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That was the plan. Right to the station. Like I’ve done with hundreds of other fugitives.
Who are not Hannah Clark.
I glance at the clock. It’s close to eleven. If I take her back now, she’ll spend the night in a cell before being taken to court in the morning—if she’s lucky. With the backlog of cases, there’s no telling how long she’ll have to wait to face the judge.
I can’t stand the thought of her locked in a cell…again.
“How’d you find me?” she asks.
“Unpaid taxes on the trailer, plus the bus ticket you bought.”
“I paid cash.”
“Ten minutes after withdrawing the last seventy-five dollars from your bank account. And only one bus ticket was purchased from San Francisco to Hanover earlier today, which was when your phone pinged from the closest tower.”
She huffs out a humorless laugh. “Nice puzzle-solving, detective. But don’t you need a search warrant for that kind of invasion of privacy?”
“No.” I flex my hands on the wheel. Her scent drifts to my nose again, but this time it’s different, like flowers. I inhale. A deep longing stirs to life, one I’ve tried to smother…or at least to ignore.
I push harder on the gas pedal. The SUV speeds over broken branches and ruts on the nonexistent path.
“The trailer belongs to a relative?” I ask.
“It was my grandfather’s.” She looks out the side window. “Then it became my mother’s. She obviously didn’t use it. I’m not even sure she remembers she owns it.”
“Where’s your mother now?”
She looks out the window. A sudden despair emanates from her.
I flex my hands on the steering wheel, battling the irrational urge to rail at the universe for making this beautiful girldespairon top of everything else.
“Probably with Eddie,” she finally says.
“Eddie? The owner of Zodiac?” I narrow my eyes on the dark strip of road ahead. “She’s with him?”
“Unfortunately.” Hannah blows out her breath. “She’s the reason I was working there. She owes Eddie a lot of money, and I was working to pay off her debt.”
“Why the hell were you paying off your mother’s debt?”
“Because we don’t have anyone else who would or could. And she’s my mother.”
Something painfully tender nudges at me, like it’s trying to break through my scarred defenses.
“Did your mother work at Zodiac too?” I ask.
“No. Eddie wouldn’t let her work anywhere.” She shakes her head. “I hated that he was so controlling, but I was glad he didn’t make her dance. She’s petite and really beautiful. The men would have salivated over her like wolves, and after a few drinks, they could get pretty scary. Eddie doesn’t care about the women’s safety.”
I frown. “Zodiac is a strip club?”
“Yeah, of course,” she replies bitterly. “More than a strip club with the right payment. The girls and the drugs are why it’s so popular.”
My spine tenses. “Were you a stripper?”
“God, no.” She snorts in disgust. “Even if I wanted to be, which of course I didn’t, I’m not the right shape.”
A combination of disbelief and irritation scrapes my chest. “What the hell does that mean?”
She glances at me. “What does what mean?”
