Mother by Fate

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Glancing over her shoulder even though she already knew she was the only person in the restroom, Sara held open the lid of the trash bin and pulled out the shirt. It was wadded into a ball, and she held it up, exposing the dirt. Sand. And blood. There was a lot of it. More than just a scrape would have caused.

  Starting to shake, she checked the rest of the shirt. The only place she saw blood was on the back. There was a tear. And enough red to indicate some kind of stab wound.

  Had she been in a fight?

  Had Trevor sent someone to find her, separate and apart from Michael?

  And why hadn’t she called? Sara didn’t have the number to Nicole’s untraceable phone, but she’d given the other woman her number. She had thought that Nicole felt safe with her. At least safer than she felt with anyone else. Sara would bet her life on that fact.

  Most important, Nicole had been convinced that the High Risk Team was going to get Toby for her. Not because Sara had told her so, but because they’d proved their word by getting the warrant for her arrest dismissed.

  But she hadn’t called.

  Taking a second to go through the rest of the trash, finding nothing more of Nicole’s and then washing her hands a second time, Sara hurried out to Michael with the soiled shirt.

  “I know, baby. I’m sorry you were waiting for dinner. You know how it is when I’m on a job...”

  She heard his voice before she saw him. And the one he was using, soft and loving and...

  He was standing at the corner of the sidewalk that surrounded the bathroom and led back to the beach. On the parking-lot side.

  Talking to someone he was obviously very close to.

  His daughter.

  The tender warmth in his voice cut through to her core. Touching her.

  And hurting. So badly.

  If he ever had to choose between his daughter and her, he’d choose his daughter. That was as it should be.

  Michael was...so much more than she’d expected.

  A man like none she’d ever met before.

  A man who wouldn’t be alone any longer than he chose to be.

  A man who had a daughter that, if she was with him, she’d have to take on as her own, would want to take on as her own—and then, if Michael ever decided he wanted a divorce, Sara would lose her whole family all over again.

  He still hadn’t seen her.

  Sara went back the way she’d come and waited for him to come find her.

  If she’d thought, for one second, that the Michael Edison she’d met the day before at the pool was in any way accessible to her...

  If she’d hoped, maybe just a little, that when this was all over and they had that dinner...

  She didn’t hope anymore.

  Michael Edison was so not for her.

  * * *

  SHE DIDN’T HAVE to wait long for him to come find her.

  And she handed over the shirt right away. The only thing that mattered was finding Nicole.

  With the shirt bunched up in his hand, Michael headed toward the SUV.

  She had no idea how he’d known where to look that afternoon, but his instincts were obviously well honed. They’d come up against a lot of dead ends. But they’d also found enough places that she’d visited to at least partially trace her steps.

  As soon as they were both inside the vehicle, he held up the shirt.

  “It’s pretty obvious she’s hurt,” she said, stating the obvious.

  “She was wearing this last night when I was chasing her.”

  “No one we talked to today said anything about her being hurt.”

  “It could have been just a scratch. She was scrambling under bushes, in yards with desert landscaping. That means rocks. She could have scraped her back.”

  “That’s more than a scrape.”

  He didn’t argue the point. He wadded up the shirt and tossed it onto the backseat.

  Nicole deserved better than that.

  “She’s fine.”

  Sara stared. “How do you know that?”

  He started the vehicle. Put it in gear.

  “Michael, how do you know she’s fine?”

  Pray God, let him be telling the truth for once.

  Unless...had he talked to Trevor? Did the man already have her? Was Michael covering for him?

  “Did you talk to her? Do you know where she is?”

  “Of course not.” He glanced at her and then back at the road. “If I did we’d be done here.”

  Good point.

  “So how do you know she’s fine?”

  “Two things.”

  She waited, watching as he drove slowly around the parking lot and then, instead of driving back to the main road, he headed toward the next parking lot half a mile down the beach road.

  “First, there wasn’t any blood anywhere else on the shirt. No sign of a cut that was dripping. No smears of blood. Tells me she wasn’t in a fight or attacked. The bleeding wouldn’t be as clean as it was.”

  “And second?”

  “She’s moving quickly. Staying at least a step ahead of us all day long. Someone with a serious injury wouldn’t be able to elude me like that.”

  She’d known he was good at what he did. But was he doing all he could? Or just holding her at bay until Trevor got by the cops they’d put on him and got to Nicole?

  That damned phone call, his earliest lies—they were playing with her. His ability to lie, his daughter—it reminded her of her marriage. Broken trust was an insidious thing. It tended to make one’s mind run wild. She knew. She’d lived with it for one very long year. Because she’d loved her little girl so much she hadn’t been willing to rock the boat.

  It wasn’t until she’d seen what living with Jason was doing to her—turning her into a paranoid, suspicious nut who started to think he was on the internet or the phone anytime he used the restroom—that she’d realized she had to get out to save herself.

