by Jill Sanders
She shook her head and for a moment, he thought she was going to cry. “I didn’t tell her about you. About what you told me about our father.”
He blinked a few times and understanding hit. “Why not?”
She shrugged and glanced out the window into the darkness. “I guess I didn’t want her to worry. She’s recently gotten a new position at the bar and grill and she’s deep into planning her wedding.”
He took up her hand and placed a soft kiss on her palm. “Tell her what you want, but I would be better if she stayed away from her place until she hears back from us.”
She nodded then took a deep breath and dialed her phone.
Chapter Nine
Willow waited, her heart jumping out of her chest with each ring. When she finally heard her sister’s voice, her mind locked up.
“Hello? Willow? Did you butt-dial me?” She would have chuckled, except fear raced through her mind, images of her sister cut open, bleeding much like Caleb had been when she’d met him.
“Don’t go home,” she blurted out.
Wendy laughed. “Too late. What’s up? You sound like someone from one of those slasher films you love.” She heard Wendy laugh even more. She couldn’t think of what to tell her sister, so she tried a different tactic.
“Is Cole there?” she begged.
“Yes, why?” She could hear the laughter die from her sister’s voice.
“Let me talk to him,” she said, biting her bottom lip and hoping her sister wouldn’t ask why.
“Why?” Wendy asked, causing Willow to almost groan out loud. Willow could hear even more concern creep into her voice.
“It’s a surprise,” she lied and closed her eyes, praying her sister would fall for it.
“What?” Wendy asked.
“You know, for the wedding.” She hated lying, but knew that Cole would be easier to talk to.
“Fine,” her sister said after a moment. She heard the phone being passed off and felt a little relieved.
“Hey, Willow, what’s up?” Cole sounded eager.
“Cole, I need you to step outside first,” she begged.
“Okay.” He drew out the word, but she could hear him walking outside of her sister’s condo. “I’m out. Now what?”
“I need my sister to stay with you at your folk’s place for a while.” She knew she couldn’t hide the worry in her voice and didn’t even try with him.
“Why?” he asked slowly.
She took a deep breath. “It’s a long story, but she might be in danger if she stays at her place.”
“What?” Concern flooded his voice. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, feeling tears sting the back of her eyes. “It’s about our father. The bike gang he was in... short story, they’re looking for us. I’m safe. I’m staying at a friend’s house in Crystal Shores until I hear more. I just need Wendy to stay with you, oh, and maybe you can make sure she’s safe at work.”
She glanced over and saw Caleb nod in agreement.
“Willow?” Cole’s voice was low and she could hear the anger and concern.
“Please, just do this. It may be nothing, but I need to know that she’s safe. Don’t tell Wendy anything about this. Tell her something other than this. I don’t want her worrying, not with everything she has on her plate. Besides, you know how she feels about our father. She might just walk into danger to spite his memory.”
“Why—”
“I’ll call you in a few days.” She cut off his other questions. “Please, just do this for me.”
The other side of the line was silent for a while. “Of course. But, text me where you’re staying and let me know that you’re okay.”
“I will.” She relaxed back. “Thanks.”
“Sure. Now I’m going to have to make something up and lie to the love of my life.” He groaned.
“Sorry.” She felt guilt spreading but came up with an idea. “Tell her you’re redecorating the place for her.”
He chuckled. “It was going to be a surprise, but we weren’t going to live here after the wedding. I bought a house down the street from Marcus and Shelly’s.”
“What?” She smiled. “Wow, congrats.”
“Thanks.” She could hear the pride in his voice. “I’ll think of something. Be safe.”
“I will. Take care of my sister,” she begged.
“Always.”
She held her phone and felt the tears sliding down her face. Wendy and Cole were so lucky to have found each other.
“Everything okay?” Caleb said, breaking into her thoughts.
“Yeah, Wendy’s going to stay with Cole and his family at their place in Spring Haven. Across the bay.”
“Good. Now we need to find a place for us.” His eyes moved back to the mirror. “But first, we have to lose them.” He nodded behind them. She turned around and saw two headlights.
“Who do you think is in the car?”
“Look again,” he answered. “It’s not a car.”
She turned around in her seat so she could see. He was right; there were two motorcycles following them. They were spaced apart so that their headlights looked like a car instead of two bikes.
“How did they find us?”
He sighed and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I should have known that they followed me from my last hotel. I bet they were just trying to get to you.” He cursed under his breath.
“It’s not your fault.” Her eyes were glued to the lights behind them. “What do they want with me?”
He shook his head and reached for the glove box.
“What are you looking for?” She helped him open it.
“Everything with your name on it.”
“Why?” She frowned.
“We need to get rid of it.”
“Why?”
“Because at this point, they don’t know you’re Billy’s kid,” he burst out.
“So?” She wasn’t following him.
