Juanita pulled thoughtfully at her lip with her teeth. “I’ll have Carlos take me home early,” she decided, “before I would expect you back, then I’ll tell Manuel I felt ill and didn’t want to infect Dominick.”
“And if someone’s watching the house? What if they see me like this and tell Manuel you left with Dominick—and never came back? With Manuel coming home, it’s all so much more immediate.”
“Calm down, my friend. We’ve talked about this before. I’m just the housekeeper. No one pays attention to when I come and go. If someone says I left with Dominick and never came back, I’ll say they are loco. My son dropped me off in the morning. Carlos took me home when I felt ill. In between, I never went anywhere or saw anything out of the ordinary. How can Manuel argue with that? It is simple, eh? Besides, he doesn’t even think we speak the same language, remember?”
“Sí.” Vanessa struggled to regulate her rapid breathing. He’d never suspect Juanita. He trusted her. Everyone trusted Juanita.
Nodding decisively, she ducked back into the kitchen, covered her head with the scarf and put on the coat. It was now or never. She was leaving; she couldn’t look back. Somehow she’d provide a life for herself and Dominick, a life that had nothing to do with the man who tried to own her.
Their return distracted Dominick from his magnets. “Why are you dressing up like Juanita?” he asked with a scowl.
“This is the special game we’ve been practicing for,” she told him, adding Juanita’s sunglasses and dark lipstick to her disguise. She’d been terrified that Dominick might mention the “game” to Manuel. But it was a risk she’d had to take. Fortunately, they played games of pretense quite a lot, and it had never become an issue. “We’re going to see if anyone can tell who I really am.”
“Am I going to dress up, too?”
“No, you’re going to act like I’m Juanita, remember? When we step outside, you’ll hold my hand and walk to the car the same as you do whenever Juanita takes you shopping or to the library.”
“That’s not how it goes. I’m Max, from Where the Wild Things Are, and you’re a lady named Emma.”
Vanessa had chosen the name Max because it came from Dominick’s favorite book. He responded well to it. And, equally important, it was a name Manuel would never connect with him. “We’ll do that, too. Just as soon as we drive away.”
“Oh, I get it! You’re going to be Juanita first, then Emma.” He seemed excited—until he followed them into her bedroom and noticed, for the first time, the two suitcases she’d packed. He watched Juanita cover one with a big black garbage bag and take it out to the back porch.
“Why are we throwing away our suitcases?”
“We’re not,” Vanessa said, doing the same with the other one. “Carlos is going to get them for us.”
“Is he playing, too?” Dominick asked as they walked into the kitchen.
Vanessa slipped the backpack into a garbage bag and carried it to the back. “Sort of. We’ll meet him down the street.”
“But why do we need suitcases? Are we going somewhere far away?”
“Yes,” Vanessa said, feeling such relief in the word that she reached out to squeeze Juanita’s hand.
“Where?” Dominick asked.
Across the country, as far as I can take us. “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.” She stood in the living room to make sure Carlos saw their luggage. Had he noticed Juanita pull up outside?
The gardener came almost immediately. Good. Glancing inside the house from the patio, he nodded as he picked up the first bag and carried it around to the front, as if he was loading more clippings into the bed of his truck.
Fear turned Vanessa’s legs rubbery as she hurried to the front door and gave her nanny a tight hug. “You’ll be okay?” she asked in Spanish.
“Of course. We have it all planned out.”
“I could never thank you enough.”
Juanita took a piece of paper from her pocket and slipped it into Vanessa’s hand.
“What’s this?”
“My sister Rosa’s number. We can communicate through her. Call me if you need anything.”
Vanessa stared down at the crumpled paper in her hand. “You never even told me you had a sister—”
“Exactly. Manuel doesn’t know about her, either. I keep my business to myself, eh?”
“Where does she live?” Vanessa asked.
“About an hour from here.”
In a moment of pure panic, Vanessa squeezed her friend’s arm. “Go to her, Juanita. Go to her and never come back here.” She leaned close so she could whisper the rest into Juanita’s ear. “Manuel, he…he isn’t right.”
“You’re the only one he hurts,” Juanita whispered back. “Just be safe, my beautiful friend. And be happy.”
