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morning Will drove as Emma watched the endless sand and scrub brush. The barren land looked like her future, bleak and hopeless. The memory of her dream rushed back and she tried to stuff it back in the recesses of her mind where it belonged. It was a dream, just a dream.
    Will shifted his hand on the steering wheel. “Emma, I need to know more about your mother.”
    She tensed out of reflex. Thinking of her mother only added to her anxiety. “And?”
    “Where did she work?”
    “I’m sure she works at the same place she worked at the last twenty-five years. In housekeeping, at the hospital. My mother may have a revolving door for men, but she’s a creature of habit with her job.”
    “So she couldn’t have gotten remarried?”
    Emma laughed with a snort. “No, not that she was ever married to begin with. She always said she was too much woman for just one man.”
    “Someone might be watching her house. It might be safer to visit her at work. What shift did she used to work?”
    “Days. No weekends. Mom likes to keep her weekends free.” Emma’s eyes remained fixed on the passing landscape, squashing the familiar feelings of helplessness that crept in whenever she was around her mother. “What are you going to ask her?”
    “About your childhood. About your father.”
    “What if she won’t answer you?”
    “There’s always ways to make people tell you want you want to know.”
    She turned her head toward him with a blank stare. “Because that’s what you used to do in the military. Find people and get information out of them.” It wasn’t a question, more of a statement. He told her this almost word for word what seemed like a lifetime ago. The day she was shot.
    He glanced at her with guarded eyes before answering. “One of the many things I used to do. You don’t need to worry about your mother. I won’t hurt her. Most people don’t need much coercion. You just need to find out what motivates them.”
    She turned back to the landscape. “Men and beer.”
    “What?”
    “That’s what motivates my mother, in that order.”
    Will shifted in his seat. “Then maybe we’re going about this wrong.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “If she likes men and beer, does she hang out in bars a lot?”
    “Yes. She said she worked hard all week. She deserved some fun on the weekends. Once I was old enough to stay home alone, she’d go out every Friday and Saturday night.”
    “What was her pattern? Did she go home after work and go out later?”
    Emma nodded.
    “Okay, then that’s our plan.”
    Common sense told her that seeing her mother was the best course of action, yet she couldn’t shake the dread.
    The little control she had left seemed to be slipping away. She wasn’t in control of anything. She couldn’t even get her son back on her own. The fact she didn’t know anything about Will, the man whom she’d pinned all hope of finding her son on, only made her feel worse. “What did you really do before I met you?” Her words were bitter.
    Will turned to her with wary eyes. “What difference does it make?”
    “Because I’m trusting you with my life and I know nothing about you. Answer the question. You were a bounty hunter?”
    He took a deep breath then released it. “Not exactly.”
    She waited and when he said nothing more, she pressed on. “Then what exactly did you do?”
    “This and that. I used my military background for different jobs. Sometimes I escorted people to places. Sometimes they weren’t so willing to go.”
    “Like me?”
    He looked back at her and flashed the cocky smile he used when she first met him. “I don’t remember you being unwilling.”
    She wasn’t about to let him off that easy. “Only because of Jake. I never would have agreed to go with you if Jake hadn’t insisted that I needed you.”
    The mention of Jake sobered them both. They were traveling the opposite direction of the last place he’d last been seen with no real clues to follow. Emma felt as