The Calypso Library was exactly what Marley needed. Four public computers, a kid-friendly children’s area, two librarians who paid her little mind. And a restroom where she and Braden could freshen up.

Her nerves, rattled by Wyatt Caldwell’s unexpected visit this morning, finally began to settle.

She approached the desk. An older woman with a kind face and shiny metal glasses looked up. “May I help you?

Marley dipped her head and let her hair fall forward to cover her face. “I’d like to use a computer, please.”

Braden curled his hands over the edge of the desk and rose to his tiptoes, his chin barely grazing the countertop. “Hi.”

“Hi.” The librarian smiled, turning her focus on the child. With a vague wave at Marley, she motioned toward a clipboard. “Sign there. Number three is open. Set the timer for one hour.”

Keeping her head down and face averted, Marley scribbled her fake name.

After settling Braden in the inviting children’s corner, she went to the computer. With clammy fingers, she tapped her name into the search engine. News of her arrest popped up, huge and condemning. Marley sucked in a gasp and glanced over her shoulder. Had anyone noticed? She quickly x’d the page. Blood pounded in her ears. Anyone who knew her name could find this information.

But she wasn’t using her real name. No one, not even Wyatt Caldwell, had reason to suspect she was anything but a down-on-her-luck, single mother looking for work.

After another furtive glance, she typed in, “How to disappear.”

Hundreds of entries littered the page. She scanned several articles, frustrated that none offered a way to disappear with a child. Most claimed it was impossible. She needed to ditch her car, burn all photos of herself, change her appearance, prepare to move often, work in low-paying jobs, and maybe even assume a dead person’s identity. That one stopped her cold.

She wasn’t a criminal. She didn’t want to start behaving like one.

She didn’t want to disappear forever, only until she could prove her innocence. But no one in believed her, not even her lawyer.

Marley glanced toward Brandon, then fumbled in her jeans’ pocket for the flash drive. The tiny device was her best hope. Someone had stolen a lot of money, but that someone was not her.

She inserted the drive and brought up the files of Welker’s Nursery and Landscaping. There were hundreds of folders. Vendors, customers, payroll, inventory, and dozens more, going back for several years.

Marley clicked open the top file, straining forward to study the entries. A needle in the haystack. Except she didn’t even know what the needled looked like.

The family-owned nursery had hired her with no experience and taught her everything she needed to know. Which clearly wasn’t enough. But the office job had supported her little family, and Jack and Hannah Welker had treated her well.

She would never have let the Welkers down by stealing from them. But someone had, someone in the company with access to the money and the accounts.

Nothing stood out in the first file, so she opened another. And then another and another. Nothing. At least, nothing she could identify other than the trumped-up evidence against her. Deposits that didn’t match with daily receipts.

After the shortest hour on record, the timer on the computer flashed. Defeated, she slumped in the chair and rubbed a hand over her face. She’d found nothing to indicate why or how forty thousand dollars had gone missing. Nothing that didn’t point to one Marley Johnson.

Larceny. Embezzlement. Drug abuse. Words almost as scary as jail and foster care.

“God help me.”

“Did you say something, miss?” The librarian came toward her.

She quickly closed out the files and offered a fake smile. “My time is up. I’ll have to come back another time.”

“No one’s waiting.” The librarian winked. “Go ahead and reset the timer if you’d like.”

“Thank you.”

The woman went back to the desk. Marley checked on Braden, found him sprawled on his tummy listening to an audio book, and went back to scrolling files. No one waited when the next hour was over either, so she reset the clock and kept working until Braden became too restless to stay any longer.

Nada. Zero. Zilch.

Disheartened, Marley took Braden’s hand and exited the library, trying to decide where to go and what to do now.

The ebb and flow of daily life in a small town hummed along the streets of Calypso, Oklahoma. Christmas lights brightened the overcast day. City workers leaned out of “cherry picker” buckets to hang icicle lights on the angled eaves of a café. Two women stood outside the entrance, tying red bows to the fronds of a large, potted pine. One of them laughed, and the sound carried all the way to the library sidewalk.

Potted plants. Pines. Holly and Christmas cactus.

