by Jane Toombs
“May I help you?” she asked through the speaker.
“We are Tim’s parents,” the man said in accented English. “We know he is with you.”
Jade swallowed. “Tim told me his mother was dead.”
“Ah, yes,” the man said. “Very sad for Tim, for me.” He gestured toward his companion, who smiled. “I marry this woman to be his mother.”
Looking at them standing there so patiently and looking so harmless, Jade tried to find a reason for not letting them in. Was her reluctance only due to fear of losing Tim? “Wait, please,” she said.
Returning to the kitchen, she saw that Tim had stopped eating, his expression fearful. “Is it him?” he whispered.
“I’m not sure,” she told him. “So I’m going to bring you to a window where you can see the man and woman out there. I want you to tell me if you know who they are. Don’t worry, the door is locked and the alarm system is still on.”
Tim, clutching Freddie, followed her to the window, peered out and drew in his breath.
“Is that the man you’re afraid of?” she asked.
Tim shook his head.
“Do you know who he is?”
Tim gave a reluctant nod.
“Is he your father?”
After a long pause, Tim said, “Maybe.”
Jade, hearing the uncertainty in his voice, asked, “Is this the man you were living with before Alice took you in the van? The man who hit Alice?”
Tim shook his head.
“But you do know him?”
“Yeah.”
If Tim could hardly remember his mother, was it so unusual that he wasn’t certain the man was his father? Chances were he probably was. Yet she still didn’t like the idea of letting them in her house.
“I’m sorry,” she told the couple finally, “but since I’m responsible for Tim, I’ll require proof of who you are before I open this door. And I must tell you the house has an alarm system.” Why she said that, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t hurt for them to know any attempt to break in would trigger the alarm. Not that she actually thought they might, she was just being cautious.
“Do you have some identification? ID?” she asked.
The woman said something in what Jade figured was Vietnamese and the man nodded. “Excuse, please, what ID you want?”
“Tim’s birth certificate.”
The woman said something again.
“I get,” the man said. Both of them turned and walked down the steps, heading for a large brown van parked behind her truck. She waited, watching them. The man started the van and drove away. To get the birth certificate?
She waited until the van was out of sight, then turned to say something reassuring to Tim. He was no longer beside her. “Tim?” she called.
He didn’t answer so she went to look for him. Poor kid, she hated to see him so frightened. When she found him hiding in the back of his closet, he had to be coaxed out.
“They’ve gone,” she said. “I didn’t let them in.”
“She told him to go,” Tim said.
He must have understood what the woman said in Vietnamese, Jade realized.
“She said, ‘Pretend, find another way.’”
Fear gripped Jade. Pretend? What did they mean to do? “Did she say anything else?”
He shook his head. “Munchie’s safe,” he said. “Nothing can get her in that cage?” He made it a question.
It took Jade a moment to realize he was talking about the school hamster. “You’re safe in this house,” she assured him. “Safe with me.”
He didn’t look at her and pulled away from her touch.
Should she take him to school? In view of what had happened, Jade wasn’t sure that would be a good idea. “Look,” she said, “why don’t I call the office to say I won’t be in this morning, and instead of you going to school, the two of us can do something fun.”
“I guess.” Tim’s voice was barely audible.
“Okay, I’ll get some shoes on and then we’ll decide what to do.”
Jade ducked into her room, ran a brush through her hair and slid her feet into sandals. “All ready,” she called when she came out.
Tim didn’t answer, nor was he in the hall where she’d left him.
Jade sighed. Hiding again? How could she convince him she’d keep him safe no matter what? “Tim,” she called.
When he didn’t respond, she began searching again. After she’d looked everywhere she could think of, she called his name again. “Please come out,” she begged. “I can’t find you and you’re scaring me.”
Tim didn’t appear and a niggle of fear shivered along her spine. Where was he? Passing the alarm pad, she stopped and stared. Deactivated. But it had been on, she’d swear to that. And she hadn’t shut it off. There was no one in the house but her and Tim. She’d taught him how to deactivate the system, but she couldn’t believe he’d do it. Why would he?
The front door was still locked. So was the side door onto the terrace. Not so the back door—al—though it was closed, the lock had been released. No one but Tim could have done that! Why? Where could he have gone? She flung the door open, shouting his name over and over. Hurrying into her small, fenced backyard, she looked all around. No sign of him. The gate was still hooked.
Tamping down panic, she rushed back toward the house. From nowhere, Hot Shot appeared, dashing ahead of her through the door she’d left open. She grabbed the phone and punched in Nathan’s private number, praying she wouldn’t get his answering machine. She closed her eyes in relief when she heard his voice.
“Tim’s disappeared!” she cried. “I can’t find him.”
“When?” he asked.
“Just now.” Calming herself with effort, she told him about the couple claiming to be Tim’s parents and how frightened he’d been. “It looks like he shut off the alarm system and left by the back door,” she said. “But he’s not in the yard.” Her voice broke on the last few words.
“It’ll take a little time to arrange for someone to cover for me, but I’ll be there as soon as I can make it,” he told her. “Chances are he hasn’t gone far.”
