“He’s out again. He definitely has a concussion and quite possibly amnesia, the best of all possible scenarios. Let’s get him as far away from here as we can. But first, let’s see if he has anything on him that’ll tell us how he found you.”
I watched as Connor emptied his pockets, pulling them inside out and displaying the contents on the carpet. I half expected to see some kind of high-tech tracking device, as that was how he had managed to find me before. But his pants pockets only yielded a set of keys to a rental car, his large ostentatious gold money clip with large bills folded under the clip, a folding card case with charge cards in it and a comb. Connor pulled a single folded sheet of notepaper from Jared’s dress shirt pocket. Written in Jared’s bold hand was a phone number.
“This mean anything to you?”
He held it up and I looked at it. Then I read the numbers out loud. They looked familiar but I couldn’t place them.
“I think that’s a Texas area code.”
“Of course! That’s Daniel and Julia’s number. I just spoke with them a few days ago.”
“From what phone?”
“My cell. But it’s not one that has that GPS tracking feature.”
“How do you know?”
“The clerk at the mini-mart where I bought it told me so. She didn’t hesitate when I asked; she seemed like she knew what she was talking about.”
“And you believed her?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He just shook his head, “How long were you on the phone when you called Daniel? Over three minutes?”
“Oh yeah. I talked to Angelina for at least five.”
“Well, there you have it. That’s how he found you.”
“Then why the helicopters?”
“That was probably just to get him close where he had a car waiting.”
“So we can find the helicopters and get them to take him to a trauma center.”
“Not likely. They’d have to be miles away in this terrain. They could be anywhere by now. C’mon, let’s just get him someplace where he’s somebody else’s problem.” He took off Jared’s belt, tied it tightly around his hands and propped him up against the sofa. Then Connor turned and stooped in front of Jared, his back to him, his feet straddling Jared’s legs. He reached back, positioned Jared’s joined hands around his neck and began to stand with Jared’s arms looped around his neck. Halfway up he bent and arched his back and settled Jared’s body against his broad back. It was obvious that he’d done this many times before. It was then that I remembered that Connor had been a medic in the Army. Of course he’d done this often, but probably not in a situation such as this. “Get the door will ya? And grab his car keys.”
“What about the rest of the stuff?”
“That’s up to you.”
I could have used the money, and I would certainly have enjoyed a shopping spree with the credit cards before the accountant or security caught on, but it just wouldn’t have been right. I had run away from him and all he had to offer. It didn’t feel right to take anything that belonged to him. I had cut those ties and I was now independent. I picked everything up and shoved it all back into his pockets as Connor dragged him toward the door.
“Help me get him into his car then follow in my Jeep. I’ve got a map that should point us toward the nearest medical center or hospital.”
When we got Jared belted into the back seat of his rented Cadillac STS we discovered it was equipped with an in-dash GPS monitor. Connor verbalized his request. After finding out that the nearest hospital was over two hours away, he looked over at me. “We’re going to plan two.”
“What’s that?”
“We get a reasonable distance away and I use the OnStar system to send for help for him, then we turn tail in the Jeep, hiako back here and regroup.”
I nodded. It sounded like a good plan for us, and probably the best one for Jared; he’d get the help he needed a lot quicker that way.
I followed Connor for twenty-five minutes, five miles past a ranger station. He pulled off into a deserted picnic area and I sat and watched as he pressed a button in the overhead console. Moments later Connor got out of the car, closed the door of the Cadillac using a torn piece of Jared’s shirt, and walked back to where I sat in the Jeep, sweat poring out of me despite the air conditioning being set on high. I straddled the gearshift and slid into the passenger seat so he could drive. I was completely unnerved and didn’t want to do anything but sit and shake.
“Well that ought to get somebody rushing here fairly quickly, I told OnStar assistance that I was having a heart attack.”
“What about his bruises and his split lip?”
“A man can’t have a heart attack after getting beat up?” he flashed a smile over at me as he belted himself in and turned around before pulling back onto the road, heading toward the campground.
“Speaking of which, how did you do that?” Clearly there was awe in my voice and he seemed pleased.
“Hand-to-hand combat. The Army teaches you how to defend yourself. I was a proficient student, in fact, I was an instructor for a while, until someone got my Irish up and I damned near killed him.”
“Sounded like you wanted to do that this time.”
“Oh yeah, I did. Not happy you stopped me either. He’ll get better, and come lookin’ again.” His voice had changed; it had softened with a husky brogue. I sensed this was happening because he was upset and more unnerved than he cared to show.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, you?” he asked as he reached over, took my hand and squeezed it.
“I’m mad at myself for making such a stupid mistake with the cell phone.”
“I don’t believe you can buy a cell phone these days that doesn’t have that capability.” There was quiet for a few minutes as we both tried to sort out our thoughts.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” he whispered. “It just sounded like such a weird story.”
“So I hope you appreciate my timely demonstration,” I said with a chuckle.
“Hmph, now what?”
“Well, you go find Diana, there’s no point in you hanging around and getting messed up in this. If Jared comes around, he might be able to describe you. It would be best if you got far, far away from here and Rhode Island sure fits that bill.”
