Twenty-Three
Cole shut the clerk’s laptop. Twenty-four hours after they’d bolted from Austin that night, he’d created an anonymous email account and sent the home security video of Candace McGee and the mysterious guy to his attorney. Cole had claimed their innocence and asked their attorney to share the video with the FBI. The attorney had responded within a few hours, telling him he’d turned the video over, but it had changed little. The Feds still had a murder weapon with his fingerprints on it. The attorney said the only way for them to prove their innocence was to immediately turn themselves in. The longer they hid, the guiltier they looked, which made his job even harder. Cole and Lisa found themselves in the exact same desperate spot. On the run. Willing to sacrifice their lives in order to protect Jade.
Cole motioned for the kid that he was finished. Then he stepped out of the gas station with his grocery items in a plastic bag. He needed to tell Lisa the truth about the stocky guy. But he certainly didn’t want Jade knowing anything about it. He had to protect her emotionally from an even scarier reality. If they could get to Mexico by the end of the day, the truth wouldn’t even matter. This time he would make sure no one would ever find them again. They would go so far off the grid. He paused on the front sidewalk. He could hear someone talking. But there were still no other cars in the parking lot. He moved down the sidewalk toward where the voice was coming. He could hear it more clearly now. A girl. And not just any girl. Jade. He cursed. His daughter was talking to someone on the phone.
He rushed forward, turned the corner, spotted her huddled in the dark, her back to him, a phone pressed to her ear. Everything inside him wanted to scream at her. They had clearly told her no phones. Not until they settled somewhere, which might take several weeks. It was too risky. The Feds could already be monitoring the phones of everyone they knew in town. But he knew lashing out at his daughter right now was unwise. She was fragile. He tried to be understanding. She had of course looked for an opportunity to make a phone call. She was confused and scared to death. And from the sound of it, she was on the phone with her boyfriend, Tyler. Would the FBI already know about that relationship?
Cole took a deep breath to try to settle himself, stepped closer toward her, and cleared his throat to get her attention.
Jade spun around, her eyes widening, her mouth frozen open.
“I need you to hang up, baby,” he said as calmly as he could. “Tell him goodbye and then give me the phone, okay?”
Jade swallowed. Into the phone, she said, “I have to go, Tyler.”
Then she hung up, handed the phone to him. Her eyes immediately watered. “I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she said, crying harder by the second.
He stuck the phone in his pocket, dropped the plastic bag, and wrapped his arms around her. “Baby, it’s okay. I understand. We’ve asked a lot of you tonight. I get that. And you’ve been incredibly brave. But we can’t be calling our friends right now. I know that sucks. Especially for you with Tyler. I’m sorry. But we just can’t do it.”
She pulled away slightly. “When will I be able to talk to him again?”
He pressed his lips together. “I don’t know.”
The answer was never , but he couldn’t bear telling her that right now.
Her emotional state immediately flipped on him. Her sobbing stopped, and she instead glared at him with narrowed eyes and her nostrils flaring. “This isn’t fair, Dad! You can’t just take me away from Tyler and all my friends. I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“I know,” he agreed. “You’re right. It’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair to Tyler, either,” she continued. “The FBI was at his house tonight.”
Cole stiffened. “What?”
“He said they were asking about me and about us.”
Panic seized him. The Feds already knew about Tyler. “Did he tell them anything?”
“He doesn’t know anything, Dad!”
Cole’s mind was swirling. The FBI could be monitoring the boy’s phone. Which meant they could be currently tracing the location of his daughter’s phone call.
“We have to go!” he said to Jade, his eyes flashing.
She crossed her arms in defiance. “I’m not leaving until you start telling me the truth.”
“I can’t right now.”
“You keep saying that. Then I’m not going anywhere .”
Cole thought about the police officer who’d just driven by the gas station a few minutes ago. He was nearby. All it would take was one quick phone call from the FBI for the officer to zip right back over. They had to run.
“Jade, I’m sorry.”
She remained rigid. “Sorry for what? Screwing up my life?”
“No, for this,” he said, reaching down and lifting her over his shoulder. He spun around and hustled back over to the van. Jade was yelling and hitting him on the back the whole way, which caused Lisa to pop out of the van.
“What the heck is going on?” she asked.
“Get the van door open,” he instructed. “We have to get away from here right now. And our daughter is not cooperating!”
Lisa reached up and pulled open the van door, and Cole set Jade down inside.
“Did something happen?” Lisa asked.
“Yes!” Jade yelled. “Dad is acting like a lunatic! I’m going to jump out!”
Cole turned to Lisa. “Get in there with her and stop her from being an idiot. I’ll explain when we get on the road.”
