Every Precious Thing (26 page)

Diana closed her eyes and massaged her right temple. When she opened them again, she gave her brother a halfhearted smile. “It doesn’t matter what we think. It’s up to Sara. But if it were my call, I’d probably say we have no choice.”

“To get out of here,” Richard stated.

She shook her head. “No.”

“But—”

“Richard, our family is bigger than the three of us now. Remember that. There’s Emily and Alan, too.”

He grimaced. “Alan’s not—”

“Yes, he is,” Sara said. “He’s my husband. Your brother-in-law.”

She stared at Richard, challenging him to contradict her. As much as he looked like he wanted to, he didn’t.

“So?” Logan asked.

“Yes,” Sara said.

Logan nodded. “Give me a minute.” He got out of the car and stepped over to the El Camino.

Dev rolled down the window. “Well?”

“Follow us out of here,” Logan told him. “Once you’re on the interstate, I want you to push it, go as fast as you dare. If you get pulled over, that’s fine. But if you don’t, you’ll be able to get there fast. We’ll be coming behind you, but will stay at traffic speed. I can’t afford to have us both delayed by cops. Here.” He handed Dev a piece of paper with a number on it. “That’s Barney’s cell. Call him, and tell him and Pep to be ready to leave in the next thirty minutes. Tell them I’ll call when it’s time. I’m going to keep tabs with Ruth. If possible, I want to time things so that Pep and Barney get on the road just ahead of the doctor and her people. She’ll probably be traveling pretty fast and will overtake them at some point. When that happens, they need to try to stay with her.”

“Pep should drive.”

“I agree,” Logan said. “If they’ve forced my father to tell them where Alan is, they’ll be heading straight to Riverside. We’ll know that soon enough. Callie’s getting Alan and Emily out of town as we speak, which means the house will be empty. I’m hoping we can trap the woman there, and get my dad away from her.”

“And then what? Call the police?”

Logan looked back at the Grand Prix. “If I can convince them of that.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-T
HREE

H
ARP KEPT HIS
eyes closed, hoping the others would think he was asleep. It wasn’t that he had some elaborate plan for escape. That was something his son might think up, not him. He just didn’t want to talk anymore.

It wasn’t fair. He was a nearly eighty-year-old man, whose son was the only family he had left. Once threats were made about Logan, Harp hadn’t stood a chance, and he’d talked. He hated himself for it, but what else could he do? He couldn’t run. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t call anyone even if they hadn’t taken his phone away.

Harp could hear other vehicles entering and leaving the truck stop. Most sounded like regular, family-sized cars, but every so often there were low rumbles and vibrations of big rigs pulling in to fill up.

Once he’d tried to signal a passerby, but his interrogator had simply reached over and slapped his hand down. If he tried again, he was pretty sure he’d get more than a slap.

As soon as they had stopped, the driver had made a call, told the person on the other end their location, and hung up. The two men then took turns going into the station to use the facilities. Harp, though, was not offered the same opportunity.

Finally, his mind started to drift. His body, on edge since the moment he’d been taken, felt suddenly drained and useless. If he were lucky, soon he wouldn’t just be pretending to sleep.

A phone rang, loud and jarring.

Harp’s eyes sprang open, his breath catching in his throat, as whatever adrenaline he had left shot through his system.

“Hello?” the driver said into his cell. He listened, nodding, and hung up without saying anything else.

“Well?” the man in back asked. He was the one who’d introduced himself as Leon Clausen at the hospital cafeteria.

“Almost.”

They fell into silence again.

Almost what?
Harp wondered.

He didn’t have long to wait for his answer. Only a few minutes went by before a gray sedan with a blonde woman behind the wheel pulled up next to theirs and stopped.

“We’re switching to the other car,” Clausen said to Harp. “Don’t do anything dumb.”

Dumb was getting out of bed that morning. Dumb was offering to get water for Pep by himself. Dumb was telling the men where Alan and Emily lived. Trying to get away from men with guns would be colossally idiotic.

