Al received a second phone call on the workroom line that day, when normally he wouldn't get a call specifically for him all year. This time a coworker answered it first and, when she told him he had a call, remarked, "You're a popular guy today."

"Sorry, I don't have my cell, I gave it to my wife," he said sheepishly.

"Oh, did she lose hers?"

He hadn't told anyone about Rachel going missing. For all they knew, he'd just called in sick the last couple of days. "Yes," he said.

Luckily his coworker didn't ask him to explain how she'd lost her phone. He picked up the workroom line. "Hello?"

"Hey, sweetie."

"Rachel, are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Just wanted to let you know your detective friends called."

"Oh, did they."

"Yes, and they'd like to come by and have a chat."

"Oh. Did they say what they want to talk about?"

"They did not. I asked them if they could hold off until you got home. I'd really like you there."

"And I'd really like to be there."

"Good."

"You know, we should probably call Sunny, he said we should have lawyers the next time they came calling."

"Al, do you really have the energy to find a lawyer right now?"

He sighed and said, "No. Not really."

"That's what I thought. If they're okay with interviewing both of us together, it must be a friendly call."

"Yeah. You're right. Okay."

Silence for a moment. He cleared his throat and said, "Was there something else? I'll be home soon, so I guess I better--"

"Did Lauren call you?"

Her tone was more than just one of polite inquiry. He needed to be careful. "She did, in fact."

"She called your cell phone first. She wasn't aware you'd given it to me."

He swallowed hard. "She sent me an email with a photo she thought I should see."

"Yes. She sent it to me, too. I forwarded it to the detectives. Maybe that's why they want to talk. Have you seen it, yet?"

"Honestly, I didn't think I should look at it at work."

"Good call."

"Is it bad?"

"It's not good."

"I'll look at it when I'm home."

Silence. Then she asked, "Was that all you talked about?"

"Yes, because I'm not supposed to talk long on the work phone on personal calls."

"Ah. Is that a hint you need to go?"

"Unfortunately, yes, but I'll see you soon."

He hung up feeling guilty he'd ended the call so abruptly, but what else could he have told her about Lauren's call that wasn't incriminating?

When he arrived home, Parsons and Reynolds were already there. "They'd like to go home at a good time," Rachel explained.

"I wouldn't want to get in the way of that," he said.

"We just wanted to update you both on a few things," Parsons said. "First, we discovered the most recent calls Joe had on his phone were from or to the same number, twice; once close to midnight, and the other at roughly four in the morning, last Sunday, when you were reported missing." He handed Rachel a sheet of paper with a phone number on it. "Do either of you recognize this number?"

Al looked at it and shook his head. Rachel said, "No, but I'm sure it's the number of whoever called Joe to go out there. The one at four is when Joe called them back to say we were close."

"What?" Al said. "What is this? Joe got a call?"

Rachel didn't answer. Parsons took the paper back and said, "We'll try to track this number down. The second thing we have is the trip information from the car co-op, and we wanted to confirm the stops with you, Rachel."

Reynolds had a file folder, and she opened it and handed another sheet of paper to Rachel, who sat at the dining room table and looked at it. Al sidled over to her and sat down beside her. On the paper was a computer generated map, with a route designated as a coloured line, with a few dots punctuating it at various points. Below the map was a list of times, directions and stops.

Reynolds pointed to the first dot on the map. "Okay, so we have the start location as the pre-assigned spot downtown where you picked it up, correct?"

"Yes," Rachel said. "I fobbed in here. The cars have a fob reader on the windshield where you press the fob to make the car unlock and lock."

"Okay. So here's where you start your trip. Midnight." She moved her finger just a millimetre and stopped. "There's a significant stop at this address just down the street."

"Right. Joe and I stopped at Justiciar headquarters to pick up Lauren's sword."

"What?!" Al squawked.

"Sorry. Did you say you went to pick up a sword?" Reynolds asked.

"Yeah, see, Joe had a spare key for the front door and Lauren's office, and the alarm code for the building. We wanted to bring something to protect us in case things went sideways, which, of course, they did. Lauren keeps a sword in her office because it's too sharp to have at home with kids around. It's her grandfather's, he brought it home from the war."

Al looked at Reynolds and Parsons. They looked as mystified as he did. "When we were about thirteen," Al said, "and we were all growing up in Queensborough... me, Rachel, Lauren, Joe and Sunny... I don't think you've met Sunny..."

"You all grew up together?" Reynolds asked, astonished.

"Yeah, but we lost touch with each other for about thirty years, and then we reunited. Anyway, when we were growing up, we had an encounter with a man who was abusing his son, a boy we befriended. This man took Rachel into his house against her will, and we broke in to rescue her. Lauren brought her sword with her to help us against the much bigger man. She..." He cleared his throat before continuing. "... sliced off his penis with it."