Marley pressed her lips together to keep from blubbering. She should be at the nursery, enjoying the happy rush of customers buying evergreens and poinsettias and preparing for the holidays. She and Braden should be at home, decorating their own tree and thumb-tacking homemade stockings to the living room wall.

One glance at her son and she set her jaw. Somehow she had to clear her name and take him home. But how? She trusted exactly no one. Not after the lawyer fiasco. She had friends, but contact was too dangerous. Both for them and for her. Why put someone she cared about in an awkward situation? They weren’t accountants or detectives.

The only people who knew how to investigate crimes were the ones who would take her into custody and put her son in foster care.

She shuddered, and not because of the sudden wind gust.

Think, Marley, think.

An idea popped into her head. Someone she knew had framed her. Which meant, someone had a need for that much money.

She turned back toward the library.

Braden resisted her tug. “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

Marley dug the cell phone from her back pocket to check the time. The longing to get back to the computer pressed, but it was far past noon. Braden’s breakfast nuggets were scarcely a memory.

She looked down at his round, dark-eyed face, love squeezing her insides. “How about a peanut butter sandwich?”

“Okay.”

Bless her sweet, easy-going boy.

“Want to go to that park we saw on the way into town?”

His face brightened. “Will you swing me?”

“Sure will.” The more pent-up energy he expended the better.

“All right!” He tugged on her hand, and they jogged to the car. His enthusiasm made her smile. Though his father had been a mistake she’d made, Braden wasn’t. From the moment of his birth, Marley had experienced a love she hadn’t imagined possible. And she’d been loved in return. No one, for any reason, was going to separate them.

At the park, they ate sandwiches, tossed the bread crusts to a stray dog, and then played until the wind drove them back inside the car.

“Are we going home now, Mommy?”

“No, babe. Not yet.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw his downturned mouth. The sight pierced her. She wanted to go home too.

The day was dwindling away, and she’d made no decisions.

She started the car and drove back to the library. It was another hour and half until closing.

Hurrying into the low-slung building, she settled Braden with crayons and a coloring book from the car and sat next to him with pad and pen.

First, she listed every Welker’s Nursery and Landscape employee she could remember, right down to the part-time help and contracted landscapers. Then, she divided the list into groups. A list of those with direct access to the daily receipts: cashiers, office workers, field landscapers, the Welkers themselves. Another list of those less involved with the accounts, and finally, the warehouse and greenhouse workers who rarely entered the office except on payday.

With Braden content for the moment, she checked out another computer and entered the first name on her list. When a Google search turned up only the most innocent information, she searched social media. One by one, she went down the list, jotting notes gleaned from memory and the computer.

Jorge Vargas’s wife was battling cancer. He’d certainly need money. Maggie Wiseman had recently bought an expensive car. Not that a new car made her guilty. The boss’s sister had bought one, too. Marley jotted the information anyway and moved on down the list.

Linda Filbert was recently divorced. One son was in college, and another had gone into drug rehab three weeks ago.

Marley’s hand froze on the computer mouse. Drugs. Divorce. College. All of those added up to a lot of money for a woman on a cashier’s salary, and a motive for embezzlement. A huge motive. With access to her son’s drug stash, Linda could also have planted the drugs in Marley’s car.

A mother would do most anything for her child.

With her pulse racing, Marley thought she might be on to something important.

The bespeckled librarian approached. Marley closed out the page and leaned her forearm over the handwritten list.

“The library closes in ten minutes.”

“Thank you. I’m finishing up.” Marley offered her a genuine smile.

When the librarian continued her trek through the stacks, Marley pulled up the Tulsa Police Department’s website, found the anonymous crime tips page and typed in every piece of information she’d gathered.

Her finger hovered nervously over the mouse for several beats.

Afraid of being discovered, but convinced this was her best hope, she tapped send. This was a public computer. No one would know who’d sent the email.

More hopeful than she’d been in three days, Marley logged off, retrieved her son and his mountain of colored pages, and left the building.

A police cruiser motored slowly passed. The officer’s head turned.

Her insides froze. Was he staring at her?

He raised a hand and waved. Marley felt movement at her side. She glanced down. Braden was waving at the officer, the way he always did in Tulsa.

As the cruiser moved on, Marley forced a slow, causal walk toward her car.

No matter where she chose to hide, police would be around.

