She Can Hide (She Can #4)(75)

“Besides my house?” The irony in Abby’s question was all too clear. “No.”

“Where did he go last time?”

“The woods, but it was summer.” Abby sipped her coffee.

“He’s a smart kid.” Ethan drove out of the garage into a steady, soaking rain. “I think he’ll hole up somewhere out of the weather.”

“If he can.”

An hour later they drove across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and went north on the Schuylkill Expressway. The rain changed to sleet, and Ethan was forced to slow the truck as patches of black ice spread across the road. At this speed, it would be morning before they got home.

The sleet intensified, mixing with snowflakes as they headed north. It was definitely not summer, and Derek didn’t have a warm coat or boots. If the boy was outside, exposure was only a matter of time.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Derek shivered in the backseat.

The tall man turned up the heat. “Where are you going, Derek?”

“Dunno. Far as I can get.” Derek shrank into the cold leather. Water dripped from his hair onto his nose. The guy knew his name. That wasn’t a good sign. He scanned the passing scenery for landmarks and recognized a billboard for a local ski hill. They were heading back toward town.

“Shitty walk in this weather.” The man turned on the defroster. “My name is Kenneth. I’m looking for the man who took your mother. I could use your help.”

“Are you with the police?”

“No.” They passed under a streetlight. In the rearview mirror, Kenneth caught Derek’s gaze. Kenneth’s eyes were flat gray, no color, no expression. Dead eyes. “You can think of me as the opposite of the police.”

A killer going after a killer? Derek tried to sort out facts, but the events of the past few days felt like pieces to different puzzles all mixed together. “What do you want with Joe?”

“His whole name is Joe Torres. Does it matter why I wish to find him?” Kenneth’s words were carefully articulated, as if English wasn’t his original language. The faint trace of a weird foreign accent gave his words an odd ring. “You want your mother back, right?”

The question felt dangerous, but so did not answering. “Yes.”

“Then we should work together.” Except being with Kenneth made Derek’s intestines want to tie themselves into knots. There was something inhuman about him. Derek’s instincts told him to run far, far away. Not that his instincts were doing him any good locked in a car doing fifty miles an hour. Kenneth had to stop the car eventually, though. The needle on the gas gauge was leaning into the red.

Derek considered the hard body that had picked him up like a newborn kitten. The guy was lean and mean in a way that didn’t suggest a membership at the local Y. Derek would need a cagey plan to get away from Kenneth. Pure speed wasn’t going to cut it. “Where are we going?”

“I’m going to be straight with you, Derek. Joe freelances as a contract killer. My boss believes he was hired to kill Miss Foster.”

Derek cringed. A hit man had been living in his house. He didn’t doubt Kenneth’s claim. That was the first real fact to snap into place. Joe had picked up his mom just so he could get close to Abby, and Derek hadn’t done a thing about it. His mom and Abby were both in danger because he’d been too afraid, too selfish, too cowardly to rat out Joe.

The car passed by the high school. His neighborhood was a couple of miles away. Before he worried about where he was going, he had to shake creepy Kenneth.

“If my boss is right, I doubt Torres is leaving with the job unfinished,” Kenneth said. “He’s hanging around here somewhere. I bet you know your neighborhood better than anybody. Are there any good places to hide?”

“Not really.” Derek wasn’t so sure Joe would stick that close. Abby hadn’t been home much. She’d been with Ethan. If Derek wanted to find her, he’d hang in the woods behind Ethan’s place. But Derek wasn’t going to explain his theory to Kenneth.

“Unless she is at the policeman’s house,” Kenneth said.

Derek’s empty stomach cramped. He and Kenneth were thinking the same thoughts, which creeped Derek out even more. They passed the Food Rite shopping center. Kenneth turned into the gas station and pulled up to a pump. On the other side of the cement island, an older guy was taking the gas nozzle out of his pickup.

Kenneth’s phone rang. He got out of the car. Pressing the phone to his ear, he locked the doors and gave Derek a pointed look through the window before going inside the convenience store.

Ethan’s farm was in the opposite direction. How many miles? Derek had only been there once. Would he even be able to find it in the dark? Whatever. Escape first, make new plan second. Derek opened the backpack at his feet. He took the phone Abby had given him out of the front pouch and slid it into his inside jacket pocket. He’d have to leave everything else behind.

Pickup guy screwed his gas cap back on and got into his truck. In the store, Kenneth was getting cash out of his wallet, his phone jammed between his shoulder and ear. Derek pried off the dome light cover and took out the lightbulb. He hit the unlock button and pulled the door lever. It didn’t open. Stupid childproof locks. Sliding over the seat, he slipped out the driver’s door, which faced away from Kenneth and toward the cement island. The engine of the pickup on the other side of the pumps turned over. In a crouch, Derek ran around the far side of the truck, climbed into the bed, and pulled a tarp over him. The sound of sleet pinging on metal covered the scrape of his clothing.