Page 44 of Rowe

Victor stared at the miniature horse pin.

“Why is this on my map?” Emilio cleared his throat.

“Technically, sir, the team found Belle Fleur.” Victor swept the pin box across the room. Emilio watched blue, yellow, and red pins scattered like confetti. Outside, thunder rolled. Within an hour, the sky opened.

Rain transformed shell roads into pale rivers and dirt lanes into pudding. The teams crawled through storms while wipers beat uselessly. Phones lost signal. Navigation screens spun. Ditches vanished beneath brown water.

For men who had come hunting a hurricane survivor, the weather felt like ridicule.

Theo's vehicle stopped near a raised house where a family had pulled lawn chairs beneath the porch to watch the rain. He approached with Mara's photograph sealed inside a plastic bag. A middle-aged man glanced at it.

“You still at this?” Theo stopped.

“You know me?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know we're still at anything?” The man's wife laughed. Theo looked from one face to another.

“People are protecting her.” The husband tipped his chair back.

“Maybe people just don't like you.”

“We haven't done anything to you.”

“You came here trying to find somebody who don't want finding.” Theo looked at the rain beyond the porch. For the first time, he heard how simple it sounded. He sat on the bottom step without invitation.

“My boss says if we don't find her, we're dead.” The family became quiet. The wife set down her drink.

“Well,” she said, “that's a terrible benefits package.” Theo laughed before he could stop himself. It was the first honest sound he had made in three days. The husband looked at the photograph again but did not touch it.

“You boys keep thinking a place is hidden because you can't see it.” Theo waited. “Sometimes a place is hidden because nobody will show it to you.”

“Is Belle Fleur real?” The man smiled.

“Rain's real.”

“That isn't what I asked.”

“No, but it's the answer you're getting.”

Theo stood when the storm eased. He thanked the family for the porch. The wife handed him a paper bag of biscuits for the road. That gesture troubled him more than any threat.

By the fourth morning, the forty men were exhausted, muddy, scratched by branches, bitten by insects, and beginning to suspect that every person they met had attended a secret conference dedicated to wasting their time.

Perhaps there was no conference. Perhaps there did not need to be. Louisiana had its own instinct for closing around certain people. Mara Guillory, wherever she was, had become one of them.

Sal returned to the gas station where he had bought the ceramic frog. The silver-haired cashier recognized him immediately.

“You back.”

“I need the truth.”

“That costs more than the frog.” Sal put two hundred dollars on the counter. She looked at the money, then at him.

“Put that away.”

“You know where Belle Fleur is.”