by Brenda Novak
Hansen looked up and down the street before getting behind the wheel of the warden’s government-issue van. His worry made Gabrielle feel better than she had since he and the warden had arrived. But her pleasure dissipated the moment David came up behind her.
“Do you think it was wise to taunt him that way?” he asked. “They were pretty nice about the accident. They could cause you a lot of trouble over that, you know, maybe even bring you up on criminal charges. I know you weren’t at fault, but it’s your word against Eckland’s.”
Gabrielle turned to face him. “They weren’t being nice,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Because they just offered me a deal. Didn’t you hear them?”
“I think you’re reading things into the conversation, Gabby. I didn’t hear any deal.”
“Oh yeah? They let me know they had a different version of the accident, then they offered to sweep it under the rug along with everything else—if I keep my mouth shut about what happened to Tucker. They’re just letting me stay on at the prison to sweeten the pie, and to stop anyone from asking questions as to why they’d fire me.”
David rubbed his neck with one hand as though the tension was starting to get to him. “Come on, Gabby. They didn’t even refer to the stuff that happened at the prison before Tucker was transferred.”
“Yes, they did. The warden called it a big misunderstanding, remember?”
“Are you sure he meant what you think he meant?”
She watched the cloud of dust from the tires of the warden’s van settle, then sighed. “No, I’m not sure. Maybe you’re right.”
“Either way, why not take away their power? Come to Phoenix with me. You won’t have to work unless you want to,” he said.
Gabrielle closed the door, folded her arms and leaned dejectedly against it. “David, do you know what you’re asking me to do?”
He stared at her for a few seconds and his voice dropped. “All I know is that I want you to love me the way I love you, Gabby.”
Their eyes locked. “And what if I can’t?” she asked softly, wishing she could dictate her emotions.
A muscle flexed in David’s cheek. “He raped you, didn’t he?”
Gabrielle blinked in surprise. “What?”
“What happened in the desert wasn’t how you made it sound. Are you afraid to tell me because I didn’t want you to come down here in the first place?”
“No, it’s not that at all.”
“Then what?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t rape me,” she said. But he’d done something almost as bad. He’d stolen her heart and her soul, and ruined her for David or any other man.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT RAINED that night. Gabrielle lay in bed, listening to large, fat drops ringing like coins on the metal of her trailer. But she was remembering another storm, the one in the desert when she woke to find Tucker sleeping beside her in the cave. She relived the fear that had seized her at the thought of being alone in such a situation, the relief that had taken over at finding another human close by, and the comfort that Tucker had provided when she finally curled up next to him. He’d instinctively shifted to hold her while she slept, and the contact had kept the fear and discomfort at bay. At least for a little while.
Kicking off the covers, Gabrielle got out of bed, considered going down the hall to Allie’s room, then decided against it. David slept in the room next to her own, and the hall floor creaked. She didn’t want to wake him as she had before, didn’t want to be confronted with any more questions or doubts or searching glances. Especially since he’d be leaving the next morning. He’d told her before bed that he needed to go home to take care of business for a few days. He was hoping to return to Florence by the following weekend, but Gabrielle wasn’t sure she’d want to see him even then. She appreciated what a good father he was to Allie, but she was confused about her feelings right now. She needed some time alone, time to deal with what she’d been through and what she’d done.
Pulling back the drapes to gaze out at the stormy night, she pressed her forehead to the cool glass. There was little here in Florence. A main street with an old-fashioned grocery store, a small post office, a town hall that desperately needed refurbishing, several stores that had gone out of business and were sitting empty, a few buildings that dated back to silver-mining days and were boarded up—like the hotel—awaiting the funds to save them as historical landmarks. Florence boasted only one fast-food restaurant, no hospital, certainly no mall and no hotels to speak of. And yet this town held…something she needed. Her real mother. A means to support herself and Allie. Space to figure out what she wanted from life. Somehow, moving back to Phoenix smacked of giving up and settling. She couldn’t do that. But how could she continue to hurt David?
Lightning stabbed across the sky, illuminating a car parked across the street from her house and yanking Gabrielle out of her thoughts. She doubted she would’ve noticed except that it was facing in the wrong direction and, when she looked closer, she saw the blurry image of someone’s head and shoulders in the driver’s seat. Whoever it was seemed to be staring at her house! Staring right at her!
She jumped back from the window and put a hand to her chest as if she could stop the sudden knocking of her heart against her ribs. Who was it? She tried telling herself it must be her neighbor coming home from work, but the digital alarm clock on her nightstand confirmed that graveyard didn’t end for another two hours. Besides, the plain white sedan sitting across the street was not her neighbor’s car.
Could it be Tucker?
She felt a strange quiver in her stomach, a mixture of fear, for his safety and hers, and a sudden aching desire. How many times had she wondered if he was okay? If she’d ever see him again?
She peeked around the edge of the window, but raindrops, flung against the trailer by the wind, pinged against the glass and rolled down the pane, distorting her view. Although the streetlight glowed eerily, it was nearly half a block away.
