The horse almost nodded to him, and Ted headed down the aisle. He was about to turn left to leave the stables when he saw Ginger sitting on the low stool, feeding the foals. Surprise kicked through him. “Where’s Emma?”
Ginger looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. “She left for the weekend.”
“She did?” He looked down the aisle as if she were really standing at the sink, getting another bottle ready. Concern spiked through him.
“Yep,” Ginger said, obviously not concerned, though she didn’t hold his gaze for very long. “She has every second and fourth weekend off. But last week threw some things off.” She glanced up at Ted for a fraction of a second. “So she left this week.”
“Every second and fourth weekend? Where does she go?” He distinctly remembered her telling him she’d returned to the ranch in the middle of last week because she had nowhere to go.
“To see her family,” Ginger said, her voice slightly false. “She’s been doing it forever. Since the day she started.” She tugged on the bottle. “Come on, Ruby. It’s empty. Let it go.” She wrestled with the filly for another moment, finally succeeding in wrestling the bottle away from the horse. She stood up. “It was part of her contract when she started here. Every second and fourth weekend off.”
Ginger walked away, leaving Ted in her wake. Stunned, he could only stare after her. Ginger didn’t seem like this information was Earth-shattering, but to Ted, it was.
Something as routine as that…Emma had somewhere she was definitely going. So when she’d said she didn’t have anywhere to go, that wasn’t true.
He turned and left the stables, needing the open air to clear his thoughts. But they refused to clear, no matter how quickly he walked. He took the steps to the deck two at a time, and entered the Annex at six-twenty-five.
Nate came out of the hallway with his backpack. “I’ll come back and get yours while you shower.”
“I’ll be five minutes.”
“I know.” Nate had obviously already showered, and he carried his cowboy hat under one arm, because his hair was still damp. He wore a new pair of jeans, a spotless white polo, and a plain pair of sneakers. Since they’d have to dress down to go in, simpler was always better.
Ted hurried into the shower, letting his ranch clothes drop to the floor for once. No one was there to write him a ticket anyway.
Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what. No, Emma hadn’t always been truthful with him, but all he had to do was ask and he felt sure she’d tell him. They’d agreed to that, at least.
He joined Nate in his fancy truck with the heated and cooled seats, and said, “Ready.”
Nate pulled out of the garage at six-thirty-two, and Ted thought that was pretty dang good for what they’d done that morning.
Only five minutes down the road, a light bulb clicked on inside his brain.
“She’s not visiting family,” he blurted out.
“What?” Nate asked, and Ted looked at him with wide eyes.
Emma had told him that she “hardly ever” saw her family, so there was no way she was going to visit them every other weekend, for ten straight years.
So where was she going? And to see who?
Chapter Fourteen
Emma pulled up to the perfectly suburban house on the east side of San Antonio. It wasn’t where Fran and Matt lived with Missy, because Emma refused to take any chances with anyone following her.
She’d left the ranch on Friday night—late—instead of Saturday morning. That one deviation from what she normally did might throw off someone watching her. She’d always been a little paranoid when she came to see Missy, but nothing like this trip.
She’d driven to a bus station an hour away and parked. She sat in her car for twenty minutes just to see if any cars were trolling the lot, looking for her. Satisfied, she’d gone inside and slipped into the bathroom. After pulling up her hair and covering it with a cap, she’d changed her clothes and taken out the folded reusable shopping bag from her purse. She put all her stuff in that next, making herself someone different who’d gone in. She wanted anyone looking to think she’d just gotten off the midnight bus and was headed home after a long week of work.
She’d left the bus station a half an hour later and joined the cab line, where she’d taken a taxi to a faceless motel. She hadn’t seen a single person besides the man who’d given her the key, and in the morning, she’d walked the mile to pick up her rental car.
Then she’d made the drive north, where she’d exchanged the car for a different one after complaining that the engine had been making a funny noise. It hadn’t been, but she wanted a different car.
Now, she sat in that car—after driving around the city for a good two hours and checking her rear-view and side mirrors every few seconds—three houses down from where her daughter lived.
Fran and Matt were expecting her in ten minutes, and Emma kept her hyper-vigilance up. She would not put any of them in danger, and her string of changes, hops, skips, and wild goose chases had to have thrown anyone off her trail.
No one came down this street. No blue trucks, no slow moving cars. Emma felt like she’d succeeded in making sure no one knew where she’d gone or how she’d gotten there, and with that assurance in her mind, she eased down the curb to the right house.
Almost before she’d put the car in park, the front door to Fran and Matt’s house opened, and her daughter came spilling outside.
Joy filled Emma, and she couldn’t get her seatbelt unbuckled fast enough. She fumbled the latch, her emotion catching her in the chest, the back of her throat, and behind her eyes. By the time she got out
