And, like many times before, I did.

“There,” I said, tapping Anchor on the shoulder. “To the right. Sign says it’s a block away.”

Anchor turned his head, then nodded. Kitting turned right without being told.

The Capistrano was a domed building, an old Spanish-styled miniature mission, housing both buses and the Metrolink train that ran the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego. The parking lot was already half-full, the tall street lamps in the parking lot still lit.

I got out quietly, letting Lauren sleep, shutting my door softly. Anchor did the same.

We crossed the parking lot, our shadows growing taller as we walked.

“I sent out several messages,” Anchor said. “We should be able to track any movement on the alert. If they get anything solid, we should get it at the same time.”

“You guys really do have people everywhere, I guess.”

Anchor nodded. “You don’t ascend to Mr. Codaselli’s position without making friends in many places.”

I wondered just what making friends meant. Coercion? Bribery? Blackmail? It didn’t really matter to me right then, I was just curious.

“I’ve also made inquiries on your associates,” Anchor said.

We came up to the depot. “My associates?”

“The officers you used to work with. The ones you no longer trust.”

I nodded. If anyone was going to be able to dig up information, it seemed like Anchor was the guy.

People milled about the outside of the station, mostly men and women in business suits, briefcases tucked under their arms, phones in their hands. The coaster trains were primarily used by commuters between San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles. They were a too-little, too-late attempt to curb the stifling traffic on the overcrowded highways. Some people had taken to them, but many still sat in their expensive foreign cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Letting go of their cars and embracing mass transportation was just too much of a change in lifestyle.

I stepped inside. Several benches, a ticket counter and not much else. It was small which made sense. San Juan Capistrano wasn’t a huge pick-up or drop-off point. They didn’t need a ton of space and they probably didn’t run a full schedule.

Anchor pointed to the wall. “Schedule here.”

I joined him. A faded map of the train routes was encased in a rectangular glass window. The route times were listed on the right of the map. I put my finger on the glass and slid it downward, looking at the times.

“Last one from here was just before midnight,” I said. “And it would’ve gotten her as far as Oceanside.”

“If she got on last night,” he said.

“She did.” I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. She would have been tired of waiting, tired of being stymied by circumstance.

“You think she went south?”

“She told her friend that she was remembering some things about San Diego,” I said. “And she’s gone south since the airport. It’s just a guess. But I’m not sure what else we have to go on.”

“I could see about obtaining a passenger list,” Anchor said, eyeing the ticket counter.

I shook my head. “Don’t think it would do any good. You can buy cash tickets from the kiosks. They might’ve checked I.D. getting on, but I don’t think it would’ve been recorded for her to travel.”

He nodded. “Alright. I can check on that pretty quickly, but that makes sense.”

He made his way quickly to the ticket counter, taking his place in line behind a woman in a tailored navy blue suit. I turned around slowly, taking everything in. We didn’t have an exact location, but I couldn’t imagine where else she would’ve gone. I had no idea how she’d gotten from Redondo to Capistrano, but that almost seemed irrelevant now. We knew she’d been to Capistrano, based on the cellular signal. And I couldn’t imagine why else she would’ve gone there. She didn’t know anyone and there was no destination she was familiar with. She was flying blind.

Anchor returned. “No passenger list. Do you think she would she have drawn any attention as a teenager on the train?”

I shook my head. “I doubt it. So even trying to track down anyone who was here might be a waste of time. Not all that unusual to see a kid getting on the commuter trains.”

Anchor nodded, lines in his forehead creased, thinking.

I turned around to look at the schedule again. The train would’ve taken her as far as Oceanside, the northern most point in San Diego County. But when she got to Oceanside, she would’ve had the option to jump on another train to get further in to San Diego. But where would she have gone? She made no mention to Morgan about Coronado. But was her memory coming back? Was it being triggered by the fact that she was in Southern California now? Maybe triggered by our speaking to one another? I had no idea and like always, that was the hardest part.

I had no idea.

“I think the best thing to do is to head to San Diego,” I said. “We can stop in Oceanside and see what the train schedule is there. I don’t really have a better idea.”

Anchor nodded. “I thought of something else that I might offer to you.”

“What’s that?”

“The two men who you are not sure about?”

“Bazer. And Mike.”

Anchor nodded again. “I know that you’re concerned that they are a danger to your daughter. What if we put something in place to draw them out?”

“I’m not following.”

“If we fed them false information that let them believe we knew her whereabouts, it might…give us a more accurate picture of whom you can trust. And who has lied to you.”

“So, what? A sting?”

“For lack of a better word, yes.”

“How?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet,” Anchor said. “And I don’t want to do anything to endanger your daughter. But if you’re open to the idea, I can go about finding a way to put it together.”

I stared at the deserted train tracks. At some point, I was going to want to know which of them had played a part in her disappearance. And I would deal with them. At that moment, though, the thing I cared about most was finding Elizabeth and keeping her safe. Punishing anyone who was involved would have to wait and I didn’t want to get bogged down thinking about those things.

But I didn’t see any harm in having Anchor do a little preliminary work.

“Start working on it,” I said.

THIRTY-FOUR

“Can we stop at a drugstore or something?” Lauren asked. “I feel like crap.”

We were nearly to Oceanside, a straight shot down the interstate from San Juan Capistrano, past the power plant in San Onofre and the marine base in Camp Pendleton. To my right, the ocean hugged the coast, choppy waves crashing in to the shoreline as we flew past.

“Sick?” I asked.

She made a face. “Probably just hungry. I don’t know.”

I nodded.

“We’ll pull off at the next exit,” Anchor said from the front.

We passed the harbor and the old Holiday Inn and then took a cloverleaf exit and parked in front of a twenty-four hour drugstore.

“Be right back,” Lauren said, getting out.

“I made a phone call,” Anchor said. “No passenger lists on the commuter trains.”

I frowned. I wasn’t sure how I’d missed hearing him on the phone, unless I’d dozed a little, too. “Yeah. Figured.”

“ I think I’m getting access to video surveillance,” he said.

“What?”

“I saw cameras at the depot,” Anchor said. “Monitored ticket and boarding areas.”

“You can tap in?”

He shook his head. “No. Having recorded feeds sent to me for download. And from this Oceanside station we’re heading to. If your daughter was on there, we’ll have a good idea of where to go.”

I should’ve been surprised, but I wasn’t. Anchor had shown an incredible ability to get nearly anything we needed and was able to do it quickly. I’d stopped wondering how he was getting it and how powerful Codaselli really was and instead wished I’d run into him the day after Elizabeth had disappeared from Coronado.