Free CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set by Billie Sue Mosiman Page B

sauntered out the cafe door chewing a toothpick. He never even glanced her way. Molly watched his tight little butt as he circled the building to the back lot where his rig was parked. She sighed to see him go. He'd had thick black curly hair and dark eyes. She would have to dream of him tonight. It was as close as she was going to get to heaven this century.

    #

    Mark Killany thought he'd lost Molly's trail for good. He had overslept in Beaumont, cradling the phone receiver on his chest after the wake-up call. Cursing himself upon waking, he hurried from the Holiday Inn to his car, his shirt trailing out the back of his pants. He had needed to shave again, but there hadn't been time. He ran a hand over his grizzled chin now, frowning at how he was slowly losing all control over events in his life. He wasn't exercising, he wasn't shaving enough, his clothes needed an iron run over them.
    He crossed the Old and Lost Rivers and thought how apt the name was to his state of mind. If his mind wasn't old and lost, he didn't know what was.
    He stopped along the way between Beaumont and Houston, showing Molly's picture. No one had seen her.
    He kept losing time exiting the freeway, parking, walking around to question service station employees. He had known he was handicapped from the outset, that she'd be ahead of him and gaining ground west each time he chose to stop. But he'd optimistically thought he could find a clearer trail.
    Trail! He had a wisp. A promise. Not a trail.
    Now it was late afternoon, the sun setting in a blaze at his back. He was somewhere between San Antonio and El Paso on Interstate 10, out in the center of the tumbleweed desert, and he hadn't once found a person who had seen his daughter.
    A vibration in the rear of his car that he'd noticed earlier, but didn't want to stop to check, now turned to a walloping sound. A flat. Of all the damned luck...
    He pulled over into the emergency lane and stopped just as the tire went so flat he could hear the car running on the metal rim. Big eighteen-wheelers whooshed past, their wind hot and full of stink. The displaced air from them rocked his car on its wheels.
    Mark carefully exited the car, eyes squinted against the ball of fire to the west. He circled to the rear right tire and stooped to inspect it. Shredded. Metal strands showing through the flaps. When was the last time he'd bought tires? he wondered. Sloppy. Not at all like him.
    He must hurry.
    He popped the trunk, took out the spare and the tools required to change the tire. He sweated during the time-consuming ordeal, threw the ripped tire into the trunk, and wiped his hands on a red rag he kept there.
    Now it was nearly dark. Telephone poles marched down his side of the freeway leading straight through the desert. On the other side of the rusted barbed-wire fence he could see nothing but sand and mesquite trees and cacti. He supposed the wire fence was meant to confine cattle, but where were they? West Texas made him feel exposed and insignificant. The sooner he got out of here, the better.
    God, he was tired. He was used to hard work, but not to the toll stationary sitting and driving took on his muscles. The strain showed in his face shadowed with the day-old beard. His blue eyes were dim as swamp water, his mouth set between twin age lines cut deep into the flesh. Haggard wouldn't even get near to describing the way he was beginning to look.
    Once on the road again, he sped toward the steel-gray horizon. How in hell did he think he could find her? The blue Chrysler could easily be in New Mexico by now. For all he knew her ride, the guy with the long hair and beard, could have taken her another route and done anything to her, anything. He could have murdered her and left her body for the buzzards and the sandstorms.
    This thought so frightened him he edged the speedometer needle past seventy to eighty, eighty-five, racing toward nowhere, lost in West Texas, sure he was now on a mission doomed to failure.