by Janie Crouch
“Here’s the diaper and formula package.” Tanner placed the tattered packaging on the counter. “They both...somehow ripped.”
“Are you serious? I’m so sorry,” Gary muttered. “If you wait just a second, miss, I’ll go get you packages that aren’t ripped.”
She finally broke eye contact with Tanner to look at Gary. “There’s no need to do that. I think half of it fell out in the baby carrier anyway.”
Gary smiled and looked at the baby in her arms. “Yep, look, there’s a formula packet right there in this little guy’s outfit.” He reached over and grabbed the small packet of formula from near the baby’s neck. Bree flushed and looked away.
They stood there awkwardly as Gary rang up the items, chatting the entire time about the weather, Tanner’s upcoming fly-fishing trip and the decline of the quality of plastic as evidenced by the ripped diaper and formula packages, before finally putting the items in a bag.
Bree murmured her thanks and then moved with the babies out the door.
Tanner was right behind her.
He followed her out to her gray Honda, which at least didn’t look like it was going to fall apart on the side of the road. She immediately began buckling the car seats into the car.
“Were you waiting until we got out here to arrest me?” she asked when she saw he had followed her.
He leaned against her hood. “No laws were broken. Everything was paid for before anyone exited the store. So, no need for an arrest.”
She let out a sigh. “Thank you. It’s very kind of you to help me. Can I pay you back?”
The tightness in her features screamed that she didn’t have the money to pay him back. He was almost tempted to say yes just to see what she would do.
But his mother hadn’t raised him that way. “No, there’s no need.”
Some of the tension faded. “Well, thanks again. I’ve got to get going.”
He kept his posture as relaxed as possible. “There are government assistance measures in place if you can’t afford what you need. If you come down to my office, we could help get you set up.”
She stiffened, then shook her head. “No, it’s not like that. My wallet got stolen, but I’ll be fine.”
Her wallet may have gotten stolen, but he had a feeling there was a lot more to it than that. “If you’re in some sort of trouble, I can help.”
She shook her head before walking around to the driver’s side. “No, I’m fine. I just need to get to where I’m going.”
“And where is that?” He hefted himself from the hood and walked toward her. She immediately took the long way around the car, keeping distance between them. She opened the driver’s-side door.
“Thank you for your help,” she said, not answering the question.
He sighed. “I’d like to do more.”
“Well, I appreciate it, but I don’t need more.” She gave him a smile, but it didn’t come anywhere close to meeting her eyes. All the desperation and fear he’d sensed earlier was back again. “We’ll be fine and out of your hair in no time, Sheriff.”
“Just captain of the department. Sheriff Duggan is my boss, although she’s at the office about forty miles north of here,” he corrected with a smile.
She nodded but didn’t say anything further.
She was slipping through his fingers, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. But since he wasn’t going to arrest her and couldn’t force her to come in and get help, he had to let her go.
He gripped the roof of her car and leaned toward her. “The Sunrise Diner is down the street on the way out of town. At least stop by there and grab yourself something to eat before you head out. Tell them to put in on my tab. Believe me, they’ll get a hoot out of it.”
Cheryl and Dan Andrews ran the place together. They’d known Tanner since he was born and would be more than thrilled to provide a meal for Bree and coo over the babies. They probably wouldn’t even let him pay them back.
“Yeah, okay. Maybe.”
She looked so fragile. He wanted to do more. But sometimes pushing did more harm than good.
“Good luck to you, Bree, and your babies. I hope you get to where you’re going before you run out again.” He wasn’t just talking about running out of baby supplies.
“Me, too,” she whispered. Then she got in the car and drove away.
* * *
BREE’S WHOLE BODY was shaking so badly she could barely make it out of the parking lot. If the cop hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t even have tried. But there was no way she could stay there and continue to talk to him.
Talking to anyone was almost impossible for her. But then to have been caught red-handed and almost been arrested? She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid.
If law enforcement got her name and ran a background check on her, the name Bree Daniels would be fine and shouldn’t alert anyone in the Organization. But if they took her fingerprints and ran her through any database?
She was as good as dead.
But shoplifting had been her only option. Six weeks on the run with two newborns had depleted nearly everything of Bree’s. Almost all her money. Then all her energy and stamina. And maybe now her sanity.
She felt one breath away from a breakdown.
She didn’t know what to do. They’d burned through her saved money much faster than she’d anticipated. Who knew that tiny little humans could need so much stuff?
She’d stayed near Kansas City the first few days after the twins had been left in her care. It was a little risky, but Bree was familiar with the city and had been praying the phone Melissa had provided would ring. But it didn’t.
Bree could write elaborate computer code, had an innate ability at developing software and could hack into some of the most secure databases on the planet if she wanted to.
But babies? Bree had no idea.
She wasn’t good with people on any day. She definitely wasn’t equipped to provide 24/7 care for two beings whose only method of communicating was screaming their heads off when they weren’t happy.
