“Okay, but you can’t blame me for asking.” She paused, then asked, “Tell me again what the hospice nurse said. How exactly did she hear Stuart Ramsey’s confession?”
He blew out a breath, glad to move on to the real reason they were there together. “The nurse’s name is Helen Gingrass. Stuart Ramsey was her patient, and he’d wanted the chaplain to come so he could confess his sins. I guess the chaplain was tied up with another patient, so he ended up blurting everything out to her.”
“What exactly did he say?” Kendra pressed.
He thought back to the strange conversation. “Per Helen, Stuart Ramsey admitted to sabotaging a plane six years ago. He said he’d caused the deaths of three people. Only he didn’t know there would be three people aboard. When Helen asked if he had intended to kill them, he said he was paid to kill the pilot, not the others. And that he did it because he needed money. And that he wanted to confess so God would forgive him before he died.”
“Wow. So basically my parents were collateral damage,” Kendra murmured.
“Yeah.” He swallowed a pang of guilt. It wasn’t as if he had anything to do with Ramsey taking down the plane, but he still felt bad that she’d lost her parents because someone had wanted his father dead. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t apologize. You’re an innocent victim in this too.”
He was touched by her comment. “If I had known some gunman would target me, I would have stayed in Billings.”
She turned to look at him. “Makes me wonder how he knew your location, especially if you weren’t followed.”
As a computer nerd, he was keenly aware of how to track people electronically. Not that it was something he’d worried about until now. He dug his phone out of his pocket, then lowered his window and tossed it away.
Kendra gaped at him. “I’m not sure that was necessary.”
“Yeah, I think that’s the only way they could have known my location.” He grimaced and held out his hand. “We’d better ditch yours, too, since I used mine to call you several times.”
A pained expression crossed her features, but she pulled out her phone and handed it over. That one, too, went out the window.
“We’ll need to get new phones,” Kendra said, after a long moment of silence. “My family will go nuts if I don’t let them know I’m okay.”
“I understand.” He couldn’t imagine what it was like to have eight older siblings.
“What about you?” Kendra asked. “Don’t you have a girlfriend or someone that you need to stay in touch with?”
“Nope.” He thought about his former girlfriend, Shari Coffen. She’d broken things off a few months ago. Not that he’d missed her as much as he thought he would. “There’s nobody special.”
Her brow furrowed. “That’s hard to believe.”
He sighed. “My girlfriend dumped me for her personal trainer, who can bench-press twice his weight. Unlike me.”
“She only cares about physical appearances?” Kendra waved a dismissive hand. “If that’s the case, you’re better off without her.”
He smiled for what felt like the first time since crossing the Montana/Wyoming state line. “I can’t disagree.”
“Okay, when we get into Cody, we’ll stop to buy disposable phones, then grab a bite to eat before finding a place to stay.” She glanced at him. “Being a Monday, we shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a hotel room.”
“That sounds good.” He relaxed a bit, relieved to have a plan. Yet he still wanted Kendra to head home after dropping him off at a hotel.
He had no idea why he was in danger, but at that point, he needed to make sure Kendra didn’t become collateral damage.
The way her parents had been.
As Kendra drove toward Cody, she kept a wary eye on the rearview mirror to make sure they weren’t followed. When headlights came up behind her, she slowed down to the exact speed limit, moving over to encourage the driver to pass. So far, every vehicle had done exactly that.
Nobody followed the speed limit in Wyoming. Highway patrol didn’t bother to pull anyone over unless they were going more than fifteen miles over the posted limit.
“I have my computer in my overnight bag,” Dom said, breaking the silence. “I know how to reroute the ISP address to hide our location so we can dig into Stuart Ramsey without raising any red flags.”
“You can do that?” She was impressed.
“Yeah. I’m all about the geeky stuff.” He shifted in his seat, and she could tell by how his knees were wedged against the glove box that he wasn’t comfortable.
