by Lisa Ladew
“Maybe. If anyone can find your brother, he can.”
“If he finds him this soon after letting Vivian and I know we were actually triplets and not twins, it’s going to take some brainpower to get used to. I at least knew Vivian existed all these years, even if I hadn’t found her. A brother though - I never imagined I had a brother too. I wonder what he looks like.”
Craig looked at Emma’s face, wondering also. Emma and Vivian were fraternal twins, and did not look very much alike. Except for their startling light-blue eyes. Triplets, he reminded himself. They were triplets, not twins. He laughed to himself. It would take some getting used to for him too. He guessed if two of the triplets were fraternal, that meant they all were? Or could the brother be identical to one of them. He shook his head. It was too complicated to think about right now.
Craig pushed the button to call Lionel back. The red light on the carousel flashed and the notification alarm brayed. Later. He hung up the phone and scouted for their luggage.
***
Craig and Emma drove to Jerry’s house from the airport. It was locked up tight. “Let’s talk to his neighbors,” Craig suggested, although he knew what they probably would say. He had told Jerry maybe it would be a good idea to take a vacation on Wednesday. It was now Saturday, and no one had heard from him since. He was betting the neighbors would say no one had been at Jerry’s house since Wednesday. He was mostly right.
Mrs. McKinley, a sweet, 82-year-old widow from directly across the street, told them that she hadn’t seen Jerry at his house since Tuesday night. But plenty of other people had been there. A big, black Suburban had come every day except for yesterday. “I didn’t like the look of that man,” she told them, over sweet lemon scones and big glasses of iced tea. “He looked shifty, like he was up to no good,” she said. Detective Gagne, Craig thought.
She said another car had come by on just Wednesday, but no one had ever gotten out. The man had just sat in front of the house for over an hour. She showed them her chair she sat in during the day, in front of the window. “I could see his car but not his face because the angle was bad.”
“You didn’t happen to be able to see the license plate did you Mrs. McKinley?” Craig asked.
“As a matter of fact I did,” she said. “And I wrote it down. Hang on.” Mrs McKinley walked to the small, round table next to her chair. She pulled out a drawer and then a piece of paper, handing it to Craig. “There’s both the license plate numbers. I keep a good watch on the neighborhood, seeing as how I’m always here.” She indicated her chair in front of the window.
Craig couldn’t wait to be off. He wanted to run the second plate through a computer right away.
“Thank you Mrs McKinley, you don’t know how much you’ve helped us.”
Emma murmured her thanks and they headed to the door.
“You’re welcome. You just make sure that handsome young man comes home soon. I’ve missed seeing him.” She winked at them, making Emma look up suspiciously. She looked at Mrs. McKinley’s view out the window. Jerry’s kitchen and bedroom window were clearly visible from Mrs. McKinley’s chair. Emma tried to catch Craig’s eye. He wouldn’t look at her though. His face was set in a broad smile and Emma thought he already knew what she was thinking.
They made it down the walk and into the car before collapsing into laughter. “Jerry’s got a secret admirer,” Craig said.
“I wonder if he ever closes his bedroom curtains?” Emma giggled, thinking about Jerry’s parade of girlfriends through that house - well, at least until the last year when he had met Sara. Thinking of Sara sobered her instantly. Emma was horribly afraid Sara had mixed Jerry up in something dangerous.
Craig stopped laughing too. “Let’s get to HQ and see what comes up on these license plates.”
On the way there, Craig called his contact at the Westwood Harbor Police department again. He hung up after a short conversation. “He still hasn’t been arrested here. He must have taken my advice and gone somewhere. Too bad he didn’t tell me where.”
At he and Hawk’s headquarters, Craig punched the license numbers into the computer. The first one came up as registered to the Westwood Harbor Police Department. The second one was a rental car. “Come on, we’re going to the rental car company to see who rented that car,” he told Emma. “If I can show them my badge we will get information a lot quicker than if I try to call.” It could be a dead end, but at this point it was the only lead they had.
