Читать книгу Where the Road Ends - Tara Quinn Taylor - Страница 9

Five months later…

Another town.

There’d been so many.

But this town, on this cold January day, was the one. It had to be.

She didn’t even glance at the dirty snowbanks, the barren trees.

Her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, Amy Wayne, as she called herself on the road, couldn’t take the time to care which fast-food places were being advertised on the billboards she whizzed past, or what the economic atmosphere in this particular Michigan town seemed to be. Depressed. Run-down. Thriving. Prosperous. Gray and broken. Beautiful. She’d seen them all.

She’d come to Lawrence, Michigan, to find her son. Nothing else mattered.

Without taking her gaze from the road, Amy reached for the thermostat, flipping it on defrost to clear gathering condensation from the windows.

A few minutes ago she’d lost sight of the car she’d been tracking all day, but she was intimately acquainted with the fact that county roads went in only two directions. To the next town. Or back.

Her ex-nanny’s vehicle was a spruce green, four-door Pontiac Grand Am—purchased after she’d been exonerated, at least by the law, of any suspicion in Charles’s disappearance. The car hadn’t passed in the other direction, so it had to be up ahead.

And almost out of gas.

As far as Amy could tell, that sedan hadn’t stopped for several hours. Which meant its driver would probably be forced to stop in Lawrence.

And Amy was going to be right there when it did.

After almost five months on the road alone, chasing down every hint of hope while the officials investigated everyone Amelia Wainscoat had ever known, Amy would see her son again. To fill her aching arms with his sweet, robust little body.

She’d made only occasional visits home, primarily to deal with business matters. The few people who knew what she was doing, who knew she’d undertaken this search a few weeks after her son’s disappearance, wondered about her sanity. But no one had been able to stop her.

Amy could hardly remember what it felt like to be the confident, in-control woman who’d accompanied her son to the amusement park that afternoon so many months before. Some days she could hardly remember what it was like to feel at all.

How much did five-year-olds grow in five months? she wondered, her eyes alert, darting here, there, everywhere at once, ensuring that nothing—no one—got by her. Had he lost that baby fat she and Johnny had loved so much?

The multimillionaire mother might not look so powerful in her department-store clothes and polyester-filled parka, with her barely made-up face, as she drove the ordinary black Thunderbird she’d purchased to replace the chauffeur-driven limo she’d left at home. But her slender appearance, still sporting remnants of the sleekness she’d once worn so naturally, was as deceptive as the car she was driving. Over the past months of searching for her abducted son, she and her car had proved just how high performance they were.

They were going to win this one. Johnny had always said she could do anything she put her mind to. He’d told her many times, usually while shaking that gorgeous blond head of his, that he’d never met anyone who could make things happen the way she could.

Of course, that had been B.A. Before the accident. Before she’d known she could take nothing in life for granted. That all the money in the world did nothing for her at all. Bought nothing that mattered.

Her stomach in knots, Amy pressed a little harder on the accelerator, the eight-cylinder coupe sliding only slightly when she rounded the next bend. Where was that green car?

She’d lost it twice that day and each time had found it again within minutes. The Fates were with her now.

And maybe Johnny was, too. In the past months, Amy had felt an odd closeness to the husband she’d lost. Odd because, in some ways, she felt closer to Johnny after his death than she had during the last few years of their marriage. As though he was watching over her.

In those last years, the one thing that had bound them together was Charles. No wonder she felt his presence, his support, as she dedicated every ounce of energy to finding their son and returning him safely home.

And Johnny had warned her about Kathy. He’d understand why she’d undertaken this search, which others considered a complete dead end.

He’d also understand that she couldn’t just sit at home, waiting for the professionals to do their jobs. He’d share her uncompromising need to be out here on the road.

What would her little boy be wearing? He’d always preferred denim. And baseball jerseys. But of course Kathy knew that…if Kathy was the abductor, as Amy firmly believed.

Did Charles have a winter coat?

She should call Brad Dorchester. Let him know she was so close. She was paying the private investigator an exorbitant amount of money for a reason. She’d hired him—a Denver resident—over the perfectly competent detectives in Chicago because he was reputed to be the best in the country.

And she’d promised to keep him informed of her whereabouts.

