That’s how we ended up in that truck stop.
We couldn’t go in legally. Travis hadn’t been charged with anything. CPS had visited twice and seen nothing wrong. Travis was good at hiding things. He’d had Sarah trained to lie before she even answered the door.
The plan was Sarah’s idea. She was the only one who could get Caleb out without Travis losing it.
She told Travis she needed to take Caleb to her sister’s for the weekend. Travis didn’t trust her, so he made her drive a route he could check on GPS. The truck stop was on that route.
Sarah was supposed to “stop for gas” at exactly 2:15 PM. We’d be inside waiting.
The five thousand dollars was real. Pike and I had emptied our savings. So had three other brothers. Sarah needed money to disappear. She had a plan. There was a women’s shelter two states over that had agreed to take her in once Caleb was safe. She just needed to make it there.
The bills were also her cover story. If Travis came looking, she had to be able to say something.
The story we agreed on was that some bikers had stolen Caleb at the truck stop. That they’d held a gun to her head. That they’d thrown the money in her lap and warned her not to follow.
The waitress with her phone out at the diner? She was the witness Sarah needed. Someone to call 911. Someone to put it on record that the boy had been taken by force. So Sarah wouldn’t be charged. So Travis wouldn’t suspect.
That’s why Pike told her, on his brother’s grave, that the boy would eat. Because we both knew Jesse was watching us. Because we both knew this was the last thing Jesse ever asked for.
