Page 13 of One Last Promise

Pulling into a Speedway, she got out and headed inside to the bathroom. Kept her head down.

No wonder her head throbbed. Rigger, the former MMA boxer, had managed to bloody her nose, blacken her eye, and split her lip with one lousy punch.

Tearing off paper towels, she wet them, then eased the coldness onto her nose, cleaning it off, then pressing into her lip. She held back a groan and then dabbed at it until she didn’t look like she’d been draggedacross blacktop.

Then she wiped her shirt and zipped up her black jacket. Pulled back her dark hair and took a long breath.

A woman came out of a nearby stall. Middle-aged, she was overweight and wore a sweatshirt with Moose’s Pub and Pizza written on the front. Her eyes widened at Tillie.

“I’m fine. Just a little fight with a door.”

“Yeah,” said the woman, turning on the water. “I hope the door got the worst of it.”

Tillie made a face.

“You should report that.”

“Thanks,” Tillie said and headed outside, her head down. Yeah, she needed to ditch town, and fast, before she left a trail of breadcrumbs.

She got into her car, pulled down the visor, and found a pair of sunglasses. Then she reached for her phone in the console between her seats to grab the GPS to Moose’s place.

Stilled.

Her phone lay in the yard.

Worse, Roz’s location was still in her phone, her last known position. And sure, she had a password, but it was easily breakable by no one but Rigger. Hazel’s birthdate.

She got out of the car and went inside, now wearing her sunglasses, and headed to the checkout counter. “Do you have a phone I can use?”

The young clerk considered her for a moment, then reached under the cash register and pulled up an old landline phone. “You okay?”

“I will be.” She dialed Roz’s number, grateful for the fact that she’d made Hazel memorize it.

And how sad would Pearl be to know that Hazel was memorizing numbers in case Tillie got arrested and Hazel went into foster care. Some mom she’d turned out to be. She shook her headas the phone rang.

And rang.

And rang.

And then, finally, picked up.

“Roz—it’s me. I lost my phone?—”

“I know.”

Not Roz, and her legs nearly buckled. “Rigger. Listen?—”

“You listen. You have one hour. Get the money and get here, or you will never see Hazel again. But I will leave you Roz as a gift to bury.”

“Rigger, just don’t?—”

He hung up.

She pressed her hand to her chest, her breaths coming too fast.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

She barely saw the kid, even as she hung up and turned away.

---