Run to Me (10 page)

‘You’re right, it’s all just an evil conspiracy to curtail a doctor’s freedom to gossip.’

‘Fine, don’t tell me. Thought I might be able to help, is all.’ Allen leaned towards him. ‘Just could be I know a few things. Things Doc Muir never put in his files.’

‘Dad, we’ve only been here three weeks and you haven’t left the house. What could you possibly –’

‘Like Marg Whetherston’s
gout, for example. Which has more to do with her fondness for port than the family predisposition she claims.’

‘Thanks, but I figured that out on my own.’

‘And Herbie Laracourt, who didn’t break his leg felling that tree but climbing out Shellie McManus’s window.’

Chase sipped his coffee to hide his surprise. Now
that
he hadn’t known.

‘And Geraldine Sprenkle who uses more than Valium to ease
the boredom of her lonely nights. And –’

He thumped the mug down. ‘Dad, how do you do it? How on earth do you know all this?’

Allen tapped his temple. ‘Side effect from the accident. Ever read
Dead Zone?
’

‘Dad.’

‘Gina told me.’

‘Gina, our cleaning lady?’

‘Well, she told me the bit about Marg Whetherston. The rest I got from Abagail Watson.’

Chase’s frown deepened. ‘Who’s Abagail Watson?’

‘Runs the local mobile library. For people who can’t get out much. I signed up last week.’ Allen smiled. ‘Been reading a lot of fine literature lately.’

Chase shook his head.

‘What, I can’t have a coffee with a lady now and then?’

‘You mentioned two ladies.’

The man turned sheepish. ‘Actually, it’s six. They formed a book club and asked me to join. Said they needed a man’s perspective.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re getting to know the locals, but I hardly think hearsay is a reliable source of facts about my patients.’

Allen shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

Chase took another sip of coffee. He fought back the urge as long as he could, then finally gave in. ‘Did Gina or Abagail ever say anything about a local woman who sells her wood craft from Bill’s store?’

‘No, but I could ask. Seeing
as you’re more than professionally interested I’m sure they’d do their best to find out.’

Chase coughed up the crumb he’d inhaled. ‘Dad, I am not –’

‘And that’s why we have four bird feeders and a dozen houses cluttering up the kitchen.’

‘You know what? Forget it.’ Chase mopped up the coffee he’d spilled – served him right for encouraging the man – and got to his feet. ‘I’ll see you tonight.
Leave the dishes. I’ll get them after dinner.’

‘Nonsense, I’ll do them. Don’t I always?’

Slumped in the rental car’s front seat, Nolan jerked awake at a rap on the window. For a moment he didn’t know where he was, nor did he recognise the face peering in at him through the windscreen. Until she spoke.

‘You going to sit there all day or what?’

Nolan opened the door and got out, wincing at the brightness of the morning sun.

‘Good to see you’re on top of things as usual,’
Vanessa quipped as he stood rubbing his neck.

‘You try spending a night in a car with no blanket in the friggin North Pole. I didn’t get to sleep till –’

‘Is this the truck?’ She pointed at the one he’d parked behind.

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

She scanned the ground beneath its rear door. After a moment she started wandering, still hunched, along the depot’s dirt driveway.

‘The ground’s soft here.
You can see their footprints,’ she said as she slowly moved towards the road, ‘in the spots where you didn’t tramp all over them.’

Nolan watched her with grudging respect. Unlike him she had dressed for the setting – hiking boots, camouflage fatigues, fleece-lined jacket. Her take-charge attitude was a pain at times but she could usually be relied on to get things done. Though sometimes he wondered
just what she was trying to prove and to whom.

Then again perhaps he knew. In the weeks since they’d met in that North End bar, he’d got the sense from odd things she’d said that everything in her life came back to one person. Lazaro. Her uncle. The man who’d raised her.

Nolan shook his head. He just didn’t get it. The lifting weights, the survival training, the toughing things out when it wasn’t
required . . . Was she trying to prove she was as good as her cousins, Lazaro’s sons? Why go to all that effort when the guy would give her whatever she wanted without her ever lifting a finger?

Things were different for someone like him – the reason he’d hooked up with her in the first place. To get where he wanted to go in life he needed connections like Lazaro, had to be prepared to start
at the bottom, take the shit jobs. Jobs like this one. And if that included massaging Vanessa’s ego, letting her walk all over him, ride him with spurs on every issue . . . Well, at least the sex was some compensation.

