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“Yes, ma’am. I’ll get him on the hunt.”
“Call me when my daughter is secured.” She ended the call and stood there in deep thought for a moment, mentally running through scenarios and possibilities. One in particular stood out: if she had to get her hands dirty and take care of matters herself, she was starting with him—and she had no doubt that he was well aware of that fact.
Chapter Nineteen
Room 107 hadn’t been occupied
in a while. In addition to the hole in the wall and a catty-wampus towel rack, the room was musty-smelling and dusty, which told her the small hotel had a problem with cash flow. A hideous gold and orange bedspread covered the single bed, and—she noted, pulling a corner of the spread back—there were no sheets. Lucky for her, there was one forgotten towel in the bathroom.
“Great,” she muttered. “I’m not completely shit out of luck.”
Priorities. She was starving. Lizzy grabbed some ones from her wallet, along with the loose change from the drugstore, and headed for the vending machines three rooms down. Key to her room in one hand, money in the other, hat and sunglasses on, she strode to the lineup of machines. Junk food wasn’t what she’d had in mind for supper, but since she’d never gotten to the barbecue sandwich her stomach was trying to crawl through her spine. She was so hungry she didn’t care if all the offerings were stale.
There wasn’t much to choose from: sodas, water, chips, cookies, crackers. She loaded up, went back to her room, and once the door was closed behind her she dropped her “dinner” on the single table in the room, removed the hat and sunglasses, and sat down in the only chair.
For one moment, one horrendous split second, she thought she was going to lose it, just break down and sob. She swallowed hard, looking up at the ceiling as she willed herself not to break down now.
She’d been running since she’d realized those men were shooting at her, so until this moment she hadn’t really had time to think about how truly bad this all was. But she wouldn’t cry. She refused to let them get the best of her. She focused on the next step, which was to get herself fed. Then she’d shower, get some sleep. She had to get some rest or she wouldn’t be able to keep going. Those things she could handle. After that, she needed a plan … and she didn’t have one.
She had to get out of town, but how? Public transportation would be under surveillance. Considering the number of cameras in the Metro, her hat and sunglasses wouldn’t be a sufficient disguise. Bus? Maybe. That was a possibility. She could pay cash and hope she could change her appearance enough not to raise any alarm. But still, the idea gave her the heebie-jeebies. Her car—which wasn’t a safe option anyway, obviously—was out of the picture. And she couldn’t very well walk out of D.C.
Damn it, she thought irritably, she was going to have to steal another car. A bit more discreetly this time around, so the theft wouldn’t be reported for several hours. Which meant she couldn’t snatch the keys out of a driver’s hand, unless she was willing to resort to kidnapping. Lizette Henry, carjacker.
Maybe.
It would be better, though, to hot-wire an older car. New cars with their computers and antitheft systems weren’t an option, but something older, maybe with a really kick-ass engine: a gas guzzler, an engine that roared. Why did that thought give her a bit of a thrill?
Exactly how did one hot-wire a car? Lizzy thought about it as she opened a pack of cheese crackers with a thin smear of peanut butter sandwiched in between. She took a big bite. They were stale. No surprise there. Damn it, she should have bought some food at the drugstore. They would have had protein bars, which would be better than this. But she’d been in a panic at the time, and she hadn’t been thinking clearly—not clearly enough, anyway. It was the kind of stupid mistake that could get her killed. Yeah, she might starve to death.
Back to the immediate question: did she know how to hot-wire a car? She asked herself this again as she wolfed down the rest of the first stale cracker and moved on to the next one, washing it down with a long swallow of cold, sweet Coke.
Yes. Yes, she did! She could almost see her hands confidently crossing and twisting wires. The process was so clear in her mind, she might have done it just yesterday. No, not yesterday, but more than three years ago, in that two-year blind spot.
She waited for the blinding headache, the nausea, the internal warning that she could not go there. Nothing. She closed her eyes in relief. With everything else that was going on, she didn’t think she could deal with those headaches now. If one of them hit at the wrong time, it could get her killed.
Two packs of crackers, two Cokes, and a bag of potato chips later, she was finally full. Tiredly she dragged herself into the bathroom. This long-neglected unit wasn’t stocked with shampoo and soap, but she’d bought the basics, so she was set. Maybe while she was in the shower she could come up with more of a plan than “steal a car,” which, as far as specifics went, left a lot to be desired. Where to find the car? When should she leave this room? Where should she go after she stole a car?
Under the spray of the shower, she tried not to think about anything but getting clean, washing the day off her body and out of her hair.
Seriously, the shittiest day ever.
At least as far as she could recall, which—ha-ha—wasn’t all that far.
She got out of the shower and used her one towel to dry both her body and her hair, then pulled on her oversized tee shirt. She wiped the steam from the mirror and looked again at her new face. She did remember seeing it in the mirror every morning for the past three years, but now she also remembered that it wasn’t her face. And she remembered without pain. Progress was definitely being made, but she wasn’t certain she’d ever truly get used to that face, as if something deep inside her was mourning what she’d lost.
“What did they do to you?” she asked the face in the mirror, which, of course, had no answers and a whole helluva lot of questions.
She turned on the TV in front of the bed. The motel didn’t get many channels, and it wasn’t a very good TV, but all she wanted was a look at the news. Did they have her name, her photo? By morning would everyone in the city be looking for her?
Get real, a cynical little voice said. What made her think her little carjacking was of that much importance in a city with D.C.’s murder rate?
While she waited for the news to come on, Lizzy sat on the end of the bed and packed her belongings into the big, cheap bag she’d bought at the drugstore. Her smaller purse went in the very bottom, everything else in the middle, and the scissors placed so the handles were at the very top, easy to grab if she needed them. She wished again for her backpack, those power bars, the knife, her new running shoes.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake with this bag that she’d made with the backpack; from now on she’d take everything she had with her wherever she went. It wasn’t as if she’d be carting around a huge suitcase.
The story about the supposed drive-by at the barbecue restaurant was one of the first stories on the news, and Lizzy held her breath as she waited for the bit about the stolen car and the assault on the driver. It didn’t come. The newscaster mentioned that a bystander had been wounded, but he’d been treated at the hospital and released, and then they moved on to other news.
Huh. Just as her cynical little voice had said: a stolen car wasn’t exactly news in D.C., but the way it had happened, where and when … She felt a little dissed. Here she’d been so worried, wasting all that energy, and evidently she didn’t rate even a blip on the dangerous-criminal radar.
