Finally, it was their turn. Chase reached back and nudged his dog. “Jesse, speak.” He lowered his window and the Lab started barking.
“Good mornin’,” said the middle-aged trooper, who took a quick step back as Jesse shoved his snout through the opening between the front seat and the backseat and let loose with a series of strident barks.
“Howdy,” said Chase. “Hush, Jesse,” he ordered, only Jesse didn’t know that command.
Keeping his distance from the dog, the trooper glanced at Chase’s license and registration. He then handed Chase a flyer. “We’re looking for this boy and his mother. They disappeared yesterday from the Virginia Beach area,” he explained, speaking over the dog’s loud barks.
“I heard about that,” Chase answered, frowning at the pictures on the flyer—same as the ones in the newspaper.
The trooper tried to peer at Chase’s passengers. He caught sight of Sara, who sent him a friendly smile. “Where are you headed?” the trooper asked.
Jesse, who blocked the man’s view of Kendal, barked again.
“Knoxville,” Chase replied loudly. “My sister-in-law’s place.”
The trooper nodded. “Ya’ll have yourselves a nice drive,” he said, and he waved them on.
As Chase eased them out of the bottleneck, Sara snatched the leaflet off his lap. He heard her stifled cry. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, staring aghast at the photos of her and Kendal. “They think we were kidnapped,” she realized out loud. “They’ve issued an Amber Alert!” She raised her horrified eyes at him. “Oh, Chase,” she breathed with bottomless regret. “I had no idea it would come to this, I swear,” she added, her concern, apparently, all for him. “You can drop us off at the next bus station if you don’t want to take us. I totally understand—”
“I’m not droppin’ you off,” he told her, holding her gaze for a reassuring moment.
As she considered him through tear-bright eyes, her slender eyebrows came slowly together. “Why aren’t you upset? Or surprised?” she added with belated suspicion.
“I saw it in the papers this morning,” he admitted.
He could see her reviewing the morning in light of that confession. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “Didn’t want you to worry.”
“But you were worried,” she recalled.
He didn’t bother to deny it. He sensed he’d just earned a portion of her faith by trying to protect her.
“Mom, I feel sick again,” Kendal interrupted.
“Honey, we just started driving.”
“I need my medicine,” he insisted.
With a sigh, Sara turned and pawed inside the backpack.
Chase checked the impulse to say something. It wasn’t his place to point out that maybe Kendal was just stressed out—not that he blamed him. Besides, a dose of Dramamine wasn’t going to hurt. It’d keep him from getting restless till they could afford to stop, on the other side of Tennessee, if Chase had his way.
“Navy SEALs kill people, don’t they?”
The question popped out of Kendal, as Chase slid his gun under the pillow on the bed closest to the window of their motel room in Memphis. Sara had just retreated into the shower. There wasn’t any chance in hell that she’d save Chase from having to answer.
“SEALs protect the interests of the free world,” he replied, sitting down. He put his back against the headboard and focused his gaze on the fishing show that Kendal had found on television. “Sometimes we kill terrorists because they’ve hurt innocent people and intend to do it again.”
Obviously that wasn’t enough to satisfy the boy. “Bet you’re a hunter, too,” he continued several minutes later, “which is why you’ve got a retriever.” He glanced at Jesse, who lay sprawled in front of the door.
“He retrieves ducks,” Chase conceded, “but that’s pretty much all I hunt. And I never kill more than I can eat.”
That earned him a horrified look.
Chase scratched his head and tried again. “My grandfather was a Creek Indian. He taught me to respect life, not destroy it.”
The atmosphere in the room shifted. “A real Indian?” Kendal asked, darting him a dubious look.
“Hundred percent Indian.”
The interrogation continued. “What was his name?”
“Jeremiah Blackbird. He taught me how to trap beaver and tame a bobcat,” Chase recalled with remembered pleasure.
“You can’t tame a bobcat.”
