Chapter 17

  She couldn’t get up. Couldn’t quit staring at the screen, at the last glimpse she’d ever have of her baby sister. The smile on Kelsey’s face as she answered the door...the way her cheeks and body had filled out with pregnancy... Kelsey truly glowed.

  And was more beautiful than Haley had ever seen her.

  To think that a man had played her, pretended to love her, to bring her such bliss, only to have her end up dead with no evidence she’d ever had a child...and, in the end, to have her friend, Noah, her only voice...

  That did it. That got her standing.

  And holding on to Paul’s arm, too.

  Because she knew where they were headed now. And needed time, needed someone, needed him, her friend, to help her get through it.

  “An evil man, with money, and the ability to convince my sister he loved her, fathered a child with her.” Her voice cracked. “He pretended to fall in love with her so that he could either convince her to give up the baby, or, at the very least, be present when the baby came so that he could get rid of the evidence,” she said. “Either by selling the baby, having it adopted...or...worse,” she said aloud, finding it odd how calm she sounded.

  The rampage going on inside her was about to topple her.

  Except that, for Kelsey, for the baby, she would not let it. Period.

  The fiend would not win.

  “The obstetrician, he knows what happened to that baby. And he was afraid. That’s why he wouldn’t talk to us. Same with the lawyer in Pahrump,” she continued as awful vignettes played out in her mind.

  And then she focused on Paul. Saw him there, solid, right in front of her, saw her hand on his arm, and read the look in his gaze. Burning fire.

  But not at her—not because of her. It was that drive, the thing deep within him that made him engage with everything he had when went on a job, or tackled classes, or anything else he put his mind to...that was what had first drawn her to him.

  And there it was, still burning.

  Bringing tears to her eyes, and a sob up from her chest that made it hard to breathe and impossible to speak.

  Because they were probably too late.

  It was possible they’d always been too late—that Noah hadn’t known who had the baby, or why, just that something wrong had happened.

  Maybe, like with their marriage, they’d been on a collision course before they’d begun.

  * * *

  “I’m not giving up.” Paul was clear on that point.

  Decision made. Though, there’d been none to make. He wasn’t walking away. He’d die, first.

  Pulling the other chair over for Haley to sit beside him, he sat in front of his computer and went to work. He had a face. “Finding people who don’t want to be found is what I’m best at,” he said aloud as his fingers flew on the keyboard.

  “Even if we find him, if the baby’s still alive, and he’s the father, we have no legal grounds to do anything to save it from him...”

  It wasn’t like her to be negative...unless she was hurting so badly she couldn’t handle the pain.

  As she’d been the night of their second anniversary.

  The knowledge came to him as though it wasn’t new, as though it had always been lurking, waiting for him to find it.

  “If he’s a bad guy, there will be evidence,” he told her, reading, scanning and typing some more. “And when I find it, you can use it to petition the court to have his parental rights severed.”

  She nodded, looking unconvinced. But she was looking. Intently. At everything in front of him. Joining in the search.

  Helping him.

  “There are a lot of ifs here, Hale,” he said, as he typed again. “I can’t promise a happy ending. But I can promise that I won’t stop until we find that child. One way or another.”

  Dead or alive. He wouldn’t say it aloud.

  Things could end badly. They both knew that. But at least this time they’d be fighting the evil together.

  On the same team.

  With the same goal.

  As friends instead of enemies.

  * * *

  After an hour of scouring the internet, of multiple phone calls with Endives, who confirmed that police facial recognition software had come up blank with a name to go with the face seen on the video, Paul announced that the quickest way to find out the identity of Kelsey’s mystery man was to head back to Pahrump.

  To question people in the small town until he got answers.

  Even if they were just signs of nervousness as they swore they’d never seen the man before.

  Haley saw the way he looked at her as he made his pronouncement. Saw the worry in his gaze, and said, “I’m coming with you.”

  He didn’t argue.

  And she didn’t push her luck by asking any questions as he told her to close up her bag and prepare to check out.

  By one o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, they’d talked to a dozen people in Pahrump, at the town’s biggest box store, the most crowded diner, when they went in for lunch, and gas stations both in town and by the highway. No one knew the guy in the still photo Paul had on his phone.

  It wasn’t the greatest likeness. Grainy at best.

  But someone had to know the guy.

  “Unless he doesn’t travel in the same circles as common folk,” Haley said as they climbed back in the SUV. He had a process for getting in and out, aware, at every turn, that whoever had kidnapped her, and had almost run them off the road, was still at large. The same guy, or two random acts, no one knew.

  Endives hoped to know though, as soon as financials came through from the shell company. If someone had used it to pay one dirty-job professional under the table, chances were good he’d used it, or a similar one, to pay another.

  Each time they parked, Paul would get out while she stayed low, and she didn’t show her head until he’d tapped twice on her door and then opened it.

  They repeated the process for getting back in, minus the two taps.

