Every Precious Thing (7 page)

Footsteps moved toward the back of the building, quickly fading to nothing.

Pep ran after them. “No. Wait. Please, just tell me where she is. I need to—”

The board hit him square in the face, twisting him to the ground. Immediately, someone jumped onto his back, holding him down and hitting him in the ribs and head and kidneys. Stunned by the initial blow, he could do little to fight back.

“Stop looking for her,” a voice whispered in his ear as the world started to close in on him.

Then another blow, and another.

If the voice said anything more, Pep didn’t hear it.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

L
OGAN’S EYES SNAPPED
open.

His phone was vibrating loudly against the nightstand, smacking against the hard surface. At home, a small tablecloth covered his stand, dulling the noise. That was definitely not the case here. He might as well have turned the ringer on.

He snapped it up and tapped the A
CCEPT
button.

“Hello?”

“Sorry to wake you.” It was Dev.

Logan swung his feet off the bed, and glanced at the clock next to where the phone had been. It was 3:42 a.m. “What’s going on?”

“It’s Pep.”

Pep?
It took Logan a second, then he remembered—Pep, the man who Dev had arranged to check out Braden. “Did he find her?”

“He’s in the hospital.”

“Hospital? What happened?”

“I just got off the phone with a nurse a few minutes ago. Said Pep had asked her to call me. Apparently someone beat him up outside a bar. She tells me he wasn’t drunk. Pep, I mean. The other guy—they don’t know who he was.”

“Did you get a chance to talk to him?”

“No. But apparently he said he’d been showing a picture around.”

Sara’s picture.

“I’m heading out there, but it’s going to take me a good six hours at least,” Dev said.

The hotel where Logan, Harp, and Barney were now staying was in Laguna Beach. At this time of night, they could probably reach Braden in about half the time.

“We’ll meet you there,” Logan said.

__________

B
Y THE TIME
Logan was able to get Harp and Barney up and out the door, it was after four, so they didn’t reach Braden until a quarter after seven. Even at that early hour, it was easy to tell the day was going to be a scorcher. Already the temperature was north of ninety-five degrees.

As they drove into town, they caught a glimpse of the Colorado River to the east, its wide, blue stripe at odds with the brown landscape that surrounded it. The city limits sign listed the town’s population at 4,763. There was nothing gaudy or fancy about the place, just a working-class town full of people struggling to carve out an existence from one of the harshest environments on the planet. It wasn’t a place Logan would ever choose to live—not a judgment, just an observation.

Following the instructions from the GPS on his phone, they exited I-40 and made their way to the Braden City Medical Center. Like the town itself, it was small—three one-story structures connected by covered walkways. The buildings were made of tan concrete blocks, textured on the outside to give them a rough-hewn look, and were surrounded by low-impact desert landscaping.

The hospital’s lobby was about the size of Dunn Right’s garage back home. Behind a counter along the far wall were two nurses and an older woman who appeared to be the receptionist.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked as they walked up.

“Thank you, yes,” Logan said. “A friend of ours was brought in last night. Chris Pepper?”

Without even looking at her computer screen, she said, “Was he the one who was in that fight?”

“That’s what we understand.”

“We don’t approve of drunks in our town.”

“I was told he wasn’t drunk.”

She gave him a pitiful you-can’t-believe-everything-you-hear look. “He
was
near a bar.”

Logan forced a smile. “Is it possible to see him?”

She was shaking her head before he even finished. “You’ll have to come back. Visiting hours don’t begin until eight.”

He’d been afraid of that. “Is there at least a way to find out how he’s doing? We’ve driven for several hours to get here.”

Looking doubtful, she said, “Have a seat, and I’ll check.”

“Thank you.”

They found chairs not far away.

“I don’t like her attitude,” Harp said.

“Sometimes people get set in their ways,” Logan said. “Only see the things they want to see.”

Both Harp and Barney stared at him.

“Are you talking about
old
people?” Barney asked.

“We’re not the only ones who can get set in our ways,” Harp added.

Logan scoffed. “Did I say anything about old people?”