  And, she’d thought, to save Bessie, too. She’d thought she was getting out so she could bring up her little girl in a much healthier environment...

  “Why aren’t we checking the woods?” she blurted when Michael pulled into the next beach parking lot. She’d already inspected the restroom when they’d covered the area on foot. An hour earlier. The woods were a good place to hide. He’d said so. And there were miles of them north of the beach.

  “Because Nicole’s susceptible to poison ivy to the point of requiring steroid shots anytime she gets near it.”

  How in the hell did he know that?

  Because he was an associate of Trevor’s?

  He circled the lot slowly. As though looking for something in particular. Then stopped the SUV, reached into the back for a canvas briefcase, withdrew a clipboard and pulled off a sheet of paper, which he handed to her.

  “I have a list of questions I ask anytime I have a chance to speak with anyone who knows a jumper well. Those are Trevor’s answers.”

  She read about Nicole’s supposed OCD. About her needing to bathe at least twice a day. About her vacuuming and doing laundry, changing sheets and disinfecting in a continuous cycle. All listed under daily routines. There were also habits. Allergies. Particular likes and dislikes.

  Nicole was a reader.

  The only surprise for her was the fact that Michael had all of this information, had been referring to it all day long, and had never once accessed his portfolio.

  Her professional respect for him climbed even higher.

  She hadn’t made an official OCD diagnosis in Nicole’s case, but she’d seen the tendencies. Understood them under the circumstances. People who felt as if their lives were out of control often controlled what they could. Kill the bacteria on the sink because you can’t kill the insidious disease leeching
the life out of you. Make your house shine because your life sure doesn’t.

  Positioning the car toward the beach, Michael killed the engine.

  “We’re going to walk again?”

  “No. We’re going to get a little rest in case we have to be on the run tonight.”

  “Here?”

  “I tend to wake up often when I’m working. I sleep a few minutes at a time, when there’s time. I want to be on the lookout when I’m awake.”

  “We’ve already scoured this entire beach.”

  “And she was here today. This afternoon.”

  Because she’d changed clothes, and chances were that had been after her visit to the Salvation Army store. The Salvation Army worker hadn’t mentioned blood on Nicole’s shirt. Did that mean the injury had happened after that? Or had she been wearing a cover-up? She could have picked up a jacket or a sweater someplace. Off a clothesline or from a Laundromat...

  Sara wasn’t tired. Didn’t think she could sleep at all.

  “We can’t see the pier from here.”

  “Nicole doesn’t like dirt. She’s not going to join the homeless until after dark. When the filth won’t be so visible, and thus, sickening.”

  Nicole had told her that she’d ended up hanging out with the homeless people in San Diego because it was the only place she’d known Trevor would never look for her.

  Because he’d known that she had panic attacks if surrounded by too much filth. He’d used the information against her—forcing her to put her face in a public trash can once to induce a panic attack and then telling Detective Miller that she was jonesing.

  “Water makes her feel clean,” Michael said, just as she was looking at the ocean and thinking the same thing.

  Nicole’s desperation was obvious in her ability to overcome her phobia in order to save her son. If Nicole wanted to avoid panic attacks, she’d stay around water.

  “Which is why she hangs out in bathrooms for long periods of time.”

  She’d probably washed her whole body after spending the night with Simon and his friends.

  “If what you’re saying is accurate, and I believe it is, then wouldn’t we be better served parking by the restroom we know she visited?”

  “She’s not going back to that one.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She threw the shirt away there. Something she didn’t want to be associated with. She won’t go back.”

  Michael tipped back his seat and closed his eyes while Sara’s heart ached for the woman on the run. She prayed that she’d get the chance to help Nicole recognize the strength deep inside herself. Prayed that that strength continued to keep her alive.

  All Nicole wanted was to save her son’s life.

  And the lives of those he’d kill if his father raised him in the ways of the Nation.

  “They wear red shoelaces.” She spoke out loud because the quiet in the vehicle closed her in too intimately with a man whose hands, while strong looking, had felt so gentle on her skin.

  A tough man whose touch had been so tender.

  “Who does?”

  “Members of the Ivory Nation. In order to attain the status of full brotherhood they have to kill for the cause. They’re given red shoelaces as a sign of having reached that status. Red for the blood they shed.”

  The things Nicole had told her had made her sick. Beyond anything she’d heard during her years at the Stand. Abusers would go to many horrendous lengths to maintain power and control over their victims, but it was out of emotional weakness, alcohol, lack of control. The things Nicole had described—they’d been done rationally. In cold blood.

  And the perpetrator showed no shame.

  The perpetrator—Trevor Kramer. Whose black work boots, according to Nicole, were laced with red.

  “We’re not dealing with the Ivory Nation here.”

  He might believe that.

