The other voice was deep and spoke with a Brooklyn accent. More was mo-ah. In the background were the steady whooshes of cars going past. They must be near a freeway again. There was nothing else of interest until that one big rumble.

Unmistakable.

A low-flying airplane.

They were near an airport.

Only two major airports serviced the Los Angeles area. L.A. International and the smaller domestic terminal—

Hollywood-Burbank. Decker knew from experience that Hollywood-Burbank shut down around one, two in the morning. So did most of the charter airports.

Unless Hersh and Noam hightailed it over to Orange County and took off from John Wayne International, he was probably right on top of them.

When Frieda came back on the line, Decker asked her when she received the call.

“Six-eighteen,” Frieda said. “I looked at my digital clock.”

Three-eighteen our time, Decker thought. What was landing or taking off at three-eighteen? He asked her to hold on and checked the television monitors inside the TWA terminal. No activity here at 3:18. He checked his watch—3:47. “Mrs. Levine, I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ll call you back in an hour.”

“Please keep me informed, Akiva,” Frieda said. “It’s not knowing that’s so hard.”

“I understand. In the meantime, if you haven’t already done it, you must call up Ezra and Breina. Let them know you’ve heard from Noam…that he’s alive.”

“Baruch Hashem,” Frieda whispered. “I haven’t called yet because I wanted to keep the line open for you. I’ll phone them right now.”

“Good. I’ll keep in touch.” Decker hung up and came out of the booth. He gave Rina a rundown as they hurried down the escalator, jogged down the long corridor toward the baggage exit. “I’m going back to my car and contact all the remaining LAX terminals. I can do it faster with my radio than I can by phone.”

Rina was running to keep up with him. “They’re somewhere at the airport?”

Decker couldn’t tell if Rina’s breathlessness was excitement or overexertion. He slowed his pace. “I don’t know if they’re in the airport. I’m pretty sure Noam didn’t make the call from inside a terminal. You can’t hear freeway noises when you’re inside those booths.”

They walked outside the building. The night was cold and misty, the air around them humming with generator sounds. They stopped at the curbside. Decker listened a moment, then said, “Can you hear the freeway?”

“A little bit.”

“Well, I heard it clearly,” Decker said. “Heard it over the static of a long-distance call and a cheap phone system. And I didn’t hear that drone in the background either. They didn’t make the call from inside the airport. I’m positive about that.”

“So they’re not here,” Rina said.