“Yeah, that it does. It’s amazing that you found her like that. I would never have thought of it.”
“Well, we girls like to look nice for the men in our lives, or the men we’d like to have in our lives.”
“I feel badly about leaving you alone now.”
“I’m not alone. I have Stumpy to keep me company.”
He smiled and let out a long sigh. “Okay, I’ll go. But first I’ll help you straighten out the mess I made in your RV. I think we may have knocked over a few things and I’ll catch a few more bugs for you, too.”
“That would be greatly appreciated.”
We heard a siren off in the distance and we both closed our eyes hard before blinking them back open.
“I hope he has amnesia for the rest of his life,” Connor said. “That way at least he won’t remember you and keep hunting you down.”
“And I hope he doesn’t ever remember you or what you did to him.”
“Nothing permanent, if you don’t include the head thing.” We both laughed at the ludicrous statement.
“If he does remember, he’ll be looking for two of us, so I’m glad you’re getting out of here. When can you leave?”
“I’ll drive to Portland and get a flight to the east coast. I just might leave tonight. I’m anxious to see Diana and find out if she still feels the same about me.”
He pulled up in front of the path that led to my RV. “Do you think your neighbors saw me carry him?”
“No, they’ve been gone for a few days, took their car and went somewhere. But they sure can’t say anything—what goes on with them is considerably weirder than what appeared to be two guys fighting over a woman
.”
“Yeah, you’ll have to keep me posted on that.”
“And you’ll have to let me know what happens with you and Diana.”
“I’ve got your e-mail, so I’ll keep in touch.”
We went into the RV together to clean the mess and to feed Stumpy. When we discovered that Stumpy’s terrarium had been knocked over during the fight, I panicked. It was one thing to house and feed the lizard, it would be another to wake up with him crawling on top me.
Despite an hour of crawling on hands and knees we couldn’t find him anywhere. I consigned myself to the fact that I would either run off the road one day when he ran up my leg while I was driving, or I would track him down by his tell-tale droppings that looked like an inch of pencil lead, with a white streak at the very tip. Fortunately I hadn’t seen any in the RV yet, and as I was pretty obsessive about keeping my RV clean, I did not want to find any.
The place shipshape again, I hugged Connor good-bye, and told him I hoped to be introduced to his Diana one day. He promised to keep in touch and to let me know what happened when he found her on the other side of the continent. Then just before leaving he collected some ants for me. I could not believe I was bringing a container of ants into my house. How quickly one adapts, I thought, as I took them inside.
Chapter Thirteen
After Connor left I got the collapsible ladder out from under the RV, along with a bucket, sponge and extendable squeegee. I had intended to wash the RV in a day or two anyway, but the dust and leaf debris the helicopters had churned up made it absolutely necessary to do it now. When traveling I tried to clean the windshield fairly often so that the dead bugs wouldn’t bake on but it was such a tiring job that I was never really up for it. Occasionally, I was lucky enough to find a truck stop that had a truck wash and then I would run the whole coach through.
As I was up on the ladder wiping away, I looked over at my neighbor’s RV. There was something to be said for a sand-colored RV, even the windshield cover they had snapped on was camel-colored, so I doubted they’d even notice the grit until they got back on the road again.
I didn’t know whether I should e-mail Brick or call him on my cell phone. Certainly I had to tell him about Jared. Trying to downplay the potential seriousness of my latest run-in with Jared, I opted for the former, and sat down with my computer in my lap to type a play-by-play for him.
Within an hour he replied, reminding me that he had told me about cell phones and how easily one could be traced. I knew that, as Brick himself had tracked me with one before. I just had no idea that what I considered to be a disposable, no-contract phone had the same kind of internal chip that allowed one to do that. Then he added a terse message about how quickly things could change, how different everything would be if Jared died. For a while, it was as if we were instant messaging each other as one message was sent and read and another appeared on the screen.
Brick: What happened to Connor? I don’t suppose due to the circumstances, that you’re going to tell me where he is now.
Jenny: We tracked down Diana and he’s on his way east to find her.
Brick: East, I suppose that’s all I’m going to get from you. You are clueless, you know that? What he’s doing, what you HELPED him to do, is exactly what I fight against every single day—older men preying on teenagers. For God’s sake Carrie, this is what I do! I go after the pedophiles—the predators!
Jenny: It’s Jenny now, remember, you named me. And this isn’t like that, they’re in love.
Brick: That’s what they ALL say. All the forty-something guys hanging out at the high school games. Do you think they’re going to say they’re horny bastards looking for nubile, young flesh?
Jenny: They’re both adults now. Jenny is eighteen.
Brick: And that’s the only reason I’m not arresting him and you for helping him find her.
Jenny: You having a bad day?
Brick: You’re making it that way.
Jenny: Just because we’re on the opposite side of the fence on this doesn’t mean you have to be so angry with me.
Brick: Oh yes it does!
Jenny: Well, fine then. Goodnight!
I waited and waited for a reply, but I didn’t get one. I grabbed a wine cooler from the fridge and made my way back to the bedroom. On the way back through the hallway, something caught my eye, something moving in the vicinity of the bathtub.
