Mother Mary, she wanted to be someplace safe more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
They’d been on the run all night, first to elude the police chase that had resulted when they’d bolted away from that cop, then dodging through the streets and alleys as they’d tried to get out of College Park altogether. With sixty-two dollars and forty-nine cents left between them, there hadn’t been many places they could have gone. Finally they’d chanced the metro, feeling like they’d wanted to jump out of their skins until they’d been were safely on the train. They’d ridden aimlessly for a while until Jaden had had the bright idea of going to see if one of her past stepdads would take them in. Lucy hadn’t thought it had been the best idea ever, because the ex-stepdad might turn them in, or somebody might come looking for them there, but she hadn’t had anything better to offer and, anyway, she’d been too tired to argue. So they had gotten off at Farragut North, and now they were walking along M Street to the ex-stepdad’s apartment a couple of blocks over. Not that Jaden had talked to him in like five years, but she said it didn’t matter: he would take them in if he was there.
Lucy thought that was a pretty big “if,” but she didn’t say so. Her alternative plan was to crash in one of the tunnels that ran beneath the city, where colonies of the homeless camped. Their long-term plan was still California Dreamin’, but it required both ID’s and cash, neither of which they had. After a sleepless night, they were both so exhausted that they were almost punch-drunk, plus hungry, and dirty, and a hundred other bad things as well. Jaden kept getting dizzy, which made her stagger like she was drunk. Lucy was worried about her, but she was worried about herself, too.
At least the furnace room in the basement of the apartment building across the street from the Quik-Stop in College Park, where’d they’d holed up for most of the last week, had been a place to crash.
Now finding a place to hide was urgent. No telling how many of those flyers were out there, or where they were. Anybody could have seen them. Anybody—just some random person they passed by—could recognize them and call the cops.
Maybe they should go to the cops. They’d be in a world of trouble and probably be separated and locked up until they were twenty-one at least, but at least they’d be alive. If Miss Howard’s killer caught up with them, they’d be dead.
Maybe he wasn’t even still looking for them. Maybe he’d just run away, putting as many miles between himself and the murder scene as possible. Maybe …
A familiar neon sign caught her eye.
“Look.” It was a Quik-Stop, on the corner across the street. Lucy’s stomach growled at the sight of it. She supposed it was conditioned now, like Pavlov’s dog.
Jaden’s mouth drooped at the corners. “I can’t eat anything.”
“Well, I can.”
Jaden’s step was slow as Lucy pulled her across the crosswalk. Lucy left Jaden outside, leaning wearily against the redbrick wall as she went in to claim their daily coffee-and-doughnut ration. The one she picked out was chocolate-covered, with cream filling, because she figured it had the most calories. Just looking at it made her mouth water. The smell was so good that she could practically taste it. Saliva pooled in her mouth. Not even realizing that she was licking her lips every time she looked at it, she set it down carefully on one of the little squares of waxed paper the store provided as she filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee. She loaded the coffee with sugar and creamer.
When she came back out of the store, carefully carrying her prizes, Jaden was gone.
It was just after 7:00 a.m. when Jess emerged from her bedroom. She had showered, being careful not to get her injured foot wet so as not to disturb the bandage Mark had rigged up. She’d also taken another dose of Advil, put in her contacts, and dressed in a charcoal gray pantsuit with a black tee. She wasn’t in the best of moods, which, given the events of the previous night, wasn’t really a surprise. Her feeling of general grumpiness, however, was something she was determined to hide, because it might have made it seem as if her bad mood had somehow been related to Mark. Which it wasn’t, because he had no power to influence her moods, because the two of them were over, last night’s unfortunate aberration notwithstanding. Just like they had been over before.
Only this time she meant to make it stick.
