Every Waking Moment

Emma looked at her son. It was hardly possible to claim Max wasn’t okay for the moment when he appeared as alert, happy and curious as he did.

Shit! She’d gambled and lost. How badly she’d lost remained to be seen.

She rummaged through the glove box, completely unsure of what she might find there, and managed to come up with a Certificate of Registration. Along with the registration, she found a sealed envelope with her new name on it, but she had no idea what it could be and wasn’t about to open it right now. Shoving the envelope back in, she gave Officer Daniels the registration.

His eyes flicked over it. “This car is registered to a Maria Gomez?”

Emma had no idea how to respond. She could only hope that if the car was stolen, it hadn’t been reported yet. “Yes. Maria’s a friend of mine.”

“This might take a minute.” He walked back to his patrol unit. She could see his head and shoulders in her side mirror as he sat behind the wheel with his door slightly ajar, could hear the faint murmur of his voice as he spoke into a crackling radio. Was he running her license plate through some computer? If so, what would he find?

A semi rumbled past, muting all other sound. Several cars whizzed by, too. Emma’s hand hovered over the gearshift. She was tempted to join that stream of traffic, to run while she still had the chance. She couldn’t go back to Manuel. This time she’d lose Max for sure.

“Did I do good, Mommy? Do I get a toy?” her son asked.

“You did great, babe. But it’s not over yet. Be quiet a little longer, okay?” Resting her hand lightly on the gearshift, just in case, she watched the patrolman walk back to her.

“We’re almost done,” Daniels said, and handed her the registration certificate but not her driver’s license, which he’d attached to the clipboard he carried. From what she could see, he was writing her a traffic citation.

She let go of the gearshift. Daniels must not have found anything on her or the car, or he would’ve said something by now. That the car hadn’t raised a red flag surprised her, but the fact that she wasn’t in the computer didn’t. She knew Manuel would involve the police only as a last resort. He had too much to hide to draw that kind of attention. And because he’d found her so easily last time, he’d feel confident he could do it on his own.

“May I see proof of insurance, please?” the officer asked.

Suddenly hopeful that she’d have the chance to recover from her foolish mistake, she rummaged through her purse again and provided her insurance card.

He compared it to her driver’s license and passed it back. “Sign here, Ms. Beacon.” He held the clipboard out to her. “If you’d like to protest this action, instructions are on the other side. Signing the violation isn’t an admission of guilt.”

She didn’t care if it was. She’d sign anything to be able to get back on the road.

She scribbled her real name at the X and accepted her pink copy. But he stopped her before she could roll up her window.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

He pulled a candy bar out of his pocket and gave it to her. “I had this in my lunch today. Hope it helps your little boy.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” He leaned down to look in the back seat. “You’re a handsome kid,” he said. “What’s your name?”

Charmed by the promise of candy, which he preferred to toys since he lived on such a restricted diet, Max didn’t hesitate. “Dominick,” he said, smiling broadly and completely forgetting his pretend name. “Dominick Escalar Rodriguez.”

Emma’s grip tightened on the steering wheel until her knuckles grew white. “Get your seat belt on,” she told her son, her voice as normal as possible even though she was dying to escape—before anything else could happen. “You don’t want Mommy to get another ticket, do you?”

Grudgingly, Max flopped onto the seat and buckled himself in. “Are we going home now?”

The patrolman stepped away from the car. “You’re heading in the wrong direction for that, I’m afraid.”

“We’re taking a little vacation.” Emma rolled up her window and, at the first break, merged into traffic. She was extremely lucky to be driving away. But she had no idea how long her luck would hold.

She needed to get out of California. Fast.

EMMA FELT SAFER once darkness fell. She hadn’t initially planned on venturing into Nevada, but after her confrontation with the California Highway Patrol, turning east instead of continuing due north seemed wise. And though she never would’ve anticipated it, she liked the harsh wilderness that made up this part of the state. She also liked the western feel of the tiny mining towns she passed. Carson City, Dayton, Ramsey Station, Silver Springs, Frenchman…Some weren’t even big enough to appear on her map. Others had a small casino that doubled as a motel or an old-style theater with the marquee advertising a movie—usually not a new release by the rest of the country’s standards. There was always a church or two, a diner, a gas station, maybe a post office, sometimes a public library or municipal building. In each one she saw older, well-kept homes at the center of town and some cheaper, not-so-well-kept homes at the edges, plus a handful of single-wide trailers scattered here and there, and more than the usual ratio of four-by-fours.

