Читать книгу The Missing Twin - Pamela Tracy - Страница 13
ОглавлениеANGELA’S EVERY INSTINCT screamed run. Run now!
The driver of the Cadillac obviously listened to the same screaming instinct. With screeching tires, one very flat, it tore up the dirt in the mobile home’s yard. Next, it hit the right rear bumper of the neighbor’s old blue truck as well as the side of the garbage truck before it hobbled away from the scene of the crime. The driver obviously needed the thick glasses he wore, she thought in passing. The two men inside didn’t bother with a backward glance.
“Mom. Mom. Mom.” Billy ran to his mother, who was still on the porch. She hadn’t moved since the whole thing began.
Great, Angela had no choice. The man had been trying to help and may have been shot because...
Angela didn’t want to think about why.
Blood was slowly spreading across the garbage man’s shirt. The embroidered white name badge read Albert; the look in the man’s eyes read Pain.
It was Jake Farraday from Sunday night.
“Pain is good,” Angela assured him. “It’s when you don’t feel anything that you have to worry.”
He didn’t look convinced.
As if to prove his point, blood stained his name badge red. His lips moved and Angela caught the merest whisper of, “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. You saved the little boy. Take it easy.” She unbuttoned his shirt and saw a neat hole, nothing huge, on the right side of his chest just below the nipple. Using the shirt, she pressed it against the hole to stop the bleeding.
“Is he going to die?” Billy’s mother asked from the porch.
What was wrong with the woman? How could she just stand there? This man had saved her son’s life!
“No,” Angela said quickly as she scooted closer to the man. She wished she knew what else to do. She shouted to Billy’s mother, “Did you call 9-1-1?”
The woman looked around as if afraid someone would overhear before answering, “Nine-one-one doesn’t work out here.”
“Then call the police or fire station or something! Don’t just stand there! This man just saved your little boy.”
The woman took Billy by the arm and tucked him beside her. “I’m sorry. I can’t get involved. This was all a big misunderstanding. Please...”
Angela wasn’t sure exactly what the “please” was supposed to imply. Luckily the door on the mobile home opened and Ted Dilliard, a man Angela had seen only twice, came running out, hunkered down next to her and said, “I called the sheriff’s office right when they started pulling the little boy into the car.”
Angela had researched the neighborhood before moving in. The cabin where the woman lived was owned by a man in his eighties. She’d been hoping for a retiree; instead she got the worst kind of neighbors.
They’d more than proved that today.
An internet search had revealed that the third dwelling in the cul-de-sac—a mobile home—had been rented for the past ten years by Ted Dilliard, a divorced computer programmer who, for the most part, kept to himself. She wanted to ask him where he’d been after he’d called the police, when she and Jake were battling for the boy, but he was here now, and that had to count for something.
“Hey, fella.” Ted was all business and seemed to know what he was doing. “You breathing all right? Your lungs hurt?”
Jake nodded.
“Already blood loss is slowing,” Ted said. “That means it missed the heart and any major pulmonary vessels.”
Angela could hear the wail of sirens in the distance. Good, she needed to go inside to check on Celia. That girl could sleep through a tornado!
Without meaning to, she moved her fingers to the lock of limp, dark hair that fell across his forehead and into his eyes. He was perspiring. Arizona was hot, and it wasn’t every day a man took a bullet while picking up trash.
“Billy,” Jake whispered.
“He’s all right,” Angela whispered back. “You saved him.”
His eyes locked on hers and again he tried to say something. All that came out was “Wanted save you.”
The ambulance skidded to a stop behind the garbage truck, and both Angela and Ted were urged to take a step back.
She saw Jake glance around, looking frantic, until he locked eyes with her. His eyes were deep brown, like melted chocolate. The next moment he seemed to relax.
“He’s having trouble breathing,” said one of the paramedics. It was more an order than a statement. Just before the paramedics moved and blocked her view, Angela saw Jake Farraday’s eyes slowly close.
He no longer looked in pain.
He looked dead.
But he wasn’t, a young police officer assured her some minutes later when taking her statement and her description of the passenger. He even went so far as to point out the garbage container now set aside for evidence. It apparently had something inside that had slowed the projectile. The police officer’s words, not Angela’s. All she could think was that the bullet hadn’t slowed enough.
Even as Angela answered the questions, she tried to figure out why a forest ranger would be doing garbage duty wearing a shirt not bearing his name.
“I’m brand-new here,” Angela told the cop. “We moved in one week ago. I don’t know anybody.”
The cop wanting descriptions and asking her questions already seemed to know the answers. Angela wished she could ask a few, but no way did she want to bring attention to herself. When she was finally allowed to go back into her cabin, she paced.
They needed to leave.
But this had nothing to do with her.
And she needed to find Marena.
