She kept her gaze forward. “No. Why do you ask?”
“You’re just being awfully quiet.” He didn’t comment on the real reason he thought she might be angry with him. He’d sensed how horrified she’d been to learn he’d played a role in keeping Mia at their house. Her reaction was understandable. There’s no way someone from outside the family could understand the power his mother had over him and his dad. Her moods affected all of them, dictating their behavior. She created scenarios, lies and situations, that couldn’t be undone. Over and over again she insisted on her version of events. Even when he knew she was wrong, her spinning caused him to doubt himself. “I just thought you might be mad . . .” He looked down at his phone.
“I’m not mad. I’m quiet because I’m not used to being on the interstate.” Niki sighed. “If you want to know the truth, I’m not used to driving at all. I have my license, but I don’t have a car, and I haven’t driven all that much. Going this fast is very stressful for me.”
“Oh.” That made sense. “Well, I’m sorry you’re stressed. Do you want me to drive?” He hadn’t driven all that much either, but speed didn’t bother him.
“No, but thanks. I’ll be fine.”
“I know when we find Mia we’ll have to go to the police, and she’s going to be taken away. I’m really going to miss her,” Jacob admitted. Mia was the only one who greeted him with a smile. It took so little to make her happy. She was grateful for the smallest things. Mia not only loved him, but she loved him even though she had no reason to do so. Mia was love.
“Well, since she doesn’t have any relatives, she’ll go to foster care. She’s still little. Maybe someone will adopt her.”
“But she does have relatives,” Jacob said, the words coming out without thought.
Niki said, “What relatives? You said she wasn’t on the missing children’s website.”
“She wasn’t.” He took a deep breath, knowing he was going to tell her everything. All along he’d wanted to tell someone, but there’d been no one he could tell. “I did a DNA test on her recently. You know, the kind where you spit into a tube and mail it back in.”
“And what were the results?”
“She has grandparents and an uncle. Their names were there and everything. I looked them up on Facebook. The grandma was the only one with a Facebook account, and she looked nice. She’s an accountant.”
“So they’re probably good people.”
“I guess,” he said. Something in her voice made him squirm with guilt. “I only just found this out.”
“Does Mia know?”
“She knows I did the test. She doesn’t know about the Durans. I told her I was still trying to figure out the results.”
“The Durans. That’s the name of her people?”
“Yes. The grandma is Wendy Duran.” Her people. Mia had people. Such an odd concept.
They continued on in silence for the next two hours, interrupted only by a phone call from Niki’s grandma saying she’d left a voice mail for the social worker and would call back when she knew more. “You be careful, Niki,” she said, and Jacob could hear the love in her voice. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“We’re being careful,” Niki assured her. “I’ll let you know if anything happens.”
“This whole thing is making me nervous. I feel like the police should be called.”
Niki said, “Can you wait a little bit? Once we catch up to her, we’ll know more. Right now we’re not sure of anything.”
Niki’s grandma agreed to wait, but Jacob could tell she was conflicted. About a half hour after the phone call, Jacob noticed something new on his tracking app. “She’s not moving anymore. It looks like she got off the expressway and then stopped.”
Niki said, “Do you think she found the house and is leaving Mia there?”
He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure that’s not the right location. It doesn’t seem far enough. She probably just stopped somewhere to get some food or go to the bathroom or something.” He hoped he was right. If Mia was strapped into the back seat, he could only imagine how frightened she might be. His mother would have given her a story to explain the drive, something fantastical, like they were going to visit an amusement park or off to ride a pony. Lies came easy to her. But Mia was not as gullible as his mother thought, and Jacob suspected she’d eventually see through it and then get worried about being so far away from home. He kept his eyes on the phone. “I’ll let you know when she starts moving again.”
“At least this gives us a chance to catch up.” She punched the accelerator and was now fifteen miles over the speed limit, something Jacob appreciated given how much expressway driving scared her. They’d been gaining on his mother all along. Now they had a chance to actually catch her. Now that they were so close, he knew there would be a confrontation. Mentally, he went over what he would say. He’d tell his mother that it was over, that the police knew now, that she wasn’t in charge anymore. Jacob would insist on taking Mia back with them. His mother would be furious, and who knew what she’d do? Whatever way she chose to lash out, he could take it.
He had to. Mia was depending on him.
Twenty minutes later, he noticed his mom was on the move again, and he told Niki, “She’s on the road now, heading north.” Just as he’d thought, her stop had been little more than a brief pause on the way there. He knew this because she didn’t turn back to go home but continued on course.
“How much farther?”
“Not too much,” he said. “Another twenty-five or thirty miles, maybe?”
Niki pushed her hair back behind her ear and sped up to the car in front of her, then veered around it before returning to her lane.
Jacob grabbed the dashboard. “What the hell, Niki?”
“You want me to catch up with her? I’m going to catch up with her.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t help if we get in an accident or get stopped for a speeding ticket. We want the police involved, but not until we get there.”
A fine mist came out of nowhere, turning into a drizzly rain that covered the windshield. Niki said, “Jacob, could you figure out the windshield wipers for me?” Her voice was tight.
