After ten minutes beneath the paltry overhang, eyeing her watch, Mercedes cursed and braced herself to get drenched. The rain wasn’t letting up, Noah would be home from work by now, waiting at the house, and she was just sitting there, afraid of getting wet. Grabbing her wallet from her purse, she stepped out of the Corolla and rounded her car at a run. She was soaked before she stopped in front of the pump. Clutching her wallet to her chest, she tried to use her card, only to have it decline and the pump ask her to “see attendant.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she cried. She tried the card again. No luck. She pushed the button to call the attendant, and he confirmed that she would need to bring her card inside.
Mercedes swore beneath her breath and swiped at her wet face. She wasn’t going to get Gia out of the car in this rain just to run inside for ten seconds. There wasn’t another car in the lot and she could see her car from inside the store. She would just run in, have the attendant swipe her card for preapproval, and run back out. Her decision made, she raced, wallet in hand, for the gas station. Her clothes were completely soaked, her hair plastered to her neck, and when she yanked open the door and stepped inside, she glanced back at the Corolla, just to make sure it hadn’t floated away. Reassured, she stepped inside and handed her card to the attendant, a kid who didn’t look old enough to pop his own zits, let alone sell alcohol.
“Twenty bucks on pump two,” she said, shivering.
“Sorry about that. They get glitchy in the rain.” He pushed a few buttons and ran her card. “Uh, pump two?” he asked, looking over her head out the window.
“Yes.”
“You sure? Looks like your car has other ideas.”
Mercedes flipped around, only to see the Corolla pulling away from the pump.
“Call the police!” she shrieked, racing for the door. “Call 911. There’s a baby in that car!”
“You want your card?” he called behind her, as she threw herself through the doors.
“Call the police!”
She felt the strap on her flip flop snap and felt a moment’s gratitude that she wasn’t in heels. She ran, sliding and careening through the wet lot and out onto the street, doing her best to keep the car in sight. Someone blared at her, someone else honked, and she ran, screaming for help, eyes clinging to the brake lights that flickered on as the Corolla careened around a corner and out of sight.
“You okay, lady?” someone yelled, pulling up beside her in their car.
“Help me! Someone stole my car, and my little girl is in the back seat!”
The woman behind the wheel waved her inside, and Mercedes jumped into her front seat, pointing the way to the road where she’d last seen the car disappear. She thought she heard a siren wail, and the woman, a white lady with fluffy, blonde hair and a little dog in her lap, pushed her foot down hard.
“Turn on the next street!” Mercedes cried. “Right!”
“Your foot’s bleeding, sweetheart,” the lady gasped.
“I’m okay, please, just drive.” Mercedes was too afraid to cry, too afraid to blink, for fear she’d miss something.
The woman obeyed, taking the corner with considerable skill. Mercedes scanned the street ahead for the Corolla. A row of cars was stopped at the next light, but her car was not among them.
“There!” The Corolla was abandoned in the middle of a Wendy’s parking lot, the driver’s side door hanging open. “That’s my car!” Mercedes shrieked. “The lot on your right.”
The woman flew across two lanes and took the turn into the parking lot fast enough to make her little dog yelp and fly up from her arms. Mercedes had her door open before the woman came to a shuddering stop only feet away from the abandoned Corolla.
Mercedes could hear Gia screaming.
Her legs buckled as she scrambled for Gia’s door, desperate to reach the little girl, weak with relief that she was restored, terrified that she’d been harmed. The rain was billowing back through the open, driver’s side door into Gia’s face, and she was wet and frightened, her eyes wild and her face slick with tears and rain, but she was still buckled in her seat, safe and unharmed.
Mercedes loosened the straps on Gia’s seat and pulled the little girl into her shaking arms.
“Shh. We’re okay. We’re okay, Gia Bug. Mer’s got you.”
“Daddy!” Gia howled.
“Yeah. We need Daddy.” Mercedes murmured, her terror turning to tears. She fumbled for her phone, realizing her purse was still sitting, untouched, on the passenger seat. The car was in park but still running, as if the Corolla had just decided to take a joy ride on its own and changed its mind minutes later.
“Honey, do you want me to call someone for you?” Mercedes’s blonde savior peered through the open door, huddled against the rain, her little dog yipping wildly from her car.
“No. No, I have my phone. But I need your name. I can’t thank you enough for what you did,” Mercedes cried.
The woman’s name was Mary Jane Fryer, and she gave Mercedes her number and promised that she would come to Maven for a free cut and color the next time she was in need, but insisted on sticking around until the police arrived. She pulled a blanket from the trunk of her car and wrapped it around Mer and Gia, who sat wet and trembling in the back of the Corolla. Then she climbed in the front seat to get out of the rain.
