“I’m sorry, but nobody matching that description is part of our nursing staff,” the nurse said before glancing at the friendly cop again. This time, the friendly cop nodded, his stare softened, and he glanced at Ethan as the security officer led the nurse out.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Vernon,” the friendly cop said.
But Ethan knew. He’d seen his wife, he hadn’t imagined that. And judging from the eye-wrestling match that had just gone down inside that little examination room, this nurse had been told to say nothing about Raleigh.
Maybe she wasn’t a nurse. Maybe she wasn’t even part of their staff.
But Raleigh’s here. Somewhere.
“Alright,” Ethan said, adding a dramatic sigh. “I said I’d leave town if my wife isn’t here, so I’ll leave.”
Terminator and the friendly cop both nodded. Mission accomplished.
“I’m real sorry this isn’t the outcome you were hoping for, Mr. Vernon,” the friendly cop said.
Glancing down at his hands, Ethan made another motion, pulling the chain tight between the cuffs.
“Get him out of those,” the friendly cop told Terminator, who came forward. When Terminator grabbed his wrists, he made sure to squeeze the metal cuffs a notch or two tighter before finally turning the key to release the clasps.
Rubbing his wrists, Ethan allowed the friendly cop to open the examination door for him. He didn’t even put up a fuss when Terminator escorted him outside, making sure he reached the stamped-concrete sidewalk.
Moe was long gone.
“Hey, Vern,” Terminator said as Ethan started across the street to the diner.
When Ethan turned back, he saw that Terminator was pointing in the opposite direction, toward the end of the town where the motel was.
“Isn’t that your Jag up at the motel?”
Grinning, Ethan hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s a long drive home. Thought I might grab some lunch, support your local economy.”
Terminator lowered his arm. He didn’t have a comeback for that, not wanting to suggest that Ethan spend his money in Hollis Falls instead. Times were tough in Boyle Mills, every dollar mattered, including Ethan’s. So Terminator simply accepted that Ethan would stick around for lunch. “The club sandwich is the bomb, Vern.” He nodded to add legitimacy to his claim. “The bomb.”
Offering a wave of gratitude—who even says “the bomb” anymore, he wondered—Ethan smiled at Terminator and finished crossing the street.
When Ethan stepped inside the diner’s front door, he glanced at the corkboard. His eyes landed on Raleigh’s poster, her black-and-white image smiling up at him, decked out in her wedding dress. The brief stare that he exchanged with the photocopied image of his wife was long enough for him to know, with complete and undeniable certainty, that the woman he’d seen leaving the grocery store and entering the community health center was indeed Raleigh.
Despite what he’d promised the two cops, he wasn’t leaving Boyle Mills without seeing her, no matter how badly she wanted to avoid him.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Seated at the same window booth as this morning, Ethan watched the activity across the street. He ordered the clubhouse sandwich with a side of fries, just in case Terminator strolled through. He also ordered a coke.
When his food arrived, he forced himself to casually pick at it because, like Terminator had suggested, it definitely was “the bomb.” By taking his sweet time, he stretched his lunch over the course of an hour, taking note of the truly old people, as well as the prematurely old people, who came and went from the Boyle Mills Community Health Center.
The hours posted in the health center’s window had said that the place closed at four. With just five minutes left until four, it seemed more and more of the prematurely old people ambled up, many of them moving one or two increments quicker than zombies.
They’re junkies, Ethan realized at last. They’re showing up for their methadone or suboxone treatments.
That’s it!
The man he’d pushed down—Moe was the name they’d called him—he’d had the weathered jawline, drug-battered recessed eyes, the premature aging that screamed textbook opioid addiction. All of these Boyle Mills residents were junkies in various states of recovery, weren’t they?
Sitting straighter in the booth, Ethan watched as one of the nurses walked an addict out and then returned inside the center to flip the “Open for Business” sign around to “Closed—Please Call Again.”
“Refill?”
