Losing You Terrifies Me

Chapter 21

"That storm last night was crazy," Price said as he shook the snow from his hair. Zeller shot him a disapproving look at the mess the man was leaving on the floor. "It took me nearly an hour to shovel out my car."

"More snow than we've had in a long time," Zeller acknowledged with a grumble, sitting up from where he had been leaning against an empty exam table.

"This reminds me of all of those frozen corpses." Price hung up his jacket in the corner of the room and stepped down to log into his computer to check his daily spam of emails of people wondering when their testing was going to be back, knowing full well that the testing was nowhere near done and they were just going to have to wait in line like everyone else, a near six month line.

"Oh, the ice sculpture ones?" Zeller questioned, moving to stand beside his friend and frown at the 347 emails that awaited Price to answer. A similar amount that he had as well that he had spent the last hour or two restlessly searching through, holding his tongue tight on information to be shared with Jack.

"The very one," Price said with a nod and a frown. "His work would have been quite beautiful if he didn't use real people as the center of his sculptures. What that man could do with a hammer and chisel."

"Why do you think Jack came out of retirement?" Zeller pondered, wanting to move on from the killer they were discussing. He had found himself having a very difficult time with that case while they were working it. It had been one of his first, and while it wasn't gruesome, no one was ripped and gutted and being eaten, it was enough to make Zeller want to run.

"I think he just wants to catch Hannibal." Price gave a shrug, typing in answer to an email he had received that asked about something or other with the bullet casing for a shooting. "You know he didn't want anything to do with the FBI again until Will went missing. He made them reinstate him. I heard it was quite a hostile meeting."

"That could mean a lot of things concerning Jack."

"What could, Zeller?" Jack's booming voice asked as he entered the lab.

"We've got another ping. Came in last night at about eleven," Zeller announced in a hurried voice, unable to keep the news down any longer.

"What?" Price asked, turning around to give Zeller a look that said he was hurt that that hadn't been the first thing out of Zeller's mouth to him.

"Why didn't you call me?" Jack demanded, pointing at Zeller.

"I tried. You didn't answer," Zeller informed Jack, moving over to where his own computer was and pulled up the program. "Pinged just off of I-81 in Pennsylvania. It hasn't moved since. It's still there."

"Why would he turn his phone on?" Price asked as he went to pull his coat back on.

"The last time he turned it on was so that we could find Will," Jack reminded, leaving Zeller scrambling at his computer to grab his things as they left the lab. "He wants us to find something this time."

***

"For all of the no trespassing signs, they didn't do a good job locking the gate," Price muttered as Jack drove off the road and into the deep snow.

"Are we sure this is right?" Jack questioned as he passed through the open gate and continued through a path of trees and a dark grey sky promising more of last night's storm.

"There's a phone tower on this property. I'm not sure how much closer we can get to the ping, Jack," Zeller replied, working on his laptop, grateful for once that he had a hotspot on his phone that he paid a ridiculous extra amount of money for and never used.