Page 43 of Fearless
If he were an American without money, friends or means, where would he go, Noah tried to think. What would he do?
She’d gone home, or so her note had said. And yet, why would she write that without calling the one person who could help her get there? He searched the road for signs of anyone walking. She didn’t have a car, so she had to be out here somewhere. Unless she’d turned to hitch-hiking. He swore again, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t be that stupid, but Cooktown was too small even for a bus system. Except the tour buses, but those only ran during the height of the tourist season and usually only back and forth from the hotel to the beach.
Unless she took a cab, a little voice in his head suggested. Cooktown did have one of those. Literally, one.
Pulling a U-turn in the middle of the road, he very nearly side-swiped another vehicle and drove straight to Old Man Jennison’s home, which doubled as the base of operations for his single-cab business.
Frail and bent-backed, seventy if she was a day, his wife, Maybelle, answered the kitchen door when he pounded. The thickness of her glasses amplified her owl-eyed shock at seeing him. “Mr. Carver?”
Pushing past, he searched the cluttered three-room home. “Kitty!”
There was no answer and no sign of either her or Jennison. His beat-up Studebaker of a cab wasn’t parked within sight of the house, not via any of the windows Noah checked.
“What on earth?” Maybelle declared, chasing after him in confusion. “You need to calm down right now, young man. This isn’t seemly!”
“Is she with him?” Noah demanded.
She tried to give him a stern frown, but he pushed past her again, storming back through her equally small house to the living room where a work station made up of phones, books, maps, calculator and a visa machine cluttered the top of a narrow desk.
Drawing herself up to her tallest diminutive height, she knuckled her hands onto bony hips. “Sometimes you have to let them go if it isn’t meant to be.”
Sure enough, the last call logged in the notebook he found lying open on top of the pile had Kitty’s name and his address written on it. He checked the time against his watch. Shit, that had been almost two hours ago. “Where’s Jennison taking her?”
Maybelle’s frown deepened, but not without a glimmer of sympathy. “Cairns Airport.”
“He got his cello on him?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Even if the fare hadn’t already been paid in full, in advance, the answer would still be no. She’s a grown woman.”
Paid in full? The notebook had a money amount, but nothing that showed a payment taken. “How was it paid?”
Pushing him aside, Maybelle dug through the stacks to show him a slip of a paper and credit card receipt. “The card cleared,” she said, thrusting it at him. “I can get a hold of him, but I can already tell you right now, he’s not going to bring her back against her will. That would be kidnapping.”
Noah barely heard her. Taking the receipt, he read the name again. Not Garreth, which he’d been expecting, or Hadlee, which would have been understandable. He’d still paddle Kitty’s bottom to within an inch of all sitting ability, but he’d have understood. But no, the name on the receipt was Ethen O’Dowell, complete with verification information and a home address.
Kitty hadn’t called Hadlee for help. She’d called Ethen.
“Jesus,” he breathed.
Maybelle barely got out of his way before he bowled past her. They had a two-hour head start on him, but Cairns was a four-hour drive. He broke every speed limit along the way, but it didn’t make any difference. Kitty’s plane was taxi-ing down the runway by the time security tackled him at the gate.
“She left me,” he said, watching in disbelief as the plane lifted off the ground.
“Yeah, well,” the arresting officer said, snapping him into handcuffs, “I reckon if you were this much of a nut with her, she can’t be blamed, can she? After you, mate.” Catching him by the collar, the officer pulled him away from the windows. “Start walking. Through the turnstyles this time, instead of hopping over ‘em, eh?”
Chapter 15
The flight back to the States took four hours longer than leaving it had, with three plane transfers instead of two and a layover in excess of seven hours. She didn’t know if Ethen had done that on purpose or if he’d simply got her on the first flight out and that had been her luck of the draw. It was the sort of thing he would have done, but for her own mental sake, Kitty chose to believe it was the latter. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and all that. It wasn’t like she’d had a lot of options.
She didn’t sleep a wink the entire trip. She laid the seat back on each plane she boarded, but when she closed her eyes, all she ever saw was another long and awful ride in Ethen’s car. Once he picked her up at the airport. If he picked her up.
Of course, once she got back to the States, she wasn’t quite as stuck as she’d been overseas. She had Hadlee once she got to D.C. Hadlee would drop everything to come and get her. But she’d probably bring Garreth with her. Kitty knew she had some hard explaining to do. Frankly, with every plane transfer that brought her closer to home, all the reasons she’d been nursing for leaving Noah in the first place seemed to weaken. She wasn’t sure she knew anymore how to explain to herself what she was doing or why. How could anyone else understand? Especially not Hadlee, who although she’d run away first, had gone straight into the arms of a man who loved her, and had for months.
She didn’t have to flee the country.
She didn’t lose everything first.
She didn’t… For fuck’s sake! Scrubbing her hands through her hair, Kitty turned off her miserable thoughts. She was tired of running down her own litany of woes. Everyone had problems. No one had a perfect life. She’d got herself into this and, one way or another, she’d get herself out. She didn’t know how yet, but the solution would not involve becoming dependent on strangers to straighten it out for her.