Vanessa waited while Juanita said goodbye to Dominick. Then she took her son’s hand. Keeping her face down and stooping a bit like the older woman, she led him out the front door into the mellow sunshine of a clear August day.
The nondescript white sedan she’d asked Carlos to purchase sat in the circular driveway, representing the freedom she’d craved for so long. She wanted to race toward it, buckle Dominick safely inside and put the metal to the floor as she tore away. But she forced herself to walk very slowly, like Juanita. She’d be gone soon. Then she wouldn’t be Vanessa Beacon anymore. She’d start over as Emma Wright, and Dominick would be Max.
CHAPTER TWO
“EMMA, EMMA, EMMA,” Emma chanted, trying to get used to her new name. She gripped the steering wheel of the white Ford Taurus so tightly her shoulders ached. She’d been heading north on Interstate 5 for nearly six hours, but the miles didn’t seem to be passing quickly enough. Probably because she kept imagining that Manuel had figured out she was gone and was already coming after her.
She checked her rearview mirror, something she did every few seconds, and increased her speed to eighty. A red Toyota 4Runner was following her and had been since she’d come out of the Tehachapie Mountains, the section of interstate called The Grapevine that separated the Los Angeles Basin from the San Joaquin Valley.
Interstate 5 wasn’t like Highway 99, which ran parallel to Highway 5 through the central part of California. Interstate 5 bypassed most of the small farming communities between Los Angeles and Sacramento. The people on this newer road were typically traveling across the state, so the fact that someone had followed her for so long wasn’t that unusual. Except she didn’t recognize any of the other cars around her. People passed her all the time, or she passed them, but they soon drew apart.
“Mommy, I want to go home,” Dominic—Max—said from the back seat. He was bored with the action figures she’d brought for him to play with and had been asking to get out of the car for the past few hours. She’d stopped once in Los Angeles to feed him, test his blood and give him insulin. But Emma couldn’t afford to let him have another break yet. She felt the tick of every second. As close as freedom suddenly seemed, she was still only a heartbeat away from failure and terrible reprisal. “I’m sorry, babe. Mommy can’t stop now.”
“Why not?” he asked, jingling the chain around his neck that held the dog tag she’d had Carlos purchase. It was engraved with Dominick’s new name and medical information.
She checked the red Toyota again. Two occupants. She didn’t think she’d ever seen either man before. But they could be a threat all the same. Maybe they were the ones who’d been keeping an eye on the house. Maybe her disguise hadn’t fooled them, or they’d seen Juanita pass by the kitchen window a few minutes after she’d left….
“Mom?” Max persisted when she didn’t answer. “When are we going home?”
She watched the needle on her speedometer edge up to eighty-five. “We’re not.” Glancing in the rearview mirror, Emma saw her son tucking the metal tag inside his T-shirt.
“Ever?”
Emma didn’t want Max to have to face the reality of forever. She knew he might not find the same relief in it she did. So she kept her answer vague. Especially because she didn’t know what might happen. “Not for a while.”
“What about Daddy?”
“What about him?” She was too preoccupied with the Toyota to focus fully on Dominick’s questions. Max, she reminded herself. She had to become accustomed to it. But she couldn’t concentrate. Had the men in the other car been following her longer than she thought? Could she have missed seeing them somehow?
“Isn’t he coming with us?”
“No, he’s in Mexico,” she said to make the situation easier for Max to accept. If her son reacted to this news the way he normally did, he wouldn’t ask about Manuel again for days, maybe even weeks. Soon, one month would blend into the next, and Max would adjust to his new life and eventually forget the old. The transition wouldn’t be easy, but time would help.
“Won’t Daddy be mad that we’re going on vacation without him? He doesn’t like it when we leave.”
“I know.” She sped up yet again, so the Toyota couldn’t draw even with her.
“I think Daddy’s gonna be mad,” he said.
Max was right, of course—Manuel was going to be furious. But she felt no guilt for separating him from his son. She had to think about what was best for Dominick—Max—had to guide and protect him so he wouldn’t grow up to be like his father or get involved in the family “business.”
“Daddy’s busy. He doesn’t even know.” She adjusted her mirror again, relieved to see that the Toyota had finally dropped back a little. A moment later, however, she realized why. A highway patrol car was coming up fast, in the other lane.
