Tara Quinn - Where the Road Ends

“Or make yourself ill.”

She wasn’t paying him to look out for her health. “I know it was Kathy I was following today.”

“Kathy was cleared of any suspicion months ago.”

“And afterward she buys a new car and leaves town.”

“Wouldn’t you have needed a new life after all that publicity? Being questioned in connection with kidnapping a child is a little hard on the reputation. Especially in her line of work.”

“She was unbalanced and had a motive.”

Charles had disappeared less then two weeks after Amy had let Kathy go. Kathy had tried to visit the boy twice during that time—without Amy’s approval—but Celeste and Clifford had denied her entrance to the Chicago Heights mansion.

“I followed her myself for those first weeks after the abduction,” Brad said. “She never left Chicago. She neither had Charles, nor made contact with anyone else who showed any evidence of having a newly acquired child. Her alibi was solid, Amelia.”

They’d had this conversation before. Countless times.

Kathy’s claim that she’d been at the mall shopping had been confirmed by two different sales clerks who remembered seeing her. Still, Amy wasn’t convinced. The clerks might have been mistaken. Or friends of Kathy’s. Or…

Amy rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to remember if she’d eaten anything that day.

“Your resources work very well in the big city. But if we’re going to turn over every stone, we need infiltration in the small towns, too.”

“Small towns have police departments, Amelia.”

“But they aren’t all that practiced at handling big cases. They give speeding tickets, sponsor the local baseball team and drink bad coffee.”

“You’ve been watching too much television.”

“Some of these towns don’t even have their own police departments.”

He didn’t answer. She’d scored.

“Why do you think Kathy would be moving from small town to small town, instead of trying to get lost in a big city?” he asked easily, as though doing nothing more than making conversation.

Brad Dorchester never just made conversation.

“I don’t, necessarily.” She studied the faux quilted stitching in the patterned bedspread. “You and your men are more effective in the big city. I’m more effective in small towns. And it seems to me that if I were on the run from negative publicity in a big city, I’d try to find a hole in a small town. One that’s mostly oblivious to the rest of the world so I could cuddle up, wait it out. And if I had a little boy to hide, I’d find some obscure place where his picture hadn’t been plastered all over every public building within miles.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“You already know that.”

“I also know that Kathy Stead does not have your son.”

The room’s earth tones—medium brown and a dark rusty orange—were suddenly cloying. They were everywhere she looked. The carpet, the bedding, the chair and walls. And when she closed her eyes—more earth tones. She couldn’t escape.

Her stomach churned with nausea.

“Then tell me why, if a perfect stranger took him, there’s been no ransom note,” she said when she could.

“Children are taken for any number of reasons,” Brad told her patiently. “Some crazy woman who can’t have a kid sees one standing alone and figures she can do a better job of keeping him safe than whoever left him standing there.”

“But if some sicko just wanted a child, why take one with such a high profile, one whose mother can afford to go to the ends of the earth looking for him?”

“It’s possible the abductors had no idea who they were taking that day. You and Johnny were pretty careful about keeping the press away from your son.”

Amy traced the pattern in the cheap bedspread with one finger. “Tell me something, Brad.”

A pause, then, “What?”

One part of her, perhaps the tiny part that was still completely rational, didn’t blame him for that hesitation.

“With all the publicity that’s been out about Charles’s disappearance, the abductors surely know his identity by now.”

“One would assume so.”

“So how’s that knowledge going to affect them if they really hadn’t known who he was before they took him?”

It wasn’t a question she’d needed to ask before. Kathy had Charles; she was certain of it.

But there’d been no sign of a child in that car today….

“Scare the shit out of them, I’d imagine.”

“Beyond that.”

“Make them nervous.”

“And more apt to do something drastic?”

“Kidnapping a child’s pretty damn drastic.”

Sweat gathered between her palm and the little black cell phone.

“But if they thought they were taking just any kid, a kid whose parents couldn’t afford to hire private help, who had to rely solely on the limited resources of public law enforcement, their risk of getting caught was much smaller. Now that they know who they’ve got, they must realize that their chances of getting caught have become greater—and that the repercussions will be greater, too, because I have clout and the case has been so publicized. Suddenly the game is much more dangerous.”

“Yes.”

His bedside manner left a lot to be desired. Yet, while he might resent her insistence on joining the search, he always gave her straight answers. Over the past months, that fact alone had earned him her respect.

“At this point, even if the kidnappers wanted to give him back, they’d be afraid to because they know I have the money to overturn every stone until I find them and bring them to justice.”

“Yes.”

“And after this long on the run, they have to be getting desperate.”

“If they are on the run.”

She ignored that and continued with her thought. “Desperate people do desperate things.”

“Yes, Amelia, they do.”

She was suffocating. She laid her head back against the thin pillows. “They might be driven to…get rid of the evidence.”

“There’s always been that possibility.”

And others, as well. Charles might have been taken by another kind of crazy. The kind that liked little boy’s bodies. Her son’s body might be nothing more than decaying bones in a ditch somewhere.

Hand over her mouth, Amy choked back bile.

“He’s alive and well, Brad,” she managed to whisper.

“We have no reason to believe otherwise.”

Except possibly the fact that, in five long months, they’d found no concrete evidence to support that belief.

“He is, isn’t he?” Her voice broke.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Amelia. You have no business being there in some motel room by yourself. You should be home with Cara, seeing your counselor regularly.”

“I don’t need a counselor. I need my son.”

“You’ve been all over the state of Wisconsin chasing inconsequential leads. Don’t spend the next few months getting to know Michigan the same way. Go home. Let me do my job.”

“If you’d done your job, I’d be home—with my son.”

No one knew more than she how dedicated Brad was to this case—how many hours he put in, how frustrated and disturbed he felt at times when the clock kept ticking and leads turned up nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, all too aware that her apology was inadequate.

“Tell me about today.”

“A woman in a gas station recognized Kathy’s picture lat night,” Amy said softly. “She said Kathy was staying at a motel down the road. There was no sign of her, but when I went by this afternoon for another look at the parking lot, a green Grand Am with a brunette at the wheel pulled out in front of me. Her shoulders were slight, like Kathy’s. She seemed the same height. I’m sure it was her.”