Diaper changing, feeding schedules, holding, swaddling, sleeping on their back, buckling in car seats, burping...
She’d rather try to hack Department of Defense nuclear codes. It would take less time and energy.
From a purely intellectual level, Bree could understand why Melissa had chosen her to care for the babies. Bree was quite possibly the only person in the world who was living completely free of the Organization but still knew how dangerous they were. How important it was to keep away from them.
But just because she knew that didn’t mean she wasn’t ruining these children’s lives. For six weeks Bree had barely kept the three of them above water. And things were just getting worse.
If Melissa could see them all now, both kids starting to wail from the back seat, Bree barely able to make it out of a parking lot after almost being arrested—Melissa would know she’d made the wrong choice by asking Bree to help.
She’d stayed at hotels at first, paying with cash, not realizing how much the babies would need and how much it would cost.
In the third week, low on cash, she’d made the biggest mistake of all. She’d decided to use her credit card. It wasn’t under the name Bree Daniels—it wasn’t under a name associated with her at all.
But in her exhaustion she forgot it had been linked to her address in Kansas City.
If they hadn’t run out of diapers, forcing an emergency trip to the local supercenter in the middle of the night, she would’ve been there when the Organization’s hired thugs came crashing into the hotel room.
As it was, she’d narrowly escaped. The number of sedans in the hotel parking lot—and the fact that her mother, in all her paranoia, had taught Bree to notice these types of things—had tipped her off.
Once again she’d forced herself to drive
sedately by as the most hideous type of danger surrounded her.
Then they’d left town. It didn’t matter if Melissa might call or not, they couldn’t stay in Kansas City.
She drove west, since it was in the opposite direction from the Northeast, where the Organization’s main office was located. Or, at least the main office where they showed their public face.
It wouldn’t have mattered which direction she drove. The days wore on her. Lack of finances wore on her.
Why were baby formula and diapers so damn expensive?
Even only eating one meal a day herself and spending every night they possibly could in the car, she was still down to her last twenty dollars just outside Denver.
Desperate, she’d taken to shoplifting the stuff she could for the babies, using all her spare cash for gas, and had been successful a few times.
But it looked like her luck had run out today here in the tiny town of Risk Peak.
At least she wasn’t in jail waiting for someone from the Organization to come kill her—or worse, take her back into captivity with them—so maybe her luck wasn’t completely gone.
Not that the screaming in the back seat was any indication of that. Bree gripped the steering wheel tighter, feeling pressure sitting like a hundred-pound weight on her chest. Breathing was becoming harder.
She tried to think rationally. She couldn’t go any farther right now. Christian and Beth were hungry and needed to be changed. And she couldn’t drive in this condition. She was too strung out, her body crashing now that the adrenaline wasn’t coursing through her system.
When she saw the diner the cop had mentioned, she pulled in. Might as well take him up on his offer of a free meal. For the past week she’d been living off a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and what food she could steal from sneaking into the lobbies of hotels that offered free breakfasts.
God, she was so tired. When was the last time she got more than two hours of sleep in a row? Maybe food would help. It couldn’t possibly hurt.
She grabbed the diaper bag filled with the shoplifted formula packets. If she’d known someone was going to buy her formula, she would’ve gotten the cans of the powder. Those were so much more economical.
Bree was now an expert on finding the cheapest possible formula.
She got out and hefted Beth in her carrier up with one arm, then walked around to get Christian with the other. She only made it a couple of steps before she had to stop, dizziness assailing her. She took deep breaths, trying to force strength into her limbs. She could not pass out here, leaving the babies defenseless. The door got more blurry as she moved toward it, but she forced herself to take the steps. She just needed to get inside and sit down. Then she would be okay.
She had to be okay. She didn’t have any other option.
The bell that clanked against the door as she opened it seemed almost at a distance. Bree walked as straight as she could, trying not to stumble, toward the first booth she saw.
She almost cried in relief when she put the carriers down on the booth with a thump. Neither twin liked being set down so hard, and they began crying harder.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she whispered, the words sounding garbled to her own ears.
She half sat, half fell into the booth next to one of the babies. At this point she couldn’t even tell which one it was.
“Good thing one of you is a boy and one is a girl, or I would never know who was who,” she whispered.
They both just kept screaming.
For the life of her, Bree couldn’t remember how to get them to stop crying. She just wished everything would stop spinning before she got sick.
When an older lady wearing a bright yellow apron walked up to the table, Bree wondered if they were going to get kicked out. And what in the world she was going to do if they did.
“Can I help you, sweetie?” the woman said.
Bree just stared at the woman for a few moments. “I never planned on being a mother. This is too hard. I was the wrong choice.”
She was saying too much, maybe putting them all in danger. But the older woman just smiled and sat down across from Bree. “I think all mothers feel like that sometimes. How about if I help you? It looks like these little guys need to be fed.”