No further drama required. She walked—well, limped—toward her kitchen as if last night had never happened. When his blue eyes flicked in her direction, she did not scowl at Mark, who was sitting on her couch fully dressed except for his jacket, with his cell phone in his hand as he apparently checked his e-mail. She merely glanced at him with untroubled serenity and went into the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee, which she would have thanked him for making except she knew him: he needed his coffee in the morning, too. So it was not like he had made it especially for her. It was simply Mark taking care of Mark, which was how she wanted it to be.
As if to underline that, today he hadn’t done anything about breakfast. But he had cleaned up the glass and spilled milk from the night before, so she owed him a thank-you for that, which she would deliver, with dignity, later. As she poured herself a cup of coffee, visions of what the mess had led to assaulted her, and her body tightened and tingled in reflexive response. Determinedly she fought the unwelcome memories off.
Spotting the cell phones she’d left on the counter provided a welcome distraction. Coffee in hand, she picked the hot pink one up, flipped it open, and pushed the Play Message button.
Then she listened, one by one, to seven messages. The first thing she learned was that the phone was Lucy’s, and most of the messages were from a kennel where she had apparently worked just before she had found herself at Shelter House. Four in a row, they were all demands to know where she was and when she would be in to work. The fifth message was from the manager, firing her. The sixth message was from a girl named Amanda. Amanda wanted to know if Lucy wanted to hang out.
It was the seventh message that made Jess catch her breath.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Allison. I’m getting married! Can you believe it? His name is Greg and we’re eloping to Las Vegas tonight. I’ll call you in a couple of days with the details, okay? Talk to you later. Bye.”
Jess stared at the phone in surprise. The message was only a little over three weeks old. The name that came up on the caller ID was Allison Howard.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Mark.”
Mark was on his feet when Jess hurried out of the kitchen, her eyes bright with excitement, a cell phone in each hand. After one comprehensive glance that took in her entire, unharmed person, he turned expressionless. Instead of answering, he merely lifted his eyebrows at her. Okay, clearly he was still feeling a little hostile toward her. At the moment she had more important matters on her mind.
“Allison Howard called Lucy.” She waved the pink phone. “Listen to this.”
She played the message for him.
He looked unimpressed. “Sounds to me like she called a wrong number. Or did you miss that whole ‘Hi, Mom’ thing?”
Jess blinked at him, taken aback. She hadn’t thought of that.
“A wrong number? Yes, I guess it could be. But what are the chances of that? That Allison Howard would call a wrong number, and that number would happen to belong to runaway teenager Lucy Peel’s cell phone.”
“I’ve got no idea. But that’s the simplest explanation, and usually the simplest explanation is the right one.” He picked his jacket up from the back of the couch. Today’s suit was navy pinstripe, the shirt white and the tie red. With his jaw set and his mouth grim, he looked every inch the on-duty fed. Of course, the shoulder holster helped, too.
“It just seems so unlikely …”
“Unless your missing teenager is doing a Benjamin Button number and aging backward, a wrong number is what it has to be, because it’s not possible that she’s your vanishing woman’s mom.” He shrugged into his jacket.
“You’re being deliberately dismissive of this, aren’t yo
u?”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because you’re still mad at me about the whole no-relationship thing.”
“Believe me, the idea of you and me in a relationship leaves me cold. I’ve already moved on.”
“So why won’t you admit that this is important?”
“Important how? Face it, Jess, your imagination’s running wild again.” Her purse and laptop case were on the floor beside the coffee table, where she had dropped them the previous night. He picked those up, too, and handed them to her. “You ready to go?”
Even as she accepted the items, Jess divined his meaning and looked at him indignantly. “What do you mean, my imagination’s running wild again? Are you by any ill-advised chance alluding to my seeing Allison Howard in my office yesterday morning?”
“Seeing her vanish, you mean?” He was shepherding her out the door as he spoke. “Baby, that’s only the latest, greatest example.”
Heading down the stairs, Jess bristled. “Maybe if you had a little more imagination, you’d see that the kind of coincidence that has Allison Howard mistakenly calling Lucy Peel’s cell phone is what’s not possible.”
