Chapter 79
Seventy-Nine
They weren’t in a police vehicle, but her colleague had taunted the speed limit when he’d felt it was safe to do so, chewing up those extra miles.
‘Next one,’ Kim said as they passed a sign stating services in one mile.
She wasn’t sure that Daniel would have been relaxed enough to stop this side of the border, but with the bladder of a seven-year-old to consider, he might not have had the choice.
Bryant changed lanes and indicated left onto the slip road. He wound his way past the fuel pump, lorry and coach parks to the spaces closest to the building. The car park wasn’t as full as it might have been an hour ago, and far more people were exiting the services than entering it.
She took a cursory glance before Bryant drove down the first aisle.
The spaces between cars enabled her to see at a glance if Daniel’s was there.
Part of her was hoping to find it so she could grab them both and keep them safe.
The other part of her hoped he was successfully outrunning their killer as well as them.
They were driving down the middle aisle when Kim spotted a promising vehicle a couple of lanes over.
‘Over there,’ she said, pointing.
Bryant followed the one-way system and turned into the final aisle.
Kim quickly saw that the model was correct, but the colour was off and there was no sticker in the back window.
‘Damn,’ she said. Bryant continued to crawl along the aisle, but she could already see that no other cars matched Daniel’s Peugeot. ‘Onto the next.’
She tried his number again, but it was still going to voicemail.
There really were times when she wished people didn’t do everything she told them to.
For a minute, she questioned her own conviction in her plan.
They were driving around service stations on a three-hundred-mile stretch of road looking for one particular car.
What if Daniel had left earlier than she’d estimated? What if Ava had a stronger bladder than she gave her credit for? What if she was wrong about him maintaining a sensible speed because he had a child in the car? What if he’d chosen to take a different route?
So many variables meant it could be a fruitless search, but she didn’t know what else to do.