Both detectives tried to hide their surprise behind stony faces, but he could tell they were a little thrown by this story. "And she was thirteen when it happened? A minor?" Parsons asked.

Al nodded.

"She did it to save me," Rachel explained. "He was just about to assault me sexually. He had his dick out, and he went charging after them because they broke in, and..." She made a chopping motion with her hand. Al could tell Parsons squeezed his legs tighter together. "So, this sword, it's always been a kind of totem, a symbol of our growing up, and of that terrible time. Joe knew she kept it in the office, so he brought it with us as an equalizer. Turned out they had their own."

Reynolds and Parsons shared a look but didn't comment. Rachel must have told them most of this already, so they were inured to the story of what had happened that night. For Al, though, it was all new, and his guts were churning with dread at what he was about to hear next.

"Okay, let's move on from there," Reynolds said. "I assume you locked all the doors back up and reset the alarm?" When Rachel nodded, she continued. "Now you leave downtown."

She trailed her finger where the route line left the downtown core of Vancouver and travelled along Terminal Avenue, to First Avenue. "It looks like you're heading to the Trans Canada Highway at the First Avenue exit."

Rachel nodded. "That's right. We thought the highway would be the fastest way to get where we were going."

Al was fascinated by this roundabout way of finally finding out what Joe and Rachel had done that night.

"So, now your route appears to turn off here in Burnaby," Reynolds said.

"Yes," Rachel said. "We went to see Johnny, Joe's brother."

"Johnny?" Al said. "What the hell? That late at night?"

"Yup. He was giving us money to pay off the guys."

Al stared at her for a second. "What guys?"

Rachel sighed. "At the party, Joe received a call from an unknown number. That number, I guess." She pointed to the piece of paper in Parsons' hand. "Someone on the other end told him that he witnessed Johnny and me burying Charlie in the woods--"

"By Charlie, you mean the dog that belonged to Joe's brother, Johnny," Parsons said.

"That's right."

"Wait, wait," Al said. "You helped Johnny bury Charlie?"

Rachel nodded impatiently and waved her hand as if swatting a fly. "It was back in the summer. Johnny didn't want Joe and Lauren to know he'd accidentally run over Charlie in the driveway. Luckily the kids were away on a day trip with his wife, so they didn't see it. He didn't know how Charlie had gotten out of the house, and he was frantic to keep the tragedy a secret. He put him in the steamer trunk and in the garage until night time, meanwhile making up the story that Charlie went missing and putting on the whole search effort. That night, while pretending to look for him, he took the steamer trunk in his truck and called me. I met him at a Skytrain station and we went out there."

"You just... helped Johnny because he asked you to?"

Rachel shrugged. "I didn't have anything else to do. And I like Johnny. I had a bit of a crush on him when I was twelve or thirteen. And I know all about covering up a dead dog."

"True. Where was I when this happened?" Al asked.

"I think it was an after work party with your coworkers. Anyway, the person on the other end of the phone told Joe that it wasn't Johnny's property, it was theirs, and they threatened to dig him up and deliver him to Johnny's house the next morning if we didn't bring a thousand dollars and take him somewhere else. When Joe balked at that, because it was late and that was the last thing he wanted to do, they threatened to firebomb the construction equipment on the site, and that got him going, because that would have cost more than a thousand dollars to replace."

Al was still stupefied by this explanation. "Why only a thousand dollars? It seems rather low."

"We think it was a ruse," Parsons said. "The amount of money demanded does seem very small as extortions go. We think they just wanted Joe and Johnny to go out there to do exactly what they did to you, only Johnny didn't go, it was you, Rachel."

"Why did you go, by the way?" Reynolds asked. "We never really got clarity on that."

"I couldn't let Joe go alone, and Al and Lauren were out of commission," Rachel said, shrugging. "And anyway, we were both pissed at them for making out right in front of us and embarrassing everyone in the room. We both just wanted to leave and cool down. We thought we'd be back in a couple of hours." She rolled her eyes at the thought of how wrong she was.

"So, you leave Burnaby," Reynolds said, moving her finger, "and then you take the highway over the Port Mann Bridge. Your car co-op pays the toll, so it recorded that transaction too. Then you take the 176th Street exit to go into Surrey's Cloverdale neighbourhood. You make a prolonged stop at this address."

"Yeah, that's another site Joe's company is working on. We went to dig another grave for Charlie," Rachel said. She looked to Al. "That was what I was talking about in my first text to you in the early morning, that it was taking longer than we thought. We had to find a place on the site that was out of the way of any feet and heavy machinery while still on the property. Then it took us a while to dig because the ground was a little frozen by a couple of chilly nights."

Al stared open mouthed at her. "That's what you were doing all that time? Wait, why did you book the car for an entire day if you were going to come back by the morning?"