“If you can come up with an explanation besides a wrong number for your vanishing woman calling a teenage girl ‘Mom,’ I’m all ears.”
Jess pushed out of the door and headed across the stoop and down the sidewalk, thinking furiously all the while. Lightning flashed overhead, and she glanced up to find that the sky was ominously dark and low. The smell of rain was in the air, which was hot and sticky even so early in the morning. The Suburban was parked conveniently close, thank God.
“Can’t think of one, can you?” He beeped the doors open.
“I’m working on it.” She was all the way in the Suburban and the door had slammed shut behind her before it occurred to her that he’d walked around to open it for her. The unsettling ramifications of that had her narrowing her eyes at him as he got in beside her. “And what part of ‘we’re not a couple any more’ did you miss?”
Starting the car and pulling away from the curb, he looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “What the hell are you talking about now?”
“You opened the door for me.”
A quick flash of consciousness crossed his face. He knew what she meant, she could tell.
“Well, gosh, golly gee, let me apologize for that. But before you let your imagination run totally away with you again, I want to point out that I came around to your side of the car and opened the door just to make sure there wasn’t anybody hiding over there out of my sight waiting to try to kill you.”
“You didn’t open the door for me yesterday.”
“Probably because we were in a crowded section of the city where there would be all kinds of witnesses to notice somebody crouching on the far side of the car with a weapon waiting to kill you.”
Silence reigned as Jess digested that.
“Oh,” she said.
“Try to get your mind around the fact that I’m just doing my job here.” His profile could have been carved out of granite. His hands gripped the wheel with a little more tension than usual. Looking at those bronzed, long-fingered hands, Jess had a flashback to the way they had touched her last night. Her body quickened, her breath caught, and heat flooded her veins. Glancing instantly away, Jess gave herself a mental kick. Over and done with, remember? Big fat drops of rain plopped down on the windshield, creating a welcome distraction. A moment later, the world beyond the windshield blurred as rain began to fall in earnest. Mark turned the lights on, the windshield wipers on. The wipers’ gentle swish, coupled with the darkness and the roar of the rain, made the inside of the Suburban feel like a world unto itself.
A world in which she and Mark were trapped together forever with no possibility of escape.
“I’m getting tired of this,” she burst out. “I need this to be over. I want my life back.”
“Believe me, you and me both.”
They exchanged not another word the rest of the way in to Ellis Hayes.
The good news was, there was no sign of Allison Howard or anyone else when Jess walked into her office. Flipping on the light, crossing to open the blinds, looking around a second time just to make sure she was alone—she absolutely was—Jess felt tension leaving her muscles. Tension she hadn’t even realized had been there until all of a sudden it wasn’t anymore.
Maybe Mark was right. Maybe I did see Allison’s picture somewhere around here.
Whatever, she didn’t see Allison today, and that was what mattered.
Jess began her morning with a quick check of her own phone messages—no Tiffany—and a perusal of Lucy’s and Jaden’s call histories to see if there was anything that jumped out at her as to where the girls might have gone. Nothing did. Likewise, their text messages yielded nothing. She called Tiffany, got her voice mail, left another message. Then it was off to the morning meeting—a regular feature of office life when they weren’t working flat-out in imminent preparation for a trial, Jess learned. At present the team was in various stages of preparation for a staggering number of cases, most of which wouldn’t come to trial either because some circumstance, such as Yamaguchi’s fingering of someone other than their client, prevented it, or because of a plea bargain. Mark put in a brief appearance at the meeting, during which the status and strategy of the Whitney case was discussed, then left again. While he was there, he sat several seats away from Jess and paid her no particular attention. Which, to her own annoyance, Jess found annoying. Especially when Hayley kept eyeing him like he was sex on a stick.