Still, for the next few hours, Angela was poised for flight. Her purse was on the chair by the door, her .357 Magnum inside.
The only reason she and Celia weren’t already halfway to a new city, state, was Angela’s need to find her twin. But, except for the police officers who’d cordoned off the area and were doing what they did best—investigating—no reporters showed up, no pictures were taken and no curious locals drove by.
An unforeseen perk of living in rural Arizona? That thought didn’t stop Angela’s heart from racing. She’d chased down a Cadillac and helped save a little boy. She’d put herself and Celia in harm’s way. How could this not be news? How could the rest of the world not know that someone had been shot outside her house?
Sunday night she’d suspected meeting Jake Farraday was no accident. Now she wondered exactly who he was. What was he doing pretending to be a garbage collector?
She sat herself on the couch and watched the news on every channel available. But after the last news anchor signed off, she realized that either what had happened wasn’t important in the scheme of things or law enforcement was keeping it out of the media.
The online news media was no different. The headlines highlighted how more money was being ripped from education, how another driver had been going the wrong way on a major interstate and how Arizona would deal with its most recent female who might be heading for death row.
Nothing about Jake Farraday.
“Does this mean we can move? Back to a real city with a mall?” Celia said, coming out of her bedroom, her voice tight and more mature than an almost thirteen-year-old’s should be. She was irritated that she’d missed the commotion and excitement thanks to earbuds and iTunes. By the time Celia had come outside, the paramedics had been loading Jake into the ambulance.
Angela hadn’t told Celia that the victim was the forest ranger they’d met at the New Year’s celebration. Instead she’d merely said he was going to be fine and called him the garbage collector.
It was the truth, sort of.
Silverado sensed the unrest and came to weave around Angela’s ankles. The cat hadn’t even had time to explore the whole cabin.
“We just got here. Plus, the cops might need my testimony or something.” Angela almost choked on the words. She never, ever, wanted to deal with the justice system again.
“You okay?” Celia switched from know-it-all teen to little girl. “I mean, you’re not going to faint or anything? I wish I could have seen you this morning. You’re a hero.”
She’d been called a hero all those years ago, too. That and two dollars might get her a cup of coffee somewhere cheap, someplace that didn’t feel like home.
Celia went to the front window, pulled the blind to one side ever so minutely and peered out. Silverado headed over to her, expecting to get petted.
Angela followed, wishing she knew what to say, what to do. Since entering witness protection all she’d known was a slippery Alice-in-Wonderland kind of life, where every move felt like the wrong one.
No matter her adventures or surroundings, Alice had been on her journey alone.
Angela wasn’t alone, and she wanted Celia to have a normal childhood more than anything. But it wouldn’t happen in Scorpion Ridge, Arizona. They were here for one reason: to find Marena.
Being here went against everything Buck Topher had taught Angela, but Marena was her twin sister. For the first twenty years of Angela’s life, they’d rarely been separated. Oh, they were different, but they’d always watched each other’s back.
Always.
Their monthly phone call had been Angela’s only link to her old life. Marena was a lifeline Angela was willing to die for, no matter what Buck said.
As long as she could do it without putting Celia in danger.
What Angela hadn’t expected was how this rural area spoke to her, soothed her, let her breathe. Had it been that way for Marena, too?
* * *
IT WAS SUCH a strange tract of land she’d stumbled upon. Except for the two homes on the cul-de-sac, her nearest neighbor was at least three miles away. Two days last week, not a single vehicle had driven by.
There was a heated pump house with a five-thousand-gallon water tank. “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down,” the landlord had advised.
Celia hadn’t gotten the joke; Angela hadn’t thought it funny.
The landlord had also had advice about how often to shower, which spiders were deadly and how to use the emergency generator. The nearest big city was Tucson. Three small towns were within driving distance. The biggest was Adobe Hills. It boasted a small community college, market, auto repair shop and bank.
She’d not relied on a brick-and-mortar bank in years.
The second town, much smaller, and whose address they used, was Scorpion Ridge. That was where she’d met with the sheriff just two days ago. It boasted an animal habitat and very little commercialism.
The third town was Gessippi. Angela might take Celia there one day for a drive, but it was so small that there’d be little to do.
It was a whole different world than what Angela had been born into. She grown up in Springfield, Illinois, where a nanny had driven her to play dates, camps and parties. Her house had been a fourteen-thousand-square-foot, split-level mansion with marble floors and two elevators. Her father’s bedroom had even had a fireplace and a waterfall! She and her twin sister had had a castle in their bedroom complete with stairs and a tower—
No, don’t go there.
She now knew where he’d gotten the money to pay for such luxuries. She’d never again think that material goods such as multiple cars—some seldom driven—and a two-tiered Jacuzzi complete with a flat-screen television and its own bar were the good life.