“Did once. Back when I was ten. We had a couple o’ bobcats on the ranch. I tamed one of their cubs so that it’d come to me when I called it.”
“No way,” Kendal scoffed, looking at him.
“Way,” said Chase, staring him down.
They went back to watching the TV as the angler snared another fish.
“What other animals live on your ranch?” The hostility in Kendal’s voice was gone.
“The usual: ’coons, and squirrels; badgers and jackrabbits; eagles, owls, egrets, and three-toed box turtles. Those’re my favorite.”
“So you know lots about animals.”
“Grew up with ’em. The ranch is fifty acres or so,” he added, picturing it in his mind’s eye. “Most of that’s forest, some pastureland. There’s a creek you can wade in when it gets too hot.” He experienced a tremor of excitement at the realization that he’d see it all again, soon.
Reflective silence sat between them. “Maybe I could visit,” Kendal suggested.
“Maybe,” Chase replied. Maybe not. He’d be out of his mind to take them any farther than the Muskogee Turnpike, Oklahoma. At that junction, they’d head south to Texas, and he’d head northwest to Broken Arrow.
But then he pictured Sara and her son at the ranch, and the thought occurred to him that Garret would never find them there.
Forget that shit, he sternly commanded himself. He’d gone above and beyond the call of duty where those two were concerned. He wasn’t going to get into any more trouble than he was already begging for.
Sara awoke from a paralyzing dream, trembling and covered in goose bumps. It took her a moment to recollect where she was—in a motel room in Memphis, not in her bedroom in Virginia Beach, cringing from Garret’s sexual advances.
She turned her head, seeking reassurance in the form of Chase’s silhouette, on the bed next to hers. The pale expanse of sheet was all she saw.
With an indrawn breath, she jerked to her elbows, seeking him in the room’s dark shadows. Where was he? Not here. Could he have taken off, abandoned them? She wouldn’t blame him if he had.
She rolled out of bed, straining to see in the darkness. To her great relief, she spied Jesse, guarding the threshold. No way would Chase have left his dog.
She crossed the room to peek outside. A man loomed on the other side of the glass, startling a gasp from her. She realized it was Chase, standing with his back to the window. She glanced at the nightshirt she’d bought while buying Kendal clothes at a local Walmart this evening. Heck, it covered more of her than the clothes she’d worn all day. Nudging Jesse aside, she squeezed through the door to talk to Chase.
His head turned as she stepped into view. Silvery rain dropped like a curtain on the other side of the balcony, hemming in the walkway. Wearing nothing but his gray sweatpants, Chase seemed to take up an awful lot of space.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
In the dark, his eyes glinted like pools of water. He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. You all right?” he asked her.
The drumming of rain created a peaceful atmosphere that drew her out to join him. “Bad dream,” she admitted, letting the door close softly behind her.
She had to wonder if she was still dreaming. Against the backdrop of the rain, Chase struck her as reflective, nonthreatening. In the semidarkness, the angles of his face didn’t look so fierce. She even considered that his broad torso might be a comfort to lean against—like a pillar of strength or a safe haven.
“A dream about
Garret?” he guessed, insightfully.
She hugged herself against the wet breeze and nodded.
Silence fell between them, but it wasn’t fraught with tension as before.
“I had a dream, too,” he admitted.
She could tell by his tone that it wasn’t a good dream. She shivered, overwhelmed by the sense that it was just a matter of time before Garret caught them both.
“We’ll go our separate ways tomorrow,” she reminded him. They’d discussed a plan before going to bed. In Muskogee, Oklahoma, he’d help her find transportation to Dallas.
“I’ve been thinkin’ ’bout that,” he admitted. “Any type of shuttle is going to ask you for identification, and you don’t have any.”
“We’ll take a taxi,” she offered, wanting to put his worries at ease.
“Too expensive.”
Another reflective silence swept between them. Chase broke it, with a decisiveness that told her he had just made up his mind. “There’s something I can do for you,” he offered quietly. “I have a friend in Washington who makes documents for me when I go abroad. I can get you any form of identification you need.”
