Where the Road Ends

If Amelia Wainscoat really found her ex-nanny, she wasn’t going to wait quietly on the sidelines. Kathy Stead would be lucky if she wasn’t down at the first count.

And then Brad would be wasting time getting his client out of jail rather than doing what she was paying him to do. Find her missing son.

“Amy.”

“Gotta go, Brad. I’m just getting into town. It’s quaint. Quiet. Old-fashioned shops with angled curb parking. I don’t see the Grand Am yet….”

“Amy…” Men who’d been trained to kill were intimidated by that tone.

“I know, Brad.” Her voice would have been weary if not for the excitement that tinged it. “I’ll call you.”

He said her name again, but was met with a click as she hung up.

Swearing, Brad started to count to ten to cool down before he talked to her again. He made it to three before hitting speed dial.

“Yeah?” She didn’t conceal her irritation.

She was irritated?

“Don’t bluff. You’ll risk getting any ensuing confession thrown out of court.”

This time it was Brad who disconnected. But only because he had some favors to call in. He wanted a man on Amelia Wainscoat’s tail in the next half hour. Which meant finding an off-duty cop in the state of Michigan who’d be glad to make some extra money.

That done, satisfied that he’d hired a man he could trust, one who came with the highest recommendation from one of his ex-FBI buddies, Brad had a conference call with his Wainscoat team, Diane Smith and Doug Blyth, two of the country’s best investigators, who each had another four or five leg-work men reporting to them. Together they decided on a couple of guys they could pull from their current assignments. These two would be sent to Michigan on the next available flights.

His last call was to request that the plane Ms. Wainscoat had provided for his private use be gassed up and ready to go, just in case.

The only thing keeping him from heading straight to Michigan was that damn phone call he might or might not get. As much as he needed to do something besides stand in his office and stare at papers that led him nowhere, he couldn’t risk being in the air—where he couldn’t keep his cell on—if Amy called him.

Knowing her, she wouldn’t try twice.

Clementine’s was nice as far as bar-and-grill joints went. Its warmth was almost a shock after the bone-chilling January cold. With its long, historical bar and lots of tables and booths for friends and families to eat and enjoy themselves, the restaurant had a welcoming feel. But no one there had seen Kathy Stead. Nor had they seen her at the department store, a place whose wooden floors spoke of another era, a simpler time when kids could wander downtown by themselves. When parents didn’t have to worry about some maniac stealing them away.

On her way out of town, Amy picked up her phone with fingers stiff from cold and hit redial. More because she couldn’t stand to be alone with herself, with her disappointment, than because she had any real desire to speak with Brad Dorchester. The man depressed her.

Still, she’d told him she’d call. And there was a small but persistent part of her that trusted him implicitly, that wanted to feed him every single piece of knowledge she had in case it was the one thing he could use.

A part of her that needed to know she wasn’t doing this alone.

He picked up in the middle of the first ring.

“She wasn’t there. I’m on 196 heading north.” The two-lane highway was only slightly easier to travel than M-43.

“I’ve got someone heading up M-43 into South Haven and beyond in case you missed something.”

Amy nodded. Brad was taking her seriously.

Still, tension ate away at her regained sense of control.

“What’s your man going to do if he finds her?” As she’d already revealed to Brad, she had no concrete plan for getting information from the woman who’d managed to dupe the Chicago police and FBI into thinking she was innocent. Up to this point, her plan had always been about finding Kathy. And nothing about what she’d do when she actually did.

“Ask questions,” Brad said. “Try to get her to reveal something. It’s all he can do.”

“What kind of questions?”

A long pause. And then a sigh. “You’re in way over your head, Amy. Go home.”

The grassy median, brown now from the winter cold, sped by her window. Pine trees grew in the distance. “What kind of questions?” she asked again.

“Anything to keep her talking. Maybe ask her about a tire on her car needing air. Maybe about the food in the restaurant she stopped at. He’ll know what to do. The idea is to get her to disclose anything at all about her life. Where she’s been. Where she’s going. Why. And hopefully, if he can keep her talking long enough, she’ll give us a detail that’ll crack this case.”

He paused and she could hear him sigh a second time. “Details. It so often comes down to details.”

Amy quickly cataloged his response. When she found Kathy, she’d be ready. While the car heater blew steadily, warming her skin, her heart remained completely unaffected.

“What if she won’t tell me anything?” she asked, her mind already skipping ahead, playing out a full scenario. “I can’t just let her walk away.”

“She’d better not tell you anything because you’d better not be talking to her. My men will get her to talk, Amy. It’s what they’re trained to do. If not at first, they’ll just happen to turn up wherever she stops next. Go home. Let us do our job.”

Yeah, and if she’d done that, his men would still be in Wisconsin or Chicago or Washington, D.C. or wherever else they’d been looking. If not for her, they wouldn’t have any idea that Kathy Stead was traveling on an innocuous strip of highway in western Michigan.

“I’m going to stop in every small town along the way until I find someone who’s seen her,” she replied.

“Keep in mind that you’re doing this against my advice.”

“I know.”

“Call every half hour.” Brad’s voice was gruff, impatient. He was obviously not prepared to entertain any arguments.

She might have argued, anyway, except that he hung up.

And the loneliness once again consumed her.

“No, ma’am, no one here’s seen her.” The middle-aged woman at Monroe’s Café and Grill in Saugatuck handed the snapshot back to Amy with an odd, not quite suspicious but not entirely sympathetic look. “Is she your sister?”

“No.” Amy took the photo, eager to move on. “Just an old high-school friend who used to live in these parts.” She tried to deliver her spiel with some of the ease she usually exhibited. “She’s remarried and I don’t know her new name or I’d just look her up in the phone book.”

Shoulders relaxing, the other woman nodded, her brown eyes warming. “I wish we could be more help,” she said. “Have you tried the sheriff’s office in Douglas? It’s over the bridge, a little past the Holiday Inn. They’d probably know if she lived around here.”

Amy nodded, tucked the picture into the pocket of her parka, thanked the woman and hurried back out into the cold.

Saugatuck appeared to be a tourist town, judging by the marina, shops and bed-and-breakfast places she passed. But it was a small one, although it had its share of big old aluminum-sided homes in pleasant, shady neighborhoods. As quickly as possible, Amy perused as much of the town as she could manage, stopping at Mario’s Pizza, a convenience store and a couple of motels that weren’t name brand. She gave the artists’ shops a miss. Something told her Kathy would not be in the mood for shopping.

And then, as she turned, looking beyond the big trees that lined the town, her heart stopped. Just for a moment. But it was long enough to take her breath away. And to let panic in. There, by the lake, was a ferry. The perfect way for a woman—and her car—to disappear. Amy swore. She tried to take a deep breath to prevent the tears that threatened from falling.

Kathy could already have left. Gone. Missing again.

And if she had, Amy would have to wait who knew how long for the next ferry. By that time, her ex-nanny could be anywhere. Her hand came down hard on the steering wheel. Why the hell did this keep happening?