AllFreeNovel
Share Us
y to fight. She would have to learn to think like the night predators, or she wouldn’t make it a week on the street.
Carefully she slipped the ATM card into her pocket, then huddled once again under the overhanging roof. After depositing the precious, plastic-wrapped computer on her feet, she opened her purse and began ruthlessly sorting through the contents. She took out what cash she had, stuffing it into a pocket of the computer case without bothering to count it; she knew it wasn’t much, maybe forty or fifty dollars, because she didn’t normally carry much cash. She hesitated over the checkbook, but decided to take it; she might be able to use it, though a paper trail was dangerous. Ditto for the American Express card. She dropped both of them into the plastic bag. Any use they had, though, would be immediate and short-term. She would have to leave Minneapolis, and after she did, using either checks or a credit card would lead the police right to her.
There were several photos in the plastic pockets. She didn’t have to see them to know what they were. Her fingers trembling, she pulled the entire photo protector out of her wallet and slipped it too into the bag.
Okay, what else? There were her driver’s license and social security card, but what good were they now? The license would only identify her, which she wanted to avoid, and as for the social security card—a hollow laugh escaped her. She didn’t think she had much chance of living to collect social security.
Any identification she left behind would undoubtedly be found and used by the street scavengers, which might help dilute the police search for her if they had to run down leads that had nothing to do with her. She left the cards, and on impulse dug the checkbook out of the plastic bag. After carefully tearing out one check and storing it in the same pocket with her cash, she dropped the checkbook back into her purse.
She left the tube of lip balm, but couldn’t bear not having a comb. Another eerie, hollow laugh sounded in her throat; her husband and brother had just been murdered, the police were after her, and she was worried about being unkempt? Nevertheless, the comb went into the bag.
Her scrabbling fingers touched several pens and mechanical pencils, and without thought she took two of them. They were as essential to her work as the computer, because sometimes, when she was stumped on deciphering a particularly obscure passage or word, actually rewriting the words in her own hand would form a link of recognition between her brain and her eyes, and suddenly she would understand at least some of the words as she saw similarities to other languages, other alphabets. She had to have the pens.
There was her bulky appointment book. She ignored it, shutting it out of her thoughts. It held the minutiae of a life that no longer existed: the appointments and lists and reminders. She didn’t want to see the scribbled notation for Ford’s next dental cleaning, or the sappy heart he’d drawn on the calendar on her birthdate.
She left her business cards—she’d never used them much, anyway. She left the small pack of tissues, the spray bottle of eyeglass cleaner, the roll of antacid tablets, the breath mints. She took the metal nail file, tucking it into her pocket. It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing she possessed in the way of a weapon. She hesitated over her car keys, wondering if perhaps she could sneak back and get either her car or Ford’s truck. No. That was stupid. She left the keys. With both the keys and her address, perhaps whoever found the purse would steal either the car or the truck, or both, and lead the police astray even more.
Chewing gum, rubber bands, a magnifying glass… she identified all of those by feel, and removed only the magnifying glass, which she needed for work. Why had she been carrying so much junk around? A flicker of impatience licked at her, the first emotion other than grief and despair that had seeped through the numbness that surrounded her. It wasn’t just her purse; she couldn’t afford to make any mistakes, carry any excess baggage, let anything interfere with her focus. From this second forward, she would have to do whatever was necessary. There couldn’t be any more wasting of precious time and energy because she was paralyzed by fear. She had to act, without hesitation, or Parrish would win.
Grimly she tossed the purse on top of the trash bin, and heard a faint squeak and scrabble as a scavenging rat was disturbed. Somehow she made her feet begin moving again, shuffling across the littered alley, painfully inching from safety to exposure.
The headlights of an approaching car made her freeze just before stepping onto the sidewalk. It passed, tires swishing on the wet pavement, the driver not even bothering to glance at the bedraggled figure standing between two buildings.
The car turned right at the next intersection, and disappeared from view. Grace focused on the ATM, took a deep breath, and walked. She was staring so hard at the brightly lit machine that she missed the curb and stumbled, twisting her right ankle. She ignored the pain, not letting herself stop. Athletes walked off pain all the time; she could do the same.
