Chapter 8 #4
“Yes,” he muttered, “exactly that.”
“My God,” she whispered, bereft of words.
“I sure as hell hope that’s not what Arlene was doing,” Rubin added.
Tricia frowned. “You may want to dig deep into her background then.”
“Why?” Rubin asked.
“I seem to remember that she used to work at another university, and her job was the same.”
Rubin nodded. “Not that many people have insider knowledge on how these schools operate, and, like everything, it’s run on money.
So, if there is a problem with an employee, they don’t really do a big nasty firing because they don’t want that publicity.
People are just quietly let go, and, if that happened to Arlene, maybe she just moved over to another university, where she continued to collect more information. ”
Tricia stared at him in shock, not able to speak for a few minutes, her head pounding. When she had collected her thoughts, she added, “I hate to say that it makes sense, yet it makes far too much sense to ignore. But why would she have been here at that back-roads gas station?”
“I don’t know, unless she was one of many looking for you.
Maybe she wanted you to persuade your father on some issue.
Maybe the kidnappers thought that a woman might connect with you more easily.
Regardless, her university position would be over, which it probably already is because maybe she’s gotten whatever she needed,” he explained. “So I wouldn’t worry about that.”
Tricia swallowed. “I’m not friends with her, if that’s what you’re saying.
However, if I were still in that hut and saw her, I would have assumed that she was another victim taken from the school at the same time.
In that case, I might very well have talked to her,” she noted, “and her secret role could potentially have worked.”
“Good point.”
“Christ,” she muttered. “That would have been stupid too. I would have immediately assumed that she was a victim as well.”
“And Arlene could still be a victim. We don’t know that she isn’t. Maybe the kidnappers blackmailed her because of her getting fired at her former job.” Rubin shrugged. “We don’t know enough about it yet.”
Tricia didn’t know what to say to that and slumped back into the seat. “But,” she spoke after some time, “that would mean that they are on to us and that they expected us to be there.”
“Not exactly,” he corrected. “We don’t know how many people they have out there looking for us.
And, as you said, we are in cow country.
May sound safer but we have fewer roads to take.
If they have someone on each of those roads, they could easily come upon us somewhere.
Even the group who expected us to be at the barn, they would need bathroom stops and food runs and could have ended up staying at that rest stop. It did have motel rooms.”
“Right, … I didn’t even consider that.” She scrubbed her face and muttered, “I can’t believe all of this is going on around me. It just feels so foreign, so wrong.”
“That’s because it is wrong, and it is foreign, and it is crazy, and all the other things that you can possibly think of,” Rubin confirmed. “But right now it’s in our face, and this is what we’re dealing with. So, anything that you can think of or can recall about Arlene could be huge.”
“I keep coming back to that damn creepy boyfriend of hers,” she said, leaning forward to look at Hayden and Rubin. “It was just that really creepy feeling.”
“But you didn’t see him again.”
“No, I haven’t seen him again.”
“And what about the men who kidnapped you? Can you tell us anything about them?”
“I don’t know of anything,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Mostly they were masked. Double Chin ditched his once we got to that hut. … There was—” She slowly sank back, her mind churning. She faced Rubin and whispered, barely audible, “Let me take that back and think for a minute.”
“What do you mean, take that back?”
A few long moments of silence passed, which gave her time to think.
“I was being moved at one point, and I felt as if I’d been drugged,” she began.
“No way I can confirm that. Plus, I thought I recognized one of the voices, but I couldn’t place it.
Then I was moved again and then again, until I ended up with Double Chin,” she recalled.
“So honestly, it never really crossed my mind again to figure out whose voice that was. Yet, in that earlier instance, I did hear a voice that I thought I recognized.” She frowned and then groaned.
“And what about now?” he asked. “Would it have been Arlene’s creepy boyfriend?”
“No,” Tricia said, “definitely not him, but I’m pretty-darn sure it was her.”
“Arlene Cuddy?”
“Yes.”
*
Rubin turned to Hayden and stated, “We need to change directions … completely. Change countries too.”
“Tell me where you want me to go, and I’ll get you there. I’m driving, … so just keep giving me directions.” And very quickly Rubin had Hayden pulling up to another gas station. He looked over at her and barked, “Grab everything you have back there.”
“Like?”