“On it.” He leaned over and twisted the end knob of the lever until the wipers swept back and forth at the right pace.
“Thanks.”
He returned to his phone. “She just got off the expressway and is on a highway. I’ll let you know when it’s time to exit.”
Niki nodded, her concentration on the road ahead. “So what are we going to do when we see her? Just follow her?”
“Play it by ear, I guess.”
They continued in silence as Jacob watched them close the gap. His mother was going more slowly now, driving on country roads that were probably not clearly marked. His best guess was that his mother had thought she’d found the right exit and was now driving around, looking for the house or any landmarks she remembered being near the house. He could imagine her frustration at not seeing anything familiar. He shook his head. She is hopelessly lost.
When they got to the exit, Niki made a turn to the right, accelerating and coming to a quick halt at the stop sign at the end of the ramp. “How far?” she asked.
“Almost there. Maybe a few minutes.” He continued to direct her, past a gas station and down a country lane. On either side, farm fields lay bare, gray and wet, waiting for spring. Small clumps of snow dotted the ditches on either side. The lane ended in a T, and Jacob said, “Take a right here.”
They’d been following the road for a few minutes when Niki said, “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”
She’d just finished the sentence when Jacob spotted his mother’s car pulled over to the side of the road. “That’s it,” he said. “The silver Audi, parked on the right.” The lights were still on, and the exhaust coming out of the tailpipe indicated that the engine was still running. His mother was either making a phone call or looking at her GPS. She was so stup
id. “Pull up behind her.”
When the car came to a halt, Jacob said, “Wait here. I’ll go talk to her and get Mia.” He leaped out and strode over to the driver’s side of the Audi. He’d expected to see Mia strapped in the back seat, but except for his mother in the front, the car was empty. A feeling of horror filled him. What had his mother done this time? He stood next to her window while his mother, oblivious to his presence, looked at the GPS on her phone. The GPS on her dashboard was on as well. Her wiper blades whipped back and forth, sending a fine mist when they came his way. For a split second he stood and processed the scene. If Mia wasn’t with her, where was his mother trying to go? And even more importantly, where was Mia?
He rapped on the glass, startling her. Her head jerked upward. Upon recognizing him, a range of emotions flitted across her face in the space of seconds. He knew them all, having seen them many times before—confusion, annoyance, and finally what looked like the beginning of rage. She rolled down the window. “Jacob, what are you doing here?” She said each word as if they began with a capital letter.
“Mom, where’s Mia?”
She glanced back to see the car parked behind her. “You need to leave right now and go home. Your father and I will deal with you later. You are in big trouble, mister.”
“Mom, I’m not going anywhere.” His hand was on the wet roof of her car, and he leaned in. “You need to tell me where Mia is.”
“She’s at home, of course.” She spat out the words. “Have you been following me?”
“Mia isn’t at home. You took her somewhere. Where is she?” Fear clawed at him. “Is she alive?”
She reached through the window opening and pushed him away. “How dare you! You hacked into my phone, didn’t you? You hacked into my phone and tracked me! You little shit.”
True to form, when she got really angry, her ladylike facade slipped away and she couldn’t help but resort to profanity. So many times the shock of her verbal attacks had made Jacob and his father let things go in order to walk away in peace, but Jacob wasn’t going to allow her to deflect this time. “You need to tell me where she is or I’m calling the police. Tell me now.”
Her eyes flashed with rage. “You have a lot of nerve.” She rolled the window up.
Jacob pounded his fist against the glass and yelled, “Just tell me! Is she okay?”
His mother revved the engine, and then realizing it was still in park, she shifted into drive. She gave him a slight finger wave of derision as she drove off.
“Don’t go. Wait! We can talk about this.” Jacob jumped back as she swerved toward him and bounced back onto the road. In that moment, he got a nose full of exhaust fumes. He ran back to where Niki was parked and climbed into the car. “Go, go, go!” He frantically pointed to the windshield. “We have to follow her. She’s done something to Mia.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“What do you mean she’s done something to Mia?” Niki asked as she stepped on the gas. “Did she hurt her?” She took in a sharp breath, envisioning the child tied up in the back seat, bruised and bleeding.
“I don’t know what she did to her. She’s not there!”
Not there? Niki pursed her lips as she watched the taillights of the silver car in the distance. Mrs. Fleming was driving like a maniac, way too fast for such slippery roads, and now, making things worse, her car had veered across the center line. Niki gripped the steering wheel. “Mia wasn’t in the car?”
“No.”
“Then why are we still chasing her?” Ahead, the silver Audi took a left onto a side road, and Niki followed suit. They drove past a run-down barn with a sagging roof. One lone cow stood out in the rain in the adjacent field.
“Because we have to find out what she did to Mia!”
“And how is chasing after her going to do that?”
“We can catch up to her and then cut her off,” Jacob said, his voice fraught with emotion. “Make it so she has to stop. And then I’ll make her tell me.”
