The Mountain Midwife (38 page)

She crawled into bed and slept for half the day. No texts came through on her phone. No calls came through from the home phone. It was the weekend and only emergencies warranted calls. Keeping her updated on his family issues apparently wasn’t a priority or consideration for Hunter. She wished she had an excuse to call him. She didn’t want to just make contact in case he was with his family and didn’t want the interruption, especially if he had told them no more about her than how she helped him find Sheila Brooks. Maybe he was using this opportunity to end matters between them. Except she didn’t think Hunter worked that way.

And she shouldn’t worry about it right now. They still must find Racey Jean and Jeremiah.

Monday afternoon she was home seeing patients, four of them in varying stages of pregnancy, when an ancient suburban pulled up in her drive and Rita stepped out.

“Is everything all right?” Ashley sprinted toward this solitary woman who had never come to her house for care.

“I’m all right.” She waited until Ashley reached her before she spoke again and then in a low voice that wouldn’t carry to the two women still getting into their cars. “I hear you’ve been looking for a couple of kids.”

C
HAPTER
29

A
SHLEY FOUND
H
UNTER
at the hospital. He looked tired yet peaceful, and when she walked into Sheila’s room, his shoulders straightened and his smile bloomed. “Ashley.” He rose to greet her with both hands on her shoulders, just short of embracing her. “My parents”—he glanced toward Sheila—“my other parents just left.”

“They were here?” Ashley indicated the hospital room.

Hunter nodded. “The three of them talked for nearly an hour. Made their peace, I guess. They told me to leave. I was going to call you once I was sure Sheila is settled.”

“Is she? That is—” Ashley caught her teeth on the inside of her lip.

“What is it?” One hand still on her shoulder, Hunter guided her into the hall, pulling the door to behind him. “Is something wrong?”

“No, that is, not yet.” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “It’s Racey Jean and Jeremiah. One of my patients knows where they’re hiding.”

“Your network worked.” Hunter’s eyes widened behind his lenses. “Can we find them?”

“I can, but—” She moved out of the way of an aide pushing a
cart piled with plates that smelled more like industrial dishwasher detergent than food and lowered her voice. “Hunter, your brother and sister are wanted by the law, so I should rightfully contact the sheriff’s office with this news.”

His brows went up. “Then why haven’t you already?”

“Because one of my patients found them camping in the woods by her house and gave them shelter. If I send the sheriff’s office there, she’ll get into trouble.”

“And we’ll be breaking the law by going ourselves.”

Ashley crossed her arms over her chest. Hunter was right. But Rita trusted Ashley enough to give her the information she’d been seeking. Better to get Racey Jean and Jeremiah away from her and have them turn themselves in. Maybe Hunter could persuade them to do so. If not, Ashley could be in a great deal of trouble.

She dropped her arms to her sides. “I have to risk it to protect my patient.”

Just as Gramma had done, to a greater degree, to protect Sheila Brooks and the baby who had grown into this man before her.

“Then let’s go.” Hunter slipped his hand beneath her elbow.

“Don’t you want to say good-bye?”

“She’s sleeping.”

They headed toward the elevator. On their way past the nurse’s station, Hunter paused to tell the woman on duty that he had to leave for a while, but he’d be back.

She looked at him with compassion. “We’ll keep her comfortable, Mr. McDermott.”

“That’s all you can do.” Hunter gave her his devastating smile. Though she was old enough to be his mother, she blushed.

Ashley didn’t quite manage to suppress a giggle. “I see you have the nurses charmed.”

“I’m just being polite.”

Ashley snorted, but the elevator arrived with several people aboard, so she said nothing. Then they reached the lobby and the parking lot and another reality set in.

“Have you seen the truck lately?”

“No, but he might have just gotten smarter, if he is interested in seeing if we lead him to my brother and sister.”

Eyes scanning the parking lot, Ashley thumbed the key fob for the Tahoe. “Then I should contact Jason at the least.”

“And your patient?”

Ashley leaned on the side of her vehicle, suddenly weary with a burden like the entire five-thousand-plus pounds of the SUV weighing upon her shoulders. She couldn’t make that decision, but she had to. Keep Rita safe from any kind of prosecution when she had trusted Ashley, or Racey Jean and Jeremiah’s safety when they were the fugitives, but Hunter’s siblings.

“I told her I wouldn’t tell the sheriff.” Ashley spoke more to herself than Hunter.

“It’s her safety, maybe,” Hunter pointed out.

Ashley nodded and pushed herself away from the side of the SUV. “All right. You drive. I’ll call Jason.”

And if Rita ended up in trouble for helping out two confused kids, the women of the mountain might not trust Ashley again.

T
HE HIGHWAY WAS
quiet, as much as any major expressway could be, for the first ten miles they headed north out of Brooksburg. The road was quiet in the sense that no black pickup followed them. After Ashley called Jase, the inside of the Tahoe was unnaturally
silent in comparison with the sheriff’s deputy’s yelling at Ashley over the phone a few moments earlier.

“You get home, or back to Heather’s if you must, and stay there.” He issued the order at full volume. “You have no business interfering in police business and everyone’s lives. Stop trying to be some kind of hero to impress some city guy.”

“I’m trying to help someone who came to me for help.” Ashley tried her soothing-the-distraught-father tone, but it didn’t work on Jason.

