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“Lucy?” he prompted. When she didn’t immediately respond, he pushed, “I need to know. As Renee’s father.” He didn’t say the rest, but the unspoken threat of his parental right, possibly to the point of getting the police involved, was out there.
“In Oregon, okay?” she finally admitted. “In the mountains.”
“Where in the mountains?” Oregon had tons of mountain ranges all throughout the state.
“At . . . at a friend’s cabin.”
“What friend?”
“You don’t know her. Someone I work with.”
His jaw tightened and his free hand clutched the bedspread, wrinkling the quilting. “Lucy,” he said as calmly as possible, “where are you?”
Another few seconds of silence passed as she hesitated, and Ian thought he might go mad. Finally, she said in a rush, “I—I can’t say, Ian. You—you know why.”
“Because of Ray Watkins.”
“Yeah.”
“And you think I would tell him, or that he would be listening in . . . Lucy, listen, you can’t run and hide from him, even if he is a threat—”
“He is!”
“Don’t you think you’d be safer with me? Here?”
She didn’t answer.
“With people around?”
He heard a sigh. Felt her indecision.
“I don’t know.”
“Does anyone know where you are?”
She hesitated a second too long. “No. Not really.”
“You told someone.”
“I had to. In case something happened.”
“Who?” he demanded.
“My aunt.”
“Beth,” he said, thinking of Beth Smith, who had not, unlike her sister, changed her name to Champagne.
“I have Renee with me. Someone had to know.”
“Didn’t you think I was the logical person?”
“Of course.”
“But—?” he prodded, anger coursing through his blood.
“But you would have come up here.”
“Damn straight.”
