Every Precious Thing

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

With each passing hour, Diana’s sense that she’d missed her opportunity to find out what Logan and his friends were doing grew, but then the truck returned to the Desert Inn parking lot-not only with the tough guy inside, but Logan, too-and all those thoughts of failure disappeared.

After Logan got out, the other guy took off again. She didn’t even consider following the El Camino. Logan was the one who’d been asking questions about Sara. That’s where her focus needed to be.

She watched as he went up to the second floor and into one of the rooms. For a few seconds, she considered following him up and confronting him, but she knew that would give her no more than temporary satisfaction. If he was involved with whom she thought, best to just observe for now.

For a while nothing happened, then Logan exited his room carrying a duffle bag and walked downstairs. On the first floor he entered another room, came out holding a second bag, and went into the motel lobby. He stayed there until a white, generic-looking sedan pulled into the parking lot. As he exited the office, the man who’d been driving the car climbed out. The driver was wearing khakis and a bright blue golf shirt, and he was holding a tablet computer. Using a stylus, Logan wrote something on the computer screen, and the man handed him a set of keys.

A rental, she realized.

As Logan threw the bags in the trunk, Diana started her car.

Her weak point was obviously following people, but she knew if she lost him this time, she might never find him again. Given that he’d brought the bags, she guessed he was probably leaving town, and the only way to do that was via the interstate.

The freeway entrance was a straight shot down Center Street. She pulled out of the lot and headed in that direction before Logan even got behind the wheel of his car. A block shy of the overpass, she pulled into a gas station to wait.

Thirty seconds later, the rental sped by. When its blinker came on indicating it was about to make a right turn, the skin on her arms went numb.

East. He was heading east.

Sara was east of here. Could he know that?

Having no choice, Diana shifted the car out of park and took off after him.

She quickly found that freeway following was a hell of a lot easier than doing so in town, and she was able to keep Logan in sight with little trouble. As they headed through Arizona, she tried willing him to turn down US 93 to Phoenix, but he blew right past the transition, staying on the I-40.

Every mile her concern increased. When they neared the exit to Williams, she could feel her pulse pounding in her neck and arms. But Logan kept going, driving right by the off-ramp that would have taken him to the cabin where Sara was.

Could it just be a trick? Did he know she was following him, and was trying to throw her off? Having no confidence that the situation was any better than it had been, she stayed with him.

When he exited at Flagstaff, she felt her blood pressure rise again. She had a connection in this town, a connection that could possibly lead in Sara’s direction. She tried to follow him into town, but once more was defeated by her lack of experience and lost him within minutes. Worse, Flagstaff was at least a dozen times bigger than Braden, so he would be much harder to find.

Her only choice was to do a methodical search for his white sedan. At least she’d been able to memorize his license plate number, making her task of spotting his amongst the hundreds of other white sedans marginally less impossible than it could have been.

When she did find the sedan within the first fifteen minutes, she didn’t know if she felt lucky or horrified. It was parked in front of Burrage Copy Box. The very same Copy Box outlet she had used as a mailing address when she worked at the canyon. Oddly, Logan didn’t seem to be around.

Could he have…?

With growing dread, she doused her lights, and turned down the street where her former employer’s offices were located. And there, parked right in front, was the electric blue El Camino.

She pulled to the curb and reached for her phone. She had turned it off after talking to Sara, because she didn’t have any answers, and had no idea what to say. It was a panic move, but now she needed to talk to Sara, tell her she was coming to pick her up tonight. She brought up Sara’s number, but before she could hit SEND, she saw that there were other people on the sidewalk beside Logan and his tough friend.

Four, in fact. Two behind the friend, and two in front of Logan.

Even from a block and a half away, she could see the guns.

What the hell was this?