Agent Daddy. Alice Sharpe

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      “There you’re wrong,” Novak said. “Her mother said she ran off without a word a year or two ago.”

      Trip hadn’t known that. “Gina told me Saks had a history of domestic violence.”

      Chief Novak flipped his hand. “The boy’s a hothead, that’s all.” The big man heaved a sigh that put even greater pressure on his buttons and added, “Listen. I know you had a fancy career in the FBI. I bet it sucks to be out of the action. But this is my town, so why don’t you just go back to ranching?” Novak slapped his hands on the counter. Case closed.

      Trip left before his temper got the better of him.

      

      IT WAS GETTING DARK. The rain had let up, but the temperature had dropped, making the roads icy. Faith had taken the children to a big-box store where she changed Colin’s diaper and fed him some of the dry cereal and fruit she found in the diaper bag. She’d bought Noelle a banana, they’d returned to her car and now it seemed the baby had fallen asleep. By the hush in the backseat, Faith thought it likely Noelle had nodded off as well.

      How had her life gotten to this point?

      Six months before, she’d known who she was and what she wanted. It had been her friend, Olivia, who wanted out of Westerly, not Faith. And now she was driving two very small children around on a stormy night in a town she barely knew, while their uncle tried to find their babysitter. To add insult to injury, she couldn’t even take them somewhere decent, somewhere warm, somewhere safe because her landlady and her son made the Bates Hotel seem like a day spa.

      “Ms. Bishop?” Noelle said. Guess she wasn’t asleep after all.

      “Yes, sweetie?”

      “Can we go home?”

      Home. “Well, I don’t want to run into those people again—”

      “My home,” Noelle said. “Mrs. Murphy makes cookies sometimes.”

      They were at the northeast edge of town. Faith knew Trip lived on a ranch with the children, she knew about where it was, as she’d passed a sign on one of her weekend drives. It was called the Triple T.

      Dare she drive to his house? Would he think she was being pushy? Did it matter what he thought?

      “What kind of cookies?” she asked as she headed out to the highway. At this point, any decision was better than no decision.

      “Sometimes chocolate with peanuts, only Uncle Trip doesn’t like peanuts, so now she leaves them out.”

      “I sure hope she made some today,” Faith said.

      “Me, too.” It was quiet for a mile or two, and then Noelle spoke again, her voice ominous this time. “Uh-oh, Ms. Bishop.”

      “What’s wrong?”

      “Colin is waking up.”

      

      IT WAS ALMOST DARK by the time Trip pulled up in front of the Quik Mart. Gina’s car was nowhere in sight. For a second, it crossed his mind she’d come back for it, or her mother had taken it or the cops had impounded it, and then he remembered the way Gina always parked on a hillside, facing down, when she came to the ranch, in case the engine wouldn’t start. There was a slope beyond the store. He topped the hill and looked down the road that bordered a ravine on one side and a few stores on the other side, and sure enough, there was Gina’s car, pointed downhill.

      Gina’s car windows were up now and the doors were locked. The car itself looked like it always did, battered and old, the tattered front seat bare, except for a fluff of something very white and purple, just visible on the passenger side, stuffed between seat and seat back. Trip hitched his hands on his waist and looked up and down the street. A gas station on the corner, a flower shop and a shoe repair directly opposite. He checked his watch and decided he could spare a few more minutes.

      The man in the shoe repair shop worked in the back and came to the front only when he heard the bell ring over the door. Trip asked him about the car across the street, but the repairman hadn’t even noticed the police, let alone a nineteen-year-old woman. He did say he’d seen the car there before.

      The flower shop was better staffed. The three female employees, all in their thirties and all smiling up a storm, agreed they’d seen Gina’s car parked on the hillside before, but none of them had actually seen her, not today, anyway. Since Trip didn’t have a photo to show around, there wasn’t much else to be learned.

      He went to the service station last. It was an independently owned station, with higher prices than could be found elsewhere, hence it appeared to do a neighborhood kind of business. There were no cars at the pumps, but there was a man in the garage, sitting on an overturned box, lights blazing around him. It looked as though he was in the process of dismantling an engine.

      Trip stood there for a moment, watching. Late twenties, pudgy, somehow familiar, dressed in blue coveralls, extremely focused on his job. The mechanic was picking up little pieces and wiping them with a grease rag, dropping some into some kind of solvent, arranging others in a pattern of sorts.

      The guy gave no indication he was aware of Trip. Mindful of the need for haste, Trip stepped into the light and said, “Sorry to bother you…”

      At the sound of Trip’s voice, the attendant jumped up. Sandy hair, sparse mustache over full lips, blue eyes, a couple of grease smudges on his cheek. His overalls were too big for him. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear you drive in.”

      “I didn’t drive in, I walked. I don’t need gas, I just want to ask you a couple of questions.” As the mechanic perched back atop his box, Trip added, “You look like you know what you’re doing with that engine.”

      “Been taking ’em apart since I was a little kid.”

      “You look familiar,” Trip said. “You from around here?” Too late he realized he’d fallen into interrogation mode.

      The kid didn’t seem to mind. “More or less,” he said.

      Trip introduced himself and stepped closer, hand extended.

      “Eddie Reed,” the guy replied, but raised grease-stained hands to explain why he didn’t return the shake. He added, “I know who you are, Mr. Tripper. I came to your place looking for work a few weeks ago.”

      “I don’t—”

      “Your foreman, that Mr. Plum guy, he said you just hired someone else.”

      A big clock on the wall ticked away another ten seconds before Trip added, “I’m wondering about the car across the street. The green one that’s been parked there most of today.”

      “What about it?”

      “Did you see the young woman who left it there this morning?”

      “I don’t come to work till two o’clock,” Eddie said. “What does she look like?”

      “Oh, around twenty, long red hair, tall. Pretty girl.”

      “She special to you?”

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