by Linda Howard
But still she crouched there, hidden from view and partially protected from the rain by the overhang of the building and the bulk of the trash bin. Her hair was plastered to her head, her sodden braid hanging limp and rain-heavy down her back. Her clothes were soaked, and even though the night was still unusually warm by Minneapolis standards, the dampness had leached the heat from her body so that she shivered with cold.
She clutched a garbage bag to her chest; it was a small bag, the type sometimes used to line the trash cans in public buildings. She had liberated it from just such a can in the ladies’ rest room of the public library. The computer and the precious papers were protected inside the case, but when it had started raining she had panicked at the possibility of them getting wet, and all she could think of using to protect them was a plastic bag.
Maybe it hadn’t been smart, going to the library. It was, after all, a public place, and one she frequented. On the other hand, how often did the police search libraries for suspected murderers? It was impossible for Parrish to have gotten a good look at her through that tiny slit in the bedroom curtains, but he certainly guessed she was the one lurking outside the window and had seen everything. He and his men were searching for her, but even though Ford had told them she’d gone to the library she doubted they would think she had gone back to one to hide.
The police might not even have been notified of the murders yet. Parrish couldn’t report them without bringing himself into the picture, which he wouldn’t want to do. The neighbors wouldn’t have heard anything, since the shots had been silenced.
No. The police knew. Parrish wouldn’t take the chance of letting days go by before the bodies—her mind stumbled on the word, but she forced herself to finish the thought—were discovered. Was there any way for forensics to tell if the pistol had been fitted with a silencer? She didn’t think so. All Parrish would have to do would be to call in a “suspicious noise, like gunshots,” at their address, and use a pay phone so nothing would show up on the 911 records.
Both Parrish and his henchmen, and the police, were looking for her. Still, she had gone to the main branch of the library. Instinct had led her there. She was numb with shock and horror, and the library, as familiar to her as her own house, had seemed like a haven. The smell of books, that wonderful mingling of paper and leather and ink, had been the scent of sanctuary. Dazed, at first she had simply wandered among the shelves, looking at the books that had defined the boundaries of her life until a few short hours ago, trying to recapture that sense of safety, of normalcy.
It hadn’t worked. Nothing would ever be normal again.
Finally she had gone into the rest room, and stared in bewilderment at the reflection in the mirror. That white-faced, blank-eyed woman wasn’t her, couldn’t possibly be Grace St. John, who had spent her life in academia and who specialized in deciphering and translating ancient languages. The Grace St. John she was familiar with, the one whose face she had seen countless times in other mirrors, had happy blue eyes and a cheerful expression, the face of a woman who loved and was loved in return. Content. Yes, she had been content. So what if she was just a little too plump, so what if she could have been the poster girl for Bookworms Anonymous? Ford had loved her, and that was what had counted in her life.
Ford was dead.
It couldn’t be. It wasn’t real. Nothing that had happened was real. Maybe if she closed her eyes, when she opened them she would find herself in her own bed, and realize it had only been a ghastly nightmare, or that she was having some sort of mental breakdown. That would be a good trade, she thought as she squeezed her eyes shut. Her sanity for Ford’s life. She’d go for that any day of the week.
She tried it. She squeezed her eyes really tight, concentrated on the idea that it was just a nightmare and that she was about to wake up, and everything would be all right. But when she opened her eyes, everything was the same. She still stared back at herself in the stark fluorescent light, and Ford was still dead. Ford and Bryant. Husband and brother, the only two people on earth whom she loved, and who loved her in return. They were both gone, irrevocably, finally, definitely gone. Nothing would bring them back, and she felt as if the essence of her own being had died with them. She was only a shell, and she wondered why the framework of bone and skin that she saw in the mirror didn’t collapse from its own emptiness.
Then, looking into her own eyes, she’d known why she didn’t collapse. She wasn’t empty, as she’d thought. There was something inside after all, something wild and bottomless, a feral tangle of terror and rage and hate. She had to fight Parrish, somehow. If either he or the police caught her, then he would have won, and she couldn’t bear that.
He wanted the papers. She had only begun to translate them; she didn’t know what they contained, or what Parrish thought they contained. She didn’t know what was so important about them that he had killed Ford and Bryant, and intended to kill her, merely because they knew these particular papers existed. Maybe Parrish thought she had deciphered more than she actually had. He didn’t just want physical possession of the papers, he wanted to erase all knowledge of their existence, and their content. What was in them that her husband and brother had died because of them?
That was why she had to protect the laptop. Her computer held all her notes, her journal entries, her language programs that aided her in her work. Give her access to a modem, and she could connect to any resource on-line that she needed in her work, and she could continue her translations. She would find out why. Why.
To have any chance of successfully hiding, she had to have cash. Good, untraceable cash.
She had to make herself walk to that ATM. And when she’d emptied it—assuming there was any cash left in it, given the hour—she would have to find another one.
Her fingers were numb, and bloodless. The temperature had remained in the sixties, but she had been wet for hours.
She didn’t know where she found the surge of energy that carried her to her feet. Perhaps it wasn’t energy at all, but desperation. But suddenly she was standing, even though her knees were so stiff and weak she had to lean against the wet wall for support. She pushed away from the wall, and momentum propelled her several unsteady steps before panic and fatigue dragged at her again, slowing her to a standstill. She clutched the garbage bag to her chest, feeling the reassuring weight of the laptop within the plastic. Rain dripped down her face, and a massive black weight pressed on her chest. Ford. Bryant.
Damn everything.
Somehow her feet were moving again, clumsily shuffling, but moving. That was all she required, that they move.
Her purse swung awkwardly from her shoulder, banging against her hip. Her steps slowed, stopped. Stupid! It was a miracle she hadn’t already been mugged, wandering back alleys at this time of night with her purse plainly in sight.
She edged back into the shadows, her heart thumping from a surge of panic. For a moment she stood paralyzed, afraid to move as her gaze darted around the dark alley, searching for any of the night predators who prowled the city. The narrow alley remained silent, and her breath sighed out of her. She was alone. Perhaps the rain had worked in her favor, and the homeless, the druggies, the hoodlums, had decided to take shelter somewhere.
She laughed in the darkness, the sound small and humorless. She had grown up in Minneapolis, and she had no real idea which sections of the city she should avoid. She knew her neighborhood, her routes to the university, the libraries, the post office and grocery, doctor and dentist. In the course of her work, and Ford’s, she had traveled to six continents and God knows how many countries; she had thought herself well traveled, but suddenly she realized how little she knew of her own city because she had been encapsulated in her own little safe, familiar world.
To survive, she would have to be a lot smarter, a lot more aware. Street smarts meant a lot more than locking your car doors as soon as you were inside. She would have to be ready for anything, an attack from any quarter, and she would have to be read
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.
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?