Bree tried to study the woman’s face, but it was going in and out of focus. “Yes, they need their bottle. I need to give them their bottle.”
“When was the last time you got a decent night’s sleep, honey?”
Hadn’t she just been asking herself that question?
“When I was ten.” Before she’d realized what the Organization really was capable of.
The older woman chuckled and patted Bree’s hand. She wasn’t used to touch, but this felt warm, comforting. “I’m sure it feels like it. I’m Cheryl Andrews. Me and my husband, Dan, own the Sunrise Diner. We raised three kids of our own, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to help you out and make a bottle for your little ones. Give you a chance to rest.”
Could she trust this woman?
Did she have a choice?
“Why don’t you just let me get the bottles ready for you. Is it okay if I go into the diaper bag?”
Bree just nodded, everything still fuzzy as she watched the woman walk. Bree was still staring at the doorway when the woman came back out a few moments later, an older man behind her.
She’d made the bottles.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She felt like crying she was so thankful for the kindness.
“This is my Dan. He and I are just going to feed your babies. Is that okay? You just sit there and rest, okay?”
“Okay.” She leaned her head against the back of the booth and watched as the older couple spoke soothingly to both children before putting the bottles up to their tiny faces.
Then there was blessed silence.
Then there was nothing at all.
* * *
THE FIRST THING that penetrated Bree’s consciousness as she awoke was the silence. Followed by liquid under her cheek. It took her a moment to realize she’d been sleeping with her arms folded on a table.
Where were Christian and Beth?
She jackknifed upright, looking around. The carriers were still in the booth, but neither baby was there.
Terror slammed into her like a sledgehammer. How long had she been asleep? How could she have let this happen? She bolted out of the booth, looking around frantically, then came to an abrupt halt.
There at a corner table, the old couple—what were their names? Dan and Sherri? No, Cheryl—were holding the babies, cooing and smiling at them.
A half dozen other people of varying ages were standing around, too, talking, smiling, reaching over Dan and Cheryl to make funny faces at the twins.
It was like something out of a television show. Not even a show from this decade. Something from forty years ago.
It definitely wasn’t something she’d ever been a part of herself. Emotions weren’t easy for her on any given day. But this? She had no idea how to react to this scenario.
“Hey, honey.” Cheryl smiled up at her, a noncrying Christian in her arms. “Are you feeling better? We weren’t sure if you needed a doctor but finally figured maybe you just needed a little break from these two. Babies can be so exhausting.”
“Um, yes. I guess I did.”
Dan smiled at her, standing and handing Beth over. “Thanks for letting us hold your young’uns.” His Southern accent was more pronounced than Cheryl’s. “We haven’t had babies to hold in a long time. Hope you don’t mind.”
Bree just shook her head, still feeling like she was in some black-and-white television show. As if someone would tell John Boy good-night at any moment.
“No, I don’t mind. Thank you. I’m not sure what happened, but I feel a lot better.”
Dan patted her shoulder. “Why d
on’t you sit down with everyone and I’ll go make you something to eat in the back.”
Bree looked at the group, teeth grinding. She didn’t have anything against people sitting around chatting, she just didn’t think she was capable of joining them. Didn’t know how.
Dan smiled gently at her. “Or, if gabbing like a bunch of squawking ducks doesn’t suit your fancy, you’re welcome to come in the back with me. Bring the baby, or I’m positive they’ll all fight to the death for the chance to hold her.”
Bree wasn’t quite sure what to do, so she kept Beth in her arms as she followed Dan into the kitchen, using the baby almost as a shield. Not that she thought the older man would do her any physical harm, but from all the questions she knew would have to be coming.
But the only question Dan asked was if she would prefer the breakfast sampler or Cheryl’s famous meat loaf.
Bree would much rather have the breakfast food, but she didn’t want to make a social faux pas by insulting the famous meat loaf in this sitcom she was currently starring in.
“The breakfast sampler does come with pancakes, so I can’t blame you if that’s the route you’d rather go.” Dan winked at her.
“I do like pancakes,” she whispered, pulling Beth a little closer.
“Then pancakes it is.”
She offered to help, but Dan would hear nothing of it as he made her food. When Cheryl stuck her head through the window and told him someone wanted the daily, Dan didn’t even bat an eye, just immediately started fixing the meat loaf platter.
He never asked Bree any questions about where she was from, what she was doing or why she’d fallen asleep in the middle of his restaurant. Just whistled, working contentedly in a kitchen he obviously was very familiar with. He passed the daily special order out to Cheryl, then added a couple more pancakes to the griddle, putting them on Bree’s plate as soon as she’d finished the first ones.
“Oh, I don’t know if I should...” She trailed off. It wasn’t that she wasn’t hungry enough to eat them, she just didn’t want to be completely greedy.
“Might as well finish them now,” he said. “I hate to waste food if I don’t need to.”