Harp moved over into the gray sedan without a fight. The man who’d been driving took over the same duties in the new vehicle, and soon they were back on the interstate.

Once they had settled into a steady speed, the woman twisted around in the front passenger seat and looked at Harp, studying him.

“I see the resemblance,” she said. “Your son has your eyes, and your…ears, I think.” Her smile sent a chill through Harp. “But I’m glad to hear his stubbornness didn’t come from you.”

Harp said nothing.

“I advise you to continue to be cooperative, Mr. Harper. If I get the feeling that you’re not, you become unnecessary, and I don’t keep anything unnecessary around.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-F
OUR

D
R. PASKOTA AND
her men had over a two-hour lead on Logan and the others. They might be able to close the gap some, but it wouldn’t be by much. The question was, would the woman blaze into Riverside and go straight after Alan and Emily? Or would she take a little time to evaluate the situation first?

That really depended on why the woman was after the girl.

“If I’m going to help you,
really
help you, then you need to tell me exactly what’s going on,” he said.

“No,” Richard said. “All you need to know is that those people are trying to hurt my sister and her family. That’s it. That’s all you need. That’s all you get.”

“Those people also happen to have my father. He’s not a young man. There’s not a lot he can do to protect himself. I
need
to know what’s going on!”

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Richard shot back. “But I don’t give a shit. If you hadn’t come nosing around in the first place, he wouldn’t be in trouble.”

All Logan had to do was grab the back of Richard’s head and slam it into the steering wheel. That would be that. Of course, they’d all be dead, but at least he’d have a little satisfaction.

His hands remained at his side.

“I’m going to ignore that last part, because I know you’re trying to protect your sister. That’s admirable. I also know that you’re not very smart. There’s nothing you can do about that.”

Richard’s face balled up into a reddening mass of fury. “You son of a—”

“Richard!” Diana yelled. “Just drive!”

“I’m pulling over and we’re kicking him out.”

“No, we’re not,” she said. “Keep going.”

“Go to hell, Diana! Sometimes
I’m
right. Sometimes we do what
I
say!”

“Richard,” Sara said, her voice calmer than the others. “Logan’s right. We all know you’re doing your best to help me. I love you more for that than I can ever express. But Logan’s not the problem here.” She pointed out the front window at some imaginary point in the distance. “She is. Logan’s involved in this now whether you want him to be or not. Which means he needs to know the truth. Please. Keep driving.”

A whole minute passed, then two, as if the air in the car needed to calm first before anyone spoke. Then Sara started talking.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-F
IVE

“D
IANA AND RICHARD
had it harder than me,” Sara said.

Diana shook her head. “That’s not true.”

“It is. We all had the same mother, but Diana and Richard had a different father than me. Didn’t really matter, though. Their dad, my dad, neither of them stuck around. Mom was…not picky, you know what I mean? There were different men all the time.”

“Until Jerry,” Diana said.

“Yeah,” Sara agreed.

When neither of them said anything more, Logan asked, “What happened?”

“Richard and I came home from school one day,” Diana said, picking up the story. “Sara was four at the time, and was sitting in the living room watching TV. That usually meant Mom was busy with one of her boyfriends in back, but when I went to my room, I noticed her door was open, and she was stretched across the bed. There was something odd on her pillow, so I tiptoed in to see it, thinking she was asleep.” Diana paused. “It was blood, and there was more on the sheets. Her face was bruised and swollen. Turned out Jerry beat her into a coma at some point during the day, then gave Sara a sandwich, put her in front of the TV, and left. They caught him a week later. Mom never came out of the coma. She lasted three months before she died, and six weeks after that Jerry went to prison.”

Sara said, “We were sent to live with our aunt and uncle in Iowa. Unfortunately, they weren’t particularly big fans of our mom. They tolerated us at best. Diana and Aunt Jill didn’t see eye to eye at all, so Diana left when she was a junior in high school. Richard and I both made it through our senior years before we got out.”

