Tami Hoag - Down the Darkest Road

He made his way back to the tennis courts by way of several other sports. The courts were busy with players in serious combat, casual matches, having lessons. He walked the perimeter, stopping to snap a shot here and there. He would choose an individual, take a face shot first, then zoom in, continuing his study of segments of the athletes’ bodies. He shot both men and women, young and old.

Eventually his lens found a pair of girls having a lesson with a male pro. A tanned girl in a white skirt and a hot-pink top that lifted to show a strip of tanned belly every time she raised her racquet over her head. She had small breasts and an impossibly thick mane of variegated blond hair. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen.

The other girl was taller, dressed in a pair of black shorts that showed off coltish legs, and a black polo shirt worn untucked. She might have been slightly older than the blonde girl. His focus remained on her body for a while. The lines were elegant, lithe, slender, strong. A dancer’s body. And somehow vaguely familiar, he thought.

He lifted his lens a few inches and zoomed in on the girl’s face, and something like a bolt of lightning went through him.

Leslie Lawton.

No. Not Leslie Lawton. The younger sister.

Leah.

37

Lauren turned into the sports complex, dreading the evening ahead of her. She wanted to pick Leah up and just leave—abandon dinner with Wendy and her mother, abandon Oak Knoll, abandon the last four years of her life.

I want a do-over , she thought, fully aware of how childish that sounded.

Oh, for the luxury of being a child. She couldn’t make a wrong decision if the decision-making process was taken away from her.

But then she thought of Leah, and Leah’s plea that morning: What about me ? To have no control of the decisions didn’t change the impact of the consequences.

There was no running from the heart of the torment, at any rate. The tragedies that had changed their lives couldn’t be left behind. The grief and the need for closure would always be in Lauren like a malignant tumor. The only thing that could remove even part of it would be justice.

She pulled into the parking lot nearest the tennis courts and checked herself in her visor mirror. It always surprised her that she didn’t look as crazy as she felt. She had kept her hair swept back into a ponytail and made the attempt to soften the harsh lines of her face with makeup.

In the old days she would have put on something pretty—a sundress or a soft summer skirt with a feminine top. She would have accessorized with fun vintage jewelry—chunky, colorful Bakelite pieces; a necklace and an arm full of bangle bracelets. Her shoes would have been the latest fashion.

God, she had loved shoes. In Santa Barbara she had an entire walk-in closet of shoes and bags. Now she didn’t care. She had brought three pair of shoes with her to Oak Knoll. The woman she was had been put into storage. She had put the house Lance had designed for them on the market, unable to stay there with all the memories.

She got out of the car, smoothing the wrinkles from her tan linen slacks and black summer sweater set. She looked around, anxious, half expecting to see Greg Hewitt watching her from a distance. She had no doubt she would see him again. He wouldn’t simply go away because she’d told him to, or because she had pulled a gun on him. He hadn’t gone to the trouble of coming here only to turn around and leave.

But it wasn’t Greg Hewitt she saw as she turned around. It was Roland Ballencoa’s van.

Her heart began a bass drumbeat in her chest. Now when she looked around, it was with the anxiety of a wild animal looking for a predator. The park was full of people going on with their ordinary lives, none of them looking for a cobra in the grass.

Lauren hitched the strap of her handbag up on her shoulder and pressed the bag close against her side, slipping her hand into the zippered compartment. She touched the Walther like a worry stone.

The cab of the van appeared to be empty. She walked toward it and around it, giving it a wide berth, as if it were a dangerous creature, not just a vehicle that transported a dangerous creature. She couldn’t see into the back of it. Ballencoa could have been inside. Or his next victim.

She came closer, imagining not just someone inside the back of the van, but Leslie in the back of the van. The police had speculated that Ballencoa had probably grabbed her off the side of the road and put her in the back of the van bound and gagged. The mental image of that had haunted Lauren’s nightmares night after night after night. She could see her daughter, see the fear in her eyes, as she lay helpless.

She imagined the horror of being trapped in a vehicle sitting in a public place like this with people all around and no one suspecting. Every moment that passed was a moment closer to the return of the monster who had taken you.

Lauren moved closer, her back to the van as she scanned the area for any sign of Ballencoa. She turned and looked in the passenger window. The cab was clean and empty, without so much as a piece of mail or a gum wrapper to be seen. A fabric curtain behind the bucket seats hid whatever—or whoever—might have been in the back.

Trying to look casual, she walked along the van, rapping her knuckles a couple of times on the side as she went, thinking if someone was trapped inside, they might try to make some kind of sound if they thought someone might hear and try to help. Or they might be too afraid, thinking it could be Ballencoa coming back.

No sound answered hers.

She went around to the back of the van and tried the handle on the back door. Locked.

It occurred to her that this might not be Ballencoa’s van at all. Yet the anxiety remained as she walked away from it and headed toward the tennis courts. She wanted Leah and Wendy off the courts and in the car as quickly as possible, before Ballencoa could spot them if he was here. He would recognize Leah. Even though she had grown up since he left Santa Barbara, she resembled Leslie more and more.

The idea of that bastard looking at her youngest brought Lauren’s anger and protective instincts boiling up. Her step quickened. She started scanning the busy tennis courts, looking for Leah and Wendy, spotting them on court four, working with Wendy’s instructor.

Leah saw her coming and lifted a hand. “Hi, Mom!”

Lauren raised a hand and forced a smile. She didn’t want to scare the girls, and at the same time she almost hoped to see Ballencoa so she could point him out, so they would recognize him and be aware of the danger.

And then she spotted him, standing off to the far side of court four with a serious professional’s camera slung around his neck and a baseball cap backward on his head.

She stopped dead, frozen for a moment. Leah’s smile vanished.

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

Ballencoa raised the camera deliberately. She could hear the motor drive whir and the shutter click-click-click-click as he photographed her and the girls standing there.

“Stay there,” Lauren snapped. Leah turned her head to see what her mother was fixed on, and gasped aloud.

Lauren’s feet were moving before she could even think what she would do next. Faster and faster, until she was running. Her purse slipped from her shoulder and dropped to the ground. She kept running straight for Roland Ballencoa.

“You son of a bitch!” she shouted.

Ballencoa stood his ground and kept the camera clicking, capturing the rage on her face as she advanced on him.

“Drop the fucking camera!” Lauren shouted. “Drop it! Drop it!”

He stumbled backward at the last possible second, dropping the camera to swing from the strap around his neck. Lauren ran right into him, shoving him backward.