***
Craig examined the driver’s license the Avis employee gave him. He didn’t recognize the face or the name. “Can I get a photocopy of this?” he asked, holding the card back out to her.
“Sure,” the sleek, young woman smiled at Craig just a moment too long and made sure her fingers brushed his when she took the license. Emma folded her arms on the counter and watched this with interest and a little irritation. Craig winked at her. He probably hadn’t even noticed. Did the woman not see the wedding ring on his finger? If she did, she didn’t care. Emma shook her head. She was going to have to get used to this, being married to a man as good-looking as Craig. And don’t even get her started on the badge bunnies. Emma had been appalled to find out there was a subset of women in this country whose sole purpose in life was to sleep with as many cops or law enforcement agencies as possible. Emma took a deep breath. She wasn’t a jealous person. And she wasn’t going to start now just because she was married to the hottest man on the planet. She knew he would never think of cheating. He just wasn’t wired that way. She caught his eye and smiled at him. He smiled back and tipped her another wink.
The woman returned with the copy. She batted her too-long, probably-fake eyelashes at Craig and tossed her stick-straight hair.
“When was the vehicle returned?” Craig asked.
“Let me check the computer.” The woman’s fingers flew over the keyboard in front of her.
Emma held her breath, peeking over Craig’s shoulder at the driver’s license. Greg Fuller from Atlanta, Georgia. He looked mean - his neck was too big for his head and he wasn’t smiling.
“Oh,” the young woman said, sounding surprised. “It wasn’t returned. We reported it stolen yesterday.”
“Do you have a phone number for the renter?”
“Yes, here I’ll write it down for you Agent Masterson.” She took the photocopy back and wrote a phone number on it, her heavily lined eyes never leaving Craig’s face. Suddenly Emma felt like winding her body around Craig’s and shoving her tongue down his throat, right here. Marking her territory. She restrained herself - barely.
“Thanks,” Craig said. He slipped her his card. “If he returns the car, call me right away, would you?” She smiled and touched her tongue to her top lip. “Of course.”
Emma bit back an urge to punch her in the eye. She backed up from the counter, a little surprised at her anger. She was going to have to get a hold of herself. This surely wouldn’t be the last time some bubble headed beauty flirted with her husband. Her husband. The thought made her smile and deflated some of her anger. Craig stepped away from the counter too. She took his hand and walked to their car. She imagined she could feel the eyes of the counter cutie on Craig’s backside, but she ignored it.
When they climbed in the car Emma turned to him. “What now?”
“Now we run a check on this name. Hopefully that will point us in some direction.”
“OK.” Emma sighed. Her anxiousness was returning full force, no longer held in check by activity. She was so worried about Jerry she could cry. Craig pulled out of the parking lot and handed her his cell phone. Do you mind calling Hawk? He’s in the air but you could leave a message on his phone, give him the name and tell him to run it through the criminal database.”
“Sure.” Emma did as he asked, happy for something to do. As she was hanging up the phone rang in her hands. “Hello?” she answered.
“Um yeah, can I talk to Agent Masterson please?” Emma recognized the voice of the woman from the car
rental place and handed the phone to Craig a look of disbelief in her eyes.
“’Lo?” Craig said. He listened, then nodded as if the woman on the other end could see him. “Where exactly?” he asked. “Great, thanks so much! Did they say anything about the car, what it looked like or what was in it?” He listened and said “OK, thanks again.” He handed the phone back to Emma. She could hear the woman on the other end saying her goodbyes. Emma pushed the end call button with satisfaction.
“The car was found yesterday abandoned. She didn’t know what the code in the computer meant but her coworker told her. That’s why she called. The police found it in Las Vegas.”
Lights bloomed in Emma’s mind. She turned in her seat. “Las Vegas? Jerry loves Las Vegas. He had reservations there in a few weeks.”
