The Elizabeth McClaine Thriller Boxed Set

by Catherine Lea

  “Terrific.”

  She tossed the phone back onto the seat, started the car and gently put her foot to the gas. Wayne once told her that cars have way more gas in the tank than the indicator shows. She had nineteen bucks left. That wasn’t going to last long. Which is why she hadn’t put more gas in the car in the first place. But if her memory served her right, there was a gas station a few blocks down.

  With her lower lip clamped between her teeth, she turned left at the lights and pulled into traffic. Right up ahead she spotted the Sunoco sign and her shoulders dropped in relief. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been until now. She blew a long slow breath out between pursed lips pressed her foot to the gas and hit the signal light to cut into the next lane when the car coughed and the engine died.

  “No, no, no,” she said over and over, like the words would make it not true. She twisted the key in the ignition and the car roared into life again.

  Then died.

  Horns began tooting almost immediately, cars veering around her as irate drivers let her know what they thought.

  “Yeah sure, I’m doing this for fun,” she yelled after a guy who gave her an offensive hand sign as he shot past her.

  “Oh, please, please,” she begged and twisted the key again. The engine turned over and over with a whirr, whirr sound, but didn’t catch.

  In her rearview mirror, she could see the traffic piling up, cars waiting then pulling out so they could go around her. Only now, the traffic next to her had slowed. Her face crumpled and she leaned forward with her head against the steering wheel. When she looked up, a cop on a bike was weaving through traffic on the other side of the street.

  “Oh, please, this can’t be happening.”

  She slumped in the seat, arms over the steering wheel. How could it have come to this? Caught after everything she’d been through, just because she’d been stupid enough to run out of gas.

  “It’s okay, I got it,” called a man’s voice from somewhere just behind her. The cop on the bike signaled in return, then pulled the bike around into the street opposite and roared off.

  Stacy checked the rearview mirror. Behind her all she could see was the front grille of a tow truck, amber lights flashing.

  When a knuckle rapped on the window, a tiny spark of hope ignited in her chest. She turned the key in the ignition so she could lower the window, and looked up.

  “What’s the problem?” he said.

  He was big and burly, same build as Bear Traynor, same Indians cap, same manner, but without the mellow bearing and carrying a little extra weight around the middle. He had one hand on the roof of the car while he bent to talk to her.

  “Ah, I just ran out of gas, is all.”

  “Well, you can’t stay here. You’re holding up traffic. I got a call in asking me to get you out of the way.”

  He glanced behind him to where the cars were now backed up right down the street, but were now sedately maneuvering around them.

  “How much is this going to cost?” she asked as she got out and followed him back to the truck, flattening herself against the car every now and then to let another vehicle pass.

  The guy waved a couple of cars by. “Sixty bucks for the tow, ten for every day it’s in the yard.”

  “Don’t you have any gas with you?”

  “Nope,” he said with a one-sided grin. “Just sold the last of it, and you’re stopped in a no parking zone.” He pointed. “Sorry, I gotta tow it. Go sit in the cab of the truck while I get your car loaded up. We’ll talk about payment in a bit.”

  Instead of getting into the truck, she cut between the truck and Curta’s car and went to stand on the sidewalk among a collection of onlookers. Yes, she could make a run for it, but a) she’d be on foot, and b) there was no way she’d leave Curta’s car here. So it wasn’t a choice.

  “Door’s unlocked. Go ahead and get in,” he said as he walked back to the driver’s door of the truck.

  She gave the people to one side of her a self-conscious glance, wondering if any of them would recognize her, then walked quickly to the tow truck, pulled open the door and hoisted herself in.

  The guy came back and slid into the driver’s seat then waved out the window, fingers splayed, indicating for the traffic behind to make way. When the traffic stopped, he pulled out and steered the truck into the space in front of Curta’s car, and backed up. He got out, and the truck whined and jolted as the front of Curta’s car lifted.

  Stacy slumped back in the seat. There was no way she could pay for this. That meant she’d lost Curta’s car. What was she going to tell her? Stacy felt sick.

  The guy opened the driver’s door and slid back into the cab with a sideways look at her. “You’re lucky I happened along. I don’t come out this way much.” And he turned the ignition.

  “I can’t believe I ran out of gas,” she said flatly, while she stared out the windshield.

  He put his hand out the window to stop traffic again, then pulled out. The truck engine droned up the scale as they picked up speed.

  “You got a specific place you need to get to?”

  “Just the gas station. I got nowhere else to go.” She turned her head to the window, furious with herself. Then she turned back to him, “Do you know a guy named Bear Traynor?”

  The grin said it all. “The Bear? Course I do. Everybody knows him. Why? You a friend of his?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Sure,” he said and grinned, as though that’s what everyone told him.

  “No, seriously, I am.”

  He gave her a sideways glance, still not convinced. “So where do you know him from?”

  “Ah, we met at his house.”

  He pulled to a stop at a red light and checked the rearview mirror. “You want me to call him?”

  What did she have to lose?

