California Girl

by Rice, Patricia

  “We could forget last night happened,” he growled, not starting the ignition. “It could have been drunks or some scorned lover who picked the wrong room.”

  Alys watched the child root through the bags Elliot had given her and pull out an envelope of photos. “May I see the pictures?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

  With a solemn expression, Lucia handed over the packet. Alys flipped quickly through them, handing each to Elliot after she was done with it. She studied a photo of a dark-haired young woman who bore a family resemblance to Lucia, but it was taken at an odd angle and didn’t reveal much.

  Most of the pictures were obviously taken by a child who didn’t know how to use the camera well. One seemed to be of a burly man with a bristling mustache and an unhappy expression, but Lucia had only caught his torso and the bottom half of his face. Another photo appeared to be the dirty back end of a semi.

  “Nothing in there that will do us any good.” Elliot started the car engine. “Although that one you took of the pack of thugs on the street corner is pretty good.”

  Maybe she had a talent for photography, but her next career wasn’t on her mind so much today. She put the picture of the young woman on top and handed the photos back to Lucia. “Is this your mama?”

  Lucia shook her head, and holding that photo in her hand, tucked the others back into the film envelope. Glad the child had someone she loved to cling to, Alys faced forward again.

  It wasn’t in her to be serious for long. Maybe Fred had exhausted her worry gene. The sun was shining, Lucia was playing with her new doll, and Elliot looked like every movie star she’d ever sighed over on the big screen. She’d never fallen for the pretty ones. She’d always loved the second bananas, the ones who never got the girl. The handsome ones were too slick and shallow. The tough ones and the semi-nerdy ones, though, they had character. Let a man don a pair of glasses, and she was a goner.

  Elliot could easily be all of them rolled into one. And she couldn’t love him. Wouldn’t. Love hurt far too much.

  “When we find Mame, will you take her to the hospital in Albuquerque?” She still hated the idea of hospitals, but she hated worse the idea of losing a friend.

  “I’m not familiar with the facilities in Albuquerque. I know some specialists working on some experimental techniques in L.A. I may take her there.” He threw her a swift, unreadable, look. “And myself.”

  Alys gulped and nodded. Unable to speak, she reached over and flipped on the radio, searching for the local news.

  * * *

  “Is the truck still back there?” Dulce asked, focusing on the empty highway ahead of them.

  “There’s a truck back there. I can’t tell if it’s purple. The traffic is light, so he’s staying way back, out of our view.”

  “Driving through the night was a dangerous decision,” Dulce said grimly. “What if they’d tried to drive us off the road?”

  “I’m assuming Salvador has some sense. If he wants Lucia home safely, he can’t let his men be too reckless. They’ll probably wait for us to stop before attempting to snatch Lucia.”

  “Oh fine.” Dulce rolled her eyes. “Then we must never stop. It’s not as if this little road is littered with places to pull over anyway.”

  “You’re learning to speak for yourself, excellent,” Mame said with a weak grin. She hadn’t worked out the pulling over and stopping part yet. After leaving Lucia with Elliot, they’d driven into a truck stop in hopes one of Salvador’s drivers would recognize them.

  They’d led some poor trucker on a merry chase all night, driving east as if they were returning to Missouri. They’d taken the first opportunity to lose their tail, turned around, and careered toward Albuquerque on the southern route to the reservation.

  Somewhere, they’d picked up another tail. Now breakfast and bladder needed attending.

  “Next town, we lose him,” Mame said confidently. “That will put them into a tizzy.”

  Dulce nodded grimly and hit the gas. They were in New Mexico now, her home turf. She’d already told Mame about her family scattered over the dirt back roads. It was time to lose this guy.

  * * *

  Traffic flooding toward Amarillo was heavy, but still on the light side on the interstate out of town that they traveled. Only a few semis rumbled along in their lane, and Elliot passed them easily. The morning sun was behind them. At the speed they were traveling, they’d be in Albuquerque by noon.

