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17
Six Months Later
My fingers flyover the laptop keys, my attention trained on the information in front of me. The sound of rapid clicking and my shallow breathing are the only two things breaking the silence of my new apartment, one of many I’ve lived in over the last six months. This dump is barely over four walls and a postage-stamp-sized bathroom—there isn’t even a full kitchen, just a hot plate and a dorm room fridge—but it’s all I need. I don’t spend a lot of time here.
I spend most of my time driving around, following leads, and asking questions. I haven’t been exactly secretive about it, either. I’ve taken every precaution I can think of, using my training plus my instincts to get around the law, to hide my tracks.
First, I paid cash for the late model two-door I spend more time in than I spend in my shithole of an apartment. The guy whose lot I visited looked happy to do business and wasn’t the sort of guy who asks a lot of questions. Like why I was in such a hurry and didn’t want to give him too much information about my identity. It was an excellent match all the way around.
Second, I left my old apartment, taking only what I needed—my clothes and computer—and hit the road in said untraceable vehicle. This is maybe the worst I’ve rented, honestly. I have to hold my breath whenever I use the stairs, which is always since the elevator never works. The stairwell smells like piss and mouse droppings, and I can almost always hear either a baby crying somewhere down the hall or people shouting at each other. I’ve learned to block that out.
Third, I cut my hair and dyed it from brown to black, and always dress in plain, baggy clothes, with a ball cap and sunglasses close at hand, when I’m chasing a lead.
I touch my wrist and still, after all this time, expect to feel my bracelet there. They say people who’ve lost limbs feel phantom itching where their leg or arm used to be, right? I never knew the same thing could be true of missing jewelry. That bracelet was part of me, and it’s still gone.
What’s left of my cash is safe in the footlocker I bought just after renting my first room using cash and a false name. Another perk of choosing some place where the staff isn’t exactly working their hardest to make sure they play by the rules. Most people here rent by the month, even by the week. That’s how I’m paying for my current home, playing the part of a girl who’s had a run of bad luck.
People around here can get pretty desperate when it comes to getting their hands on money.
So that means taking extra precautions. I get up from the sofa that also serves as a bed and push it aside, revealing the footlocker and the cage it sits in bolted to the floor. The pair of locks holding it closed require a four-digit code to open. It’s too easy to lose a key. The locker itself is shut tight with another pair of code locks.
There’s only around half of what I started out with left in the metal box, enough to get me through maybe another six months if I keep sticking to instant ramen and cereal. Even twenty-five thousand dollars goes fast when you’re doing the sort of work I’m doing. When you’re tracking people down.
It’s not like anybody will miss it. I mean, I’m sure the police department does. I wonder how long it took them to discover the missing bags of cash from the evidence locker? Maybe they still haven’t—I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of stealing it if I didn’t know for sure how lax security could be and how lazy the paper pushers in the department are. For all I know, they think I fell off the face of the earth after what happened to me. Maybe they even think I killed myself.
Let them. Honestly, it would be easier.
God knows I laid it on thick when they questioned me for all those hours. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have to make anything up because I was sure as hell shaken by everything that went down. I made sure the detectives understood how close I had come to dying, how Ryker had caused the crash, and how they’d prepared to ambush us. There was nothing we could’ve done to avoid that.
By the time they finished with me, they knew I had nothing to do with the escape or with Jeff’s death. They knew they assaulted me, that Hunter and Ryker left me chained to a pipe where I might’ve died if the bunker hadn’t been raided not a half-hour after the guys left. I was a victim to them. A heroine who managed to stay alive when two cold-blooded killers took her hostage.
Exactly what I wanted them to think. Not that it was far from the truth, but still. They needed to think I feared Hunter and Ryker more than anything else. That the thought of them finding me somehow and finishing the job terrified me.
Anything, so long as they never suspected what I had in mind all along.
Ryker wants me to find him so I can have my bracelet back. Then that’s exactly what I plan to do.
I go back to the laptop after taking a little cash from my stash. My last set of leads led to a dead-end, when a pair of men close to Hunter’s and Ryker’s descriptions were spotted near a racetrack outside Phoenix. That’s just one of the dozen or so areas my search has led me.
I always wanted to see new places. I never imagined this would be the reason.
There’s nothing matching their descriptions in the Phoenix PD database. No, I don’t technically have any right to know this, just like I didn’t have the right to know what was going on in the departments of the other cities I’ve stopped in. Just like it was sort of illegal to hunt down dirty cops and blackmail them with the info I found in their records, all hoping to learn more about the underworld in their cities. Who to talk to. Who to trust. Who to stay away from.
All I want is my bracelet, and I know how insane that sounds. It’s the truth. I want what Ryker took from me. I only wish he didn’t insist on sending me on this wild goose chase. I’m sure this is fun for him, for both of them. Twisted fucks.
They’re smart, but I’m smarter. And I have inside knowledge of how stupid most big-city police departments are with their online security. It took me next to no time to get into their systems, all of them. They probably keep their passwords on post-its stuck to their monitors, too. Idiots.
The buzzing of the burner phone sitting next to me pulls my attention from the computer. It’s one of the hotels I reached out to when I first got to town. I never expected to hear anything back after giving my usual sob story about a missing sister who skipped out on rehab and might be on a bender some place.
“Hello?” It’s difficult to keep the anticipation out of my voice.
“Miss Lewis?”
“Speaking.” I mean, not technically, but still. I’m who they’re looking to talk to.
“This is Greg at the Rising Sun Inn. We had a check-in earlier this morning under the name Delilah Lewis.” The way he whispers it, I can tell he’s fully immersed in the idea of being a super spy or something.
Blood hums through my veins as my pulse quickens. That was a gamble, using Delilah’s name, hoping to track Hunter. I have to keep from dropping the phone, my hand is shaking so hard. “Can you describe who checked in? She might be with a shady character who’s supplying her.”
“I only just started my shift and saw the name in our system. I can go to the room—”
“No, no, please. I don’t want to raise a red flag and scare her off. Let her think everything’s normal for now. Thank you so much for giving me the heads up on this.”
Moments later, I’ve shoved my laptop and phone into a messenger bag, which I sling across my chest. After checking the locks on the cage one last time, I move the sofa back into place and leave the building. It’s a fifteen-minute drive to the hotel, and I can only hope I make it there in time to see my two captors again.
If only so I can get what’s mine.
