might have slipped in while she’d been doing her log check. How many times had her dad cautioned her to close the door after grabbing the clipboard?
Starla scanned the white-blanketed vista ahead and behind, then guided the rig off to the side of the road and put the transmission in Park, at the same time unfastening her seat belt.
Jabbing the power button on the stereo, she plunged the cab into silence and turned sideways in the seat to get up. Crouched beneath the head liner, she stepped to the doorway and flipped on the overhead light. There was room to stand straight in the sleeper and she moved forward.
A bundle of bunched covers in the corner of the bed rustled. The hump was bigger than a cat or a raccoon. Heart hammering, she swallowed hard and pointed the gun. “What are you doing back here?”
The covers moved again. Not really a big enough lump to be a person—unless it was a very small person. Keeping the revolver at the steady in her right hand, she leaned forward and, with her left, jerked the blankets away.
She saw a tumble of dark hair first, followed by a small white face and blue eyes. A child!
Quickly Starla jammed the revolver into a storage cabinet overhead and bent to the little girl. “What are you doing here? How did you get in? Who are you?”
The child’s lower lip quivered, and her gaze moved to the cabinet above and back to Starla. “I’m Meredith.”
Completely confused, but relieved that her intruder was harmless, Starla sat on the edge of the bunk. “What are you doing in my truck?”
The girl sat up swiftly, all signs of worry erased, and crossed her stockinged legs. She wore a red jumper with a Sesame Street character on the bib. Grover, maybe. No, Elmo, that was the red one. “You have to help my daddy.”
Knowing full well there was no one else hiding in this cramped space, Starla looked around, anyway. “Where’s your daddy? What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s at home. And he’s sad. That’s why you have to help. If you sprinkle some of your miracle dust on him so he can be happy again, I know he’ll find me a new mommy.”
Starla rubbed her brow in confusion. “Where is home?”
Meredith shrugged.
Starla pressed, “Where do you live?”
“In a brown house.”
Oh, my goodness. Placing her hands on her knees and biting her lip, Starla concentrated. Couldn’t be too hard to figure out where the kid had come from. The last place she’d stopped had been that café back on the highway a while back.
Of course. The pieces of mental puzzle slipped into place. This child had been seated at a booth with her father. Everyone in the place had stared at the stranger, the lady truck driver, but this little girl had waved and looked happy to see her. “Do I look like somebody you know?”
Meredith nodded happily.
“Who? Your mommy?”
The child frowned then and shook her head.
“Who do I look like?”
“You’re the angel, like the one in my book.” She pointed to the colorful cover. “See?”
“I’m not an angel,” Starla denied, glancing at the picture of the platinum-haired celestial being. “I’m just a person.”
Meredith shook her head. “Says you’re a angel right on the door of this truck, don’t it?”
“That’s just the name of the truck. Men are silly like that. They name things. Like trucks. My dad calls his truck Silver Angel.”
“You’re the angel,” the child insisted, pointing. “This one.” She opened the book and turned pages until she came to a picture of the woman sprinkling sparkly dust. There was a smear that appeared to be ketchup across the corner of the page. “See right here?” Meredith turned enormous blue eyes on her. “My daddy needs some of your miracle dust. Please say you’ll help him.”
“That’s just a story,” Starla told her. “It’s pretend. If I was an angel, what would I be doing driving a truck across Iowa in a snowstorm?”
Not to be dissuaded from her cause, Meredith ignored the denials and used five-year-old logic to explain, “Aunt Edna who lives at the nursey home said she was in a car crash once, and a beautiful angel in a white robe sat right on the seat beside her and kept her from going off a bridge.”
“Your aunt Edna is in a nursing home?”
“She’s not my aunt. That’s just her name. She’s prob’ly somebody’s aunt, though.”
“Well, as you can see,” Starla replied, gesturing to her cashmere V-neck sweater and jeans, “I don’t have a white robe.”
“Uh-huh.” Meredith nodded and pointed to where Starla’s white satin dressing gown and pajamas hung on a plastic hook.
“Those are my pajamas.” Starla shook her head in negation. Or was it confusion? “How did you get in here?”
“I watched when Miss Rumford carried dishes to the back. When you got your coat, I followed. I was behind the gas pumper and saw you take your papers from inside and walk around, looking at the tires and the lights and stuff. You left the door open.”
She certainly had. After all Dad’s warnings.
Meredith scooted toward the edge of the bed. “I have to go potty.”
Starla held her forehead in her hands, her mind thrown into overdrive. She would have to take this child back to her parents. To her father. To that café. She was going to lose…her gaze shot to her watch…nearly three hours, even if she made good time!
The child’s family would be frantic by now.
“Meredith,” she said suddenly. “We have to let somebody know that you’re okay.”
“Daddy’s going to be mad. Really mad.”
“I’m sure he’s more worried than mad.”
“I really have to go potty.”
Ten minutes later, after showing Meredith the camper-size toilet, digging a bag of popcorn from a supply cupboard, then buckling her into the seat belt on the passenger side, Starla asked. “Do you know your phone number?”
Meredith nodded and reeled off the number. Starla jotted it on the edge of a log sheet on her clipboard and unplugged her phone to dial. She got an answering machine. “He’s not there.”
Of course he wasn’t there. He was either at the café or at the sheriff’s department, reporting a missing child.
“He gots a cell phone, too,” Meredith told her.
“Oh! Do you know that number?”
Meredith shook her head.
“That’s