Once back in her office, even in the midst of diving into Allison’s files, Jess found herself eyeing Lucy’s phone again. Allison’s cell phone number was right there in front of her. If she had questions about why Allison had called Lucy, why not go straight to Allison and ask?
She called Allison. The call went straight through to voice mail. Jess left a message explaining who she was, informing Allison that Lucy Peel had run away from Shelter House and they were trying to find her, and asking that Allison call back. Then she sent Allison a text, just in case the memory was full or something, just to be sure her message was getting through.
With no answer forthcoming from that quarter, she placed a quick call to Paloma and told her about the message from Allison on Lucy’s cell phone.
“All I can think of is that it must have been a wrong number,” Paloma told her, unconsciously echoing Mark. “Maybe Allison’s mother’s phone number is similar to Lucy’s. Or maybe Allison just pressed the wrong automatic dial button on her phone.”
“Why would Lucy’s number even be in Allison’s phone?”
“The girls were allowed to take their phones with them on field trips. That way, if someone got separated, it was easy to contact them. Allison had just gone with a group to tour the Capitol. Lucy and Jaden were part of the group, so Allison probably entered their phone numbers in her phone then.”
“That’s possible.” Even likely, Jess considered. After all, what other explanation could there have been? None that immediately jumped out at her, certainly.
“Have you found anything on their phones that might help us find them?” Paloma asked.
“Not yet,” Jess said. “But I’m not very far into it. I’ll let you know. And I’ll let you know about the lawsuit.”
Paloma thanked her, which ended the call.
While the matter was still uppermost in her mind, Jess quickly filed a motion to dismiss Jax Johnson’s lawsuit as frivolous, e-mailing it to the appropriate court.
All the while Jess was working, Allison’s calendar, with the big red star marking the award luncheon she had missed, was right there on the corner of her desk.
Jess didn’t know Allison. But Jess did know that if she had had an engagement that was important enough to mark with a big red star, she wouldn’t have forgotten about it. Granted, some things in this world were more important than others, and a honeymoon just might have been enough to
make someone cancel a luncheon being given in her honor, but not without letting someone know. Not without giving someone a call.
Looking at Allison’s caseload, being impressed with the caliber of Allison’s work as she went through the files, Jess learned that Allison had taken her job seriously. She’d been meticulous, detail-oriented, the opposite of sloppy. The type to cross every legal t and dot every legal i.
Forgetting about the awards luncheon seemed out of character. So did just blowing it off.
Pearse stuck his head in Jess’s door to tell her that he’d just received a phone call from the DA’s office to let him know that Camilla Shively had been indicted for Murder One, and that she would be arrested forthwith. He had made arrangements for her to turn herself in, and he wanted Jess to go with him to collect their client and escort her to the jail, where she would be booked in and then, as soon as bail could be arranged, immediately bailed out.
That made for a particularly eventful morning, especially since Mrs. Shively wept all over Pearse until she was led away for booking. Any lesser lawyer than Pearse wouldn’t have been able to manage it, but he arranged to have her bail set and then posted immediately. So Mrs. Shively, weeping still, was back in her fabulous Kalorama mansion before lunchtime. Fortunately, the still-pouring rain seemed to have discouraged the media from coming out. Only a single TV station and a few print reporters were there to witness the event.
“Whew.” Pearse looked at Jess as they rode back to the office in the chauffeur-driven limousine in which they’d picked up Mrs. Shively. “We’ve got our work cut out for us on this one. If we end up going to trial, remind me to tell Christine to pack the jury with doddering old men.”
“Do you think it will go to trial?” Jess asked. The limousine was big and luxurious, the seats absurdly plush, and the uniformed driver the touch that put the whole thing right over the top. I could get used to this. And then Jess realized, with a little electric thrill, that if she did her job well with Ellis Hayes, and rose through the ranks, she would get used to this. The limos, the mansions, the wealthy clients—all the perks of being a high-priced, successful trial lawyer—would become part of her life.
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