While the renowned P.I. did not approve of Amy’s active participation in the hunt for her son—especially as she was working independently of the official search, driven by her own instincts—he was seriously engaged in keeping track of her and her progress.

And he followed up on every hint, every lead, she might find.

Eyeing her cell phone in the console, she continued to drive.

Dorchester, an ex-FBI agent, and the FBI, along with various local police forces, had been working around the clock for months. In the beginning, they’d received about a call a minute from people reporting sightings. None of them had turned out to be accurate, but they’d had to check them all.

The past five months, they’d investigated Wainscoat business associates, both in the company and outside it, gardeners, repairmen, even her mailman. They’d talked to every single employee of the amusement park, but no one remembered seeing anything unusual. Some had remembered Charles, but no one had noticed him with anyone in particular.

The Chicago police had even had her and Cara, Celeste and Clifford Smith, the chauffeur and a few other key people take lie-detector tests. To no avail.

Kathy had been among those tested; she’d been questioned repeatedly. The police had concluded she wasn’t guilty—and then she’d vanished without a trace. Until recently, when there’d been sightings in or near various Michigan towns.

Charles’s picture had been everywhere. On television, posted around the country at police stations, schools, churches. Even in the tabloids.

She’d given them the picture of Charles that had been taken at his fifth birthday party, less than two weeks before his disappearance. The pitcher for the Chicago White Sox had been there. In the photo he’d been ruffling Charles’s hair.

And what about that hair, dark and thick like hers? She and Johnny had kept their son’s hair just long enough to be untraditional. Had his abductor cut it short?

Another bend in the road.

Still no green sedan.

The town was just ahead. Instead of billboards, she could see buildings. The green sedan might be just around that curve. Amy pressed the gas a little harder.

Where would she and her son stay that evening? Grand Rapids, maybe? Or Kalamazoo? Someplace far from the dusty little towns she assumed Charles had been dragged through all through the fall and into the winter. Someplace where she could get them a penthouse suite and they could order room service and play video games until her little boy fell asleep at the controls and she could pull him onto her lap and never let him go.

Another curve. No car.

Hands trembling, Amy wondered what she’d do if she didn’t find him that night.

How could she possibly take this for another day? Or week. Or month.

An insidious burning crawled through the lining of her stomach, settling just beneath her rib cage. Hands clenched around the steering wheel, shoulders hunched in her parka, she admonished herself to stay focused. On the road. On what mattered. She wasn’t going to allow doubts. Wasn’t going to get discouraged. Charles needed her.

And she needed him, too.

This was the day. The town. She could feel it. She’d never been this close. Never had a lead that lasted longer than the minutes it took to check it out.

Wiping the sweat from her upper lip, she slowed as she approached the town. One motel, a diner, some shops, scattered homes—nothing as formal as a neighborhood—a school that looked a little shabby… Occasional piles of dirty, melting snow.

And a green Grand Am. It turned the corner in front of her.

Thank God.

Giddy with renewed confidence, Amy ignored the twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit, ignored the grumbling in her stomach, pressed her foot to the floor—and caught the glimpse of taillights as the green car turned again. And then again. It was winding over roads that looked as if they’d been forgotten in the previous century. Cracked, graying pavement. Potholes. No sign of human life on either side.

Kathy Stead—the brunette driving that car had to be Kathy—was traveling away from the county road that led out of town. And turning without hesitation, as though she knew where she was going. But Amy couldn’t remember the nanny ever mentioning the town of Lawrence.

There were no taillights at the next turn. Head snapping from left to right, Amy peered intently. The car had to be up there; she just wasn’t seeing it. Had it turned into a drive? Or a street that she’d missed?

Fighting the nausea that would only slow her down, she drove the stretch of road twice more, slowing at every slight break in the overgrown brush. Cars didn’t simply disappear into thin air.

Five-year-old boys, yes, that happened, but not three-thousand-pound cars.

Still, there was no sign of it.

A huge, wrenching sob filled the Thunderbird. She’d never heard herself make such a sound until the night Johnny died. It didn’t surprise her anymore. Mostly she just gave in to it. Let it twist her ribs painfully, ripping her throat as it exploded out of her. Sometimes she hurt so badly she couldn’t help herself.

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.