Every Precious Thing by Brett Battles Read Free Book Online Page B

would get.
    Logan wished there was something more encouraging he could say, but he wasn’t going to lie. So instead, he nodded a good-bye then stepped outside with the note.

C HAPTER N INE
     
    C HRIS “PEP” PEPPER dove into the search for the runaway mom with focused determination. Dev had warned him that things might not be as they appeared, so he should avoid any preconceived notions.
    While Pep understood what Dev was trying to say, there was no way his own past couldn’t help but influence his feelings. His childhood was fine enough, his mother distant but physically there. It was his brother Marko’s kids that he couldn’t keep out of his mind.
    Pep’s sister-in-law, Ann, had not run off unexpectedly. She’d been killed while crossing a street to get change for a parking meter. Just like that, Marko’s kids lost their mother. Pep had seen how her absence affected them. Marko had tried to do the best he could, but his kids would always be living with that absence.
    Pep knew Ann would have given anything to stay with her children, but that wasn’t a choice she’d been given. Sara Lindley, on the other hand, did have that choice. Whatever trouble she might be in, how the hell could the best answer have been abandoning her child? No matter how much he tried to rationalize it as he drove across the Mojave Desert, he couldn’t come up with a good answer.
    He arrived in Braden at around eight thirty p.m., and spent the first two hours going around to restaurants and motels showing the picture Logan Harper had sent him. It was obvious the image of the woman had been cropped from a larger photo and enlarged to focus on her. She was a bit fuzzy and not fully facing the camera, but it was enough to get a pretty good idea of what she looked like. Unfortunately, no one had recognized her so far.
    As the night grew late, he switched his focus to the several bars scattered around town.
    “What’re you drinking?” the bartender asked. It was the third bar Pep visited.
    “Just want to show you something, if you don’t mind,” Pep said.
    He already had his phone in his hand, so he brought up the picture and turned it so the bartender—an old, leather-skinned guy who looked like he’d been birthed from the desert itself—could see it.
    “Ever see her before?”
    The man looked at the screen, shrugged, and said, “I have no idea. People come in and out of here all the time.”
    Pep would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking at the man’s face when he glanced at the picture. For a brief second, the man’s eyes widened. He had seen the woman before.
    “You sure?” Pep asked.
    The man stepped back from the bar. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
    Pep frowned and shook his head. “You’re lying.”
    “Hey, buddy. I don’t like being called a liar.”
    “Then tell me the truth when you answer the question. Have you seen her before?”
    The bartender shrugged noncommittally.
    So that’s how the guy wanted to play it. Pep pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and set it on the bar. “Tell me,” he said, his fingers securing the bill in place.
    The guy looked at Pep, then at the twenty, and smiled. “I don’t know. She looks like someone who came in here a couple times.”
    “Looks like, or is?”
    Another shrug, but one that seemed to indicate the latter more than the former.
    Pep picked up the twenty and folded it as if he were going to put it back in his pocket.
    “Hey, what are you doing?” the bartender asked.
    “I don’t pay for guessing games.”
    “A twenty’s not that much.”
    Now it was Pep’s turn to shrug. He stepped toward the door.
    “Wait a minute,” the bartender said.
    Pep paused.
    “Yeah. I’ve seen her.”
    Walking back to the bar, Pep asked, “When?”
    “A year or two ago. Came in a couple times.”
    That was not the answer Pep had been expecting. “A year or two? Why would you remember someone who came in here a couple times that long ago?”
    “She, um, came in with