Without moving his attention from the health center, Ethan agreed with a nod. Once a few more addicts left the center, he realized he would have to make his move soon. When the waitress returned with his refill, he asked for the check and paid it with cash, ready to dash from his booth at a moment’s notice.
Half an hour later, once the last addict left and the lights were turned off inside the center, the dark nurse walked out alone. Ethan watched her cross the street to a Jeep Wrangler. A few minutes later, two more nurses left—the first brunette with the blue scrubs, and the heavier one. They’d carpooled in a Chevy Acadia.
Which left the nurse who knew about Raleigh.
Having sipped his coke all the way down to the ice cubes, Ethan noticed that his legs were bouncing underneath the table. A mixture of sugar rush and caffeine overdose, propelled by nerves. When that final nurse left, he slipped out of the booth while she locked the center’s front door from the outside. By the time she was walking toward her minivan parked half a block away, Ethan had already crossed the street and was speed-walking toward her.
“Hey,” he said, slowing down to the match her pace.
When the nurse glanced over, she rolled her eyes and groaned. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“But you know Raleigh.”
“‘Raleigh?’” She shook her head, removing her car keys as they reached the Pacifica. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard that name until today.”
“Then who is she, the woman from the missing-person poster on the diner’s board?” Ethan asked, placing his hand on the minivan’s door so that she couldn’t open it. “I need to know. I need to see her for myself.” He choked down the emotion, the very thing that had led all of his and Raleigh’s friends to abandon him at his worst. “She’s my wife. She went missing, and if she’s out here living a new life . . .” He closed his eyes and let out a defeated sigh. “Maybe I can move on if I see it for myself.”
The nurse seemed to consider him, her face crunching up with empathy. The pause told him that she knew Raleigh, that she had information but she just didn’t want to share it with him. He knew he could threaten her, say he’d sue and ruin her life. With all of the money from the insurance payout and Raleigh’s inheritance sitting in the bank, he certainly had the resources to make things incredibly difficult for everyone in this shit hole town, but he held back.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard about me,” he said, remembering what Moe had said and the police photos of Raleigh’s beaten face, the false allegations of domestic abuse. Maybe Raleigh had sworn her colleagues into secrecy, playing the Sleeping with the Enemy card as she rebuilt her life as a volunteer nurse helping the same people her drug had been created to help. “But I just need to see her. One last time.”
Staring away, the nurse took a deep breath before meeting his intense stare. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I really am. But your wife, or ex-wife, or whomever this woman really is, she doesn’t work with me. I’m sorry, but I have nothing I can tell you that will help.”
When the nurse tried to pull her door open, Ethan allowed her, stepping back and watching her climb into the driver’s seat.
“I’m sorry, and I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said before closing the door.
Moving away from the reversing minivan, Ethan watched the nurse speed off, headed deeper into the Michigan backwoods as it rolled past the motel where he’d spent the night.
Stepping back to the sidewalk, Ethan decided
that it was time for him to leave as well. He started in the same direction as the nurse’s minivan, but half a block up, a cruiser turned off of a side street and came toward him. Even from such a mild distance, Ethan saw that it was Terminator behind the wheel. The passenger window lowered as he came closer to Ethan, drawing the car to a complete stop.
“Thought you were leaving town, Vern,” Terminator said.
Ethan pointed up the street, noticing another vehicle, a Cherokee easing to a stop at the same area where Terminator’s car had emerged. “I’m on my way now.”
Terminator offered a seemingly threatening stare.
“By the way, the clubhouse was delicious.”
“Safe travels home, Vern.” Terminator shut the passenger window and then continued driving in the opposite direction that the minivan had taken.
Ethan continued walking, noticing that the Cherokee at the side street up ahead was still stopped there. It wasn’t like the main street had so much traffic that it prohibited the Cherokee driver from making a turn. Even the worst driver could have made his or her left half a dozen times in the span that Ethan had been chatting with Terminator.
