6. Chapter 6
Still no sign of her.
Like he had any business checking in on her, but here he was anyway.
Waiting four hours past the end of his shift just so he could make sure she was okay.
It was all he could think about all day today—the way she’d gone limping off yesterday without her groceries.
That had been his fault. Jaywalking, for heaven’s sake, was so miniscule of an offense, especially in this town where oncoming traffic could be seen by the dust it kicked up from a mile or more away on the north end of town, and on the south, all the way to the curve that led to this rundown motel.
The Female Residential Reentry Facility. How the hell he’d received clearance to run the place always struck him as being intensely strange. Especially since for the entirety of his life, Travis was a sliver of proof away from being sent to jail himself.
He could practically hear his mother’s admonishment in his ear, Leave your brother alone, Jeffrey. It’s hard enough turning over new leaves without you breathing down his neck.
Travis didn’t need his brother looking over his shoulder. He needed the whole police department and a well-placed county auditor going through his files, because sure as he was sheriff, his brother was crooked.
Just… not officially.
Jeffrey couldn’t remember a single time when he hadn’t suffered the deep-seated suspicion that Travis was hiding something.
The man couldn’t speak without lying at least once.
That he should also go through his schooling and obtain a job working for just another aspect of the same judicial system as Jeff… it was aggravating.
No, it was insulting.
And there was nothing Jeff could do about it except hope he’d be there when Travis finally ran out of luck and the law caught up to him.
Please don’t let this be that time.
“Where are you, baby?” he muttered. He was starting to get antsy and he didn’t know why.
Call it professional instincts. The problem was, he knew himself well enough and he knew this tension in his gut too.
It had nothing to do with being a cop or cop instincts.
This was Daddy instincts. Tabitha should be at home right now, and she wasn’t. Someone needed to go find her.
Like he knew where to go. He knew every inch of Starvation and all the roads in and out of this county as far as his jurisdiction went.
But about eleven miles north of here was the county line and he did not know those roads half as well.
Or where all the farms were, or the drug users, movers, and sellers, or those who should be medicated and weren’t, or hell, those trying to get away from Big Brother influences and who would probably meet him at the door with a firearm, cocked and ready.
He didn’t have jurisdiction, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t wander up and look around ‘unofficially.’ Plus, he had a good working relationship with all the sheriffs who butted up to his county.
All he had to say was ‘missing girl’ and he’d be granted access, and a knowledgeable tour guide to help navigate the terrain.
It would only take a few phone calls, some awkward answers to the questions that would no doubt be asked, and probably paperwork.
He ran the risk of looking like a good cop if she’d run off, or shacked up with someone, or even just if she’d gotten lost. He’d have to book her in if Travis said she’d missed curfew.
He didn’t know if he had it in him to put her in a cell.
But what if the next time he saw her, she was nothing but bones bleaching white in the brutal sunshine?
“Shit.” He grabbed for the keys in the ignition and would have turned it, except that was when the light in Travis’s office suddenly winked off.
His brother stepped outside with a length of rope in his hand and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, both of which he dumped into the passenger seat of his truck before hopping up into the cab. The lights came on as he started it up, and off he went.
Now this, Jeff thought as he started his own truck up, this was cop instincts. He watched as Travis turned right, taking the road out of town. He waited for his brother to get a respectable distance down the road before he drove out of the motel parking lot in cautious pursuit.
“Take me to her,” he muttered under his breath.
At least his brother knew where to go. The problem now was, to drive far enough back that his headlights wouldn’t give him away, while also keeping close enough not to lose his brother down one of these hard-to-see turnoffs that trailed all over these mountains.
Travis had to know he was being tailed. Farmers went to bed not long after nightfall. The stores and café both closed over an hour ago. The liquor store closed at ten. The moment he saw Jeff’s lights in his rearview, he was going to know who was tailing him.
And yet, Jeff kept the distant taillights on his brother’s truck in his sights as he bumped along a road that was more like twin bike trails.
Grass and scrub raked the sides of his vehicle and he must have hit every rut God put on earth, testing his shocks and struts.
But he stayed a good half mile or so behind Travis and if his brother noticed him back here, he didn’t seem concerned.
He kept the speed low and slow as they drove a good fifteen miles out to where the male ex-cons had their halfway house.
Once he realized this was where Travis was heading, he thought for sure he’d just been led into a wild goose chase.
Or his instincts were wrong. There was nothing nefarious about two probation officers kicking around on their time off, having a beer together, or even asking for help in the search for a missing ex-con.
Fuck.
He stopped, wondering if he should wait until Travis drove up into the gated lot of the other halfway house, or if he should continue on up the hill, except that his brother didn’t turn down the male residents’ driveway.
Instead, he continued on up the hill, taking a different turn that immediately curved into a steep upward climb into the trees that now obscured both head and tail lights.
Jeff sped up, needing to get those truck lights back in sight.
Up the rough road he went, winding his way steeply through the trees.
He didn’t find Travis’s headlights again.
He found another road, but that one really did look more like a cattle trail than a road.
He ignored that turn, but with a feeling of frustration welling up inside him, he took the next. This led back down the mountain.
He quickly lost all confidence that he was still behind his brother. No one had ventured down this road in a long time. It was just too narrow and overgrown, and the only sign of civilization he passed was the hunter’s cabin that local hoodlums had accidentally burned down last winter.
He should have maintained a closer distance and a sharper eye on his brother.
He hit the steering wheel, but there was no such thing as turning around.
There were too many trees and rocks crowding in on both sides.
He followed the road all the way down the mountain before the path he was on intersected a real road.
The same one he’d come in on approximately half a mile south of the men’s reformatory.
He stopped his truck, frustrated, knowing he had next to no chance of finding Travis up there. Not by himself. Hell, probably not even if he called the local sheriff for help. Ten men in separate vehicles could scour this mountain and probably never find him.
Swearing, he smacked the steering wheel again, then grabbed the gear stick.
Shifting back into drive, he was about to turn left and head back to the motel, when something not twenty feet dead ahead of him moved in the grass growing tall on the side of the road.
Deer out here were plentiful. So were skunks.
He paused, watching to see what it was--and whether or not it was chewing on something.
But instead of a browsing animal emerging from the roadside brush, the tip of what he had mistaken to be just an abnormally bright roadside rock slipped back off the road into the grass.
That was not a rock, he realized with a start.
That had been the tip of a dirty white sneaker.
Just like the kind Tabitha wore.
All the air whooshed out of his lungs.
Slamming the truck back into park, Jeff threw off his seatbelt and jumped out.
He ran to her, finagling to keep the bulk of his body from blocking the headlights so he could see exactly who was hiding in the grass.
Jesus, if this was her, he was going to paddle her little backside for scaring him like this. He’d passed right by her!
This might not be her. Let this be her.
He parted the weeds and grass, shielding his eyes from the glare of the lights. “Tabitha?”
It was her.
Oh Jesus, what happened?
She lay on her side, knees drawn up to her chest, her head pillowed on her arm while she sucked on a dirty thumb and stared blindly at nothing.
“Tabby?” he asked, lowering himself beside her.
He touched her hair, and then her cheek.
For all she moved, she could have been a doll.
A doll that blinked and sucked her thumb like a little girl as withdrawn into herself as the horrors of the world could make her retreat.
Her face was sunburnt pink, streaked by dirt and dried up sweat tracks.
“Tabby, baby?” he coaxed, laying his hand on top of her head.
“Go ‘way,” she croaked.