Lisa climbed into the back, tried to get Jade to calm down. But their daughter only continued to lash out at them. Cole slammed the door shut behind him and swiftly circled the vehicle. Realizing he still had the burner phone Jade had just used, he pulled it from his pocket, reared back, and tossed it across the parking lot. He then reached into his other pocket, pulled out his own burner, and did the same. The two phones could somehow be tied together through his store purchase a few months ago. He couldn’t take any chances. He would pick up new phones somewhere along the way. He climbed behind the wheel, started the van, and stomped on the gas pedal. The van bounced through potholes in the parking lot before reentering the street.
Cole was only fifty yards from the gas station when he saw a police car in his rearview mirror with its red and blue lights blinking. He gripped his steering wheel tightly, wondered if he was about to go on a high-speed chase. But thankfully the police car pulled into the same gas station parking lot they’d just left. His panic now exploded. The Feds were listening. The FBI knew exactly where they were at this very moment. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor and crossed a bridge over the Rio Grande into the middle of town. He spotted more red and blue lights up ahead, coming straight toward them. Cole quickly turned onto the next street, pulled into an alley between a dry cleaner and a liquor store, and turned off his headlights. He could feel his heart in his throat as he watched his mirrors, wondering if he’d made the right choice. Seconds later, a police car pulled onto the same street as them, but quickly passed by the dark alley without noticing them.
Cole exhaled, but his chest felt so tight. The police car was clearly coming after them. Because there were so few cars on the road at this hour, the police were probably going to start stopping everyone they encountered in hopes of finding them. And Alamosa was no small town—he guessed around ten thousand people—which meant they had a significant police presence. There were likely more police officers out and about right now beginning to circle the streets looking for moving headlights.
“What is happening, Cole?” Lisa said from the back. “Why are there so many police cars all of a sudden?”
“They know we’re here,” he admitted.
“What? How?”
“We made a mistake, Lisa. They’re tracking our phones. That’s why I got rid of them.”
He glanced at his daughter in the rearview mirror. She no longer looked angry. Her face was sunken with guilt. There was no reason to beat her up about it.
“Did you call someone?” Lisa yelled at him. “Are you crazy?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We just have to get out of here.”
He slowly backed out of the alley but kept the headlights off. Pausing, he searched both ways up and down the street. No sign of the cops. While it was dark out, Cole had just enough surrounding streetlight to make several more turns, which he swiftly did. He was back on the main street, driving with his headlights off. His speedometer hit sixty and then seventy. New headlights up ahead. Cole quickly pulled off the street again and stopped in a small parking lot in front of an auto mechanic, which had a dozen other cars parked out front. This time, it wasn’t a police vehicle. It was a black Jeep Wrangler. When it passed, he pulled back into the street and floored it again. He passed by several more retail strips and followed the signs leading them out to Highway 285, which would take them south into New Mexico. As they left the lights of the inner city, the streets grew darker, so he was forced to turn on his headlights again. Once on 285, his foot grew even heavier on the gas pedal. They hit eighty miles per hour, which started to make the van vibrate a bit. But he didn’t slow down until Alamosa had completely disappeared in his rearview mirror.
Lisa remained agitated. “Do the police know we’re in this van?”
“I don’t think so. The security cameras weren’t working at the gas station.”
“What about the clerk? Can he identify it?”
Cole had intentionally parked out of view from the front counter. Plus, he’d never once noticed the young guy look out the front windows. The kid had been too absorbed in video games on his laptop and messing with his phone. “I think we’re okay.”
“You think ?” Lisa said, her voice continuing to rise with anger. “I can’t believe this, Cole. You’re the one always telling me to be so careful. And then you blew it? Who did you call?”
“Stop, Mom!” Jade interrupted, crying again. “It wasn’t Dad! It was me! I called Tyler. I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. This is all my fault. I screwed everything up!”
Realizing her misguided anger, Lisa quickly changed her tone. “No, baby, you didn’t screw anything up. None of this is your fault. We don’t ever want you to think that.”
“She’s right,” Cole agreed. “If anyone is to blame, it’s me.”
He kept thinking about the money. If he hadn’t touched it, they would still be sleeping peacefully in their beds back home. He’d allowed his own brokenness about his daughter’s dire medical condition to cloud his better judgment.
“No one is to blame,” Lisa clarified. “We’re all in this together.”
Jade continued to sob, her whole body shaking. Lisa pulled her in close, held her, and Cole saw tears now forming in his wife’s eyes. She looked up at him in the mirror and mouthed, I’m sorry. Sitting there, watching his girls lose it, Cole felt his heart ripping in two. All he wanted to do was protect them. And he was failing miserably.