It had to be Tucker, she decided. Who else would it be? Florence was a community of corrections officers and other prison workers, and there was very little crime. She doubted her visitor was casing the place.
Tucker must need her. But what could she do for him? She doubted David would sympathize with or understand her feelings for Randall Tucker. He’d tell her to let the system handle the situation, that Tucker’s problems weren’t her problems.
On one level, Gabrielle knew he was right. But she cared too much about Tucker to divorce herself from responsibility where he was concerned.
She had to warn him of David’s presence, send him away.
Wearing a muscle shirt and men’s boxers, she slipped out of her room and tiptoed as quietly as possible down the hall. The floor creaked, as it always did, jangling her nerves. She caught her breath, listening for sounds of movement in David’s room.
She heard nothing. Thank goodness.
Fearing Tucker might come to the door before she could stop him, she didn’t pause long. She hurried on, moving more quickly once she reached the living room, being extra-cautious when she opened the door to brace for the wind and not let it tear the door out of her grasp and bang it against the side of the trailer.
Outdoors it was cool but certainly not cold, only wet and windy. Gabrielle could still feel residual heat emanating from the concrete sidewalks and blacktop of the roadway, leftovers of another one-hundred-and-ten-degree day. But the rain quickly doused her, chilling her as soon as she moved out from under the shelter of her carport and started across the street.
She was nearly at the white sedan when she slowed, suddenly hesitant and regretting her thoughtless haste. The person in the car wasn’t getting out to meet her. Certainly Tucker would have seen her by now and made some move to—
The headlights flashed on. In the split second before they blinded her, she saw a face she recognized.
It wasn’t Tucker’s. It was Hansen’s.
&nb
sp; Gabrielle considered beating a quick retreat, then forced herself to continue around the car. She couldn’t slink away because that wasn’t something she’d do if everything she’d told Hansen and the warden had been the truth. She’d bang on his door and ask what the hell he was doing skulking around her place.
Her hair was plastered to her head and she was shivering, hugging her arms to her body for heat, by the time he rolled down his window.
“Nice outfit,” he said, his eyes settling on the wet fabric covering her breasts. The scent of alcohol drifted from inside the car. Gabrielle stifled a grimace.
“You let Tucker see you like this out there in the desert?” he asked. “Or did you take it all off? Give him a real show and a free ride, too?”
“You’ve been drinking,” she said.
He shrugged. “I’m entitled. It’s Saturday night, and I’m off duty.”
Gabrielle thought she could make a good case that he was too intoxicated to drive, but she had other things on her mind at the moment. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s a public street.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You want an answer?” He slung an arm over the steering wheel and leaned closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I’ve been wondering what it is about you, Hadley.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would a sexy little thing like you prefer prison trash to a real man?”
“Are you using yourself as the example?”
She knew he’d caught the insult in her tone when his eyes turned hard. “I’m more of a man than you could handle, Hadley,” he said. “If I ever f—”
“Go home,” Gabrielle said, cutting him off and backing away before he could get too vulgar.
“Not until you tell me a few things.”
She glanced across the street, wishing she hadn’t been so quiet when she left the trailer. David would’ve been a welcome interruption about now. “Like what?”
“Like how Tucker survived in the desert long enough to tie you up at that ranch.”
“I have no idea,” she lied.
“And why the manager of the Bountiful Harvest said he found an orange jumpsuit in an egg cooler that had been locked from five o’clock the previous night to eight o’clock the morning you turned up?”
When Gabrielle didn’t answer, he smiled. “I called you this morning. Your hubby, David—”
“My ex-husband.”
“—told me where to find the ranch. He was very helpful. Even gave me directions.”
“I would’ve done the same.”
Hansen’s chuckle was disbelieving. “I bet. You probably would’ve sent me to Tombstone.”
“So you went out there today?” she asked, wondering what else Richard Griffin had told him.
“Yeah, I had a look around.”
“Pretty industrious for your day off, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’m going to get Tucker. I’m going to get that son of a bitch if it’s the last thing I do. He won’t make a fool out of me.”
In Gabrielle’s opinion, Hansen did a fine job making a fool out of himself. But he was just twisted enough to be dangerous, and she wasn’t about to provoke him any further. “Maybe you’re wasting your time,” she said, trying to defuse his anger. “Maybe Tucker went back into the desert, tried to cross the border and never made it. He could be carrion right now and you’re sitting out here in the middle of the night obsessing.”
“You’d like me to believe he’s dead, wouldn’t you? Then maybe I’d give up.”
“Why would I care?”
“I don’t know.” He studied her. “But you do.”
“It’s cold,” she said. “I’m going inside.”
She started to walk around his car. Moving much faster than she’d thought him capable of in his current state, he stepped out and caught her by the wrist before she could clear the headlights. “Griffin said some of his workers found a man hiding in his storage shed the same day they found you.”
Fear ripped through Gabrielle, making her whole body tingle. “So?” she managed to say.
