Where the Road Ends

It wasn’t a question she’d needed to ask before. Kathy had Charles; she was certain of it.

But there’d been no sign of a child in that car today….

“Scare the shit out of them, I’d imagine.”

“Beyond that.”

“Make them nervous.”

“And more apt to do something drastic?”

“Kidnapping a child’s pretty damn drastic.”

Sweat gathered between her palm and the little black cell phone.

“But if they thought they were taking just any kid, a kid whose parents couldn’t afford to hire private help, who had to rely solely on the limited resources of public law enforcement, their risk of getting caught was much smaller. Now that they know who they’ve got, they must realize that their chances of getting caught have become greater—and that the repercussions will be greater, too, because I have clout and the case has been so publicized. Suddenly the game is much more dangerous.”

“Yes.”

His bedside manner left a lot to be desired. Yet, while he might resent her insistence on joining the search, he always gave her straight answers. Over the past months, that fact alone had earned him her respect.

“At this point, even if the kidnappers wanted to give him back, they’d be afraid to because they know I have the money to overturn every stone until I find them and bring them to justice.”

“Yes.”

“And after this long on the run, they have to be getting desperate.”

“If they are on the run.”

She ignored that and continued with her thought. “Desperate people do desperate things.”

“Yes, Amelia, they do.”

She was suffocating. She laid her head back against the thin pillows. “They might be driven to…get rid of the evidence.”

“There’s always been that possibility.”

And others, as well. Charles might have been taken by another kind of crazy. The kind that liked little boy’s bodies. Her son’s body might be nothing more than decaying bones in a ditch somewhere.

Hand over her mouth, Amy choked back bile.

“He’s alive and well, Brad,” she managed to whisper.

“We have no reason to believe otherwise.”

Except possibly the fact that, in five long months, they’d found no concrete evidence to support that belief.

“He is, isn’t he?” Her voice broke.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Amelia. You have no business being there in some motel room by yourself. You should be home with Cara, seeing your counselor regularly.”

“I don’t need a counselor. I need my son.”

“You’ve been all over the state of Wisconsin chasing inconsequential leads. Don’t spend the next few months getting to know Michigan the same way. Go home. Let me do my job.”

“If you’d done your job, I’d be home—with my son.”

No one knew more than she how dedicated Brad was to this case—how many hours he put in, how frustrated and disturbed he felt at times when the clock kept ticking and leads turned up nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, all too aware that her apology was inadequate.

“Tell me about today.”

“A woman in a gas station recognized Kathy’s picture lat night,” Amy said softly. “She said Kathy was staying at a motel down the road. There was no sign of her, but when I went by this afternoon for another look at the parking lot, a green Grand Am with a brunette at the wheel pulled out in front of me. Her shoulders were slight, like Kathy’s. She seemed the same height. I’m sure it was her.”

“Did you get the license plate?”

“It was a Michigan plate, not the Illinois one we knew about, but that doesn’t mean anything. If she’s capable of taking a child, she certainly wouldn’t have a problem switching plates.”

“If she’d taken a child, I’d agree with you.”

She gave him the plate number, then said, “I followed her all afternoon, Brad. She led me to this little town, Lawrence. You know where it is?”

“Vaguely. Is that where you are?”

“Yes.”

“I take it you lost the car you were following?”

“She turned off onto a series of old roads that looked like they hadn’t been used in years. There were no streetlights, no houses around to light the area. It got dark and all I had to go by were her taillights.”

“Which, if she knew she was being followed, she could have turned off.”

“She’d still have had brake lights.”

“Not if she slowed down enough not to need her brakes.”

“I went back and took every turnoff,” Amy told him, frustrated and confused all over again. “Even private drives. I don’t know how she could’ve disappeared into thin air like that.”

“You drove, by yourself, in the dark, on deserted private roads.”

“Of course. I didn’t want to lose her.”

“What about losing yourself?” he asked, real anger in his voice. “Do you have any idea how stupid that was? Who knows what might’ve happened to you?”

“I’d have handled it,” Amy said. “I had my cell phone.”

“Which you didn’t use.”