  They rode silently with the radio playing a soft violin concerto that seemed to appeal to Elliot. Alys watched him relax, and she breathed deeply, trying to find the harmony between them again. If they could only turn the clock back a day . . .

  The panorama through the windshield abruptly changed from plowed fields to a desert landscape of tumbleweed, yuccas, and mesquite, with dramatic buttes rising in the distance. Alys exclaimed in excitement—they’d finally reached the Old West of her imagination.

  “There’s a visitor’s center down the road,” she said when they came within view of the welcome sign at the New Mexico state line. “Why don’t we pull in there instead of stopping beside the road? We have a long empty highway ahead. We’d better take advantage of the facilities.” She nodded toward the backseat.

  In apparent agreement, he steered into a line of cars and trucks taking the exit ramp. The big rigs rolled into their own lot while Elliot pulled up directly in front of the visitor’s center.

  As a reward for not stopping for a picture along the interstate, the visitor’s center had an even better welcome sign than the one on the highway. They took turns snapping pictures of each other beneath the big letters. Lucia tried taking a picture of both Elliot and Alys leaning against the sign, although Alys figured it would show mostly their legs.

  Alys led Lucia to the rest room while Elliot checked their drink supplies. Noticing several rough-looking men lingering near the women’s side, Alys held Lucia’s hand tightly and ran over a mental list of defensive moves. Scratch eyes, knee groin, kick shin, stomp foot, and scream bloody murder didn’t seem quite so feasible with a five-year-old relying on her. To her relief, a security guard wandered out, and the men moved on.

  She was growing paranoid. Just because someone had broken into their hotel room didn’t mean every man in sight had evil designs.

  When she and Lucia returned to the main room, Elliot was watching the weather advisory on the television monitor.

  “More rain moving in. We’d better get ahead of it while we can.”

  Piling back into the car, checking seat belts and cat and orchid, perusing the map, Alys didn’t notice Elliot’s taut silence until some miles down the road. Uncertain of his mood, she watched the traffic, attempting to discern the reason for the muscle jumping along his cheekbone. A light rain spattered the windshield, but not to the extent that it leaked through Beulah’s cracked window.

  Traffic had picked up but they were still traveling quickly. She tried to concentrate on the scenery rather than Elliot’s foot growing heavier on the gas. He weaved in and out of traffic at a disconcerting speed. She cast him an anxious glance. Was he feeling ill?

  Stomach clenching, Alys stared straight ahead, but she sensed every nuance of Elliot’s actions. From the corner of her eye she could see his knuckles whiten on the wheel. She knew him so well she could envision his jaw tightening and his mouth thinning. In another minute, he would reach for the antacid in the ashtray.

  Instead, he hit the gas again, slipping the Caddy into the passing lane between two semis. The semi he cut off blew his horn in rage, but Elliot held his speed until directly in front of a tractor-trailer rig slowing down to exit. Then he jerked the car back to the right, in front of the exiting big rig, hit the gas, and flew up the ramp and off the interstate, horns blaring like curses behind them.

  “I don’t want to ask,” Alys whispered, too terrified to look.

  “Don’t.” He whipped the car off the main highway into a shopping center parking lot, barely slowing u
ntil they reached the barren area between Dumpsters and loading docks in the back.

  A pink Cadillac would stick out like an eyesore anywhere in the civilized world. These flat open spaces looked impossible, but he maneuvered into a shadow between a tall Dumpster and an empty trailer, then backed around so the Caddy was invisible to anyone driving by.

  They sat silently. No one drove by.

  “What did you think you saw?” Alys finally whispered after Lucia unbuckled her seat belt and climbed over the seat to sit in her lap. The child buried her face against Alys’s chest and clung.

  Her own heart pounded at an uneven rate. Taking comfort in the child’s warm arms, Alys gathered her closer, trying to be reassuring while assimilating an assortment of frightening puzzle pieces.

  “Maybe I’m crazy,” he muttered, still holding the wheel as if it might fly off on its own. “But I thought I saw the same semi following us since just outside Amarillo. I thought we’d lost him at the welcome center, but it looked like he caught up.”

