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I stood in the aisle of the Walgreens, holding a box of pink hair dye, and took a deep breath. Straightening my shoulders, I put it in my basket and headed for the checkout.
Ten minutes later I carried my bags back to the hotel—managing to keep my face off most surveillance tapes around the store—and dumped my haul onto the bed.
All in all, it’d set me back only five hundred dollars. I still needed a laptop, a cheap car—which admittedly could wait until I got to my last destination—and a more permanent phone situation. Data cards were expensive as hell.
I put my goods away and grabbed a can of mixed fruit and a stick of beef jerky for dinner before switching on the TV and settling in to binge-watch reruns of Gossip Girl. The ache in my chest was always the worst at night, and tonight it felt like my chest was being cleaved in two.
I wrapped the blanket around myself, curling into the pillows as a tear slipped out.
“Fuck you, Romero, for making me love you,” I told the empty room. Behind me the sounds of fake-as-shit moans and the rhythmic smacking of the box-spring mattress against the wall competed with the volume of the TV, forcing me to turn it up.
Another tear fell when the one person I wanted to hear didn’t speak. He never would—not to me, anyway. Because I would never see him again.
* * *
Only five days later, the email I’d been waiting for came. I leapt to my feet, ready to get to the meeting place.
As I pulled the door shut, shifting the strap of my purse higher on my shoulder, the door next to me shut as well. Gregorian, the tall, rail-thin man with a mostly bald head—save for the sparse grey hair that decorated his scalp—looked over at me. His bulging, yellowed eyes raked me up and down in a way that made me want to take another shower.
“Where you off to so early in the morning, Bernadette?” he crooned.
I lifted a brow, managing to keep my disgust from showing on my face. “It’s noon, Greg.” His name came out sounding like a curse, but I couldn’t help it. “You’d know that if you stopped entertaining prostitutes until four in the morning.” I flashed him a wide, sickly sweet smile that I hoped would poison him. Turning, I fled, just barely making out his shouted, “You’re always welcome to take their place, sweetheart!” as I took the stairs down three at a time.
A shudder of revulsion washed over me when I made it to the lobby. I could never get away from that guy fast enough, and after the stunt Todd pulled, I was especially mistrusting of the entire male gender.
In the street, I signaled for a cab and slid in the second it stopped. For some reason, being out in public constantly had me feeling like I was on the run, even though things had been quiet and oddly peaceful.
I gave the cab driver the address and sat back, forcing my heart to slow. Gregorian wasn’t after me. No one was. I’d successfully disappeared—for now. Watching the bustling city pass, I sighed. The driver’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror several times through the drive, though I didn’t find the man who looked to be in his thirties to be offensive. He was handsome enough and his glances weren’t the kind that made my skin crawl. They almost seemed…confused.
He cleared his throat after a minute. “You look awfully young, miss. And you seem a little jittery. Is everything okay?”
I pursed my lips, meeting his stare in the mirror. His eyes were an electric shade of blue that I had no doubt was still melting panties. I might have been affected if not for the state of my love life. “I’m perfectly fine. The man staying in the room next to me just creeped me out, nothing new.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding like he understood.
I wanted to snort a laugh. There was no way he knew what it felt like to be leered at and sexualized from the moment puberty hit. For some of us unlucky girls, it was even before then.
“You staying here long?”
Like a bucket of cold water was tossed over my head, my heart bottomed out. I was sure it was innocent questioning, but still it felt like he was digging.
“Not sure,” I hedged, eyeing the street outside when the car rolled to a slow stop at a red light.
He nodded again. “Well where did you come from? You look tanned. That’s gotta be somewhere south, right?”
I inhaled slowly, leaning slightly to the right to check if both of his hands were on the steering wheel. Call me paranoid, but the sudden questioning rubbed me the wrong way. I could see one of his hands, and felt my heart rate spike even further. It doesn’t mean he has a weapon, I told myself. “Um, yeah, I’ve been south a time or two.”
His eyes flicked back up to meet mine. “And California before that?” The ease of his tone vanished, and that’s when I knew.
I lunged for the door, hearing the locks click. My hands fumbled for it, but I felt him move, the flash of steel careening toward me. I screamed and got the door open, falling onto the street right as the knife nicked my knee. There was no time to dwell on the pain, and I knew the cut wasn’t terribly deep.
I held my bag to my chest and ran, ignoring the blood beginning to seep into my jeans. The man shouted after me and the thundering of several pairs of footsteps told me more than one man had followed.
I sprinted around cars that began to move again with the changed light. They honked and braked, their drivers flipping me off, but I didn’t care. When I reached the sidewalk, there were people to dodge as well, but if I had to maneuver around them then so would my pursuers.
After studying the map of where I was meant to be heading, I had a vague idea of where I needed to go without looking. I ran in that direction, hoping to lose them on the way.
My lungs burned and my leg ached, but I pushed myself harder. The shouts and clapping footfalls behind me were more distant now, and I turned onto a different street abruptly, praying they hadn’t seen me.
