by Sylvie Kurtz
Rafe’s tail jumped in two cars down. This wasn’t happening. They weren’t sardined in a train with an assassin only a few feet away. In spite of the heat, Abbie shivered.
The train started with a jerk. The steel wheels click-clacked along the rails in time to her fast-beating heart. The car rolled from side to side, brushing Gray’s hip against hers like a match head against a striker with each roll. The smell of sweat and clashing perfumes of the tightly packed crowd clouded the air, nauseating her.
She couldn’t move without bumping into someone’s arm or leg or briefcase. Trapped. They were trapped. A bubble of panic rose and ballooned in her chest.
Escape. Flee. How?
Gray’s hand squeezed her. “We’re okay.”
Abbie nodded and forced herself to breathe in the fetid air. They weren’t caught in an ambush. Rafe’s tail couldn’t get to them. Nobody was going to die.
No time for complacency. Be prepared. Don’t just sit there like a rat in a trap. Look for a break. Taking a cue from Gray, she scanned her surroundings.
Her heart sank when she spotted the brown hair combed back into a severe braid at the back of the head. Pushing through with sharp elbows, she was making her way toward them. Determination shone in her eyes. Abbie’s heart couldn’t help its jungle beat of fear.
Gray’s thumb stroked the back of her hand, reminding her she still had a lot to live for. He, too, had noted the woman’s movement and he urged Abbie forward through the gauntlet of bodies and into the car ahead. “When the train stops, push your way out and head right back in at the next car.”
“I’m not going alone.” She wasn’t going to allow him to face this assassin by himself to save her. Not after what she’d done to Brynna, the three deputies and the young police officer.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
The train screeched to a stop. The doors whooshed open. Gripping his hand even tighter, she didn’t give him a chance to go solo. Passengers crammed the doorway, then disgorged like a herd at market, fanning out toward exits. She and Gray were swept along with the human cattle. Scrunching himself down to meld, Gray kept them in the thick of the crowd and sidestepped them into the next car. Abbie grabbed the overhead rail and swiveled forward to search the crowd.
“That woman’s a tick.” She followed their every move as if she were glued to them, forcing them to keep scrabbling against the tide of people.
Rafe had warned her.
You won’t ever be free from me, Abrielle. I won’t ever let you go. I’ll be in your dreams and in your nightmares. I’ll follow you wherever you go.
This woman was proving him right.
At the next stop Gray urged Abbie out.
“Stairs,” he said and shot toward them as if he planned on leaving the station.
Parallel to the last car, he yanked her close and said, “Jump!”
They hopped into the train just as the doors were closing.
“Did we lose them?” Abbie asked, breathing hard, anxiety banging around her chest.
“Looks like it.” But Gray’s gaze kept scouring the crowd as if he, too, feared that their pursuer would reappear inside the subway train, right next to them.
On the platform the woman, staring at them with a steely expression of wrath, spewed silent curses as the train sped away. Then she noticed the dark and dangerous-looking man striding toward her. Their second tail—the Seeker Gray had mentioned?
The subway train entered a dark tunnel, snuffing out the image of both tails running. Would they catch up with them?
There was no place to hide. The knowing lodged in Abbie’s throat and threatened to choke her.
As she and Gray sprinted across the T lines from red to green to blue, then yellow, she held on to only one thought. Stay alive. For the next minute. For the next hour. For the next day. She couldn’t let Rafe win. Stay alive.
At the North Station they bought a commuter train ticket.
“Were are we going now?” Abbie asked as they climbed into the northbound train.
“To the end of the line.”
With a terrible jarring the train lurched forward. Away from Rafe’s assassin. Away from the Seeker sent to bring them in.
A thought pried into her conscience. She tried to shake it loose. But once it sank its claws into her brain, she couldn’t flick it away.
Her hands curled around the edge of the seat to stop them from shaking, and she pivoted her head to look at Gray. His features were sharp, unreadable, on alert. The outside landscape strobed by on the mirrored lenses of his glasses.
He’d evaded one of his own Seekers teammates.
Helping her had cost him everything.
For him, turning back was no longer an option.
Chapter Ten
The motel room they found in Lowell was situated in the kind of neighborhood where no self-respecting woman went, especially after dark. Beyond the stack of derelict row houses, storefronts and rusty chain-link fencing ran a railroad yard with its jumble of tracks and cars. Farther out snaked the sooty waters of the Merrimack River. The air stank of fuel and neglect. The graying sky added to the dreary atmosphere.
The stairs creaked as they climbed to the second story. Gray did his guard-dog circuit around the room—not that anyone would want to hide in a place like this. It smelled of cigarettes and sex and the cloying spray of canned disinfectant. Abbie sat gingerly at the foot of the bed, reached for the remote and pointed it at the television set bolted to a metal frame in the wall. No response. Great. She shed the new white espadrilles that had already blistered the back of one heel, hiked a foot to her opposite knee and massaged her aching arch.
On the way from the train station they’d stopped at a discount store. Within its aisles they’d found everything they needed to pass unnoticed in this blue-collar neighborhood—from sandwich fixings for dinner to jeans and T-shirts.
Gray had asked her to change clothes in a dingy gas-station bathroom. He’d thrown her silk blouse and her rayon pants in a Dumpster. Okay, she could understand the need to blend. Clothes were easily replaced. Then he’d asked for the rest of her things—her gold-and-silver watch, the gold feather earrings she’d worn since Deputy Marshal Kushner had died, even her leather bag. They had sentimental value, but she could replace them all.
She’d balked when he’d asked her for her mother’s wedding ring. Heat had fired in the pit of her stomach, crackling with destructive urgency.
