Chapter 4 #2
“Sounds like useful information. I took photos of the license plates on those trucks while you were inside.” Yíxīn held up her phone.
“Perfect! Can you run those plates from my house?”
“As long as I’ve got internet, I can run them from anywhere.”
“Okay, head out now.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay? What about the horrible husband?”
“Gone, which is where I plan to be before he gets back. I’ll see you at the rectory.” She grinned. “I left the door unlocked.”
Back at the cabin, Clare swung the door wide. “Tiny? Ready to go?”
She had stuffed Rose into a snowsuit and put on her own coat. She reached into her pocket and handed the keys to Clare.
“He really didn’t think you’d make a run for it, did he?” Clare marveled.
“I’ve always done what he said. I thought that was what being a good wife was all about. That’s how my mom was before she and Dad got divorced.” She paused. “I guess that wasn’t the smartest role model, huh?”
Outside in the crisp air, Clare gave the trucks a once-over while Tiny was strapping Rose into the baby seat.
She could think of several ways to sabotage the rides—heck, pulling the plugs wouldn’t even require getting under the chassis—but she could feel the clock ticking.
She had no doubt Cal would hightail it after his wife and child the moment he saw the cabin was empty.
She wanted to be far away from here by then.
Her car’s all-wheel drive got her down the long drive easily.
When she reached the narrow mountain road, Clare sped up as fast as she safely could, praying they didn’t encounter another snowmobile-hauling truck or SUV full of winter hiking fans.
She didn’t have time to pull to the side to politely let anyone past her.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding when they reached the broader, two-lane stretch to the state highway. “Okay, it’ll take us a little over an hour to get to Millers Kill from here. How about we pick up a few things for you and Rose at the Walmart in Fort—Oh, shit!”
She and the driver of the pickup heading past her recognized each other at the same moment. Tiny twisted around in her seat. “It’s Cal! Oh my God, what are we gonna do? Oh God, oh God…”
Clare had already hit the gas. Her Subaru was no sports car, but it was a goer, and Cal March had to make a three-point turn before he could follow her.
She swung onto the state highway without slowing and immediately accelerated to seventy-five.
She split her attention between the road and her rearview mirror.
Sure enough, in the distance, she could see the pickup turning onto the highway after her.
Tiny leaned forward, looking from side to side. “Is there someplace we can hide? Take another route?”
Clare focused on the road ahead, inching her speed up to eighty.
“This is it. It’s about fifteen miles to the first town, and that’s not much more than a cluster of buildings along the highway.
It’s twice as far to the Northway.” She wrestled the Adirondack atlas out of her side pocket without taking her eyes off the road and handed it to Tiny. “See if there’s any place likely.”
“What about a police station?”
“I know the Essex County Sheriff is up in Lewis, but that’s got to be an hour from here.” Up ahead, an oil delivery truck lumbered along at a sedate five miles below the speed limit. Clare shifted lanes and blew past him. “State Police Troop G is south of here. Somewhere around Brant Lake.”
Tiny bent her head over the map. “That’s, like, thirty miles.”
The oil truck dwindled in her rearview mirror.
Maybe…? Then the truck popped out from behind it and continued after them.
That was the problem with Route 28N—it was a thirty-mile-long gentle curve, with stretched-out sight lines that made it very safe for tourists traveling into the mountains and very inconvenient when you wanted to disappear.
She slowed slightly to scan the area ahead of the SUV in front of her, then revved up to pass it.
The good news was, it was Sunday, and there wasn’t much traffic on the road.
The bad news was, it was Sunday, and where in this corner of the Adirondacks could they find enough people and vehicles to get lost in?
“North Creek,” she realized.
“What?”
“It’s a ski town. Near Gore Mountain. A beautiful weekend afternoon after a snowstorm? It’ll be jammed with cars and people.”
Tiny bent her head over the atlas. “I see it.” She leaned over to look into the side mirror. “But he’s going to be able to follow us.”
“Yeah. We’re not going to be able to shake him unless he runs out of gas.
But if we can get to the village just a little ahead of him, we can hide in the traffic and the crowds.
” She passed another pickup and watched it dwindle fast in the rearview.
She was up to eighty-five now, a guaranteed ticket on the Northway and liftoff airspeed in one of her dad’s small planes.
She made herself relax her shoulders and release her death-clutch on the wheel.
“Clare?”
“I see it.” Ahead of them, traffic both coming and going. She took her foot off the gas. “This is Minerva, right?”
Tiny consulted the map. “Yeah. Maybe we should pull off here?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a couple roads and no stoplight.
We’d be in the same situation, but on an even smaller road.
” She braked hard to avoid rear-ending the ancient station wagon putt-putting along in front of her.
More traffic coming toward them. No room to make an illegal pass on the right—the trees crowded close against the narrow shoulder.
She glanced in the rearview mirror. Cal’s truck was catching up.
She was playing scenarios in her head—lock the car and refuse to get out?
Try their luck with a kind stranger in Minerva?
—when the northbound traffic cleared and the car holding them up was able to turn left.
Clare didn’t give Grandpa’s station wagon time to start forward; she shifted and stomped on the accelerator, shooting around him and swerving violently back into her lane before she ran into the Toyota coming toward her.
She got one glimpse of its driver’s wide-eyed shock before hurtling past, leaving Minerva, and wisdom, behind her.
“Oh my God,” Tiny whimpered.
Fly or die. Clare didn’t share that with her passenger. A few more vehicles were headed north; between them and Grandpa, Cal would be held up for a few crucial seconds.
