Mortal Danger

she sensed that Dan was choosing his words very carefully. He complained that they’d had to move all of John’s “crap” out of his apartment near San Diego and turn off his phone there. That proved to Kate that John had been in touch with them.
    Kate explained that John had begun to send questions and “demands” to her through his psychologist, Charlie, and Dan seemed quite aware of that. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he admitted that he had sent a big duffel bag full of John’s possessions to Oregon.
    She hoped that wasn’t true, but she said nothing. She knew in her gut that John wasn’t in Oregon, but that gave her faint comfort. She and her father were packing her belongings, but she still didn’t know where she was going, and it would be weeks before she could wind up her affairs in Gold Beach. It was so hard to stop in the middle of life and completely change direction. She thanked God for her dad, who promised to stay with her until she moved.
    The big questions in Kate’s mind were how John was managing to stay hidden and who was giving him money.
    “Is Tamara concerned about where her father is?” Kate asked Dan.
    “No,” he said too forcefully. “She’s pissed as hell. Heather’s about ready to write him off, too. She’s like, ‘If I get a call, I’m real seriously thinking I never want to talk to him again.’ Tamara’s not quite that extreme, but, ahhh, we’re all extremely angry. Kate, I would say that you’re the most sympathetic ear he has.”
    She didn’t respond to that.
    In the next breath, John’s son-in-law-to-be surmised that the next time John tried to kill Kate, he would succeed. He agreed that John was probably in dire need of psychiatric help, but Kate almost felt that Tamara was standing nearby, telling him what to say. Still, Dan muttered that it might be better for everyone if John killed himself.
    Maybe he meant it. He seemed sincerely annoyed with all the upheaval in his and Tamara’s life because of John.
    Kate suggested her theory that John had found someone within a 450-mile radius and had charmed them or made them feel sorry for him. “I think it’s someone you guys know; it’s not a business acquaintance,” she added.
    “Someone’s gotta be taking care of him, all right,” Dan agreed.
    “I think he’s always expected a lot of Tamara,” Kate said, but Dan wouldn’t bite on that.
    “Well, he’s going to be disappointed,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s doing or who’s giving him advice, but, as usual, he’s making a bad situation worse.”
    Dan said he didn’t know why John and Sue and their daughters had left Florida more than a decade earlier, but he thought John had stayed in hiding for a year, and that everything they’d owned had been put in Sue’s name then.
    He danced on the edge of confiding in Kate—if indeed he knew anything. Kate repeated that John had probably charmed someone just to keep a roof over his head. “I would figure he’d head to Stanley Szabo,” she said. “The other thing would be Mexico, but if he did that, he must not be planning on coming back. I can’t imagine that, as racist as he is, but I guess it’s a possibility.”
    “I don’t know how he would get to Mexico—we have his Hyundai, and it’s not even running,” Dan replied. Then he stressed that he and Tamara were leaving for Alaska in three days, and that he was happy to “get away from this mess.”
    “If you feel as if Tamara’s not saying something—”
    “Yep,” he said, which didn’t answer her question at all. “Yep. Yep.”
    Kate urged Dan to have Tamara call Dave Gardiner in Curry County, but Kate knew Tamara wouldn’t. She was positive that Tamara knew where her father was, that she was probably helping him stay free. His daughter thought John was a saint, and loved him, Kate thought, but he was a loaded gun out there. Who knew how many people woulddie before he was captured? Didn’t Tamara know that in this case blood shouldn’t be thicker than water?
    Apparently not.
    “Well,” Dan said, “you have a pleasant evening.”
    The line went dead as Kate thought, How weird! It would be a very long time before she would have a pleasant evening.
    Kate suggested to Dave Gardiner that he check the passenger list for the Holland America cruise scheduled to leave Portland, Oregon, for Alaska on June 18. John’s name—or any of the fake names he was known to use—wasn’t on the manifest.
    On June 29,