Karen Harper - The Hiding Place

Watch for Karen Harpers upcoming novel

Available June 2009

Near Black Hawk, Colorado

May 20, 2004

S he was terrified shed be too late. Tara Kinsale-Lohan took the next tight turn on the slick road faster than she should have. Shed been driving Colorado mountain roads for years, but never at this speed.

The big sedan fishtailed, but she steered it back onto the narrow, two-lane road, running with spring rain. Thank God, there was little traffic in this weather. She longed for her old four-wheel-drive truck, but her husband, Laird Lohan, liked only luxury cars. The road became a twisting, one-lane gravel path. When the next widely spaced driveway came into view, she hit the brakes again. Gripping the steering wheel in both sweating palms, she squinted to read the numbers on the mailboxes through the mountain mist. Her windshield wipers slapped gray rain aside, whap-whapwhap-whap. She was getting closer. She prayed shed get there in time.

How could a bright woman like Alexis have been so stupid to try to snatch her child back? Rats like her ex-husband, Clay, a moral coward, could be vicious when cornered. And how, Tara berated herself, could she herself have been so careless to let her dear friend sneak into her office and take her skip trace report on Clay? One of Taras cardinal rules when she started her one-woman private investigating firm, Finders Keepers, was that the locate information went first to a lawyer or law enforcement, not to an emotional woman who might mess everything up, trying to take her child back on her own.

Shed simply trusted Alex too much, but theyd been close ever since theyd roomed together in college. Tara was an only child, and Alex was the closest shed ever had to a sister. Like sisters, they sometimes argued, but when an outsider threatened them, theyd always come to each others rescue. When Taras parents had died while she was at the university, Alexs widowed mother had taken her in for holiday visits. With no family of her own, Lairds close-knit clan had looked so appealing to Tarauntil she got to know them.

But Clay was the enemy now. Even for Alex, Tara did not like taking risks. She did almost all her work from her office on the phone or online. She never did her own surveillance or ventured out to serve a summons or subpoena where things could go bad. She had promised Laird she would not do any fieldwork, though shed recently gone Dumpster divingperfectly legal, though hed had an absolute fit, just as he did each time he saw that she was not going to be remade into his picture of the perfect Lohan wife.

Their agreement, actually part of a prenup, was that she could still help women get their children back, if she agreed to hand Finders Keepers over to someone else when she and Laird had their own children. Laird was obsessed with having an heir for his share of the Lohan family fortune. The thing was, shortly after their honeymoon, their marriage had become so rocky that she had told him she was staying on birth control pills until they smoothed out their differences.

Shed seen numerous times that, if a marriage wasnt on solid ground, having kids only made things worse for the adultsand damaged the kids, too. Lately, to her amazement, it seemed that Laird had accepted that. The last few months, hed become amazingly understanding, though she was pretty sure he still thought children could bind any marital rift.

Tara hit the brakes and felt the big car skid. At this altitude, way above mile-high Denver, she was actually driving through clouds. She began to creep, squinting through the windshield, straining to keep control of the car and her fears. The road narrowed even more. As if protecting their lofty realm, tall lodgepole pines and blue spruce loomed like mythical giants as they closed in around her.

At least, Tara thought, trying to buck herself up, she was getting close, but why did it have to be a place like this one? When Clay Whetstone, Alexs ex-husband, had snatched their four-year-old daughter, Claire, six months ago, Tara had agreed to trace him. Both she and Alex assumed hed head out of state, which was why it had taken her this long for the locate. Clay loved to gamble, so Tara had spent precious hours online checking Las Vegas and Reno area U-Haul records, change-of-address Web sites, and expensive state-sponsored databases.

But Clay had outfoxed them. Hed been livingprobably gambling, tooless than forty miles away in the casino-studded town of Black Hawk. She had finally located him through a hunting license he took out, since that required an address and a Social Security number. Clay and Alex had shared custody, but hed only had Claire every other weekend. When Alex went into the hospital for an operation, hed taken off with some house furniture and their child. Tara was worried, not only for Alexs safety, but that she might cause Clay to panic and run with Claire again before he could be arrested.

Yes, there it was, 4147 Elk Run! Tara had cross-checked the address through purchasing the subscription lists for two of Clays favorite magazines, Western Big Gamer and Poker Player U.S.A. Now Clay was the hunted and, she prayed, his hiding game was over.

To doubly confirm Clays location, Tara had used an online telephone directory, then phoned Clays neighbor to the north, pretending to be a previous owner in the area. Shed asked if the Brown family still lived at the 4147 address, claiming their phone number had evidently changed. Pretexting, it was called; P.I.s used the chat-someone-up practice all the time to get information.