Agent Daddy

Dare she drive to his house? Would he think she was being pushy? Did it matter what he thought?

“What kind of cookies?” she asked as she headed out to the highway. At this point, any decision was better than no decision.

“Sometimes chocolate with peanuts, only Uncle Trip doesn’t like peanuts, so now she leaves them out.”

“I sure hope she made some today,” Faith said.

“Me, too.” It was quiet for a mile or two, and then Noelle spoke again, her voice ominous this time. “Uh-oh, Ms. Bishop.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Colin is waking up.”

IT WAS ALMOST DARK by the time Trip pulled up in front of the Quik Mart. Gina’s car was nowhere in sight. For a second, it crossed his mind she’d come back for it, or her mother had taken it or the cops had impounded it, and then he remembered the way Gina always parked on a hillside, facing down, when she came to the ranch, in case the engine wouldn’t start. There was a slope beyond the store. He topped the hill and looked down the road that bordered a ravine on one side and a few stores on the other side, and sure enough, there was Gina’s car, pointed downhill.

Gina’s car windows were up now and the doors were locked. The car itself looked like it always did, battered and old, the tattered front seat bare, except for a fluff of something very white and purple, just visible on the passenger side, stuffed between seat and seat back. Trip hitched his hands on his waist and looked up and down the street. A gas station on the corner, a flower shop and a shoe repair directly opposite. He checked his watch and decided he could spare a few more minutes.

The man in the shoe repair shop worked in the back and came to the front only when he heard the bell ring over the door. Trip asked him about the car across the street, but the repairman hadn’t even noticed the police, let alone a nineteen-year-old woman. He did say he’d seen the car there before.

The flower shop was better staffed. The three female employees, all in their thirties and all smiling up a storm, agreed they’d seen Gina’s car parked on the hillside before, but none of them had actually seen her, not today, anyway. Since Trip didn’t have a photo to show around, there wasn’t much else to be learned.

He went to the service station last. It was an independently owned station, with higher prices than could be found elsewhere, hence it appeared to do a neighborhood kind of business. There were no cars at the pumps, but there was a man in the garage, sitting on an overturned box, lights blazing around him. It looked as though he was in the process of dismantling an engine.

Trip stood there for a moment, watching. Late twenties, pudgy, somehow familiar, dressed in blue coveralls, extremely focused on his job. The mechanic was picking up little pieces and wiping them with a grease rag, dropping some into some kind of solvent, arranging others in a pattern of sorts.

The guy gave no indication he was aware of Trip. Mindful of the need for haste, Trip stepped into the light and said, “Sorry to bother you…”

At the sound of Trip’s voice, the attendant jumped up. Sandy hair, sparse mustache over full lips, blue eyes, a couple of grease smudges on his cheek. His overalls were too big for him. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear you drive in.”

“I didn’t drive in, I walked. I don’t need gas, I just want to ask you a couple of questions.” As the mechanic perched back atop his box, Trip added, “You look like you know what you’re doing with that engine.”

“Been taking ’em apart since I was a little kid.”

“You look familiar,” Trip said. “You from around here?” Too late he realized he’d fallen into interrogation mode.

The kid didn’t seem to mind. “More or less,” he said.

Trip introduced himself and stepped closer, hand extended.

“Eddie Reed,” the guy replied, but raised grease-stained hands to explain why he didn’t return the shake. He added, “I know who you are, Mr. Tripper. I came to your place looking for work a few weeks ago.”

“I don’t—”

“Your foreman, that Mr. Plum guy, he said you just hired someone else.”

A big clock on the wall ticked away another ten seconds before Trip added, “I’m wondering about the car across the street. The green one that’s been parked there most of today.”

“What about it?”

“Did you see the young woman who left it there this morning?”

“I don’t come to work till two o’clock,” Eddie said. “What does she look like?”

“Oh, around twenty, long red hair, tall. Pretty girl.”

“She special to you?”

Trip ignored the question. “Did you see anyone matching her description?”

“No, sorry. I saw the cops nosing around, that’s all. Is something wrong?”

“I’m not sure. Probably not.”

This earned Trip a long glance, until Eddie, apparently losing interest, went back to his task with a nimble-fingered finesse Trip envied. How did a man get that comfortable with engines? At his father’s knee? Trip thought of his own father, the man who had started the Triple T Ranch, the man who could fix anything, the man Trip had given up emulating two decades before.

“Thanks anyway,” Trip said.

“Sure. Hey, I hope it works out.”

“You hope what works out?”

“The girl. I hope you find her.”

“Yeah,” Trip said. “Thanks.”

Walking out of the garage, Trip dug from his pocket the paper on which Faith had written her number. Standing in the light shining through the gas station window, he flipped open his cell phone right as it rang.

“Trip here.”

“This is Faith—”

“I was just going to call you.”

“Listen to me,” she pleaded. Her voice sounded anxious and in the background, he heard Colin screaming.

“What—”

“I’m on the road to your house with your kids. Someone is following really close behind me, so close his lights blind me and I’ve tried to get away from him, but he speeds up when I do.”

“Where are you exactly?” he yelled as he ran to his truck. None of this made any sense. Why was she driving the kids out to the ranch?

“I don’t know where I am, not exactly, but there are hardly any cars out here. I passed something called Tyrone Gardens a few minutes ago.”

“I’m coming,” he said, estimating time in his head. “Don’t stop, whatever you do, and don’t speed up if you can help it. I’ll call ahead to the ranch. I know where you are…I’ll be there.”

“Okay,” she said, almost drowned out by a high-pitched scream that had to be Noelle. His gut tightened as she whispered, “Oh, please hurry.”

Chapter Three