  “Purple cab pulling a produce trailer?” Alys tried to speak calmly for Lucia’s benefit.

  “I couldn’t read what was on the trailer.” Elliot turned to stare at her. “Where did you see it?”

  “When you were in Wal-Mart. It was idling in the parking lot. I thought I saw it several times along the road and wondered if there were a lot of trucks like that out here.”

  He returned to watching out the windshield. “Maybe there’s a whole fleet of them, and we’re both paranoid.”

  “I agree.” Holding Lucia, feeling her little heart race, Alys stroked the child’s cheek reassuringly. “We’d better call the police.”

  “And say what?” He reached for the cell phone anyway.

  “I have no idea. Ask them if there were any purple trucks outside the motel last night?”

  He stared at her, his eyes growing darker. “I heard a semi idling out there during the break-in, but the lot was full of them.”

  “That makes no sense,” she said. “We’ve seen too many horror movies—‘Monster trucks gone mad’ sort of things. We’ll be looking for giant ants next.”

  “What if it’s Lucia they’re after?” he asked quietly, trying not to sound too concerned while the child listened. “We didn’t have any problems until she appeared.”

  “You don’t really believe Mame would kidnap a child?” Even as she asked it, Alys wondered. Mame had definitely been up to something, but kidnapping? Why?

  “I’ll call anyway.” He dialed the operator, connected with Amarillo police, and handed the phone to Alys. “Ask for one of the officers you saw last night.”

  As if she remembered any of them. Frantically searching her memory, she recalled the badge of the one who’d stayed with her in the motel room while they waited for the ambulance. Speaking the name into the receiver, she waited, and was given to a desk clerk who said the officer wouldn’t be in until afternoon.

  She gave the clerk the little bit of information she possessed and let Elliot give them his cell phone number and explain about being followed.

  The clerk didn’t sound too interested.

  “They probably get anxious calls all the time.” Elliot clicked off the phone and returned it to its holder. “People get paranoid after a robbery.”

  Alys licked her lips. “I’m paranoid. What do we do now?”

  Elliot leaned over and brushed his mouth against hers. “Breathe.”

  His breath feathered across her lips. She tasted orange juice before he sat up again. He’d just had a heart attack. Or an infarction. Or something. He ought to be resting. Maybe they should find a hospital instead of traveling uncertain highways.

  “Even if we’re paranoid, maybe we shouldn’t take the open road?” she suggested, trying to ignore the tingling sensations stirred by Elliot’s touch.

  He lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “There’s some other kind?”

  Shifting Lucia to Elliot’s lap, she dug on the floorboard for the maps. “Route 66 fizzles out and there isn’t much out here.” She opened the big map. “The directions Mame gave us show the reservation south of Albuquerque. If there’s any chance the thieves last night are related to Lucia, they may know where we’re headed. Would changing direction throw them off?”

  “Provided there is a ‘they’ and that we’re not crazy?” Elliot thought about it. “I can’t imagine Lucia being a target, but if she is, I suppose they might know where we were headed. The interstate is the biggest road out here and it heads straight to Albuquerque. Is there some way we can get off this road and circle back without ending up in Colorado or Mexico?”

  “Given the state of some of these roads, it might take us all day, but if this is the Tucumcari exit, then the closest road is the state road north. It’s a long way around and could take us a while. The easier road looks like the southern route out of Santa Rosa, but that’s another fifty or sixty miles down the highway.”

  “Does the northern route go through the mountains?”

  “I don’t know about mountains. The map is flat. But the northern road is a black line and not a nice fat red line like the southern one, so I assume it’s a small road.”

  “Let’s see if we’ve lost the guy and go for the safer southern route.” Switching on the ignition again, he bounced Lucia up and down on his knee. “Honey bear, you need to climb back into your seat or Purple will come up here after you. She’s lonely.”