His words steadied her. “I’ll go out and look around the neighborhood,” she told him. “Maybe he got over the fence somehow and went up into the pines behind the house.”
As soon as she set the phone down, she headed out, going through the back gate and around to climb the hill on the other side of the backyard fence. No houses had been built on the steep slope, so the pines grew thick, their dense shade discouraging underbrush. Their aromatic scent surrounded her as she scuffed through brown needles searching for any sign Tim might have climbed the hill ahead of her.
“Tim!” she called. “Answer me!”
From somewhere below a dog began to bark. Startled by her shouts or for some other reason? Jade paused. The only people near her with a dog were a ways down the road. Could Tim have disturbed the dog? But would he risk the road when he knew the people he was afraid of had a van?
He didn’t know any of the neighbors, so she doubted he’d seek a place to hide in another yard. Anyway, none of them were really close by. She still couldn’t understand what had led him to leave the safety of the house. Blind panic?
She was verging on that herself. Where could Tim have gone? He must be somewhere nearby.
After Jade had walked along the road in both directions, asking all the neighbors who were available if they’d seen Tim and gotten negative responses, she returned home. Should she call the police? As she was trying to decide whether or not to, Hot Shot twined persistently around her ankles.
“I already fed you,” she said absently.
The cat stood on his hind legs, raising up to put his claws into her jeans. “Ow!” she protested. “That hurt. What’s gotten into you?”
Hot Shot trotted toward the back door, pausing in front of his cat door to look back at her. She stared at him and he gave an impatient yowl. Was it possible... ?
“Do you kno
w where he is?” she cried.
In answer, Hot Shot slipped through the cat door. Jade ran to the back door, threw it open and hurried after the cat. Hot Shot scaled the fence separating her property from the next-door neighbor’s to the left, who owned several acres. At least half a tree-filledacre separated her house from theirs. As the cat jumped off the fence to disappear on the other side, Jade noticed that the thick stem of the grapevine growing along the fence showed scuff marks, and some of the leaves had been torn from their stems.
She’d never gotten a single grape from the vine but kept it for sentimental reasons because her grandmother had planted it. Examining the woody stem closer, she saw it afforded an easy climb up and over the fence if the person climbing didn’t weigh too much.
Jade grabbed the fence top and walked herself up the vine, vaulting over and down onto the other side, hoping the cat was still in sight. She spotted Hot Shot sitting at the base of a big sweet gum with spreading branches.
Before she reached the cat, he sprang up the trunk and vanished into the leafy green foliage. Standing underneath, she gazed up into the tree, noting the wood nailed to the trunk in a series of crude steps. Above her head, she saw an old tree house perched in a crotch. From an opening, Hot Shot looked down at her. Next to him she caught a glimpse of dark hair.
Weak with relief, she leaned against the trunk for a moment to take a deep breath and then let it out. “I know you’re up there, Tim,” she said, “and I want you to come down right now.”
When he didn’t immediately respond, she added, “That tree house isn’t a good hiding place, you know. If I found you, someone else could.”
She waited. Finally a small jean-clad leg emerged, then a sneakered foot feeling for the first rung of the steps. She held her breath while Tim climbed down the trunk, worrying about him falling. When he was safely on the ground, she knelt and hugged him.
“Thank heaven you’re safe,” she murmured.
He hugged her tightly, trembling. “I got scared,” he whispered.
“So did I,” she admitted. “But it’s okay now.”
Yet she knew it wasn’t.
Chapter Ten
On the way back to the house, Tim told Jade he’d climbed the grapevine before to look over the fence. “That’s how come I knew about the tree house, ’cause Hot Shot goes up there all the time.”
“He knew where you were,” she said. “He led me to the tree house. Thank heaven. I was so worried when you disappeared.”
As soon as they were inside, Jade called Nathan to let him know she’d found Tim, but got his answering machine. Hoping he wasn’t already on his way to her place, she left a message. He had a busy practice, it wasn’t fair for her to disturb him unnecessarily. After all, she could have called Zed.
That possibility hadn’t occurred to her until this moment. Instinctively she’d wanted Nathan’s help, not her brother’s.
“Are they gonna come back?” Tim asked as soon as she set down the phone.
“I don’t know. But think about it—this house isn’t like a hamster cage someone can pick up and walk away with. You’re safe in here with me and no one can try to force their way inside without the alarm going off at the sheriff substation. When that happens, the police come to see what’s wrong.”
“I wish Doc was here,” Tim said wistfully.
So did she. So much so that she began to hope he was on his way, after all.
After trying in vain to interest Tim in games, books and a Disney movie, she finally gave up and let him do what he wanted, which was peer out the window. She did the same herself from time to time.
Finally she decided this kind of behavior would never do. She couldn’t call the police because she had nothing concrete to complain about the couple hadn’t threatened her, after all. Except in her mind, and that didn’t make it a police case.
“We can’t stay cooped up here,” she muttered to herself. “That’s acting cowardly.”
“Jade, come quick!” Tim cried. “I saw their van.”
By the time she got to the window, no van—our any other vehicle—was in sight.
“They went that way.” Tim pointed to the right.
