Читать книгу Familiar Escape - Caroline Burnes - Страница 9

Thomas knew he’d shocked Molly, but she had to understand the score or she’d get hurt. No matter what her intentions—and if she hadn’t put the cat up to springing him, who had?—she was now involved. He might regret that she’d been dragged into the mess, but he certainly didn’t regret having his freedom. If he was going to prove his innocence, he had to be free to do it. Certainly no one wearing a badge seemed interested in seeking the evidence that would counter the circumstantial case against him.

“Miss Harper, I’m not going to hurt you, but I may need to keep your vehicle.”

Molly stared out the front window as if she’d gone into some kind of trance. Worry etched fine lines around her eyes, and Thomas felt a pang. This woman had lost her sister and her niece. Now, because of him, she was in trouble with the law.

“I’m sorry.” He meant it. “When I can, I’ll let you loose. I’ll call the sheriff’s office and tell them you weren’t involved in the breakout.”

“And they’ll believe you.”

The heavy dose of sarcasm in her tone actually made Thomas feel better. She was a fighter. “Why did you send the cat in to get the key if you didn’t want me to escape?”

The look she shot him would curdle milk. He automatically pressed harder on the gas pedal.

She raised her chin defiantly. “I didn’t send the cat. He went on his own.”

“You’d better come up with something more reasonable than that if you want the deputies to believe you.” It was sort of ironic. They were both at a place where their stories were “too convenient.” “Look at it from my perspective. You show up out of the blue and insist on talking to me. You come back twice in one day. And the second time, while we’re talking, the cat is casing the joint to plot an escape. Doesn’t that seem like you might have planned it? Heck, even the idea that a cat obeys your command is hard to believe. But that the cat planned it? Get a grip.”

He could see she understood, even if it was against her will. It was easier for her to be angry at him than it was to think how her own actions had put her in jeopardy.

“I didn’t plan a thing except for a talk with you.” She nudged the cat. “That’s what I get for listening to him. He insisted we go to the campsite. He found the place where those other campers pitched a tent. He’s your biggest supporter and fan.”

Thomas chuckled. He couldn’t help it. In another time and place he’d think about calling the men with the white coats for a woman who spoke about a cat as if he were human.

She slumped deeper into her seat. “You’re laughing at me like I’m a nut.”

He wisely kept his mouth shut and focused on the road. The sun had set behind the hills, and the blue-gray of twilight had turned the trees into stark black silhouettes. It was the most beautiful and the saddest time of day to him.

“Familiar is a private investigator.” She spoke softly, as if she didn’t believe the words. “I hired him yesterday and picked him up at the airport in Shreveport, Louisiana, this morning.”

He chanced a look. She’d really blown a fuse—she thought the cat was a detective. “You picked him up? Like at the baggage claim?”

“He flew in from D.C. First class. I hired Familiar to find Kate. He’s got a résumé that includes solving murders, kidnappings and busting international crime rings. All he’s done here is involve me in a jailbreak with the man charged with my sister’s murder.” Now it was her turn to laugh.

As Molly grew quiet, Thomas turned on the SUV’s lights. They cut a broad path through the gathering darkness, and to his left he saw a herd of white-tailed deer grazing. The light was poor, but he thought they were all does, the females who’d managed to survive the most recent season of hunting.

Thomas failed to see the sport in it when the hunter had a high-powered rifle, scopes that practically sighted the gun, a four-wheeler to cover ground, and walkie-talkies to conspire with his buddies. There wasn’t much sport in killing an animal whose only defense was flight.

“You look like you could spit nails,” she commented. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I was thinking about hunters.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to try to understand how your mind works.” She sat up taller. “Where are you taking me?”

“I have a friend who has a cabin. It’s a bit primitive, but you’ll be warm and safe.”

“Can’t you just let us out of the car? We’re a thousand miles from nowhere. I haven’t seen another car for the last hour. If you let Familiar and me out, it’ll take us two days to walk back to civilization.”

He considered it. “No.”

“Why not? You say you don’t intend to hurt us.”

“Something bad could happen to you.”

She raised her hands in disgust. “Something other than being taken hostage by an escaped murderer?”

“I’m not a murderer. I’m falsely charged. And I don’t consider this a dangerous situation because I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m supposed to take your word for that.”

“Look.” He was getting annoyed. “You don’t have any choice but to take my word. There are wild animals in these woods. Normally they avoid humans, but it would be my luck that I would put you out and a mountain lion would eat you. Now let me drive. It’s dark. The road has gotten narrow. I haven’t been back here in the past five years, and I don’t want to get lost. We have only a quarter tank of gas.”

Those words silenced her, and Thomas’s thoughts turned to the real danger of their situation. If they ran out of gas up in this area, they might wait around for days before anyone happened along. February wasn’t a big camping month and though the weather was mild now, a blizzard could pass through and they could easily freeze to death.

