Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

minutes I sit in the car, contemplating my options, the children sleeping soundly in the back. Do I leave them in a cell like I did with Katherine? Right. Brilliant idea. I can’t drop them at my place, which is technically a crime scene until Sheriff Davies says otherwise. The obvious answer is to find their mother, Sally, read her the riot act for leaving her kids unattended, then hand them over with a glare that will keep her from doing something like this ever again. But finding her means scouring the town, going into every shop. Knocking on the doors of all her friends, maybe even checking the trailheads and campgrounds. That’s a lot of getting in and out of the car, muscling the kids out of the back, wrestling with the huge stroller. It’s going to be brutal, but it has to be done. Just thinking about it starts a headache growing behind my eyes. Caffeine’s wearing off, probably. That will be my next problem to address.

I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. For some reason the thought of Katherine Pascoe, the hiker, keeps floating around on the edges of my mental debate. How she left so quickly. How little she said whenever I spoke with her, and the way she’d so eagerly tucked into some gas station pizza.

Just then my phone starts buzzing in my pocket, and when I fish it out and check the caller ID, the name triggers something in my brain, like a door being opened.

Clara. Clara!

“Christ on a stick, get it together girl,” I mutter to myself. Why am I sitting here thinking about wrestling a double-wide stroller from the trunk of the car all day when I could have called Clara?

“Hey there,” I say, pressing the slab to my ear.

She’s talking before I get the words out. Where are you, are you okay, what happened last night, everyone’s talking, did you shoot someone, and several more phrases I don’t quite catch. It all kinda blurs together in front of my suddenly pounding skull.

“Dude, Clara, chill out,” I tell her, a little more forcefully than I intend. “I’ll tell you all about it later. For now I need…” I trail off, the words elusive. What did I need, again? The answer is hazy all of a sudden. Damn this headache.

One of the children starts to fuss.

“Mary, is… is that a kid with you?” Clara asks.

Her question jogs my foggy brain. “Yes. Two kids, actually. Sally Jones’s twins. I’ve got them in my car because their mom left them home alone this morning.”

“Sally?”

“Yeah.”

“Sally’s here. At the diner. I was wondering where her kids were.”

I sit bolt upright. “She’s there?”

“Uh-huh. Having coffee with some strange guy.”

“Holy shit. Okay. Don’t let her leave, I’m on my way.”

I throw the car in gear and make my way to the diner. It takes me all of thirty seconds to get there and I park on the street right in front to make sure everyone can see me.

Clara has smartly led Sally to the door, and nudges the woman down the two steps to the sidewalk as I’m coming around the front of the car. With a look of confusion and concern aimed at me, Clara retreats back inside. Customers watch me from every window. Familiar faces. I ignore them and focus on the mother in front of me.

She’s smiling.

I’m not. “Sally Jones, I need to have a word with you, right now.”

Too loud, I realize belatedly. Inside, the diners’ forks and spoons freeze midair and all eyes are turned to me. Sally points to herself like a schoolkid getting called to the principal’s office, then sheepishly follows me to the car. Once we’re a few feet away from the diner, I lay into her.

“Tell me there was supposed to be a babysitter, Sally.”

Her brow furrows but the smile comes back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Sally Jones,” I start formally, which wipes the grin from her face, “I’m tempted to arrest you for child neglect.”

The look of bewilderment on her face is enough to make me want to slap her back to reality. It’s as if I’ve spoken to her in Swahili. “Neglect?! But,” she stammers, eyes darting to the kids in the car, to me, and back, “but they were fine when I left them.”

Did she really just say that? I tilt my head and step right up into her face. “Fine?” I ask. “Sure, for about five minutes probably. You’ve been gone for hours.”

“Well, this man needed directions. I couldn’t just say no.” As she says the words a note of doubt creeps into her voice.

I close my eyes and speak with deliberate slowness. “How does ‘directions’ turn into lunch with a stranger? Why couldn’t you say no? For that matter, why’d you open your door at all? Who is he? Who needed directions so goddamn urgently that you left your twins at home alone, where one of them cut herself on broken glass?” It all comes out in one breath.

Sally Jones is staring at her kids now, her lower lip quivering. Tears begin to fall, and she’s shaking her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know!” And then she’s bawling, on the verge of collapse. People in the diner begin to stand, probably thinking I’ve just informed the woman of a death in the family.

“Look,” I say, “come with me to the station and we’ll sort this out, okay? Can you do that?”

She turns back and is looking, I realize, at the man who needed directions. He stands at the corner of the building staring back at us. With my index finger I point at him and do a “come here” gesture. He moves slowly through the diner, ignoring the confused looks from the rest of the people inside, and joins us on the sidewalk.

“What’s the problem, Officer?”

“Who the hell are you?”

My tone has him backpedaling, glancing at Sally. “I just met her. We were—”

“Not what I asked.” I glance over my shoulder at Sally.