Mother by Fate

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “I’d head back to Santa Raquel if I was you.”

  Sara hadn’t said much in the couple of minutes they’d been back on the road. She’d unwrapped another peanut-butter sandwich and handed it to him before he was even out of the parking lot. And he used it to occupy his mouth before he did something stupid like remind her of the dinner she’d promised him when this was done.

  Or send her gooey-eyed looks. Something Mari had said about Peanut and her date at their most recent family picnic.

  Mari wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him that Sara was pretty. She was constantly bugging him to get a lady friend.

  But then Mari didn’t remember her mother. Didn’t remember how her parents had loved each other so much. And didn’t understand that there were times when adults couldn’t be friends. When they had to take measures to make certain that passing lust didn’t lead someone up a path that didn’t exist. Or that someone didn’t want.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “About going to Santa Raquel? Yes.”

  She was chewing on half a sandwich. He’d watched her, surreptitiously, as she’d carefully rewrapped the other half before she’d leaned over the seat to put it back in the cooler.

  Her ass was right there again.

  Yep, he’d looked. And reacted like a schoolboy.

  He was going to have to move that damned cooler up to his lap if they didn’t get this job done soon.

  “So is that where we’re going?”

  “She caught a ride south. Chances are that trucker was heading to LA.” He was giving himself a minute to wallow in his misery and then he was going to make a couple of calls that would tell him where to go next. For the next five minutes or so, he was on a road with no exits, so there was nothing to do but drive.

  And pity himself.

  “I’m pretty sure she’d go back to Santa Raquel.”

  “You still think she’s going to come running back to you? Don’t you get it that she was using you folks as a hideout? It was a perfect plan, really. She’s little, can adopt an air of fragility at a second’s notice, and good acting gets her a bed in a secure facility where no one can get to her. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t stay inside. If she hadn’t been in that thrift shop either time, I never would have found her.”

  “You still haven’t found her.” The reminder was droll. And accompanied by a small smile. She was teasing him.

  “I spooked her, though.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  His sandwich was gone. He wanted another. He’d finished his water, too. But there was no way in hell he was asking her to bend over that seat again.

  She brushed crumbs off her pants.

  “I know I agreed that this is your show until we find her. I know that you’re good at what you do and that I have no experience in this arena whatsoever...”

  “Just say what you want to say. You aren’t going to offend me.” He wished to God, in that moment, that he did find her annoying. Much more of this and he was going to be screwing up the job.

  “You’re used to working alone,” she said.

  “I’m used to getting my jumper within twenty-four hours. This time is different.”

  He sent her a look. It was personal. She seemed to be pondering him.

  “I know,” she finally said. He was pretty sure her response was personal, too. “I like to always try to understand other perspectives in a situation,” she added.

  Were they still talking personally? Or was she back to understanding that this was his show? Work show, that was. Right?

  Yes, right.

  “I also like to receive understanding in return.”

  Michael almost laughed out loud. So did she want professional or personal understanding? Did she want him to know that while they obviously shared some kind of attraction for each other, she really didn’t want to explore it? The woman was tying him up in knots.

  And damn, in a way, it felt...not bad.

  “I’m ninety percent certain that Nicole Kramer is going to head back to Santa Raquel. Assuming the guy that picked her up is decent and drops her off when she asks him to.”

  Michael picked up his phone, put it on Bluetooth and gave a voice command to find the name of the trucking company the waitress had given them. Ten minutes later he had confirmation from a dispatcher, who’d called the driver, who’d confirmed that he’d picked up a woman, but that he’d dropped her off at the Santa Raquel exit. He was a private contractor and could pick up whomever he liked as long as he didn’t do it on an interstate. Which was illegal.

  Michael was aware of the laws. And didn’t give a rat’s ass what the trucker did as long as he wasn’t hurting anyone.

  “What did they say?” Sara asked the second he rang off.

  “He dropped her off in Santa Raquel.”

  * * *

  THE SANTA RAQUEL exit was one mile ahead. Sara was glad to be back. She’d texted Lila several times. To let her know Nicole wasn’t on the bus, that they were searching Mariposa and that they’d found out she’d hitched a ride.

  No one at the Lemonade Stand or on the High Risk Team had heard from the missing woman. As they did with all of their residents, they’d offered Nicole a pay-as-you-go phone preloaded with a hundred minutes. She hadn’t needed one. She’d already purchased one of her own.

  And, Sara had ascertained, she hadn’t wanted anyone to have any chance of tracing the phone through a serial number, or bugging the phone before they gave it to her. Nicole Kramer was afraid of her own shadow.

  Lila had also texted that they’d heard back on the query Officer Sanchez had sent out on Michael. The man was known in police departments all over the state of California. Apparently he was the best there was at finding dangerous folks who didn’t want to be found.

