Where the Road Ends

“I think I found Kathy today.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. She shouldn’t have bothered calling. She knew that Brad agreed with the police. They’d run a thorough investigation on Kathy, on her bank account, her habits, her home. Questioned her intensively. Administered two lie-detector tests. Watched her carefully. After which they’d absolved her of any suspicion of wrongdoing. That was the reason Amy was out on the road; she still suspected that Kathy had taken Charles. She believed the nanny was guilty because nothing else made sense. There’d been no ransom demands, no communiqués, no threats.

And if she didn’t look for Kathy, no one would, considering the official verdict that the nanny wasn’t involved.

She wouldn’t have called except that she wanted Brad armed with every possible piece of information, no matter how small, insignificant, inconsequential or unnecessary it might be. Regardless of what Brad believed about Kathy, Amy had all her hopes wrapped up in him.

If anyone could put seemingly random pieces together, it was Brad Dorchester. He wouldn’t be working for her otherwise.

“You’re out on the road again.” His no-nonsense tone was resigned, disapproving.

“Of course.”

“When did you leave Chicago?”

“Two days ago.”

“You were only home twenty-four hours this time.”

“I can’t just sit there and wait. You have no idea the toll it takes on me.”

“Traveling incognito from town to town is taking its toll, Amelia.”

“He’s got to be going to school somewhere, or having his teeth cleaned, visiting a doctor, playing a video game or eating a fast-food hamburger. Someplace, someone’s going to have seen him.”

“Every law officer in that part of the country is looking for those leads.”

“The abductors know that. They’ll be on guard. But they won’t be guarding against an unremarkable woman who’s just moving to town. There’s nothing threatening about that. And townspeople talk. All I have to do is be in the right place at the right time, get to know the right person, and I’m going to find my son.”

“Or make yourself ill.”

She wasn’t paying him to look out for her health. “I know it was Kathy I was following today.”

“Kathy was cleared of any suspicion months ago.”

“And afterward she buys a new car and leaves town.”

“Wouldn’t you have needed a new life after all that publicity? Being questioned in connection with kidnapping a child is a little hard on the reputation. Especially in her line of work.”

“She was unbalanced and had a motive.”

Charles had disappeared less then two weeks after Amy had let Kathy go. Kathy had tried to visit the boy twice during that time—without Amy’s approval—but Celeste and Clifford had denied her entrance to the Chicago Heights mansion.

“I followed her myself for those first weeks after the abduction,” Brad said. “She never left Chicago. She neither had Charles, nor made contact with anyone else who showed any evidence of having a newly acquired child. Her alibi was solid, Amelia.”

They’d had this conversation before. Countless times.

Kathy’s claim that she’d been at the mall shopping had been confirmed by two different sales clerks who remembered seeing her. Still, Amy wasn’t convinced. The clerks might have been mistaken. Or friends of Kathy’s. Or…

Amy rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to remember if she’d eaten anything that day.

“Your resources work very well in the big city. But if we’re going to turn over every stone, we need infiltration in the small towns, too.”

“Small towns have police departments, Amelia.”

“But they aren’t all that practiced at handling big cases. They give speeding tickets, sponsor the local baseball team and drink bad coffee.”

“You’ve been watching too much television.”

“Some of these towns don’t even have their own police departments.”

He didn’t answer. She’d scored.

“Why do you think Kathy would be moving from small town to small town, instead of trying to get lost in a big city?” he asked easily, as though doing nothing more than making conversation.

Brad Dorchester never just made conversation.

“I don’t, necessarily.” She studied the faux quilted stitching in the patterned bedspread. “You and your men are more effective in the big city. I’m more effective in small towns. And it seems to me that if I were on the run from negative publicity in a big city, I’d try to find a hole in a small town. One that’s mostly oblivious to the rest of the world so I could cuddle up, wait it out. And if I had a little boy to hide, I’d find some obscure place where his picture hadn’t been plastered all over every public building within miles.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“You already know that.”

“I also know that Kathy Stead does not have your son.”

The room’s earth tones—medium brown and a dark rusty orange—were suddenly cloying. They were everywhere she looked. The carpet, the bedding, the chair and walls. And when she closed her eyes—more earth tones. She couldn’t escape.

Her stomach churned with nausea.

“Then tell me why, if a perfect stranger took him, there’s been no ransom note,” she said when she could.

“Children are taken for any number of reasons,” Brad told her patiently. “Some crazy woman who can’t have a kid sees one standing alone and figures she can do a better job of keeping him safe than whoever left him standing there.”

“But if some sicko just wanted a child, why take one with such a high profile, one whose mother can afford to go to the ends of the earth looking for him?”

“It’s possible the abductors had no idea who they were taking that day. You and Johnny were pretty careful about keeping the press away from your son.”

Amy traced the pattern in the cheap bedspread with one finger. “Tell me something, Brad.”

A pause, then, “What?”

One part of her, perhaps the tiny part that was still completely rational, didn’t blame him for that hesitation.

“With all the publicity that’s been out about Charles’s disappearance, the abductors surely know his identity by now.”

“One would assume so.”

“So how’s that knowledge going to affect them if they really hadn’t known who he was before they took him?”