Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
C onnor cranked the wheel to turn off the road then flung the door open the moment the truck came to a stop. Randy revved his engine and kept driving. Cal drove alongside him, preventing Cal from shooting at Connor as they raced through town. Once he realized Melinda was in Lacy’s car, he would most likely turn back.
Lacy opened her door and stumbled from her car as she ran around to the other side. A cold doused his whole body. Had Melinda been shot when the bullet had gone through the windows? When he blinked, he could still see the glass instantly web in the dim light of the streetlights.
Lacy got to Melinda’s door faster and opened it wide. Melinda’s body fell haphazardly to the side. He picked up the pace to help her. She shook Melinda’s shoulder and called for her to wake up.
He reached her side and helped support Melinda. “What happened?”
“He shot the windows out. He didn’t hit either of us, but I want to get us out of the street before he comes back. Melinda took one of her pain pills about forty-five minutes ago, so she’s out,” Lacy stated quickly, still trying to wake Melinda.
He gently moved Lacy out of the way. “Get the bags from the trunk. I’ll move her to my truck. We’ll need to follow and make sure Randy is alright.” He unbuckled her seatbelt as he spoke.
Lacy opened the trunk with her key fob and lugged the two bags out of the back. She had them stored in the bed of his pickup before he could get Melinda moved. Lacy climbed in so she would be in the middle and he set Melinda in. Lacy held her steady so he could buckle her and didn’t drop her into the street.
“I wonder if she’s sensitive to whatever they prescribed? She seems to be even more sleepy than I would expect.” He closed the door before Lacy could respond, not that he needed an answer to his question.
He ran back over to Lacy’s car and climbed behind the wheel. Easing the car back into the street, he parked it. Thankfully, nothing was damaged except the windshield and rear glass. She hadn’t hit the building when she’d driven onto the sidewalk.
After locking the car, he ran back to his truck and headed in the direction Randy had gone. “Any word from him?” He glanced over to Lacy.
She shook her head. “No, nothing. Then again, if he’s racing away, he may not be able to call.”
“Help me watch for lights. I wouldn’t put it past him to drive Randy into the ditch.” With as dark as it was, he hoped any shred of light would stand out like a beacon, but he couldn’t see anything as they reached the outskirts of the small town.
Lacy dug her phone out and held it in her hand. If he wasn’t driving, he’d keep his close by too. He accelerated feeling like he had to find Randy fast. As the miles passed, his gut twisted. Where was Randy? Had he turned off onto another road? Had he been injured? The only promising thing was that they hadn’t seen a car left behind.
He squinted into the distance but all that appeared was another small town.
“My gut says we should avoid that. Slowing down is a bad idea,” Lacy muttered quietly at his side.
“I know, but if we go around it, we might miss seeing his car. What if he was able to get away and is waiting for us in that town? If we skirt around it and change the route we’d planned, we might make Randy face more danger.” Though he agreed with her. Slowing down for town was a recipe for disaster.
As they neared the little city, Lacy reached over and verified the doors were locked. She then checked Melinda’s seat belt.
“Is everything secure?” He knew it was, but having her repeat it would calm both of them.
“Yes.” Her head swung slowly from left to right as she looked intently down the streets while he drove.
“Look there!” She pointed at an all-night gas station. There, waiting in front, was Randy’s car.
Connor flipped on his blinker and turned in. There were no other cars at the pumps or in the lot. He took the spot right in front of the door and killed the engine. “Wait here. Keep the doors locked. I don’t know what’s going on, but better safe than sorry.” He touched the holstered to his side to remind her to use hers if she needed to.
Lacy nodded and mimicked his action to agree. “I’ll be here.”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Good. I wouldn’t want it any other way.” Carefully, he opened the door and headed inside the gas station.
Randy sat on a stool near the counter. A food warmer sat next to him with slices of pizza circling in a glow. The scent made his stomach grumble. “Randy?”
He looked up from his energy drink and grinned. “I knew you’d see my car. After what you said about Wayside, I didn’t want to be driving in there without you.”
“What happened to Cal?” If he was anywhere nearby, they needed to rush away.
“I’m not sure. I turned on the map on my phone and decided to take a few detours. At one point, I turned off my lights so he wouldn’t see where I went.” Randy shrugged. “Every time I turned, my map app would reroute me, so I was never far away from where I needed to be.”
“It’s always a good idea to stay close to the plan.” He took a deep breath. “You ready to get back on the road?”