“What do mean, like a birth certificate?” she asked, stunned.
“Birth certificate, driver’s license, transcripts, anything,” he answered, watching her carefully.
The offer made her head spin. “Oh, I can’t,” she decided. “You’ve done enough, more than enough—”
“How are you going to get a job without a social security number?” he pressed her. “How’s Kendal going to go to school without transcripts?”
She put a hand to her forehead. He made the future sound impossible. “I don’t know, I—” She’d been naïve enough to think that she could say that Kendal had been homeschooled. Chances were that someone would eventually question that. “It’s not your problem.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “You made it my problem when you asked me to help you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not asking for an apology. I just want you to trust me.”
Trust? She would never fully trust a man again.
“Enough to answer some questions,” he amended, “so that I can send my buddy information, and he can put some stuff together for you.”
She drew a troubled breath. She didn’t want Chase to find himself court-martialed one day, should Garret somehow find her. On the other hand, Garret stood less chance of that if she accepted Chase’s offer.
“I’d also like for you to come to Broken Arrow with me,” he added unexpectedly. “My stepdad left behind a truck. If I can get it running, you wouldn’t have to take a bus or taxi. You’d have your own wheels.”
Her very own car to drive? This offer, like the last, was equally hard to refuse. More than that, she’d been dreading the moment of separation, when she and Kendal were thrust into the hostile world, where some stranger might just recognize them. The thought of being detained and questioned and ultimately reunited with Garret terrified her.
Chase’s invitation erased those wretched pictures and replaced them with visions of something far less threatening.
But what if he exploits you? whispered the voice of caution.
She immediately quelled it. Chase might have brooded for two days straight, frightened her with his terse efficiency, slept with a gun under his pillow, but he’d acted honorably in every conceivable way. Surely she could trust him to see to their well-being just a few days longer. “Okay,” she agreed. “I’m not in a rush.”
His lagoonlike gaze held hers captive. “You’re gonna have to tell me what your last name’s gonna be. Everything.”
She queried her judgment one more time. She would have to tell him that she and her birthmother had corresponded via e-mail for months now; that she planned to live with her in Dallas, tutoring immigrants to earn a living. “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” she promised, too weary tonight to go into detail tonight.
“Fair enough,” he said, his gaze lingering. “You gonna be able to sleep now?”
“I think so.”
“Me too. Let’s get some shut-eye.”
His arm brushed her breast as he turned toward the door to put the keycard in the lock.
Sara gasped, surprised that the contact felt pleasurable. She trembled to think of how vulnerable she truly was, how easily Chase could take advantage of her.
“Go ahead,” he said, holding the door.
She dove into the dark room, resolved to remain watchful.
Chapter Five
A hush fell over the occupants of the sports car as Chase turned off the asphalt road onto a dirt-and-gravel driveway to his ranch outside of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
It was 4:00 P.M., several hours past their anticipated arrival time. But they’d dawdled in Memphis that morning, where Sara had answered Chase’s questions—Where in Texas was she headed? Who was waiting for her? What did she want to do for a living?
They’d stopped at a postal store on their way out of the city, and Chase had put all the notes he’d gathered that morning into an envelope and mailed it to his contact in DC. In ten days or so, she could expect her new documents to arrive at her birthmother’s home in Dallas.
In the seven hour road trip that followed, Chase must have sensed Sara’s misgivings for having revealed so much. He spoke to her—actually opened his mouth—and told her a little of his past and of the ranch where they were headed.
She’d been surprised to hear that he’d left Broken Arrow the day after high school graduation, driving a beat-up GTO all the way to California, where he joined the Navy and was accepted for training to be a SEAL.
“Didn’t you miss your family?” she’d asked him.
“By then, there was only my stepfather,” he explained, frowning.
