He chuckled, but there was an edge to it. “A blunt man. I can respect that. I’m here because it has come to my attention that there is a woman in town who is calling herself Faye Anders. She has a boy with her.” He studied me as if searching for confirmation, but I kept my face carefully blank. “She and I have some unresolved history, and I would like to settle it before I get further along in the race. I’m sure you can understand.”
“What kind of unresolved history?” I asked.
“The kind tabloids love. Nothing that would cost me the candidacy, let me assure you.” He adopted a devastated mien, and watching the bloviating buffoon switch out masks was fascinating. “The tragedy she was involved in is still incredibly painful for me to talk about, and it is an intensely private matter.”
“And how do you propose to settle this unresolved history?”
“I was told she was at Mercy Community Hospital, but when I went to visit, she and the boy both were gone.”
“The hospital must have discharged them,” I said, knowing full well the hospital had not done so yet.
He made a noncommittal noise. “The police will need to be involved eventually, of course, given how dangerous she is. But first, I would like your help in finding her.”
“Why come to me?” I asked, curious what his answer would be. “Why not go to the chief with this information? If she’s as dangerous as you claim…” I let the sentence hang, and he filled in the silence, as I knew he would. Men like this loved nothing more than the sound of their own voices.
“I can assure you, it’s more than just a claim. But I would like to keep this quiet for as long as possible.” His smile was full of aggrieved commiseration. I started to ask him if keeping it quiet entailed kidnapping a woman and child in full view of evacuated employees and patients at the hospital, but I refrained. His pit bull standing outside the door had already showed me how overzealous the men he hired tended to be. “As for why you, I think your record speaks for itself.”
I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “What record is that?”
He looked caught off guard for a second. “Your exemplary record with the department, of course.”
“Hm.” It was the biggest line of bullshit I had ever heard, and now I knew for certain who sent him my way. I stood. “I’ll think about it.”
He pushed his chair back and followed me to the door. “You’ll…think about it?”
“I will,” I said, enjoying his discomfort. “I’ll get back to you about whether or not I’ll help you find the woman and her boy. Do you have a card with a number I can reach you at?”
I opened the door and the pit bull moved aside to let me exit.
“Ah, yes.” His expression was perplexed as he pulled a business card made of heavy stock from an inner pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to me. I wagered no one had ever told him anything but yes, of course, whatever you would like. “You’ll be well compensated for your assistance in this matter.”
I wondered if he always spoke like a pompous prick. “I’ll take that into consideration.” I stepped across the hall and opened the door that led into the lobby, stepping aside to let them pass. “I’ll be in touch.”
Kevin Hastings’s bemused expression was priceless as I shut the door in his face. I dug my phone out of my pocket as I strode back to my office. I called William, but it went straight to voicemail.
I unlocked the top drawer of my desk and retrieved the folder containing the case Ted Peters found after running Faye’s fingerprints. I read through the case again. The details had captured the nation’s attention when it first happened. A lover’s quarrel, a murder, a missing child. But nowhere in the case report was Kevin Hastings mentioned.
I brought up the internet browser on my computer. Frank left his bed, stretched, and came to rest his head on my knee as I searched for Kevin Hastings.
Numerous articles and news reports popped up in response to my query. An intensely private matter, he said. I searched his name linked to Faye’s real name, but aside from finding that Faye came from the same echelons of wealth Hastings did, I got nothing back in the search.
Affairs your wife did not know about were usually an intensely private matter. Faye being his mistress and Sam his son was the narrative that made the most sense. But everything I read about Hastings over the next hour painted him as a loving, devoted husband.
His private life was just that, though. Private. I found no references to any scandals, personal or professional. By all accounts, his work ethic, intellect, and charm were unparalleled.
The fact that I found nothing but positive press about him raised my suspicions. A man with a persona that carefully composed undoubtedly had a number of unsavory secrets he worked hard to hide.
And now I knew Faye and Sam were one of those secrets.
twenty-six
GRANT
“You didn’t tell me Hector Lewis would be difficult,” he said as he accepted the snifter from me and leaned back in my leather high back by the cold fireplace as if he owned it.
I snorted. “You look up difficult in the dictionary, and it has Hector’s picture beside it.”
He made a noncommittal noise, and we fell into silence. We had worked together for years now, authoring bills, being courted by the same lobbyists. Kevin Hastings was a shark, ruthless, powerful, and filled with the unflinching confidence of knowing he was at the top of the food chain.
He was also intensely private. The only reason I had known about his mistress and the boy was because his financier father had been a close friend. Kevin had been a young man who still needed an older man’s counsel, and with his father’s death, he turned to me.
It was a family matter. Nothing inspired loyalty like family. I understood that and honored that code.
I had considered Winona family. It was why I did not resort to drastic measures immediately after she threatened me.
Threats could work both ways. She needed to understand that even though I loved her, I could not let her ruin everything I worked so hard for.
