Redemption Road (Jackson Falls #5) (26 page)

Colleen

Mikey hadn’t come home last night.

At eighteen, he was a legal adult, one who’d been living away from
his parents for nearly a year. Considering that she wasn’t the one who’d raised
him to manhood, Colleen tried to stay out of his personal business as much as
possible, avoiding asking nosy questions. But if he wasn’t coming home, a phone
call would have been nice. Just because he was of legal age didn’t mean she
stopped worrying about him. If you were a parent, that worry never went away. It
was tempered somewhat when the kid was away at school, or with the other parent.
But when said kid was living under your roof and expected home, and then he
didn’t show, that fear magnified tenfold.

She got up at her usual time, went downstairs at eight and opened
the office. There was no sign of Rob, but then, she hadn’t expected to see him
until later. After Saturday’s catastrophe, she assumed that he and her sister
were laying low. At eight-thirty, she drove into town to get the mail and a box
of doughnuts. Rob couldn’t get through the day without the damn things. If she
ate doughnuts the way her brother-in-law did, she’d look like a beach ball with
arms and legs. But Rob, the lucky bastard, had a metabolism that allowed him to
eat whatever he wanted without gaining a pound.

The phone wasn’t exactly ringing off the hook, and now that she’d
picked up the mail, sorted it, tossed out the junk and put the important stuff
on Rob’s desk, there was nothing else to do but babysit an empty studio. They
had a local band coming in this afternoon for a recording session, but her
morning stretched out ahead of her, empty, boring, leaving her with too much
free time to listen for the sound of Mikey’s truck pulling into the driveway.

So she pulled out a steno pad and began making random notes, just
as a way to distract herself and pass the time.
Need to set up a business
plan
, she wrote, then underlined it twice.
Desired amount of product
divided by annual pounds of wool per sheep equals number of sheep needed in
herd.
It had been some time since she’d taken the Forming A Small Business
course, and she had to dig deep to pull some of the material out of her head. She’d
scribbled a couple dozen pages of notes when the door opened and Rob blew in,
grim of face and breathing hard. Colleen glanced up, and for an instant, her
heart stopped. “Casey?” she said, pen still poised over her steno pad.

“Casey’s fine. Where’s your son?”

It wasn’t the question she’d expected. She blinked twice. “He’s
not here.”

Rob leaned over the counter that separated them. “I know he’s not
here. His truck’s gone. Where the hell is he?”

Colleen set down the pen. “I don’t know. He didn’t come home last
night. Why? What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. My daughter is missing!”

A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her this wasn’t going
to end well. “What do you mean, she’s missing?  Isn’t she at school?”

“She’s not at school. They called because she’s on the absent list.
Casey and I slept late this morning. We never gave her any thought, just
figured she got up on time and got on the school bus like she does every
weekday. After the school called, I went upstairs and checked her room. Her
guitar’s gone. Her suitcase. Most of her clothes. Her cosmetics are missing
from the bathroom.” He began to pace frantically. “I swear to God, Colleen,
when I get my hands on your son, I’m going to strangle him. What the hell is he
thinking?”

“Maybe they’re not together. Maybe it’s coincidence.” But even as
she said the words, she realized how ridiculous they sounded. If Paige was
gone, and Mikey was gone, given her suspicions, it wasn’t much of a stretch to
assume they were together.

“Call Jesse,” he said. “Get him over here.” He spun and headed for
the door.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Me?” He paused, hand on the doorknob. “I’m calling Cousin Teddy.”
And he slammed out the door.

***

“There’s really not a lot I can do,” Teddy said. “The boy’s
eighteen, and if he wants to take off, he has a legal right.”

“My daughter just turned seventeen!” Rob snapped. “She’s still a
minor!”

Teddy crossed his arms over his protruding belly. “Well…technically,
if he’s taken her over state lines, he’s guilty of a Federal offense—”

“Mikey’s a good kid,” Jesse said with surprising calm, given the
situation. “He’s not a kidnapper.”

“I don’t want him arrested,” Rob said, “I want him castrated!”

Ignoring Rob, Teddy said, “That’s exactly my point, Jess. While
technically, this could be called a kidnapping if they’ve crossed state lines,
the fact is, the girl’s seventeen years old and she left of her own free will. There’s
no evidence to suggest otherwise. She took her things with her.”

“So what are you saying?” Rob’s face was getting redder by the
minute. “Because she left willingly, you’re not going to do anything?”

“That’s not what I said. There are gray areas in the law. If Mikey
was some thirty-five-year-old with a yen for young girls, we’d take this a lot
more seriously. But he’s eighteen, and she’s seventeen, and he’s not some stranger
who picked her up on the side of the road. Which means I don’t believe she’s at
risk. If I did, I’d treat this differently.”