He nodded with a grin. “Thanks, man.” He reached over the counter and gripped the clerk’s hand.
The attendant waved. “No problem. Safe travels.”
Connor headed back outside, still aware that Cal could be anywhere. If he had map software on his phone, then he could find his way back to the highway. Now might be a good time to change the route, since they were all together again.
He headed for his truck and Randy followed. The moment he opened his door, he noticed that Lacy looked really tired. After the adrenaline rush of being shot off the road, she was probably ready for sleep. He opened his map software and looked for the nearest hotel.
“Unfortunately, if we decide to stay the night somewhere, or what’s left of the night, we have to drive about twenty miles out of our way. We’d be forced to take the highway back to Cheyenne, then west to Wayside.”
“Looks like they could both use a comfortable bed. As long as Cal doesn’t catch back up with us, I’m fine with whichever way you want to go,” Randy answered.
The only risk was that he’d wanted to avoid Cheyenne. Chances were good that if Viceroy was anywhere, that’s where he’d choose to be. That was where he had multiple comfortable places to hide. That was where he’d kept Scarlet when she’d been his personal attendant. Going through Cheyenne held more risk.
He waited for the Lord to give him direction. When he didn’t feel fear override his desire to rest, he told Randy to head for Colorado, and he went to his own car. Before getting into his truck, he called into the insurance company and left a message about Lacy’s vehicle and where it was. He knew he’d forget to call in the morning if he waited.
Back on the road, he watched for anything out of the ordinary. While the dark was a great time to hide for some things, being the only vehicles on the road made them easy to spot. With only a few hours left until they would enter Wyoming, they pulled into the parking lot to check in for the rest of the night.
At least there were no vehicles in the lot that looked like they belonged to Cal. Maybe he’d actually get a couple hours of shut eye. He gently shook Lacy awake and she startled. After blinking a few times, she seemed to realize what was going on and asked no questions. Lacy shook Melinda slightly and this time, Melinda woke.
Bone-tired, they all headed inside. Connor’s phone buzzed and he groaned, knowing whatever was on it, would be bad news.
Something thwacked Lacy in the head, jolting her awake. The room was strange, and she couldn’t remember entering it or how she got there. Fear prickled over her skin. Melinda thrashed around next to her.
“Help, get me out of here,” she muttered in her sleep as she tried to untangle herself from the blankets.
Lacy took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. She was safe, at least for now. They were in a hotel room somewhere in Colorado. Hopefully, they were close to the border, within a few hours of home.
Lacy helped untangle Melinda and that immediately calmed her. She fell back to sleep with a deep sigh and made no more noise.
“I wonder how long it’s been since she had a good night’s sleep?” Connor’s voice rumbled from a few feet away.
Lacy turned around to find him watching her. Randy was facing the other direction on the other side of the bed with Connor. They clearly weren’t comfortable with the arrangement, but it was the only suitable one if they wanted to only pay for one room and be as safe as possible.
“I’m not sure. When are we heading back on the road?” She glanced at her watch and found it was already nine in the morning.
“In about an hour. We didn’t roll in here until about three, and I wanted to give everyone plenty of time to sleep. As long as Cal didn’t drive by here, he shouldn’t have any idea where we went. My hope is he turned around and drove home.”
Randy stirred and rolled onto his back. “Morning. I was planning on calling my old man before we leave and ask him if he could call Cal and see if he answers. He used that trick on me, so it seems only fair that I use it on him. He seems to think everyone is too stupid to figure out what’s going on so he might tell my dad where he is.”
“As long as you don’t tell your dad where you are. He seems more than willing to help Cal find you.” Lacy crossed her arms and stifled a yawn.
“Yeah, I hadn’t planned to let him know where I am, and I removed the app that tracks me yesterday morning.”
Lacy unzipped her travel bag and dug through what was in there. She’d lugged her bag along this whole time and most of her clothes had gone unused. At least today she could take a shower safely and put on something fresh for the arrival home.
“I’m going to make use of the shower while all of you are still waking up.” She lifted the one clean pair of clothes she had out of the bag and headed for the bathroom.
She wasn’t a nervous sort of person but knowing someone had broken into the house where she was staying, kidnapped her friend, and wrote on the mirror in the room where she was showering, made her distrust the standard safety measures in the bathroom.
After locking the door, she rolled up a towel and shoved it in the crack under the door. No one was going to fish a wire through there to open the locked knob from the other side. She turned on the water and waited until it was so hot steam rolled from the shower toward the vent fan.
