As he strained to hear signs of an emergency response vehicle, Mitch mulled over his mistake. His father had begun to rouse.
“Pops,” he called. “Pops, it’s Mitch.”
“Wade was here,” Pops mumbled.
“I know. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stop him.”
“He told me he’s going to take his son back.” A tear rolled down his father’s bruised cheek. “I’m too weak, too old. I couldn’t stand up to him.”
Mitch swallowed hard. “Not your fault, Pops.”
“The child... Is he safe? Is Jane?”
He couldn’t answer.
“I’m praying,” he said, eyes closed, lips quivering.
Me, too, Mitch said silently, praying for the woman bleeding in his care, and the one who was painfully out of reach.
Liam, Chad, Gus, Helen and Ginny stood in the foyer as she shouldered the small bag Ginny had given her, now stuffed with new muffins and pieces of plastic-wrapped pie, as well as the toys Helen insisted that Ben keep. Ben stood at her knee, sobbing.
“Don’t worry,” Aunt Ginny said. “We’ll take great care of Catty Cat, and when you come back, you can play with him.” She kissed Ben’s head.
Liam said what they were all thinking, she imagined. “Stay here. At least until we hear from Mitch.”
“I already heard from Mitch. He wants me to go with Foley. If I don’t, Foley will leak that I’m here and I’ll have to go anyway. This way I decide where and when.”
“But...”
She held up a hand. “You have all been nothing but kind to me, but I have to know that I’m still making the choices for Ben. He’s all that matters.”
Uncle Gus cleared his throat. “At least let one of us escort you...until you get settled.”
Jane smiled and kissed his cheek. “No,” she said firmly. “But thank you.”
He reached for his wallet. “Well, you’ll need some money.”
She shook her head. “We still have some from the sale of my shop in the bank. Enough to last a little while. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” She wished she could own the bravado she forced into the words. After kissing each one of them and clasping Ginny in a hug, she let herself out the front door and into the waiting taxi.
Chad had already strapped the car seat into the rear, and she let Ben look back one more time and wave to the group gathered at the front door. He was still crying when she strapped him in.
“Where to?” the cabbie said.
“To the bus station, but not the one here in town. There’s one an hour north of here, right, in Ridgeway?”
“Well, sure, but you can just hop onto a bus here in town...”
“Ridgeway,” she said firmly.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
She settled back in the seat and checked her phone again. There had been no further word from Mitch or Foley.
Whip up or whoa, she thought.
Through the thick lump in her throat, she forced out a breath. Time to whip up and get away while she still could.
She leaned back in the seat and tried to close her eyes. It might be the last hour she’d have to nap for a while. She heard the cabbie’s sharp surprised breath and something slammed hard into the cab, knocking it off the road. She flung a hand out toward Ben, but the car toppled over. Her head smacked into the side door, and the world went black.
Elaine Barber somehow managed to survive, and the medics took over, working frantically to get her stabilized for transport on a helicopter. Mitch’s father was already being loaded into an ambulance, his pulse steady, his breathing strong. The cop Foley had sent was securing the scene, photographing every square inch inside and out of the boat.
“Here,” a medic said, giving him some wipes to cleanse his hands.
He did so absently, details and facts rolling over in his mind.
“You saved her life, you know,” the medic said. “She would have bled out if you hadn’t found her in time.” Over his shoulder, a bird skimmed the cliffs.
He froze, ignoring the medic’s comment. Falcon. The image stuck in his mind, him and Ben admiring the majestic bird. Falcon, emblazoned on Bette’s yellow T-shirt. The Fighting Falcons...the mascot of a Southern California college football team.
He pulled out his phone and typed into the search bar.
He heard Foley saying it again. We’ve been tracking all the contacts, letters written to Wade during his prison time. Plenty of hate mail, but one consistent writer. Postmarked from a town called Stottsville.
But Bette was Wade’s victim...wasn’t she?
Finally the phone supplied the answer. The Fighting Falcons were the home team of a small college in Stottsville, California. He knew deep in his gut that Bette Whipple was the one who had been writing letters to Wade in prison, the one who had probably helped him track Jane to Nana Jo’s, and for whatever reason, she was determined to hand Jane over to her psycho ex-husband.
He bolted to Rosie and they galloped away, leaving the openmouthed medic standing on the dock.
Jane awakened slowly, a dull ringing sounding in her ears. Her nerves jerked into motion with one terrified thought.
Ben!
She was somehow on her knees on the grass, someone tugging at her arm. Blinking, she saw the upside-down cab, the driver feebly moving in the front seat. Ben, her heart cried again, and she lurched to her feet, realizing that someone was tugging at her arm, helping her along.
It was Bette, clutching a crying Ben on one hip and yanking Jane with the other arm.
“Hurry,” she said. “We have to go now. Before they find us.”
Brain buzzing, limbs aching, she stumbled along, arriving at a car with a crunched front fender.
“You...you hit the cabbie?” Jane mumbled.
“Get in, quick.”
She found herself tumbled into the back seat. Bette handed Ben into her arms and took off, the car lurching along at breakneck speed. Jane could do nothing but hold Ben close.
“Where are you taking us? What is happening?”
Bette smiled brightly in the rearview mirror. “We’re taking Ben back to his father.”
Jane’s blood ran cold. “What? Bette, what are you doing?”
Bette shot her a look in the mirror. “Wade and I are together,” she said with a smile. “I realized that he was the only man who really loved me.”
“No,” Jane said in horror. “No, no.”
“At first I didn’t think so, but after he went to prison, I wrote him. He explained that I was special. That’s why he let me get away. He knew we’d be together someday. I helped him escape from prison, you know, with a spike stick on the road.” She giggled. “Easier than I thought.”
Jane tried to gather her wits. “Bette, listen to me. Wade doesn’t love you. He’s manipulating you.”
“You can’t keep him for yourself, Jane. He asked me to help him kill his brother, and then you showed up and I was scared for a while. I thought he’d dump me for you, the wifey.” Her eyes narrowed. “But I helped him a lot, with money and a hotel, even got a box out of storage for him with his granddad’s gun. When my money ran out, he didn’t get rid of me, Jane. Do you hear? He kept me. That tells you something, doesn’t it? We went to his father’s house and took what we needed—food and the old man’s phone.”
She frowned. “He had to stab the woman who barged in. Turns out she was a cop of some sort.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t Wade’s fault, though. He didn’t have a choice when she pulled her weapon.”
Jane bit her lip to keep from crying out. Oh, Bette. What have you done?
“Looking back on it, maybe I shouldn’t have handed him the picture I took of your kid, but that worked out well, too. Now he wants you dead. Don’t worry, though,” she said. “I’ll raise Ben as my own. He won’t even remember you after a while. He’s still young enough.”
Jane searched desperately around the car. What could she use to overpower Bette? To escape? She couldn’t jump out at this speed without hurting Ben.
“There he is,” Bette cooed.
Jane looked through the dusty front windshield at the man standing on the side of the road. She didn’t need to see him close-up to know that the smile was in place, the cool, satisfied quirk of the mouth below flat, soulless eyes.
Wade Whitehorse stood waiting for her. No, he didn’t value her life at all, she corrected.
He stood waiting for her son.