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Good deal.
She thought of the name she’d given him in the dream. Mr. X. It fit him. It felt right. She drifted back to sleep thinking of how he’d tasted in her dream.
Chapter Nine
Lizette warily approached Saturday; Friday had been such a day of upheaval that she was almost afraid of what the new day would bring. The wrong face still stared at her from the mirror, she still had at least two years missing from her memory, but at least she wasn’t spending the morning either curled up in pain or hanging over the toilet puking her guts out. She’d take any improvement she could get.
But the day felt odd, as if she were just waiting for something else to happen. Briefly—very briefly—she entertained the idea of going back to Walgreens to see if by chance Mr. X would be there, but she had to roll her eyes at herself on that one. Not going to happen. He’d bought his shampoo yesterday; he wouldn’t be back for more.
Saturday was her day for errands, one of which was grocery shopping. Normally she shopped at Walmart for the majority of her groceries, and at the small neighborhood store closer to the house when she needed only a few things. Today she went to neither, and she couldn’t have said why, other than breaking out of her routine seemed like a good idea.
Instead she stopped at a store she passed on the way to and from work every day but had never entered. It was a nice store, large, clean, just a bit fancy, so she took her time. The prices were a bit higher than at Walmart, but she was actually having fun finding different foods.
Leisurely shopping was a decent enough way to spend a Saturday afternoon when it seemed as if her body and mind were turning against her and nothing about her life made sense anymore. It was nice to get away from her worries for a while, to deal with nothing more dramatic than what this store had or didn’t have, to study labels, plan a meal or two, and think about … nothing.
Except—suddenly, the damnedest things were perplexing. She stopped, staring into the case of frozen foods. Blueberry pomegranate frozen yogurt. Something about it resonated, though she couldn’t remember ever trying it before. Did she like it? Would she like it? She tended to stick with vanilla, and she was damn tired of vanilla. So … maybe. Opening the door, she took out a carton of blueberry pomegranate and placed it in her grocery cart, next to the cinnamon raisin bagels and the oatmeal raisin cookies. Carbs, much? She usually made certain her diet was more healthy than not, but today she was having problems with her selections. What if all this time she’d been eating foods she really didn’t like? After everything she’d gone through the day before, that didn’t feel as ridiculous as it sounded.
She couldn’t live on carbs alone, so she made herself go back through the produce aisle, adding fruits and vegetables to the cart. Normally she ate turkey: turkey breast, ground turkey, turkey bacon, turkey sausage … she was so sick of turkey, she never wanted to see it again. She bought some real bacon, though a package of chicken breasts probably balanced that out. Before she totally flipped out and added something like sardines to the growing pile, she wheeled the cart to one of the checkout lanes.
As the cashier efficiently scanned the items, Lizette looked out the wide front windows, studying the parking lot. Her car was parked to the right and several spaces down, facing out—again—so she could drive straight out of the space and into the lane that led to the side exit of the parking lot. She didn’t even remember purposely choosing that space, but looking at it now, from this distance, it was plain to see. She was poised for a quick getaway.
And, huh, no headache or nausea, just a clear observation of her surroundings.
She paid with a swipe of her credit card and plucked the keys from her purse so they were in her hand and ready. She grabbed her bags—plastic, not paper—and placed them so they hung over her forearms but didn’t restrict her hands. The plastic straps of the heaviest bag bit into her flesh and pinched a bit, but she wanted both of her hands free. She couldn’t remember ever worrying about that before, but she had a new reality now.
She stepped off the curb and headed toward her car, her gaze automatically scanning the area. She was alert, in a way she hadn’t ever been. No, that wasn’t quite right: she hadn’t been this aware in a long time. So what if she couldn’t remember exactly when she had been this aware? What was fascinating was how oblivious most people were.
The woman who had checked out beside and just before Lizette was loading her groceries into the back of her Highlander, while two children—one boy, one girl—argued about who was going to sit where. Most of the other cars were empty, though a man sat in the driver’s seat of a gray sedan, probably waiting for his wife or girlfriend. He was looking down, as if texting or playing a game on his phone, but she couldn’t see what was in his hands. A store employee, a young and bored guy probably working a summer job, was collecting grocery carts. One young couple was headed into the store; she held a piece of paper, most likely a list, in her right hand. Lizette could tell they’d probably been arguing. Neither spoke or looked directly at one another at any time, and there was a good three feet between them, a distance neither felt compelled to narrow. His shoulders were tight; her mouth was pursed.
Lizette used the remote to pop the trunk open. After storing her groceries there she closed the trunk, and once again looked around. A car was just pulling into the parking lot—a female driver, alone. The woman circled the parking lot, looking for a slot as close to the store as she could get.
Lizette unlocked her door, got inside, and immediately relocked the door.
She sat there for a long moment before starting the engine. A long chill ran down her spine. Someone was watching her. Damn it, she felt eyes on her, though she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.
But maybe not. Maybe being hyper-alert was just putting herself in the mindset that she could be watched, and her imagination was taking over from there. Half convinced she was being watched, half certain she wasn’t, Lizette pulled out of the parking slot and turned toward the traffic light.
The gray sedan, the one with the man who’d been texting, or whatever, in the driver’s seat, was just leaving the parking lot as well and he fell in behind her. Frowning, she glanced into the rearview mirror. He was still alone.
What were the possibilities? Rapidly she ran through a few scenarios. Maybe he’d run into the store, picked up a few things, checked out ahead of her and then sat in his car for a few minutes to send a text. She hadn’t seen him in the store, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he had planned to shop, but something or someone had called him away before he could take care of that chore. That was plausible. Unlikely, but still plausible.
Then again, maybe he was following her. Had he picked her out of all the women who’d walked in that parking lot and chosen her as his victim? She had been careful, she’d been alert, so what had marked her as an easy target? Or had he been behind her on the drive from her house to the store where she had never shopped before? Would she have noticed?
No, an inner voice said, you wouldn’t have. You were thinking about Mr. X, and doing normal things, like getting on with your life as if nothing had changed in the past day and a half. Her big thing today had been shopping at a grocery store she hadn’t been in before.
Her heart jumped up in her throat. What should she do?
A left turn would take her toward home. She didn’t dare lead this guy to her house, though if he’d followed her from there he already knew where she lived. She tried to think through the ramifications of that, but things were happening too fast for her right now and she needed to concentrate on what she was doing. When the traffic light changed to green, Lizette turned right.
So did the car behind her.
She drove down the main street that would, eventual
ly, take her past the office building where she worked. This was a part of town she knew well. She’d driven these streets enough. For the past three years—maybe three—she’d driven this route to work five days a week. She had rarely deviated from the route, though every day she’d gone out for lunch and gotten to know the area that way. Once, for a five-week period, a detour had taken her by another route while this one was being repaired and repaved.
Now, as she kept her speed at precisely the speed limit, she realized that while she’d never consciously paid much attention, she really did know a lot about this area. It was as if a part of her subconscious had been operating on a different level all along.
The road coming up led to an apartment complex: dead end. The next three streets to the left would take her into a middle-class neighborhood. She wasn’t sure what was back there besides houses: cross streets, maybe a park. Farther down this street there were a number of restaurants, an office building much larger than her own, and a couple of nice strip malls.
