Where the Road Ends

“Wainscoat hasn’t lost any work.”

“And you have your finger on the pulse of the construction business these days? You know what projects are up for bid and who they’re going to? You know what people in the industry are saying about Wainscoat? About you?”

Longing for the sleeping pills that had been prescribed for her the previous August—which she’d never used—Amy turned her head on the pillow.

“You think someone could be slowly sabotaging me, insinuating doubt about Wainscoat’s reliability, trying to undermine the years of trust we’ve built?”

“It’s possible.”

“Wouldn’t Cara know?”

“That depends on how talented the culprit is.”

God, she was tired. Too tired to care if she lost her business.

“How valid is your theory?” she asked.

“Valid enough to warrant a check, Amelia.”

“On a scale of one to ten.”

“Four to five.”

Amy hooked a pillow with one arm, hugging it to her. She took an odd and immediate comfort from the soft worn cotton and flattened foam. A feeling similar to the reassurance brought about by Brad Dorchester’s thoroughness.

“Can you please call me Amy?”

“If you’d prefer.”

“I would.”

“If you won’t go home, at least give me your word that, in the future, you’ll call me before taking off on a chase.”

“You won’t stop me.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then yes, I’ll call you.” She’d at least try.

“Good. Now get some rest…Amy.”

As if she could.

She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

The kid was crying again. She hadn’t been prepared for that. Never thought that a kid who was five years old would still cry.

But this one did. All the time—or so it seemed to her. He didn’t cry when she was pulling him along and he fell down and skinned his knee so bad there was blood all over. That she could’ve understood. Nor any of the times she’d slapped him. Not even when she’d made him throw his ice-cream cone away the day she’d seen a dress in a store window that she wanted to try on and there’d been a No Food Allowed sign posted at the front door.

She would’ve understood that, too. Probably would have yelled at him to shut up. But she’d have understood.

But no—she pulled one of her fluffy feather pillows over her head to drown out the pathetic sound before it pissed her off enough to make her get up and do something about it—this kid only cried for one reason.

The one reason she absolutely could not forgive.

The fucking kid was crying for his mother.

Needed ASAP, Blade, Loader & Scraper operators…

How did one operate a Scraper? For that matter, what was a Scraper?

Printing pressman, exp. only…

That left her out.

ADULT NEWSPAPER CARRIERS WANTED. Immediate openings. Must be 18 or older. Call…

Amy circled it.

Janitor needed, Lawrence Elementary School. No experience necessary. FT position. Salary commensurate w/exp. Apply M-F, 8-3, at Lawrence Elementary main office.

Perfect.

“Can I get you more coffee, ma’am?”

“What?” Amy looked up from the newspaper want ads. “Oh, no, thank you, I’ve had enough.”

“You sure I can’t get you something else to eat?”

“No thanks.” She smiled at the friendly girl dressed in an old-fashioned waitress uniform with big front pockets. “The toast was fine.”

“You hardly ate any of it.”

“I wasn’t hungry.” Amy glanced back at the paper. “Listen, you wouldn’t happen to know where the elementary school is, would you?”

“Sure, it’s just down this road.” She pointed out the window to the road Amy had taken into town the night before. “Go right at the corner. It’s about half a mile down the street. There’re some swings in the side yard. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” Amy smiled again.

Coffeepot in hand, the girl continued on to the next table, and Amy read the ad one more time. Infiltrating towns had become a way of life for her. Plans formed naturally, as though she’d been living this way forever.

Sometimes that was how it seemed.

She hardly gave a thought anymore to what her shareholders would think of their CEO cleaning toilets.

Or sitting here, dressed in a pair of cheap jeans, a polyester orange sweater and tennis shoes, in this sticky-tabled restaurant with black scuff marks all over the floor.

Remembering Brad’s theory that someone might be out to destroy her professional reputation, Amy still didn’t care. She’d sacrificed so much for Wainscoat Construction, and in the end, all that money hadn’t been enough to buy her the one thing that mattered. Her son’s safety.

Which was why she was sitting in a greasy spoon in a town that would never be able to afford the services of a nationally renowned group of builders. And it was why she belonged there.

