Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  As if in response to her fervent wish to have things be normal, to be able to go and see if he had, the man behind her spoke.

  “Turn in there, to the right, and park behind the hotel.”

  As demanded, Jessie pulled off and around to the back of the Watson Lake Hotel, where she eased the Winnebago into a space beyond another motor home. Discouraged, she knew that anyone following would now be unable to see her rig and would continue on out of town, thinking she was still ahead.

  “Get up slow and come back here,” her captor said from the rear of the coach. “Get him something to wear. And don’t try anything stupid.”

  She did as she was told, tossing Patrick a pair of her own jeans from the closet, which fit well enough, for they were close to the same size in height and slenderness. As he pulled them on, he gave her a fearful, dispirited look, but there was also anger in his face and she hoped he wouldn’t be foolish in his panic.

  “Open the door. We’re going into the hotel,” she was informed. “You and the kid’ll go first and stand against the wall by the phone that’s just inside the door. I’ve got a call to make, but I’ll have this gun in my pocket, so don’t make any mistakes. Got that?”

  Jessie nodded and did as she was told. Opening the door, she stepped out into the parking lot and waited until Patrick joined her. With their captor close behind, they walked side by side along the walk. She was reaching for the handle of the door when it unexpectedly flew open and a young couple came hurriedly out.

  Suddenly five people were bumping into each other in confusion.

  “Sorry,” the young man said, and the girl who held his hand giggled.

  With two strangers between him and his captor, Patrick took instant advantage of the situation and bolted. In seconds he had reached the end of the walk that continued the length of the building and vanished around the corner at a dead run. Jessie, with people still in the way, was unable to follow and spun around to see if she could delay the man behind her.

  “Get out of my way,” he barked, shoving the amused girl to her knees in his attempt to push past her.

  “Hey!” her escort yelled. Angrily he grabbed at the other man’s arm, but missed and fell. Jessie was the only obstacle left, and without hesitating she hurled herself into his path but was straight-armed in the process and knocked down as well. With a quick change of direction, he dodged her attempt to catch his ankle and ran off after Patrick, who was visible for a moment or two as he ran into the Signpost Forest and was swallowed up among the hundreds of signs.

  “What the hell’s his problem?” growled the young man as he helped his girlfriend to her feet. He turned to Jessie. “Are you okay?”

  But Jessie, realizing that chasing after Patrick would do no good at all, picked herself up and ran back to the Winnebago without answering his question. Climbing in, she closed and locked the coach door and made her way quickly to the driver’s seat, where she had left the keys in the ignition.

  Before she could drive away, she had to back up and swing wide to avoid hitting the motor home in front of her—a behemoth, larger than a bus. Clearing it by inches, she drove back around the hotel, headed for the highway, and swung the Winnebago onto it.

  Between the highway and the Signpost Forest was a wide space for vehicles to pull off the road. She drove into it and between two cars and a truck with a trailer attached, looking anxiously for Patrick among the posts covered with signs. Forest was the right word for the collection, for the signposts were as impossible to see through as real trees with branches, obstructing vision for any distance greater than a few yards. Keeping the motor home inching forward, she kept searching. He had to be somewhere, unless he had been recaptured already, but she thought his dash had been quicker than the lumbering gallop of the gunman chasing him. He wouldn’t be easily caught.

  Glancing ahead to see how much room she had left in the pull-off space, she caught a glimpse of motion among the signposts, and Patrick dashed out into the far end of the space ahead of her. Her foot came down heavily on the accelerator as she simultaneously beat on the horn with her fist. Still running, he turned his head and saw her coming, glanced behind him, then swerved toward the Winnebago as she pulled up beside him and stopped. Behind him in the Signpost Forest she could see his pursuer coming fast.

