“You’ve made her into a monster with powers that don’t exist.”
She scoffed at that. “This woman’s greatest advantage is that she doesn’t look or act the part. It’s her strongest defense and most dangerous attribute.” She pulled out the folded note he’d found on his pickup’s windshield. “You think I don’t want to find out if this is true? You think I don’t want to believe that my sister didn’t take her own life?”
“Why would Natalie lie?” Brick asked.
“It’s nothing but a distraction. So instead of going after Natalie, I chase my sister’s death only to find out it was all a lie. But by then, Natalie is long gone. She’s living in someone else’s house, taking care of a patient for a family who has no idea what horror has walked through their door.” She pushed past him. “We need to get moving.”
MO FELT CLOSE to tears. She couldn’t help being upset. She hated hurting Thomas more than he was already suffering. Add that to her disappointment. They’d come so close to catching Natalie. She could feel the note in her pocket, the words burned into her brain. Tricia was having an affair. She didn’t want to believe it. Just as she didn’t want to believe any of this was happening.
And yet, it was happening. It had happened. What if Tricia really did have another man in her life? Did that really change anything? Unless it was true and Tricia hadn’t taken her own life. All Mo could think was, why hadn’t she known? She and Tricia used to be so close. How had she not known what was going on with her own sister?
“Where to now?” Brick asked as they climbed into the pickup cab again and he started the engine.
She pulled out her phone to call up a map and tried to get her emotions under control. Thomas’s phone call had gutted her. She kept thinking of the wedding. Her sister had been so happy. The two had been in love since college. Everyone said they made the perfect couple. But after trying so many times to have a child and failing... Is that when everything changed?
“Take 287 north,” she said to Brick and pocketed her phone. “We’ll watch the truck stops, the convenience stores.” In truth, she had no idea what Natalie would do now. “She’ll be wanting to get rid of the vehicle she’s driving.”
“While you were on the phone, I spoke to one of the neighbors. He said she left in a hurry, driving a tan older model two-wheel-drive pickup, so she’s already dumped the car she stole in Big Sky,” Brick said.
She looked over at him. “Nice work.”
“This one sounds like it might have been cheap enough that she bought it with the money she’s stolen so far.”
Mo nodded. “I suspect Natalie’s been living on the run for a long time, afraid to stay anywhere for too long. She’s at the point now that she’ll do whatever she has to do to survive.” A part of Mo felt that way, as well. She’d given up everything—her job, the life she’d made for herself, her savings—to find this woman.
What am I doing? Chasing a possible killer and if so, when and how would it end? She feared the answer.
FROM DOWN THE STREET, private investigator Jim Cameron slid down behind the wheel as he watched the two climb into the pickup. He held the phone tighter to his ear.
“I’m looking at them as we speak,” he said into the phone. “The female cop and the deputy marshal.”
“Did they find Natalie?”
“No. Apparently she went out the back before I got here.”
“Stay on it. This has to end.”
He thought about the elderly couple that had cruised by in a sedan earlier—before the cop and the deputy had arrived. He’d noticed the way they’d stared at the three-story house.
“There’s this old couple,” Jim said. “I’ve seen them too many times and they drove by, both of them staring at the house.”
“I’m not worried about some old couple. Stay on the cop and the deputy. Make sure they don’t find Natalie first.”
Jim shook his head. As many people as there appeared to be after this woman, himself included, none of them had gotten their hands on her except for whoever had abducted her in Big Sky. And the woman in question had managed to escape.
“Keep me informed.” The line went dead.
Jim disconnected and sat up a little. The cop and the deputy had been sitting in his pickup unmoving so far. This had seemed like a simple enough job when he’d taken it on. If he wasn’t getting paid so well...
He tried not to question what exactly was going on. It seemed to him that Natalie Berkshire was doing her best to crawl into a hole and stay there. Why roust her out? Why keep forcing her to run? Why not let her land somewhere and then throw a net over her?
The pickup with the cop and deputy was moving again. He waited a few moments before he fell in behind it.
BRICK DROVE THROUGH the residential area toward the center of town. Mo was lost in her own thoughts. What would Natalie do now? Run! What choice did she have? This time, she might run farther and be harder to find.
They were almost to the main drag in town when Mo saw the lights of police cars and what appeared to be a wreck in the middle of the intersection. As they drew closer, an officer waved him around the two-vehicle accident. She saw that a sedan had been involved—and a tan older model two-wheel-drive pickup.
“Isn’t that the couple we saw eating the ice cream cones last evening?” Mo asked as he started to drive past the couple the police were talking with.
“Maybe, but that definitely looks like the description of the pickup Natalie was driving,” Brick said.
“Stop.” Mo threw her door open and she was out,