Each of the small towns was a bit different, yet her goal was completely the same. Get into the schools, scour records. Of course, Charles wouldn’t be registered under his own name, but maybe, being the boy’s mother, she’d recognize some hint. Some clue, however slight. Maybe a new student who chose chocolate milk on the lunch plan…

And outside of school, her aim was to get to know the townspeople enough to win their trust—and their confidences. Be an ordinary woman getting to know other ordinary people. Put herself in the various places where she might hear talk of children. And maybe the mention of one child.

The goal was to find Charles.

But never had a plan fallen into her lap as easily as it had today. It must mean something.

The job was made for her. She had to get to the school, show Amy Wayne’s fake ID she’d found frighteningly easy to obtain using her own social security number, give Cara as her reference and secure the position before it was given to someone else.

She should have asked for the check.

Where was that girl?

Amy glanced around—and noticed a car pulling out of the gas station/convenience store across the street. A green Grand Am.

Throwing a twenty-dollar bill on the tabletop, she grabbed her purse and the cheap navy parka and ran—across four lanes of traffic. Glad of the tennis shoes that were a regular part of her wardrobe now, Amy was only vaguely aware of the honking horns.

Yanking her picture of Kathy out of the back pocket of her bag, Amy cut in front of a man wearing overalls, buying a pack of cigarettes at the counter.

“Have you seen this woman?” she asked addressing both the bearded customer and the middle-aged female clerk.

“Yeah, she was just in here,” the clerk said. “Wearing a pretty fancy white ski jacket and expensive-looking black pants.”

“She left in that green Pontiac,” the man added. “She was real nice-looking in a natural sort of way.” And then, “You know her?”

Amy didn’t bother to answer, just ran to the door.

Her car was across the street. She was losing valuable time.

Hand on the door, she stopped. “You didn’t happen to notice if she had a small boy with her, did you?”

“Nope, she was by herself,” the clerk said.

“She bought animal crackers, though,” the man, a friendly sort, told her. “And two ice-cream bars. I noticed mostly because she cut in front of me and then I couldn’t figure out why a woman all by herself needed two of ’em at once. It wasn’t like she could save one for later….”

The door closed behind Amy, who was already halfway across the parking lot. Animal crackers were Charles’s favorite—next to ice-cream bars. Johnny had bought both for him regularly. To go with the brie and filet mignon her little boy more commonly got at home.

Amy’s son might not have been at the store, but Kathy had to be going to him.

And he had to be close. That extra ice-cream bar wasn’t going to last long.

Holding up her hand to stop traffic, Amy ran back across the street, ignoring the angry honking. The Thunderbird purred instantly to life and Amy threw it in reverse, blinking away tears as she backed out of the parking space.

Kathy had at least five minutes on her.

They seemed like five years.

3

Squealing out onto County Road 215, gravel flying behind her, Amy choked back emotion until she could no longer feel the acidic burning inside her. She was going to get this woman.

Kathy had taken Charles. Amy knew it as surely as if Johnny were speaking to her from heaven. Knew it despite what Brad and the police had said. The feeling was stronger than intuition. Stronger than desperation.

The first bend didn’t faze her. She leaned to the right as the powerful car took the curve, her eyes intent on the road unfolding before her. A straight stretch. But the two-lane road gave her nothing she wanted. No green Grand Am. Only a slow-moving rusty blue pickup with two sheep in its bed, a bearded and bent old man at the wheel, and windows so clouded she could hardly see through them. It was blocking her view.

“Damn!”

Jerking the wheel to the left, Amy crossed the center yellow line far enough to see beyond the truck. A station wagon was coming from the opposite direction.

“Get out of my way,” she growled at the driver of the pickup, which was only inches from her front bumper. Every second these people took from her gave Kathy an edge.

The station wagon passed. Amy crossed the center line again. A sport utility vehicle was coming at her now. And then another pickup truck.

The car’s defrost was blowing at full speed. Every muscle in her body tense, Amy rode the back of the blue pickup, laying on her horn, willing the driver to get nervous and pull over. He was doing ten miles under the speed limit. It wasn’t fair.