I thought long and hard about how to deliver my threats. I decided the most effective way to frighten her into rethinking what I knew she planned to do was to be subtle about it. The threats were as innocuous as possible, aimed at the very things I knew she cared most about.
I never left the neatly typed messages with her when she was at the Broken Arrow. I waited and left one in her daughter’s car seat when the pair were in the grocery store. I slipped one under the pillow that smelled most strongly of her in that ugly trailer she and her family called home. There were other places I left the threats, and all were places I knew would hold the most impact.
At the grocery store, I had waited. I borrowed a ranch hand’s truck so she would not recognize me and parked across the lot to ensure she found my message. She had as soon as she leaned into the car to place her daughter in the car seat.
She froze, every line in her body going stiff as she slowly straightened. I watched her, noting the careful way she held the note, the way her beautiful face drained of color, the way her arms tightened around her daughter, the way she glanced around, searching for me.
Kevin swirled the whiskey in the snifter for a moment before meeting my gaze. “What do you want?”
As soon as he announced his running, I saw the opportunity. When I first approached him about it, though, he treated me as if I were a stallion past my prime, ready to be gelded and put out to pasture. I had my pride, but now I had leverage. “The same thing I asked you for several months ago.”
His smile was filled with hard edges. “You have me exactly where you want me now.”
“I’m not an unreasonable man,” I said magnanimously. I left out the fact that he would be doing me a favor, removing the woman and child from the equation. Now all I had left to deal with was Hector before I joined Kevin on the ballot as his nominee for vice president.
twenty-seven
/>
FAYE
We could disappear again. We did it once before, and I knew how Kevin operated. This time, there would be no press, there would be no manhunt organized by law enforcement. We would vanish, as if we had never existed in the first place.
I knew his aim. He would bury us in an unmarked grave, somewhere we would never be found. No one would know to look for us. No one would remember us.
My eyes burned. This was what had haunted me for years. We could vanish, and no one would remember a woman with harsh black hair and a silent boy with a haunted face. I braked at a stop sign and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
That would not happen now, I assured myself. Evelyn would remember us. I had made a home for us in Raven’s Gap. People knew us. They loved my pancakes.
But the lump in my throat felt sharp and tasted of bitterness. I slipped my arm between the driver’s seat and passenger’s and held my hand out. Sam’s fingers immediately clasped my own, and I blinked rapidly to clear my vision.
We could escape, go on the run again and drop out of existence, surfacing again as a new woman and son. I could find a new town, build a new life for us. We would have to start over completely, sever all ties, even with Evelyn.
First, I had to get back to the inn. All of my money, my weapons, and the extra birth certificates, IDs, and passports I purchased for us were in my safe. He would be watching the inn, though. If he found me in the hospital, he already knew everything about the life I built for us in Raven’s Gap.
I glanced in the rearview mirror again. We had not been followed as we fled from the hospital, but we needed to get out of this car before the vehicle was reported as stolen.
I had driven a circuitous route around Livingston, turning at random down narrow, quiet streets in the neatly gridded town. It was such a small town I knew we risked garnering police notice, stolen vehicle or not, if I kept switching back through town.
I drove into the lot of the supercenter and pulled around behind the building until we were out of sight from the road. I parked and tried to twist in the seat to look back at Sam, but the slight movement sent a knife of pain through me. I sucked in a breath and dropped my head back. I clenched my teeth against the urge to cry out. The fingers twisted between mine squeezed my hand.
It took me several moments before I could reassure him. “I’m fine.” I could hear the lie in the tremor of my voice, but I hoped Sam could not.
A trickle of warmth slid down the side of my face. I wiped it away and found my fingers stained with blood. I pulled down the visor to peer into the small mirror on the flip side. A gash sliced open the hairline above my temple. Blood was crusted in the edge of my hair and down the side of my face into my ear. I swiped away another teardrop of blood that made its way down my cheek.
I should take the time to wipe the car down, make sure we had not left any fingerprints behind. Fingerprints or blood. I should search through the glovebox and trunk to see if there was anything worth taking.
I made do with sliding the cuff of my sweatshirt over my hand and using the sleeve to give the steering wheel and door handles a cursory polish. I left both the glovebox and trunk untouched.
I swayed as I climbed from the car. I kept the cuff of my sweatshirt pulled down over my hand when I opened the back door and leaned within, wrapping my arms around Sam to lift him from his huddled position on the floorboard behind the driver’s seat. I could not bite back the cry that left my lips as I attempted to lift him and staggered, bracing a hand on the backseat before I collapsed on top of him.
I was shaking, a fine tremor rattling through me so hard my teeth chattered with the force of it. I closed my eyes and swallowed against the bile rising in the back of my throat. A sheen of sweat dampened my forehead.
A hand touched my cheek, and I opened my eyes. Sam peered into my face, his own set in tense, pale lines of fear.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
He started to nod, but he winced in pain, hand going to his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, and I stroked his hair gently.
“I’m so sorry you’re hurting, sweetheart,” I whispered. The cast on his arm was still secure, and when I lifted his shirt to check the incision on his abdomen, I found a row of staples. It turned my stomach, seeing his skin raw and puckered around the staples. None were busted, though, and the incision was neat and clean.