He glanced at her. “If they found out... let’s just say, I think it would be better if they thought you were just a friend of mine.”
She thought about it, then started gathering up everything—her car registration, her license, her checkbook, everything. She never realized how much she had with her name on it.
“Now what?” she asked, holding everything in her lap.
“Toss it out the window.” He nodded towards the side of her car.
“What?” she squealed.
“What else do you suggest we do with it?”
She thought of her credit cards, her license. How long it had taken her to apply for each one, what each one meant to her. She had about a hundred dollars on her in cash, but the rest of what she lived on was tucked safely into her bank account. And he was asking her to throw her entire identity out the window for anyone to find.
She thought about it. What else could she do with it all?
“Fine.” She felt her heart sink.
“Toss them in a bag first. If they see you tossing out all that paperwork, they might stop to see what it is.”
He kept his eyes on the road as she reached behind the seat and pulled the small black trash bag she used and tossed everything into it.
“Next turn I make, toss it hard so it clears the side of the road,” he said, speeding the car up.
“I hope you have some cash, because I only have about a hundred.”
He nodded without saying anything. She rolled down the window and waited. Her heart beat faster as the wind blew her hair around.
“Now,” he called just after he turned off the highway. She tossed the bag hard, but hit her hand on the top of the door. She watched in horror as the bag bounced once on the side of the road, then rolled off into the grass. By the time the two lights hit the spot, the bag was out of sight.
She leaned back and rolled up her window.
“Did it clear the road?” he asked.
“Yes, I don’t think they noticed it. Now what?”
“Now, we run f
aster than them.”
Caleb drove for the next hour, thankful that the little car didn’t need to be filled up every hour. Actually, he was pretty sure that the tank of gas in her car would outlast even the motorcycles following them.
The bikes were faster, but at this point, whoever was following them didn’t seem to want to catch up, just follow.
Willow had become quiet next to him and when he looked, her face was turned away from him.
They had talked for the first half hour. She had so many questions about where he’d been, what he’d been doing since he’d left her. Each question he had answered and he’d asked his own about what she’d been doing.
She kept telling him her life was boring, but so far he’d hung onto her every word.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked.
She looked over at him. “Yeah, I guess I’m just thinking about what to do next.”
“Any ideas?”
“A few. You think that your contact, your handler, is in contact with the Lone Outlaws?”
“How else would they have been able to find me so quickly?”
She nodded and then was silent for a moment. “I had a thought on how to use that to our advantage.”
“And?”
“Maybe we can mislead them again.” She looked over her shoulder at the two lights that were still following them down the long back highways.
“To what end?”
“If we can lose them”—she tossed her head back towards the two lights— “then change directions, we can head back towards the coast. I might have a place we can hide out for a while without being noticed.”
“And tell my contact what? We’re up north?”
She nodded. “We’ve driven almost two hours this direction. Why would they believe we’ve circled back?”
He thought about his trick, the night in the alley, how he’d backtracked, knowing they wouldn’t look for him where he’d just been. It had worked once; why wouldn’t it work again?
“I’ll have to do some fancy driving; you might want to hold on.” They were quiet for a while as he scanned the roads ahead.
When the opportunity came, he jerked the wheel of the car to the side, turning off on a dirt road, then slammed on the brakes and shut down the lights. They sat in darkness until first one, then both bikes past them.
“How long should we wait?” she whispered. She didn’t know why she felt the need to keep her voice down. It wasn’t as if they could hear them, but she still felt the urge to keep her ears glued to every sound. The low rumble of the bikes had finally passed, and now only the sounds of crickets played outside the quiet car.
They waited for a while, and then he glanced back, throwing his arm over the back of her seat, and started to slowly back out. He made sure not to use his brakes when they rolled to a stop on the road. He switched gears on the car without coming to a full stop and punched the gas without turning on the lights.
“Sorry, we’ll have to go slow until I feel we can turn the lights on.” They crept along the dark road and she wished it had been a full moon that night instead of just the small sliver of light.
Over a mile later, he turned off on a side road and punched the gas after turning on the lights.
“This will lead us back to the main highway.” He drove faster than he’d gone all night and she settled back in her seat and watched as small farms and open fields passed by them.
Every now and then she would glance over her shoulder. But, so far, there was nothing but darkness behind them.
Finally, they reached the spot where he’d turned off onto the back highway and he pulled over. “Do you think you can find that bag?”
She smiled and jumped out of the car as he turned so the headlights hit near the spot. It took her less than a minute for her to retrieve her belongings.
She tucked the back close to her and got back in. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “I know what it’s like to lose your identity.”
They continued on the path towards her home, and only stopped once to fill up the small car.
“I take it back.” He glanced over at her, her eyebrows shooting up in question. “What I said about this car. I guess it does pay to have one that only needs to be filled up once every five hundred miles or so.” She chuckled.
