They explained how the men were walking up the corridor, when the couple opened the door. One herded them into the room, took their phones and ripped the landline cord out, then threatened them and warned them to stay in the room and keep quiet.
“Very rude,” the wife added.
“Then we heard them kick the door down. The one that woman and girl were staying in.”
“Did the men take them out of the room?”
“No. They ran off before those a-holes got here. Five, ten minutes.”
“Stanley,” she warned.
Ah, so they’d gotten away...
The wife added, “The woman was shouting at the girl. Mad, real mad. ‘How could you?’ Something like that. And the girl was shouting back. They just threw some things in their car and drove off.”
“Bat out of hell.”
“What model car?”
“Kia,” the husband said. “Just like her cousin drives.”
“Just like Bett’s. Only gold.”
“Wish I’d bought one of them.”
“You see which way they went?”
“We could see which way they didn’t go — right, east. That’s the only view we got from here.”
A left turn would take them back to 55, though the highway the motel sat on, Route 92, was a major artery and would get her ultimately all the way to the West Coast.
The wife continued, “That man, the one in here. He threatened us. Looked at his license. Memorized the address.”
The husband said with a laugh, “But it’s a year old! I never got around to changing it after we moved. Joke’s on them.”
The one-up-on-them part — a variation on the same tactic that Undercover Shaw had used with Ahmad in the warehouse yesterday morning.
Shaw thanked them and returned to the office, where the clerk was manipulating his nose.
“It’s not broken. Don’t play with it.” Shaw pulled out his phone and scrolled to the most recently dialed number.
46
“Don’t say a word.”
Allison Parker was speeding west on Route 92.
“You were spying on me.” Hannah tried to sound indignant and wronged. The words rolled out, though, laced with fear.
Parker muttered, “Don’t. Go. There.”
The girl sat in the passenger seat, hugging her knees. Her stocking cap was unevenly tugged over her head and her gray coat was on the floor. She would have been looking at her phone under other circumstances. Not now, of course. The Samsung was in Parker’s pocket, where it would remain.
Her heart pounding, she looked in the rearview mirror. Expecting Jon’s truck to be following.
Not yet. But he could have come close to finding them.
Thanks to Hannah.
Just after the heartwarming embrace, as they were about to eat, Parker had glanced down at the girl’s phone, which was not only no longer in airplane mode but was open to an Instagram account. Not her old one. But @HannahMer-maid447788.
According to the time stamp she’d posted the selfie, taken in the back of the motel, when Parker was in the shower. So her errand was about more than just scoring a breakfast menu.
The picture was an uncharacteristically smiling face, behind which was the water tower with part of the name of a nearby town visible. Thompson Hills. It would take anyone with half a brain and access to Google no time at all to figure out where they were.
Parker had barked a scream and leapt up, scattering food, spilling coffee.
“We’re leaving. Now!”
“What?”
She had shut off and pocketed her daughter’s phone.
“Hey, that’s mine.”
Parker flung their computers and some clothes into their bags.
“What’s wrong?” the girl had wailed. “I don’t want to leave!”
She had gripped Hannah by the arm. “Now.” The word was an enraged shout.
There would have been something about her mother’s unhinged expression that rattled the girl. She didn’t nod, didn’t say a word, just grabbed the luggage and pushed out the door, ahead of Parker. Their bags were not even fully zipped up. Toiletries and a half-dozen articles of clothing were left behind. Another silly Disney show was on a TV screen too big for the room.
Now Parker pushed the accelerator hard and hit seventy-six in a seventy zone, wishing to do ninety, but she could not risk getting pulled over.
She muttered, “Did it not occur to you that he’s checking social media? That he could scan for ‘Hannah’? And ‘Mer’? How stupid could you be?”
They drove in silence. The girl was staring defiantly out the window.
About five miles from the motel, Parker skidded to a stop on the shoulder. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the girl’s phone. Hannah lunged for it and her mother lifted an arm to block her. It was the first painful contact between the two of them since a two-year-old Hannah punched her in the lip reaching for her necklace.
“Stop it!” Parker raged and her daughter sat back, fuming. Parker knew the PIN and soon the phone was live. She flipped through the apps. No Facebook or Twitter. Just the new Instagram.
“Password.”
When the girl didn’t answer immediately, she asked again, in a threatening tone.
The girl gave it to her. Parker deleted the account and tapped the phone to sleep in airplane mode once more.
“Christ.”
She now skidded back onto the asphalt and sped up. Her daughter was not, of course, careless at all. What she’d done was calculated. She wanted her father to know where they were. She knew he was checking for their names. So she’d left him what was, in effect, a coded message: Come and find us, without saying so specifically.
Deniability.
“Your father wants to hurt me. Do you understand?”
“You don’t—”
“Do you understand?”
“You don’t know him. Why do I have to keep telling you that?” Hannah was now sobbing. What was the most painful component of her sorrow? Her mother’s anger or the loss of a digital device?
Another few miles streaked by. Parker began to calm.
And she realized that this was her own fault. The overprotective mother had kept the girl far from the legal proceedings following November 15. She’d done the same yesterday, not sharing Jon’s true mission.
“Han, I wasn’t honest with you. I didn’t tell you everything.”
The girl continued to stare out the window.
“I didn’t tell you everything that David found out. I said I was worried he’d make a scene. It’s more than that. Worse. Your father wants to hurt me. He told some prisoners before he left he was going to find me.” A deep breath. “He wants to kill me.”
“Bullshit. He’d never do that.”
“He’s not who you think he is.”
Hannah shot back with: “And how would you know? You sent him to prison, just threw him away. And that was it. You never visited him!”
No, she hadn’t. She couldn’t. Nor had she let Hannah. That was not going to happen. This had been an open wound in their relationship. One of them.
“You dumped him there and went on to something else.”
Parker felt her heart beat faster yet. If that were possible. “What?”
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
More silence. The car edged up over eighty. She eased off the gas.
“I’m sorry, Han. I know it’s hard to hear. It breaks my heart. I made a judgment. I had to press charges. It was time for somebody to stand up to him. And now I’m going to keep you safe. Whatever I need to do. And that’s the way it is. We need to be together on this. I need your help.”
The girl scoffed.
Parker reached out and set a hand on the girl’s leg.
“Don’t touch me, bitch.”