Page 12 of Caleb's Cause
“Talk to Lyle about that. Don’t miss your meeting. It’s the only one you’ll get. If you miss it, then I don’t know what to tell you. I love you, and I will do anything for you, but Lyle isn’t as unforgiving as me.”
“I won’t, thanks Mom.” Katherine hugged her again, and stood next to her mother until her Uber arrived, then she went inside and up to her room. She slept very little that night, and when it was time to leave for her meeting, she drove her car and had fifteen minutes to spare. She walked in, took a seat in the corner, and less than three minutes later, an older gentleman entered, saw her, and came forward.
“Katherine?”
“Oh, hi, have a seat.” Since she recognized him, she didn’t say his name. She didn’t know if anyone was there to spy on either of them, so she played it safe.
They both settled and after they both ordered coffee, Lyle got right to the point by lifting the duffel bag he had brought in with him, she had thought it was a gym bag.
“You talked with your mother?”
“Yes, and I can’t thank you enough for helping.”
“Actually, you’re helping us.”
“How do you figure that?”
“With George Babcock and Larry Mason on a rampage looking for you, we’re hoping they will say something that will trip them up. I shouldn’t say this, but we have their phonestapped.” He held up his hand and shook his head. “With a warrant.”
“Good. You don’t want anything to slip through.”
“Correct, by getting you out of harm’s way, we’re hoping they’ll mess up. Speaking of phone,” he paused as the waitress arrived with their coffee and they both declined anything to eat, but Katherine did ask if she could have two breakfast sandwiches to go. She looked at Lyle with a grin. “I’m too nervous to eat now, but I’ll be hungry later.”
“Good thinking. Now, in this bag is a burner phone. It has minutes on it, and is fully charged. There is a charger in the bag also. This phone is untraceable. Where is your current phone?”
“In the glovebox to my car. The battery is out of it, and that too is in the glovebox. I don’t know if it’s true about tracing a phone, but I didn’t want to take any chances.” She reached into her pocket and slid the key across the table. “Mom said you’d deal with my car?”
“Yes, when we leave here, I’ll drive it out to my property. I have a barn that no one uses and I will park it there and cover it with a tarp.”
“So, you really can’t trust the police?”
“No, we know there are some dirty cops, but until Babcock showed up at your mother’s home last night, we didn’t know who to suspect. Ilsa was able to get photos and positive IDs on them. Now we know which direction to look with the evidence your mother was able to get. Don’t worry, she has them on her phone, but they also show up on the cameras set up at her house.”
“Okay, wow, this is starting to get intense.”
“It is, and our biggest priority at the moment is to keep you safe. Both your mother and I feel that once you’re safe, then we can concentrate on the next step.” He pulled an envelope out of his front shirt pocket and slid that across the table. “I’m sorry Ididn’t get anything fancy, but I got you a bus ticket to Denver. It leaves in two hours. From there, you’ll be on your own. I didn’t want to get too involved. Don’t worry, I paid cash for it, and I had an intern from the office purchase it.” He saw her nod, and took a sip of his coffee. “Also in this bag is cash. This is from your mother. She’s been saving money over the years, and she’s been putting it in the safe at work. She said it was her exit money. I didn’t know what that meant until she explained that she was saving in case she had to exit her marriage. There’s enough here to keep you safe. Spend wisely, and cheaply.”
“I understand, one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Mom said something about an old family friend of hers. I’m going to go there. I won’t tell you, to protect everyone, but she also mentioned that you might have a case number I could tell someone, or a phone number to give to someone to verify my story?”
“It’s all in this bag. When you get somewhere safe, and feel comfortable enough to tell your story, everything you’ll need is in this bag.”
“Thank you, Lyle. I know I don’t have a right to ask, but may I ask a favor of you?”
“Sure, I’ll help if I can.”
“Keep Mom safe. I know you can’t keep her out of harm’s way, because she lives with that asshat, but try to keep her safe.”
“I will, I wasn’t going to say this, but along with the wire taps, there is video surveillance set up inside and out at your home. Again, all done legally. Since your mother already had a security system, it wasn’t hard to have it routed to a server for monitoring.”
“Good. When do I use the burner phone?”
“When you feel that you are absolutely safe. You can give a quick call to the number already programmed into it to sayyou’re safe. Again, it will be routed to a number that will be monitored. If something happens and you are found, call that number again to give us the information. We’ll get help to you as quickly as we can. Only reveal your location when and if you’re in danger.”
“Oh, wow, okay. Will it be okay that when I get to my location I pick up one of those pay by the minute phones?”