They wound higher into the hills, and Thomas had the sense that they’d entered a tunnel of trees. No stars were visible through the thick canopy of limbs. During the day it was beautiful. At night it felt a bit claustrophobic.

“Have you thought far enough ahead to figure out what you’re going to do?” she asked. “You’re free, but you don’t have a life. You can’t go back to your home. You can’t go to your job. What are you going to do?”

He didn’t have a specific plan, but he had an answer. “I’m going to prove my innocence. And I’m going to find Kate, if she’s alive. I’ve been sitting in that jail cell since Anna was killed. I haven’t had a chance to look for Kate. Now I will.”

Her voice was softer. “Do you believe she’s alive?”

As much as he wanted to lie to her, he had to tell the truth. “I don’t know. I want to believe she’s okay, but the sheriff has everyone convinced that she’s dead. He must have found something at the scene to make him so sure.”

“Has anyone talked to Darwin?” she asked.

He shook his head. “He wouldn’t talk to me. We had a heated set-to at my arraignment. I accused him of killing Anna and he screamed at me and accused me of killing his wife and baby. It was high drama on his part.”

“He was acting?”

“Darwin hardly knows me, but I think he knows I didn’t hurt Anna or Kate. We had words a few months ago after he’d hit Anna and she came to my house. He wanted to say we were having an affair, but I straightened him out.” His hands tightened on the wheel as he remembered. “I wanted to punch his lights out, but I couldn’t. I might’ve had a moment’s satisfaction, but Anna would have lost the only safe place she had to go.”

“You said high drama. Why would he accuse you of killing her?”

“He didn’t want the cops looking at him. I was the perfect scapegoat, and he played it to the hilt. How well do you know him?”

“The first time I met him was at the wedding.” Molly cleared her throat. “He was crude and awful. I guess I wanted my sister to have that fairy-tale love story—the prince on a white horse who would rescue her and love her and take care of her. Darwin was about as far from that as anyone can get. He married Anna for her inheritance. And when he went through all of her money, he started hitting her.”

“He’s a real charmer.”

“How often did you see Anna? Thomas, you have to tell me the truth. I have to know the facts if I’m going to figure out what happened to Katie.”

Thomas knew she was asking how often her sister received a beating at the hands of her husband. Earlier he’d tried to protect her from the truth about her sister’s abuse, but now he felt he had to tell her. “Anna came by sporadically, either when she was really happy or really scared.”

The dash light of the SUV gave Molly’s face a soft illumination, and he saw the tear trace down her cheek. She was hearing some hard things, but if she wanted to find Katie, she would have to hear a lot more.

He kept his gaze on the road as he talked. “About once a week Anna would come over because she was afraid. Either he’d already hit her or he’d threatened to hit her.”

“When she was pregnant…”

“Toward the end he just slapped her. He had some restraint. He never took it far enough to break a bone or do any permanent damage. It was more about bullying Anna, about breaking her down. The emotional pain was far worse than the physical.”

Now Molly’s tears flowed in earnest. He slowed the vehicle, but she waved him on. “I’m okay,” she said. “I just wish she’d called me. I suspected she was unhappy, but whenever I spoke to her, she said she was happy and for me to mind my own business.”

“It was so important to her for you to believe she was a success. That she’d made the right choice.” Thomas thought about the conversations he’d had with Anna. “She felt like a failure. She was the college dropout, the one who couldn’t get it right. She knew she’d worried your mom a lot. After your mother died, she felt like she had to prove to you that she was smart and strong and able to manage her own life.”

“You see how well that went.”

“There was nothing you could have done. Honestly. I tried. I begged her to leave Darwin, to take Kate and start over fresh. I offered her money, contacts, whatever she needed. She wouldn’t go.”

“She was hardheaded like that.”

“Anna looked up to you. She talked all the time about her sister, Molly, about how talented you were and how you were living in Arizona on an Indian reservation and helping the tribes market their jewelry and crafts.” She wasn’t crying any longer, but in the quick glance he shot her, he could see the pain on her face. Thomas wanted to ease her suffering. He knew enough about loss to know that a few well-placed words could last a lifetime. “Anna admired you so much. She said you’d gotten all the strength in the family. That you didn’t need a husband or anyone. She thought that was great.”

Molly sighed. “That’s funny because she told me I was too ornery to catch a man.”

It was the first time he’d seen her really smile, and it literally made him catch his breath. There was something in Molly Harper’s smile that touched his heart and made a shiver rush through him.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded. “I guess someone just walked over my grave.”

IN THE BLACKNESS of the wilderness, Molly didn’t see the outline of the cabin until the SUV’s lights struck the cypress exterior. She suppressed a shudder. The cabin was dark and lonely looking, but she needed to get out of the vehicle. She felt as if she’d been riding in darkness for half her life.

“Let me go in first and check it out.” Thomas got out of the SUV, pocketing the keys and her only chance of escape.

