For the Love of Pete by Julia Harper

Author:Julia Harper [HARPER, JULIA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780446543552
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-one

Friday, 6:42 p.m.

You can’t arrest them—they’re little old ladies,” Zoey hissed as she bent over the Beemer’s steering wheel.

“Who brought illegal saffron into the country,” Dante murmured back. He held a road map up under the ceiling light. “Have you any idea how many laws they probably broke?”

“It’s saffron, not opium!”

“Is everything all right?” the taller Gupta lady called from the back seat. She and her sister sat on either side of the little blond boy.

“Fine! Just fine,” Zoey sang back. Under her breath she muttered, “Gestapo.”

“I didn’t say I was going to arrest them,” Dante muttered.

“Humph.”

Dante cleared his throat and shook out the map. He’d decided without consulting anyone else that they would all go to the motel the Gupta ladies had been heading to in the first place. He hadn’t offered an explanation, but Zoey assumed that he didn’t want to drive back to Chicago on the roads tonight. Either that, or maybe he thought Pete was still in southern Illinois. Hard to figure out someone else’s train of thought when they weren’t talking to you.

The two Mrs. Guptas said they had no idea who the little boy between them was. Maybe Tony the Rose’s henchman was a specialist in kidnapping babies and always traveled with a few in his Humvee. Zoey wrinkled her nose at her own rather dark humor. What they did know—maybe the only thing they knew for sure right now—was that Tony the Rose’s employee had kidnapped Pete. Again. Which brought her back to the one guy she could blame all of this on, Ricky Spinoza. Pete was the only good thing that’d come out of stupid Ricky-the-jerk’s life, and she was worth ten of him. Oh, please let Pete be safe.

Zoey tightened her lips as she looked for the exit. I will not cry. I will not cry. The snow was falling thick and fast now, sticking to the faces of road signs and obscuring the letters.

“I think it is here,” one of the Mrs. Guptas said from the back seat.

“No, no, Savita-di,” the other Mrs. Gupta said. “Do you not remember that we passed a Kentucky Fried Chicken sign before the proper exit?”

“And what if the Kentucky Fried Chicken sign is no longer there?” the first lady shot back. “What then, Pratima Gupta?”

What then, indeed? Zoey thought.

Beside her, Dante cleared his throat. “I think the exit we’re looking for is the one after this, actually. There’s a sign for the motel right there.” He nodded with his chin to a dim billboard by the side of the road. The Beemer’s headlights briefly lit a familiar chain logo, and then they were past.

“See? What did I tell you, Pratima?”

Zoey rolled her eyes. These ladies had obviously known each other waaay too long. She squinted, looking for the exit.

“Here,” Dante said.

She’d almost driven past the exit. Hastily she clicked on her turn signal and steered the Beemer to the off-ramp. The motel sign was lighted and clearly visible from the top of the ramp.

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