It took them five minutes to reach the outskirts of the scenic village, and it wasn’t until she slammed on the brakes entering the thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone that she caught a glimpse of Cal’s truck in the distance behind them.
She was still going forty-five when she crossed the Hudson River, but had to actually slow, thirty-five to thirty to twenty-five, once she turned right onto Main Street, where SUVs and cars with ski racks lined the thoroughfare and shoppers in sleek parkas jaywalked from galleries to restaurants to inns.
“There’s a parking spot!” Tiny pointed.
“I don’t want to be on the side of the road if I can help it. I want a lot. With a bunch of cars.” A cafe, an antique store—the Alpine Lodge? Then she saw it, up ahead. A humble Tops sign. “That’s it.”
“A grocery store?”
The parking lot, which served a small strip mall as well as the Tops, was as crowded as Clare had hoped. She drove toward the rear and slipped her Subaru in between two hulking SUVs. “Get Rose.” She unbuckled and opened the door. “We’re going in.”
“Shouldn’t we—”
“Inside.” Clare reached into the back and grabbed the diaper bag.
“We’ll be safest surrounded by people.” She prayed she was right, and that her decision wasn’t about to lead to a shoot-out in a public place.
Tiny pulled Rose into her arms, and Clare leaned in and unbuckled the car seat, shoving it into the space between the front and back seats.
She tossed Oscar’s dog blanket over it. There were probably a dozen vehicles here that were—or looked like—Outbacks.
If Cal searched car to car, there wouldn’t be anything to alert him to this one.
Clare strode toward the store entrance after Tiny.
Inside, Clare took Tiny’s arm. “Let’s find the restrooms.” They were in the back of the store, behind the day-old bread rack and the bottle return. She ushered Tiny into the men’s room, which, thanks to modern mores, had a fold-down table for diaper changes. She hung the baby’s bag on a wall hook.
“I can’t be in the men’s room,” Tiny hissed.
“If he figures out that’s my car outside and if he comes into the store, he might look for you in the ladies’. He’s less likely to check here. Lock the door, I’ll see if I can find an out-of-order sign. I’ll come back when I’m sure it’s safe.”
“How will I know it’s you?”
“Um.” She looked at the baby, blinking sleepily. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with wanting to be home with her own little boy, not hiding from an asshole with a gun. “Ethan. I’ll say Ethan.”
There was no readily available sign, but tucked against the bottle redemption machine were two “Wet Floor” pylons linked with a yellow chain.
Totally symbolic, but if anyone knew the power of symbols, she did.
She set them in front of the men’s room and walked out.
Cal had viewed her three times now, twice in person and once through the car window, but she didn’t think a man that dismissive of women would have seen her enough to have her face down pat.
In the “Seasonal Aisle,” she found a selection of Santa hats and knit scarves sporting logos like HO HO HO and NAUGHTY OR NICE?
She grabbed one of each, ran them through the self-checkout, ripped off the tags, and put them on, hiding her hair under the cap and covering part of her face with the muffler.
She stripped off her coat and tied it around her waist, altering her silhouette slightly.
She stepped outside again, just in time to see the back of Cal’s truck passing the entrance.
She sucked in a breath and jostled a cart out of the corral and walked calmly—or at least faking calm—back into the store.
There were several displays a few steps inside the entrance; from there she had a good view of most of the parking lot.
She slid the cart against one and started idly picking up cans of cranberry sauce and boxes of stuffing mix.
Hopefully, she looked like she was waiting for someone, and not like a low-rent shoplifter.
The truck cruised along one row of vehicles, turned right, and drove up the last row.
Slowly. If he had noted her license plate number, or the WELCOME TO THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH decal in her quarter glass window, things were going to get ugly.
And dangerous. She was betting on what she’d seen of his personality: angry, impulsive, arrogant.
She had met more than one man like that in her life, and they didn’t tend to be very observant.
The truck seemed to stop for a moment, along with her heart.
Then it moved on. Past her car and the two SUVs flanking it.
The truck circled the lot, still at a walking pace, making sure to pass every vehicle near the strip mall stores.
Then, as if still suspicious, it crept past the grocery’s huge front windows and out onto Main Street.
Clare blinked, and discovered she had tossed four cans of pumpkin puree into her cart without noticing.
She pulled out her phone and checked the reception. Nothing, of course. She waited one minute, then five, then five more, just to be sure Cal hadn’t parked elsewhere and walked to the store. She weighed eleven minutes against his lack of impulse control and decided it was good. Or at least, okay.
She removed the wet-floor pylons, rapped on the men’s room door, and said, “Ethan.” There was a click, and Tiny peered out at her. “What happened? Is it safe?”
“He drove around the parking lot and left. We’re going to give him enough time to check out the rest of the town before we get back on the road ourselves.”
Tiny emerged, with Rose on her hip and the baby bag slung over her shoulder. “All right.” She looked up at Clare’s Santa hat, but didn’t say anything.
“I planned on taking us back to the rectory—my house—so I need to know, Tiny—can Cal find that address? Did you tell him my name?”
“Um. Your first name, yeah. But honestly, I forgot your last name so—” Tiny shook her head. “He knows you’re friends with Meghan Smith, ’cause he saw you there.”
And he never met Russ, because he was still out target shooting that day. His beefy buddy Dillon had followed her car as far as the gas station in Millers Kill, but he wouldn’t have known her final destination.
“Okay, I think coming home with me is still the best choice.” She drew mother and daughter into a hug. “We’re going to keep you safe, Tiny. Both of you. We’re going to keep you safe.”