Where the Road Ends

“No thanks.” She smiled at the friendly girl dressed in an old-fashioned waitress uniform with big front pockets. “The toast was fine.”

“You hardly ate any of it.”

“I wasn’t hungry.” Amy glanced back at the paper. “Listen, you wouldn’t happen to know where the elementary school is, would you?”

“Sure, it’s just down this road.” She pointed out the window to the road Amy had taken into town the night before. “Go right at the corner. It’s about half a mile down the street. There’re some swings in the side yard. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” Amy smiled again.

Coffeepot in hand, the girl continued on to the next table, and Amy read the ad one more time. Infiltrating towns had become a way of life for her. Plans formed naturally, as though she’d been living this way forever.

Sometimes that was how it seemed.

She hardly gave a thought anymore to what her shareholders would think of their CEO cleaning toilets.

Or sitting here, dressed in a pair of cheap jeans, a polyester orange sweater and tennis shoes, in this sticky-tabled restaurant with black scuff marks all over the floor.

Remembering Brad’s theory that someone might be out to destroy her professional reputation, Amy still didn’t care. She’d sacrificed so much for Wainscoat Construction, and in the end, all that money hadn’t been enough to buy her the one thing that mattered. Her son’s safety.

Which was why she was sitting in a greasy spoon in a town that would never be able to afford the services of a nationally renowned group of builders. And it was why she belonged there.

Each of the small towns was a bit different, yet her goal was completely the same. Get into the schools, scour records. Of course, Charles wouldn’t be registered under his own name, but maybe, being the boy’s mother, she’d recognize some hint. Some clue, however slight. Maybe a new student who chose chocolate milk on the lunch plan…

And outside of school, her aim was to get to know the townspeople enough to win their trust—and their confidences. Be an ordinary woman getting to know other ordinary people. Put herself in the various places where she might hear talk of children. And maybe the mention of one child.

The goal was to find Charles.

But never had a plan fallen into her lap as easily as it had today. It must mean something.

The job was made for her. She had to get to the school, show Amy Wayne’s fake ID she’d found frighteningly easy to obtain using her own social security number, give Cara as her reference and secure the position before it was given to someone else.

She should have asked for the check.

Where was that girl?

Amy glanced around—and noticed a car pulling out of the gas station/convenience store across the street. A green Grand Am.

Throwing a twenty-dollar bill on the tabletop, she grabbed her purse and the cheap navy parka and ran—across four lanes of traffic. Glad of the tennis shoes that were a regular part of her wardrobe now, Amy was only vaguely aware of the honking horns.

Yanking her picture of Kathy out of the back pocket of her bag, Amy cut in front of a man wearing overalls, buying a pack of cigarettes at the counter.

“Have you seen this woman?” she asked addressing both the bearded customer and the middle-aged female clerk.

“Yeah, she was just in here,” the clerk said. “Wearing a pretty fancy white ski jacket and expensive-looking black pants.”

“She left in that green Pontiac,” the man added. “She was real nice-looking in a natural sort of way.” And then, “You know her?”

Amy didn’t bother to answer, just ran to the door.

Her car was across the street. She was losing valuable time.

Hand on the door, she stopped. “You didn’t happen to notice if she had a small boy with her, did you?”

“Nope, she was by herself,” the clerk said.

“She bought animal crackers, though,” the man, a friendly sort, told her. “And two ice-cream bars. I noticed mostly because she cut in front of me and then I couldn’t figure out why a woman all by herself needed two of ’em at once. It wasn’t like she could save one for later….”

The door closed behind Amy, who was already halfway across the parking lot. Animal crackers were Charles’s favorite—next to ice-cream bars. Johnny had bought both for him regularly. To go with the brie and filet mignon her little boy more commonly got at home.

Amy’s son might not have been at the store, but Kathy had to be going to him.

And he had to be close. That extra ice-cream bar wasn’t going to last long.

Holding up her hand to stop traffic, Amy ran back across the street, ignoring the angry honking. The Thunderbird purred instantly to life and Amy threw it in reverse, blinking away tears as she backed out of the parking space.

Kathy had at least five minutes on her.

They seemed like five years.

3

Squealing out onto County Road 215, gravel flying behind her, Amy choked back emotion until she could no longer feel the acidic burning inside her. She was going to get this woman.

Kathy had taken Charles. Amy knew it as surely as if Johnny were speaking to her from heaven. Knew it despite what Brad and the police had said. The feeling was stronger than intuition. Stronger than desperation.

The first bend didn’t faze her. She leaned to the right as the powerful car took the curve, her eyes intent on the road unfolding before her. A straight stretch. But the two-lane road gave her nothing she wanted. No green Grand Am. Only a slow-moving rusty blue pickup with two sheep in its bed, a bearded and bent old man at the wheel, and windows so clouded she could hardly see through them. It was blocking her view.

“Damn!”

Jerking the wheel to the left, Amy crossed the center yellow line far enough to see beyond the truck. A station wagon was coming from the opposite direction.

“Get out of my way,” she growled at the driver of the pickup, which was only inches from her front bumper. Every second these people took from her gave Kathy an edge.

The station wagon passed. Amy crossed the center line again. A sport utility vehicle was coming at her now. And then another pickup truck.

The car’s defrost was blowing at full speed. Every muscle in her body tense, Amy rode the back of the blue pickup, laying on her horn, willing the driver to get nervous and pull over. He was doing ten miles under the speed limit. It wasn’t fair.

But then, life wasn’t fair. Nothing had been made clearer to Amy these past months. Intellectually she’d always known that, but now she understood what it really meant, understood—viscerally, emotionally—how it felt to be the recipient of perpetual unfairness. Life had never been fair. Her privileged existence had simply made her unaware of it.

The pickup driver didn’t slow down and pull over to let her pass. He didn’t speed up. With nearly frozen fingers she pulled the cheap black gloves from her pocket and put them on.

It took her a precious ten minutes to finally get around the old man. Ten minutes that stretched her already dangerously taut nerves.

Engine roaring as it slipped into high gear, the Thunderbird sped up till the speedometer needle flew to the end of its range. The road continued straight for a mile or two. And there were no cars in sight. At least not on the side of the road that mattered to her. The damn blue pickup had given Kathy a chance to get away.

When Amy started to wonder if the driver of the pickup was an accomplice of Kathy’s—perhaps he’d even hidden her the night before—she gave herself a mental shake. She couldn’t afford this kind of paranoia; it only obscured her goal. Okay, she’d lost ten minutes. She’d find them. The roads were clear, the day crisp and sunny. At the rate she was driving, it shouldn’t take more than half an hour to catch up with Kathy.

So she started to plan. How was she going to handle the apprehension? Call the police? They’d exonerated the younger woman.