  “How did you know she was going to come back here?”

  They were the first words Michael had uttered since he’d told her what the dispatcher had said.

  “She trusts me.”

  “I don’t buy it. Even if we went with your story and Nicole is a victim of a maniacal white-supremacist husband who wants her dead, why go back to a place where she’s already been found?”

  “Maybe you just answered your own question. She figures you’ll figure she wouldn’t go back because she’s already been seen there.”

  “You know something.”

  She knew a lot of things. Didn’t mean she was going to tell him what they were. Unless they served the purpose of getting Nicole safely back in secure housing until law enforcement could gather enough evidence against Trevor Kramer to ensure Nicole’s safety from him.

  Which basically meant tossing him in jail and throwing away the key. And then giving Nicole a new identity so his Ivory Nation brothers still on the outside didn’t come after her and try to steal her son away from her.

  “If you want me to trust you to approach her alone, to keep you on the job with me, you have to tell me what you know. That was our deal.”

  Maybe. But he needed her. If Nicole saw him, she’d run. And this wasn’t about being straight with Michael Edison. He was a means to an end. Period. Because he had to be.

  On so many levels.

  Yes, she was attracted to him. Very attracted. Yes, maybe she should think about having a life of her own after this, lest she flame out. But Michael was a practiced liar.

  For the job. With good cause. Her mind played devil’s advocate.

  He had a daughter.

  He took the Santa Raquel exit. She didn’t ask where they were heading. He was the expert.

  “The way I work...” he began, and then stopped. Turned onto the road that ran along the ocean, and said, “I don’t just need one piece of information to know to rush off in a particular place to find someone. I get as full a picture as I ca
n of them. The fuller the picture, the faster I can find them. I factor in the choice she made to spend the night with the homeless trio last night. To hide under bushes when she was running from me. The fact that she hitched a ride with a trucker. And managed to dupe a counselor into honestly believing she needs help. I add those facts to what her husband told me, what I read in the police reports and the fact that her son looks healthy and well cared for...”

  “You saw Toby?” All her instincts were on alert.

  He glanced at her. “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Friday morning.”

  Which fit with when he said he’d accepted the job. He’d said he talked to Trevor. But the baby...

  “And he looked good?” Nicole hadn’t seen or heard anything definitive about the boy for over a week—other than from the woman across the street, who’d said that Trevor hadn’t moved and that there’d been dirty diapers showing through the white trash bag sticking up over the top of the can he’d put out at the curb.

  Nicole had spent a good bit of that time in the homeless compound in San Diego until she’d missed her court appearance and knew she had to get help. That had been when the homeless woman had told her about the Lemonade Stand.

  “He was sleeping soundly and restfully on the couch next to his father.”

  Nicole needed to know that as of two days ago, her precious son was still safe. Sara didn’t like the sleeping-next-to-his-father part. The man was a shotgun with the trigger cocked.

  And Michael knew him. He’d done more than make a phone call for information, as she’d heard him do that morning with the trucking company.

  “You didn’t just talk to Trevor, you saw him.”

  Michael knew Trevor Kramer.

  “Yes.”

  “Was that the first time you’d ever met him?”

  Trembling inside, Sara didn’t know what to think in that moment. Michael had a license, and Miller, the cop in LA who Nicole was certain was an Ivory Nation brother, had a badge. That badge didn’t stop him from writing reports of crimes Nicole hadn’t committed. He’d used the badge to frame her for crimes her husband had committed...

  “Of course it was the first time I met him. I told you, I just got the call for the job on Friday.”

  “Who called you?”

  “A bail bondsman I’ve done some work for. He’s on the hook for the fifty thousand dollars he posted for Nicole’s bail.”

  Trevor had told Nicole he’d posted her bail.

  Michael could be lying through his teeth. He was exceptionally good at it. And had already demonstrated his willingness to do so to get his job done.

  When he’d lied to her the day before she hadn’t been able to tell.

  He pulled into a gas station as soon as they’d exited. “I have to pee. You want to wait in the car?”

  Sara took the opportunity to relieve herself, as well. But did so quickly, so that Michael didn’t leave without her. She was showing Nicole’s picture to the woman at the register when Michael joined her.

  The store clerk shook her head.

  “So...” Michael hit the automatic-unlock button and Sara climbed back into the seat that was beginning to feel like her own. “If we’re going to find this woman as quickly as possible, I need you to tell me how you knew Nicole was going to come back here.”

  Sara weighed the cost of giving the information to him against the cost of not giving it to him. If he was working with Trevor, or in any way connected to someone who was reporting to Trevor, she’d be tipping off the man to Nicole’s detriment.

  But Nicole’s best shot at safety right now rested with Michael Edison being able to track her.

  And Sara really wanted to trust him.

