She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,180

and a half hours from Pittsburgh.”

“No streets called Windmore nearby?”

“I don’t see anything on the map, but I can keep working on it. I’ll dig up what I can on Charter Pharmaceuticals, too.”

Fogel rubbed at her temples. “I could catch a flight and be there by tonight.”

“That’s a long shot. Might be better to stay around there—head back to the strip club and try and pick him up if he goes back,” Stack suggested.

“He’s done around here. I think he got what he came for.”

“The girl?”

“Yeah.”

“You see her? What’s she like?”

Fogel wasn’t quite sure how to describe what she saw last night. She finally settled on a single word. “Dangerous.”

“That seems about right.”

Fogel looked back over at Officer Jun. This time, he waved. “I’ll call you when I land.”

10

David’s eyes snapped open.

His mouth was dry.

“You were dreaming,” Latrese Oliver said from the seat beside him.

He closed his eyes again and leaned back into the seat. The rumble of the private jet was usually soothing, but he couldn’t get comfortable. He preferred these trips without her, but she had insisted. She always insisted when it involved that girl.

“How much further?”

“A few more hours before we land, then another hour by car.”

“And she’s still there?”

“Yes, and we’ve confirmed Stella is on her way with the boy. All together, nice and neat,” Oliver said. Her breath stunk almost as bad as that damn arm of hers.

He did smile at the thought of seeing Stella again. It had been far too long.

11

Sixty miles outside of Fallon, I turned left off Interstate 580 and took the South Lake Tahoe ramp toward Minden. “Do you have any cash?”

Stella looked up from my copy of Great Expectations. She had been reading it for the past hour. “I have $2,463.00.”

“On you?”

“Under a stone back in Fallon.”

My heart sank.

“Of course, on me, Jack. I don’t trust banks, and stones aren’t much better.”

Her spirits had improved, but her skin had managed to grow even more pale. Although the air conditioning in the car was blowing at full, her temples glistened with a thin sheen of sweat. The shaking had come and gone. I pretended not to notice, but she caught me looking down at her hands more than once.

“I’ve got about sixteen hundred, I think. I withdrew all I could last night. If we trade in the Jeep and use about half the cash, we should be able to get something decent.”

“Or we could just steal a car and keep our money.”

“We’re not stealing a car.”

“Okay, we borrow a car and return it at a future date, to be determined, at a location of our choosing,” Stella said, her gaze falling back to the book.

“I’m pretty sure that’s still stealing.”

“I’m not suggesting we borrow a nice car. It can be a clunker, something that won’t be missed.”

“A nice car is more likely to be insured.”

“Settled, then. A nice car it is. Perhaps a BMW.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Stella marked her place in the book with her thumb and closed the cover. “I’d prefer never to set foot in a place like the one where you found me, but for a girl on the run, options for earning an income are limited. I’ve learned the value of a dollar. I fully understand how difficult it is to earn a dollar, and when it comes to vehicles, I prefer to stick with the ones purchased by someone else’s dollars, particularly when they are so readily available.”

“So you steal?”

“Now that I think about it, I do believe I prefer the term ‘borrow.’ I never should have said ‘steal.’ Stealing is wrong. Borrowing is neighborly, friendly. Like when you say you’d like to borrow a cup of sugar, which you then use and are unable to return, but still, everyone wears a smile. Moving forward, I will only ‘borrow’ cars.”

The exit ramp dropped us on 395, and the town of Minden popped up around us. Not much of a town at all. Most of the buildings stood only one or two stories. A large number appeared vacant. Minden looked like an old mining town that managed to claw its way into the twentieth century but was now living on life support.

“A place like this, I don’t think you could borrow or steal a car without getting caught. We need a big parking lot, someplace where nobody will see us,” I said, studying both sides of the street.

“You’ve clearly never borrowed a car before. Pull in there—” she said, gesturing toward one of the largest