She picked up her mobile to call the boss.
They had to get to Ava in time because she didn’t think she could bear the alternative.
Seventy-Nine
The traffic was starting to thin out ahead of them as rush hour passed. Kim was relieved to think that that same surge of vehicles might have slowed Daniel down further. It had been almost an hour since Stacey had called to tell them the way, and Bryant had put almost 160 miles between them and home.
They weren’t in a police vehicle, but her colleague had taunted the speed limit when he’d felt it was safe to do so, chewing up those extra miles.
Although still on the M6, they were now heading through the Lake District, approaching the halfway point.
‘Next one,’ Kim said as they passed a sign stating services in one mile.
She wasn’t sure that Daniel would have been relaxed enough to stop this side of the border, but with the bladder of a seven-year-old to consider, he might not have had the choice.
Bryant changed lanes and indicated left onto the slip road. He wound his way past the fuel pump, lorry and coach parks to the spaces closest to the building. The car park wasn’t as full as it might have been an hour ago, and far more people were exiting the services than entering it.
She took a cursory glance before Bryant drove down the first aisle. The spaces between cars enabled her to see at a glance if Daniel’s was there. Part of her was hoping to find it so she could grab them both and keep them safe. The other part of her hoped he was successfully outrunning their killer as well as them.
They were driving down the middle aisle when Kim spotted a promising vehicle a couple of lanes over.
‘Over there,’ she said, pointing.
Bryant followed the one-way system and turned into the final aisle.
Kim quickly saw that the model was correct, but the colour was off and there was no sticker in the back window.
‘Damn,’ she said. Bryant continued to crawl along the aisle, but she could already see that no other cars matched Daniel’s Peugeot. ‘Onto the next.’
She tried his number again, but it was still going to voicemail.
There really were times when she wished people didn’t do everything she told them to.
For a minute, she questioned her own conviction in her plan.
They were driving around service stations on a three-hundred-mile stretch of road looking for one particular car.
What if Daniel had left earlier than she’d estimated? What if Ava had a stronger bladder than she gave her credit for? What if she was wrong about him maintaining a sensible speed because he had a child in the car? What if he’d chosen to take a different route?
So many variables meant it could be a fruitless search, but she didn’t know what else to do.
Eighty
‘You ready, kiddo?’ Daniel asked, checking that Ava’s seat belt was secure before he started the car.
She nodded as she negotiated opening the pack of Haribo he’d just bought at the service station shop. Such tasks weren’t easy with her prosthetic, but he fought the urge to do it for her. He’d needed constant reminders from Ashley to let her be as independent as possible. The parental instinct in him had wanted to do everything he could to make her life easier.
He still couldn’t believe she was sitting beside him. The day she’d been taken away counted as the second-worst day of his life, just days after losing her mother.
He blamed himself more than he blamed the Chances. They wouldn’t be in this mess now if he’d only acted on adopting her. He had wanted to from the day they got married, but neither he nor Ashley had felt there was any rush.
He remembered the day he’d met her. He’d been dating Ashley for almost a year before she’d allowed him anywhere near her child.
While he had no kids of his own, he did have two nephews, and even compared to them the two-year-old had been packing attitude.
He was honest enough to admit that his heart had instantly swelled at seeing her disability. That had soon been forgotten when she’d ordered him to sit in a different chair because that one was where she cuddled with Mummy.
From that moment, he had steadily grown to love her more and more. He’d watched her grow from a rambunctious toddler to a confident, polite but spirited young girl who refused to be held back by her physical challenges.
