by Kathi Daley
As she veered from the freeway onto the narrow coastal highway that would take her north, she felt her mood lighten. As a teen, she’d felt stifled in such a small town, but now that her life was such a mess, she realized that after fourteen years out in the world, a large farm perched on a private lake seemed like the optimal place to regroup and heal. As she navigated the narrow, winding road that hugged the rocky shoreline, she tried not to think about what she had lost. She knew in her heart if she was going to ever be able to move forward she had to find a way to stop looking back at what might have been.
After she had driven for several hours, the open coastline gave way to the dense forest of the redwoods. Without the crashing waves to set the mood, her mind began to wander and the fatigue she had been holding at bay began to creep into her consciousness. Deciding that what she really needed was a diversion, she reached forward to switch on the radio. She was momentarily distracted as she searched for a station, which was probably why she hadn’t seen the dog that darted onto the road until a split second before it ran in front of her. She slammed on her breaks and turned the wheel hard to the left. She somehow managed to guide the vehicle to a stop, but not before she lost control of it and slid into a drainage ditch that bordered the road. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute by the time she came to a full stop.
“Oh God.” She put her hand over her chest. She wasn’t hurt, and while the car was going to need to be towed, she didn’t think it was badly damaged. She put her hand on the latch and opened the driver’s side door. Taking a deep breath to steady shaky knees, she slowly climbed out. She was pretty sure she was fine, but the dog… Oh God, the dog. She looked around the area and didn’t see a dog, injured or otherwise. She didn’t think she’d hit him. She slowly made her way up the embankment and looked around. She couldn’t see the dog, but after a moment she heard him whimpering from the other side of the road. The sun had set and the sky was beginning to grow dim, so she pulled on her jacket, grabbed the flashlight she kept for emergencies, and jogged across the road. “Are you okay?”
The yellow Labrador, which was really no more than a puppy, continued to whine, so she walked slowly forward. “I won’t hurt you,” she said in a soft voice. “I just want to help.” The pup didn’t move, and he didn’t attack either, so she took a few more steps. Not only had she grown up on a farm but her mother was a veterinarian. She’d lived around animals her entire life and generally knew how to calm them. She could see that this one was scared, but he also seemed to want her to help.
“I’m going to come closer,” she said in a soft voice.
The dog watched her warily but didn’t move toward her. When she was within a few feet of him, he moved away. She took a few more steps. He moved a few of his own. She supposed at some point he must have realized that she was going to continue to follow because he limped down the embankment and into the dense forest. He hadn’t gone far when she noticed something blue. A car. The dog had led her to a car that must have veered off the road. There was still steam coming from its engine compartment, so she had to assume the accident had recently occurred.
She made her way toward the car as fast as the steep terrain would allow, slipping only once on the muddy ground. When she reached the car, she headed directly to the open driver’s side door and looked inside. There was a man in the seat who was still buckled in with a large gash on his head. He appeared to be unconscious. She looked into the interior of the vehicle and found a woman in the passenger seat. She likewise appeared to be unconscious. Taking a quick peek into the rear of the vehicle, she saw a baby strapped into a car seat.
“A baby,” she said a little too loudly. She must have startled the dog because he began to bark aggressively. “It’s okay,” she said in a gentler voice. “I’m going to go around to the back and open the door so I can see what needs to be done. Okay?”
The dog stopped barking but didn’t move from the position he had taken up near the open driver’s side door. When she arrived at the back door, Harper assured the dog once again that he could trust her. She opened the door and gently ran her hands over the baby, who was awake and appeared to be unharmed. She unstrapped the car seat, lifted the baby out, and cradled the whimpering infant it in her arms. “It’s okay. I have you now. It’s okay. I’m going to get help.”
She walked back around to the front of the vehicle to check on the driver. She felt for a pulse, and he opened his eyes. “The baby,” he gasped. “You need to hide the baby.”
“Hide the baby?”
“Hurry. You must leave now. Don’t trust anyone.”
She froze in indecision. The man had lost a lot of blood. She had to wonder if he was delirious. She looked toward the woman in the passenger seat. “The baby’s mother?”
The man nodded. “Dead. Now hurry. Take the diaper bag. It is up to you to keep the baby safe.”
She looked down at the infant in her arms. He or she appeared to have drifted off. She didn’t feel right about leaving the man and woman in the car and was trying to make up her mind about the options available to her when she heard another car on the road. She wasn’t sure why she made the decision to hide. Instinct, she supposed. One minute she was contemplating the idea of calling 911 and the next she was heading toward the cover of the trees with the baby cradled snuggly in her arms and the long handle of the diaper bag draped over her shoulder. The puppy, who seemed to have settled down now that she had the baby, trailed along behind her.
