Putting out his cigarette, he climbed into the Hummer and pulled up to the turnout. He already had someone going to Vegas. He doubted Vanessa would really show up in St. George after using that town as a decoy. So if not Vegas or St. George, where might she be heading? His only other choice, if she was sticking to major highways instead of trying to hide in some backwater town in Nevada, was Utah.
He turned toward Salt Lake City. Hector could always call him if he was wrong.
EMMA GOT her crying son buckled up and moved into the passenger seat, where she immediately realized they were driving in the opposite direction than she’d assumed. “Where are we going?”
Preston checked his rearview mirror but didn’t answer.
“Is he following us?” she asked.
“Not that I can see.”
“That was close.”
“Too close. Now we can’t go directly to Salt Lake from here. If Manuel saw us at the gas station, we’d be too easy to spot along the road. We have to do something unexpected.”
“Like backtrack?”
“Exactly.”
“How far?”
“We’ll go the seventy or so miles to Eureka.”
“What’s in Eureka?” As far as Emma could remember, not much besides a junkyard, a café, a gas station and a couple of quaint churches.
“From there we’ll take 278 to Interstate 80. That way if he heads to Vegas, we’re fine. If he goes to Utah instead, we should still be fine, because we won’t be traveling on the same two-lane highway until Wendover. And we won’t be arriving in Salt Lake at the same time. It’s only a four-and-a-half hour drive from Ely.”
“And the drive we’re taking is…”
“I haven’t figured it out. Probably eight or nine hours at least. But I think it’s worth it to go around, don’t you?”
She couldn’t believe Preston was changing his precious agenda for their sake. She couldn’t believe he’d come back for them at all. “I thought you were in a hurry to reach Iowa.”
He scowled at the reminder. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Max, who was still crying for his father, and she figured he probably regretted it already.
Emma nearly shushed her son, then changed her mind and turned to stare out the window. She didn’t have the heart to ask one more thing of Max. Of course he was sad. He didn’t understand what was happening, only that he’d been ripped away from his father before he could even say hello.
She hated what leaving Manuel meant for her son. But every time she went over the situation, she could see no other way. Even if she could take parting with Max, she couldn’t abandon him to Manuel and the future he’d have if she did. And Manuel was not the kind of man to share nicely.
“Max?” Preston said a few moments later. He adjusted the mirror so he could see her son, but Max wouldn’t answer him. “I got something for you.”
Surprised, Emma twisted in her seat to witness her son’s reaction. Max still didn’t answer, but his crying turned into an occasional hiccup.
“What is it?” he finally asked.
“Some candy I found at the grocery store when I was looking for the two of you.”
“I can’t have candy,” he said.
He knew he could have candy occasionally, but he was too busy sulking to acknowledge it.
“This is sugar-free,” Preston told him.
Sugar-free didn’t mean carbohydrate-free, and it was the carbs that mattered with diabetes. But Emma wasn’t about to spoil the moment. Max had liked Preston from the start. This small overture of friendship might just cheer him up.
“What kind of candy is it?” Max asked.
“Gummi Bears.”
There was a slight pause. “I like Gummi Bears.”
“I figured you might.” Preston glanced at her. “Is it something he can have right now?”
It was dinnertime, but that was the least of Emma’s worries. She nodded, and Preston took the bag out of a compartment in the console.
Emma read the carbohydrate totals on the package so she could include them in Max’s meal plan, then opened the Gummi Bears and passed them back without even attempting to ration.
At this windfall, her son’s sniffling stopped completely. Emma tried to smile at how easy to please a child could be. One bag of candy, and the world was good again. But she couldn’t smile. She was fighting tears. She’d made it through the close call at Garnet Mercantile, the panic of trying to get back to the motel, her guilt over Max’s insulin shock, the nerve-wracking hours in that damn phone booth, and the fear of coming nose-to-nose with Manuel at the Gas-N-Go, all without a single tear. Yet she was crying now, over a simple bag of candy.
It wasn’t really the candy, though. It was the fact that Preston had thought of Max in that grocery store. It was having a friend when she needed one most.
“Thanks,” she muttered, and averted her face so Preston wouldn’t notice her watery eyes. She knew she hadn’t fooled him when he touched her arm.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“Emma?” He didn’t sound convinced.
“I’m fine,” she said. “How did you find us?”
“Amelia Granger.”
She turned back, even though she was still trying to blink away the tears she didn’t want Preston to see. “How did you come across her?”
“I knew you were searching for a car and that you hadn’t gone to the dealership. So I called every ad in the paper. When I got to Amelia, she said she’d spoken to you earlier and was just getting ready to meet you at the Gas-N-Go.”
“She never came.”
“I told her to hang on so I could swing by and take a look at the car.”
“What made you think I might’ve called about her ad? She was asking forty-eight hundred for her car. You don’t think I have that much money, do you?”
“I started with the cheapest cars and worked my way up.”
Which was pretty much what she’d done, so it probably hadn’t take him long to realize he was on the right track. “I was going to trade her my earrings.”
“How much are they worth?”
“Ten thousand dollars.”
“It wouldn’t have been a good trade.”
“Why not? The car’s a Mercedes.”
He cocked a challenging eyebrow at her. “Do you know how many miles a Mercedes would have to have on it to cost so little?”
She didn’t. Manuel had handled all their finances and brought home a new car for her almost every year. “The mileage wasn’t mentioned in the ad.”