by Brenda Novak
“It can be.” He scowled, studying the cigarette pinched between his fingers. “Anyway, you don’t know me. And you’ve got a kid in there.”
His eyes held too many secrets. She gazed out across the lot. “Maude seems to think you’re okay.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. You barely met her,” he said, bringing the cigarette back to his lips.
“Are you telling me I can’t trust either of you?”
The cigarette moved as he talked. “I’m telling you that you can’t trust anyone.”
“You have some serious issues.”
“We all have issues.” The way he looked her up and down would have made Emma nervous, except it was so…orchestrated. “You’re not even dressed,” he added.
She arched an eyebrow at him. “I’m well covered.”
“Those pajamas aren’t the most attractive pair I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m not trying to impress you, so quit trying to intimidate me.”
He crushed his cigarette beneath his heel and didn’t respond.
“Do you want to talk about it or not?” she asked.
Shoving off from the post, he rounded on her a little too quickly. She hopped back out of reach—and dropped her mace on the ground in the process.
He eyed it for a second. “There you go. Now you’re using your head.” Picking it up, he gave it back to her. Then, with a humorless chuckle, he disappeared inside his room.
So much for starting a Tortured Souls Club, Emma thought as she looked down at the small canister. But it was just as well. She was never going to see Preston Whoever-He-Was again. And she had enough problems of her own to worry about. She needed to get some sleep. The more states she managed to put between herself and California tomorrow, the better.
WAL-MART WAS BUSIER than Emma had anticipated. Evidently it paid to be the only superstore in town, even in a town the size of Fallon.
Max helped her push a shopping cart down the aisles as she looked for the bottled water. She’d planned to be on her way by now—hours ago, actually. But she’d been exhausted. When Max had slept in, she did, too. And by the time they’d showered, dressed and packed, the stores were open. So she’d decided to take advantage of the local Wal-Mart to stock up on bottled water before venturing any farther into the desert.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t been the quick stop she’d anticipated. First, Max needed to use the restroom and took so long, complaining of a stomach ache, she was afraid he was getting the flu. Then she had to feed him, so they ate at the Mc-Donald’s in the store. At that point, she couldn’t put off his insulin injection, which necessitated another trip to the restroom. And on the way back, he’d spotted the toy aisle and insisted he be allowed to choose a toy as his reward for being so good while the police officer talked to Mommy yesterday. Because Emma didn’t have the heart to tell him he hadn’t been as quiet as she’d requested, she’d given in and let him pick out a magnetized game designed for travel. But now she was getting nervous and more than eager to leave.
“Hey, Mommy, they have gum,” Max said once they’d found the water and were finally standing in the checkout line.
Emma thumbed through the latest issue of People. “I’ve got some sugarless gum in the car.”
“I don’t like that kind.”
She glanced at the candid photos of various stars. “It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”
“How ’bout a sucker?”
Emma looked over the top of the magazine, wishing the checker—a gray-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses—would hurry. Checkout was never fun for the mother of a diabetic child. Everything Max loved but should avoid was displayed at eye level. “I don’t think so, honey.”
“Please? It could be my emergency snack.”
Except that his emergency snack never lasted until an emergency. “I really want to keep your blood in its zone, okay, baby? You had that candy bar the policeman gave you yesterday, which didn’t really fit into your meal plan.”
“What if I take an extra shot?”
“I just gave you your insulin.”
His shoulders drooped and his bottom lip came out. “What if I eat only half of it?”
Emma picked up the sucker and checked the carbohydrate totals on the back—twenty-one grams. “I guess you could have it for your afternoon snack,” she said, although she knew Max would start begging her for it the moment they got in the car.
All too familiar with their typical negotiations, he began to press her even before that. “You mean for lunch?”
“I mean for snack at three o’clock.” She’d have to take away a healthier food in order to let him eat the sucker, but she didn’t want to make his life miserable.
Forever conscious of the fact that her money had to last, Emma put the magazine back in the rack, paid for the water, candy and Max’s game, and hurried from the store. She was so intent on avoiding the other shoppers and traffic moving through the lot that at first she didn’t notice the cop car parked at a slant behind her Taurus. It was Max who pointed it out to her.
“Look, Mommy. There’s another policeman.”
Emma leaned around the large family in front of them to see what he was talking about, and felt her stomach drop. Sure enough, a police officer circled the Taurus, shading his eyes to see inside it.
God, it was stolen, just as she’d feared! Why else would they be so interested?
What now? Grabbing Max’s hand, she darted back into the store. She’d noticed another exit over by the tire center. She’d slip out there. But then what? She couldn’t leave her car.
“What are we doing now, Mommy? Where are we going?” Max asked as she hurried him down one aisle and then the next.
Emma could hardly breathe. Their suitcases were in the trunk of the car. She had no choice but to leave behind almost everything they owned. Thank God she had the backpack with Max’s diabetes supplies and her purse.
“Mommy? What’s wrong? Are you crying?”
“No.” Obviously, her panic showed. “I’ll tell you what’s happening in a minute,” she said, scrambling to decide what to do. She had to get out of Fallon right away. But she no longer had transportation. And, as far as she knew, this town didn’t have any bus service.