Rob squared his jaw. “Do you have any kids, Ted?”

Teddy scowled. “I do. I have two little boys.”

“And you’d go to the ends of the earth to protect those kids.”

“That’s not the point.”

“That’s exactly the point!”

Casey, seated beside her husband on the couch, took his arm. “Babe,”
she said.

He looked at his wife, then back at Teddy. “If they’ve gone over
state lines, it’s a Federal offense. Why can’t you call in the FBI?”

“Are you serious, MacKenzie?  You think your kid is the only thing
law enforcement has to deal with? Or maybe just the only
important
thing? Just because you have
beaucoup
bucks? Get a clue, buddy. Do you
have any idea how many runaway kids are out there? Millions. Some of them are
twelve years old, and you know what they’re doing? Working the streets. Peddling
their asses so they can eat. Some of those kids will survive. The rest won’t. A
spoiled rich kid taking off on some
la-la-la
adventure with her
boyfriend isn’t the same thing at all.”

“Teddy,” Colleen snapped. “Kitchen! You and me. Now!”

“Look,” he said quietly, when they were out of hearing, “there’s
only so much I can do. Your brother-in-law is being ridiculous.”

“Come on, Teddy, it’s his little girl. Two years ago, he didn’t
even know he had a daughter. Of course he’s worried! He loves the kid, and now
that he’s found her, he’s terrified he’ll lose her again. And he’s not the only
one who’s worried. Mikey’s my son. I’m not happy with him right now, but I
still love him, and yeah, I’m worried, too. But I’m more concerned about my
sister and her husband. They’ve had a really shitty couple of days.”

“I understand that.”

“No. You don’t. Friday night, Casey and I were in a car accident,
on our way back from dinner with
your
mother. It was minor, but scary. Rob
just about had a coronary. Then, on Saturday—”  She took a deep breath. “Casey
lost the baby she was carrying.”

“Shit.”

“Shit is right. And now, Paige is missing. I don’t know what this
thing is between you and Rob, why the two of you seem to hate each other so
much, but you need to cut him a little slack right now. As far as Paige being a
spoiled rich kid, that’s absolute bullshit. Until she was fifteen, she lived
with her mother. The woman was a single mom, struggling to get by. Rob wasn’t
paying child support because she’d never told him he had a daughter. My
brother-in-law is a good guy, and right now, he’s scared shitless. Show him a
little respect.”

Teddy’s face flushed, and a muscle twitched in his cheek. Without
speaking, he spun around and headed back to the living room. “Look,” he said to
the group, “if you can give me pictures of the kids, a description of the
truck, the plate number, I can put out a BOLO, and—”

“What’s a BOLO?” Jesse said.

“It stands for Be On the Lookout,” Teddy said. “We can send it to
every police agency in the country. If the kids are driving around in that
truck, sooner or later, somebody will see them. That’s the best I can give
you.” He glared at Rob, then turned to Casey. More gently, he said, “Colleen just
told me about the baby. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Mikey

There was only one bed in the motel room, so they shared it. Both
of them exhausted, both of them wound like a coiled spring, both of them fully
clothed, they clung awkwardly to their respective edges of the mattress. He
wasn’t about to push her for any kind of intimacy. The truth was, he didn’t
think she was ready. If she wanted to wait until after they were married, he
had no problem with that. They had the rest of their lives to have sex. There
was no need to rush it. Besides, all he could think about was how pissed off her
father would be if he touched her before they were legally married. Afterward,
it would be a moot point. Once they were husband and wife, she’d be his, flesh
of his flesh, cleaving only unto him, and Rob would no longer have any say in
the matter.

He slept fitfully, hyper-aware of the bright sunlight outside the
window, attuned to every move Paige made. Finally, after several hours, he fell
into a deep sleep. When he woke, the room was in total darkness. It took him a
moment to remember where he was, and when he rolled onto his side and reached
for her, Paige was gone.

His heart rate accelerated. Had she left him? Then the door opened
and she came through it, silhouetted in the light from the street lamp in the
parking lot. “Where’d you go?” he said.

“To that little convenience store across the street.” She turned
on a lamp, and he blinked at the sudden brightness. “I brought you a Pepsi and
a hot dog. It was the best I could do.”

“It’s great.” He stretched and groaned. “What time is it?”

“Almost eight-thirty. I didn’t know what time you wanted to be on
the road.”

“We probably should start early tonight. Put some miles behind
us.” He sat up, ran a hand through his hair, then took the food and drink she
proffered. She sat beside him on the bed, and they ate their evening meal while
he studied the road atlas he’d brought in from the truck. “Two more days,” he
said. “Two more days, and we should reach Las Vegas.”  She nodded somberly. Those
green eyes of hers were serious, but her face showed no fear. Paige was the
bravest person he knew, boldly unafraid of what lay ahead of her. Which was
ironic, considering that although this had been his idea, he was the one with
the shaky hands. Mikey leaned forward, found her lips, and gave her a gentle
kiss. She tasted of mustard and heaven. “You okay?” he said.

