Time to Run (5 page)

Following intensive questioning, first at the park, then at the police station, Stan had followed Captain Garret home to get more recent photos than those he carried in his wallet. It was taking the man an inordinate amount of time.

Stan got up and paced. The carpet under his feet kept his footfalls silent. He circled the room, making note of the impersonal wall art.

He read through the diplomas declaring Captain Garret an honor's graduate from Harvard University and the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary. The man was definitely an overachiever, and given the dust-free surfaces in his study, not to mention the starch in his golf shirt, he was also a perfectionist.

All of which led Stan to wonder if Sara Garret didn't secretly long for a more carefree existence than that of a housewife living the all-American dream.

"Sorry that I took so long," Captain Garret said, startling Stan from his contemplations. "I'm not sure what Sara did with the rest of the photo albums. This is the best I can offer."

Stan cast a jaundiced eye at the two photos. "When was this picture taken?" he asked, studying the one of the boy first.

"I believe he was eight, then."

"And he's ten now? Don't you have any school pictures hanging on the walls?"

Captain Garret looked muddled. "No, I... perhaps Sara took them to work with her."

She volunteered as an English tutor at the Norfolk Refugee Center. Stan made a note to check there Monday morning. He glanced at the second photograph, the one of Mrs. Garret. It was blurry. Not only that, but it captured a woman with indistinct features, medium brown hair, and baggy clothing. "And this is the only picture you could find of your wife," Stan marveled.

"She's the self-effacing sort," Garret explained. "She doesn't like to have her photo taken."

Stan could see that. She didn't look like the type to abduct her son, either. "These will have to do," he decided, sliding them into his breast pocket. "I'll need to run if I'm going to get these into the Sunday paper."

"Then you're issuing an Amber Alert," Garret guessed with a look of relief.

"Yes," Stan decided. "We can't rule out the stranger at this point."

"Thank you," Garret replied, with a hitch in his voice.

Normally Stan was moved to pat the shoulder of a distraught parent, but something about this father—his extreme height, perhaps—kept him from being that demonstrative. "By dawn, the search for your wife and son will go regional, and from there, national," he comforted.

"Do you think you'll find them?"

Stan didn't want to raise the man's hopes too high. "It really depends on the identity and motivation of their abductor. You have no idea who the bearded stranger might be?" It was the tenth time he'd asked that night.

"No," Garret said, tiredly. "I have no idea."

"Well, then." Stan offered him a grimace and a nod. "We'll be in touch in the morning. Let us know if you hear anything on this end."

Garret escorted him through the marble foyer and out to his car. When Stan pulled away, speeding to deliver the photos to the press, a glimpse in the rearview mirror showed Garret still standing on the curb, looking forlorn.

Chase awoke as the first hint of sunlight framed the motel curtains. He swung his feet to the floor, beset by the instinct to keep moving. But the two dark lumps in the bed next to his were sleeping peacefully—at last. He'd heard Sara toss and turn late into the night. He didn't have the heart to wake her.

He dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, put on his running shoes, and brushed his teeth. Jesse wagged his tail as Chase scooped up his leash.
Go for a run, boy?

It could be Chase's imagination that had him thinking that Garret was dogging his heels. The best way to find out would be to pick up a morning newspaper. He'd do that and squeeze in a run at the same time.

Grabbing money and the room key, Chase let himself out into the cool mountain air. The hills were bathed in dawn's first rays. They brightened by degrees as the sun climbed higher.

"Hup," Chase said to Jesse, and they took off across the parking lot, setting a strong, steady pace that helped relieve some of Chase's tension.

He'd never put his career on the line for anyone before. It had to be his dislike of Captain Garret that made him do it. The man's arrogance at last year's court-martial had made Chase envision a humiliating defeat for the prosecution—not that vengeance had ever been a motivating factor for him.

The sky warmed to the color of butter as Chase cut across a grassy knoll, urging Jesse to cross a quiet intersection. Arriving at the Super K, he fed the newspaper machine seventy-five cents and whipped out a paper. Shaking it open, his gaze fell to the article emblazoned across the lower portion of the front page, and his heartbeat faltered.

AMBER ALERT ISSUED FOR KENDAL GARRET. Below that were three pictures: One of Kendal, one of Sara, and a composite sketch of their kidnapper.
Oh, fuck.

Chase angled the paper so that the sun illumined it fully. "Jesse, sit," he ordered, as the dog snuffled out a piece of trash.

He read the article once quickly, then again more carefully. The sweat he hadn't managed to break on his run poured from him belatedly, coursing down his back in rivulets.

Son of a bitch!
A statewide search was under way for Kendal Garret and his mother Sara, both of whom were believed to have been kidnapped at Seashore State Park yesterday afternoon by a bearded stranger.

With a scowl, Chase assessed the composite sketch of himself. The one witness to the abduction, the fisherman on the pier, had remembered Chase as having a full beard, like the one he'd grown for his mission to Malaysia. With the bill of his cap pulled so low, his features, thankfully, hadn't been clear.

Even Kendal's picture wasn't the best representation of him. It'd been taken a while ago, and his hair had been even longer than it was yesterday before Chase cut it.

As for Sara, her photo captured a woman with drab, shoulder-length hair, unremarkable features, and baggy clothing.

There was hope, yet.