The vision of a beat-up brown van flashed through her mind, along with a snippet of conversation.
I have to go to Iowa tomorrow.
Iowa! Surely you’re not driving there.
I drive everywhere.
Preston was leaving town today. He was going far, far away. And he had a van.
He might be her only chance to escape.
But it was nearly eleven o’clock. What if she’d already missed him?
PRESTON HOLMAN BLINKED at the ceiling overhead. He needed to think of five good reasons to get up. That was the exercise, wasn’t it? The therapist he’d seen at his ex-wife’s insistence had told him to face each new day by making his list of five.
He glanced at the gun on the dresser. As usual, he could think of only one. Ironically, it was the same thing that had caused his divorce. But it got him out of bed every day.
Rolling off the mattress, he landed on his feet, peeled off his boxer briefs and strode to the bathroom to take a quick shower. He might have suffered a setback yesterday when the pharmacist who knew Vince didn’t hear from him as he thought he might. But Gordon, the private investigator he’d hired to help him track Dr. Vince Wendell, had called afterward with better news. And even if this new lead didn’t work out, Preston would still find him—somehow, somewhere. Dallas was counting on him, and he wouldn’t let his son down again, regardless of the cost.
A knock echoed through the room before he could start the water. He didn’t generally receive visitors. He’d quit associating with friends and family over a year ago—about the time he started carrying a gun.
It had to be Maude. She was the only person he knew who refused to notice or care that he didn’t want to be bothered. He supposed that in some perverse way he
liked her motherly clucking. After all, he’d been searching the state of Nevada for months and always came back here.
Pulling on a pair of jeans, he fastened the buttons and shoved his gun in a drawer.
A shaft of sunlight blinded him as he opened the door, reminding him that he should’ve been up hours ago. He would’ve been, if it hadn’t taken him until five in the morning to fall asleep.
Raising a hand to shield his eyes, he blinked when he realized two people stood on his stoop—and Maude wasn’t one of them.
“Can I help you?” Keeping his gaze firmly affixed to the pretty woman he’d met last night, he refused to acknowledge the stocky, all-American boy at her side.
She dropped four quarters in her son’s hand and asked him to run to the office to see if Maude would sell him a diet soda.
The boy trotted off, and she gave Preston a hesitant smile, which faded quickly when he didn’t return it. “I’m sorry to bother you, but…”
“What?” he prompted when her words faltered.
Her eyes drifted to his bare chest. Then she lifted her chin. “I heard you say to Maude last night that you’re heading to Iowa today. Is that true?”
It was his turn to grow leery. “Do I really want to answer that question?”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t see where you’re going with it, which makes me a little uncomfortable.”
“I’m not going anywhere with it. Well, of course I am, but…” She wiped her palms on her expensive linen shorts before folding her arms in a jerky, nervous movement. “My car’s been stolen.”
“From here?” He stuck his head out to check the far corner where, for whatever reason, she’d parked her car last night. The white Taurus was gone, all right, but he had a hard time believing it’d been stolen. Fallon had very little crime. He typically left his keys in the van.
“Not here, exactly,” she clarified. “At Wal-Mart.”
“Are you sure you didn’t forget where you parked?”
Her lips thinned. “I didn’t forget where I parked. My car is gone and my luggage with it. Max and I had to walk three miles to get back here.”
“Do you need to use my phone to call your insurance agent or…something?” he asked, still at a loss. He didn’t know this woman. What could she possibly want from him?
“No.” Her nails made indentations in her arms, beneath her white, short-sleeved sweater. “My insurance agent won’t be able to help me.”
“Because…”
“I only carried liability coverage. My boyfriend and I recently split up and…and I couldn’t afford anything more comprehensive.”
Preston considered her troubled face. She had ice-blue eyes with golden lashes, a small, elegant nose, a generous mouth, and the most beautiful sun-kissed skin and long blond hair he’d ever seen. Was she using her looks and that bad-luck story to see how much she could take him for? She was probably accustomed to getting whatever she wanted.
But he wasn’t a good mark. He traveled light. And he carried a gun.
“I’d offer to let you call your family or a friend or someone else,” he said. “But something tells me you’re not here to use the phone.”
“No.”
“So…what, then?”
She glanced over at the dirty brown minivan he’d picked up at some two-bit used-car lot along the way. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel and wrecked his truck—the only thing he hadn’t given his wife in the divorce.
“Actually, I was hoping maybe we could hitch a ride with you.”
The moment of truth. “Hitch a ride where?” he asked.
“Iowa.”
“What?”
“You’ve got room.” She appealed to him with those incredible eyes, and for the first time, Preston noticed how pale and drawn she was under that tan. “I have family there—in Iowa, I mean.”
“We’re complete strangers!”
“I know.”
She was also too thin. But he couldn’t do anything for her. He couldn’t stand the idea of having her boy in the car. And the loaded weapon was something else entirely. “Forget it. Won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It takes three days to get there.”