They’d all died? He’d mentioned earlier that his father had fallen off a ladder when he was quite young. His grandfather had come to live at the ranch to help his mother cope. Then Lincoln Sawyer, the foreman who worked the ranch, had asked his mother to marry him.
“You didn’t get along with him, did you?” she’d dared to ask.
“Used to work me like a rented mule,” he admitted shortly.
That was her first inkling that Chase’s happy childhood had gone swiftly down the drain. To hear that everyone but Linc had died, including his mother, whom he’d spoken of so tenderly, cemented her conclusions.
Sara peered down the driveway now, curious to see what kind of place had produced a man like Chase. The trees pressed in on either side—scrub oaks, sassafras, and persimmon. Wildflowers shot color through the overgrown grass edging the road.
She glanced at Chase’s profile to assess his state of mind. He’d lapsed into silence, his eyes watchful, his expression grim. Dappled sunlight flickered over the tops of his hands as he adjusted the steering wheel to keep from driving through potholes.
A hundred yards down the driveway, the trees gave way to prairie grass interspersed with towering sunflowers and Indian paintbrush. The driveway curved, and a bungalow, complete with stone chimney, sloping roof, and covered porch came into view. It stood in the clearing, flanked by a red barn and shaded by a mammoth pecan tree.
One of the tree’s limbs had been sheared by lightning and lay across the driveway. Chase drove around it, into the tall grass, which tickled the underbelly of his car.
As they pulled up before the house, she could see that weeds choked the steps to the porch. A window on one side had been broken, leaving behind a gaping hole. At least the structure itself was standing and appeared intact.
Chase cut the engine and stared at it grimly.
“It’s in worse shape than you thought?” Sara guessed.
“It’s pretty run-down,” he agreed.
Obviously it was going to be a chore to fix it up in a couple weeks’ time.
Kendal gave a sudden gasp. “Look, someone’s runnin’ into the woods!”
They peered in the direction that he pointed, catching sight of a man
dodging through the tall grass, headed for the trees.
Chase jumped out of the car and flipped the seat forward. “Get him, Jess!”
Jesse bolted. Whether he’d seen the man flee was anyone’s guess, but he took off in the direction that Chase had indicated, tearing after the trespasser with every indication of knowing what he was doing.
Chase reached under his seat for his gun, causing Sara’s pulse to quicken. “Stay put,” he instructed, heading for the house.
“Kendal, keep your head down,” Sara advised her son. Welcome to the Wild West, she thought, with an inappropriate urge to giggle, as she and Kendal scrunched down in their seats.
Time slowed to a crawl.
“Was someone s’posed to be here?” Kendal whispered.
“I don’t think so,” Sarah admitted. It flashed through her mind that Garret had guessed her destination and set a trap for her, but she dismissed the thought as paranoid. The police would have been waiting for them if that were the case.
Chase emerged from the house scowling. He whistled for the dog, a sound that must have carried for miles.
“House is clear,” he said, opening her door for her. “It was just a squatter hopin’ to lay claim to an empty building. He left a mess behind, though. Come on in. We’ll get our stuff later.”
They filed out, trailing Chase up the porch steps. Ceramic pots of every shape and size littered the porch. Some previous occupant had liked to garden. Chase’s mother? she wondered.
Chase pushed the door open. A musty odor greeted them as they stepped into a dark interior. “Electricity’s turned off,” he explained. He pulled heavy drapes away from the window, and light flooded in.
Sara’s eyes widened. The main room boasted a stone hearth, exposed beams, a large sofa, hardwood floors, and a rust-and-cream-colored rug. “Oh, this is nice,” she said, noting the gold-framed mirror and faded prints on the once-white walls.
“Kitchen’s over here,” Chase said, turning away.
Following him, she noted the dated cabinets and orange Formica countertops, littered with empty wrappers. Chase hadn’t exaggerated to say that the squatter had left a mess behind. Dirty dishes filled the sink, and the garbage overflowed, making Kendal pinch his nose.
Time to Run Page 5