Where the Road Ends

Another town.

There’d been so many.

But this town, on this cold January day, was the one. It had to be.

She didn’t even glance at the dirty snowbanks, the barren trees.

Her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, Amy Wayne, as she called herself on the road, couldn’t take the time to care which fast-food places were being advertised on the billboards she whizzed past, or what the economic atmosphere in this particular Michigan town seemed to be. Depressed. Run-down. Thriving. Prosperous. Gray and broken. Beautiful. She’d seen them all.

She’d come to Lawrence, Michigan, to find her son. Nothing else mattered.

Without taking her gaze from the road, Amy reached for the thermostat, flipping it on defrost to clear gathering condensation from the windows.

A few minutes ago she’d lost sight of the car she’d been tracking all day, but she was intimately acquainted with the fact that county roads went in only two directions. To the next town. Or back.

Her ex-nanny’s vehicle was a spruce green, four-door Pontiac Grand Am—purchased after she’d been exonerated, at least by the law, of any suspicion in Charles’s disappearance. The car hadn’t passed in the other direction, so it had to be up ahead.

And almost out of gas.

As far as Amy could tell, that sedan hadn’t stopped for several hours. Which meant its driver would probably be forced to stop in Lawrence.

And Amy was going to be right there when it did.

After almost five months on the road alone, chasing down every hint of hope while the officials investigated everyone Amelia Wainscoat had ever known, Amy would see her son again. To fill her aching arms with his sweet, robust little body.

She’d made only occasional visits home, primarily to deal with business matters. The few people who knew what she was doing, who knew she’d undertaken this search a few weeks after her son’s disappearance, wondered about her sanity. But no one had been able to stop her.

Amy could hardly remember what it felt like to be the confident, in-control woman who’d accompanied her son to the amusement park that afternoon so many months before. Some days she could hardly remember what it was like to feel at all.

How much did five-year-olds grow in five months? she wondered, her eyes alert, darting here, there, everywhere at once, ensuring that nothing—no one—got by her. Had he lost that baby fat she and Johnny had loved so much?

The multimillionaire mother might not look so powerful in her department-store clothes and polyester-filled parka, with her barely made-up face, as she drove the ordinary black Thunderbird she’d purchased to replace the chauffeur-driven limo she’d left at home. But her slender appearance, still sporting remnants of the sleekness she’d once worn so naturally, was as deceptive as the car she was driving. Over the past months of searching for her abducted son, she and her car had proved just how high performance they were.

They were going to win this one. Johnny had always said she could do anything she put her mind to. He’d told her many times, usually while shaking that gorgeous blond head of his, that he’d never met anyone who could make things happen the way she could.

Of course, that had been B.A. Before the accident. Before she’d known she could take nothing in life for granted. That all the money in the world did nothing for her at all. Bought nothing that mattered.

Her stomach in knots, Amy pressed a little harder on the accelerator, the eight-cylinder coupe sliding only slightly when she rounded the next bend. Where was that green car?

She’d lost it twice that day and each time had found it again within minutes. The Fates were with her now.

And maybe Johnny was, too. In the past months, Amy had felt an odd closeness to the husband she’d lost. Odd because, in some ways, she felt closer to Johnny after his death than she had during the last few years of their marriage. As though he was watching over her.

In those last years, the one thing that had bound them together was Charles. No wonder she felt his presence, his support, as she dedicated every ounce of energy to finding their son and returning him safely home.

And Johnny had warned her about Kathy. He’d understand why she’d undertaken this search, which others considered a complete dead end.

He’d also understand that she couldn’t just sit at home, waiting for the professionals to do their jobs. He’d share her uncompromising need to be out here on the road.

What would her little boy be wearing? He’d always preferred denim. And baseball jerseys. But of course Kathy knew that…if Kathy was the abductor, as Amy firmly believed.

Did Charles have a winter coat?

She should call Brad Dorchester. Let him know she was so close. She was paying the private investigator an exorbitant amount of money for a reason. She’d hired him—a Denver resident—over the perfectly competent detectives in Chicago because he was reputed to be the best in the country.

And she’d promised to keep him informed of her whereabouts.

While the renowned P.I. did not approve of Amy’s active participation in the hunt for her son—especially as she was working independently of the official search, driven by her own instincts—he was seriously engaged in keeping track of her and her progress.

And he followed up on every hint, every lead, she might find.

Eyeing her cell phone in the console, she continued to drive.

Dorchester, an ex-FBI agent, and the FBI, along with various local police forces, had been working around the clock for months. In the beginning, they’d received about a call a minute from people reporting sightings. None of them had turned out to be accurate, but they’d had to check them all.

The past five months, they’d investigated Wainscoat business associates, both in the company and outside it, gardeners, repairmen, even her mailman. They’d talked to every single employee of the amusement park, but no one remembered seeing anything unusual. Some had remembered Charles, but no one had noticed him with anyone in particular.

The Chicago police had even had her and Cara, Celeste and Clifford Smith, the chauffeur and a few other key people take lie-detector tests. To no avail.

Kathy had been among those tested; she’d been questioned repeatedly. The police had concluded she wasn’t guilty—and then she’d vanished without a trace. Until recently, when there’d been sightings in or near various Michigan towns.

Charles’s picture had been everywhere. On television, posted around the country at police stations, schools, churches. Even in the tabloids.

She’d given them the picture of Charles that had been taken at his fifth birthday party, less than two weeks before his disappearance. The pitcher for the Chicago White Sox had been there. In the photo he’d been ruffling Charles’s hair.

And what about that hair, dark and thick like hers? She and Johnny had kept their son’s hair just long enough to be untraditional. Had his abductor cut it short?

Another bend in the road.

Still no green sedan.

The town was just ahead. Instead of billboards, she could see buildings. The green sedan might be just around that curve. Amy pressed the gas a little harder.

Where would she and her son stay that evening? Grand Rapids, maybe? Or Kalamazoo? Someplace far from the dusty little towns she assumed Charles had been dragged through all through the fall and into the winter. Someplace where she could get them a penthouse suite and they could order room service and play video games until her little boy fell asleep at the controls and she could pull him onto her lap and never let him go.

Another curve. No car.

Hands trembling, Amy wondered what she’d do if she didn’t find him that night.

How could she possibly take this for another day? Or week. Or month.

An insidious burning crawled through the lining of her stomach, settling just beneath her rib cage. Hands clenched around the steering wheel, shoulders hunched in her parka, she admonished herself to stay focused. On the road. On what mattered. She wasn’t going to allow doubts. Wasn’t going to get discouraged. Charles needed her.

And she needed him, too.

This was the day. The town. She could feel it. She’d never been this close. Never had a lead that lasted longer than the minutes it took to check it out.

Wiping the sweat from her upper lip, she slowed as she approached the town. One motel, a diner, some shops, scattered homes—nothing as formal as a neighborhood—a school that looked a little shabby… Occasional piles of dirty, melting snow.