Nevada was truly the last bastion of the Old West, Emma thought as she dodged a tumbleweed blowing across the highway. Folks here didn’t have spectacular coastline views and multimillion-dollar homes. They didn’t even have many trees—just sagebrush, mostly. But they lived a simple life in wide-open spaces. And they seemed more likely to mind their own business.

She rubbed her burning eyes. Max had fallen asleep in the back seat hours ago, after a short dinner break at Lake Tahoe. If she wasn’t so tired, she would’ve preferred to forge ahead, but hour had marched after hour and it was nearly eleven. She’d been driving all day and the tension in her muscles was making her back ache. She needed to find a place where they could spend the night, and she needed to test Max to be sure the insulin she’d given him with his meal hadn’t pulled his blood sugar too low.

Reaching over the seat, she touched her son’s head. He wasn’t sweating, which was a good sign. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully. She could probably wait another thirty minutes to test him, until she found a motel. But she was never completely certain of such a decision. Battling diabetes was as much a guessing game as anything else. Except, like their game today, there wasn’t anything fun about it.

A loud thump, thump, thump warned her that she’d just swerved into the center of the road. Momentarily startled, she jerked the car back into her own lane. She was practically alone on the highway, but she had to stop driving—before she crashed into a ditch or a telephone pole.

Fortunately, she saw city lights ahead.

MANUEL STRODE around his desk and slapped down a map in front of his trembling gardener. “Where?” he shouted. “Where is she going?”

Sweat trickled from Carlos’s temples, and his dark eyes darted furtively toward Richard and Hector, two of the men who worked for Manuel. “I—I do not know.”

“That’s what you told me the last time I asked,” Manuel growled. “Say it one more time, and I’m calling Border Patrol. Your American Dream will disappear like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.

Though heavyset, Carlos wasn’t very tall. At Manuel’s words, he seemed to shrink into himself. “W-what makes you think I help her, amigo?”

“Carlos, I saw you.” Hector unfolded his lanky body from the chair where he’d been sitting several feet away, shoved a hand through his long dishwater-blond hair and moved closer. “I keep an eye on the house, you know? This morning, when I was turning into the neighborhood, I saw you talking to someone in a white Taurus.” He scowled. “Only I thought it was Juanita.”

“Sí, it was Juanita,” Carlos insisted. “I already tell you that.”

Manuel couldn’t help himself. He hauled off and hit Carlos so hard he could feel the gardener’s nose break beneath his fist. Carlos’s head snapped back against the wall, and he nearly fell from his chair. The blow seemed to surprise everyone, but only because it came without warning. Manuel knew his men weren’t opposed to violence—they thrived on it.

Carlos’s arms flew up to protect himself from further blows, fear gleaming in his eyes.

“Don’t make me do that again,” Manuel said, shaking the sting out of his fingers. “Tell me what I want to know or I swear I’ll have you deported.”

Carlos began to sputter, “Amigo…”

“I’ll have your mother deported, too,” Manuel added. “She’s old and sick. She doesn’t need to have Border Control knocking at her door, eh?”

Pulling his hands away, Carlos stared down at the blood on his palms. “Señor, please…por favor. No trouble. I—I have a family.”

“Then tell me what you know about my family!” Manuel wanted to hit him again. This man had cost him Vanessa and Dominick. He wanted to kick him until he was nothing more than a bloody blob on the floor.

Carlos must have sensed the malevolence inside him because his trembling grew worse.

“Whose car was Vanessa driving?” Manuel pressed. “Where did she get it?”

When he said nothing, Manuel hit him again. Twice. He would’ve kept hitting him, except Hector finally pulled him away. “Manuel, not here. You’re not thinking.”

He wasn’t thinking. He couldn’t think. Since he’d come home to find Vanessa and Dominick gone, and had begun to suspect the worst when they didn’t return, he could only want. He wanted Vanessa and Dominick back, and he wanted to punish this man for helping them leave.