Rachel's face softened. "I knew we had dinner with your mom later that day. I thought maybe we'd spend a nice day out, as well, get out of downtown, you know?"

So, he was right. Rachel was a fantastic wife, and he didn't deserve her.

"The site where you dug, did that property belong to Johnny or Joe?" Parsons asked.

Rachel shrugged. "I'm not sure. Sometimes they purchase land themselves, build and sell, sometimes they build for developers on land they purchase."

"Okay, so it seems you spent the most time at this stop," Reynolds continued. "Then you connect with the Fraser Highway, here, and there you spend some time. Traffic jam?"

"RCMP road block, checking for drunk drivers."

"Aha," Al said. "That's the second text."

"Yes, and it was a pain in the ass, because we were so close to the place we were supposed to meet the guy, except it turned out to be more than one guy. We just wanted to get through."

"So, then you did," Reynolds said. "No one pulled the breathalyzer on you? You did come from a party."

"Joe drove. He and Lauren worked out that he would be the designated driver that night."

"Good thinking," Parsons said. "Is he authorized to drive your car, though?"

Rachel grimaced. "You won't tell Modo, will you?"

Parsons smiled. "I think Modo cares more about the car being stolen and left somewhere other than its designated spot long after the booking expired."

"So, you make your way to this spot for another stop," Reynolds said, pointing to the spot in Aldergrove where Al and Lauren had gone. "Is this where you met them?"

"Some of them. They were in a truck, a Dodge Ram, I think. The first thing we noticed was that there was no steamer trunk with Charlie in it. The second thing we noticed was that the two men exiting the truck were wearing balaclavas. We were on high alert right away, but we still just thought they wanted to take the money and not be identified. We thought maybe the steamer trunk was in the bed of the truck. We exited the car, and Joe asked them what the fuck was going on, where was the trunk. They just stood there silently, and we knew this wasn't right, so we just got back in the car and took off. And they started following."

"Oh, fuck," Al breathed, scared even by this recounting of it in the comfort of their own home. "Is that when you called and left the voicemail?"

She shook her head. "Not until we saw the second truck blocking us off."

"Fuck. You must have been so scared."

Rachel nodded but said nothing.

"You didn't think to call the police at this point?" Parsons asked.

"I did, though," Rachel said, her voice child-like and quavering. "I was so scared, though, my hands were shaking so much, that after I left the voicemail for Al, I fumbled the phone before I could call nine-one-one, and the phone fell out of sight, it was dark, and I couldn't find it."

"That was when it must have fallen beneath your seat," Parsons said. "That was where we found it."

"So, did they block you off here, then?" Reynolds asked, pointing to another point, down 272nd Street.

Rachel nodded. "Middle of fucking nowhere. No side roads to escape to. They had us blocked off. One truck behind us, one in front. They must have been communicating by CB radio to coordinate the block like that."

"I take it this is where Joe was assaulted?" Parsons asked.

Rachel nodded, swallowing. "He never should have left the car, but they had baseball bats, so they could have feasibly smashed the windows. He thought he could hold them off by swinging the sword around. He was surrounded quickly, though, and he was more worried about protecting me than himself, because they were trying to get to the car. He couldn't be everywhere at once."

She paused, and Al realized she was trying and failing to hold it together. Her chin quivered, and tears ran down her face. Al put an arm around her and drew her close, and she wept into his shoulder for a minute. This, Al realized, was why she hadn't wanted to talk about it until now. This was still very real for her, very frightening. They really could have been killed.

Parsons and Reynolds stood quietly, respecting her need for a moment to compose herself.

Eventually Rachel sniffed and raised her head. "So, you've seen Joe's injuries. While they were working on him, one of them went in the door Joe left open and started grabbing for me. I fought like a maniac, but in the scuffle he punched me in the face, got my eye and my nose. Luckily it wasn't a full on punch, or I would have been knocked out, but my head was still spinning, my nose was bleeding.

"I didn't see how badly they injured Joe, but I knew I had to get out of that car because the guy who hit me found the hanging key and put it in the ignition. He was going to drive away with me in it, and I could only imagine what he had planned. I opened the door just before the guy figured out how to work the automatic locks, and he started driving before I could get out. Luckily it was just starting to move, so my impact hitting the ground wasn't as hard as it could have been."

"Jesus Christ, Rachel," Al breathed. "My God, what you went through... so that was your blood, then, on the passenger side window."

"Probably," she said, shrugging.

"We'll confirm that when the DNA results come back," Parsons said.

"So, you and Joe were left there," Reynolds said.