But then, life wasn’t fair. Nothing had been made clearer to Amy these past months. Intellectually she’d always known that, but now she understood what it really meant, understood—viscerally, emotionally—how it felt to be the recipient of perpetual unfairness. Life had never been fair. Her privileged existence had simply made her unaware of it.

The pickup driver didn’t slow down and pull over to let her pass. He didn’t speed up. With nearly frozen fingers she pulled the cheap black gloves from her pocket and put them on.

It took her a precious ten minutes to finally get around the old man. Ten minutes that stretched her already dangerously taut nerves.

Engine roaring as it slipped into high gear, the Thunderbird sped up till the speedometer needle flew to the end of its range. The road continued straight for a mile or two. And there were no cars in sight. At least not on the side of the road that mattered to her. The damn blue pickup had given Kathy a chance to get away.

When Amy started to wonder if the driver of the pickup was an accomplice of Kathy’s—perhaps he’d even hidden her the night before—she gave herself a mental shake. She couldn’t afford this kind of paranoia; it only obscured her goal. Okay, she’d lost ten minutes. She’d find them. The roads were clear, the day crisp and sunny. At the rate she was driving, it shouldn’t take more than half an hour to catch up with Kathy.

So she started to plan. How was she going to handle the apprehension? Call the police? They’d exonerated the younger woman.

She had to stay calm. Act precisely, correctly, to ensure that her new life with Charles began that day, immediately. There would be no further investigating. No charges filed against Kathy for illegal behavior. All Amy wanted was her son.

Glancing at her speedometer, she frowned. The illegal behavior in question might well be hers—a traffic violation. She kept her foot on the gas. So what if she got a speeding ticket?

She’d willingly pay.

“I need your help.”

Clutching his cell phone—it was the number she always called—Brad Dorchester looked out at, but didn’t see, the panoramic view of snowy Denver from the thirtieth-floor window of his office high-rise.

“Amy,” he said, the stiff muscles in his jaw making words difficult. “Where are you?”

Would there be time for him to save her pretty ass?

“On the road. It was Kathy I was following yesterday, Brad. I saw her again this morning—at a convenience store across the street. The clerk and a customer both ID’d her from her picture.”

Brad’s gaze returned to his office. To the mass of papers and photos and reports spread on the conference-size table across the room. He didn’t have to look at them to know what they contained. He knew them all by rote, played them over and over in his mind like an irritatingly catchy tune.

The papers and photos represented hundreds of hours of work—all generated because of one very small boy. Charles Wainscoat Dunn.

Brad shook his head, then wrapped one hand around the back of his neck, which had taken on a habitual soreness. He had all the information. And it wasn’t doing a damn bit of good.

Dared he hope that his second thorough investigation of the world of construction business would turn up something new?

“Did you follow her?” He hated to ask. Hated to give Amelia Wainscoat any encouragement in her current endeavor.

“I’m trying, Brad,” she said now. His stomach sank at her eagerness. “I’ve been on 215—you know one of those two-lane roads that—”

“—only go to one place,” he finished for her. He knew. Not only had he been up and down them himself, he’d been hearing her talk about them for months. Picturing her racing over them all alone in a vain search that was going to kill her sooner or later.

If not physically, then emotionally and mentally. He just wasn’t sure which would come first.

“I haven’t seen her since she left the convenience store. I’m approaching M-43, which ends in South Haven. She’d have to take the highway from there.”

If anything happened to Amelia Wainscoat while she was out there trying to do his job, he was sure as hell going to end up carrying that guilt around forever. He didn’t appreciate the burden.

Goddammit! If she’d just let him concentrate on doing his job, instead of making him waste time worrying about her.

“So should I stop in South Haven and risk letting her get farther ahead of me, or do I skip the town and risk the possibility that she might have stopped there?”

“I’d check the town. If she didn’t stop, it won’t take long to figure that out.”

He couldn’t believe he was giving her reinforcement to continue with this futile course.

“But what if she went on ahead?”

