While she’d been out, she’d stopped in a small coffee shop not too far from where Travis worked and had spent a few precious minutes on the Internet. Looking for any sign that Walt was close. For any new developments. What the latest accusations were he was flinging her way.
All she’d accomplished was renewing her utter panic as she’d gone over the news stories in the local California papers and seen that even a few larger news outlets in the bigger cities in California had picked up on the “human interest” story of a deranged, emotionally unstable woman who’d kidnapped the two children of a wealthy, respected man.
Eve wanted to put her fist through the computer screen. Lies. All of it lies. But who would believe her? Who would ever believe that Walt was the monster and not her? That he was the sadistic, abusive father instead of the doting, worried, grieving man he portrayed to the rest of the world. He had everyone who mattered fooled. Only she—and Travis and Cammie—knew the truth.
Eve’s mother had known the truth, and she’d paid for it with her life. Eve could never prove it, but she knew, she knew that Walt had killed her mother. It wasn’t a guess. She knew absolutely. And so did Travis. They kept that from Cammie. It was something she never needed to know. She had enough to fear from her father without knowing he’d killed their mother. But Eve and Travis knew and they lived with the knowledge every single day. That if they ever went back, they’d be going back to hell.
Eve would be locked away, if not in jail, in some mental institution where they’d make a vegetable out of her. And Travis and Cammie would be returned to a man who’d destroy them.
It was only a matter of time before the news carried farther than California. Maybe it already had. Walt had the connections, and it was evident he was doing everything in his power to make the media carry the story far and wide. So there’d be no place for Eve to hide. No hole deep enough. No corner far enough out of the way to escape his reach.
An Amber Alert had already been issued for Travis and Cammie. Eve’s face was plastered on many a billboard as the one who’d kidnapped the children. She was listed as highly unstable and to be approached with caution, as she could be armed and dangerous.
That was laughable. She’d never even held a gun in her hands. Wouldn’t know how to use it. There was a lot she regretted. One was thinking, as many people did, that she’d never have need of self-defense. That she’d never be touched by situations calling for violence. Or to defend herself from violence.
She was a naïve fool, and now Travis and Cammie were paying the price for her ignorance.
Her first instinct was to hide behind blissful ignorance. Not to seek out information or remind herself of what she was running from. But that would be the height of stupidity. She couldn’t afford blind ignorance or to ever believe for one minute that she was safe. Hidden. Out of Walt’s reach.
And so she needed to keep close watch and monitor the news and any other information about Walt’s pursuit, both privately and in the media. It was the private pursuit that scared her the most. Not that both avenues weren’t frightening. But it was the lengths to which a man like Walt would go outside the law that sent chills snaking down her spine and gripped her throat in a paralyzing hold that took her breath.
She tensed, shaken from her chilling thoughts by the sound of a vehicle just outside the trailer door. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and her gaze flew to Cammie, who was still sleeping on the couch.
Oh God. What if he was here? What if he’d found her? There was nowhere for her to run. No escape. She had no vehicle. The one she’d bought with nearly all of her cash reserves—under a false name—from a seedy car lot that charged her three times what the piece of crap was worth had broken down outside Dover.
She and Travis and Cammie had abandoned it, knowing they had no money or means to repair it, and they’d walked. It was how they’d come to stay in Dover. Necessity. Not choice.