  “Nicole believes that Toby is going to be brought to Santa Raquel.” She chose the words carefully. She gave no indication of anything that would give validity to the truth of Nicole’s belief. Didn’t mention CPS or the Santa Raquel police. In this moment, they didn’t matter. What mattered was what Nicole believed.

  “Why does she believe that?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Is her son being brought to Santa Raquel?”

  “I don’t know that. But I’d be very happy to hear that he was.”

  “Do you know for certain that someone told Nicole that they would get her son to her?”

  She studied his face. They were wasting time sitting in the parking lot playing word games.

  And if he warned Trevor that someone might try to kidnap his son, Trevor could pack up and run. Which would send Nicole into a tailspin and there was no telling what she’d do.

  “I told Nicole that I’d have CPS look into her allegations regarding her son’s safety.” She also knew that certain trusted members of the LAPD, in conjunction with the Santa Raquel police, were trying to get enough evidence together on Trevor Kramer for Sedona Malone, TLS’s resident lawyer, to make a motion for a temporary custody order in Nicole’s favor.

  “But if Nicole knows she was lying to you, she’d also know there was no way in hell CPS is going to take action against her husband.”

  “Exactly. And she wouldn’t have come back here. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Nicole isn’t lying to me.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because...” Michael started the car. Backed out.

  He didn’t meet her gaze.

  There were things he wasn’t telling her.

  Fine. There were things she wasn’t telling him, either.

  Like the fact that she wasn’t sure she could go to dinner with him when this was done. She wasn’t sure she could trust herself around him.

  At least they understood each other.

  * * *

  STARTING WITH THE exit where Nicole had been dropped off and working his way across Santa Raquel, Michael drove through every section of town, stopping to show Nicole’s picture around in areas his instincts told him she was more likely to have been in.

  Trevor had said his wife was addicted to a particular brand of diet soda. No other brand would do. And she had to have it every day. With ice. Not out of a can.

  He stopped at the most likely places for her to satisfy that need. And less than an hour after they arrived, he had a hit. A young girl had seen her. Nicole was still wearing the clothes he’d seen her in the night before. She’d been by there a couple of hours ago, when the girl had first started her shift.

  Nicole was fastidious. Her husband had described her as having OCD. If she was going to lay low, had time on her hands, she’d be wanting a change of clothes. She was a spendthrift.

  He went to Goodwill. And the Salvation Army. Found out she’d purchased two pairs of lightweight dark-colored pants, two green T-shirts and a sweater, half an hour before Michael and Sara had arrived.

  And the trail stopped there.

  Nicole wasn’t in the area of the Salvation Army. She wasn’t anywhere.

  She was allergic to mowed grass and loved the water. She’d been on the swim team in high school.

  At a grocery store not far from the beach later that afternoon, they got another hit. She’d been there on Saturday, during one of the times he’d lost her.

  She’d ducked into a grocery store while she was being chased. Or maybe she’d underestimated him and thought she’d lost him.

  The clerk couldn’t remember what she’d purchased.

  “How much money did Nicole have on her?” he asked as he and Sara headed back to the SUV. Trevor had already told him that she’d taken over a thousand dollars out of their joint bank account earlier in the week.

  She could pay for food and necessities for a good many days as long as she was careful.

  “Enough to last her awhile,” Sara said.
r />   “Did you see the money?”

  “Yes.”

  It would be better for him if she’d squandered it all on fancy hotel rooms and fine dining. She’d have fewer options without cash, and she’d be easier to find if she was prone to making stupid mistakes.

  They spent another hour trekking around before he finally admitted, “I don’t think she’s out and about right now. At least not in town.”

  And it made sense. He was hunting a woman used to being hunted. Like most animals, she’d make her move under the cover of darkness.

  If he was on his own, he’d take a nap. Get some rest while he could. With Sara in the car he didn’t think the odds of falling asleep were in his favor.

  Parking the SUV on a side street, he got out to walk.

  “Where are we going?” Sara asked as she put her cell phone back into the waist pouch she was wearing and got out to join him.

  “To look for Nicole.”

  “By walking around aimlessly?” Her gaze was sincere as she kept pace with him.

  He liked looking over and seeing her there. “I’m not walking aimlessly,” he told her.

  “You have an idea of where she might be, then? Some bounty hunter’s instinct?”

  “I’ve weeded out areas where I think she won’t be.” Like the woods. She was susceptible to poison ivy.

  “Which are?”

  They were on a sidewalk one street over from the beach. He didn’t mind the sun beating down on him so much with the ocean breeze blowing Sara’s flowery scent over him.

  “The section of town where I saw the two of you.”

  “But we just established that she might go there just because she figures you think she won’t.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  She frowned. And he took pleasure in being one mental step ahead of her for once.

  “You’ve been in touch with your people all day.” She hadn’t said so, but she didn’t deny his assumption.