He shouted a few more things until she simply disconnected. “He or someone is on their way, but we’re heading out of county, so they have to get permission or call them or something.”

Hunter nodded but said nothing. He concentrated on the signs along the road, seeking the one Ashley had told him would indicate where he needed to exit.

Ashley rested her head back and closed her eyes. This wasn’t going well. Rita, Jeremiah and Racey Jean, Jason, and the owner of the black truck, probably the boyfriend, aside, she was with Hunter at last and he wasn’t speaking. They hadn’t talked much since he called to let her know the McDermotts had come down to see him. If she and Hunter had begun a fragile relationship, it was probably over before it truly began. Being with his Fairfax County family would remind him that smart enough to get into med school or not, Ashley was from the wrong kind of world. And yet she thought him beyond that sort of snobbery with which he had come to the mountains. Maybe he simply realized they couldn’t start or continue a relationship at this time in their lives.

But it didn’t stop her from loving him, from hurting being so close to him and feeling like a continent lay between.

“Ashley?”

She jumped at the sound of his voice at last.

“Yes?” She opened her eyes and turned inside the confines of her seat-belt harness so she could look at him.

He was going to talk.

“Check your side mirror and tell me what you see.”

“Oh, sure.” She scanned the rearview mirror. The sun had dropped below the mountains to the east and people were beginning to turn on their headlights. They flickered behind like opening eyes. Most were low to the ground, car headlights, commuters heading home. But one set rode high, not quite a semi, but higher than an average pickup’s.

She sagged back around. “Looks like a jacked-up pickup.”

“I thought so.” He increased their speed. “How far to the turn?”

“Another mile.”

“Can we go another way?”

“It’ll take longer.”

“It’ll give your friend Jase time to catch up.”

“I don’t think he’s my friend anymore. But we might need him.” She leaned so she could peer back between the front seats. “Why is he following us around?”

“From what Sheila says, that’s Racey Jean’s boyfriend, Beau. He’s cooking meth and Jeremiah has helped him distribute it.”

“And Racey Jean?”

“She fell for all the things Beau bought her and moved in with him. Sheila was too sick to stop it.”

“So they’re both witnesses to what Beau’s been doing.”

“Which may keep them from being in more serious trouble, or get them killed.”

Ashley shivered. “There are some fast-food places at the next
exit. We can cut through a lot of parking lots and circle around. I know a back road. We can hope to lose him.”

But he probably knew as many nooks and crannies of the mountains as she did, bolt-holes to keep him out of the way of the law. The Tahoe was big, but the truck was bigger. The Tahoe might maneuver better.

“Or we can wait for the sheriff’s department,” Hunter suggested.

“But I have to—” Ashley clamped her hands onto her knees and stared straight ahead. “I can’t do everything. If we keep going, we could lead this criminal right to them.”

Hunter exited the highway and pulled into a parking space in front of a gas station. “We don’t know that he’s following us. We don’t know if it’s even this Beau fellow. But we can’t risk it.”

“I was hoping to get there first and warn Rita.”

Hunter tugged off his glasses. “And I was hoping to be there with Racey Jean and Jeremiah when the sheriff picks them up.”

Their eyes met and held. Ashley read her own tension in his taut face.

“We didn’t make them do what they have,” Hunter said. “We can’t save them from the consequences, only help them get through them.”

Ashley nodded and reached for her phone. “Jason, don’t start yelling. I’m going to tell you where to find Racey Jean and Jeremiah Davis.”

C
HAPTER
30

T
HEY WAITED FOR
hours at the jail before the magistrate set bail. Hunter went forward to offer to arrange for the bond.

“What relationship do you have to them?” the magistrate asked.

“I’m their half brother,” Hunter announced.

Sitting on a bench, slumped and ragged, Racey Jean and Jeremiah straightened, their faces registering shock.

“What do you want to do with us?” For the first time, Ashley heard Racey Jean speak. Her voice was soft and sweet, and she was every bit as pretty as her mother had been at her age, or would be if she was cleaned up and fed a few thousand calories a day for a month. Despite her thinness, she looked remarkably well for a young woman whom Ashley feared would bleed to death. Ashley needed to ask her how she recovered.

Racey Jean caught sight of Ashley and took a step forward. A deputy stopped her. She needed to wait until bail had been met.

That took another two hours. Midnight had just clicked over on Ashley’s digital watch when the four of them walked out to Ashley’s
Tahoe. Jason was no longer around breathing fire at Ashley. Rita, apparently, hadn’t been around her house. Beau had stuck with Hunter and Ashley until they turned into the municipal parking lot and then vanished from sight.

“Where are we going?” Jeremiah asked. It was the first thing he’d said.

“I think my house.” Ashley opened the back door for Racey Jean. “You know where it is.”

“Yeah, uh—” Jeremiah slouched in his seat beside his sister.

“We’re sorry about what we did to you.” Racey Jean’s gentle voice rose from the back as Hunter pulled onto the empty road. “We was scared of my boyfriend catchin’ us. He knew I was having my pains and was waiting for me at the hospital. If you hadn’t been there, I probably would have died or something.”

“I was afraid you had died.” Ashley turned as far around as she could. “You were bleeding badly.”

“It’ll never come out of the seat of my truck,” Jeremiah muttered.

“How—um—” Ashley sought for a delicate way to ask the burning question for herself in front of the men. “How did you recover?”