Where the Road Ends. Tara Quinn Taylor

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      She’d willingly pay.

      “I need your help.”

      Clutching his cell phone—it was the number she always called—Brad Dorchester looked out at, but didn’t see, the panoramic view of snowy Denver from the thirtieth-floor window of his office high-rise.

      “Amy,” he said, the stiff muscles in his jaw making words difficult. “Where are you?”

      Would there be time for him to save her pretty ass?

      “On the road. It was Kathy I was following yesterday, Brad. I saw her again this morning—at a convenience store across the street. The clerk and a customer both ID’d her from her picture.”

      Brad’s gaze returned to his office. To the mass of papers and photos and reports spread on the conference-size table across the room. He didn’t have to look at them to know what they contained. He knew them all by rote, played them over and over in his mind like an irritatingly catchy tune.

      The papers and photos represented hundreds of hours of work—all generated because of one very small boy. Charles Wainscoat Dunn.

      Brad shook his head, then wrapped one hand around the back of his neck, which had taken on a habitual soreness. He had all the information. And it wasn’t doing a damn bit of good.

      Dared he hope that his second thorough investigation of the world of construction business would turn up something new?

      “Did you follow her?” He hated to ask. Hated to give Amelia Wainscoat any encouragement in her current endeavor.

      “I’m trying, Brad,” she said now. His stomach sank at her eagerness. “I’ve been on 215—you know one of those two-lane roads that—”

      “—only go to one place,” he finished for her. He knew. Not only had he been up and down them himself, he’d been hearing her talk about them for months. Picturing her racing over them all alone in a vain search that was going to kill her sooner or later.

      If not physically, then emotionally and mentally. He just wasn’t sure which would come first.

      “I haven’t seen her since she left the convenience store. I’m approaching M-43, which ends in South Haven. She’d have to take the highway from there.”

      If anything happened to Amelia Wainscoat while she was out there trying to do his job, he was sure as hell going to end up carrying that guilt around forever. He didn’t appreciate the burden.

      Goddammit! If she’d just let him concentrate on doing his job, instead of making him waste time worrying about her.

      “So should I stop in South Haven and risk letting her get farther ahead of me, or do I skip the town and risk the possibility that she might have stopped there?”

      “I’d check the town. If she didn’t stop, it won’t take long to figure that out.”

      He couldn’t believe he was giving her reinforcement to continue with this futile course.

      “But what if she went on ahead?”

      Phone lodged between his ear and his shoulder, Brad rolled up the sleeves of the white cotton shirt he’d tucked into his slacks at an ungodly hour that morning. “She’ll only have an hour or so. It shouldn’t be hard to follow her trail.”

      “Okay.”

      “Amy, I’m putting some of my men on this.” Even though he knew the nanny was a dead end. He’d assigned two men to make absolutely certain of that. They’d checked every aspect of her background, spent weeks doing surveillance—and they’d come up with nothing.

      “Good.”

      He’d already called in the license plate number. “Keep your phone on. I’ll be checking in every hour. Call me sooner if you find anything.”

      “Okay.”

      He studied the table across the room again. He could rearrange the papers there. Stare at the photos until he went blind. And still, the facts weren’t going to change.

      “She was exonerated, Amy.”

      “I know.”

      “She’s perfectly free to travel across the state of Michigan, or any other state, for that matter.”

      “She left town right after the police dropped her as a suspect and she’s been missing ever since.”

      “Who, besides you, is looking for her? The police aren’t. And after all the negative publicity, who could blame her for starting over?”

      Amy ignored his remark. “I’m going to spend the rest of my days hunting her down if that’s what it takes.”

      “If you find her, don’t do anything stupid.”

      “I won’t.”

      Why didn’t he feel confident about that?

      “What should I do?” she asked. “If I find her, I mean.”

      Questions like that really scared him. She didn’t even have a goddamned plan.

      “Nothing,” he said, his feet landing on the floor as he pushed away from his desk and stood. “You should go home and let my men take care of this.”

      “I’m going to question her, but what’s the right tactic?” Amy continued, ignoring him. “Do I act friendly and pretend this is a great coincidence, try to reestablish some trust? Or do I try to bluff her with the idea of some new evidence, hoping I can scare her into a confession?”

      Jaw so tight he couldn’t speak, Brad wandered over to the conference table. With his free hand in the pocket of a pair of navy Dockers he stared down at the array of documents, picturing, instead, the beautiful and completely out-of-her-element heiress alone on a county road in Michigan.

      “Come on, Brad, I don’t have much time. I’ve just taken the South Haven turnoff.”

      “Stay out of this, Amy,” he muttered, refusing to acknowledge the cold sweat slinking down his back. “If you do find her, and that’s a big if, I don’t want you going near her. Keep her in sight, call me immediately and don’t do another damn thing.”

      “Okay.”

      “I mean it, Amy.”

      “I know. She bought animal crackers, Brad. And two ice-cream bars. Not one, two.”

      Animal crackers and ice-cream bars. Charles’s favorite foods.

      If Amelia Wainscoat really found her ex-nanny, she wasn’t going to wait quietly on the sidelines. Kathy Stead would be lucky if she wasn’t down at the first count.

      And then Brad would be wasting time getting his client out of jail rather than doing what she was paying him to do. Find her missing son.

      “Amy.”

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