After a few minutes of searching for an adequate hiding place, she found an outcropping of rocks that, combined with the darkening sky, seemed to provide a sufficient amount of cover. She tightened one arm around the baby, caressed the puppy with the other, crouched down as low as she could manage, and watched as a man in a highway patrol uniform hiked down the embankment, walked over to the car, said something to the driver, took out a gun, and shot him. The pup began to growl. She shushed him and then watched as the patrolman walked around the vehicle and shot the woman in the passenger seat, although, according to the driver of the vehicle, she was already dead. The accident hadn’t appeared to have been serious enough to be responsible for the woman’s death, so Harper had to assume she had died before that, from an injury or illness. After he shot the woman in the passenger seat, the officer opened the back door and stuck his head inside. She held her breath when she realized that he must be looking for the baby. After rooting around in the rear of the vehicle for a moment, he took several steps away from it and looked around.
Her heart pounded as she continued to crouch behind the rocks, calming the puppy and whispering to the baby. It was a cold day in February and the blanket in which someone had wrapped the baby wasn’t all that heavy, so Harper unzipped her jacket, slipped the baby inside, and then scrunched down even smaller and waited. The puppy climbed into her lap, providing an extra layer of warmth for the baby as the man in the uniform continued to search the immediate area. The tall, thin man, with dark hair and a crooked nose, took several steps in her direction, pausing only a few yards from the rocks where she was hiding. If not for her military training, she was certain she would have screamed or fainted or both. The baby let out a tiny cry, so she tightened her arms around the bundle she’d nestled to her chest and prayed the puppy would remain quiet and the baby would go back to sleep.
After a few minutes, the man headed back toward the vehicle for a second look, opened both the trunk and the engine compartment, rooted around, circled back toward them, and then pulled out his phone and spoke in a deep voice. “Agent Beaverton is dead, as is the witness. The baby is gone and there is no sign of the ledger. There is a car in the ditch just off the road. I assume that its driver found our target and went for help. I’m going to see if there is ID inside the vehicle. The driver can’t have gotten far.”
Harper watched as the man turned and headed back toward the road. After he’d driven away, she scooted out from behind the rocks and let out a long breath of relief before the puppy, the baby, an
d she slowly made their way back toward her car. It was almost completely dark now, and getting colder by the minute. She knew she needed to get help, but her car was disabled, and a quick search of her vehicle confirmed that the man who had shot the occupants of the vehicle carrying the baby had taken her purse and her phone, as well as her vehicle registration.
“Okay, this can’t be good,” she mumbled. She supposed it made sense to stay with the vehicle. Someone would come along eventually. Of course, the man who had been with the baby had said not to trust anyone, and it had been a man in a highway patrolman’s uniform who had shot and killed him in cold blood. Maybe waiting with the car wasn’t the best idea. She’d been heading toward a small town she knew was just north of her position when the accident occurred. The town was still quite a ways off, but she’d driven this road before, and she seemed to remember a rundown little motel connected to a gas station and a small eatery not all that far up the road. Staying in a motel so close to the spot where her car had been disabled might not be the smartest thing to do given the fact that there was at least one man she knew of looking for the baby she’d tucked beneath her jacket. Still, staying with the car was probably the worst thing she could do, so she began to walk along the side of the road with the baby in her arms and the puppy trailing along beside her. The baby hadn’t been very active since she’d plucked it from its car seat. This, she had to admit, worried her. Had it been hurt in the accident despite the lack of blood? He or she had been strapped into a high-quality infant car carrier that appeared to have shielded the tiny thing from the worst of the impact, but she supposed the infant could have sustained internal injuries. She didn’t have a lot of options at this point, so she hiked the diaper bag more firmly over her shoulder and continued to walk, praying all the while that a solution to her dilemma would present itself before it was too late.
“ʻClosed for the season.’” She groaned as she read the sign nailed to the front of the motel, gas station, and eatery she’d remembered. It had taken her forty minutes of steady walking to arrive here, and she couldn’t remember there being another town for a good twenty to thirty miles more. She needed to get the baby inside and out of the cold, so, making a quick decision, she made her way over to the small motel and used the multiuse knife she always kept in her pocket to break into one of the rooms farthest away from the road. Once the puppy, the baby, and she were inside, she tried the lights, but the electricity was turned off. She used the flashlight she still had in her pocket to provide at least a modicum of light. She unzipped her jacket, removed the bundled-up baby, and laid it on the bed. The puppy jumped up onto the bed and stretched out next to it.
“Hey, sweetie, how are you doing?” she cooed to the child.
The baby opened its eyes.
“I know that you are probably wet and hungry. Hopefully, there will be supplies in the bag that will take care of both those problems.”
