Rebel Heart

Brady brooded then dismissed everything to focus on his surroundings. A couple of hours later, Dan's voice came across his net.

"We got something."

"What?" Brady asked, alarmed by the grimness of Dan's voice.

"A body." Dan added quickly, "Not Lana's."

Brady almost sighed in relief.

"A little old woman. Elise said she was Lana's neighbor. I guess she tried to escape and didn't get far. She's dressed in grays-your grays."

"I gave Lana a set before we left the commo site," Brady said. His heart quickened at the first sign of proof that Lana might be alive. "Any sign they were traveling together?"

"Not likely. The body hasn't been dead long. It looks like she was living out here, not traveling."

"No sign of Lana?"

"None. Still not sure if she came this route."

"Keep looking." Brady's attention shifted again to the forest.

He searched for another hour, finding no sign of human travelers on the trail. Frustrated, he sent Dan a rally call and returned to the crater. Elise was pacing and Dan calm.

"This isn't working," Brady said. "We've got two and a half days. She had ten. We're looking at this all wrong."

"We have no way of knowing where she went or how far," Dan pointed out.

"Let's assume she ran into no trouble and traveled all ten days with four-hour breaks every day," Brady said. "How far could she get?"

Elise whipped out her micro and focused on the calculation. Brady tapped his foot, frustrated they'd wasted half a day without finding any trace of her.

"It depends on the route. But," Elise paused, studying the results, before continuing. "She's somewhere in this box." She showed him the micro, which displayed a forty-kilometer stretch along the Mississippi that was twenty kilometers deep.

"That's eight hundred square kilometers," Brady said. "And you're excluding the area on the other side of the Mississippi."

"She can't cross the river. The Mississippi is locked down with everything the feds have."

"Oh dear god," Dan said with a snort. "You can give a fed a micro …" He took it from Elise.

Brady waited impatiently as his friend manipulated the data.

"There. Forty square-kilometer area. There are three cities along the Mississippi. I recommend we start there," Dan said. "I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt that she made it all the way to the river."