Vanessa—Emma…she was Emma—immediately eased off the gas, but it was too late. The red SUV passed by with scarcely a glance in her direction, while the patrolman came up behind her and flipped on his lights.
Damn it! What was she going to do now? Her first panicked impulse was to run. But she had Max in the car.
Turning on her blinker, she slowed and pulled off the Interstate onto the shoulder, and the patrolman did the same.
“Why are we stopping?” Max asked.
“Because we have to. There’s a policeman behind us.”
When the car was no longer moving, her son unlatched his seat belt and climbed up on his knees to stare through the back window. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know yet. Just don’t say anything while he’s here, okay?”
“Why not?”
“It’s all part of the game we’re playing. No matter what I say, you don’t talk.”
“How come?”
“I don’t have time to explain. Just be quiet back there.” Emma hated to use bribery with Max. It set a bad precedent, but she wasn’t sure what she might have to say to the patrolman and didn’t want her son to contradict her. “If you keep quiet, if you don’t say even one word, Mommy will buy you a toy at the next town, okay?”
“Okay!” His enthusiasm gave her hope that he would actually remember and comply, but Max’s natural frankness was only part of the problem. She had no idea what would happen if she gave the patrolman a fake ID and he ran it through his computer. How much scrutiny could her new driver’s license withstand? And what was she going to do when the officer asked for registration and proof of insurance? The car could be stolen property.
Real or fake ID? Either way, she could be in trouble.
Breaking into a cold sweat, she felt in her purse for her wallet.
The patrolman’s boots crunched on the gravel shoulder as he approached. In her rearview mirror, she could see the pant legs of his taupe uniform, his black utility belt and holstered gun, and his badge, which glinted in the bright light of early afternoon. As he drew closer, in her side mirror, she made out a fiftyish face with salt-and-pepper hair showing beneath his trooper’s hat.
She’d let the red Toyota spook her into making a dreadful mistake. How could she have been so stupid?
Wiping away the perspiration on her upper lip, Emma pushed Juanita’s sunglasses closer to the bridge of her nose and pulled the scarf forward. Then she lowered the window.
“Good afternoon,” he said, his manner professional.
“Hello.” She took note of his name—Daniels—and tried to smile confidently. A lot depended on her performance in the next few minutes.
He bent his head to glance at Dominick, who was dangling over the seat in an effort to see him. “Where you headin’ today?”
“Sacramento.” Emma wanted to embellish the lie by saying she had family there, but she was afraid such a comment would draw Max into the conversation despite her bribe. They’d visited her family in Arizona two years ago, when Emma had tried to leave Manuel, and Max had loved it. He constantly begged her to take him on another “Zona vacation.”
“May I see your driver’s license?”
Offering up a silent prayer, she handed him her real license.
“Is this address correct?”
“Yes. Is something wrong, Officer?”
“You were speeding. Going nearly ninety miles an hour, Ms.—” he studied her driver’s license “—Beacon.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My son has diabetes, and I’m in a hurry to reach the next town so I can get him some food.” She shifted to make sure the backpack containing Max’s diabetes supplies was completely closed—and prayed that Max wouldn’t pipe up to remind her of all the snacks they had in there. She hated to lie, especially in front of her son, but if she didn’t do something, their bid for freedom and safety could easily end in the next ten minutes. Fortunately, Max thought it was all a game.
“What does he need to eat?” Daniels asked.
“Fifteen grams of carbohydrate, but he needs to do it right away or he could have an insulin reaction. He was just recently diagnosed, so I’m still getting used to the whole thing. Had I been thinking, I would’ve prepared better when we stopped in L.A., but I gave him lunch and forgot all about buying an emergency stash. For the past few minutes, I’ve been so worried he’ll go low and pass out that I haven’t been watching my speed.”
Emma risked a glance at Max in the rearview mirror, hoping he’d hold his tongue. Her stomach lurched when he didn’t.
“I need to eat something?” he said.
“Yes, sweetheart. You didn’t finish your lunch.” At least that part was true.
Daniels seemed to soften, but he didn’t return her driver’s license, tell her to be more cautious in the future and let her go as she’d hoped. “We’ll get you on your way as soon as possible,” he said. “May I see your registration?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t have time for this.” She let the panic rising inside her enter her voice. “Maybe you could follow me to the next town.”