Out on the road she looked around briefly before walking back to him. ‘The tracks fade out when they hit the gravel but they definitely headed up that way.’ She waved a hand. ‘Was
it dark when you got here?’

‘Just about.’

‘And you said the truck’s engine was still warm.’ She added things up. ‘I’m betting they didn’t make it far. Which means they slept in the woods somewhere.’

She pulled her car keys out of her pocket, clicked the remote and locked her door. ‘Right, let’s go.’

Nolan looked from her to the trees. ‘You mean in there?’

‘Afraid of ruining those Gucci loafers?
Too bad. Get moving.’

The berries were squashed and staining his fingers by the time Zack reached the culvert again. Together with the peanuts he’d taken from a bird feeder in someone’s yard, they constituted the sum of his food-finding efforts.

In the end he hadn’t been able to get anything from the general store. The man who’d eventually shown up to open it had watched him like a hawk as he’d
walked around the aisles. As much as Zack had wanted to grab something, he couldn’t take the chance of being caught for shoplifting and handed to the police.

No, the nuts and berries would have to hold them until he could enact his revised plan – he’d return to the store, this time with Reece, whom he’d get to create some kind of diversion while he stole what they needed.

It meant that now two
of them would have to show themselves but Zack figured that was okay. As long as the three of them weren’t spotted together – and provided he gave a convincing story – he doubted anyone would become suspicious.

Besides, there wasn’t a whole lot of choice.

Reaching the embankment he checked to make sure no cars were coming before sliding down it. The minute he hit the bottom Reece rushed out
of the culvert at him, red-faced and crying.

‘There’s something wrong with Corey! He fell asleep again and I can’t wake him up! I think he’s dead!’

The boy’s panic was contagious. Zack dropped the berries and raced to the pipe.

‘Not dead, he’s unconscious,’ he said after checking that Corey was breathing. The boy’s round face was as pale as his hair.

‘He kept crying that his stomach hurt,’
Reece hiccupped. ‘I thought it was just because he was hungry, like you said, but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘He said he hurt it when we had the accident. He landed on the arm rest when we crashed into the ditch. He didn’t want to tell you ’cause he thought you’d be mad.’

Zack turned back. With a rush of dread he rolled up the hem of Corey’s sweatshirt, and sucked in his breath. The bruise that spread
across the boy’s left side was shiny, swollen and dark red.

Instantly Reece started crying again. It was all Zack could do not to join him. He forced himself to climb from the pipe and drag Reece with him.

‘Here,’ he said, fishing the peanuts from his pocket. ‘Eat these while I think what to do.’

Reece hesitated only an instant before accepting them. Between sniffles he shelled the nuts and
wolfed them down. By the time he’d finished, Zack had decided.

‘There’s a doctor’s office up the road. We’ll take him there.’

Reece looked horrified. ‘You said we shouldn’t talk to anyone!’

‘I know, but we have to. Corey’s sick.’

‘But what if the doctor calls the police? What if they send Corey back to –’

‘It’s better than letting him die!’

Zack swore at the force of his outburst. He knew
it wasn’t just fear that had goaded him. If he hadn’t caused the accident . . . If Corey hadn’t been too afraid to tell him he’d been hurt . . .

Reece had lapsed into crying again. Zack reached out and hugged the boy to him. ‘It’ll be all right. Corey’ll be safe and so will we. We’ll sneak him into the doctor’s office and leave again before anyone sees us. Then . . . then we’ll hide in the woods
and watch the place and as soon as he’s better we’ll go back and get him.’

‘But how will we know when he’s better?’

‘When it’s dark I’ll go over and look through the windows. I’ll find out what room he’s in and every day we’ll check how he’s doing. Now come on, you gotta help me with this.’

Zack dragged Reece towards the pipe again. ‘I can carry him but I need you to push him up onto my back.
Get in there behind him.’

Reece stepped carefully over the still, little form then stood crying softly. ‘I don’t want him to go. They’ll take him away.’

‘No, they won’t. It’s gonna be fine.’ Zack sat down with his back to Corey and lifted the boy’s legs in either hand. ‘As soon as he’s better we’ll help him climb out the doctor’s window and come away with us. Now push him up!’

