A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(12)

“Okay,” the man said to Jane. “I’ll give you a name, then. How about Jenny? Or Jill. Or—”

“Thanks for the offer, but we’re leaving,” Jane said. She began to pack her things hurriedly.

“If you’re too shy to change among friends, I’ll help you,” the man said, and stepped toward her.

Jimmy lunged and collided with the man in a football tackle that pushed him into the wall, but the man wasn’t entirely taken by surprise. When Jimmy tried to disentangle himself and fight, the man held him in a headlock and punched him in the face three times, then brought his knee up into Jimmy’s face. Then the man tossed him to the concrete floor, where he lay unmoving.

“Your playmate’s plan seems to have slipped his mind,” said the man as he took his next step toward her. “If you’d like to take your clothes off yourself, get started.”

Jane’s hand was already in Jimmy’s backpack feeling for the gun. She closed her fingers around the handgrips just as the man clutched her arm. He yanked her arm up out of the backpack, but with it came the gun, and Jane pulled the trigger.

The shot was a bright flash of spitting sparks, and the small caliber charge gave a loud, reverberating report in the tiny concrete room. The man completed his tug and pulled Jane to her feet, but she didn’t release the gun. Instead, she squeezed the trigger and the bright light and loud noise ripped the air again. It was then that the man realized he had been hit by the first round. “Bitch.”

Jane kicked her foot toward his groin, and probably missed, but she kicked his thigh where he had been shot, and he pushed off backward and retreated toward the door.

“Wait,” Jane yelled. “Take out your car keys and drop them on the floor.”

“Are you kidding?”

She gripped the gun with both hands to keep it from shaking. “Do it.”

The man began to fumble in his pocket.

“Pull a knife,” she said. “Please try it.”

He changed hands and pockets, and then dropped the keys at his feet.

Jane said, “That’s it then. I’m not the only one with a gun. When he wakes up, he’s going to be mad. If you’re not gone, he might kill you. So get going.”

“How am I supposed to walk out there after you shot me in the leg?”

“It’s not my problem, but you’d better get as far as you can, because if either of us ever sees you again anywhere, we’ll kill you.”

The man went out through the door, and she heard the spring pull it shut. Jane moved to stand along the wall at the hinge side of the door, the gun in her hand, watching the door for the next half hour before Jimmy came back into consciousness. Now as the grown-up Jane approached the rest area in daylight, she thought about the fourteen-year-old boy who had taken that terrible beating to protect her. It was unlikely he could have grown into a man who would do something as cowardly as ambush and murder a witness against him. People changed, but she was sure Jimmy hadn’t changed that much. And as she allowed herself to repeat the feelings of that horrible night, she knew a second reason why she had come. It was her turn.





5



Jane felt trepidation as she came from the brush on the side of the Southern Tier Expressway. She stood perfectly still for a full minute as she studied the cars in the lanes close to her. She looked in each direction and reassured herself that all the threats were simple and visible. She walked onto the parking lot. Nothing had changed in this place since she’d been here twenty years ago. She kept looking ahead for signs of Jimmy. She had guessed that when he decided to escape, he would think of the path they had taken the summer when they were fourteen. Maybe she’d been wrong.

She looked at the small building at the end of the parking lot as she approached, and her stomach tightened. She hadn’t imagined she would ever return to this rest stop. She walked directly to the ladies’ room door on the small, lonely building. She pushed the door so it opened against its spring, and then closed as she came in. She looked around her. The initials scratched in the mirror over the sinks were gone. Probably someone had gone all the way and broken the mirror at some point, so it had been replaced. Today there was graffiti on the walls. Had there been twenty years ago? No. If Jimmy came here and saw the writing, he might have left a message to her here. When she had the thought she realized that was what she had been searching for—not Jimmy himself, but a message only for her, to tell her where he was hiding. Jimmy wasn’t somebody you could just track down and find at the end of a trail. He had to invite her, allow her to find him.

Jane stepped to the spot away from the door where she and Jimmy had sat that night and tried to get their sleeping bags to dry. There were the same three sinks on the right, the three stalls beyond them, and the same hand dryer on the opposite wall. She took out a hairpin like the one she hadn’t used twenty years ago and walked toward the switch plate for the lights. She stopped. Last time, when they were fourteen, Jimmy had stopped her. Keeping the lights off hadn’t kept that horrible man from finding them, but the darkness had probably saved her from being raped. This time she used the pin to turn on the lights, then stepped to the wall and began to read.

She knew his message wouldn’t be any of the big, bold marker lines. His would be one of the small pencil messages that a person had to look for. “They’re cute when they’re little, but don’t bring one home,” some woman had written. “They grow up stupid.” She kept reading the small handwriting on the wall. “Kylie, Mona, and Zoe were here, but wish they were somewhere else.” Somebody had replied, “We wish you’d never come back.” There it was. “J. If you’re here to help me out, I’m heading for the oldest place. J.”