She grew more agitated. “What about Salt Lake City? That’s closer.”
He wasn’t taking her anywhere. He started to shake his head, but she grabbed his arm. “Please?”
Damn it! Preston closed his eyes. Since the tragedy that had changed his life, no one dared approach him, let alone ask him for a favor. He was too filled with rage, too hungry for vengeance; all that negative emotion made others uncomfortable. So how had he suddenly found himself in this predicament?
He opened his eyes to stare down at the hand still gripping his arm so beseechingly—and saw a nasty-looking sore. It was only the size of a nickel, but he was willing to bet it hurt like hell, and it didn’t seem to be healing.
Taking hold of her wrist so she couldn’t immediately recoil, he said, “Where’d you get this?”
Her eyes slid to the injury. “It was an accident.”
He made no effort to pretend he believed her. “An accident?”
“I bumped into my boyfriend when he was smoking a cigarette and burned myself.”
“This isn’t the type of burn you get by accident. It’s too deep.”
When she didn’t answer, he dropped her hand. “Are you going to tell me the truth? Or do we say goodbye right now?”
“Okay.” She seemed to deflate a little more. “He’s got an anger problem.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“He did it on purpose?”
“You already know that.”
“Sounds like quite a guy.”
She said nothing.
“You two split up?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
“Not here, which is all that matters. And I can pay for gas. Surely that’s an incentive to let me ride with you for a few hours. You look like you could use the money.”
“I look like a lot of things,” he said. “A lot of things I’m not.” Remembering the sleeping boy she’d held in her arms last night, the same boy who’d just dashed off to get a soda, he let his breath out in a long sigh. “If it was only you, it’d be different, but you have a kid and—”
“You’re worried about Max?”
It’d been two years, but the sight of a young boy still made Preston feel as though someone had driven a stake through his heart. “Kids don’t do well on long drives. They get bored, they whine, they beg, they have to go to the bathroom every five minutes—”
“Not my kid,” she interrupted quickly.
“Every kid.”
“Max is a good boy. He…he’s very low maintenance. You won’t even know he’s in the car, I promise.”
As if on cue, her son came running back, carrying a diet cola, which he’d already opened. “She had one, Mom,” he said. “She gave it to me. She wouldn’t even take the quarters.”
Preston kept his eyes averted from the boy’s young face. The voice affected him badly enough.
“How nice of her,” Emma said. “I hope you remembered to thank her.”
“I did. She gave me a cookie, too. Can I eat it?”
A frown creased the woman’s forehead as she regarded her son. “You already had a sucker.”
“But we walked a long way.”
She glanced fleetingly at Preston. “Not now. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Pul-leeze, Mom?”
The conversation sounded all too familiar. “See?” Preston said. “It won’t work.”
“He’s only asking me for a cookie!” she said.
“You’d better find someone else to give you a ride.” He backed up and started to shut the door, but she put a hand on the panel before he could.
“Wait! You can’t turn me away. I…I need your help.”
Preston still wanted to refuse. He would
have—if not for that damn burn and the desperation in her eyes.
“Please!” she said again and, suddenly, he let go of the door. The opposing pressure sent it crashing into the wall. She flinched; he didn’t.
“Fine,” he snapped, “but you’d better keep that boy quiet.”
The woman grabbed her son’s arm and pulled him slightly behind her. “He won’t make a peep, right, Max?”
Max looked confused, which made Preston feel even worse. He knew he was being harsh and unreasonable. But he couldn’t help it. “If either of you gives me any trouble, I won’t feel the least bit guilty kicking you out at the first town,” he said.
She stiffened but nodded obediently. “I understand.”
CHAPTER FOUR
EMMA KNEW SHE SHOULD test Max’s blood. Soon. Because she was trying so hard to keep him quiet, she’d been giving in too easily whenever he asked for something to eat. With no exercise to compensate, he had to need extra insulin. But after claiming that her son was “low maintenance,” she didn’t dare whip out his testing kit and reveal what a monstrous exaggeration that had been. Preston Holman, who’d introduced himself once they hit the road, seemed to have no tolerance for children. She feared he’d use Max’s special needs as a reason to dump them long before they reached Utah.
If Max could hold out until they had to stop, she could walk him into the ladies’ room and take care of him without a lot of fuss. Only they were in the middle of nowhere, and Preston didn’t seem inclined to pull over just for the fun of it. Neither did he talk much. They’d been driving for nearly three hours, and he’d scarcely said a word. She got the impression that he saw her and Max’s company as an endurance test, that he was busy counting the minutes until he’d be rid of them.
The slightest irritation could make that happen sooner than she wanted.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Max complained.
Emma knew he couldn’t be hungry. He’d been snacking like crazy, which was what had her so worried. “You’re fine.”
“I want a cookie.”
She glanced quickly at Preston, whose eyes seemed fastened on the road ahead of them. He hadn’t looked at her, or her son, more than a couple of times since they’d left. She hoped he was in his own little world, deep in thought, and wasn’t paying attention. But the way he gripped the steering wheel with both hands when Max added a whiny “pul-leeze” indicated otherwise.
