A Stranger's Touch (14 page)

Davie had seen car chases on TV. Now he was in the middle of one. A real, live police chase. But it wasn’t cool, like in the movies. The siren pounded his ears like a big fist. He clapped his hands over them and started to shout.

“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Davie didn’t know how many times he said it. Maybe a hundred. Finally, the woman must have heard him. She slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road.

The police truck moved in front of them, so they couldn’t get away. Davie gave a silent cheer. Even if it wasn’t his mom who’d found him, it was still okay. The officer would know what to do.

The man stepped out of the truck. He was tall, about the same size as Davie’s daddy, but had dark skin. He wrote something in a little book, then walked toward them.

Davie waited. He didn’t want to do anything to upset the woman. He had to make sure the man was real close before he waved to him. He held his breath and leaned forward in his seat.

The woman put her hand up to her mouth and chewed on her fingers. “What should I do? What should I do?”

Davie didn’t know why the woman was still asking that. She’d already done what the officer wanted. She’d stopped. What else
could
she do?

As the man touched the hood of the car, Davie lifted his hand to wave. At the same time, the woman started up her motor.

The car shot forward. Davie threw himself onto the window, banging against the glass. The officer’s mouth opened. He reached for his gun. Then Davie couldn’t see him anymore.

The woman backed up, tires squealing. An awful, burning smell filled the car as she steered around the police truck.

Coughing, Davie looked out the back window and saw the officer flat on the highway, his arms and legs flung out like a broken action figure.

A cold, damp fear burst out all over Davie’s body. His stomach kicked inside him. He swallowed, trying hard not to throw up.

The man on the ground didn’t move. All around him, the road turned red with blood.

Chapter Ten

D
avie leaned his forehead against the cold, metal bar in front of him. It hummed with the ferry’s engine, making his teeth buzz.

He stared into the gray-blue river and thought about Fred Flintstone, the episode where he used toothpicks to keep his eyelids from closing so he wouldn’t fall asleep. Davie wished he had some toothpicks now. Every time he blinked, he saw that policeman lying in the road bleeding.

The woman grabbed the back of his jacket and lifted, forcing Davie onto his tippitoes. “You’re not going to be sick again, are you?”

His tummy gurgled and his mouth filled with sour spit. He took a gulp of the icy air that nibbled at the tops of his ears and tried to think of something happy. Like when his daddy took him to a hockey game. Or when his mommy made him hot chocolate with little marshmallows. And when he would crawl in bed between them to watch TV on Saturday mornings. When they were still a family.

The boat slowed as they reached the other side of the river. The motor cut out, and he could hear the water licking against the side. Like a giant monster tongue, slurping. The sound whispered to him...

That officer is dead. She’ll get you next.

For the whole trip, he’d tried to think of a plan to get away. But now the ride was over. And he hadn’t thought of a thing.

He looked over at a man wearing orange overalls, the guy who’d lowered the ferry’s drawbridge and let on all the cars. Maybe
he
could help.

Davie took a step toward Orange Man to get his attention, to make him see that something was wrong. The grip on his jacket tightened and he bounced back to the woman like an elastic band.

“You stay close to me,” she said, dragging him to the opposite side of the boat. “We’re almost there. First, we have to say hello to someone.”

Davie didn’t want to say hello to anyone. He didn’t want to go anywhere else with this woman. He dug his fingers into the steel mesh below the bar and waited.

“Come on. We’re here.” She tugged at him, then shook him, making him wobble from side to side and his tongue flop around in his mouth.

She crouched down, her face inches from his, her hot, smoky breath huffing and puffing against his cheek. “Maybe I should leave you on the side of the road. How would you like that? You want coyotes to eat you?”

Tears burned his eyes. He blinked them away and curled his fingers into the mesh so tight his hands shook.

The woman poked him in the side. “I can see why your mommy doesn’t want you anymore.”
Poke, poke.

Davie doubled over. It was like Billy punched him in the stomach. Didn’t his mommy want him? Is that why she hadn’t come to pick him up after school?