The worst part was that the Cherokee’s windows were tinted. Ethan couldn’t see the driver. He couldn’t make out whether the driver might be texting or distracted by something else like a phone call, book, or nap, something long enough to have kept her parked at the stop sign for such a long time.
But then he realized something. Well, two things because when he started running toward the Cherokee, its tires chirped as it accelerated away.
The first thing he realized was that he’d seen that vehicle before; it had nearly taken out the old man who’d been eating at the diner earlier that morning, and back home.
The second thing he realized, thanks to the driver’s uncalled-for reaction to his running toward her, was that it had to be Raleigh driving the Cherokee.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The road leading out of Boyle Mills was a long and lonely one. It meant that Ethan had somehow, by some miracle, managed to sprint an eighth of a mile or so to his Jaguar, parked on the motel’s lot, sparked the engine to life, and raced at a dangerous speed in the same direction as Raleigh’s Cherokee. There were turns in the road that pushed his Jag’s tires to the point of not only screaming, but caused them to lose traction altogether.
“Shit,” he said, leaning forward in his seat and gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the skin on his knuckles threatened to tear open.
There’d been no side roads so far, so he knew Raleigh hadn’t turned off of this main road.
She’s somewhere up ahead.
He was travelling far too fast to activate the navigation system and search for side roads.
And then, straightening the Jag’s tires as he came out of a tight turn and eased into a long straightaway that dipped down and then up before disappearing over the next hill, he saw the wink of red lights up ahead. That was also when he remembered seeing the Cherokee back home. Like the old couple crossing the street this morning, she’d almost taken him out as well. Except Ethan had been crossing Clark Street, not Main Street, Boyle Mills. He’d been hurrying to the L platform that day, too tired to trust himself to drive to the John Hancock for his very first meeting with Thomas Braun.
Raleigh.
She had to be a good two miles away, her Cherokee close to being swallowed whole by the trees on either side of the highway, their peaks forming something of a steeple as they leaned over the road.
If the vehicle up ahead was indeed Raleigh’s Cherokee, Ethan realized that the bright red lights meant she was braking. So, with nothing but straight roadway before him, he pushed his right foot closer to the floor, the eight-cylinder engine roaring as the transmission downshifted two or three gears to help him accelerate to an even more dangerous speed. The Jag’s back end got loose for a fraction of a second before the traction control corrected his adrenaline-infused carelessness.
Through the windshield, Ethan watched the Cherokee slowly get larger—still, it had to be a healthy mile and a half away—before veering off to the left, crossing the oncoming lane and disappearing from view entirely.
She’s gone.
But he’d seen her.
He knew where she’d turned.
She was so close.
He was getting closer.
With his heart pounding, he glanced down and saw that he was traveling at 140mph.
But it was worth it; Ethan was going to find his wife, once and for all.
When he reached the road where she’d turned, he jammed the brakes hard, feeling the staccato of the ABS brakes biting into the asphalt and his seatbelt tensing against his chest. When he turned, he realized why the brakes had behaved that way; there was loose gravel that had spilled out from the road where Raleigh had turned.
Wincing at the damage that the gravel stones could cause to his paint, Ethan only briefly considered whether he should continue his pursuit. Clearly, Raleigh didn’t want to see him, didn’t want him finding and possibly confronting her. But Ethan’s doubts didn’t last long. He knew that he had no other choice. If he wanted to move on with his life, he needed to see her, needed closure.
And for that kind of closure, he had little choice but to continue down this horrible gravel road—he didn’t even know gravel roads still existed now that America had been made great again—and find the only woman he’d ever loved.
Chapter Sixty
The gravel road that Raleigh had taken wandered through the northern Michigan hills. After a half-mile or so, the road narrowed and the trees came right up to the sides. There were no more metal safety barriers, no more shoulder, and the tighter margins on each side of the Jaguar forced Ethan to slow down, something the vehicle’s suspension appreciated. The potholes were larger now as well, and a few signs warned that there was no winter service beyond that point.