“Fantastic.”

He held her gaze for a few seconds and then leaned in for another,
longer kiss, one that set his blood pumping and affected other portions of his
anatomy as well. Before things could get out of hand, he broke it off. Said,
“You smell wonderful.”

“It’s the shampoo.”

“What shampoo?”

“In the bathroom. I took a shower while you were sleeping. It was
nothing to write home about, but the water’s hot, the towels are fluffy, and
the shampoo is out of this world.”

Following her lead, he took a shower. Then they packed what little
they’d brought in with them, checked out of the motel, and hit the highway. Traffic
was heavy for the first fifty miles. After that, it grew sparse, and he was
able to make good time. He turned on the radio, and Paige did her best to tune
in a local station, finally finding one that played Top 40 music. When they
reached the limit of its range and the signal grew fuzzy, she spun the dial
again and found another one. Mikey checked the rear-view mirror constantly as
he drove at a steady speed, rarely passing other vehicles. He didn’t want to
draw attention. The radio grew staticky again. By now, Paige was asleep,
slumped against the passenger door, her breathing deep and even. He reached
over, pushed a button, and the static silenced.

He’d been driving for six hours and had just passed an exit for
Elkhart, Indiana, when a car pulled up rapidly behind him. A moment later, blue
lights flashed. “Crap,” he muttered, pulling into the breakdown lane. “Paige,”
he said, shaking her, “wake up. We have company.”

She straightened and nervously met his eyes. His heart pounding
double-time, he watched in his side mirror as the officer, flashlight in hand,
got out of his car. The cop shone his light on Mikey’s license plate, then
walked up to his driver’s window. He rolled it down and said, “Evening,
officer.”

The cop look at him, at Paige. “Long way from home,” he said.

“I’m driving my cousin to her mother’s house in Nebraska,” he
said, shocked by how easily the lie tripped off his tongue.

The officer eyed him. Mikey stared back. “License and
registration,” the cop said.

Mikey took out his wallet, pulled his license, and handed it to
the cop. He leaned over Paige’s knees, opened the glove box, and took out his
registration. The cop trained his flashlight on both documents and studied them
carefully. Nodded and handed them back. “I pulled you over,” he said, “because
your right rear tail light’s out. The brake light’s working, so we’ll let it go
until morning. How much longer will you be on the road tonight?”

“Just a little longer,” Mikey said. “My uncle lives in Joliet.”

“Good. Get that bulb replaced tomorrow.”

“Will do.”

The cop pulled a pad from his pocket, wrote out a warning, and
passed it through the window. “In case you get stopped again,” he said. “You
both have a good night.”

As the cop walked back to his car, Mikey exchanged a wide-eyed
glance with Paige, and let out a hard breath.

“Holy shit,” he said, and shifted the truck back into gear. “That
was close.”

***

It was five a.m. when they rolled into Joliet. After the scare
with the cop, he wanted to be off the road well before daylight. By now, they’d
been gone for nearly thirty hours, and he imagined they’d left quite an uproar
behind them. He tried not to think about the people they’d let down, sneaking
away like this. People they both cared about, people who cared about them. His
parents. Her parents. Their kid sisters. Hell, even Leroy, as long as he was
counting.

They ate a cheap breakfast at a truck stop, got directions to a
nearby motel, and went to bed. Paige fell asleep almost immediately, but he lay
awake, his mind alive with images that wouldn’t go away. For the first time, he
recognized the seriousness of what they’d done. Paige was underage. If he chose
to, her father could press charges against him. It would be a hell of a thing
if he didn’t make it to Camp Pendleton on time because he was wasting away in a
jail cell in some hick town in the Midwest.

He finally slept, woke up around two, unrefreshed, his mind still
a jumble. He left Paige on the bed watching soap operas and went out to find an
auto parts store and a McDonald’s. While they were sleeping, it had snowed. Nothing
significant, just a couple of inches. Just enough to make the roads greasy and
sloppy. He returned an hour later with their lunch. They watched an afternoon
talk show while they ate. Then, she played her guitar softly while he opened
the road atlas and studied it some more.

At dusk, they were back on the road, his wipers working overtime
as passing trucks threw sand and slush all over his windshield. Paige was
deathly silent, and he wondered if she was having the same thoughts that were
badgering him. “Paige?” he said.

“What?”

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing? Are you having second
thoughts?”

She looked at him, but didn’t say anything for a long time. “It’s
not that. It’s just…I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

“Like what?”

