The answer didn’t seem to completely satisfy Alan, but he nodded as if he knew it was the best he would get.
Logan wished there was something more encouraging he could say, but he wasn’t going to lie. So instead, he nodded a good-bye then stepped outside with the note.
CHAPTER NINE
Chris “pep” Pepper dove into the search for the runaway mom with focused determination. Dev had warned him that things might not be as they appeared, so he should avoid any preconceived notions.
While Pep understood what Dev was trying to say, there was no way his own past couldn’t help but influence his feelings. His childhood was fine enough, his mother distant but physically there. It was his brother Marko’s kids that he couldn’t keep out of his mind.
Pep’s sister-in-law, Ann, had not run off unexpectedly. She’d been killed while crossing a street to get change for a parking meter. Just like that, Marko’s kids lost their mother. Pep had seen how her absence affected them. Marko had tried to do the best he could, but his kids would always be living with that absence.
Pep knew Ann would have given anything to stay with her children, but that wasn’t a choice she’d been given. Sara Lindley, on the other hand, did have that choice. Whatever trouble she might be in, how the hell could the best answer have been abandoning her child? No matter how much he tried to rationalize it as he drove across the Mojave Desert, he couldn’t come up with a good answer.
He arrived in Braden at around eight thirty p.m., and spent the first two hours going around to restaurants and motels showing the picture Logan Harper had sent him. It was obvious the image of the woman had been cropped from a larger photo and enlarged to focus on her. She was a bit fuzzy and not fully facing the camera, but it was enough to get a pretty good idea of what she looked like. Unfortunately, no one had recognized her so far.
As the night grew late, he switched his focus to the several bars scattered around town.
“What’re you drinking?” the bartender asked. It was the third bar Pep visited.
“Just want to show you something, if you don’t mind,” Pep said.
He already had his phone in his hand, so he brought up the picture and turned it so the bartender-an old, leather-skinned guy who looked like he’d been birthed from the desert itself-could see it.
“Ever see her before?”
The man looked at the screen, shrugged, and said, “I have no idea. People come in and out of here all the time.”
Pep would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking at the man’s face when he glanced at the picture. For a brief second, the man’s eyes widened. He had seen the woman before.
“You sure?” Pep asked.
The man stepped back from the bar. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
Pep frowned and shook his head. “You’re lying.”
“Hey, buddy. I don’t like being called a liar.”
“Then tell me the truth when you answer the question. Have you seen her before?”
The bartender shrugged noncommittally.
So that’s how the guy wanted to play it. Pep pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and set it on the bar. “Tell me,” he said, his fingers securing the bill in place.
The guy looked at Pep, then at the twenty, and smiled. “I don’t know. She looks like someone who came in here a couple times.”
“Looks like, or is?”
Another shrug, but one that seemed to indicate the latter more than the former.
Pep picked up the twenty and folded it as if he were going to put it back in his pocket.
“Hey, what are you doing?” the bartender asked.
“I don’t pay for guessing games.”
“A twenty’s not that much.”
Now it was Pep’s turn to shrug. He stepped toward the door.
“Wait a minute,” the bartender said.
Pep paused.
“Yeah. I’ve seen her.”
Walking back to the bar, Pep asked, “When?”
“A year or two ago. Came in a couple times.”
That was not the answer Pep had been expecting. “A year or two? Why would you remember someone who came in here a couple times that long ago?”
“She, um, came in with someone I know.”
“Someone here in Braden?”
“Maybe.”
Pep took a step back like he was going to leave again.
“Okay, yes. Your friend there came in with a woman named Diana Stockley.”
“And who is she?”
“Works at The Hideaway. It’s another bar. She should be there if she’s working tonight.” He held out this hand. “So can I get my twenty now?”
There was a woman behind the bar at The Hideaway when Pep walked in. From the other bartender’s description, she had to be Diana Stockley.
The Hideaway was packed, so the woman was kept busy, running around and making drinks. Pep took a seat at the bar. Over a twenty-minute period, he started up a conversation with her without ever letting on he knew her name or of her potential connection to Sara. Finally he showed her the picture, but unlike with the old man, there wasn’t even a hint that she’d ever seen Sara. So had the other guy been pulling a fast one just to get the money out of him? Or was this woman the one who was lying?
“Sorry. Who is she?” Diana asked.
“You don’t know her?”
She shook her head. “No. She a friend of yours or something?”
“Hey, Diana. How ’bout another beer?” someone called from the far end of the bar.
“Excuse me,” she told Pep, and walked off.
Pep hung at the bar for another quarter hour but was unable to grab any more time with the woman, so he began showing the picture around to the customers. Those that paid him attention showed no sign of having ever seen Sara. Finally, he decided he wasn’t going to get much further that night. He’d go find a room, come back early the next evening before the place got busy, and maybe he could have some quality time with the bartender to find out for sure if she knew anything or not.
The parking lot of The Hideaway was small, and had been packed when he arrived, so he’d had to park along the side of the road a block away. When he got to his car, he unlocked the driver’s door and pulled it open.
“You’re looking for Sara?”
Pep turned. The voice had come from down the gap between two abandoned buildings, but it was too dark to see anyone.
“Who’s there?” he called out, instantly alert. He’d only been showing Sara’s picture, not giving out her name.
“I…I know where she is.”
“Tell me who you are,” Pep said.
“I can’t. They’ll kill me if they find out I’m here.”
“Who’ll kill you?”
“Never mind. I…I shouldn’t have…shouldn’t have come.”
Footsteps moved toward the back of the building, quickly fading to nothing.
Pep ran after them. “No. Wait. Please, just tell me where she is. I need to-”
The board hit him square in the face, twisting him to the ground. Immediately, someone jumped onto his back, holding him down and hitting him in the ribs and head and kidneys. Stunned by the initial blow, he could do little to fight back.
“Stop looking for her,” a voice whispered in his ear as the world started to close in on him.
Then another blow, and another.
If the voice said anything more, Pep didn’t hear it.
CHAPTER TEN
Logan’s eyes snapped open.
His phone was vibrating loudly against the nightstand, smacking against the hard surface. At home, a small tablecloth covered his stand, dulling the noise. That was definitely not the case here. He might as well have turned the ringer on.
He snapped it up and tapped the ACCEPT button.
“Hello?”
“Sorry to wake you.” It was Dev.
Logan swung his feet off the bed, and glanced at the clock next to where the phone had been. It was 3:42 a.m. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Pep.”
Pep? It took Logan a second, then he remembered-Pep, the man who Dev had arranged to check out Braden. “Did he find her?”