“She’s too busy with her job. She doesn’t have time for you. That’s why she gave you to me. I’m going to be your mom from now on.”

Sharp pains dug into his chest, a million times worse than an asthma attack. A zillion times worse. “No. She’s looking for me.”

“If she was trying to find you, don’t you think she’d be here by now?”

The bar in front of him blurred. Snot oozed from his nose and hung on his upper lip. He flung out his legs and plopped his bum onto the deck. He leaned against the barrier and sobbed until he choked.

The woman pressed her lips against his ear. Her words boomed inside his head. “You stop this, right now. What’s the matter with you? You want everyone to see what a bad boy you are?”

“How’d he like the ride?” a man’s voice called out. Orange Man. He was close. So close, Davie could talk to him. Explain what was going on.

As Davie turned, the woman ripped his hands away from the railing. “Very much. He doesn’t want to leave.”

Then she threw Davie in the air, high above the deck. He let out a squeal as she lifted him onto her shoulder. He squirmed until her hand smacked hard against his butt. It stung, but it didn’t hurt as much as his insides.

“Mommy. I want my...Muuuummy.”

“My son’s been away from me for a while,” the woman told Orange Man. “He’s picked up some bad habits.”

The man laughed. “A spanking now and again never hurt anyone.”

Davie felt cold all over, right down to his toes. Orange Man was on
her
side. A white-haired lady looked at him and shook her head. A teenager pointed and made a face.

“Help,” he screamed. “You’ve made a mistake.”

No one came. No one cared. The woman carried him to her car and strapped him in tight.

“You see? You’re mine, now,” she whispered, and smeared a wet kiss on his forehead, as cold as the metal bar.

* * *

Maggie relinquished the driving to Stafford. She wasn’t in any shape to get behind a wheel. Her legs were too shaky to use the pedals, her eyes too sore from crying to see the road. The only thing that had kept her from causing an accident so far was the shortage of other vehicles on the highway.

She looked at her hands and studied Stafford’s hasty bandaging job. Another reason she shouldn’t be driving. After her hysterical nosedive down the side of the falls, he’d found the first aid kit she kept in the trunk and patched her up with a bedside manner any doctor would have envied.

And he’d get more opportunity to practice it. Even as she examined his handiwork, blood soaked through the gauze that covered her physical wounds.

Her real injuries remained inside. Buried beneath the skin.

Feeling woozy, she lifted her head to gaze out of the car window. The blur of trees didn’t help matters. Neither did the tip-tap of rain as it splashed against the glass. Davie could be out in the middle of it. Cold, shivering and calling for her.

Guilt sliced into her chest like a cleaver. It was all her fault. If she’d been a better mother...

No.
She couldn’t go down that road again. Couldn’t even summon up the energy to feel embarrassed by her descent into madness. Terror had turned her inside out, leaving her soul raw and exposed. And Stafford had witnessed every excruciating second of it.

She closed her eyes to clear the image and let her mind wander, remembering happier times. Like the last matinee she’d gone to with Davie a few weeks earlier. Or was it months?

He’d tripped over his drink, sending the entire contents of his Big Slug Mug cascading toward the screen. A quick-witted fellow two rows ahead had called out, “Floodwaters. Pick up your feet.” She’d laughed, replaced Davie’s drink, and moved with him to another seat, making light of the situation so he wouldn’t feel embarrassed. Accidents happened. No use worrying over spilt milk. Or Sprite.

She’d told the story a dozen times to her co-workers. It always got a good response, a few chuckles, a couple of well placed
awwww
s. Now, her eyes misted with the memory, turning the hordes of gangly pines along the road into an army of dark specters.

Did accidents really happen? Did events truly occur by chance? Maybe she was supposed to lose Davie in order to learn some kind of life lesson that would make her a better person.

The idea might have been a comfort, if she believed any of that new-age schlock. Like everyone else on the planet, she was adrift, searching for meaning in a meaningless world, and sinking fast.