“All of it. Everything. Don’t leave so much as a food wrapper or a hair clip behind. Nothing.”
“I don’t have a hair clip,” she snapped as she got out.
He quickly moved her over to a luxury white SUV. He popped open the back door somehow. She didn’t see any keys.
Rubin whispered, “Get in and stay low.”
They were stealing this vehicle. As soon as Hayden got into the driver’s seat and started it up, Tricia shared, “I don’t think we should be stealing cars.”
“No, we probably shouldn’t be,” Hayden agreed cheerfully. “So, you tell me. Do you want to wait until your friends catch up? Because we’re pretty sure that we saw them not very far behind us.”
She swore at that. “How could that even possibly be? We’ve been ahead of them the whole way.”
“We haven’t had much of a head start from the coffee shop,” Rubin declared, glancing over at her.
“And, if they had a faster vehicle and potentially other people helping them, for all you know, they’re already ahead of us, waiting for us to come to them.
So we have to change vehicles and just keep moving. ”
Tricia heard Rubin’s serious tone and knew she had no chance of changing his mind, not that she wanted him to. She didn’t say another word but tucked in underneath the windows, just as he had asked her to.
Rubin smiled at her and added, “Remember that we’re doing what we do best.”
Hayden added, “What he means is, just relax.”
“You don’t need to explain everything he says,” she snapped, her tone frustrated. “I just feel bad about the people who own the vehicle.”
“You really don’t need to worry about that. We won’t damage it, and we’ll leave it on the side of the road for them to find.”
Hayden snorted. “And this SUV will be insured to the hilt. So don’t worry about it.”
“Easy for you to say,” she muttered. “This isn’t exactly something I’m used to doing.”
“No, but as Hayden said, we have limited choices.”
“I know. I know,” she grumbled, “and it’s what we need to do. It’s just uncomfortable.”
“Good,” he noted. “It should continue to be uncomfortable for you. This isn’t something you ever want to get comfortable with.”
She laughed and replied, “I don’t know how, but, when I’m feeling down, depressed, or just pissed off, somehow you guys make me laugh.”
“That’s a good thing too,” Hayden said, giving her a big smile, “because sometimes the only answer we have at the end of the day is to laugh. And you most definitely do not laugh nearly enough.”
“Right,” she muttered, with an eye roll, “as if you’re some authority on who should laugh and how much laughter is a good thing at the end of the day.”
He smiled and nodded. “All laughter is a good thing, especially at the end of a long day, and we’ll take it whatever way we can get it. And I get it. You don’t want to steal cars, and I appreciate that. But, right now, this is the best answer we have, so that’s what we’re doing.”
“Yes, but—”
“And I really don’t want to end up losing you at a gas station because we didn’t want to bend the rules.”
She stared at him, looking contrite. “Okay, so that doesn’t sound very good at all,” she muttered. “How about I just stay back here and be quiet?”
He laughed. “If you can get a nap, then go ahead. We don’t know how crazy things will get down the road, so get some sleep if you can.”
“Right,” she muttered. “So, we may not get another safe house? Am I reading that right?” When he hesitated, she added, “Don’t worry about it. I already got the answer.”
“No more safe houses,” Rubin interjected, his tone low. “We’ll drive through the night, make some good headway, and then we’ll switch off so Hayden can get a break.”
“So, all in all, just a happy family road trip.”
Hayden snorted from the front seat. “Glad you got your sense of humor back. I must have missed the happy part, and it’s entirely possible things will get worse before they get better.”
Hayden wasn’t downplaying it even a bit. She sighed. “You could at least lie a little, you know, to make me feel better.”
“I could, but, if you don’t like car thieves, chances are you won’t like my being a liar.”
“You don’t even care if I like you anyway, right?” She gave him a quizzical look when he didn’t answer, and then she upped the ante. “Now, Rubin, that’s a different story.”
“What do you mean, a different story?” Rubin asked. When he turned to face her, she shrunk back a bit.
“You do care, at least a little, but I don’t know about Hayden. He’s been driving this whole time, so I’m not sure he even has any idea who I really am.”
“You would be surprised what Hayden knows.”
“And I already commended you for your deflecting skills, but, you, on the other hand, do know me.”
He just stared at her blindly, while Hayden burst out in big booming laughter. “I told you. This gal has your number.”