Every Step She Takes

by K. L. Armstrong

  A delivery truck turns into the service lane, taking up the whole width of it. The driver motions, as if to say, “Wherever you came from, lady, go back inside.”

  I head the other way. Behind me, the driver taps his horn impatiently. I wave and pick up speed. A door slams, and over the patter of my sneakers, I hear the driver call me some choice names.

  I duck into a passage between buildings. At the slap of boots behind me, I glance back, thinking the driver is coming after me, but he’s heading for a delivery door, still grumbling. I wait there in the shadows as the door creaks open and then smacks shut.

  I turn and—

  Someone walking down the alley stops short, seeing me. I catch only a glimpse of a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a hat and dark clothing.

  The police.

  I wheel and take two running steps, only to see the delivery truck blocking the lane. Blocking me in.

  It’s over. I am caught. Well and truly caught, and even as my stomach plummets, a frisson of relief darts through me.

  Time to turn myself in.

  My gut spasms. Not at the fear of a lifetime in prison. I don’t honestly see that happening. No, the wild panic bubbling inside me comes from photographs that flash before my eyes.

  Me in the hot tub with Colt.

  Me in that motel room doorway.

  And now me, being arrested for Isabella’s murder. Photos of me, disheveled and exhausted. My mug shot plastered across the Internet.

  It doesn’t matter whether the case is dismissed tomorrow. I will already have been found guilty in the court of public opinion.

  I want to say it doesn’t matter. I survived before, and I’ll survive again. Yet even as I think that, my body betrays me, shaking convulsively, screaming to run, just run.

  No.

  I am caught, but I will handle this. I will survive it.

  Brave words, yet even as my body pivots toward the officer, hands rising, I’m half-blinded by sheer, gibbering terror, that voice screaming that I cannot do this again, cannot, cannot, cannot.

  Will.

  I will.

  I’m turning to face him, my hands raised in surrender and—

  A fist slams into my jaw. I stagger, so shocked that my brain only processes what just happened as pain explodes in my jaw. Hands grab me, and I scramble, clawing uselessly, my mind fighting for traction.

  What’s happening?

  What the hell is happening?

  Memory flashes, and in a blink, the alley is night-dark, and I’m walking from my job waitressing outside Syracuse. Someone grabs me and throws me against a wall.

  The alley brightens again, shadowed light and the stink of summer trash. Hands pin me to the wall, and I struggle for that mental footing as the world threatens to dive back into that memory.

  “I-I’m not resisting,” I say finally. “I’m not carrying a weapon. Go ahead and pat me down. My ID is in my wallet. I’m Gen—Lucy Callahan.”

  There’s a pause. Then a low, masculine laugh as lips bend to my ear. “You think I’m a cop, Lucy?”

  I freeze.

  Of course he’s not a cop. He just hit you.

  Which doesn’t mean he absolutely isn’t a police officer.

  He’s not a cop, Lucy. This is the important part. You are pinned to the wall by a man who is not a police officer.

  I can’t think straight. Memories surge, and all my energy goes to holding the dam against them.

  Dark alley. Footsteps behind me. Hands slamming me into the wall.

  This is not that. Focus on this.

  “I-I have money,” I say. “A few hundred in my wallet—”

  “I think the price of freedom is more than a few hundred dollars, Lucy. I think it’s more than you can afford to pay. Do you have any idea how much you’re worth right now? There’s someone who’ll pay very well to—”

  He whispers the rest against my ear, but I don’t catch it. It’s like a nightmare where you’re struggling to hear what someone’s saying because you know it’s critically important, but all you hear is a buzz of words. He’s leaning too close, his words garbled.

  “Wh-what?” I say.

  He pulls back and something presses against my spine. A gun, I think at first. But the moment it presses harder, I know exactly what it is. The cold tip of a knife digging in.

  Dark alley. Footsteps behind me. Hands slamming me to the wall. Then a knife pressed to my throat as I stare into the eyes of my attacker, a woman my own age, her breath thick with booze.

  I-I— I began. You were at one of my tables.

  And I didn’t leave a tip, she said. I decided to save that for later. Do you want it now, Lucy Callahan?

  My throat closes, and I open my mouth, but nothing comes out except a low whimper as my insides convulse.

  Here’s the tip, she said, pressing the knife against my throat. You can’t get away with what you did. You think you did. You think you got off scot-free after trying to ruin Colt’s career, destroy his marriage. You think no one cares. But his fans do. I have been looking for you a very long time, Lucy Callahan. With a message from Colt’s true fans.

  The knife pulls away from my throat, and there is one shuddering moment of relief before I see her arm swing back, the knife slashing—

  I let out a noise. I feel it, burbling up, an animal cry, and then I see the brick wall in front of me and shadowy daylight all around as I’m flung back to the present, and whatever noise I make, it is enough to startle my attacker.

  I shove back from the wall as hard as I can, slamming into him. I don’t know where that comes from. Perhaps ten years of replaying that night outside the bar, thinking of all the things I could have done, pierced by the humiliation of having only screamed for help.