A three quarters of a mile into his off-roading excursion, Ethan noticed intermittent driveways on either side of the road. Those driveways were nothing more than tire ruts cutting through narrow openings in the trees. Some of those trees had signs with “Private Property – No Tresspassing” hammered to them. One property had the owners’ name on it—The McAdam’s McCabin—and when he looked down the McAdam ruts, he saw a log “cabin” that had to be three or four times the size of his house at 121 Cobalt, three stories tall with lots of windows. The McAdams’ McRange Rover was parked out front with a heavy duty pickup truck next to it, a large fishing boat on a trailer behind it with several men making sure it was secured.
End of season fun in the backwoods of Michigan.
The boat suggested a lake on the backside of the McAdam’s McCabin.
Raleigh had always loved spending time in nature, hiking through forests, taking the path less traveled, all of that tree-hugger fun stuff that Ethan had tolerated early on and quietly come to appreciate and even crave during their time together. It had not only meant long spans of time with his wife, watching the way she stepped over rocks or through shallow creeks, or the way certain beauties in nature caught her attention, but it also meant enjoying something where her science and his own data analysis areas of expertise weren’t involved. During those hikes, they couldn’t hide behind the intricacies and specialization of their respective careers.
They were themselves.
They were two people, madly in love.
Lost in his own thoughts about Raleigh and nature, Ethan hadn’t been paying enough attention to see that the gravel road ended at a boulder that had to be the size of a full-grown elephant. Slamming on his brakes, he heard the crunch of the stones underneath the tires as he skidded to a stop, a couple of inches from driving straight into that boulder.
There were no more driveways or options at this point. Even turning around—three-point turn? How about three-hundred point turn!—proved to be a difficult task, but he managed nonetheless.
As he crept back down the narrow gravel road, he began to se
cond-guess seeing the Cherokee turn down this road. Perhaps there was another road she’d taken. She’d been so far ahead of him, a healthy mile and a half at least, which begged the question: was it even a Cherokee that he’d seen?
Maybe it was some other vehicle, definitely a SUV, but even Ethan could admit that he’d been too far back to positively identify it as a Cherokee.
Slamming a closed fist against the Jag’s steering wheel, he let out a frustrated growl. It felt good, so he repeated it, getting the years of pent-up rage, of irritation at coming so close but losing his only lead on her—again!—out of his system as he rolled past the McAdam McCabin and noticed that the Range Rover and pickup truck with the boat had both vacated the premises at some point during his three-hundred point turn.
That was when Ethan had the type of brilliant idea he would later regret.
Chapter Sixty-One
Sure, it was possible that “brilliant” was an exaggeration. In fact, as Ethan parked his Jaguar SUV in front of the large McAdam McCabin, he wondered if “act of desperation” might be more suitable. So late in the afternoon like this, he only had a few hours of daylight before the sun would start to go down. And if he didn’t figure out where Raleigh had gone before it got real dark, he was screwed.
Leaving the Jaguar parked on the McAdam’s property so that it looked like he was a legitimate guest, he walked back toward the narrow gravel road. He’d counted a handful of private properties with rutted driveways during his travels along the road, but the only cottage one he’d been able to see was this one.
Instead of hiking along the gravel road and making himself visible and vulnerable, he kept just inside the forest, a couple of trees deep so he could still see and hear any activity on the roadway and remain concealed at the same time. This far into the backwoods of Michigan, he could almost hear the birds flapping their wings overhead; he could certainly hear the chilled wind breezing through the branches, the leaves and pine needles rubbing shoulders with one another, the sound of pinecones dropping onto the ground. Raleigh had loved hikes for their calamity, yet Ethan couldn’t even come close to appreciating the serenity during this trek in search of her; so close, he could feel it.
The Last Night (The Last Series Book 2) Page 24