would feel obliged to punish Scotty for his unsoldier-like behavior. She couldn’t let that happen.
Breathing in courage, she shored up her defenses. The thug might be good at tracking, but Scotty was her son, and she understood how his mind worked—and Tommy’s, too, as fried as it was. The muscle would scour the estate, but she already knew Scotty and Tommy were gone. Key tight in hand, she wended her way around the Colonel’s Cadillac toward her car.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the Colonel barked at her.
“For a ride.”
“Now?”
“I need fresh air.” In spite of her best effort for a show of strength, she squirmed into position behind the wheel and reached for the armor of the door.
The Colonel grasped the top of it in one hand and denied her a shield. The pointed end of his icy stare pinned her against the blood-red leather upholstery. He knew. She swallowed the series of hard knots notching her throat. He knew she was holding something back. He knew that she wasn’t telling the truth.
“If you’re abetting Tommy’s folly, you’ll pay the price.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You lost the boy.” In the cavernous garage, the Colonel’s voice rumbled in warning.
“He isn’t lost.” He’s with his father.
The Colonel’s gaze slitted to a knife edge. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up filleted. “I don’t want you anywhere near that boy until I’ve had a talk with him about responsibility.”
More like a hazing. A snort escaped her. “He’s not a soldier. He’s a little boy.”
“He’s a Camden.”
Reminding her once again that only his benevolence allowed her to stay at the mansion. But what choice did she have? Scotty had never signed on for this tour of duty. If she tried to leave, the Colonel would use all of his influence to take her son away from her. The threat of loss ripped through her, leaving her clutching the edges of her seat to keep balanced. At least this way, she had a say. She could protect her son—the way Tommy’s mother never had. The way her mother never had.
Nerves rattling, she ratcheted her chin up one notch…two. “I know where he likes to go when he’s scared.”
The Colonel’s face quivered in a purple mottle. “You’ve turned him into a sissy boy.”
I’ve made him into a sweet, mostly happy boy. Knowing her chances of searching for Scotty depended on the Colonel’s goodwill, she submissively lowered her head. “I’ll bring him home.”
“See that you do.”
With a shaky hand, Nora cranked the engine over and backed out of the garage bay. She stopped at the gate and waited for the iron monstrosity to lumber open.
The situation was getting worse. Every year the Colonel expected more out of Scotty, and his expectations were beyond Scotty’s age capacity, especially with the asthma factored in.
She had to get her son out. Somehow. She had to find a way. But how? A sea of tears formed in her chest, swirled into a hurricane and threatened the back of her eyes with landfall. Dumpster-diving for food was no life for a sick boy. How could she get him the medicine he needed, the education he deserved, the safe home every child should have?
The Colonel would never stop looking for them. She blinked against the coming storm of tears. He’d made that immensely clear after she’d had the nerve to divorce Tommy. And he’d follow up on his threats. Scotty was his only grandchild. His only heir now that he’d disowned Tommy. He had the resources—money, influence, power.
Her mouth opened, greedy for air. And she had nothing. No money, no family, no job.
She’d seen him break more than one person to get what he wanted—starting with his own wife and children. She couldn’t leave Scotty alone to be raised by such a hard man.
She rolled through the gate and shuddered. Once past the corner of the property, the concrete holding her shoulders stiff and high cracked, releasing them, and her breathing became freer. She’d often wondered if Scotty’s asthma was related more to the caustic air in the mansion than to inflamed lungs.
At the stop at the end of Camden Road, she hesitated, her foot tap, tapping the brakes. Tommy, where are you?
Band on the Run. Route 66. Deep Water. Graceland. Talking Heads: 77. What are you trying to say?
The blast of a horn behind her jolted her in her seat. She signaled a right and, after checking both ways, turned. She searched all the places Tommy liked to take Scotty. The ice-cream parlor on Juniper Street. The school playground off Red Barn Road. The pet store on Woodpecker Lane.
By lunchtime, she’d looked in every park and playground of Camden, at every trailhead, at every boat ramp, and she hadn’t spotted Tommy’s battered Jeep. He wasn’t answering his cell phone and, according to his boss, he’d cashed in his two weeks of vacation time.
What if, as the titles suggested, he’d run? Ice doused her veins. No, he wouldn’t do that, not knowing how much it would hurt her. He’d have included her in any escape plan. He knew Scotty was her life.
Unless.
The rock of her heart sank to her shoes and a cold sweat soaked her through.
Hadn’t Tommy said that the Colonel had first shipped him out to military boarding school at eleven? And military school hadn’t suited Tommy—just as it wouldn’t suit Scotty. If he was off his meds, then Tommy could become fixated on saving Scotty.
Cold seeped into her bones, clacked her teeth. What if he was headed to California and planned to hide with Scotty—as far away from the Colonel as he could get?
You should have talked to me, Tommy. The Colonel and I have an agreement. No boarding schools. Ever.
Bent over the steering wheel, peering out the windshield for any sign of her son, she inched on White Mountain Road along the Flint River. She cranked up the heat and the radio. She wasn’t panicked. Not yet. “Tommy, please help me.”
“Burning Down the House” by the Talking Heads blasted over the speakers. Her brain fired with a bright light, and she bobbled the steering wheel, lurching toward the rain-swollen river. She jammed on the brakes, crunching on the shoulder’s gravel, and part of Tommy’s message became clear. “Oh, no, Tommy. What have you done?”
Chapter Two
Nora braked to a halt on the gravel shoulder. On the other side of the car, the Flint River pulsed and pounded over its rocky bottom in perfect imitation of Nora’s gushing thoughts.
Talking in code had been the only way to communicate certain things while living under the Colonel’s prying eyes. Talking Heads—telephone. 77—the last two digits of the emergency number Tommy had given her in one of his delusional phases. Her hands shook on the steering wheel, and she gripped it harder.
If you’re ever in trouble, Nora, Tommy had said, instructing her to memorize the number in blue