The sun drooped low in the west, painting gold across the horizon. Dusk came early this time of year. Soon, darkness would shroud the land, and once more, she and Braden had nowhere to spend the night.

As Marley buckled Braden into the car, her thoughts drifted to Wyatt Caldwell. His suspicion had spooked her, but with another cold night coming on fast, she wondered if she should have accepted his guesthouse offer.

“Where’re we going, Mommy? Home?”

“Not tonight.”

“In the morrow?”

“We’ll see.” Her standard phrase to avoid the question. “Play with your toys and let Mommy think.”

A beleaguered sigh came from the backseat. Braden was exhausted. He needed a warm house and a real bed.

She started the car, running the heater on full blast.

Where to from here? She liked Calypso. Wouldn’t mind sticking around a few days to use the library for research. No one seemed to suspect her of anything, even though she felt as if the words from her dream were branded across her forehead.

She shivered against the memory.

Once more, she considered a hotel, but quickly dismissed the idea. Hotels didn’t accept cash. They’d want an ID, a credit card, her tag number, all obvious ways the police could track her.

How did real criminals evade the law?

If not for her sweet son in the backseat, she’d follow that officer to the police station and turn herself in. She’d trust the justice system to learn the truth and exonerate her. But Braden had no one else to care for him. They were alone. And she would never let him feel the impact of that fact.

She squeezed her eyes shut and said a prayer.

Then, while Braden played in the backseat with his Hot Wheels, Marley scrolled her phone contacts and tapped a number she hadn’t used in years.

After four rings, she was ready to give up when her mother answered. “Hello.”

“Mom?”

“Marley?”

“Yes, it’s me. How are you?”

“I don’t want to get involved in whatever you’ve done, so don’t tell me anything.”

Marley’s throat tightened. Like a noose. “You’ve heard?”

“The police came here looking for you! I was scared out of my mind they’d think I was aiding and abetting, but I set them straight on that score. Told them I hadn’t heard from you in two or three years.”

Four. Since Marley had come to her with a newborn son, hoping for something other than cold indifference. She hadn’t gotten it. Like now.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“The police don’t get involved for nothing, Marley. I’m not that stupid.”

“It’s all a misunderstanding.” She hoped.

“Hush. Stop talking. Don’t give me any information.” April lowered her voice as if someone were listening in. “The detective gave me his card. Said to call him right away if I heard from you.”

“Please, Mom. Don’t make that call. I’m trying to straighten things out, and I will if they’ll give me time. I can’t let them put Braden in foster care.”

“Braden?” The bewildered question pierced Marley’s soul. “Oh, your baby.”

Her own mother didn’t remember her son’s name.

Marley rubbed a weary hand across her forehead, sad and more alone than she could ever remember feeling. “Your grandson’s four now, Mom.”

“Listen to me, Marley. Don’t call again and don’t come here. For your sake as well as mine. The police always look to the family first. They expect me to help you.”

The police had more confidence in their familial connection than she did.

“Forget I called. I won’t bother you again.”

With shaky fingers, Marley ended the call and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel. When would she ever stop expecting her mother to be different?

“Mommy?” A small hand touched her shoulder. “Are you crying?”

Was she? Marley rubbed a sweater sleeve over her cheeks, surprised to find them damp. “Got something in my eye.”

Braden catapulted the console and leaned in, staring intently at her right eye. She could smell his little boy heat and peanut butter breath. “What is it?”

Worry lashed his features. She was scaring him.

Sucking back her own worry, she forced a grin.

“It’s…you! The apple of my eye!”

With a quick grab and a pretend growl, Marley wrestled her son onto his back and tickled him. His gurgle of laughter dispelled the gloom leftover from the phone call. Her mother could pretend Marley didn’t exist. Braden’s father could toss her aside. But as long as she had her son, she would be all right.

---

As night fell, Marley drove aimlessly through Calypso, hoping to find a room for rent, someone who would take cash. Homes twinkled red and green and snowy white with Christmas. She pointed out the lighted lawn Santas and nativity scenes to a yawning Braden.

All the while, she prayed for an answer that didn’t come.

When Braden asked for a bathroom, she stopped at a gas station and filled up the tank. Gas was too expensive to waste, and she couldn’t drive all night.