“I knew they weren’t going to help me out when I left,” Diana said, “but I thought they’d give Richard or at least Sara a hand. But no, once they were out of high school, it was out the door, have a good life. Which meant the only thing we had was the only thing we’d always had—each other.

“I was bartending before I could even legally drink. My bosses didn’t know that, but a job’s a job. When Richard moved out, I’d get him work bussing tables, sometimes security, that kind of thing. I did the same for Sara—waitress, hostess, whatever. It always killed me, though. Sara’s the smartest of us. She should have gone to college. Of the three of us, she’s the one who could make something of her life.”

“She’s giving me too much credit,” Sara said. “Diana’s the smart one. I always wanted to be like her.”

Diana reached out and squeezed her sister’s hand. “Shut up,” she said, smiling.

“It’s true.”

“Anyway,” Diana said. “I kept looking for ways for Sara to get a better life. I was constantly checking online for something that might get her on the right track. My dream was finding her a job that might even pay for her education at some point. Anything better than where she was would have been great, you know?”

Logan nodded, sympathizing with Diana’s desire to help her sister.

“Three years ago I spotted something that I thought would be perfect. It wasn’t a job, per se, but the money she could have gotten would have paid for college. The ad said accepted applicants could earn up to fifty thousand dollars and continue working at their current job. All Sara had to do was…”

“Get pregnant,” Logan said, already knowing the answer.

Diana nodded.

“I didn’t want to do it at first,” Sara told him. “A child growing in my body? How was I supposed to give that up? I was told the baby wouldn’t be related to me, that I’d just be a surrogate, but it just seemed wrong.”

“I talked her into applying anyway,” Diana jumped in. “I told her she could back out whenever she wanted, but to at least hear what they had to say, and find out how much she could make. I even took her to the interview.”

“From the moment we walked in,” Sara explained, “the nurses and the staff were so nice, so concerned about…me. Even when Dr. Paskota came in, she seemed—”

“Hold on,” Logan said. “Dr. Paskota?”

Sara looked at him. “It’s her, isn’t it? In the other car? The woman?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes and looked like she was fighting off a wave of pain.

“Are you sure?” Diana asked him.

“It’s what the others called her. When I did, too, she didn’t correct me.”

“I knew it,” Sara said, her eyes still closed.

“Maybe…maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Diana said.

“No,” Sara said, looking at her sister now. “It was going to happen at some point.”

“We could still run.”

“But Emily…”

“We get her, then disappear. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.”

“I can’t keep running.”

For several seconds, there was only the sound of the tires on the road.

Sara turned back to Logan. “We ended up spending four hours at the clinic that first day. When we were done, the doctor had answered most of my concerns, and had actually made me feel good about the process. I mean, I was possibly going to help a couple who couldn’t have kids on their own become parents. That was actually pretty cool. While I was there, they ran a few tests, and told me they’d call me later to let me know how much I would be paid if I chose to sign up.”

“I assume they called,” Logan said.

She nodded. “That evening. They said I was in particularly good health, and that I fit a specific profile one of their clients had been looking for. The offer was for sixty-five thousand dollars. A month or two prep before the pregnancy, the pregnancy itself, and the birth. That was it.
Sixty-five thousand dollars
for maybe eleven months total,
and
I could still work.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” Diana said in a low voice, as if she were caught in the memory. “It was more than we could have hoped for. Sara could use that money to go to school and get a degree. She was going to do something better. Exactly what I’d wanted.”

“Something obviously wasn’t right, or we wouldn’t be here,” Logan said.

“Everything went fine until the fifth month,” Sara explained. “I was visiting Dr. Paskota. She told me an irregularity had popped up on one of the tests. Nothing to be worried about, but she wanted to do an amniocentesis as a precaution.”

Diana said, “Sara was worried about the baby, but I was worried about the money. She’d only get a small portion if something happened with the pregnancy. I don’t mean that to sound cold-blooded, but Sara was my concern.”