In truth, even if she had had the keys, she would have had no idea how to get out of the forest. The road had switched back and forth. Thomas had taken turnoffs that seemed to repeat themselves every ten miles. With less than a quarter tank of gas, she might end up hopelessly lost.

Familiar, her legendary private investigator, had napped most of the way. She nudged the cat. “Wake up.”

Familiar stood, arched his back and yawned. He certainly wasn’t concerned about their plight. He hopped from the vehicle and trotted behind Thomas up the steps of the cabin. The two of them disappeared from the light cast by the vehicle’s headlamps.

Molly got out and stretched. The woods were alive with sound. Insects, the rustle of leaves and branches that could be deer—or something more sinister. She hurried after Thomas. It was his bright idea to bring her there, and if someone was going to be eaten by a wild animal, it was going to be him.

Inside the cabin a lantern flared to life. The warm glow revealed a comfortable front room. Rocking chairs were drawn before a cold fireplace. There was a stout wooden table and cast-iron cooking utensils hanging on the wall behind it. A thin coating of dust covered everything, but otherwise the cabin was carefully maintained.

“I’ll get some wood.” Thomas acted on his words. Molly took the lamp and examined the rest of the house. There was a kitchen and a single bedroom. Her anger flared.

Thomas entered with an armload of wood. As he bent to light the fire, she rounded on him. “If you think you can hold me here, you’ve got another think coming. I have to get on with my search for Katie.”

Ignoring her, Thomas struck a match and the dry wood gave a cheerful crackle. He rose slowly and looked at her.

“You can’t leave tonight.” He looked at the fire. “You can have the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor here by the fire. I’m going to check for supplies in the kitchen. There probably won’t be much, but we might be able to find some beans or something.”

With that he was gone. Molly stood, hands on her hips, frustration gnawing at her gut. She wasn’t a single step closer to finding her niece.

She pulled the note from her pocket and read it again. The words seemed more ominous.

“The baby is alive. Don’t stop hunting, but don’t go to the police.”

“What’s that you’re reading?”

She lowered the note and turned to find Thomas standing not five feet away, his gaze on the scrap of paper.

“It’s why I’m here.” She handed it to him and watched his face as he read it.

“Is this for real?”

“I don’t know.” She bit her bottom lip. “I have to believe it’s real. I have to hang on to the idea that Katie’s alive. That’s why I have to get out of here now.”

He nodded. “You received this in Arizona? At your home?”

“Yes. Day before yesterday.”

“Via the mail? Where’s the envelope?”

“It was mailed from here in Jefferson.”

Thomas’s face actually showed hope. “So the person who mailed it knows your physical address and knows your relationship to Katie. That’s good, I think.”

“Are they going to demand a ransom?” Molly asked.

Thomas threw more wood on the fire and held his hands out to it. “I don’t know. That note doesn’t have the sound of someone seeking a ransom. In fact, it sounds more like someone trying to tip you off. Is there someone at your home checking the mail, in case they contact you again?”

“I have a friend I can call to do that.”

“Good. But you should warn your friend that the police may be watching him.”

If Molly hadn’t realized how serious her situation was, Thomas’s words brought it home. “Why would they be watching my friends?” Reality touched her. “Because they think I’m on the lam with an escaped murderer.” It was a statement.

Thomas nodded. “Either as a hostage or a co-conspirator in a jail escape, you’re going to be of interest to law enforcement. And so will your friends or anyone seen going in and out of your home.”

“But that could work to our advantage, couldn’t it?” She felt a surge of hope. “The police haven’t shown a lot of interest in searching for Kate, but if they’re looking for me, they might find the baby.”

Thomas smiled. He couldn’t help it. Molly Harper had spunk. “That’s one way to turn it to a positive light.”

“What’s the point of being negative?” She paced the cabin. “But we do have to resolve this—” she waved her hand around the room “—hostage thing.”

“What do you suggest?” Thomas asked.

She could see he was willing to listen. Initially she’d been mad at him, but now she felt the anger slipping away. He was only trying to get his life back. She’d lost her sister and her niece, but he’d lost big, too. He’d lost his identity and, if he was telling the truth, only because he’d been kind to Anna.

“We can play it two ways. I can turn myself in and say you released me, or we can team up and try to outrun the law.”

He was very still, but his gaze never left hers. “You’d risk it all by teaming up with me? You believe me when I say I’m innocent?”

She swallowed. “Right this moment, I believe you. Please don’t give me any reason not to.”

She felt the sharp claws of the cat digging into her shin. Leaning down, she pulled him into her arms. “You haven’t been a lot of help, Familiar.”

“Meow!” He struggled in her arms and she released him. In a moment he was patting her pocket where she’d put the note. She pulled it out and spread it on top of the table where the cat sat in front of it as if he were reading.

“Meow,” he said, putting his paw on the words The baby is alive.

Molly inhaled sharply. “The person who wrote this note knows enough about my family to track me down. This had to be someone that Anna talked to.”

“And that’s the best clue yet,” Thomas said, nodding.