Tara Quinn - Where the Road Ends

“Did you follow her?” He hated to ask. Hated to give Amelia Wainscoat any encouragement in her current endeavor.

“I’m trying, Brad,” she said now. His stomach sank at her eagerness. “I’ve been on 215—you know one of those two-lane roads that—”

“—only go to one place,” he finished for her. He knew. Not only had he been up and down them himself, he’d been hearing her talk about them for months. Picturing her racing over them all alone in a vain search that was going to kill her sooner or later.

If not physically, then emotionally and mentally. He just wasn’t sure which would come first.

“I haven’t seen her since she left the convenience store. I’m approaching M-43, which ends in South Haven. She’d have to take the highway from there.”

If anything happened to Amelia Wainscoat while she was out there trying to do his job, he was sure as hell going to end up carrying that guilt around forever. He didn’t appreciate the burden.

Goddammit! If she’d just let him concentrate on doing his job, instead of making him waste time worrying about her.

“So should I stop in South Haven and risk letting her get farther ahead of me, or do I skip the town and risk the possibility that she might have stopped there?”

“I’d check the town. If she didn’t stop, it won’t take long to figure that out.”

He couldn’t believe he was giving her reinforcement to continue with this futile course.

“But what if she went on ahead?”

Phone lodged between his ear and his shoulder, Brad rolled up the sleeves of the white cotton shirt he’d tucked into his slacks at an ungodly hour that morning. “She’ll only have an hour or so. It shouldn’t be hard to follow her trail.”

“Okay.”

“Amy, I’m putting some of my men on this.” Even though he knew the nanny was a dead end. He’d assigned two men to make absolutely certain of that. They’d checked every aspect of her background, spent weeks doing surveillance—and they’d come up with nothing.

“Good.”

He’d already called in the license plate number. “Keep your phone on. I’ll be checking in every hour. Call me sooner if you find anything.”

“Okay.”

He studied the table across the room again. He could rearrange the papers there. Stare at the photos until he went blind. And still, the facts weren’t going to change.

“She was exonerated, Amy.”

“I know.”

“She’s perfectly free to travel across the state of Michigan, or any other state, for that matter.”

“She left town right after the police dropped her as a suspect and she’s been missing ever since.”

“Who, besides you, is looking for her? The police aren’t. And after all the negative publicity, who could blame her for starting over?”

Amy ignored his remark. “I’m going to spend the rest of my days hunting her down if that’s what it takes.”

“If you find her, don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.”

Why didn’t he feel confident about that?

“What should I do?” she asked. “If I find her, I mean.”

Questions like that really scared him. She didn’t even have a goddamned plan.

“Nothing,” he said, his feet landing on the floor as he pushed away from his desk and stood. “You should go home and let my men take care of this.”

“I’m going to question her, but what’s the right tactic?” Amy continued, ignoring him. “Do I act friendly and pretend this is a great coincidence, try to reestablish some trust? Or do I try to bluff her with the idea of some new evidence, hoping I can scare her into a confession?”

Jaw so tight he couldn’t speak, Brad wandered over to the conference table. With his free hand in the pocket of a pair of navy Dockers he stared down at the array of documents, picturing, instead, the beautiful and completely out-of-her-element heiress alone on a county road in Michigan.

“Come on, Brad, I don’t have much time. I’ve just taken the South Haven turnoff.”

“Stay out of this, Amy,” he muttered, refusing to acknowledge the cold sweat slinking down his back. “If you do find her, and that’s a big if, I don’t want you going near her. Keep her in sight, call me immediately and don’t do another damn thing.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Amy.”

“I know. She bought animal crackers, Brad. And two ice-cream bars. Not one, two.”

Animal crackers and ice-cream bars. Charles’s favorite foods.

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.