“So, where’s this place you want to hide out at?” he finally asked.
She frowned as he pulled out of the gas station.
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Why?” He frowned, matching her face. “Is it an ex-boyfriend?”
She laughed sarcastically. “I wish it was that easy.”
He shook his head, not understanding, but waiting patiently for her answer.
“No, it’s my mother’s place.”
Chapter Ten
They drove in silence a little longer as she gave him directions. From what he could tell, the place was so far out of the way, they were sure to never be found by the gang.
“I didn’t know your mother was still alive. I guess since you said Wendy had been the one to raise you... I just assumed.”
She felt the pang in her chest that she always felt when she thought about her mother. “She’s been dead to me for most of my life. She spent years in prison for drug and shoplifting charges.”
“My mother spent some time in and out of jail too.” He reached over and took her hand. “I guess neither of them would win mother-of-the-year awards.”
She could tell he was trying to lift the mood, but the fact that she was about to see her mother again, after almost ten years, had her stomach rolling with disgust.
“Turn here.” She pointed to the dirt road where her grandparents’ farm had always been. They passed under the heavy wood sign that hung over the gated area. Rosburn Farms was etched deep in the thick oak.
She remembered seeing it last when she’d spent a few days’ with her mother’s parents when she was eleven. Wendy had wanted her to know the couple. Even though their daughter had turned out bad, Wendy thought they deserved a chance to know their granddaughter.
As her car bumped up the long dirt lane, she thought about her mother. Charity Rosburn, had been a wild child, born of hippy parents who were a lot older and didn’t believe in punishing their child. Charity had grown up getting everything she’d ever wanted. She’d learned early in life about drinking, drugs, and sex. Her parents had run an organic farm just outside of Destin, Florida. They had made their money selling organic honey, eggs, milk, and other products to the tourist during the season.
Willow had heard that both of Charity’s parents had passed away in the last seven years and she knew her mother was now running the farm with her new husband, Ralph.
“It looks like a pretty nice place,” Caleb said, breaking into her thoughts.
“Looks can be deceiving,” she murmured.
As they drove up, the lights flashed across the front porch. The place was dark except for a small gas fireplace on the wide porch. She could see two dark figures huddled together.
When the car stopped, another light flashed on the porch.
“Evening, are you lost?” a deep voice asked.
Willow opened her door and stepped out. She watched as her mother, the spitting image of herself twenty some years from now, stepped off the porch without a word.
She was wearing a long, flowing flowered skirt. Her short dark hair was sprinkled with an occasional silver strand and was tied back away from her face. Her mother’s hands covered her heart as she walked closer to her.
“Willow?” her mother said before embracing her in a hug.
Willow’s entire body stiffened until she felt Caleb’s hands resting on her shoulders.
“Evening, I’m Caleb Harris.” He held out his hand for the man to shake.
“Ralph. Why don’t you two come on up and join us. We were just having some coffee and some of Charity’s homemade apple pie.”
Her mother had yet to say anything more to her. She was jus
t holding onto her arm as tears streamed down her face.
She followed the men up to the porch and sat next to Caleb on a small sofa seat.
“What brings you two out our way?” Ralph asked, taking up his wife’s hand.
“Well,” Caleb said, glancing at her. “We were hoping to see if we can stick around for a while. We’ve run into quite a mess because of Billy.”
“What’s wrong?” her mother finally piped in, looking worried.
“It’s nothing,” she started to say, only to have Caleb take her hand.
“We’d like to just lay low for a while. You know, under the radar.” He pulled her closer.
“It’s because of the Lone Outlaws isn’t it? Did they find out about you?” Worry flooded her mother’s voice as she reached for her hands. Willow allowed her to take them, but held very stiff.
Willow waited, hoping Caleb would answer, but when he didn’t, she nodded her head in agreement.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need. There’s plenty of room in the guest cabin,” her mother said, shocking her.
When her mother had finally been released from prison, she’d moved back home. Her parents, spoiling her again, had quickly built a fifteen-hundred-square-foot cabin on the other side of the large barn that housed most of their animals.
“I can’t ask—”
“You haven’t,” her mother interrupted her. “For over twenty years you haven’t asked a thing from me. And for that same amount of time, I haven’t done anything for you. Let me do this one thing now.”
She looked into her mother’s eyes. They were so much like her own, she found it hard to blink or breathe. She could tell she was silently begging, so Willow nodded her head and squeezed Caleb’s hand tightly.
Caleb whistled as they walked through the front door of the “cabin.” He’d never imagined staying in a place this grand. Nor had he imagined in any of his dreams that places like this existed.
“This is a cabin?” He turned and looked at Willow, who just stood inside the door, frowning.
“My grandparents built it shortly after my mother was released from prison,” she said softly.
