“I thought you needed a ride?” Gil called after him. “If you can wait just a few minutes—”
He couldn’t wait. He burst out the door, expecting to hear sirens in the distance. Breathing in the fresh, cool air, he turned left and began walking toward the car rental agency.
All of the rental places were along a frontage road not far from the airport. He kept walking, checking behind him every few minutes. He was limping a little, the bad knee, as he listened for the crunch of gravel behind him. He was that sure that a patrol car would be pulling up any minute.
He’d thought he was being so smart renting the motor home. But he’d seen Gil’s expression when he’d seen evidence of the violence that had destroyed the bedroom door. Fortunately, Gil hadn’t noticed where the duct tape had taken the paint off the bed frame.
At the car rental agency, Herb stopped and looked behind him. Cars whizzed past. No cop cars. He hurriedly stepped inside, closing the door, and took a deep breath, trying to quiet his pounding pulse. At this place at least the air conditioning was working, he thought as he moved to the counter.
Had he cleaned up any evidence he might have left in the motor home? That was the question that nagged at him as he again filled out paperwork and produced a credit card and Arizona driver’s license.
It wasn’t that he worried about being caught. He knew that was going to happen soon enough. He just couldn’t get caught until he’d fulfilled his promise to his wife of fifty-two years.
The paperwork took just enough time that he was sweating profusely even in the air-conditioned building. But eventually, he walked out with the keys to a white panel van. The clerk had asked him if he was moving.
“Getting rid of a few things,” he’d said.
Once behind the wheel, he drove down the highway to the small coffee shop where he’d left his wife. Dorie was sitting by the window, staring down into her coffee cup as he pulled up. He hit the horn twice. For a moment he thought she hadn’t heard.
Then slowly, she raised her head. He figured the sun was glinting off the windshield because it took her a minute to recognize him before she smiled. He was used to her slack-jawed empty stare. Just as he was her confused frowns. Often it was hard to get her attention.
While those times felt like a knife to his chest after all these years together, it was her gentle, sweet smile that was his undoing. In that smile he saw the accumulation of both her pain and his. Their loss was so great they no longer cared what happened to either of them.
Dorie rose slowly from the table inside the coffee shop. As she lifted her head, she changed before his eyes. He saw the young woman she’d been the first time he’d seen her. She didn’t look frail. She didn’t look like a woman who was dying. He knew all that was keeping her alive was the promise he’d made her.
A part of him had thought Dorie might not be strong enough to go on. He’d told her he would go alone, but she’d insisted that like him, she would see this through. Dorie climbed into the van without looking at him. Instead, she noticed something on her sleeve. As if sleepwalking, she picked a long, dark hair off her sweater and held it up to study it for a moment, her face grim, before she whirred down her window and threw it away.
Finally, she turned to him. “Can you find her again?”
He nodded, knowing that he would go to the ends of the earth for this woman he’d spent the better part of his life with. “I’ll find her.”
Dorie reached over and placed her small, age-spotted hand on his arm for a moment before she looked toward the mountains, that distant stare returning to her beautiful eyes as she absently ran her fingers down the sleeve of her sweater as if looking for another strand of Natalie Berkshire’s dark hair.
Chapter Seven
The light was dim inside the bar. At this hour, the place was packed. Mo stood just inside the door, letting her eyes adjust as she did a quick scan for Natalie. She didn’t see her. Behind her, Brick came into the bar, closing the door and the afternoon out. “There’s a motorcycle beside the bar. It looks like the one she stole from the hospital parking lot.”
Mo nodded. “I’ll check the restroom. If you see her—”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let her get away.”
Mo headed for the ladies’ room, the smell of beer and nachos seeming to follow her. Her stomach growled and she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had something to eat. Brick had broken her out of jail before she’d been fed.
Pushing open the bathroom door, she saw two women at the sinks. One was putting on lipstick, the other drying her hands and talking a mile a minute about some guy she’d met at the bar. Three of the stalls’ doors stood open. Two were closed.
As Mo started toward the closed doors, one came open and a dark-haired woman stepped out in a red shirt. For a split second, Mo thought it was Natalie, but then the woman turned. She moved past and took the stall next to the one with the closed door.
Bending down, she glanced under the neighboring stall. No nurse’s Crocs, but that didn’t mean that Natalie hadn’t changed into the fairly new-looking sneakers in the stall next door. She’d had plenty of time to find a change of footwear.
Mo sat down on the toilet fully clothed and waited. The talkative woman at the sink left with her friend. She could hear water running, then the grind of the paper towel machine. The bathroom door made a whooshing sound and the room fell silent.
Next to her, the woman