“I guess I had all these romantic visions of what it would be like. 
Instead, I feel like a fugitive. Sleeping during the day, driving at night,
hiding from the world.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just scared. Let’s face it: You ran away from home,
and we’ve driven halfway across the country. By now, the cops are probably
looking for us. That traffic stop last night scared the hell out of me. It’s
not that I don’t want to be romantic. Because if you said the word, I’d
probably cave. But we’re already in enough trouble. I just thought it would be
better if we waited till our wedding night. If he caught us together, your dad
would crucify me, and I’d like to keep my hide intact.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You’re scared of my dad?”

“A week ago, I would’ve said no. But now, yeah. I could see him
ripping me to shreds with his bare hands.”

She snorted. “If you only knew what a marshmallow he is.”

“I don’t know; I’ve heard him lose his temper a time or two, and
it wasn’t pretty.”

“It’s all window dressing. Casey calls him an Irish drama queen. That
about fits.”

“You really like your dad, don’t you?”

“I do. Things were rough at first, because I’d resented him all my
life. Mom lied to me. I don’t know why she did it, but it’s the truth. Dad
never knew about me until she died. It took me some time to get past the
resentment and see the truth.”

“There’s something else that concerns me.” His palms were sticky
against the steering wheel. “If we did, um…you know…what if you got pregnant? I
don’t know about you, but I’m sure as hell not ready for fatherhood.”

“You do realize that’s why they make birth control?”

“You’re not on birth control.” He considered the possibility. “Are
you?”

“Are you implying I’ve had some reason to be on birth control?”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant we should take care of
that ahead of time. We don’t want any accidents.”

“Would it really be that awful if I got pregnant?”

“Jesus, Paige. We’re too young to be parents. It would be nice if
you at least finished high school first.”

“Maybe if we’re too young to be parents, we’re too young to get
married!” She turned away from him, her shoulders stiff as she stared out the
window into the darkness beyond.

“Come on, Paige. Don’t be this way.”

“I’m not feeling very warm and fuzzy toward you at the moment.”

“Look, if we put enough miles behind us tonight, we can make it to
Vegas in one more night of driving. We’ll get married at one of those little
chapels, we’ll find a decent hotel, and we’ll have a wedding night to remember
for the rest of our lives.”

She continued staring out the window. He sighed, and punched the
button to play the radio. When he found nothing but static, he punched it back
off.

And in a strained silence, they drove on through the night.

They were somewhere west of Omaha when the truck quit. Just up and
quit, without giving a two-week notice. Engine silenced, power steering gone,
power brakes virtually useless, every idiot light on the dash flashing crimson.
With every ounce of strength he possessed, Mikey wrangled the F-150 into the
breakdown lane. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen this coming; he’d known for
some time that this would be the truck’s last cross-country trip. He’d barely
made it home from Stanford as it was. The Beast was old and tired, and deserved
to be put out to pasture. But he’d counted on it getting them to Camp Pendleton,
where he’d planned to sell it for junk, and as he rolled to a stop, his heart
sank. This was bad. Really bad. Not only were he and Paige stuck here at two in
the morning, in the breakdown lane next to a cornfield somewhere in the
nation’s Heartland, but he had places he needed to go. Deadlines he couldn’t
miss.

This wasn’t just bad. It was disastrous.

***

While Paige sat in the diner across the street from where they’d
towed his truck, he talked to the mechanic. The news wasn’t good.

“You have a blown head gasket,” the guy said. “Your oil’s got
water in it. It’s a miracle your engine didn’t seize.”

“How much to fix it?”

The guy considered. “Oh, probably five or six to replace the
gasket.”

“Hundred?”

“There’s a lot of labor involved.”

He didn’t have that kind of money to spend on a decrepit Ford pick-up.
He didn’t have that kind of money, period. It would be a miracle if they made
it to Camp Pendleton at all.

“There’s more,” the guy said. “I looked it over pretty good. Your
frame’s shot. Rusted all to hell. There’s no way it’s ever gonna take another
sticker.”

“So you’re telling me the truck’s toast.”

“That’s what I’m telling you. If you want to sell it for parts, I
could probably give you a hundred for it. Nobody’ll give you any more than
that.”

His funds were almost gone. The tow, after they’d sat for three
hours by the side of the highway, had cost him thirty-five dollars he hadn’t
planned on. Now, they had to find a place to spend the night while they figured
out their next move. If he sold the truck, that would help, but he had no idea
how, unless they hitch-hiked, they were supposed to make it from Nebraska to
California.

License plates and registration in hand, he returned to the diner,
his heart heavy but his wallet fatter by a hundred dollars. Paige sat there and
watched him walk toward her. She took in his dejected expression, the license
plates in his hand, and said in an odd, tight voice, “End of the line?”