  As Patrick reached the passenger side of the motor home, Jessie suddenly saw that the door was locked and realized that the button to unlock it was too far away to reach without leaving the driver’s seat. Jamming the gearshift into park, she leaped for the door as Patrick madly tried to yank it open from outside. There ensued a few seconds of frantic struggle in which the two worked against each other and neither was able to open the door.

  “Leave it alone,” Jessie shouted desperately at the boy and was finally able to pull up the button, just as the man behind him broke out from the signposts.

  “Get in! Get in and lock the door!” she yelled, scrambling back into the driver’s seat and wrenching the motor home into gear. Behind them she could hear the man shouting four-letter words and knew he would try to catch the vehicle, which was not yet moving fast enough to leave him behind. Patrick leaped in and tried to slam the door as she drove forward, speed increasing as they moved, but their pursuer caught hold of the door frame with one hand, attempting to pull himself close enough to climb in.

  “No,” the boy screamed, and opening the door a few inches, he slammed it hard on the grappling fingers. A howl of pain was the immediate result and the injured hand disappeared. In the sideview mirror, Jessie saw him trip and fall to his hands and knees in the dirt.

  Patrick solidly shut the door and locked it.

  Looking back she could see that the figure was growing smaller in the mirror but was up and running after them.

  “I’m going to have to stop for traffic,” she warned Patrick, “and he’s still coming.”

  He slid lower in the passenger seat as she slowed to a halt and waited for a pickup and two cars to pass on the highway. Then, with a startled cry he flinched away from the glass as the furious face of their captor appeared at the window.

  “Let me in, you bitch,” he screamed, brandishing the handgun he had taken from his pocket and pounding it on the glass barrier between them.

  Without hesitation Jessie stepped hard on the gas and pulled out into the path of another passenger car. The driver stood on his brakes to avoid hitting them, and as she rolled past she could hear his horn blaring and see that he was shouting furiously, incensed at her seeming stupidity.

  The face and handgun outside the passenger window vanished as they swung right and careened onto the road, in a cloud of dust and flying gravel. She hoped that someone would report a wild man waving an illegal handgun to the RCMP, but was not at all inclined to hang around to see if it happened. Police were seldom there when you needed them, and except for the squad car at the police building, she hadn’t seen evidence of one anywhere in Watson Lake.

  The satisfaction she felt at escaping their captor was nothing compared with Patrick’s relief and appreciation. He watched the man disappear behind them and turned to Jessie with tears running down his face.

  “He would have killed us. I know he would.” He slumped back against the seat and scrubbed at his dirty face with both fists.

  Jessie didn’t like to have people walking around in the motor home while it was moving, but it seemed a good idea to give him something to do at the moment. Her mouth was dry from apprehension, but she was not about to stop anywhere soon in search of something to drink. She meant to keep driving until she reached the resort where she and Maxie had agreed to meet.

  “Go back and wash your face and hands,” she told Patrick. “There’s a T-shirt in the right-hand closet if you want it—and some socks. Get whatever you want to eat or drink, and bring me something to drink—anything—from the frig when you come back.”

  Periodically she watched behind them and carefully examined the driver in any vehicle that passed, not trusting
that Patrick’s stepfather would give up. If he could steal a car, she thought he would, and might come after them. What could she do to make it impossible for him to find them?

  There were a few turnoffs, but none of them led any distance off the road, and if she allowed her enemy to pass while she hunted a hiding place, he would be able to simply wait and watch for them. Without stopping, there was no way to contact the police, and pulling off the road to make a phone call could let their pursuer reach them precious minutes before the RCMP.

  The Cassiar Highway. Though she had been afraid earlier that she would be forced to turn down it, now it would suit her purpose to do so. By heading south away from the Alaska Highway, she could disappear quickly down a road she would not be expected to take. It would mean losing contact with Maxie, but she could find a telephone later and call the resort where they had agreed to meet with an explanation of her failure to turn up. Less than fifteen miles ahead of them now, the Cassiar seemed a safer alternative, if only they could reach it first.