Phone lodged between his ear and his shoulder, Brad rolled up the sleeves of the white cotton shirt he’d tucked into his slacks at an ungodly hour that morning. “She’ll only have an hour or so. It shouldn’t be hard to follow her trail.”

“Okay.”

“Amy, I’m putting some of my men on this.” Even though he knew the nanny was a dead end. He’d assigned two men to make absolutely certain of that. They’d checked every aspect of her background, spent weeks doing surveillance—and they’d come up with nothing.

“Good.”

He’d already called in the license plate number. “Keep your phone on. I’ll be checking in every hour. Call me sooner if you find anything.”

“Okay.”

He studied the table across the room again. He could rearrange the papers there. Stare at the photos until he went blind. And still, the facts weren’t going to change.

“She was exonerated, Amy.”

“I know.”

“She’s perfectly free to travel across the state of Michigan, or any other state, for that matter.”

“She left town right after the police dropped her as a suspect and she’s been missing ever since.”

“Who, besides you, is looking for her? The police aren’t. And after all the negative publicity, who could blame her for starting over?”

Amy ignored his remark. “I’m going to spend the rest of my days hunting her down if that’s what it takes.”

“If you find her, don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.”

Why didn’t he feel confident about that?

“What should I do?” she asked. “If I find her, I mean.”

Questions like that really scared him. She didn’t even have a goddamned plan.

“Nothing,” he said, his feet landing on the floor as he pushed away from his desk and stood. “You should go home and let my men take care of this.”

“I’m going to question her, but what’s the right tactic?” Amy continued, ignoring him. “Do I act friendly and pretend this is a great coincidence, try to reestablish some trust? Or do I try to bluff her with the idea of some new evidence, hoping I can scare her into a confession?”

Jaw so tight he couldn’t speak, Brad wandered over to the conference table. With his free hand in the pocket of a pair of navy Dockers he stared down at the array of documents, picturing, instead, the beautiful and completely out-of-her-element heiress alone on a county road in Michigan.

“Come on, Brad, I don’t have much time. I’ve just taken the South Haven turnoff.”

“Stay out of this, Amy,” he muttered, refusing to acknowledge the cold sweat slinking down his back. “If you do find her, and that’s a big if, I don’t want you going near her. Keep her in sight, call me immediately and don’t do another damn thing.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Amy.”

“I know. She bought animal crackers, Brad. And two ice-cream bars. Not one, two.”

Animal crackers and ice-cream bars. Charles’s favorite foods.

If Amelia Wainscoat really found her ex-nanny, she wasn’t going to wait quietly on the sidelines. Kathy Stead would be lucky if she wasn’t down at the first count.

And then Brad would be wasting time getting his client out of jail rather than doing what she was paying him to do. Find her missing son.

“Amy.”

“Gotta go, Brad. I’m just getting into town. It’s quaint. Quiet. Old-fashioned shops with angled curb parking. I don’t see the Grand Am yet….”

“Amy…” Men who’d been trained to kill were intimidated by that tone.

“I know, Brad.” Her voice would have been weary if not for the excitement that tinged it. “I’ll call you.”

He said her name again, but was met with a click as she hung up.

Swearing, Brad started to count to ten to cool down before he talked to her again. He made it to three before hitting speed dial.

“Yeah?” She didn’t conceal her irritation.

She was irritated?

“Don’t bluff. You’ll risk getting any ensuing confession thrown out of court.”

This time it was Brad who disconnected. But only because he had some favors to call in. He wanted a man on Amelia Wainscoat’s tail in the next half hour. Which meant finding an off-duty cop in the state of Michigan who’d be glad to make some extra money.

That done, satisfied that he’d hired a man he could trust, one who came with the highest recommendation from one of his ex-FBI buddies, Brad had a conference call with his Wainscoat team, Diane Smith and Doug Blyth, two of the country’s best investigators, who each had another four or five leg-work men reporting to them. Together they decided on a couple of guys they could pull from their current assignments. These two would be sent to Michigan on the next available flights.

His last call was to request that the plane Ms. Wainscoat had provided for his private use be gassed up and ready to go, just in case.

