AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You sons of bitches,” she muttered, marching up to the car and peering into it. No one was inside, and she saw nothing buta crumpled-up McDonald’s bag on the floor of the passenger’s side. Still, she was scared and mad and apparently not paranoid enough after all. They’d been watching her all week, maybe longer. She should have trusted her instincts, trusted every time the hair on the back of her neck had gone up since leaving Ohio. Since leaving DC, even. Probably since leaving Minsk.
She looked around but saw no one. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out the Swiss army knife her dad had given her on her thirteenth birthday, flicked open the blade and jammed it into the back tire. Listened with satisfaction as the air hissed out. Dropped the knife back into her bag and pulled out a tube of pink lipstick and wrote STOP in large, bright letters across the back window.
She turned back to the house, threw the lipstick into the trash bin by the side of Helen’s house, and locked herself in the garage for the night.
* * *
Annie climbed the stairs of the quiet house carrying a little bag of toiletries, a newly purchased towel, and clean clothes. Just like college all over again, walking down the hall to the showers.
Ashley’s room was painted pale lavender, Kevin’s bright blue. She didn’t see a room for the baby, but when she found the main bedroom, there was a crib squeezed against the wall between the bed and dresser. A pile of laundry lay on the floor, diapers were stacked on the dresser, and a white laundry basket held tiny onesies, little socks, and crumpled-up pants.
How did Helen do it? Where did the baby go during the day when Helen was working? And if she was only teaching two classes part-time, what else did she do?
Helen’s shower was small but clean and still damp. Annie stood under the hot water spray, enjoying the warmth while popping open bottles of unfamiliar products and sniffing them.The shampoo was what Helen smelled like the most. Her curiosity satisfied, she washed her hair and let the conditioner set while she shaved. The shower was small, requiring some contortion, but she was small too, so it wasn’t difficult. It was a good thing about being fair-haired too; when she missed shaving a spot, no one noticed.
She borrowed Helen’s blow-dryer, then put on a pair of clean underwear and her bathrobe before returning to her garage room.
She left the house early to give herself plenty of time to find parking. When she got to the end of the street, the Pontiac was gone.
Part of why she’d gone back to Toledo as quickly as she did was because she didn’t expect her ex-boss’s threats to extend past the Beltway. Frank Clifton was a respected agent of nearly thirty years, and while he was king of his division, he wasn’t the head of the whole organization. If he followed through on what he was threatening, his career would be in jeopardy, and Annie wasn’t worth all of that, no matter how much Frank had invested in her or what he felt he was owed for his efforts.
So to see now that his reach might be bicoastal sent a shiver up her spine. She hoped he was just rattling her cage, hoping to spook her back into his clutches.
She shook off her concerns and spent the drive thinking about Helen’s bedroom. She had a nice bed, a simple, sturdy frame that matched the wooden dresser. The towels in the bathroom were taupe, as were the mats on the floor. She had no pictures, though. Annie’s own parents’ bedroom was crowded with pictures—of her and her brother, of their granddaughter, not to mention their own wedding portrait hanging on the wall over the bed.
Finding parking on campus took some time. She ended up in the student parking garage. Luckily, she had a parking permit,though it cost her a small fortune; she wouldn’t have needed the most expensive one if she’d been living in student housing, though it was a small consolation that they had at least they had reimbursed her for that quarter’s payment.
She had two classes today, the same two again on Wednesday, and the third on Tuesdays. Which gave her a four-day weekend every week that she hoped to fill with a job. But with dealing with finding housing and trying to figure out if she was being watched, she worried there’d be no jobs left by the time she got to the work study office.
She’d go between classes today.
In class, she sat at a desk against the back wall. In a briefing or a meeting, she would have sat closer to the front. Today’s subject matter was interesting, but her attention wandered.
Everyone in class seemed already familiar with one another. While she’d been hopping around looking for a place to live, they’d been attending orientation and get-to-know-you mixers. Annie felt like a stranger—old too. Everyone in class appeared to be in their early twenties, and she was at the far end of that. There was one older man in a brown V-neck sweater and corduroy pants who did seem even older than Annie, though. This had to be a real career change for him. He might even have a wife and family at home. She took some comfort in that.
When class was over, she gathered up her things. It was almost three hours before her next class started, and she wasn’t really excited about searching for a nonexistent job, so she didn’t rush out. As she slung her backpack over her shoulder, the man, who had been hovering behind her, spoke.
“Hi. I’m Chris.”
“Uh, hi. Annie,” she said, glancing around at the room’s departing students. Most of them carried totes or messenger bags. She seemed to be the only one with a backpack. It made her look young, but she didn’t really care.
“I didn’t see you at the mixer on Friday,” he said.
“You must be some kind of detective.” She wasn’t sure why her immediate reaction was sarcasm, except that she was wary of strangers now. “I mean, I wasn’t there.”
“It wasn’t that fun,” he said. “Where are you headed?”
“Oh, Work Study Office,” she said. “Actually, I should go.”
She glanced up front just as the door shut behind the professor. They were alone in the classroom.
Chris’ warm smile dropped, and he stood expansively between her and the aisle. Getting around him would be a real challenge if he didn’t step aside.
The door opened.
Annie’s heart sank.
Before being assigned to his division, Frank Clifton had been one of her trainers. He wasn’t someone she would have chosen as a mentor, but he’d taken a shine to her early in training, so she wasn’t surprised when she ended up under his supervision. He taught her to be ruthless, and that was a valuable skill, one she’d used many times both professionally and personally, but it made her wary of him as a boss, and it made her even more nervous to see him out of context in her classroom on the first day of what was supposed to be her new life.