At last feeling
pressure against his back, Zack leaned their combined weight forward. With Corey’s limp form draped across him, he pushed up onto his hands and knees and crawled from the pipe.

‘What if the doctor calls the police?’ Reece choked out, trailing him towards the embankment.

‘Even if he does, they won’t take Corey anywhere until he’s better. We just have to make sure we get him back before they do.’

‘Shyler O’Neil?’

Chase waited as the man on the other end of the phone worked to connect the name with a face.

‘Oh, yes – blonde woman, late twenties, quiet,’ Muir said at last. ‘I take it she recently paid you a visit.’

‘Yesterday. Needed a couple of sutures in her hand.’

‘I didn’t know she was still around. She still bartering for her appointments?’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Sorry to
hear that. I would’ve thought she’d be over her money woes by now. Hope you didn’t have a problem with it. Would have warned you if I’d remembered, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen her.’

‘No, I was fine. It didn’t bother me.’

‘So what can I do for you?’

‘Well, I have some concerns regarding Shyler and I’m hoping you can shed some light on them.’

‘Sure, if I can.’

‘For one thing we didn’t
have her contact details so I asked her to leave them. She said she would, but in the end she didn’t.’

‘Same as last time as I recall. I assumed she forgot.’

‘Which is just what I thought. But Elaine seems to think she’s deliberately withholding the information.’

Muir gave a laugh. ‘Elaine sees mysteries where there aren’t any. A lot o’ folks around here do, probably the only entertainment
they get. There’s no great mystery surrounding Shyler. She lives in a cabin out off one of the old logging tracks. Used to vacation there with her family.’

‘Family?’ Chase felt a stab of disappointment. ‘You mean a husband and children?’

‘Oh, no, this was years ago, when she was a girl. Came up here with her parents every summer. Don’t know from where.’

‘So you knew her back then?’

‘Not really.
Ran into them now and again at the store. Enough to know who they were but that’s it.’

‘Do you know where this cabin is exactly?’

‘No, sorry. Never felt a need to.’

Chase thought a moment. ‘Did she ever explain to you why she couldn’t pay for her visits?’

‘No, and I never pressed her about it. I figured she just fell on hard times and needed a spell to get back on her feet.’

‘How did Shyler
seem to you otherwise?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘She didn’t seem overly anxious? I mean, if Elaine’s right and she’s deliberately withholding her contact details . . .’

‘Look, the woman might have been mildly depressed. Quiet, as I said, and certainly rundown. But nothing you wouldn’t see in a dozen other patients every day. Sorry, Hadley, but I’m not sure I understand your concerns.’

Chase exhaled.
Where had he heard those words before?

The forest was intolerable. An endless procession of wooded slopes, sodden hollows, and rocky streams. His Guccis had been ruined in the first hundred yards, his pigskin jacket not long after. And, believing he’d have matters sorted out well before this, Nolan hadn’t brought a change of clothes.

At the top of another lengthy rise he collapsed, gasping,
against a tree. ‘What do you say we rest a while?’

‘Can’t. Keep going.’ Vanessa marched ahead of him barely breathing hard.

‘What, are you on steroids or something?’

She stopped and laughed. ‘I find it helps to keep in mind what’ll happen to us if we don’t catch those kids before they talk. You do remember your good friend Tragg?’

Nolan sent her a sour look. As if he’d forget. ‘Us? What do
you have to worry about? Lazaro’s your uncle. Tragg wouldn’t dare –’

‘If you think for a minute that’ll protect me if we fuck this up . . . !’

Vanessa stood trying to regain control. Nolan seemed to think her connection with Lazaro was some kind of warm-and-fuzzy relationship. He sat at her feet like a starving stray begging for scraps, second-hand crumbs dropped from the table.

Never mind
that she was fighting for crumbs herself. Deprived of a life outside ‘the family’, expected to perform whatever hack work Lazaro asked, yet forever denied the respect and affection he bestowed on his sons. Bestowed on even henchmen like Tragg.

She had no delusions why Lazaro had assigned her to securing these boys from their foster home. It wasn’t because of any trust in her competence. He’d
simply have realised a woman social worker would be less threatening, more believable in the plan he’d devised. So – as always – he’d used her.