Thin Skinned by Margo Collins (top novels .TXT) 📕

Hale cursed and slammed out of the car.

At least our stop was planned to be short. I took the opportunity while the car was stopped to stretch various parts of my body. I was folded over on myself, coiled up and around inside the engine block. I considered trying to follow Hale either inside or at least to the door or window to try to get an idea of exactly what he was doing, but Lori and the baby really did stay in the car, waiting. The child was my concern, so I stayed with them. I was able to hear Lori muttering to herself, or maybe to the baby, while she sat inside.

I was again thinking about the code of ethics when Hale returned to the car. I’d been wondering if I had a duty to report whatever it was the parents were about to do with Baby Paige.

No, I’d finally decided. They still technically had custody of her, and in general, being a prick wasn’t illegal, so I couldn’t have Hale arrested on principle, no matter how much I might want to.

He got back in, slamming the door behind himself again. I had about decided that he opened and closed all doors that way.

“What did he say?” Lori asked.

“He’ll take us,” Hale said shortly. “He’s sending a car to follow us.”

“That’s not a car. That’s a hearse.” The pitch of Lori’s voice rose a full octave.

“Deal with it.”

Hale started the engine again, making it harder for me to hear.

I pulled myself away from the air conditioner vents, once again giving up on listening for a while. Pulling myself along the edges of the engine block, away from anything that might hurt me, I squirmed around until I could peer out the front grill. It was difficult to see anything clearly, but I began seeing some of the surrounding landscape.

We were in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like. As far as I could tell when I caught glimpses of the land around us, we were on a two-lane highway, surrounded by fields that stretched away into the distance.

After about half an hour, we pulled off onto a side street that led back into a neighborhood where I wouldn’t have expected one. I realized why when Hale turned into a driveway around to the back of the house.

This particular row of houses backed up to a private airstrip.

I had seen a couple of these types of neighborhoods from the highway. They were secluded and expensive.

And apparently also a refuge for druggies who want to grab their daughter and escape the legal issues facing them.

“Get the baby and come on,” Hale commanded Lori.

I didn’t know how she could listen to that tone without bristling, but instead, she whined, “Will we get another fix soon?”

“Well, fuck, I hope so,” Hale muttered.

I heard the door creaking open on Lori’s side this time, too, so I dropped my head down, out from under the engine block, to take a look around us. Another car, presumably the hearse Lori had mentioned, pulled up behind us and I heard other car doors opening and closing.

Lori opened the back passenger door, and I heard her getting Baby Paige out.

All I could see were feet and ankles and wheels. The feet belonged to Lori and Hale and several people who had gotten out of the hearse. The wheels were those of our car and the hearse, and in the near distance, I also saw the wheels of what I was certain would turn out to be an airplane.

They’re taking Baby Paige out of the country. I suddenly knew it as clearly as I had ever known anything.

I didn’t know if Hale and Lori were themselves drug runners, but they clearly had contacts in that world, probably people who smuggled drugs into the country.

The more I watched, the clearer it became.

Courtney had told me her sister and brother-in-law were involved in meth. Yvette, the amicus attorney, had suggested cocaine was the culprit. I had always understood meth to be a homegrown kind of problem—or at least a home-lab-created issue. An operation that required the use of an airplane suggested something much bigger. So that pointed to the cocaine, maybe?

Ugh. Everything I knew about drug smuggling came from TV news and network shows. I doubted either offered a nuanced image of the issue.

As I contemplated the nature of drug smugglers—like, what did they do with the baby girls of drug-addicted parents?—several people came out of the house and began moving toward the airplane.

I needed to get somewhere where I could see better.

Just then, someone rolled up a gurney next to the Beaumonts’ car and several people began speaking rapidly in Spanish. My grasp of the language wasn’t strong enough for me to keep up. But I caught a few words here and there: muerte, abuela, avión—death, grandmother, airplane.

So maybe this didn’t have anything to do with drugs at all? I slid down further, tucking myself over and around until I was hidden in the wheel well.

“Well, open it up. Let me take a look,” came a booming voice, matched by footsteps down the steps out of the house. Whoever spoke followed up the command with some rapid-fire, heavily Texas-accented Spanish.

I drew back into the shadow of the tire to make sure I wasn’t seen. People gathered around the gurney and I ducked out again, enough to see that the gurney held a casket.

I had just enough time Is that what they’re going to open? before one of several young men with dark hair who looked like they could be brothers was indeed opening it.

He stood back and gestured for another man to look inside. That man—the boss, presumably—was in his late forties, solidly built with a shock of dark hair shot through with gray and a matching beard.

“Yep. That’ll do,” the bearded man said.

“Is it really your grandmother?” Hale asked.

“Yeah,” he said dryly. “My dearly departed grandma. We called her Abuela.”

“Really?” Lori asked.

The bearded man shot her an