The only thing keeping him from heading straight to Michigan was that damn phone call he might or might not get. As much as he needed to do something besides stand in his office and stare at papers that led him nowhere, he couldn’t risk being in the air—where he couldn’t keep his cell on—if Amy called him.

Knowing her, she wouldn’t try twice.

Clementine’s was nice as far as bar-and-grill joints went. Its warmth was almost a shock after the bone-chilling January cold. With its long, historical bar and lots of tables and booths for friends and families to eat and enjoy themselves, the restaurant had a welcoming feel. But no one there had seen Kathy Stead. Nor had they seen her at the department store, a place whose wooden floors spoke of another era, a simpler time when kids could wander downtown by themselves. When parents didn’t have to worry about some maniac stealing them away.

On her way out of town, Amy picked up her phone with fingers stiff from cold and hit redial. More because she couldn’t stand to be alone with herself, with her disappointment, than because she had any real desire to speak with Brad Dorchester. The man depressed her.

Still, she’d told him she’d call. And there was a small but persistent part of her that trusted him implicitly, that wanted to feed him every single piece of knowledge she had in case it was the one thing he could use.

A part of her that needed to know she wasn’t doing this alone.

He picked up in the middle of the first ring.

“She wasn’t there. I’m on 196 heading north.” The two-lane highway was only slightly easier to travel than M-43.

“I’ve got someone heading up M-43 into South Haven and beyond in case you missed something.”

Amy nodded. Brad was taking her seriously.

Still, tension ate away at her regained sense of control.

“What’s your man going to do if he finds her?” As she’d already revealed to Brad, she had no concrete plan for getting information from the woman who’d managed to dupe the Chicago police and FBI into thinking she was innocent. Up to this point, her plan had always been about finding Kathy. And nothing about what she’d do when she actually did.

“Ask questions,” Brad said. “Try to get her to reveal something. It’s all he can do.”

“What kind of questions?”

A long pause. And then a sigh. “You’re in way over your head, Amy. Go home.”

The grassy median, brown now from the winter cold, sped by her window. Pine trees grew in the distance. “What kind of questions?” she asked again.

“Anything to keep her talking. Maybe ask her about a tire on her car needing air. Maybe about the food in the restaurant she stopped at. He’ll know what to do. The idea is to get her to disclose anything at all about her life. Where she’s been. Where she’s going. Why. And hopefully, if he can keep her talking long enough, she’ll give us a detail that’ll crack this case.”

He paused and she could hear him sigh a second time. “Details. It so often comes down to details.”

Amy quickly cataloged his response. When she found Kathy, she’d be ready. While the car heater blew steadily, warming her skin, her heart remained completely unaffected.

“What if she won’t tell me anything?” she asked, her mind already skipping ahead, playing out a full scenario. “I can’t just let her walk away.”

“She’d better not tell you anything because you’d better not be talking to her. My men will get her to talk, Amy. It’s what they’re trained to do. If not at first, they’ll just happen to turn up wherever she stops next. Go home. Let us do our job.”

Yeah, and if she’d done that, his men would still be in Wisconsin or Chicago or Washington, D.C. or wherever else they’d been looking. If not for her, they wouldn’t have any idea that Kathy Stead was traveling on an innocuous strip of highway in western Michigan.

“I’m going to stop in every small town along the way until I find someone who’s seen her,” she replied.

“Keep in mind that you’re doing this against my advice.”

“I know.”

“Call every half hour.” Brad’s voice was gruff, impatient. He was obviously not prepared to entertain any arguments.

She might have argued, anyway, except that he hung up.

And the loneliness once again consumed her.

“No, ma’am, no one here’s seen her.” The middle-aged woman at Monroe’s Café and Grill in Saugatuck handed the snapshot back to Amy with an odd, not quite suspicious but not entirely sympathetic look. “Is she your sister?”

“No.” Amy took the photo, eager to move on. “Just an old high-school friend who used to live in these parts.” She tried to deliver her spiel with some of the ease she usually exhibited. “She’s remarried and I don’t know her new name or I’d just look her up in the phone book.”