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Wow. It was her day, written all over her body. All the high points.
She wound her hair up into a roll. Back into the shower. Enough of this bullshit. Dithering over to-have-or-not-to-have sex with a dangerous guy? She had real problems, thanks very much.
Somebody was trying to kill her. A dab of perspective, please.
She thought the situation through as she soaped herself up. It was true that she’d turned rebellious the summer that she’d met Sean.
He’d started the process himself, egging her on. Then, the episode in the jail had served as an emotional vaccination. Her fear of making people angry vanished. It simply held no more terror for her. She’d experienced the worst, so why cower, why cringe? To hell with them all.
From then on, she’d suited herself. Enrolled in the classes that interested her, chose the major she wanted, hung out with the friends she liked, applied for jobs she wanted. Her mother had been hysterically frustrated by this new, inexplicably difficult Liv. She’d even cut off all the family funds in an effort to control her. But that had backfired.
Being forced to earn her own living had freed Liv completely. Maybe she ate beans and ramen, and shopped in thrift stores, but at least she could breathe. Her mother wanted to love her, but compliance was the only fuel that could make that machine function. Liv’s refusal to comply was a refusal of her mother’s love. Period. A tragic dead-end.
She was startled to find herself sobbing under the stream of hot water. She thought she’d given up the fantasy of maternal acceptance years ago. She must still be grieving for it. Maybe she always would.
So she was on her own. No surprise. She had been for a long time. She’d just never been on the run from a killer on her own.
Brr. It made that lonely-bird-in-a-gilded-cage scenario look almost good by comparison. Almost. She didn’t have much money. Her credit cards were all maxed. Every penny she’d ever saved was sunk into Books & Brew. Her vehicle was evidence in a police investigation.
She had some jewelry she could pawn. She’d go to a resort town. Wait tables, work for tips. She’d contact the police when she got settled, ask for advice. There should be a system in place that might help her.
If she was going, it had to be soon. She stuck her head out the bedroom door. Still a low hum of activity downstairs. Not yet.
She packed and repacked her bags. Her main dilemma was her stash of unread novels. She finally tossed out a pair of jeans and a handful of underwear to make room for all of them. First things first.
Four o’clock found her, dressed and packed and vibrating with nerves, staring fixedly at the little clock on the bedside table.
She’d opted for jeans, schlumpy sandals. A plain blouse. She’d composed a careful note, apologizing and explaining as best she could.
The second hand ticked to four. Goodbye to life as she knew it.
She stuck her head out the door. It was utterly quiet.
She staggered down the corridor loaded like a donkey, lugging her purse, her laptop, her backpack, her suitcase. She made noise, but no one came bursting out to stop her.
Part of her must have been hoping someone would.
She left her bags by the back door and nicked the spare keys to her parents’ Volvo sedan. She would leave it in long term airport parking and mail the keys back to them. Now to slip past the police who were parked on both sides of the property. It felt disrespectful to their efforts to protect her, but there was nothing she could do.
She silently apologized to them in her head.
Fortunately there were enough hedges and foliage to plan a sneaky route down to the riverfront garage where the Volvo was parked. She’d had plenty of practice doing that as a girl, avoiding her mother’s eagle eye. No one should see her leave from there.
She disabled the back door alarm, and had a bad moment on the steps. Four AM was not a friendly time. The bushes looked like so many hunched, hungry animals lying in wait. She scurried and slunk, for a nervous, guilty eternity, as if she were doing something illicit and bad.
She finally made it, and heaved the garage door open. She started up the car, flipped off the headlights, and eased out onto the road in the moonlight. She picked up speed around the first curve, making plans as she went. A quick stop at the nearest bank to take whatever she could out of a cash machine, and then straight onto the highway—
Oh, Jesus. She screeched to a stop, just inches from the mud-spattered black Jeep parked crosswise across the road after the blind curve. Blocking both narrow lanes. Oh no, no. That was so wrong.
Terror jangled through every nerve, an awful blinding flash of exactly how brainless she’d been, how badly she’d underestimated—
The shadow sprang up.Thunk,an angular metal something punched through the window, scattering pebbles of shatterproof glass over her lap.Omigodomigod that is a gunscreamed a faraway voice.
A black-gloved gorilla hand wrenched up the lock, released the door handle, plucked her out of the car and flung her onto the asphalt.
The thing squatted over her. Rough cut-outs in his black mask showed wide staring eyes. She sensed that he was smiling.
“Olivia.” His voice was an oily croon. “At last we meet.”