  Patrick was soon back in the passenger seat, his seat belt securely fastened, munching on peanuts from a package he had found in the cupboard. She missed Tank and worried about him, hoping again that he was with Maxie and Stretch. In no other circumstances would she ever have left him, but there was no way she could go back for him now, or stop and wait for them to catch up. She concentrated on driving as quickly as possible to the Cassiar Highway junction.

  With half a tank of diesel, Butch Stringer had not stopped at Fireside but had gone barreling up the road, gaining ten minutes on the Winnebago, though he had no way of knowing it. In just over two hours he had driven the 136 miles between Liard Hot Springs and Watson Lake without a break, slowly closing the gap between himself and the motor home, going faster than he normally would have, but he was a good driver, and most of the distance lay over a road that was well-paved and wide, with plenty of room.

  He cruised slowly through Watson Lake, looking for Jessie’s Winnebago in the parking lot of every motel, restaurant, service station, and grocery he could see, to no avail. In the middle of town he stopped to grab a burger to go and gobbled it down at the north end while he had the tank filled with diesel at a station next door to the Signpost Forest.

  Having seen it all before, Stringer hardly glanced at the display of poles and signs as he pulled out of the gas station, still looking for Jessie’s motor home. A tow truck pulling a car into the station for repairs distracted him just long enough to miss a glimpse of the Winnebago, parked almost out of sight at the back of the nearby Watson Lake Hotel, so he drove off without knowing he had been within sight of it and headed out of town.

  Thirteen miles up the road, almost to the junction with Highway 37, the Cassiar Highway, he was coming to a turnout with a litter barrel on the right side of the road when a red pickup with a camper hurriedly pulled away from it onto the highway, a boat on a trailer behind it, its driver stubbornly resolved to get ahead of the Peterbilt, though he should have waited for the truck to pass.

  “Damn fool,” Stringer muttered in disgust.

  Almost immediately he caught up with the pickup, which loaded with both camper and boat was gaining speed more slowly than his truck was traveling, forcing him to apply the brakes. A blast of his air horn did nothing to encourage the doggedly determined driver to ease his vehicle to the right and allow Stringer to pass. Another blast of the horn drew a fist out the pickup window with the middle finger raised in defiant rudeness.

  Stringer swore furiously. Had he not been anxious to catch up with Jessie, not knowing that she was now behind him, he probably would have let it go and dropped back till there was more than enough room to pull around. But the incident had angered him, and for one critical instant he lost sight of the fact that safety was his priority. He shifted gears, put his foot down hard on the accelerator, and swung the forty-ton Peterbilt and trailer out to pass.

  Had it not been for the boat, he might have made it. He was almost even with the pickup when he saw a passenger car at the intersection turn carelessly off the Cassiar Highway onto the road and pick up speed in his direction before its driver realized the road was blocked. It was far too close for him to either complete the pass or fall back behind the pickup and the boat it was towing.

  His reaction was instantaneous.

  Stomping on the clutch, he bore down on the brakes with all his weight. At the same time, knowing it was impossible to bring the 80,000 pounds of truck and trailer to a halt in less than two hundred feet, he made the choice he had always been afraid he would someday be forced to make and aimed the rig for the left-hand side of the road, intending to drop it over the edge, hoping there would be enough room for both the other vehicles to clear the trailer as it left the roadway. It was too much for the stability of the rig. With a sick feeling he felt the trailer break loose in an uncontrolled slide. Its enormous weight immediately obliterated the traction of the tractor as well and propelled it forward on the pavement. Out of control, brakes smoking, tires howling in protest, it slid past the parking lot in front of the small cluster of buildings that made up Junction 37 Services on the near side of the Cassiar Highway intersection.

  Instead of increasing acceleration, which would probably have saved him, the driver of the pickup had also applied his brakes and was slowing, still beside the huge truck, when the trailer behind the Peterbilt, heavier by far than the tractor, jackknifed to the right, sliding faster than the cab. It impacted the boat on its light trailer first, then the pickup, sweeping both off the road.

