much. You couldn’t stop thinking about whatever happened that frightened you so much that you took off without packing.”
“How—?”
“If you’d packed, you’d have changed clothes.” He stopped. “My question is, what or who are you running from?”
She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again. He saw tears start in her eyes, but she blinked to keep them from falling. When she spoke, there was no trace of the tears in her voice. “I’m not running from anyone,” she said, straightening her spine.
Mack knew from her voice that she was lying, and from her determined glare that she’d decided something. Probably to unload her woes upon him. He braced himself.
She stared at him for so long he was beginning to wonder if she’d fallen asleep with her eyes wide-open. But about the time he’d decided to snap his fingers in front of her face, she sat back with a sigh. “I drove here from Dowdie, Texas. Eight hours. And I’ve got to start back today. As soon as I can. My mother is—” She stopped as tears welled in her eyes. She wiped a hand down her face, then swiped at the dampness on her cheeks with her fingers.
“Your mother?” Mack said encouragingly.
“She’s very ill. She has to have dialysis or she’ll die.”
Mack waited, but she didn’t say anything else. She pressed her lips together and clenched her jaw, doing her best not to cry.
“Do you need money?” he asked gently. “To pay for the treatments?”
“What? No! I don’t need money. My mother has insurance.”
“So why did you drive all this way just to turn around and go back?”
“It’s complicated,” she said.
“Most things are, especially if they involve running.”
Tears welled again, and she pulled a tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. “I’ve kept that photo in my purse for years. Mom always told me that if I needed anything and she wasn’t—wasn’t—” She took a quick breath. “I should find Kathleen.”
Mack’s brows rose when she’d stumbled over her words. He pushed his chair back and stood. “Okay. Well, I’m Kathleen’s son, so if you’ll tell me what you need, I’ll take care of it for you.”
She played with the water glass, tracing a droplet of water up one side and down the other. “I can’t tell you. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous to who?” Mack asked.
“To my mother.”
“Look,” he said. “You need to start at the beginning. I can’t figure out what you’re talking about and I haven’t heard anything that sounds dangerous yet, except your mother’s illness. And you said she’s getting dialysis.”
“That’s just it. She’s not.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” She sobbed, then banged her open palm on the table. “I can’t stop crying.”
Mack got up and refilled her water. He set it in front of her and watched her as she drank it, hiccuped, then drank some more.
“Now. Why isn’t she getting dialysis?”
“Because she’s been kidnapped.”
Mack flopped down in the chair. “Kidnapped? Is this some kind of joke?”
She stared at him, anger burning away the tears. “A joke? That’s what you think?”
He opened his mouth then shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he thought at the moment. He’d figured she had come to ask for money and it was just taking her a while to work up the nerve.
He studied her. Her skin was still colorless. She looked exhausted and terrified and so far she wasn’t making a lot of sense.
“Okay. Your mother’s been kidnapped. By who? Have they contacted you? Do they want a ransom? And have you talked to the police?”
“No! No. It’s not that kind of kidnapping. And I can’t go to—” She stopped talking.
Mack sighed. “Of course you can’t. Why not?”
“They can’t help. Nobody can help. I don’t even know why I came here. I had to run. He was going to shoot me.” She looked at the water glass. “I should have stayed,” she said, her voice a mutter now. “I should have confronted him.”
Well, she wasn’t talking to him any longer.
“But there was all that blood,” she continued. “And Billy Joe just collapsed and died. So I ran. I thought I had to save myself so I could find my mother before she died. But now she’s going to die anyway. Oh, I don’t know what to do.”
“Whoa, damn it! Slow down.” Mack did his best to put everything she’d said into logical order. If she wasn’t just crazy, then she’d been through some kind of horrible trauma. “Hannah. Let’s start over and take this slow. Who was going to shoot you? Whose blood did you see and who is Billy Joe?”
She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to figure out what he was doing there, in her reality. Then she blinked. “Oh.” She shot up out of the chair and slung her purse strap over her shoulder. “I apologize,” she said. “I think I’ve made a mistake.” She looked at the business card in her hand, then stuffed it into her jeans pocket and ran out the front door.
“Hannah, wait!” he called. He started to run after her, but his protective instincts kicked in.
Good riddance, he thought when he heard the outside door slam. She had to have come here for money, then lost her nerve and tried to make up some kind of story. She’d never make it as a grifter. Her heart-shaped face gave too much away. He’d watched the kaleidoscope of expressions that flitted across her features as she’d listened to her cell phone ring. Bewilderment, fear, anger, resignation, each taking its turn, then the cycle had started all over again.
He felt sorry for her. Whoa. That was the kind of thinking that could get him into deep trouble, if he let himself get drawn in. He was lucky she’d run out when she did. Good riddance, indeed.
While his brain was congratulating him for dodging that bullet, he found himself rushing out the front door. She’d made it down his long sidewalk to her car, digging a large ring of keys out of her purse and unlocking a dark blue Toyota.
Mack used his phone to snap a shot of the rear of her car just as she climbed in. The license plate was from Texas. And even from half a block away, he could see two bullet holes in the bumper near the plate. Recent ones.
Maybe she hadn’t been making it all up.
Although he had the snapshot, he jotted the license plate number down on a small notepad that he always carried. When he put the pad back into his shirt pocket, it seemed to burn his skin. He sighed. He was going to regret this.
No. That wasn’t accurate.