  This time, I act. I fling myself back into him, the old wound in my side seeming to flare white-hot. I hit him hard, and then I run. My brain mercifully clicks on, telling me that if he only has a knife, my best bet is to run.

  What it fails to remind me of, though, is that the delivery truck blocks the laneway. I don’t stop running. I race forward, and then I hit the ground in a dive and roll under the truck.

  I crawl as fast as I can, ignoring the pain shooting up from my skinned palms. Move, just move. Behind me, my attacker’s footfalls thunder down the lane. A thump, as if he’s dropping to his knees to crawl after me. Then a door creaks open.

  “Hey!” a voice calls. “What the hell are you doing with my truck?”

  I send up a prayer of thanks for the delivery man as I scramble out from under the truck. Then I run.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I run as if I’m back in elementary school, convinced this will be the year I’ll take first in the hundred-yard sprint. I never placed higher than fifth, and even that was pure effort and zero skill. I find that old willpower now as I sprint down the lane.

  I turn the corner onto the street…clogged with traffic and pedestrians, and I’m a woman running for her life. Someone shouts. Car tires squeal. No one stops me, though. No one tries.

  I run until I see an alley. I veer into it, duck behind a bin, wobble for a moment and then double over and puke. I keep retching until nothing remains. Then I stand there, one hand braced against the brick.

  At first, I think my free hand is clutching my stomach. Then I look down to see it clamped against the spot where the knife went in ten years ago. My breath comes fast, as if I’m back there, newly stabbed, struggling to breathe, my lung nicked by the knife.

  I’m going to die.

  The thought flashes, and even in the riptide pull of that memory, I know it’s no longer true, but I still feel it. I am in that moment, stabbed in an alley, thinking I’m going to die. Back then, what flashed before my eyes wasn’t a collage of my life. It was regret. A parade of regrets, starting with “Why the hell didn’t I see this
coming?”

  Well, for starters, in a sane world, crazed movie-star fans don’t knife people for kissing their idol.

  I stand there, struggling for breath, hand pressed to that spot, slipping in and out of a world where I feel blood soaking my blouse, a world where I am certain I will die in a dirty alley behind a dive bar.

  I did not die, obviously. A coworker heard my scream and came to my rescue. She called an ambulance, which took me to the emergency ward for surgery. She also called the police, who decided I’d been mugged. Forget what I said. Forget that my colleague—bless her—argued like a woman possessed, insisting she’d heard my attacker ranting about Colt Gordon. Nope, I was just mugged by some junkie, and now, attention whore that I was, I wanted another fifteen minutes of fame. When the police accused me of that, I’d laughed so hard I’d ripped my stitches.

  This was the last straw for Mom, proof that I couldn’t just wait it out and my life would miraculously return to normal. No one wanted Lucy Callahan teaching music to their kids, so I’d been working sustenance jobs that barely paid rent on a crappy apartment. I deserved better, she said. So she withdrew fifty grand from her retirement savings and came up with the European plan.

  I could have argued. I didn’t because all I could see was the carousel of regrets that had danced before my eyes. It was time to move on and move forward.

  So I did. If I’d died in that alley today, I would no longer have seen regrets. My life truly would have flashed before my eyes, all the precious things I’d lose—my mother, Rome, my music, my friends, Marco.

  I’m already losing them. I’m not sure I can recover my music career after this. Some of my friends will drift away. Marco…I have hope there, but he’s only dipped his toe in the roiling cesspool of Internet hate. It will get worse for him. Much worse. And Mom? My mother will never forsake me, but I’m no longer eighteen and living at home. She’s regained her old life. I might never lose her love, but if I must, I will step away from it to protect her.

  I stand at a crossroads here, and I keep going back to that moment where I thought my attacker was a cop, and I had been relieved. Ready to turn myself in.

  What’s the alternative? The realistic and unvarnished alternative? Keep running? Keep hiding?

  What if it’s more dangerous out here than in there?

  I close my eyes, and I remember being thrown against a wall, the man breathing in my ear, threatening to…

  I don’t know what he threatened.

  Didn’t the knife answer that, Lucy?

  He said something about me being valuable. Was there a bounty on me? He’d known who I was. He’d followed me to…

  I pause and roll back the film to that encounter in the alley. I’d surprised him. I still can’t see his face, but when I focus hard, I realize that his “hat” had been a hoodie. A white male in a hoodie. That’s all I saw. He’d been coming down the alley and seemed surprised to see me.

  He’d known me, though. He’d said…

  No, I’d said my name. I’d thought he was a cop, and I said I was Lucy Callahan. That’s when he mentioned the bounty…

  Bounty? I snort under my breath. No, he’d said I was valuable.

  He could have been following me. He could have been in the crowded deli when he saw me sneak out the back and circled around to cut me off. I surprised him, so he had to act fast, throwing me against a wall at knifepoint because he knew exactly who I was, and someone wanted to make sure I was turned over to the police…or never turned over to the police.

  Option two, though? He was just a guy in an alley, not unlike the one from yesterday. I surprised him, and he saw the chance for easy money. Throw me against the wall and spout crazed nonsense about me being valuable.