  She didn’t think so.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MICHAEL HAD NO intention of sleeping. He needed his passenger to do so. That blood on Nicole’s shirt bothered him—with no smearing, no dripping, it was almost as though she’d opened an existing wound or bled through a bandage. Yet no one had seen any indication that she’d been hurt. Because, just as Trevor had said, she was one tough broad.

  It wasn’t Trevor Kramer who was a member of the Ivory Nation. It was his wife.

  Oh, not as a brother, of course. He knew enough about the movement to know that women were secondary—necessary to the cause as a means of populating the world with Caucasian sons. But from what Trevor had told him on the phone that morning—and he’d already verified enough of what Trevor had said to believe him on this one—Nicole had been raised in the Ivory Nation. She didn’t need to be a brother to have the cause in her blood.

  There were genetics. And there was environment.

  To Michael’s way of thinking, environment was the strongest determiner when it came to a person’s psyche. To the choices he or she made. His or her capabilities.

  Nicole had been raised to believe that there was honor in shedding blood for a cause. And to put the cause before self—including physical pain.

  Michael needed some time alone, to get so deeply into his jumper’s head that he could figure out what she’d do next.

  He couldn’t do that with Sara Havens sitting there talking to him.

  So he feigned sleep.

  All the while, sinking deeper and deeper into another woman’s mind. A sick woman. A dangerous one.

  * * *

  SHE COULDN’T JUST sit still. Nicole was close by. She’d dumped that shirt. She’d been right there just a short time ago.

  She was probably hurt.

  And here they sat. It made no sense to her.

  She thought about getting out of the vehicle while Michael slept, but where would she go? They’d already canvassed the entire beach.

  But, like Michael, she had a feeling Nicole would hang around the area. Until she got word on Toby. Or Trevor found her. She’d been to enough stores to have everything she needed as far as supplies. There was nothing for her in town except the possibility of being seen. Identified.

  They’d spent the entire day chasing the woman. Now that they’d found her, they were going to sleep?

  It didn’t make sense.

  Michael’s face didn’t relax much in sleep. He didn’t get any less sexy looking, either.

  What was with her? Did she have some latent masochistic tendency? Some unknown thing that drove her to choose the wrong men?

  And what about Nicole? What part of her drove her to stay with Trevor after she’d witnessed him beat up a black man simply because he’d been holding hands with a white girl? And that had been the least of his violent acts.

  But it had happened before they’d been married.

  Had she hoped to save him? Thought her love would be enough to help him overcome his violent tendencies? Like Sara had thought she could help Jason overcome his fascination with strippers?

  Had Nicole hoped to cure Trevor through kindness? And caring about the things he found important?

  Had Sara thought the same thing about Jason?

  She’d known he’d had a thing for strippers when they met. He’d been married to one. A pregnant one. One who’d made a deal with him. She’d agree to have his kid if he’d agree to a divorce and to sign away any rights he had to collect child support from her.

  Sara had definitely cared about what was most important in Jason’s life—his daughter, Bessie.

  A movement down below caught Sara’s attention. There were a few people still milling around, though the beach was now mostly deserted. But she’d seen something move out by a mossy rock mass that jutted from a cliff above the beach down to the sand. Perhaps
is was just the sun’s reflection as it set over the ocean.

  Or a bird.

  Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look. It would be better than just sitting there.

  She opened her car door.

  Michael’s eyes shot open.

  “I’m just going to take a walk down to the water. I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes again.

  Would he take off as soon as she was far enough away? She recognized the ludicrousness of the thought almost as soon as it had formed. She didn’t trust him to tell her the truth—but he wasn’t going to just drive off and leave her stranded on the beach.

  He’d had plenty of opportunity to leave her in the dust that day. Every single time she’d used the restroom. Many times when they’d taken different sides of streets and gone inside separate businesses.

  He needed her. She relaxed as she remembered that key point.

  Until they found Nicole, Michael needed her.

  She liked knowing that.

  * * *

  OF COURSE THERE was no one on the rock. No one anywhere near the water. No heads bobbing out in the water. But Sara was glad she’d taken her walk. She’d cleared her head.

  And had a chance to call Lila. They chatted for a couple of minutes, mainly about other residents. Maddie was upset, having a hard time not blaming herself for Nicole’s disappearance. Asking if Nicole had been found every hour on the hour.

  Darin, who was usually unendingly patient with her, had finally told her not to ask again. And then apologized and told her she could wake him up every fifteen minutes all night long to ask.

  Sara couldn’t help but smile as she pictured the scene. And promised Lila that she’d put a call in to Lynn and speak with Maddie.

  Which she did. Before heading back up to the car.

  Michael’s head was leaned back against his seat. He appeared to be sleeping still, so she decided to take a peek in the restroom again. A quick look. So quick she almost missed the pair of jeans behind the trash can.

  Not in it.

  Frowning, she picked them up. They were wadded into a ball, just as the shirt had been. But as she shook them out, a note fell to the floor.