“Oh, Jacob, no.” Niki relaxed her foot on the accelerator. She’d been on board to save a little girl. She’d borrowed a car and faced her fear of driving on the interstate and driven for hours with Jacob, who was nearly a stranger. But she wasn’t going to get into a high-speed chase that could only end in an accident, not under any circumstances, but especially not in a borrowed car. This was the time to hand things over to the police. “Too dangerous.”
“But . . . !” He held the phone close to her face. “She’s heading down to a dead end. About a mile down.”
“So it’s a dead end. What’s the difference?”
“Because she’ll have to stop. All we have to do is follow her and box her in. Trust me, she’s gonna get pissed off and yell, but she won’t do anything to damage her car. She loves that thing.”
“Jacob,” Niki said, sighing. She didn’t lack sympathy for his predicament. She recognized the panicky tone that came when things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to. She’d been there herself. But it felt like the end of the line. “Sometimes you have to know when to call it quits.”
“Please, Niki, please.” He sounded on the verge of tears. “Just go. I know I can get her to tell us where Mia is. We’ve come this far.” He put his hands together. “Just another ten minutes. I’m begging you. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
Oh no, now he was getting to her. One last look at his impassioned face sealed it. She shook her head even as her foot hit the gas pedal. This felt like a mistake, but he’d made a good point. They’d come this far. “Ten more minutes,” she said begrudgingly. “Then we’re turning around and going back.”
He exhaled loudly. “Thank you.”
Fred’s car had a surprising amount of pick-up. She zoomed down the curving road, not seeing the silver Audi anymore, but there weren’t any side roads either, so it was a safe bet Suzette Fleming was just ahead. The rain was only a mist at the moment. The wipers swept it away before it barely landed.
She kept up the pace, but carefully now because she was aware of the bends in the narrow two-lane road, slick from the rain. In the cup holder, her phone went off, but both of them ignored it.
“Just a little more,” Jacob said, his eyes flicking from his phone to the windshield. The road now crested above the farm fields that sloped down on either side. They passed a large retention pond, its surface as smooth as glass. Next to it a large wheeled irrigation machine waited for the day it would be needed. “Not too much farther.”
As he spoke, Niki spotted red brake lights at the end of lane. At the same time, Jacob cried out, “There she is! Now turn the car sideways so she can’t get past us.”
Niki eased on the brakes and turned into the left lane. She went forward and then reversed, and repeated the maneuver in an attempt to turn the car, while Jacob powered down the window and stuck his head out to get a better look. Looking back at Niki, he said, “Stop the car. I’m getting out.”
He got out of the car and ran the forty feet to where his mother’s car was jerking back and forth, obviously trying to make a U-turn. He could see now that the dead end was defined by a fieldstone wall running along the end of the road. A metal sign, peppered with what looked like bullet holes, sat atop a metal pole, with the words Private property. Keep out.
As Jacob got closer to the car, he had a clear view of his mother’s face, contorted in anger. She was so very angry. The kind of fury that at home would be directed at him in the form of screaming and insults, and might get Mia slapped. “Mom!” he shouted as he got closer. Sometimes she could be distracted and pulled out of a bad mood. Today it was doubtful, but he had to try. “Let’s talk about this!”
He was right outside her window, but she didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge his presence. Ignoring him, as if he wasn’t even there. The ultimate insult. She went back and forth, driving just a few feet in each direction, like a teenager who’d just gotten her learner’s permit and wasn’t quite sure how it was done. He walked alongside
the car as she went, saying, “You might as well stop and talk to me. You’re not going anywhere until you tell me where Mia is!”
Too late he remembered that no one gave his mother ultimatums. She managed to get the front wheels aimed back toward the open road, and she gunned it, the car lurching forward. Jacob jumped back as she drove off, and he watched helplessly as she headed straight for Niki’s car. “Mom, stop!” he yelled.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Niki saw the Audi heading right at her and tried to back up, but she only managed a few feet. She felt her heart pound in her chest and watched as the Audi hurtled her way. The car barreled at her with unnerving speed, while also seeming to move in slow motion. Her mind filled with regret. I should have followed my instincts and turned around to go home when I had the chance.
She saw Suzette’s fierce expression and braced for an impact that never came. Just before they would have collided, the Audi made a sudden turn, barely missing the front bumper of Fred’s car and leaving the edge of the road, the passenger side of the silver car so low that for a moment Niki thought it might flip over. Craning her head, she watched as Suzette lost control of the car, driving completely off the pavement. The car headed down the embankment at an abrupt angle, bouncing and shimmying as it went, hitting the edge of the irrigation equipment and slamming into the water. As the front of the vehicle plunged into the retention pond, nose down, Niki clearly heard Jacob wail, “Mom!” as he began to run toward his mother.
She got out of the car and followed him, the soles of her shoes slapping against the wet pavement. He headed down the small hill and she followed, slowing her pace when he narrowly missed taking a tumble before righting himself. “Mom, Mom, I’m coming!” he screamed, his voice infused with an emotion she hadn’t heard before. Niki thought of all the foster kids she’d met, and how even the ones who’d suffered horrible abuse at the hands of their parents seemed to miss them, as if the love from a child to a parent was a given, even when it wasn’t reciprocated.
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