I saw something move through the wavy glass door that enclosed the tub and shower. It was dark and long. Putting my wine cooler on the counter by the sink, I slowly opened the shower door. It’s designed to catch and hold fast, so it made a popping sound and caused a vibration I felt through my arm. Stumpy felt it too, and darted around the bottom of the tub. I had one option here if I was going to corral him, otherwise I’d be consigning him to free run of the house, and I really didn’t think I wanted that. No, I was sure I didn’t.
After several half-hearted tries where my hand jerked away at the last second, I had my hand over him. I could feel him twitching against my palm, Eewww. But actually, it wasn’t so bad. His skin was dry, and although not smooth, not as lumpy as it looked. I managed to scoop him up off the floor of the tub and I held him in one palm while keeping the other hand ready in case he decided to dart off my fingers and become a lemming leaping over the cliff.
He was really kind of pretty, luminescent in the fluorescent light, his scales were multi-hued, mostly tan with a gray cast, with rows of vibrant blue and green speckles running down his back, converging to a single row and leading to the area of the missing tail. I ran a finger down his spine and cooed to him and watched as this horrible red thing under his chin grew and grew like a balloon ready to pop. It went down and then it blew up again. This continued for several minutes while I stood fascinated. Little did I know that he was proving himself to be all male.
Gingerly, I walked with him to the kitchen area where his makeshift terrarium was. I gently eased him down off my hand, onto the rock and sand bottom, filled his water bowl and introduced him to the ants. He was ravenous and I felt a bit guilty about covering him up with the top of the broiler pan so I could retrieve my wine cooler and slide into bed. But there was no way I was going to go outside and scout bugs for him. Tomorrow, I reasoned I would fashion a leash of some kind. That’ll be a cute sight, me walking my lizard. I just had to chuckle. God, if Jared could see me now, he probably wouldn’t even want me back.
It was a mistake to focus my thoughts in that direction, but now that I had, I was curious. I picked up my wine cooler, turned the TV to local news and got ready for bed. At eleven o’clock there was a news item on a Jared Jameson, who was found in his rental car, clearly having been in an altercation and having experienced what was first thought to have been a heart attack. Doctors confirmed that he had a concussion and that for the time being, his memory loss was so severe that he didn’t know who he was, or why he was almost 3,000 miles away from his home. Anyone with information was to call the number running in a banner across the bottom of the screen.
So, he’d made it to the hospital in Klamath Falls; that was something. At least he was getting the best care, and with any luck, when and if his memory came back, the fact that I had once been his wife would be expunged from it.
I turned off the TV and snuggled against pillows propped against the headboard to read a few pages of my romance novel before nodding off. God I was tired, I thought as a big yawn took over and made a deep cavern of my mouth.
I read for a few minutes before I heard a loud commotion outside my bedroom window. Now what? I really didn’t need any more aggravation today. I whipped up the blinds and glared out the window that faced the loop on my side of the village campground.
Outside there was an older man tugging on the arm of a young woman. She was striking with her red hair and creamy white complexion and she was shouting, “No, I don’t want to go in there! Please don’t make me do this, please Daddy, don’t! You can’t make me, I won’t do it!”
“You have no choice! And believe me, I know this isn’t the worst thing you’ve ever done! Now stop it, and get in there!”
She looked up and saw me staring out the window as she squirmed and tried to get out of her father’s firm grasp. She mouthed the word Help before he spun her around and forcefully pulled her toward the door of the RV.
Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized that my neighbors were back. And up to their old tricks. What were they forcing this girl to do? What was her father forcing her to do? The first and only thought that came to mind was that they had to be shooting a porn movie in that luxury RV. The thought made me sick.
Well enough was enough. That girl didn’t want to do whatever it was that was expected of her in that RV. I had to do something. I closed the blinds and ran for my phone. I hoped Brick was in a better mood, because his day wasn’t over yet and there was still time for it to get a lot worse.
Chapter Fourteen
In less than an hour, pandemonium broke out in our little corner of paradise. There were cop cars, sheriff’s vehicles, unmarked Fords, and over it all, a helicopter hovered until it found a place to land on a nearby road. Brick, and a few men from his team, had arrived from Carson City.
Ten minutes later, the luxury RV had been stormed and everyone was standing outside while officers searched for signs of any nefarious filming going on. Brick and I were in my kitchen and it was safe to say that his day had gotten a lot worse, except for the fact that we had actually begun a new day.
“Are you always going to be putting my job in jeopardy?” Brick lashed out at me.
“I’m sorry, I thought they were doing something wrong.”
“Well, they weren’t! They’re just two teachers tutoring students. And they choose to do it in their RV because this is their summer vacation!”
“I said I’m sorry!”
“Sorry isn’t good enough. Because of you, we’ve spent money bringing state and federal agents out here. You said you saw them taking clothes off a girl, and that she was screaming that she didn’t want them to. You said both the man and the woman were holding her down, while another man stripped her. You led us to believe we had a child pornography case here. We dropped everything to get here.”
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