  While Haley thought the whole process a bit of overkill, she wasn’t in an argue-with-him mood that day.

  She’d been nervous, crossing the desert to Pahrump, not that she’d have admitted that to him, but he’d had a backup plan there, too. He’d checked in with Sierra’s Web every ten minutes during the sixty-minute drive. Had he failed to do so, they’d have immediately notified the Nevada State Police. And Endives.

  Paul’s pull was impressive.

  Gained not by being born to a rich father, but by earning it through hard work...

  What they didn’t do was contact police in the area. They’d yet to hear anything from them regarding Haley’s abduction report, Endives hadn’t been able to find any official record of it, which could just be slow paperwork processing due to the weekend, but Paul wasn’t taking any chances.

  Depending on how much money Kelsey’s lover had had—and all signs pointed to it being a lot—he could have friends in the highest places.

  Oh, God, Kels, what did you get yourself into? Did you know?

  “She didn’t come to me for help,” Haley announced as Paul pulled away from the diner. “It’s killing me that she didn’t come to me. I could have...”

  Paul’s frown was odd. Personal somehow. “Maybe she needed to stand on her own two feet, Hale. Maybe it was time.”

  Well, yes, but...

  Maybe he was right.

  “You used to tell me that I enable them,” she remembered. It had been the largest source of argument between them. And brought her defenses up every time.

  “I was wrong to say that. I’ve realized something not very nice about myself,” he said, as though conversationally, as he took a side street on their way to the largest local gym.

  “What’s that?” She couldn’t imagine much, at the moment, that wasn’t nice about him. Even when he’d fought with her, he’d been decent about it. It was like there’d been unwritten rules between them. No name calling. No bringing up irrelevant stuff and throwing it in each other’s faces...

  Who did that?

  Who made rules of engagement for fighting during their marriage and then stuck to them? Had they brought the battles to themselves by building the ground for them?

  Paul hadn’t answered, typical for him, and she looked over at him, about to ask him if they’d made their battles a forgone conclusion with all the rules they’d set. Now that they were friends they could talk without getting defensive, but before she could speak, she saw him looking in his side-view mirrors as he slowed and pulled over to the curb.

  Glancing out her window, she saw a woman running after them. She was kind of ragged looking, maybe a user, based on the sores on her face, but didn’t seem threatening.

  Pulling his gun, but keeping it low, Paul told her to duck.

  She did so immediately. Heard her window roll down. And heard a woman’s breathless voice say, “Look, I’m sorry. I tried to catch you back at the diner. I saw the picture on your phone through the window. I hang out there sometimes. For food, you know. Anyway, I don’t want to get anyone in any trouble, but I was thinking...maybe you’re here because of what happened and Mr. Downy—he was good to me. Always made sure I had a place to sleep, and food. He offered to, you know, help me out more, but I do what I do, you know? I like my freedom and all...”

  Haley sat up. “Mr. Downy?”

  “Well that picture doesn’t look like him, you know?” The woman, still breathless, gave them a mostly toothless smile. Bent down with her hands to her knees, breathing hard, and stood up again. She kept her distance, though.

  And was well-spoken.

  A woman who’d gotten too old to work at one of the brothels and hadn’t had any other life to go to? Or one who’d had her life stolen by addiction?

  Would Kelsey have ended up the same?

  “It’s just... I hang out late at night sometimes...down at the corner by the turnoff to Sugarloaf—where the ritzy people live—and he’d always stop, give me money for a motel room for the night...”

  Gut sick, heart hurting, Haley wondered two things instantaneously...what the woman was doing hanging out on a corner late at night, and had this Mr. Downy spent time in the motel room with her as payment for his generosity?

  Had he picked up Kelsey, too?

  “You know this man?” Paul held his phone out to her, the photo they’d been showing around town on-screen again.

  The woman nodded, her stringy blond hair falling into her eyes. “Maybe I do,” she said. “The hair...it doesn’t look like Mr. Downy, but one night, when he stopped, he had hair like that. I thought he’d been at some costume party or something...”

  Haley’s heart pounding hard enough for her to feel each beat, she reminded herself to breathe. Were they finally getting to the end?

  She wanted it so badly, and dreaded it, too.

  “You know where I can find him?” Paul’s voice was calm beside her, bringing a vestige of normality.

  “Well that’s just it. Mr. Downy’s dead!”

  “Dead?” Haley blurted, eyes wide as she looked at Paul.

  “A month or so ago. It was all over the news,” the woman said. “His horse threw him...”

  Pulling out a wad of money, Paul leaned over to hand it out Haley’s window. “Thank you for your time,” he said, let go as soon as the woman’s hand snatched it from him and sped off before Haley’s window was finished rolling back up.

  * * *

  He’d seen the white car pull out behind him at the diner. Had watched it pass him by as he’d pulled over to the curb.

  And then it had been back, right behind him while the woman had been telling them that Downy was dead.