Craig nodded vehemently. “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s where he went when I told him to take a vacation. Feel like a road trip?”
Emma nodded. “Our bags are already packed.” She gestured into the back seat where their luggage from Hawaii was sitting.
“OK.” Craig looked around at traffic, then did a screeching U-turn back the way they had come. Emma held on. He pulled over to the side and hit his hazard lights. “Do you mind driving for a bit? I’ll make some phone calls and see what we can figure out before we get there.”
“OK.” Emma ran around to the driver’s seat and climbed in. Once she hit the freeway she punched it to 75, easily passing all the cars sticking to the speed limit. Hang on Jerry, we’re coming, she thought.
Chapter 32
Jerry noticed he was limping. His leg that had been crushed, yet recovered almost fully as he spent a year in physical therapy, was finally giving out on him. Discreetly, with only the light from the waning moon to give him away, he probed the scar tissue with his fingers. The entire area burned and throbbed.
It was their 5th night walking the desert. By Sara’s original estimation, they had at least 2 nights left before they got there. Tendrils of fear caressed Jerry’s thoughts. Fear that his leg would lock up altogether. Fear that they would have to stop in a small town because he couldn’t walk any farther, and this would get them killed.
So far, they’d survived OK. The helicopter hadn’t even been back. They still had a bit of food. Sara’s water trick was still working so they still were topped off on water.
Jerry rubbed his hip in one of his sore spots and tried not to think about the pain. Besides this darn leg, he felt pretty good. He was dirty and dusty and unsure of Sara’s feelings towards him, but other those things that he felt OK.
He and Sara hadn’t been talking much. And there’d been no real softness between them. As she went to sleep each day he would try to lay next to her and rub her hair or hold her hand, and so far she had tolerated it, although she never relaxed into it anymore. He just kept telling himself that things would be different when they got where they were going. Hiking 20 miles a night in the desert was never conducive to anything other than survival.
Well, except that first day. That was 100% passion, he thought. He hoped he’d get to see that side of her again.
Sara said something.
“What?”
“I need to go to the top of the ridge line. You can rest if you want.”
What he really wanted was to go with her, but his leg needed a rest. “OK, I’ll stay here.” He sat down stiffly and got out his water bottle.
Sara hiked up the ridge line, and was back in 30 minutes. Jerry dozed lightly, curled up next to a rock as large as he was.
Sara watched him for a few moments, then sat down for a drink. She’d let him sleep another 10 minutes while she rested, and then they would go on.
When she shook him awake, his hand went to his leg immediately. His face contorted in pain.
“Your leg,” she said. “How long has it been hurting?”
“A couple of days.” Jerry struggled into a sitting position.
“Lay back down, I’ll work on it.”
Her hands skillfully palpated the wound she knew so well. She found a few bunches of scar tissues and some trigger points in the supporting muscles and went to work on them. Jerry gritted his teeth against the desire to scream out his pain.
“I’ll need to work on these muscles at least three times a day or we’ll never make it.”
Jerry said nothing. Sweat poured down his face, wetting his collar.
When she finally stopped, he flopped onto his back and breathed heavily, noisily. “That therapy was worse than the pain,” he told her.
“I know. I can’t afford to be gentle. We can’t afford for me to be gentle. You have to stay mobile and relatively pain-free while we are walking.”
“You’re not really a physical therapist, are you?”
Sara’s voice went soft, contemplative. “No, not officially, although I have undergone all of the training a physical therapist would go through. I did all the schooling non-traditionally and then went through an internship. My diploma is fake though.”
She watched him recuperate on the hard ground. “Does that bother you?”
He looked at her, trying to figure out the motive behind the question. Her eyes gave up nothing. He decided to just be honest. “If I didn’t know you and I just heard a story about someone passing themselves off as a physical therapist with a fake diploma, yeah, it might bother me. But since I know you, and I know how good you are at what you do, no, it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s a classical case of the ends justifying the means.”