“He told me you had a look at him, said it wasn’t Tucker.”
“It wasn’t. It was some hiker who’d gotten turned around and run out of water.”
“He fit the description,” Hansen pointed out.
“You don’t think I know what Tucker looks like?”
“I don’t think you want us to bring him in.”
“Why?” Gabrielle yanked her hand free and pushed her dripping hair out of her face. “I went in to that desert after him.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand,” he said, squinting through the rain beading on his lashes. “If you caused that accident to help him escape, why’d you follow him into the damn desert? Did you plan to disappear together?”
“And abandon my baby? You’re sick! I didn’t cause the accident—Eckland did. I thought I was doing my job when I went after him.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you were just trying to make it look good.”
“I nearly died out there, you son of a—” She bit off her words, took a deep breath. Inciting Hansen wouldn’t accomplish anything.
“Sometimes plans go awry,” he said, her suffering in the desert obviously meaningless to him. “But I want you to know this much. If you’re in this thing, Hadley, if you’re dirty, I’m going to nail you to the wall. You got that?”
“I think you’ve been watching too many Clint Eastwood movies,” she said.
He smiled. “We’ll see.”
Gabrielle didn’t answer. She just watched, her heart in her throat, as he got back into his car and drove away.
BY THE FOLLOWING weekend, David had been gone a week, Tucker had been splashed all over the news, and Gabrielle had reported for work at Eyman Complex, Rynning Unit, on Wednesday as Warden Crumb had requested. She’d already worked three shifts there. She’d expected to hate her job, to find it difficult to go back into the same dark surroundings she’d left the day she was supposed to transfer Tucker to Yuma. But she found the new complex a completely different experience. A modern facility, it was much quieter than the old Territorial prison, and the deputy warden who ran Rynning Unit seemed like a man of integrity. He was strict with the inmates but fair at the same time, and the corrections officers under his watch worked hard to do a good job.
On her first day, Gabrielle had sensed some reticence among her co-workers and wondered if Hansen had passed the word that she was trouble. But by the end of her third shift, almost everyone had relaxed; without exception, they were as friendly with her as they were with each other. A group of officers, both women and men, had even asked her to go out for a drink with them tonight. She’d declined because Felicia had a date and couldn’t baby-sit for her, and David had called to say he couldn’t come until Sunday.
She would have taken them up on the offer otherwise. Now that she was physically recovered from her stint in the desert, she no longer wanted to sit at home. She hated the way the minutes dragged, hated the constant worry that she’d turn on the television to see the police taking Tucker into custody. And having Hansen park outside her place in the rain last Saturday certainly hadn’t helped her state of mind. Just the memory of it was enough to give her the creeps, especially when she remembered how he’d looked at her breasts and asked why she preferred prison trash to a real man.
Shivering at the memory, and the heavily air-conditioned atmosphere of the Gas ’n Go service station, she tried to put it from her mind. She’d purchased gas a few minutes earlier and was standing in line to collect her change. But it was tough to concentrate on anything that didn’t revolve around the events of the past few weeks. Her only solace was that the police hadn’t caught Tucker yet. Maybe they never would, she thought, her natural optimism starting to buoy her now that everything seemed to be returning to normal. Maybe he’d be able to build a new life in Mexico or—
The person in front of her shifted, giving G
abrielle her first unobstructed view of the newspaper bins. There, on the front page, was another picture of Tucker. He’d been in the papers several times over the past ten days—generally the same photo—so seeing him again didn’t surprise her. It was the headline that grabbed her by the throat: Florence Escapee Thought To Have Kidnapped Son.
Oh, my God, he managed it!
“Ma’am?”
Gabrielle blinked and looked up at the skinny, redheaded clerk who was waiting with an impatient scowl.
“What can I get for you?” he asked.
For a second Gabrielle couldn’t remember what she needed. Her mind was going a hundred miles a minute, considering every tangent she could possibly connect to this new piece of information. Tucker was still alive, still free, and he wasn’t too far away. Security being what it was at airports, she doubted he’d try to hop a plane, which meant—
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step aside if you’re not ready. We have a line,” the checker said.
Gabrielle quickly plopped the newspaper on the counter. “I’ll take this.”
“Seventy-five cents.”
She began to dig through her purse, then remembered her change from the gas, the reason she’d come into the store in the first place. She told the cashier she’d used pump number five, mechanically held out her hand to receive her change and walked out, oblivious to everyone and everything around her as she read the opening paragraph of the article.
Phoenix, Arizona—Eight-year-old Landon Tucker was abducted from his home in Chandler late Wednesday night while his foster parents, Maureen and William Boyer, were sleeping, police spokeswoman Clara Cunningham told reporters this morning. Authorities believe his father, Randall Tucker, an escaped convict from the Arizona State Prison at Florence, Central Unit, to be responsible for the kidnapping. Tucker, serving a life sentence for beating his wife to death, escaped during a routine transfer to Yuma Prison on August 15th and fled into the Sonoran Desert where…
