Free Run to Me by Diane Hester Page A

stopped before getting here. Maine boasted only a handful of roads in its northern quarter and most were privately owned by logging companies. Odds were the boys had come this far. Hell, if he was really lucky the little shitswere still on the truck.
    But as he walked towards it he saw the back door was slightly ajar. Hopes dashed, he yanked it open and peered inside. Nothing but boxes, packed so closely there was no way the boys could be hiding among them.
    Cursing again, he pulled his ringing mobile from his pocket. And froze at the sound of the voice that spoke to him.
    ‘Tragg? Hey, buddy, how are you feeling?’
    ‘Well, let’s see. I wake up in a hospital with the mother of all headaches after some fuckwit drives me into a ditch. Then some battle-axe nurse tells me I’m all alone here, that the fuckwit and my passengers have split. How would you guess I’m feeling,
buddy
?’
    Nolan launched into a hasty explanation. He revamped the accident and the boys’ escape, playing up how hard he had tried to stop themgetting on the truck.
    When he’d finished, the silence from the other end was even more ominous than Tragg’s first words.
    ‘I haven’t just been sitting around,’ he added quickly. ‘I tracked where they were headed and I’m in the town now. I actually found the truck they were on and the engine’s still warm so –’
    ‘Screw the truck. What about them?’
    Nolan tried to swallow but his mouth had gonedry. ‘They’re not here. But, hey, the good news is they can’t have gone far in the dark and there’s no one anywhere around to help them.’
    ‘Find them.’
    ‘Sure. Don’t worry, I’m on it.’
    ‘Don’t worry? I’m not sure you get the importance of this. Not only are those kids the only ones who saw where Giles hid his stash but the oldest also knows things that could hurt Lazaro. Things he
wouldn’t
knowif you and the bitch had kept your mouths shut.’
    Nolan felt it wise not to argue.
    ‘I’ll be laid up here a couple more days; you’ve got that long to get them back. Otherwise the first thing I’ll do when I get out is head up there to give you a hand. That plain enough for you,
buddyboy?
’
    ‘Yeah, got it.’
    ‘Call me tomorrow.’
    Nolan closed the phone and slumped against the back of the truck. Hecould always run for it – this one-horse hamlet couldn’t be more than a hundred miles from the Canadian border. But it would never work. If the boys got away and eventually talked, Tragg would stop at nothing to find him.
    He hung his head. It didn’t seem right . . . Damn it, it wasn’t right that he should cop the rap for this alone. He opened his phone again and punched in a number.
    When Vanessaanswered he gave her the bad news.
    ‘Well, they can’t have gotten far on foot,’ she said.
    ‘Unless they hitched a ride with someone.’
    ‘Oh, come on. Lazaro’s man told me the place was remote. Population less than a thousand.’
    Nolan stared up at the towering trees. ‘Remote’s not the word. It’s a frigging wilderness. Not a house in sight and I didn’t pass another car in the last eighty miles.’
    ‘Then there’s not many places they could be hiding.’
    Nolan laughed. ‘Only a thousand square acres of forest, that’s all. I could use some help with this.’
    ‘Forget it. I’m busy.’
    ‘I’m sure it can wait.’
    ‘Maybe I don’t want to wait. Hell, it isn’t my fault you lost them.’
    ‘But it’s your fault they know about Lazaro.’ Her silence told him he’d gotten her attention. ‘That’s what Tragg thinks.I mean if you hadn’t said the name at the house it wouldn’t be so urgent we find them, would it?’
    ‘Shit.’
    He smiled.
    ‘All right, I’ll be there first thing in the morning.’

Chapter 13
    Firelight winked in the pot-bellied stove that warmed the workshop. A lone gypsy moth, a rare sight this late in the season, fluttered around the hurricane lamp that hung from the rafters, casting shadows, crazed and ghostly,