Tara Quinn - Where the Road Ends

All day she’d been chasing this car. Daring, after so many months of emotional torment, to hold on to some minuscule thread of hope. And now the car had been out of her sight for longer than it’d been since she’d first spotted it coming out of the motel drive early that afternoon.

Yesterday she’d been in Flint, showing around a picture of her ex-nanny. The cashier in a gas-station food mart had recognized Kathy, said she’d been in the evening before. She thought Kathy had said she was staying at the motel down the street.

Damning the dusk that was falling in spite of every effort she’d made to outrun it, Amy choked back more tears.

Please. Please don’t let me lose him again, she silently begged.

Back at the intersection where she’d last seen the sedan, Amy turned abruptly and sent gravel flying.

She pictured Charles as he’d been that day at Six Flags, prancing along beside her. His sweet eyes had shone with joy behind those dark frames.

She wasn’t going to fail. She couldn’t.

She retraced her path again. And again.

Nothing.

And then she took every side road, private drive and turnoff that bisected the forsaken stretch of old blacktop.

An hour later found her once more at the main road, staring out into the blackness that was a perfect cover for secrets. Was Charles out there in the darkness? Crying for her?

Was the world making any sense at all to the small son she and Johnny had tried so hard to protect?

“No!” Amy cried aloud, slamming the palm of her hand on her steering wheel. “No! No! No…”

Cotton pants sweaty and wrinkled, her face stiff with tears and a day’s worth of highway grime, Amelia Wainscoat, CEO and principal stockholder of a nationally famous billion-dollar construction firm, wearily slid the big metal key into the lock on the motel room’s discolored door.

She didn’t have to stay in Lawrence. Could have gone on to Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo, supplied herself with the comforts and amenities of a five-star hotel, but she hadn’t been able to make herself leave this nondescript town—not while there was still a chance that her son was here.

She’d barely dropped her leather bag on the bed before she was stripping down on her way to a bathroom that would only be passable at best, to stand in a skinny and cracked tub the likes of which, until nine months ago, she’d only seen in movies.

There were no bugs. That was good enough for her.

Careful not to let the suspiciously stained plastic curtain touch her more than she could help, Amy stepped into the tub. The towel provided for her use—a threadbare piece of terry cloth barely big enough to cover her shoulders—was hanging in close proximity. And the complimentary shampoo was a brand she’d at least heard of.

It was her lucky day.

Or so she tried to convince herself until she turned on the shower—and discovered that calling it a shower was far too generous. And no matter how far to the left she twisted the faucet handle, the temperature was tepid at best.

Amy burst into tears. She cried until her head ached. Her hair, cut straight and just to her shoulders, hung wet and limp around her face.

Maybe she was going crazy. What on earth was she, Amelia Wainscoat, only child of the once-prominent, now-deceased William George Wainscoat, doing in a tiny depressed town, standing in a shower with who knew what growing in the drain at her feet? And all because she’d seen a car that had looked like Kathy Stead’s. And a woman driving it who—judging by the glimpses she’d had—could have been her former nanny.

“But what else can I do?” She asked the question aloud, no longer uncomfortable with hearing her own voice. She wasn’t sure when, during the past months, the habit of talking to herself had started.

“You’re losing it, Wainscoat, if you really believed you were going to be holding your baby tonight.” There’d been no sign of a child in that green sedan.

“Why do you do this to yourself?”

Of course, Charles had always slept in the car. He could have been lying down, either in the seat beside Kathy or on the back seat—depending on how much he’d grown, how much space he’d need for legs that weren’t going to be as short and stout as she remembered them.

She hoped he’d been strapped in.

If Kathy wanted Charles badly enough to have kidnapped him, surely she’d be seeing to his safety.

Johnny had warned her about Kathy that day in her office, but even he had been certain that Charles was not in any physical danger. Of course, that had been before last year, before Kathy had become almost insanely possessive.

Amy had to struggle not to lean against the mildewed tile wall beside her. To lean, and slide right down with the minimal stream of water to the dirty tub and then slowly down the drain.

“Brad Dorchester.”

It was almost ten o’clock at night. Didn’t the man ever go off duty and just say hello? “It’s Amy.”

“I’ve been expecting your call.”

“Why?” They’d had no specific arrangement.

“Because it’s been three days.”

Dressed in the white flannel pajamas she’d bought the previous week, Amy methodically arranged the pillows against the nailed-down headboard and dropped to the mattress, clutching her cell phone.

“Do you have any news?” she asked.

“Nothing significant. I’d have called if I did.”

She nodded. Brad was very good at keeping her informed.

Forcing the desperate, grieving woman deep inside, Amy escaped into the nonchalant manner she’d developed somewhere between Kenosha and La Crosse, Wisconsin, the previous fall.

“I think I found Kathy today.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. She shouldn’t have bothered calling. She knew that Brad agreed with the police. They’d run a thorough investigation on Kathy, on her bank account, her habits, her home. Questioned her intensively. Administered two lie-detector tests. Watched her carefully. After which they’d absolved her of any suspicion of wrongdoing. That was the reason Amy was out on the road; she still suspected that Kathy had taken Charles. She believed the nanny was guilty because nothing else made sense. There’d been no ransom demands, no communiqués, no threats.

And if she didn’t look for Kathy, no one would, considering the official verdict that the nanny wasn’t involved.

She wouldn’t have called except that she wanted Brad armed with every possible piece of information, no matter how small, insignificant, inconsequential or unnecessary it might be. Regardless of what Brad believed about Kathy, Amy had all her hopes wrapped up in him.

If anyone could put seemingly random pieces together, it was Brad Dorchester. He wouldn’t be working for her otherwise.

“You’re out on the road again.” His no-nonsense tone was resigned, disapproving.

“Of course.”

“When did you leave Chicago?”

“Two days ago.”

“You were only home twenty-four hours this time.”

“I can’t just sit there and wait. You have no idea the toll it takes on me.”

“Traveling incognito from town to town is taking its toll, Amelia.”

“He’s got to be going to school somewhere, or having his teeth cleaned, visiting a doctor, playing a video game or eating a fast-food hamburger. Someplace, someone’s going to have seen him.”

“Every law officer in that part of the country is looking for those leads.”

“The abductors know that. They’ll be on guard. But they won’t be guarding against an unremarkable woman who’s just moving to town. There’s nothing threatening about that. And townspeople talk. All I have to do is be in the right place at the right time, get to know the right person, and I’m going to find my son.”