The ATM loomed closer and closer, brighter and brighter. She wanted to run, to return to the safety of the trash bin. She might as well have been naked; the sensation of being exposed was so powerful that she shuddered, fighting for control. Anyone could be watching her, waiting for her to finish the transaction before mugging her, taking the money, and perhaps killing her in the process. The ATM camera would be watching her now, recording every move.
She tried to recall how much money was in the checking account. Damn it, she’d thrown away the checkbook without looking at the balance! There was no way she was going to go back to that alley and climb into the trash bin to search for her purse, even assuming she could manage the exertion. She would simply withdraw money until the machine stopped her.
The machine stopped her at three hundred dollars.
She stared at the computer screen in bewilderment. “Transaction Denied.” She knew there was more than that in the account, there was more than two thousand—not a great amount, but it could mean the difference between death and survival for her. She knew there was a limit on what she could withdraw in a single transaction, but why had the machine balked at the second one?
Maybe there wasn’t enough cash left in the ATM to fill the request. She started over, punching in her code, and this time she requested only one hundred.
“Transaction Denied.”
Panic shot through her stomach, twisting it into knots. Oh, God, the police couldn’t have frozen the account so soon, could they?
No. No. It was impossible. The banks were closed. Something might be done first thing in the morning, but nothing could have happened yet. The machine was just out of money. That was all it was.
Hurriedly, she stuffed the three hundred dollars into her pockets, dividing it up so that if she were mugged, she might be able to get away with emptying out only one pocket. She only hoped nothing would happen to the computer; she would hand over the money without argument, but she would fight for the computer and those precious files. Without them, she would never know why Ford and Bryant had died, and she had to know. It wouldn’t be enough to avenge them; she had to know why.
She began walking hurriedly, desperation driving her numb feet. She had to find another ATM, get more money. But where was another one? Until now, she had used only the one located at her local bank branch, but she knew she had seen others. They were located at malls, but malls were closed at this hour. She tried to think of places that were open twenty-four hours a day, and also had ATMs. Grocery stores, maybe? She remembered when she had opened the account, the bank had given her a booklet listing all its ATM “convenient locations,” but she wasn’t finding them all that damn convenient.
“Gimme the money.”
They materialized in front of her, lunging out of an alley so fast she had no time to react. There were two of them, one white, one black, both feral. The white guy jabbed a knife at her, the blade glinting ghostly pale in the rain-filtered streetlight. “Don’t fuck wi’ me, bitch,” he breathed, his breath more lethal than the weapon. “Just gimme the money.” He was short a few teeth and a lot of intelligence.
/> Wordlessly she stuck her hand into her pocket and took out the fold of money. She knew she should be scared, but evidently the human mind could sustain fear only to a certain level, and anything after that simply didn’t register.
The black guy grabbed the money, and the other one jabbed the knife closer, this time at her face. Grace jerked her head back just in time to keep the blade from slicing across her chin. “I saw you, bitch. Gimme the rest of it.”
So much for her grand scheme; they had probably been watching her from the time she crossed the street. She reached into her other pocket, and managed to wedge her fingers inside the fold so that she brought out only half of it. The black guy snatched it, too.
Then they were gone, pelting back into the alley, melting into the darkness. They hadn’t even asked about the plastic bag she carried. They’d been after cash, not something that required extra trouble. At least she still had the computer. Grace closed her eyes, and fought to keep her knees from buckling under the crushing weight of despair. At least she still had the computer. She didn’t have her husband, or her brother, but at least she still had… the… damn… computer.
The harsh, howling sound startled her. It was a moment before she realized it came from her own throat, another moment before she realized that she was walking again, somehow, somewhere. Rain dripped down at her face, or at least she thought it was rain. She couldn’t feel herself crying, but then she couldn’t feel herself walking, either; she was simply moving. Maybe she was crying, useless as that would be. Rain, tears, what difference did it make?