“It was implied,” his father argued.

A grunted laugh escaped Logan’s mouth. “Whatever you want to believe, Dad.”

Before anyone could say anything else, the door to the left of the reception counter opened, and a woman wearing a white doctor’s coat exited. She was short, with blonde hair and tired-looking eyes that Logan guessed meant she was closer to the end of her shift than the beginning. When she glanced at the receptionist, the older woman nodded toward Logan and the others.

“I understand you’re friends of Mr. Pepper’s, is that correct?” she asked as soon as she drew near.

All three stood.

“Yes,” Logan said.

She held out her hand. “I’m Dr. Ramey.”

“Logan Harper.” They shook. “This is my dad, Harp, and our friend, Barney Needham.”

“Barney’s a doctor, so don’t hold back,” Harp told her.

“Harp!” Barney said.

“Dad!” Logan chimed in at the same time.

“What?” Harp asked.

Logan took a breath, then said to the doctor, “How is he?”

“Better than when he came in. He’s got two broken ribs, a fractured cheek, numerous cuts and bruises. He definitely didn’t come out the winner.”

“What about the other guy?” Logan asked.

“As far as I know, the police are still looking for him.”

“Was he drunk?” Harp asked, his eyes flicking toward the receptionist.

She hesitated. “Typically, that would be confidential, but I don’t think it would be a problem to tell you he had no trace of alcohol or drugs in his blood.”

“So he
wasn’t
drunk,” Harp said.

“No. He wasn’t.”

Harp looked at the receptionist again, his eyes hard and narrow. “You should tell your staff that so they’ll stop making false accusations.”

The doctor looked back at the woman, sighed, and turned to Harp. “I’ll have someone talk to her.” Her tone made it sound like this wouldn’t be the first time.

“I know visiting hours aren’t for a while yet,” Logan said, “but is there any chance we can see him now? We came straight here the moment we arrived in town.”

Dr. Ramey considered it, then nodded. “Sure. For a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” Logan said.

“This way.”

As she led them to the door, the receptionist looked over with both surprise and disapproval. Harp stared back at her, then said in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear, “He wasn’t drunk.”

They passed examining rooms, a nurses’ station, and a lunchroom before turning down the hallway that served as the ICU. Dr. Ramey explained that while Pep’s life wasn’t in danger, it was still important to keep an eye on him in case there was any internal damage they hadn’t been able to diagnose. She asked them to wait a moment then went off to talk to one of the nurses.

When she returned, she said, “All right, he’s awake. Remember, not long.”

“We’ll remember,” Logan promised.

“On the other side of that curtain,” she said, pointing at one of the patient stalls lining the right side of the corridor.

Pep’s bed had been raised so that he wasn’t completely flat on his back. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and the other looked like it wanted to be. There was a bandage across his chin and another on his forehead above his left eyebrow. But even then, the look on his face was stoic, as if nothing had happened.

“Pep? I’m Logan Harper, Dev’s friend. How you feeling?”

“Mr. Harper. Kind of you to come by.” There was a dreamy, drug-induced quality to the man’s voice.

“I’m Harp.”

“And I’m Barney.”

The corners of Pep’s mouth turned up a fraction of an inch. “Hey.”

“Can you tell us what happened?” Harp asked.

“What happened when?”

Logan gave him a smile. “We hear you were in a fight.”

“Fight? Oh, yeah. You mean last night. Not sure you could call it that. A fight takes two people. As far as I can remember, I was only a spectator. Or the punching bag. I guess that would be more accurate, huh?”

“Did you see him?”

“If I did, I don’t remember.”

“Did he take anything?” Logan asked. “Was it a robbery?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t checked. The nurse says I still have a wallet, but my phone…” He seemed to lose focus.

“What about your phone?”

“It, uh, got broken in the fight.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

Pep concentrated for a moment. “Just that he knew where Sara was.”

“That’s it?”

Pep was quiet for a moment. “I…I’m not sure.”

Whatever drugs Pep had been given were clearly starting to affect him. “Can you tell us why you were there?”