  “Yeah, sure. Why not?” she said, wondering why the hell she’d even suggested it.

  The guy picked up his radio and called in. Almost immediately, the line crackled to life and she recognized the voice coming back.

  “Hey, Craig buddy. What can I do you for?”

  Craig slipped a look across at Stacy. “I got a lady here says she’s a friend of yours. Name’s …” He lifted his eyebrows to her.

  Goodbye frying pan; hello, fire, she thought. “Ah … tell him it’s Shelly.”

  He relayed the information and there was a brief silence on the line. “I’m just over at the depot. Are you nearby?”

  “Right around the corner. We’ll be over in a couple of minutes,” Craig replied happily, seemingly not noticing Stacy place her finger and thumb to her eyes in utter despair.

  Craig pulled to the far right lane and turned into a narrow street. Up ahead she could see a wrecker’s yard surrounded by a tall chain-link fence, two steel gates standing open and behind them, cars and trucks all piled up on either side of a dusty driveway. They bounced down a rutted track and came to a halt behind the truck she recognized as Bear’s.

  Craig pulled on the parking brake and waved as Bear ambled over. Stacy unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door and slid from the cab, wondering what Craig planned to do next. She hugged herself and wandered around, pretending she hadn’t noticed the two guys go into a huddle, flicking glances her way every now and then. Finally, Craig motioned back to her, saying, “Well, she’s all yours now. Up to you, buddy. Good luck.”

  He got in his truck, lowered Curta’s car to the ground, then took off.

  Bear watched the departing truck clatter back down the driveway, waving to it before turning to Stacy. “Well, hello again.”

  She watched Craig come to a halt at the street, turn left, and take off. She was beginning to wonder if she’d have been better off running. But that wouldn’t have worked for long. She tucked her tee shirt in at the back and dropped her head. “Listen, I wasn’t entirely honest with you yesterday.”

  “What? About the name? Or about the reason you were in my house?”

  She gave the
landscape behind her a quick look. “Just the name.”

  He twisted his mouth to one side while he thought, then said, “I kinda guessed that, Stacy. It is Stacy, isn’t it?”

  “Ah, yeah.” She shifted uncomfortably, folding her arms, then sticking her hands in her pockets, then folding her arms again.

  He ran his tongue over his lower lip and passed a thoughtful look at the front gates before speaking.

  “So what happened? How’d you wind up here?”

  She sighed heavily and shook her head. “I ran out of gas.”

  The corners of his mouth drew back to create creases on either side. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Middle of the great escape, I run out of gas. Worst. Fugitive. Ever.”

  “Well, lucky for you, I got ten gallons of gas in back there.” He walked back to his truck and she followed along like a little dog hoping for a snack.

  “I don’t have enough money.”

  “You can pay me back,” he said over his shoulder.

  “What? You’re still gonna put gas in my car?”

  He swung a look on her as he strode back to his truck, but said nothing.

  “What are you doing? I thought you were going to turn me in.”

  He opened the door of his truck and paused, his brow crumpling while he contemplated his reply. “I should. I know that. There’s an APB out on this car. Cops all over are looking for it.” She waited, wondering what the hell was coming next.

  He narrowed his eyes on a point just across the street, then dropped his head briefly. “I felt kind of bad throwing you out of the house the way I did. I coulda done something else.”

  “Yeah, like what? Gotten arrested for aiding and abetting a wanted fugitive? That’d be real smart.”

  Brow still furrowed, he reached across, thumbed something off the truck’s windshield. “Fact is, I should have tried to do something. I should have helped you instead of throwing you out like that.”

  A short, sharp laugh burst from her lips. “Hell, if I was you, I’d have kicked my ass out the front door way sooner than you did.”

  He gave it a beat, considering his reply. “You know, ever since you busted into—” He held up one hand, then amended his words to, “I mean, ever since you visited me, I started reading up in the papers about your case. About you getting out on that early release program. It kind of got me thinking.”

  She hugged herself, wondering where this was going. “Okay.”

  “You were looking for your son, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you find him?”

  The memory of Tyler’s tiny body pressed to hers, the smell of his hair, the warmth of his skin, all flooded back, along with the knowledge she might never see him again. It welled up in her chest, tightening her throat and threatening to drop her straight into that deep, black pit of depression again.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he okay?”

  She felt her lower lip tremble. “He’s okay.”

  “Good. ’Cause I don’t know why you got put away in the first place, but that program, all those requirements you had to meet and all the stuff you had to go through; you must’a wanted to see him real bad.”

  “I did.”

  “Papers said you had to go back to school while you were in prison. And you graduated even though you were working in some program after your school lessons, then you were doing parenting classes at night. Is that right? You did all that?”

  Thinking back now, she wondered how she’d ever gotten through it all.

  A quick nod. “Yeah, I did.”

  “Y’know, some people with all the money and luxuries in the world don’t do that.”

  “I guess.”

  “That takes a lot of guts. A lot of determination.”

  “Don’t make me sound like the good guy, Bear. I’m not. I screwed up. I’ve done some dumb things, made some stupid decisions.”