His eyes cut to Max. “I’m sure I’ve got something to eat in my car. I’ll get it before you leave, if he’s okay for the moment.”
Emma looked at her son. It was hardly possible to claim Max wasn’t okay for the moment when he appeared as alert, happy and curious as he did.
Shit! She’d gambled and lost. How badly she’d lost remained to be seen.
She rummaged through the glove box, completely unsure of what she might find there, and managed to come up with a Certificate of Registration. Along with the registration, she found a sealed envelope with her new name on it, but she had no idea what it could be and wasn’t about to open it right now. Shoving the envelope back in, she gave Officer Daniels the registration.
His eyes flicked over it. “This car is registered to a Maria Gomez?”
Emma had no idea how to respond. She could only hope that if the car was stolen, it hadn’t been reported yet. “Yes. Maria’s a friend of mine.”
“This might take a minute.” He walked back to his patrol unit. She could see his head and shoulders in her side mirror as he sat behind the wheel with his door slightly ajar, could hear the faint murmur of his voice as he spoke into a crackling radio. Was he running her license plate through some computer? If so, what would he find?
A semi rumbled past, muting all other sound. Several cars whizzed by, too. Emma’s hand hovered over the gearshift. She was tempted to join that stream of traffic, to run while she still had the chance. She couldn’t go back to Manuel. This time she’d lose Max for sure.
“Did I do good, Mommy? Do I get a toy?” her son asked.
“You did great, babe. But it’s not over yet. Be quiet a little longer, okay?” Resting her hand lightly on the gearshift, just in case, she watched the patrolman walk back to her.
“We’re almost done,” Daniels said, and handed her the registration certificate but not her driver’s license, which he’d attached to the clipboard he carried. From what she could see, he was writing her a traffic citation.
She let go of the gearshift. Daniels must not have found anything on her or the car, or he would’ve said something by now. That the car hadn’t raised a red flag surprised her, but the fact that she wasn’t in the computer didn’t. She knew Manuel would involve the police only as a last resort. He had too much to hide to draw that kind of attention. And because he’d found her so easily last time, he’d feel confident he could do it on his own.
“May I see proof of insurance, please?” the officer asked.
Suddenly hopeful that she’d have the chance to recover from her foolish mistake, she rummaged through her purse again and provided her insurance card.
He compared it to her driver’s license and passed it back. “Sign here, Ms. Beacon.” He held the clipboard out to her. “If you’d like to protest this action, instructions are on the other side. Signing the violation isn’t an admission of guilt.”
She didn’t care if it was. She’d sign anything to be able to get back on the road.
She scribbled her real name at the X and accepted her pink copy. But he stopped her before she could roll up her window.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
He pulled a candy bar out of his pocket and gave it to her. “I had this in my lunch today. Hope it helps your little boy.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.” He leaned down to look in the back seat. “You’re a handsome kid,” he said. “What’s your name?”
Charmed by the promise of candy, which he preferred to toys since he lived on such a restricted diet, Max didn’t hesitate. “Dominick,” he said, smiling broadly and completely forgetting his pretend name. “Dominick Escalar Rodriguez.”
Emma’s grip tightened on the steering wheel until her knuckles grew white. “Get your seat belt on,” she told her son, her voice as normal as possible even though she was dying to escape—before anything else could happen. “You don’t want Mommy to get another ticket, do you?”
Grudgingly, Max flopped onto the seat and buckled himself in. “Are we going home now?”
The patrolman stepped away from the car. “You’re heading in the wrong direction for that, I’m afraid.”
“We’re taking a little vacation.” Emma rolled up her window and, at the first break, merged into traffic. She was extremely lucky to be driving away. But she had no idea how long her luck would hold.
She needed to get out of California. Fast.