The road Jade lived on came to a dead end three miles farther on, so if it really was the couple, they’d be back. Watching the house? Staking it out? Her apprehension grew.
An hour passed without any sign of the brown van. Had Tim been mistaken in what he thought he saw? And where was Nathan? If he was coming, he’d surely have been here before now. If he’d gotten her second message that she’d found Tim, he wouldn’t come at all—but, if so, why didn’t he call?
Making up her mind she had to do something more than sit around feeling trapped, Jade sent Tim to collect his pajamas, toothbrush and clean underwear and socks. She hurried into her room and flung a few necessities into an overnight bag, adding Tim’s belongings when he brought them to her.
After hastily putting extra dry food out for Hot Shot, she exited through the front door holding Tim’s hand, all but running to her truck.
With him buckled in beside her, clutching Freddie, Jade roared out of her driveway toward the road that would take her down the mountain. Although she glanced often in her rearview mirror, no brown van trailed her.
By the time she reached Kingsbury Grade down into Carson Valley, Jade felt herself relaxing. True, the traffic was so heavy she couldn’t be sure they weren’t followed if the van stayed several cars back, but now that she’d taken action, she felt revived. Tim, too, had eased his grip on Freddie.
“Maybe I know her, too,” he said.
Startled, Jade glanced at him. “Know who?”
“That lady.”
“You mean the woman who was with the man in the brown van?”
He nodded. “Maybe she was back there.”
“In Vietnam?”
“Yeah. Before he came.”
“The man you lived with? The one who hit Alice?”
“Yeah. He took me away. I didn’t wanna go.”
“Took you away from Vietnam?”
Tim nodded again.
Evidently seeing the couple had jarred some of Tim’s memories loose. Pushing her luck, Jade asked, “Does the man you call he have a name?”
“Grandma.”
His answer astonished and upset her. His grandfather was the abuser? “Is he Vietnamese—you know, like the man and woman who rang the doorbell?”
Tim shook his head. “Like Alice.”
“Does he have another name?”
But Tim apparently had told her all he was willing to and didn’t respond. Peering out the side window, he asked, “We going to the ranch?”
“No, to Nathan’s. I think you’ll be safer there.” Which was true. The couple could easily learn she had a brother in Carson Valley, but it would be pretty difficult to trace her connection to Nathan.
Tim smiled and murmured something to Freddie. Looking at her, he said, “Freddie’s happy we’re going to Doc’s.”
So was she.
Interstate 395 remained busy as usual. When Jade turned off to head for Tourmaline, she checked to see if a brown van made the same turn, but her vision . was obscured by the cement mixer that swung in behind her.
Shortly after this, the narrow, two-lane secondary road began to twist and turn, following the river, and the cement mixer hung a left, sending up dust from an unpaved road. Jade saw no van immediately behind it, but the road’s many turns made it difficult to keep track. As usual, there were very few cars on this potholed route.
“Pretty soon we’ll come to the turnoff to the clinic,” she told Freddie. The words were no sooner out than a van roared up behind her. A brown van! They’d been followed, after all.
Using the lane reserved for oncoming traffic, the van pulled even with her truck and began trying to edge her toward the right, toward the boulders separating the road from the river. She had her choice of ramming against the van or allowing herself to be forced into the boulders.
<
br /> Jade sped up, but the van kept even with her. If she pulled to the left, the impact might well bounce her back into the boulders. How she wished she was driving one of the big drilling-rig trucks, instead of the pickup.
Suddenly there was a flash of red on the road ahead—oncoming traffic. Jade yanked her foot off the accelerator, ramming on the brakes. As the van tried to pull ahead of her, the oncoming vehicle, making no attempt to edge off the road to avoid a collision, plowed into it. Literally.
Tim’s cry of, “That’s Doc’s Jeep,” was all but lost in the screech of metal meeting metal.
“Stay where you are,” she warned Tim as she parked as close to the boulders as she could and jumped from the pickup, her heart pounding. Was Nathan hurt?
She reached the Jeep as he was climbing out and hugged him as hard as she could, tears of relief in her eyes. “They were trying to force me off the road,” she gasped.
“I took care of that.” He held her tightly for a moment, then let her go. “Tim okay?”
She nodded and he turned away to inspect the van passengers, cell phone in his hand. Now that she’d calmed down some, Jade could see that, thanks to the snowplow attachment, the Jeep had suffered practically no damage. The brown van, though, lying on the passenger side, was badly crushed, making her reluctant to look at its occupants.
Nathan spoke into the phone, put it away, then tried and failed to open the driver side of the van.
“Are they...alive?” Jade asked.
He didn’t answer, continuing to struggle with the door. Finally it creaked open and he leaned inside. “Help’s on the way,” she heard him say to the occupants.
He hurried back to the Jeep, grabbed his bag and returned to the van. Aware she couldn’t do anything to assist him there, she said, “I’ll put out some flares,” before going back to the pickup.
Once the flares were in place to warn any traffic of the accident, she climbed back into the pickup to reassure Tim.
“Nathan’s taking care of the people in the van,” she said. “We’ll stay in the truck until the police come.”
“Is the copter gonna come, too, like for Alice?” he asked.