  His eyebrows lifted while he tilted his head. “We don’t always take the right path the first time.”

  The kindness in his voice brought a lump to her throat. She dropped her head so he couldn’t see her palm away a welling tear. Then she looked up again, straight into his eyes. “I don’t even know why you’re wasting your time on me, Bear. I got chances I didn’t deserve; let down people who were only trying to help me. This turned out to be the worst plan of my whole life. Everything I touch just goes from bad to worse.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “So what happens now?”

  Speaking straight, no self pity, no hiding from the truth, she said, “I’ll get caught. It’s only a matter of time. I guess they’ll make an example of me, running like that. A whole bunch of politicians ended up looking real stupid. I doubt they’ll let me out again anytime soon.” He was watching her. “My son’s safe—for the moment. But I’ve made some promises. If I can’t do anything else, I need to keep them before they put me back inside and throw away the key.”

  “You gonna tell me?”

  “Nope.”

  “You need help?”

  “I can’t ask you to do anything else. As it is you could get arrested for doing this much.”

  He let his gaze reel out across the yard, then nodded as though he’d come to some kind of decision. “When I met you, I didn’t see a bad person. Or a stupid person. I saw someone with a problem—a big problem. I turned my back on you and I shouldn’t have. Now, you’ve got a little boy out there wondering why his mom doesn’t come get him like she was supposed to; maybe wondering if she doesn’t want him anymore.”

  Another pang of guilt and sorrow lanced through her. “I’ll get him back one day. I don’t know when, but when I do, I want to be able to look him in the eye and know I did everything I could for him.” That welling sense of loss threatened again. She fought it back, pressed her lips together, found control again.

  “And that’s why I want to help you. So let’s get your car gassed up, and you get out of here. ’Cause the way I see it, if you don’t finish what you started, you might as well have left your boy where he is and just kept running, disappeared into the wild blue yonder and never come back. He’d have been better off that way.”

  That one blunt truth punched the air out of her. She didn’t know what she must have done to deserve such a break. But she wasn’t about to question it.

  “You can’t know how much I appreciate this. I’ll pay you back, I swear.” She tucked her hands into her back pockets, following him back to his truck where he leaned over and grabbed a red plastic gas can and went to Curta’s car. While he waited for the gas to funnel into the tank, he looked up.

  “Did you need something else? ’Cause now’s your chance.”

  She shuffled from foot to foot, fighting past the bravado, past the pride, and said, “Yeah. I know I just said you can’t do anything else for me, but can I ask you for one more favor?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Can I look up an address on your phone?”

  Without replying, he removed the funnel and replaced the cap on Curta’s tank. Then he dredged his phone from his shirt pocket. She stepped in next to him, lifting her head to watch as he opened the browser.

  Somewhere in her chest, a tiny flame burst into life—a flickering ray of hope rekindled and fanned into life. She could do this. She could finish what she started.

  “You got a name?” he asked.

  “Maryanne Louise Crane-Thorpe.”

  He tapped it in. “That’s some fancy name,” he said while they waited for the results. “Here it is. That’s some address an’ all. You gonna tell me who she is?”

  “Less you know the better, don’t you think?”

  She followed him to the cab of the truck where he tapped it into the GPS and pointed. “That’s the most direct route to the address she’s listed under.”

  “Got it.”

  He gave her a long steady look. “I’m not gonna regret this, am I?”

  “I just want to talk to her, that’s all. I
promise.”

  He held her gaze, then said, “Okay.”

  “Thank you. I really mean it.”

  “Just find what you need to make everything right. If I can do anything to help, gimme a call.” He wrote down his cell phone number on the back of a card and handed it to her.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He looked up, waiting.

  “Why are you doing this? I mean, what do you get out of this?”

  He broke eye contact and hesitated a long while. “My mom died when I was six. I spent a long time in and out of foster homes. Nobody who hasn’t lost their mom would understand.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. That was my journey. This is yours. Now, go find what you need to get yourself out of this hole you’ve dug, then get that boy of yours back. Take him home where he should be, with his mom. That’s the promise you made the day you signed onto that program. And I’m not gonna stand by and let you break it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  DAY TWO: 2:08 PM—ELIZABETH

  As it turned out, one of the gadgets Trish Tomes had purchased, along with her new car, was an online auto tracking system.

  “So you’ve been tracking her movements?” Penny asked her.

  “Not all of them,” Nancy replied defensively, as though she found the very idea offensive. Then she tipped her head in concession. “Okay, maybe some. But not always. Just the last few days.”

  “And where’s she been going?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Work and back. Then someplace down south, out in the middle of nowhere. She’s been there a couple of times. Stays an hour or so, then comes home.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Nancy shrugged. “No idea. And she didn’t say.”

  Penny chipped in, saying, “Did you ask her?”

  The horror at the very suggestion registered on Nancy’s face. “Why would I? I trust her.” Noting the skeptical looks, she added, “Well, I did before this.”

  “So do you know the address she’s been going to?” Elizabeth asked.