  Two ends of the spectrum with a million possibilities in between.

  I don’t know what just happened. I only know that, in fleeing once that deli manager called the police, I could have been stabbed in an alley. I also know that I am in no mental shape to deal with life as a fugitive. I’m a mess, cold sweats and nausea and nightmares and now actual flashbacks in broad daylight.

  Turn yourself in, Lucy. Call Thompson, and let him take his shot. Or find another lawyer. It’s the media you truly fear—the implosion of your life—but the longer you run, the more you risk it anyway.

  My phone vibrates, startling me. I thought I felt it earlier, but I’d been a bit busy, running for my life, and tumbling into flashbacks and throwing up in alleys. Speaking of which…

  I gaze down at the vomit pooled by my feet and stride onto the street before checking my phone.

  It’s PCTracy. I exhale in relief. Well, I wanted to turn myself in, preferably with Thompson’s help. Here’s my chance.

  LlamaGirl: I’m here.

  PCTracy: Good. What happened?

  I hesitate. The encounter in the alley still has my stomach roiling, but I don’t see the point in telling him about it. I keep remembering the doubt and mockery of the police after that knife attack ten years ago. If I’m not sure what happened, I should keep it to myself for now.

  LlamaGirl: I got out of there as fast as I could.

  LlamaGirl: But now I’m thinking I shouldn’t have run. I should turn myself in, right?

  When he doesn’t answer, I realize what I’m doing.

  LlamaGirl: Sorry. I’m asking you for advice on a decision I need to make myself. I don’t believe I’ll end up in prison. Well, not for longer than it takes to set a bail hearing if they even go that far. There’s no actual evidence against me, right?

  Again, he doesn’t answer, and I exhale at that. Okay, PCTracy wasn’t disagreeing with his silence. We’ve disconnected. I’ll go to my hotel room and wait—

  PCTracy: Where are you right now?

  LlamaGirl: On a street, catching my breath. I’m not sure where the nearest police station is, but I can look that up. I just need a lawyer.

  Hint, hint…

  PCTracy: Yes, you do. Right now, though, are you someplace safe and private where we can talk?

  LlamaGirl: What’s up?

  PCTracy: You returned to your hotel room yesterday morning, right? After finding Isabella?

  LlamaGirl: Right.

  PCTracy: Did you see any sign of disturbance?

  My heart pounds.

  LlamaGirl: Someone had broken in. I should have mentioned that.

  PCTracy: It’s fine. But you noticed the room had been entered. Did you notice anything else?

  LlamaGirl: I took my clothing, thinking someone might have left evidence on it. Took my toiletries and tech. I don’t think anything else had been—

  Shit. Oh, shit. The memory slams back, the thought that’s been niggling at me since yesterday.

  My towel. The one I used in the shower that morning. I’d just gotten out when Isabella texted, and I’d tossed it on the chair as I hurried to blow-dry my hair and get ready.

  The towel had been on the chair with my dirty clothing when I left to see Isabella.

  It was not on the chair when I returned. I grabbed my clothes, and the towel wasn’t there.

  PCTracy: The police found a bath towel stuffed into the vent.

  PCTracy: It had Isabella’s blood on it.

  LlamaGirl: I didn’t do that.

  PCTracy: Of course not. No one is going to commit a murder, stuff the towel in a hotel vent and leave it behind when they flee. The problem right now is that it’s forensic evidence. The police claim to have more, but I don’t know what that is.

 
LlamaGirl: You’re saying I really could go to prison for this.

  PCTracy: I can’t answer that without knowing the other so-called evidence. The towel isn’t enough. The texts were obviously sent from a linked device. That can be tracked. Someone let the killer into your hotel room. That leaves a trail, and once I can prove someone got access, all evidence found in there becomes inadmissible.

  LlamaGirl: You sound like a lawyer :)

  PCTracy: Just too much time working for them. You do need a lawyer, like you said. As for turning yourself in right now, if that is what you want to do, then I will help with whatever you need.

  LlamaGirl: But you wouldn’t recommend it.

  PCTracy: My honest advice is to stay out until I can find enough proof to make the DA think twice about proceeding with charges. But that’s easy for me to say. I’m not in your shoes.

  LlamaGirl: Just give me data. Pros and cons.

  PCTracy: I don’t think there’s significant danger in you staying free a bit longer. Could it harm your case? No more than it already has, to be blunt. But clearly, we’d argue that you were frightened.

  Frightened. I think of what just happened in that alley. PCTracy says there’s no significant danger in me staying free, but he’s speaking from a legal perspective. He doesn’t know what happened a few minutes ago.

  Except I don’t really know what happened, either. Was I attacked for being Lucy Callahan? Or just the victim of big-city violence?

  PCTracy: If you do turn yourself in, I can keep working on your behalf. There’s also an advantage, though, to me having full-time access to you. And to you assisting in your own investigation, which you seem willing to do.

  LlamaGirl: Absolutely. I’m not looking for a white knight here.

  PCTracy: I know. My advice then is to give me twenty-four hours. If you want to turn yourself in then, I’ll guide you through it.