  Purple was happily sunning herself in the back window, but Lucia seriously evaluated Elliot’s expression. Finding reassurance there, she climbed back over the seat, snapped her seat belt on, and settled in with her doll again.

  Swallowing, Alys clasped her hands in her lap. She didn’t want to be a family anymore. Every reason why stared her in the face. It hurt much too much to lose the ones she loved. She’d have to give up both Elliot and Lucia shortly. It was best to resist loving them.

  As if understanding her pain, Elliot reached over to brush a strand of hair off her cheek. “I’m here. You’re not alone this time.”

  Miraculously, it only took his understanding to raise her spirits. She wasn’t alone. Lucia had family she could go to. Elliot would go on with his life. She could live for today.

  Crossing her legs in the seat and laying her palms face-out on her knees, Alys closed her eyes and basked in his positive vibrations.

  Maybe positive energy could make Elliot well again.

  Could positive energy drive away mysterious purple semis?

  Chapter Eighteen

  The wide-open spaces felt less inviting as they drove the conspicuous Cadillac through the town’s broad streets back to the interstate. Alys swiveled her head back and forth, searching for any sign of a purple truck, but there was barely any evidence of human existence. Maybe people didn’t drive in the rain out here.

  Elliot roared down the ramp into traffic and continued west. Alys couldn’t find a radio station playing music. Restlessly, she crossed her legs in the seat, then straightened them out again so she could turn around and check on Lucia and look out the back window.

  “Purple to starboard,” she murmured, attempting to sound nonchalant so as not to alarm Lucia.

  “Yeah, I see it.” The scar beside Elliot’s mouth turned upside down as he tightened his lips and checked the rearview mirror.

  “Do you think it’s the same one?” Alys asked, picking up the map again.

  “I’d have to see the trailer. Maybe it’s just coincidence. Is there another exit we can take?”

  “There’s absolutely nothing out here. How far have we gone, do you know?” She studied the huge blank spaces between roads on the map.

  “We’ve been driving fifteen minutes or so. Check for mile markers on the side of the road, then look at the exit numbers on the map. That will tell you how far away we are.”

  The purple cab pulling an unmarked trailer roared past, and they both breathed easier. It wasn’t the same one. Coincidence. Still, Alys studied the side of the road for mile mark
ers, just in case.

  “Maybe some driver took a fancy to you back in Amarillo,” Elliot joked, but it fell flat even as he said it.

  “It’s not as if there are a lot of other roads for them to drive. We’re probably all going in the same direction,” Alys offered her explanation. “We could meet up with the Harley club at Santa Rosa. That’s the next Route 66 turnoff.”

  Elliot continued to check the rearview mirror, but his hands didn’t grip the wheel as tightly. “We’ll take the southern route anyway. If it’s a good road, it will be a nice change from the interstate.”

  “The northern route goes to Santa Fe,” Alys said wistfully. “That’s where we were supposed to spend the night.”

  “Maybe later, after we deliver Lucia. We’ll make a few calls, see if Mame has shown up anywhere.”

  She should be delighted they were almost at the end of their journey. She’d intended to leave Elliot behind, travel on her own—by bus, if necessary.

  But the realization that they only had a few more hours together didn’t raise her spirits.

  Elliot muttered what distinctly sounded like an inappropriate curse. Startled, Alys checked the windshield. A semi was slowing down in front of them, but she couldn’t see the color of the cab.

  She looked over her shoulder. A semi with a purple cab was right on their bumper. She could practically stare into the driver’s face. She didn’t recognize him, but her heart thumped in terror. “He’s too close. That’s dangerous,” she whispered.

  “They’re trying to force us to the side of the road.”

  “Why?” she asked, but there wasn’t time to think about it.

  She checked the mile marker, double-checked the exit number, and did a quick calculation. “Two miles to the next exit. But it doesn’t look like much of a town.”

  The semi behind them pulled into the passing lane, came abreast, and stayed there. The rig in front of them slowed down even more. Traffic began to build behind them.

  “This makes absolutely no sense,” Alys whispered. “Maybe we should see what they want.”