  “Stay down,” he told Haley, relieved when she did as he’d ordered without question. He didn’t like it, him ordering, her doing, but he’d do what it took to keep her alive. Swerving, he cut across two lanes, made an illegal left turn and then a quick right and another left. The car was still behind him.

  “We’re being followed,” he told her. “Call Endives. He’s speed dial two at the moment. Give him this license plate.” He rattled off the number. And then did it a second time as soon as Haley had the detective on the phone.

  “Now hold on,” he said next, and did a U-turn in the middle of a road just as a light turned red. The white car screeched to a halt. It had either been that or get T-boned by traffic coming from the crossroad.

  “I lost him, but stay down for another minute or two,” he said then, adrenaline pumping as he watched all around him for signs of anyone else on his tail.

  Ten minutes later, he pulled back into the busy parking lot of the big box store and took stock.

  “I need to get you out of town.” He said what was first and foremost on his mind. He hated to leave while the trail was hot, but losing Haley wasn’t an option.

  “Like hell,” she said, but he’d been prepared for the fight.

  “We don’t have time for this, Hale. You have to go.”

  “We’ve had reason to believe that I’m the one they’re after,” she said. “Which means that me being with you might be drawing them out. And that’s the quickest way to find out who they are, right? By drawing them out? You just got a license plate.” She was talking fast. “Besides, I feel safer with you. I know your skills and I know you’ll do everything you can to protect me.”

  “But what if I can’t?” His tone wasn’t kind. Or even a decent pitch. “I’m good. I’m not perfect,” he said.

  “We’re in danger, Paul. Both of us. I brought it on us, through Kelsey. If something happens to me, at least I’ll go out doing what I need to do.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to.

  And didn’t have the chance, as Endives phoned back with an ID on the white car. After obtaining permission, Paul put the call on speaker phone.

  The white car also had been stolen from a used car lot. At ten that morning.

  After they’d been in town, showing the picture around. Paul and the detective both theorized that the driver of the truck from the day before and the driver of the car that afternoon, who had clearly been after them, were one and the same. Which meant their near demise at the face of the mountain hadn’t been the result of a random joyride gone bad.

  Paul told Endives about the woman on the street, about her Mr. Downy. Hated that he didn’t even have a first name for the guy yet. It wasn’t how he did business.

  But he didn’t often have someone trailing him. Most times it was the opposite. And generally, when his life was in jeopardy, the danger was in front of him, usually in the form of a rifle barrel, right where he could see it.

  And disarm whoever had been stupid enough to pull it on him.

  “What’s bothering me now is that you’re still being pursued. If Downy’s dead, who’s paying this guy to go after you?” Endives’s voice came over the car’s audio system.

  “My guess on the fly is Thomas Gladstone,” Paul said, used to working in tandem with others, which usually meant law enforcement in some fashion. “We shook him up the other night. And I don’t think it’s a rape charge he’s most worried about. Especially now with the victim gone. It’s his father that scares him. He doesn’t want us digging up any trouble that’s going to come back to dear old dad. Like his association with a hit man, for instance.”

  “You two need to come back to Vegas, or go home to California.” Detective Duane Endives sounded loud and clear, and Paul saw Haley shake her head even before he spoke.

  “No way we’re leaving without finding out what happened to that baby,” he said. “There’s no official record of the newborn’s existence, and only circumstantial evidence that the infant was even born alive, so you can’t do it. You all have car thefts to investigate, and I’m guessing three deaths as well...”

  Endives couldn’t force him to leave. He was licensed and working a job.

  “Then watch your backs,” the man said. “I don’t want to see either of you coming back in a body bag.”

  The words weren’t issued with any levity at all.

  And Paul felt their fierceness as he pulled out of the lot, looking for a place to lay low long enough to get on his computer.

  “We’re only eight miles away from the California border,” Haley said before he’d even told her what he was thinking. “There are casino resorts between here and there. I read about them this morning when I was looking at Pahrump information.”

  There’d been billboards for them coming up the highway as well.

  With a nod he told her to buckle up.

  And headed west.

  Chapter 18

  Living with the knowledge that someone out to get her could be watching her every move wasn’t easy. Doing it and maintaining mental faculties so that she could help in the search for the baby seemed impossible during the first minute or two they were back on the road. Poised to take cover, or to brace herself for a wreck designed to kill them, she strove to take back control of her thoughts.

  Which meant not focusing on the danger.

  With traffic zooming in front, behind and both sides of them, the task seemed insurmountable. But she kept at it. Trying to tamp down the fear by thinking about the facts. Conversations. Computer visuals that she’d seen that morning. The woman on the street.

  And something Paul had said just before the woman had run up to them. She’d been hearing his words from the past—about her enabling her sister—had been seeing the truth in them after having spent a few days in Kelsey’s life, seeing what her sister had been doing and how hard she’d been fighting for control of her own happiness, her own life.

  “You said you’d discovered something about yourself that you weren’t happy with,” she said aloud. She’d asked what it was, but the woman had run up and...