When she was eighteen and nineteen she’d lived in a university dorm. Her sister had married and lived in a home much like the one they’d grown up in. A little smaller, yes, but twice the size of most starter homes.
Square footage didn’t matter. This cabin represented the good life. Sometimes Angela would go outside and just stand, watching the mountains touch the sky and appreciating the freedom of the terrain. Trying to decide where to start in tracking down her sister. Tonight, there would be a thousand stars all promising a bright tomorrow. If she could make it happen.
“What will we do next?” Celia asked, breaking into Angela’s reverie.
“If we stay, you’ll start school next Monday, I’ll get a job, and maybe this will become our normal.”
Celia raised an eyebrow, reminding Angela so much of her twin sister Marena that it hurt. Angela’s twin had been three months’ pregnant when she’d left her husband to follow Angela into witness protection. While she and Marena looked alike, there were enough differences. Marena was curvy and Angela athletic. Marena’s face was a bit rounder. Things like that.
Celia looked more like Angela than her own mother.
But maybe that was because Angela had purposely gained weight this past year, trying to change her appearance, fine-tune her disguise, keep Celia safe.
Angela had been the only family around when her sister had given birth. She’d held Celia as a baby, seen the first tooth, heard her niece’s first word.
They’d separated after Marena had been shot, left for dead, most definitely by someone connected to their father or her husband. Angela’s twin had lost her left leg at the knee and assumed that whoever was tracking them would have an easier time finding a one-legged target.
Marena had decided to relinquish her daughter into Angela’s care.
Didn’t matter how much Angela protested.
A mother’s ultimate sacrifice.
And now she was missing.
“Surely,” Celia said without leaving the window, “after what just happened, you want us to leave. It’s what we always do.”
Angela closed her eyes, hating the decisions she had to make and the reasons behind them. Celia griped that she wanted to go back to a big city, wanted a mall, but Angela had seen her standing in the yard, mesmerized, looking at the mountains as the sun went down.
“We should go,” Celia suggested.
“We’ll give it twenty-four hours.” She’d done everything right, had never gone back to Illinois, had never contacted any friends or relatives and was always on the lookout for anybody acting suspicious.
Of course, everyone acted suspicious.
* * *
AFTER A TOO-LONG DAY, Angela and Celia drove into Scorpion Ridge where they shared a surreal supper and a quick stop at the grocery store, before returning home. Cordon tape still marked the spot. A police cruiser was in the Rubios’s driveway.
So much for hiding in the middle of nowhere; the big city had come to them.
That night, long after Celia had gone to bed, Angela sat in a chair looking out the front window and hoping nothing would move.
At midnight only the shadows leered at her. Even the moon and stars were behind a layer of clouds. Inside, Angela tried controlling her heartbeat.
Hiding never got easier.
Around two, she fell asleep in the chair.
The next morning the cul-de-sac was as before. Right before noon, a sheriff’s vehicle pulled up in front of the Rubios’s cabin and Rafe Salazar, the sheriff Angela had contacted, went up their path, knocked on the door and then went inside.
Other than that, it was as if the attempted abduction and shooting had never taken place.
A good hour later Sheriff Salazar knocked at her door, as she’d known he would. Celia came out, looked the sheriff up and down and retreated to her room. She’d been taught that the police were the good guys, but she’d picked up on whatever negative vibes Angela gave off and knew to keep a low profile.
“Angela,” Sheriff Salazar said. “I hear you were a hero yesterday.”
“Unplanned. How is the man who was shot?”
“He’s going to be fine. Seems the Rubios’s garbage container slowed the trajectory of the bullet. It changed a scenario that could have been critical to just serious.”
Angela remembered the blood. She didn’t want to see what critical looked like.
“Sorry I wasn’t around,” Salazar continued. “I know my deputies handled it just fine.” He looked at the door Celia had just closed. “Let’s step out back.”
Angela’s yard spread a perfect vee of about three acres before bumping against the Santa Catalina Mountains. An old picnic table sat on the back patio.
“I half expected you to be gone.” The sheriff tested the picnic table’s bench before sitting.
Angela sat across from him. “I considered it.”
“What made you stay?”
“Personal reasons.”
“Your sister?” Sheriff Salazar queried.
Angela felt her hands going into fists, felt the nails dig in, and when she looked up, she saw concern in the sheriff’s eyes.
“Agent Topher called you.”
“He did. What I can tell you is that no one matching your sister’s description checked in at the station.”
Angela bit back a retort. Not even she knew what her sister currently looked like, so she wasn’t impressed with the information. She glanced over to the right where the Rubios’s backyard spread out in the same vee. Angela’s yard was empty; she hadn’t added anything to it yet. The Rubios, however, had two old cars, a broken-down boat and an assortment of trash.