She caught her reflection in the mirror. The bags under her eyes gave her the most pause. How could Connor be attracted to someone who was clearly aging? She didn’t like the wrinkles forming by her eyes and how her hair seemed to be changing as she aged. She wasn’t old, but she certainly wasn’t young anymore either.
Closing her eyes, she climbed into the shower and listened for any sounds outside the bathroom. She hoped once she was home, all the worry and stress would fall off her shoulders. When the police had caught Tod, she’d been sure there was nothing else she needed to worry about.
A noise from outside the bathroom that sounded a little like a muffled cry made her hurry to rinse off, towel dry, and find out what was going on. The moment she opened the bathroom door, she heard Melinda crying softly.
“What happened?” Lacy asked as she stepped back into the room.
“I got a text when we arrived here at about three in the morning. Tod posted bond and immediately skipped town. There’s no way he could find us where we are,” Connor said.
Melinda looked up and swiped under her eyes. “I know that, but he knows Piper’s Ridge. That’s where he met me. Don’t you think that’s the first place he would go to look?”
Lacy sat on the bed next to Melinda. “We need to take away his power. If we can find out what company holds the life insurance policy on you, we can cancel it.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think that would help. The payout was a bonus, but he loves the manipulation. He loves feeling smarter than the police. What started as a get rich scheme has turned into a mental game for him. He always has to be the best, smartest, strongest, most . . . whatever you can think of, in the room. And this is the ultimate game.”
Lacy’s stomach heaved and she was glad she hadn’t eaten in a long time. “That’s twisted and I know twisted.”
Melinda nodded and sniffled. “I can’t imagine why they would let him go. He tried to kill me. Why would they do that and how did he get the money? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know, but I know we’ll be safe once we reach Wayside. It’s protected and secure.” Though not as much as it had once been when there were security gates and perimeter fences around everything.
“I trust you. It’s just that every time I believe something is going to go right, I’m reminded that nothing ever does for me. It hasn’t for years. I’m forgotten.” She looked away. “I’ll be quick, but I need a shower too.”
Lacy worked on drying her hair as Melinda headed into the bathroom. Connor had already moved to the desk and was on his phone, looking something up. She headed over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder to let him know she was there.
“What are you doing?”
He moved the map around with his thumb, looking around the area. She could see the pin on the location where they were.
“I’m trying to figure out if the route would be better to go back where we were, then take the backroads north like I’d originally planned or if we should take the highway through Cheyenne. There are risks to both.”
She nodded, understanding exactly what he meant and knowing the safety of all of them fell on his shoulders. “Thank you again for coming.”
He glanced up at her and snorted. “Like I’d just leave you to deal with a situation if you asked me to help. That’s not happening.”
The truth of the statement washed over her. He wasn’t leaving. Not again. He wouldn’t choose to walk away this time. Had he even realized he’d answered her prayers so casually? Almost as if she should know better than think otherwise.
“Good to hear.” She leaned over to look at the tiny map on his phone. “So, we’re trying to avoid Cheyenne.”
“Viceroy is still missing. Police are searching but according to the text I got from Brendon while you were in the shower, he still hasn’t been caught. Part of me wonders if he’s in Wisconsin with Ramona, but those two seemed like they were fighting more than anything last time we knew they were together.”
“And now that her son is gone, she has no reason to stay with Viceroy.” Not to mention, he’d treated Ramona terribly, not that Ramona didn’t deserve it. She’d been behind the killing of multiple people in order to save her terminally ill son.
Connor mumbled a noise of agreement. “Which means, he’s most likely in Cheyenne. His other wife is deceased who was from there, but he has a huge network there. Lots of places to hide out.”
“But what are the chances that he would see us? He doesn’t know our vehicles and doesn’t know we were traveling. Cheyenne means highways, faster speeds. We could get home sooner.”
He frowned slightly, then zoomed out. “It would take about ten minutes off the trip. Not really enough to make a decision one way or the other but I’m leaning toward agreeing with you. Viceroy doesn’t know we’ll be coming through town and Cal knows we’re somewhere in the area headed north.”
Melinda came out of the shower looking rosy from the hot water and scrunching her hair in a towel. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Randy zipped his bag and hefted it onto the bed. “Me too.”
Connor stood and stretched. It took all of Lacy’s effort not to step right into his arms. She could use a hug that morning. Soon enough they would be home, and she could get a hug whenever she wanted. For now, she’d have to settle for looking.