“You need to get that foot looked at, sweetie.”
Mercedes nodded, thanking her again, but her foot was the furthest thing from her thoughts. Noah answered on the first ring, concern in his voice. When she heard him, it was all she could do not to break down. Instead, she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm so she wouldn’t scare him to death.
“Mer? What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay, Noah. Gia’s okay. But I need you.”
* * *
Mercedes needed twelve stitches across the ball of her foot. She must have stepped on a piece of glass when she was running down the road. She said she hadn’t felt it and didn’t know the moment it happened. It started to hurt about ten minutes after the police arrived, after the adrenaline waned and the shock wore off.
Noah arrived minutes after the police—the attendant at the gas station had come through—and Mary Jane Fryer had waited around as well, giving her own account to the police. The police took Mercedes’s statement, counseling her to “never leave a child alone in a car, even for a few seconds.” Fortunately, they didn’t belabor the point. One word of censure and Mercedes hung her head and cried into Gia’s pale curls, and Noah got angry.
“She isn’t the one you should be chastising, Officer,” he snapped.
“Meh cwy?” Gia asked, her lip sticking out so far, the policeman offered her a sucker, and Mercedes did her best to control the tears that wouldn’t stop.
“You’re the babysitter?” the officer asked Mercedes.
“She’s the godmother,” Noah interrupted.
“I watch her every Monday,” Mercedes added.
The officer nodded and made a few notes. “It looks to me like someone saw an opportunity to steal your car, but when they saw the child in the back, they thought better of it. Stealing a car is one thing. Kidnapping is another.”
“But . . . they didn’t take anything,” Mercedes argued.
“You said you had your wallet. Was there anything else of value in your purse?”
“My phone. Not much else. But it didn’t even look rifled through.”
“He sees the kid in the back seat, he’s spooked. He runs. Not that hard to figure.”
Mercedes nodded. It made sense.
“We’ll dust the car for prints—there’s a big dirty handprint on the steering wheel—and run them through the system and see if we can get a hit. We’ll also see if there is any footage from the security cameras at the gas station.”
Noah bundled Mercedes and Gia into his Subaru, leaving the Corolla to be processed by the police, and dropped Gia off with Heather so he could go with Mercedes to the emergency room to get her foot looked at.
He was remarkably calm, considering his daughter had been temporarily kidnapped. It was Mercedes who couldn’t seem to get a hold of herself. She was the one who had seen it all unfold. She was the one who’d been catapulted into hell before being miraculously pardoned. He was grim. Quiet. And he’d approached the situation with the same steadiness that had accompanied him all his life, but inside he was sick and shaking.
He held Mer’s hand as the gash on her foot was stitched, reassuring her over and over again that she’d done nothing wrong, that all was well, and that it wasn’t her fault.
The doctor told her she would have to relinquish her heels for a few days.
When she balked, Noah rolled his eyes. “Gia won’t wear anything but her pink snow boots, and you won’t wear anything but four-inch heels. I blame you for her neurosis.”
“I have a great new pair of Reeboks I wear all the time,” she grumbled.
“Well, you’re going to want to wear a slipper or, even better, stay off your foot completely for the next few days. You’ll pull the stitches out if you walk on them,” the doctor replied.
“I could get one of those little scooter things you kneel on. Then I could go to work, no problem,” Mercedes mused.
“Three days. Just stay off it for three days. Then wrap it up good and tight and wear your sneakers to work, and you’ll be fine,” the doctor urged.
“A few days off so your foot can heal won’t kill you, Mer,” Noah said as the doctor excused himself and promised to send an orderly with a wheelchair to push Mercedes out of the hospital.
Mercedes gnawed at her lip, the same worry he’d sensed earlier flickering across her face.
“What’s wrong?” Noah asked. “Is there something else going on at work?”
“You know me. It’s just hard for me to sit still.” She shook her head, dismissing his question with a wave of her hand.
At that moment, the orderly returned with a wheelchair, and Noah lifted Mercedes off the table and set her in it. She grumbled that a wheelchair was ridiculous, and Noah let her gripe, but when he insisted she come home with him so he could take care of her, she nodded, and from the droop of her shoulders and the lack of argument, he could see the day’s events had finally caught up with her. They’d caught up with him too. He was almost dizzy with exhaustion. That happened when you only slept every other day. He’d worked Sunday night and been up all day. In the last thirty-six hours, he’d had a two-hour long nap at dawn between shifts. But his little family was safe, and his gratitude far exceeded his exhaustion.
They swung past Heather’s house, and Noah retrieved a grumpy Gia from her grandmother. It was ten o’clock, and she was ready for bed, but she perked up when she saw Mer waiting in the front seat of the car.