AllFreeNovel
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“What’s happened?” Otto asks down the line as I speed away from the boatyard. “Jesus Christ, I take a few hours off, and all hell breaks loose.”
“I’ll fill you in soon.” I overtake a truck that’s chugging along at a painstakingly slow speed. “I need you to get your laptop out and check the tracker on Pearl’s phone.”
“For fuck’s sake, Brad, I’m trying to create a romantic, memorable day for Esther and all I’ve done is serve as your bitch. I just got back from dropping your last request off at the boatyard.”
“Please, Otto,” I beg. “It’s important.” I want answers, and I want them from Pearl. Her words, her mouth. I hear him muttering and cursing, a few thuds, a door closing, a lock engaging. He’s in the bathroom. Probably naked.
“She’s at Miami Station. Why is Pearl at Miami Station, Brad?”
“I said I’d fill you in s?—”
“No, wait. She’s moving away from Miami station.”
Fuck! “Find out which train.”
“I don’t think she’s on a train. In a car, I think. Or on a bus.”
“Why would she go to Miami Station and then drive away from Miami Station?”
“I don’t fucking know, Brad. I have a tracker on her phone, not a spy camera.”
I should’ve had him put a fucking spy camera on her phone. “I’ll call you back.” I hang up and call Pearl, swerving through the traffic.
“Hello?” someone says, someone I don’t recognize.
I frown. “Who’s that?”
“This is Geraldine.”
“Why do you have . . . my friend’s phone?”
“I don’t know!” She laughs. “I just found it on the back seat when I stopped for some gas outside the train station.”
I glare at the windshield.
The little fucker.
50
PEARL
* * *
I wrestle with my bag, trying to push it up onto the overhead rack, puffing and panting.
“Want some help?”
I look back, arms still in the air, bag still wedged against the edge of the rack, a few inches shy of actually being on the shelf. A tall guy in sports pants and a baseball tank smiles at me, reaching up, and he practically flicks my bag into place.
“Thanks,” I say, smiling awkwardly and shuffling into a seat at a table.
“Mind?” he asks, motioning to one of the chairs opposite.
I smile again, not engaging. I don’t want to talk or smile. I look across to the double seats. I should have taken one of those, leaving minimal scope for chatty strangers to bother me. I’d look really rude if I stand now and move. Do I care? No. But the man pulls out an iPad and some earbuds, getting himself set up, and I settle again when he opens a can of Pepsi Max. The hiss melds with the sound of the doors of the train closing. I look at them, then up at the speakers as the driver announces our departure, settling back in my seat, turning my gaze to the platform outside the window as the train starts to pull away.
Goodbye, Miami.
Goodbye, freedom.
