He lifted out his own phone and showed it to me so that I could see it was my phone calling his.

“Better,” I told him. “I’ll be in touch when the sketch artist arrives. Don’t leave town, you hear?”

That got me a nod, and I took it for a win.