I forced myself to stand upright, and he crawled out of the car. I braced my forearm against my side to try to ease the pain, and Sam caught my hand. He pulled my arm around his shoulders and tucked himself against me. As we left the car behind and rounded the building, I had to force myself not to lean heavily against him.
I tugged him to a stop at the corner. We were out of sight from the main entrance but had a clear vantage point across the parking lot. I waited, watching. Approaching someone in a parking lot was a risk, but going inside was a greater one. In this state, we would draw attention, and the security footage would be more likely to identify us than the grainy, indistinct images from the farther range of the cameras looking out over the parking lot.
I debated between an old man and an old woman. A man would feel more protective but would likely be more curious and would want to involve the police. A woman would be more leery about me approaching her, but Sam’s presence would reassure her. She would be less likely to ask questions and more likely to keep our encounter a secret.
After about fifteen minutes, I spotted what I was looking for, and the choice came down to availability.
I tried to hurry across the parking lot, but our progress was more of a pained shuffle toward the old woman crossing to her Oldsmobile.
I called out to her as I approached, and her eyes widened when she turned and saw us. “Please,” I said, and did not have to force my voice to tremble. “Will you help us?”
She leaned heavily on her cane, almost overbalanced by the two shopping bags in her other hand. Her hair was a distinct elderly shade of violet, but her gaze was sharp and shrewd. A squeal of tires at the edge of the parking lot made me glance over my shoulder.
“Do you need money or a ride?” the old woman asked.
“Just a ride,” I said. “Do you live in Livingston?”
“No,” she said carefully.
“I need to get out of town without being seen.”
She studied me for a long moment. Her gaze lifted to the cut on my head and then dropped to the child at my side, the cast encasing his arm, the way he squinted painfully in the sun and kept his face ducked against my chest. “I only have half a tank of gas.”
My knees weakened in gratitude. “Just whichever direction you’re going. If you’ll just drop us off somewhere where there is a phone.”
She nodded slowly. “Climb in.”
“It would be better if we got in the trunk,” I told her.
Her eyebrows were drawn on with a neat hand, and they arched upward with the wrinkling of her forehead. “You don’t need me to take you somewhere specific?”
The wail of a police siren somewhere nearby startled me. “Just away from here.”
Sam hesitated when she opened the trunk, clinging to my hand bandaged with a sock. I stroked my free hand over his hair. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Everything is going to be fine.”
I wondered at what point those words would be rendered meaningless, if they offered him any comfort even now. The respite and safety of the last four years were wiped away as if they never existed. My words sounded empty to my own ears.
But he nodded and crawled into the trunk. I eased myself inside after him, wincing as I curled on my side.
“Ma’am?”
I stiffened at the male voice, but before I could react, the trunk closed over us.
The darkness was sudden and absolute, and Sam whimpered.
“Shh,” I whispered against his ear.
Sound was muffled within the interior of the trunk, but I could still hear the conversation ta
king place just a few feet away.
“Is everything okay here?” the man asked.
There was a long pause before the old woman responded. When she did, her voice was low and tremulous. “This is my granddaughter and great-grandson,” she said softly. “We just saw her abusive ex inside, and I need to get her away from here. He’s been threatening to take her son away, and I’m afraid he’ll resort to violence.”
My eyes slid closed at her too-perceptive lie, but they flew open at the man’s next words.
“Do you need me to call the police?” he asked. I was blind in the darkness of the trunk, but I twisted my head, stretching my hand out until I could trace the seam of the hatch. “I can get the manager to kick him out of the store, too.”
I held my breath waiting for her answer.
“No, but thank you, young man. The world needs more men like you in the world. I just need to get her home before he notices us.”
“Of course.”
Sam trembled against me, his head propped on my arm, fingers clutching mine. After a moment, I heard the thump of the car door. The engine rumbled to life, and I rocked with the motion of the Oldsmobile reversing and then being put in drive. The seconds ticked by slowly in my head.
The trunk felt like a quiet, warm cocoon. I closed my eyes in the darkness. I breathed shallowly through my nose, trying to calm my heartbeat that still galloped wildly.
It felt too much like those hours we spent cowering under my bed. Even after Kevin’s footsteps faded down the hallway and silence rang through the penthouse, I had been too frightened to leave our hiding place. I was certain the quiet was a ruse, and he would lunge from the shadows as soon as we crawled from beneath the bed. It was not until the room began to darken that I finally left Sam hidden and crept through the apartment.
I forced my mind away from the memory of finding Mary.
When Sam was smaller and he did not fully understand the terror that gripped me, I attempted to make our situation into an adventure, encouraging him to think of our hiding in various hotels across the country as a game. I could not do that now. All I could do was hold him close and press my lips to the back of his head. The scent of smoke still clung to his hair, reminding me of how close I had come to losing him.
HIDING PLACE by Meghan Holloway Page 17
