There was no child with her, but surely this was the woman Kieran and the Warrington girl had picked up. She must be. Providence had given him aid at last.
Joseph drove another half mile, braked, and turned the truck in a careful U on the deserted expressway. He pulled up alongside the woman, rolled down his window, and leaned out.
“Where are you headed, miss?” Joseph asked, touching his cap. “It doesn’t seem safe for you to be out here alone.”
There was brief alarm on her pale face, in the eyes smudged all around with heavy makeup. But she smiled nervously, brushing at her hair and sniffling from the cold.
“I’m… just walking down to the bus stop at Redding,” she said.
He returned her smile. “Could be I’m headed the same way.”
She relaxed a little, though her eyes continued to shift from side to side, as if she feared pursuit. “I’m going to Falkirk.”
Falkirk. He’d been right, then. Joseph closed his eyes in a brief prayer and smiled. “So happens I’m going that direction myself. I’d be more than happy to give you a ride as far as I can.” He looked up and down the long stretch of highway. “No telling when the bus will be along.”
She hesitated, long enough to make him wonder if perhaps she had seen him pass in the other direction. But there was something about her that hinted at desperation, of having few choices, and a certain worn cheapness in her look that made it unlikely she’d turn down any opportunity that offered itself.
“All right,” she said. She got into the truck and closed the door, leaning away from him as he rolled onto the expressway again. A car passed, and she followed it with her gaze.
“What brings you out here on the road to Falkirk, miss?” he began. “Seems an unusual hour to be traveling.”
She hunched against the window. “I had to,” she muttered. “I had to.” And then, as if she heard the strangeness of her own voice, she sat up and looked at him. “I just moved out of Falkirk last night, but my car broke down and I… forgot to pick up my last paycheck. I have to go back and get it.”
The story was strained, but there was a ring of truth to some of it. “Perhaps we should go see to your car, then,” he suggested. “I could lend you—”
“No.” She hunched down again, clutching her thin jacket with long, chipped red fingernails. “All I need is my paycheck, and then I’ll be okay.”
He let her have silence for a while, a chance to realize he was no threat to her. “So you just moved out of Falkirk,” he began. “Perhaps while you were there you ran into some friends of mine. A young man named Kieran, and a woman with red hair. Alexandra is her name.”
She stiffened, and inwardly Joseph rejoiced. The trail was not so cold.
“I… may have seen someone like that,” she said. “Why do you want to know?”
Panic laced her voice. Yet less than forty-eight hours ago she had been with Kieran and Alexandra—had gone with them willingly, according to what Joseph had understood from the gas station attendant.
“Oh,” he said genially, “I’d hoped they’d still be in the area. I’ve been trying to locate them for some time. Old friends, you see. I have important news for them, but they move around, so—”
“I remember you,” she said suddenly. “You were in town about six year’s ago, asking for—”
“Kieran, yes.” He raised his brow and smiled. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t quite remember you, miss. At my age the memory starts to go.” He leaned back in his seat. “I do remember being told Kieran had left town not long before I came. But I’d heard he’d been in the area again, so I thought I’d give it another try.”
She stared a little longer and then turned away. “You don’t want to find him,” she muttered under her breath. “You don’t.”
He pretended not to notice her odd, almost trancelike tone. “I don’t think I understand, miss.”