“Getting my car.”

“Why was your car there?”

“Oh…uh…was showing the girl’s picture…around…at bars.”

“Any luck?” Harp asked.

Pep looked like he was going to say something, then his eyes fluttered, and he slipped out of consciousness.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

A
FTER WEEKS OF
silence, there were nights Sara would forget to bring the phone into the bedroom with her when she went to sleep. That’s why she didn’t hear it the first time it rang several hours before she woke.

When it rang the sixth time, she was still in bed but awake, feeling the weight of another day ahead of her. The sound had been faint, almost imperceptible, but after so long in the cabin, hearing all the noises the walls and the surrounding woods made, the ring was like a fire alarm.

She jumped out of bed, raced into the other room, and grabbed the phone off the couch, afraid she’d arrived too late.

“Hello?” she huffed. “Hello? Hello?”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“What do you mean? Here. Where else would I be?”

“I’ve been calling you for hours.”

“I…I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“Sara, you
have
to hear it.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll turn the volume up.”

There was a pause, then her caller said, “Things are happening.”

Sara tensed.

“You need to be ready in case you need to move in a hurry. You remember the escape route?”

Sara closed her eyes, her shoulders sagging at the inevitability of it all. She had hoped they’d succeeded, that she had made a clean disappearance. But…

“I remember,” she said.

“Good.”

Her caller hung up.

Sara stared at the wall. Just moments before she had been suffocating at the thought of living through another boring day of nothing. Now she would give anything for another one like that.

God only knew if she would ever have another quiet day.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

T
HEY FOUND ROOMS
at a place called the Desert Inn Motel, and spent most of the day either hanging out there or at the hospital, waiting for Pep to regain consciousness.

Dev arrived just before noon, but even his presence wasn’t enough for Pep to fight through whatever drugs the doctors had given him.

When visiting hours ended at eight, they drove back to the motel, ready to call it a night. Everyone but Logan.

“We’ll probably put on a movie, if you want to join us,” Harp said as they approached the room he and Barney were sharing next to Logan’s. Dev’s was downstairs, at the other end of the building.

Logan gave his dad a smile. It wasn’t hard to see from the heaviness of Harp’s eyelids and his lethargic pace that he wouldn’t make it to the end of whatever movie he and Barney were planning on watching.

“Thanks, Dad. Think I’ll pass.”

Harp nodded. “See you in the morning, then.”

They hugged.

“’Night, Logan,” Barney said, looking nearly as tired as Harp.

“’Night, Barney.”

The two older men went into their room, and Logan went into his.

That afternoon, he’d left the others at the hospital while he made a visit to the police station. The first thing he found out was that while the police were still dubious about Pep’s level of involvement in the fight, no charges had been filed because there were no witnesses, and they had no idea who Pep’s sparring partner had been.

The second thing was that Pep had been found on Thatcher Road, near some abandoned buildings, and about a block from a bar called The Hideaway. According to the cop he’d talked to, Pep had been leaning against the empty building, half conscious at best, when someone driving by had spotted him and stopped. The officer hadn’t given Logan the address, but he’d described the buildings as adjacent to some railroad tracks.

In his dad’s room next door, the TV went silent. Just to make sure there was no chance Harp or Barney would hear him, he waited for another hour before slipping out quietly.

Since Dev’s old Jeep Cherokee was large enough for all four of them, they’d earlier left the El Camino at the motel and used Dev’s SUV to shuttle to and from the hospital. Planning ahead, Logan had purposely parked his car far away from his dad’s room, so that as he started it up now, there was no way Harp would hear it.

Less than ten minutes later, Logan pulled to a stop on the other side of the street from the abandoned building Pep had been leaning against when he was found. The structure looked like it was one medium-sized earthquake away from tumbling to the ground, and the same could be said for the ones on either side of it, too. The only place that seemed to be in decent shape was The Hideaway. In fact, Logan was willing to bet it was the only building still in use on the street, its parking lot filled nearly to capacity, with another half dozen cars strung out along the road.