The Caldwell campsite flashed into her head. Wyatt wouldn’t know they’d been there if she drove in late and left early.

That Wyatt came to mind didn’t surprise her. It wasn’t often she met good-looking soldiers on horseback in the woods. As in never. Wyatt Caldwell both unnerved and reassured her. She was still trying to figure that one out.

She wondered if he was a Navy Seal or a Ranger or some such. Virile, confident, a take-charge and get the job done kind of man. A man to lean on.

Or not. She didn’t like depending on anyone.

Still, those few moments in his arms when he’d found Braden had been...nice.

And she was being ridiculous, thinking about a man when she and Braden were in such a mess.

She headed the car out of town, away from the cheerful reminders of Christmas, and turned down a country road.

She slowed the car. Was this the right way? She wasn’t sure, but she kept driving, making turn after turn while waiting to recognize something.

When she passed a ranch house with an old-fashioned windmill illuminated by a security light, she admitted the truth. She was lost. Unequivocally and completely lost.

She turned the car around, hoping to find her way back to the main highway. By now, she’d forgotten how many miles she’d driven and how many turns she’d made.

Marley had never lived in the country. It confused her. Especially in the dark. She gripped the steering wheel, shoulders tight with tension as her eyes strained to find something familiar.

A yawning gate appeared in the glow of her headlights. Not their former campsite, but at this point, she didn’t care. She pulled in. Tomorrow in the daylight, she could find her way back to Calypso. She hoped.

Marley eased the car down the bumpy cow trail and into a stand of trees. The underbrush here, as on Wyatt’s property, was thick. If she could maneuver the car far enough off the road, they’d be well hidden.

Her lights swept across a fallen log. She tapped the brake and glanced behind her. The road was still visible, which meant the car was still visible.

Pulling the cell phone from the charger, she aimed her flashlight app toward one side of the Chevy and then the other. On the left were solid trees, too close together. She couldn’t get a car in there.

Behind her and to the right appeared clear enough to park. She put the car in reverse.

Brush scraped the undercarriage. She cringed.

Suddenly, the car’s back tires plunged down. They came to an abrupt halt. The undercarriage jolted. Her body jerked.

“Mommy!”

Marley whipped around to be sure Braden was uninjured. His eyes were wide.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“What happened?”

“Not sure. I think we hit a hole.” Which they needed to drive out of ASAP. “Stay buckled up.”

She down-shifted and revved the engine. Wheels spun. The car didn’t move. Marley tried again. Nothing.

They were stuck.

She dropped her head against the headrest. What else could go wrong?

“Sit tight,” she called over the headrest. “I’m going to get out and see what’s wrong.”

She stepped out of the car and, using her cell, shined the flashlight app on the rear wheels. Dismay bent her double.

She’d backed into a gully. A deep one. The entire rear of her car was pressed up against the side of a ravine wide enough to swallow her tires.

She pressed a hand to a pounding forehead. Her blood pressure must be a gazillion.

Calm down. Don’t panic. There has to be a solution.

Right. As if she hadn’t said that to herself ten thousand times this week.

Climbing back inside the vehicle, Marley spun the wheels until the smell of exhaust and rubber tainted the air. The car didn’t budge.

She squeezed her eyes shut, frustrated enough to scream. Which would scare Braden.

Only a wrecker could get them out of this mess. Even if she wasn’t afraid to call a tow, he’d never find her out here.

They couldn’t spend the night in the car, not with the exhaust pipe jammed against the dirt. They really would be in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Lord, please help.”

Braden’s seatbelt popped. He leaned forward and touched her hair. “Call the soldier man. He’ll save us. That’s what soldiers do.”

The soldier man. Wyatt Caldwell. The man who’d run her off his property.

But he’d also rescued her son.

And offered her a place to stay.

His number was still in her phone.

Temptation brewed like fresh coffee. He’d accepted her explanation of job loss. Maybe he wouldn’t ask too many questions. But could he even find her out here?

Maybe. He knew the area. And he was a soldier.

“Mommy, I don’t like this place. It’s scary.”

Trees obscured the stars, and absolute darkness had closed around them like a fist. It was scary. Especially when she considered spending a night without daring to start the car for heat.

Grabbing her cell, she scrolled to the call log and, before she could change her mind, pressed the number.