Sara thought about this hard. Jerry could see universes of correlations swirling behind her eyes. He hoped his answer had been the right one.
“We have to walk over the ridge to the other side,” she said, changing the subject abruptly.
“Why?”
“There’s a small town up ahead. We really should detour around the back side, but it would tack another 2 days or more onto our trip and I don’t want to do that. So we go over the ridge and will try to cross the road leading to the town without anyone seeing us.”
“OK, so those were the lights we saw in the distance?”
She nodded. “Yes, and the light from Las Vegas too.”
“How close are we?”
Sara looked down. “I think we will get there tomorrow night. If not tomorrow then the next night.”
Jerry didn’t know if that was good or bad. And it looked like Sara didn’t either. But if they had that little time left, he knew he’d better spring his plan on her soon. He’d been cooking it for 2 days now, but he was scared to share it with her. He wasn’t sure why he was scared. If she said it was impossible … well that was it, then right? But maybe it wasn’t impossible. And even if it wasn’t a good plan, maybe she could build on it — flesh it out a little. Jerry felt excitement grow in his chest, but then the realization of why he was scared to share the plan with her hit him in the chest like a fastball. What if she thought it was a decent plan, but still wanted no part of it? What if she really had given up? If she truly had given up, their relationship was as good as dead, and so was he. Jerry went cold at the thought, the drying sweat on his face chilling him instantly.
***
Jerry saw the lights of Vegas for himself as they crossed the ridge line to the other side. He still couldn’t bring himself to share his plan. But as the next night broke he knew it was time. Do or die. Now or never. Die a hero or live as a coward. They packed up their gear and water and Jerry thought about how to start.
Sara said they could leave the cots there, stashed behind some large boulders. She said the FLIR helicopters wouldn’t try to find them this close to the city. Jerry left his with very mixed feelings. It had been a horribly awkward and clumsy thing, but it had saved his life.
He shared his plan hesitantly, haltingly. Sara listened noncommittally until the very end. He saw a feverish light glowing in her eyes and he was glad. Hope quickened both their paces as they hashed it out, trying to figure if it would really work or not, and when she declared it could, she s
topped him and gave him a lip-smacking kiss on the mouth. Did he think he had been glad? He was ecstatic.
After a few miles of thought on her part, she stopped him and pulled him around to look at her.
“Jerry, for this to work, we will have to involve your friends.”
He nodded.
“I was not exaggerating when I said it could mean their deaths. These are very dangerous men we are dealing with. They will see FBI agents as a huge threat.”
Jerry’s chest felt like a thousand pound weight had rolled onto it. “They can take care of themselves.”
Sara nodded. “I’m sure they can, especially if we warn them, but can their wives? I know they are strong, confident women, but I don’t think they are prepared to become targets of evil men.”
“Would Thorpe do that?”
Sara shook her head. “I don’t know. My guess is he would, if the circumstances meant he thought it would gain him something.”
The thousand pound weight on Jerry’s chest became a ten thousand pound weight. He staggered under its burden.
“I can’t do that to them, then.”
Sara nodded. “I understand.” She started walking again. Jerry tried to follow. After a few moments he got his legs to work again.
Sara’s pace slowed to a plod. As Jerry caught up to her he was going to ask her what was wrong, but when he saw her face he bit it back. Her brows were furrowed in concentration. Her lips were pressed into a small, blue line, all the blood pushed out of them. She was ticking thoughts off on her fingers and muttering to herself.
Jerry allowed himself to hope.
Chapter 33
Finally Sara spilled. “I think I’ve figured a way to do it with minimal risk to your friends.” Sara counted off the parts she would change that would keep Craig and Hawk out of the plan. Jerry nodded along more enthusiastically with each point she ticked off.
“Yes! It could work! Couldn’t it?” he said, his heart beating overdrive at the thought of what they might now do. The odds were so greatly stacked against them. One or both of them could easily be killed. But if it played out just right … Sara could have her freedom. He could have his life.