EMMA FELT SAFER once darkness fell. She hadn’t initially planned on venturing into Nevada, but after her confrontation with the California Highway Patrol, turning east instead of continuing due north seemed wise. And though she never would’ve anticipated it, she liked the harsh wilderness that made up this part of the state. She also liked the western feel of the tiny mining towns she passed. Carson City, Dayton, Ramsey Station, Silver Springs, Frenchman…Some weren’t even big enough to appear on her map. Others had a small casino that doubled as a motel or an old-style theater with the marquee advertising a movie—usually not a new release by the rest of the country’s standards. There was always a church or two, a diner, a gas station, maybe a post office, sometimes a public library or municipal building. In each one she saw older, well-kept homes at the center of town and some cheaper, not-so-well-kept homes at the edges, plus a handful of single-wide trailers scattered here and there, and more than the usual ratio of four-by-fours.
Nevada was truly the last bastion of the Old West, Emma thought as she dodged a tumbleweed blowing across the highway. Folks here didn’t have spectacular coastline views and multimillion-dollar homes. They didn’t even have many trees—just sagebrush, mostly. But they lived a simple life in wide-open spaces. And they seemed more likely to mind their own business.
She rubbed her burning eyes. Max had fallen asleep in the back seat hours ago, after a short dinner break at Lake Tahoe. If she wasn’t so tired, she would’ve preferred to forge ahead, but hour had marched after hour and it was nearly eleven. She’d been driving all day and the tension in her muscles was making her back ache. She needed to find a place where they could spend the night, and she needed to test Max to be sure the insulin she’d given him with his meal hadn’t pulled his blood sugar too low.
Reaching over the seat, she touched her son’s head. He wasn’t sweating, which was a good sign. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully. She could probably wait another thirty minutes to test him, until she found a motel. But she was never completely certain of such a decision. Battling diabetes was as much a guessing game as anything else. Except, like their game today, there wasn’t anything fun about it.
A loud thump, thump, thump warned her that she’d just swerved into the center of the road. Momentarily startled, she jerked the car back into her own lane. She was practically alone on the highway, but she had to stop driving—before she crashed into a ditch or a telephone pole.
Fortunately, she saw city lights ahead.
MANUEL STRODE around his desk and slapped down a map in front of his trembling gardener. “Where?” he shouted. “Where is she going?”
Sweat trickled from Carlos’s temples, and his dark eyes darted furtively toward Richard and Hector, two of the men who worked for Manuel. “I—I do not know.”
“That’s what you told me the last time I asked,” Manuel growled. “Say it one more time, and I’m calling Border Patrol. Your American Dream will disappear like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.
Though heavyset, Carlos wasn’t very tall. At Manuel’s words, he seemed to shrink into himself. “W-what makes you think I help her, amigo?”
“Carlos, I saw you.” Hector unfolded his lanky body from the chair where he’d been sitting several feet away, shoved a hand through his long dishwater-blond hair and moved closer. “I keep an eye on the house, you know? This morning, when I was turning into the neighborhood, I saw you talking to someone in a white Taurus.” He scowled. “Only I thought it was Juanita.”
“Sí, it was Juanita,” Carlos insisted. “I already tell you that.”
Manuel couldn’t help himself. He hauled off and hit Carlos so hard he could feel the gardener’s nose break beneath his fist. Carlos’s head snapped back against the wall, and he nearly fell from his chair. The blow seemed to surprise everyone, but only because it came without warning. Manuel knew his men weren’t opposed to violence—they thrived on it.
Carlos’s arms flew up to protect himself from further blows, fear gleaming in his eyes.
“Don’t make me do that again,” Manuel said, shaking the sting out of his fingers. “Tell me what I want to know or I swear I’ll have you deported.”
Carlos began to sputter, “Amigo…”
“I’ll have your mother deported, too,” Manuel added. “She’s old and sick. She doesn’t need to have Border Control knocking at her door, eh?”
Pulling his hands away, Carlos stared down at the blood on his palms. “Señor, please…por favor. No trouble. I—I have a family.”
“Then tell me what you know about my family!” Manuel wanted to hit him again. This man had cost him Vanessa and Dominick. He wanted to kick him until he was nothing more than a bloody blob on the floor.
Carlos must have sensed the malevolence inside him because his trembling grew worse.
“Whose car was Vanessa driving?” Manuel pressed. “Where did she get it?”
When he said nothing, Manuel hit him again. Twice. He would’ve kept hitting him, except Hector finally pulled him away. “Manuel, not here. You’re not thinking.”