  As the pickup left the paved section of the shoulder, it dropped a wheel into the dirt beyond and rolled over and over again down the steep embankment, finally coming to rest upside down in the ditch at the bottom. The boat, which had separated from its trailer, flew across the ditch to impale its bow in the opposite bank. The camper came loose from the bed of the pickup on its first rotation, which increased its momentum. It fractured into a twisted heap of wood and metal that rolled with the pickup to the bottom of the incline, scattering its contents over a wide area of the road and embankment—pillows, clothing, sleeping bags, frying pans, cereal boxes, fishing rods, and a thousand things almost too bent and broken to identify. The glass of its windows shattered into bits and shards that were hurled through the air in a glittering shower. The propane tank on the camper exploded, and within seconds the whole pile of tangled wreckage was on fire.

  In the cacophony of screeching brakes, rending metal, and breaking glass, the car that had turned into the path of the Peterbilt from the Cassiar Highway, unable to stop, crossed the center line and slid straight under the trailer, which sliced the roof from the passenger compartment at windshield level.

  From where he sat, high in the tractor of the Peterbilt, Stringer could clearly see the buildings of Junction 37 Services as he slid past them and a man who stood in front, frozen into shocked immobility, gaping at what was still happening on the highway. The trailer of the Peterbilt stopped on the Cassiar Highway, totally blocking it to traffic. The tractor slid on across, dropped over the steep edge, and hit a small tree, then a utility pole on the far side of the road. Both snapped, but the impact crushed in the left side of the tractor, pinning Stringer’s legs, and threw him hard against the steering wheel. Over the horrendous noise of the wreck, he distinctly heard and felt the crack of his ribs breaking.

  When everything stopped moving and grew still, he couldn’t seem to get air into his lungs. By the time the first people could run from Junction 37 Services to do what they could for those involved in the crash, Stringer had passed out and slumped forward over the wheel.

  Not long afterward Jessie slowed to pass the terrible accident at the intersection of the Cassiar Highway. A crowd of people had reached the vehicles involved and were trying to help while they waited for emergency crews to arrive, but the crumpled cab of the Peterbilt was far enough below the level of the road so that she didn’t see it. What she saw was the smoking ruin of an unidentifiable pickup and
camper that lay in the right-hand ditch and a passenger car that had run under the trailer and been dragged till it stopped, completely blocking the Cassiar. The sun was low in the sky, and the flashing lights of the one police vehicle that had arrived looked very bright against its fading light. Small concerned groups of people stood along the edge of the highway shaking their heads. At a glance it was clear that no one would be able to turn off on the Cassiar Highway for a long time, and to try for the attention of a single RCMP constable under these circumstances would be futile. Jessie’s only option was to keep going toward Alaska, so she took it. It was better than stopping and perhaps being caught.

  She was growing tired from fear and stress in addition to the driving, but making the best of things, she was determined to make it to Teslin. Going at least that far would make it safer to stop. She drove away from the scene of the accident, took the motor home back up to speed, and put it in cruise control. Now that she was on her own there was no reason not to rest herself as much as possible and still keep the Winnebago moving north at a good speed. The glare of the sun now angled directly into her eyes, making it difficult to see oncoming traffic, and she could feel the hint of a headache behind her eyes. She wished the sun would disappear over the western horizon and make seeing the road ahead easier.

  The vehicles that had bunched up as they slowed to pass the wreck at the Cassiar intersection, traveling at different speeds, gradually spread themselves out, and she was soon headed west by herself again. Though she kept a close watch behind her, no headlights appeared to stay behind her for long, and no one who passed was the man for whom she watched. The sun finally set, and the sky slowly grew darker until the bright glow of the headlights on pavement was all she could see except for the silhouettes of trees against a band of light that lingered in the west. When it was gone, she could make out a star or two in the deep black of the sky.