She leaned back against the headrest, her eyes toward the roof of the car. Keeping her tears from spilling was like balancing two full teacups on her cheeks. Now she understood why people turned to alcohol and drugs. A double shot of whiskey might gain a few minutes relief. A junkie’s fix might ease the pain that gripped her chest and end the constant twisting of a heart ready to break.

She felt Stafford’s hand on her knee. Comforting. Protective. Male.

Without moving her head, she reached down and placed her hand on top of his. Warmth traveled up her arm. And into places she hadn’t thought about for months.

She shouldn’t enjoy it. But she did. Welcomed it. Relished the pleasure of a man’s touch, of feeling alive again.

They remained in the same position, until Stafford pulled away, needing both his hands to make a left turn into the center of a small town.

Actually, judging from what Maggie could see, Enterprise wasn’t big enough to qualify as a town, small or otherwise. What lay before her looked more like a truck stop than a place to build a life. Mobile homes sat on the edges of nameless dirt streets.

“Captain Kirk was wrong,” Stafford muttered. “
This
is the final frontier.”

He pulled into the parking lot of a long, light blue building. An electric sign blinked the words
motel, gas, café
and
videos
.

Across a lane, two more rectangular structures, painted dark blue with white trim, formed an off kilter L-shape. The number of equidistant doors on the buildings suggested a motel, slightly cheerier than the place owned by the Bates family and minus the scary house.

On the far side, a jean-clad man, too brown and beefy to be mistaken for Anthony Perkins, perched on a ladder and pounded at the trim with a hammer. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he stuffed insulation around a window.

While Stafford filled the car with gas, Maggie comforted herself with memories. She thought about the time Davie lost his first tooth. While eating rice pudding. Sneaking into his bedroom that night with the Tooth Fairy money, she’d dropped the tiny incisor on the carpet and spent the next twenty minutes on her knees fumbling in the dark, trying to find it. She’d almost given up but couldn’t risk Davie discovering the tooth and blowing the fairy’s existence.

Searching for her son was like looking for that tooth, crawling along in the dark, reaching for a clue she couldn’t see.

Maggie jolted upright as a rap sounded on her window. She opened the door. Around her, the rain made soft, crackling noises at it hit the gravel.

“Might as well stay here for the night,” Stafford suggested, leaning against the roof of the vehicle. “There’s a restaurant. We can eat. Regroup.” He held out his gloved hand, ready to help her out of the car.

She took it, his long fingers wrapping around her bruised ones. She stood, her chest almost touching his.

In a small corner of her mind, she knew the rain fell around them, knew the air was chilled. Neither reached her. Not with Stafford standing this close. Heat radiated from him, surrounding her with a heady mix of safety and danger.

“Maggie, we will find him. I promise you that. I’m not leaving until we do.” He tucked his hand under her chin and lifted her head.

When she’d first seen him, she mistrusted those blue eyes. Now she couldn’t remember why. They were the kindest eyes she’d ever seen. Still, something smoldered behind them.

She wanted to take a step back but his embrace left no room for rational thought. She reached her arms around him, her clothes brushing against his, her fingers stroking the covered flesh of his muscled back.

She drank in his strength, until a tingling in the pit of her stomach sent a very different message. It wasn’t just his strength she wanted.

The thought shook her enough to make her feet move. She slipped out of his arms and cleared her throat. “Thanks.”

What was it about him that muddled her thinking? Yes, he was handsome. Startlingly so. But she was trying to find her child not start a relationship with a man she barely knew. Somewhere along the way, the anxiety,
the lack of food, the weariness of the search, it had all addled her brain.

She was starting to relate to the Stockholm Syndrome, a condition coined after victims, held in a bank vault during a robbery in Sweden, became emotionally attached to their captors. Patty Hearst was a fellow sufferer. Kidnapped and abused, she came to love her tormentors.

Only Stafford wasn’t holding Maggie against her will. Years from now, would some psychologist come up with a neat catchphrase for the effect he had on her? How he made her breath come faster, her heart beat stronger, her tough cop exterior crumble until only the woman remained?

He must sense how she felt. Know that in the short time they’d been together, she’d grown to trust him, to respect him, to want more from him.