So what if a statewide search was under way for them? Chase had been in tighter situations and come out on top. He didn't need to panic, necessarily. What he did need to do was to get the hell out of Virginia.

"Come on, Jess," he called, leaving the paper for someone else to pick up. He wasn't about to send Sara into panic mode by telling her what kind of publicity her disappearing act was generating.

With Jesse at his heels, he sprinted back to the motel. Pausing at the door, he took five seconds to slow his breathing, opened the door, and let the sunlight pour in. "Time to get up," he said brusquely.

Both of them jumped like squirrels on a high-voltage wire.

"Sorry," he apologized, taking in Sara's wild-eyed disorientation. "But we need to go."

She threw back the covers, offering instructions to her son as she gathered up her new clothes and scurried into the bathroom.

Chase and Kendal waited, wolfing down the donuts he'd bought last night.

"Save some for my mom," Kendal demanded, with knee-knocking bravado.

It was the first sentence he'd spoken directly to Chase. "She can have the rest," Chase assured him. Each one was the other's defender, he realized. It'd been the same with him and his mama.

Half an hour later, the dog was in the car, the car was running, but they were still waiting. "We have to
go
,"
Chase growled, knocking on the bathroom door.

"Okay, I'm done." And there she was, brushing past him in her new clothes. "I'm sorry," she said, snatching up her backpack. She was out the door without even looking at him.

Chase followed with his eyes glued to her legs.
Holy
...
fuck.
She had legs. Gorgeous, soft-looking legs that went all the way from her trim ankles up to the hem of the shorts that barely covered her cute-as-hell ass.

"Mom, you look like a girl," Kendal said, in accents of disgust.

Woman,
Chase corrected mentally. She was all woman from the rear. He hurried to overtake her, dying of curiosity to see how she looked from the front. The first thing he saw was cleavage. The pale yellow T-shirt not only revealed ample breasts but, thanks to the hip-hugging shorts, it exposed her belly button and subtly curving hips, as well. No wonder she'd taken so long to come out of the bathroom. She'd have to work up her courage, first.

He opened the car door, which gave him time to assess her transformation. The spunky haircut, makeup, and clothing made her look ten years younger. The only thing missing was a belly button ring.

She glanced at him uncomfortably as she took her seat. Her eyes had been merely extraordinary before. Accentuated by eyeliner, shadow, and mascara, they were a punch in the gut.

Feeling dazed, Chase rounded the vehicle to slip in behind the wheel.
Focus,
he commanded himself, pulling them out of the parking lot. He needed to find Route 11 West, which would put them on a less-traveled roadway crossing into Tennessee.

But even as he merged into traffic, hunting for road signs, his gaze strayed toward Sara's thighs, her waist, breasts, face. She was so unexpectedly appealing that he had to lecture himself not to get any more involved in her life than he already was.

"Aren't we going to the Super K?" she asked him, as they roared right past it.

"Not this morning," he retorted curtly.
Hell, no, not with Kendal's picture on the front page of the newspaper.
"We'll stop in Tennessee somewhere," he added on a gentler note.

His curt tone rendered her silent. She stared out the window at the hills, quilted in autumn colors. "Look at the stream, Kendal," she said, and Kendal put his chin on the back of her seat to admire the stream that ran alongside the roadway.

Chase considered explaining his haste. How would Sara react to knowing that her escape was in the public eye, and he'd been cast into the role of kidnapper?

Glancing her way, he was struck by how long and graceful her neck was. She sat with her palms on her thighs, trying in vain to cover them. She looked so vulnerable eyeing the horizon for peace of mind that he bit the words back.

She didn't need to know. Why scare her more than she was already scared?

Ten minutes down Route 11, Chase cursed his luck.

It can't be,
he told himself, scanning the area for a quick exit. But there wasn't one, and it was.

He swallowed a lurid curse, knowing that the worst thing he could do was to alarm Sara or her son.

Too late, she'd already seen the blue lights flashing up ahead. "It's a roadblock," she croaked, bracing herself as if they were going to crash straight through it.

"Breathe," he replied, using the voice he used on junior SEALs when coaxing them out of the plane on their first nighttime HALO jump. "The worst thing you can do is to show fear. Kendal, I want you to pretend you're sleeping. Turn your face away from me," he instructed. "Sara," he added, putting a hand on her knee because that was what he did with his men. "I want you to smile," he said, giving her a reassuring squeeze.

"Smile," she repeated, darting an unsettled look at his hand.

He wished he could keep it on her leg a little longer. Instead, he had to reach into his glove compartment for his registration, slowing at the same time behind the line of cars in front of him.

"They're looking for us, aren't they?" Sara inquired. She was pale and trembling, not at all the smiling companion he needed her to be.

He flipped down the visor in front of her. "Look in the mirror," he commanded. "What do you see? Is that Sara Garret?"

She stared at her reflection, swallowed heavily, and shook her head.
No.

"It's how you wear the concealment that counts," he added, easing them forward.

Sara drew a deep breath. To his surprise, she propped a sandaled foot up on the dashboard, leaned her head back against the headrest, and sent him a relaxed smile.

He caught himself staring. "Good," he muttered. He dragged his eyes forward again to assess the looks on the state troopers' faces as they bent to address the vehicles ahead of them. "Let me do the talking," he added, fishing his wallet from his back pocket.

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.