“I know your situation, what you did and what it cost you. Keeping you safe is a top priority. I’m one hundred percent sure that what went down yesterday morning had nothing to do with you being here.”
“I believe that, too,” Angela said.
Sheriff Salazar was all cop. “I want you to avoid contact with them at all cost. Your neighbors owe money to the wrong people, among other things. We’re hoping to catch the men in the Cadillac soon. We figure they were picking up the boy in hopes of convincing Miguel to pay his debt.”
“Miguel.” Angela hadn’t known her neighbor’s name until yesterday. “Believe me, I realized they were neighbors to avoid the minute I first saw them. You know the home is rented in someone else’s name.”
“We know. It’s being rented by Judy Parker’s uncle. He thinks he’s helping.”
“Parker. They’re not married? Yesterday, I heard her say her name was Judy Rubio.”
“She’ll claim they’ve a common-law marriage, but such a thing isn’t recognized in Arizona. She’s been with him at least ten years. I know that because of their oldest son’s age.”
“They have children besides Billy?”
Salazar nodded, but said no more. Angela got the idea he didn’t enjoy talking about the Rubios. He returned to yesterday’s events. “Kidnapping’s serious, but I doubt that’s what the men will be charged with. Miguel will say they were friends wanting to take his boy for a ride and that neighbors got a little too involved. They’ll most likely be tried for attempted criminal homicide and aggravated assault.”
Angela nodded. “I’m surprised they shot the man in the garbage truck.” She studied Sheriff Salazar’s face, looking for any indication that he, too, was surprised that a forest ranger had been picking up trash in a garbage truck and wearing a shirt claiming his name was Albert.
“I was close enough for them to shoot,” Angela went on. “I got the sense that wasn’t their intent.”
Salazar didn’t so much as blink. “Adrenaline is a wicked conspirator. We suspect they were here to teach Miguel Rubio a lesson.”
If Miguel Rubio owed the wrong person money, it could get even uglier. She’d seen what man would do for the almighty dollar. “Maybe I should move to a different house in the area.”
“That might be a good idea. However, from what I’ve seen, once Rubio gets in trouble, he keeps his nose clean for a while.”
Angela nodded. She’d consider her next steps very carefully. “Will I be subpoenaed to testify?”
“I’ll do everything in my power to keep that from happening. It might be that Jake’s testimony is enough and that you can simply provide identification and a written statement.”
She leaned forward. Maybe she would finally find out what was going on. “Why was Jake Farraday pretending to be a garbage collector and why did the story not make the news?”
A shadow passed over the sheriff’s expression. “Albert is the regular, private, rural garbage collector. He’s an older gentleman who owns a lot of land in this area. He likes to keep it clean. Jake took over Albert’s route so he could keep a closer eye on the Rubios. In addition to owing people money, they might be involved in some illegal activities concerning wildlife.”
Sheriff Salazar made Angela add his direct number to her phone before he left, and Angela felt a tiny bit better. Funny after all these years of feeling panicked at dealing with cops, this one made her feel a little better.
She and Celia would stay. For now. The abduction had nothing to do with her. But, her involvement meant she needed to move quickly, find Marena and get out of here before someone decided to give her a second glance. It was time to visit Tucson, put a few belongings in a storage facility and plan for the worst.
She went inside, fetched her laptop, sat at the kitchen table and did some research on Jake Farraday. She found out he had never been married, had been a forest ranger for almost eleven years and used to be a cop.
Her first impression had been right.
He was someone to avoid, yet he’d saved Billy; his last words had been about saving her.
“Mom?”
Angela looked up at Celia’s voice. “Yes.”
“The little boy from next door is on our front yard. I think he wants you.”
“Is his mother with him?”
“No.”
Had it been Angela’s child in a near abduction, that kid would not be roaming alone outside.
She followed Celia out to the front. Billy stood in her driveway. Behind him she could see telltale skid marks smeared across the cul-de-sac’s roadway.
“Hi, honey.” She bent down so she was at his eye level. He was blond, a little grubby and had a great smile. He reached up and gave her a hug. Then he walked away.
“I don’t think he talks,” Celia said.
“Maybe he’s learned it’s best to keep quiet. He’s probably having to grow up pretty fast in that household.”
Already, Billy was at his front porch, climbing the steps and letting himself in, looking far too mature.
“How old do you think he is?” Angela asked.
“Maybe three or four.”
As the door slammed behind Billy Rubio, Angela remembered why she’d run for the Cadillac yesterday. She’d done it to save a life. It was exactly the reason she’d convinced her sister to go with her to the police all those years ago and turn their father in.
To save lives.
Heading back inside the cabin, she wondered how Jake Farraday was doing.
He, too, had saved a life.