She slid the diaper bag off her shoulder and emptied its contents onto the bed. A package of diapers, baby wipes, a can of powdered formula, several bottles of purified water, a couple of pairs of warm pajamas, and a thumb drive. Everything made sense except the thumb drive. She slipped the drive into her pocket and unwrapped the baby from the blanket. She took off the wet diaper to find that her traveling companion was a little girl. She quickly changed the baby’s diaper, then dressed her in the warmest pajamas she could find. Once she was clean and dry, she wrapped her in the blanket she’d found her in, then pulled the blanket from the bed over her as well. Harper had no way of knowing when the baby had last been fed, but her tiny little whimper seemed like a feed me sort of cry, so she read the instructions on the can of formula, mixed up a bottle, and then held it to the baby’s lips. She took a single suck, then began to cry. The bottle was ice cold, and having had three younger sisters, Harper could remember that babies liked to have their bottles warmed. She made sure the baby was tucked securely on the bed, then went into the bathroom, praying for hot water. Just because the electricity was off didn’t mean the gas was off as well.
She held her breath as she turned on the faucet. The water was ice cold at first, but after a moment it began to warm up. She filled the basin with hot water, then held the bottle in it until the formula felt warmer. She made her way back to the bed, arranged the pillows against the headboard, and leaned into them as she cradled the baby in her arms. Thankfully, she devoured the bottle as the puppy snuggled in next to them and fell fast asleep.
“So, what on earth have you gotten yourself in to?” she asked the tiny baby as she sucked the bottle. “You seem a little young to have made enemies, yet there apparently are some really bad people after you.” She remembered the man in the uniform. “Or at least one really bad man.” She wondered if the man who shot the accident survivor was a dirty cop, or if he was an assassin who had stolen a uniform. The man who had been traveling with the baby had told her not to trust anyone, which led her to believe that he knew that whoever was after the baby had connections in high places.
Once the baby fell asleep, she tucked her under the covers and then got up and took a look around the room. She needed a plan that included something other than just sitting around waiting for the man to find them. She wasn’t even sure it was safe to stay in the room until morning, although taking the baby out into the chilly night air wasn’t an option either, so she supposed her best bet was to hunker down and wait for sunrise. The question was, what then?
She didn’t have her phone, ID, wallet, credit or bank card. The man in the car had said to trust no one, but she did have people in her life she knew she could trust. Her mother, grandmother, and three sisters would all help her in a minute, but she didn’t want to drag any of them into whatever was going on until she figured out exactly what was going on. The man in the CHP uniform had taken her registration, but the address on it was that of her apartment in San Diego. Still, the man had her name, and she was afraid that once he figured out who she was, he would be able to backtrack and find her family in Minnesota, so perhaps she should warn them. The problem was that she didn’t know how to warn them without worrying them.
She paced around the room as she tried to work out her options. Thinking of her family made her think of her hometown, Moosehead, and there was one person there she could trust who would have the skill set necessary to do whatever he had to in this situation. Ben Holiday was a private investigator and an ex-cop. He had moved to Moosehead after she had moved away and was married to an old high-school friend of hers, Holly Thompson. Or at least she had been Holly Thompson before she married the handsome PI, opened a foster care home, and built a family. Harper had met Ben three years ago, while she was living in San Diego. He’d been hired to track down a missing teenager who’d last been seen near Coronado Island. Holly knew that she lived in the area and suggested that Ben contact her for help with the search. In the end, she had helped him track down the missing teen and, in the process, made a lifelong friend.
The more Harper thought about it, the more she realized that contacting Ben was her best bet. Now she just needed to figure out how to get in touch with him without a phone. A quick search of the room confirmed that there wasn’t one in it, but maybe the office? The electricity had been off, but the gas had been left on, so perhaps the phone had been left on as well. It would make sense the phone would remain in service so that anyone who called the motel unaware that it was closed for the season could leave a message on an answering machine, which, she bet, was the sort of messaging system this old motel would use.
She walked over to the bed to check on the baby, who was still asleep next to the puppy. Making a quick decision, she grabbed her pocket knife and flashlight and then headed out into the cold night air. The motel office was just off the highway, so she knew she’d need to be careful not to be seen, but while this area was popular with hikers and campers during the summer, the place would be all but deserted on a cold night in February.
She had just left the shelter of the room
at the back of the lot and had started across the pavement when a set of headlights appeared from the south. She quickly ducked behind a large redwood, where she waited until the car drove by. When it had passed, she continued toward the office and café. She was just passing the gas pumps when another set of headlights appeared on the horizon. Apparently, she’d been wrong about the place being deserted. She ducked behind one of the pumps and watched as a CHP vehicle slowed and then pulled into the lot. She froze as the car stopped in front of the motel office. A tall man got out and walked over to the door. It wasn’t the same one she had seen shoot the two car accident victims, but not knowing who to trust, she stayed put. The man knocked on the door, then tried the lock. He shone his flashlight around, missing her hiding spot by inches. He walked back to the car and then pulled out a handheld radio. “Redwood Junction is clear. The place is locked up tight and there is no sign of the driver of the vehicle or the baby. I’ll continue to keep my eyes open. They can’t have gotten far unless the driver managed to hitch a ride.”