Rachel nodded. "The Modo car peeled away, and I realized my purse was still in there, probably in the foot well of the front passenger seat. The two trucks accompanied it, one leading, one following, back north up 272nd Street. I guess we were lucky they didn't try to run us over. Poor Joe was in the middle of the road, hunched over his arm, which I later discovered was broken, I can't remember if it was the radius or the ulna, one of those in the forearm. The sword was gone, I think one of them took it. Again, we're lucky they didn't use it on us. Poor Lauren. We lost her sword. It meant a lot to her."

"I think she'll forgive you," Al said. "How did you get from there to VGH?"

Rachel shrugged. "We walked. We weren't trying to get anywhere but home. I think we were in shock. Joe was probably concussed, his face was a mess, and it was a hell of a time getting him to his feet because he wrenched his knee in the melee. There we were, the two of us, stumbling down the road, not a car in sight. I got really tired being a crutch for Joe, he's a big man."

"So, from that point, the Modo car goes back north for a while, then travels to the highway, where it goes west again." Reynolds trailed her finger along the line. "Maybe one or both trucks went with it to pick up the driver of the stolen car and bring them home. We theorize the robbers drove it back to Vancouver to dump it and take suspicion away from them, probably because they live close to where the robbery occurred. They probably didn't realize the car was GPS enabled, to prevent the very auto theft they were committing."

"So, one of them must have taken Joe's phone and thrown it out the window along the highway," Al said, "since that's where we found it."

"They took it so we couldn't call for help, probably," Rachel said. "They had mine too, even if they might not have realized it. We were so fucked. No money, no phones. It was still dark, we could hardly see our way. We went in the opposite direction from the robbers because we were afraid we'd run into them again. We didn't realize we were heading into even less populated territory. There was a regional park where we finally rested for a while. We tried to sleep in the shelter of some trees. Joe was in so much pain, and we were so cold..."

She looked at Al, and Al knew she was thinking of the incident she'd described to him while they'd made love. He nodded in sympathy. How could he fault her for comforting a friend when they were both probably terrified for their lives?

"Okay," Parsons said softly. "That's all we needed from you with the travel records. The points on the map seem to correspond to your account."

Rachel nodded. "Okay. You said there were a few things. Was there something else?"

"Well, we wanted to thank you for forwarding us those photos, they were very enlightening," Reynolds said. "The picture of the man spiking the drink was a good lead."

"Oh, I haven't seen that yet," Al said. Rachel brought it up on her phone and showed it to him. "Holy shit," he breathed. "So, it is true."

"It's suggestive, although we can't prove yet that was your drink or Lauren's drink he spiked. DNA still has to come back on the glasses, but if we can match up the photos we might have something." Reynolds paused. "Now, the other photo, the one of Al and Lauren, was particularly engaging."

Al shrunk into his seat. "Have there been any results from my blood test?"

Parsons and Reynolds looked at each other. "No traces of Rohypnol or GHB was found in your blood," Parsons said. "It's too bad we didn't grab a urine sample when you went to the bathroom before the interview, it stays in the urine for longer."

"We did get more interesting results from your sheets," Reynolds said. "Hair follicles do retain traces."

Al looked at them both. "So... you did find something."

"Paired with that photo of the spiking, it's pretty suggestive of foul play." Reynolds brought up the photo of him and Lauren on her phone. "Here's the thing, though," she continued, showing it to Al. It made him feel grimy, and he sent Rachel another sorrowful glance.

"Rohypnol is a very powerful sedative, especially when mixed with alcohol," Reynolds went on. "If the both of you were drugged, you wouldn't have been able to get yourselves in this incriminating position on your own."

"What?!" Rachel squawked. "But they were making out. They seemed pretty energetic."

"Maybe in the initial stages, when they were feeling good and their inhibitions were stripped. But by the time the drug really kicked in, they would have been basket cases. Even unconscious."

"You did say we were sitting on the couch when you left, not doing anything," Al said to Rachel. "Maybe we were crashing then." He turned to Reynolds. "So, how did we get from the couch to the bed, and out of our clothes?"

"We left them with Ralph Rose, Lauren's partner at Justiciar," Rachel said. "He was supposed to look after them."

Reynolds raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

"You don't think he..." Al said, grimacing.

"That would be quite the effort to make, stripping you down and manhandling you into those positions," Parsons said. "Is there a reason he would do such a thing?"

Al shook his head. "I don't even know the guy. What would he have against me?"

Rachel's face darkened. "I don't think it was you he was targeting."

Finally a few more answers! Side note: there really is a car-sharing service in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia called Modo, it's a cooperative. Whether or not it would be easy for data on a trip to be accumulated in this way, I don't know, but the cars are equipped with fob readers and can alert authorities if they are broken into. It wouldn't be a big leap to guess that they can be tracked with GPS, since they also charge by the kilometre, so they have to have a way of knowing how many you drive with each booking. If you like what you just read, hit "Vote" and leave a comment. To read about the uncomfortable topic Lauren brings up with Joe, click on "Continue reading."