Abbie rubbed at the naked finger on her right hand and fought back tears. The sparkling-diamond-and-smoky-topaz creation her father had commissioned especially for her mother now lay under a patch of earth near the railroad fence. She just couldn’t bring herself to throw it into a Dumpster. How could Gray make her give up the one thing that kept her mother close to her? She didn’t have to wear it. She could have hidden it on the chain that bore the flash drive. When all this was done, she’d dig the ring back up. Rafe would not succeed in destroying all of her past.
Then Gray had done the unforgivable. He’d asked for the camera Bert had loaned her. The fire inside her flashed to five-alarm proportion.
“It can’t be bugged. It’s not mine. It’s Sister Bertrice’s. Rafe’s robot didn’t find us until after Bert loaned it to me.” Her body had bunched tight, a need for violence making her muscles ache.
“We can’t take a chance.”
Just knowing the camera was there in her bag had given her a sense that she still existed. Now, with its film ruined and its body lying amid fast-food restaurant refuse, the fire had died and a lethargy had weighed her limbs.
“You okay?” Gray barely turned his head as he pawed through the black duffel he’d bought to stow the socks, underwear and change of clothes, but his mirrored gaze went through her like an X-ray.
“I’m fine.” Having given up on coaxing the dead television to life, she stared at its blank screen to avoid looking at Gray.
“Something was giving our position away,” Gray said, his voice flat and
even, as if he were afraid to set her off once more. “It had to be something you had on you. We had to get rid of everything.”
“I know.”
“Abbie.”
“What?” Irritation whooshed out as she flung herself back onto the bed’s pseudo-Navajo blanket pattern. The store-stiff jeans and T-shirt chafed at her skin. How exactly had she gotten herself into this mess? There was an end, wasn’t there? A little more than five days to the trial. She could survive that long. For Dad.
“That was phase one,” Gray said, his voice so gentle, it set fear scurrying through her as if she were racing just ahead of a hurricane.
She slowly turned her head toward him. She blinked once, a Novocain-like numbness settling into her body. “Phase one?”
Out of the duffel bag he lifted two boxes of hair dye and a pair of barber scissors. “A couple of shades lighter for you. A couple of shades darker for me. We have to look as different from us as we can. We have to blend.”
Why was it so cold in the room? She jerked up and cranked off the growling air conditioner. “We’ll just stay here until the trial. If we don’t go out, no one will know where we are.”
“We can’t take a chance we won’t have to move again.”
Numb. She was numb. From her face to her feet she couldn’t feel a thing. “You made me get rid of anything Rafe could have possibly tagged with a tracking device. There’s nothing left. He can’t find us. Although frankly I have no idea how he could have rigged a ring.”
“Technology’s smaller now. All it takes is a microdot.”
She rubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes. “I didn’t even see a speck of dirt on any of the things you made me toss.”
“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around her tucked-up legs. What could she say? How did you fight against the invisible? “I have no choice, do I? I have to keep fighting him.” Or die.
“There’s always a choice. You could turn yourself in at the U.S. Marshals office in Boston.”
She shook her head. “No, we don’t know how Phil’s connected to Rafe.”
“There are other agencies.”
Other agencies with staff that could die if she sought their help. “No, you’re right. There’s no other way.”
Gray was giving her options, letting her take charge. He’d always believed in her, made her believe she could do anything. Photography as a career? Why not, Abbie? Look at the life you give even inanimate objects. She’d already decided she wanted to live. Now she had to follow words with action.
She pried the box of dye out of his hand and frowned at the back, not really seeing anything but a fuzz of print. “You go first.”
“Yours will take longer.”
“Right.”
“Have you done this before?”
She shook her head. “Not since Brynna and I dyed our hair blue for the homecoming pep rally freshman year. And that was wash-out stuff, not permanent.”
“The only way to lighten is to go permanent.”
“Here goes nothing.” Desperately trying to avoid the penetrating scrutiny of his gaze, she ripped open the box. He was risking so much for her, she had to put on a brave front. She dumped the contents on the dresser and read the instructions twice. Gray disappeared into the bathroom and came out with one of the thin towels provided.
“Ready?” He donned the set of rubber gloves included in the kit.
Her throat too thick to talk, she simply nodded. As he shook the bottle of chemicals, her heart rate kicked up.
The first cold squirt of gunk hit her scalp. She scrunched her eyes closed and held her breath. Gray’s strong fingers worked the dye from the roots to the tips, and the gentle massage soothed her in spite of her fears. Reaching for his hand to feel safe was getting to be a bad habit.
“It’s a shame to hide such glorious hair.” Wistfulness wafted on his voice.
I love the way your hair is streaked with sunshine, Abbie. She could still picture a seventeen-year-old Gray blushing red after his admission on a warm July afternoon at the quarry. He’d kicked into the water to hide his embarrassment, but the warm feeling of his artless candor had stayed with her for a long time.
A lump formed in her throat. “If my hair turns orange, you’re paying to get it fixed.”
“It won’t turn orange. I bought a reputable brand.”
He worked a comb through her hair to spread the gunk and smooth out the clumps, then he put the plastic bag included in the kit over her hair and secured it with a clip. The heat and stink of the chemicals reacting had sweat running down her back—or maybe it was plain old fear.
“Want a sandwich?” Gray asked after he shed the gloves and set the timer on his watch.
She shook her head. “I’m not hungry right now.”
He pulled two decks of cards from the duffel and offered her a crooked grin. “If I remember correctly, you owe me a Spite and Malice rematch.”
Why not? It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do. And he was trying hard to make this ordeal as easy on her as possible. If she concentrated, she could pretend she was sitting in the Reeds’ kitchen, munching on cookies and laughing as she beat the pants off Gray. Maybe then she could pretend that every deck wasn’t stacked against her and Rafe didn’t exist. “Are you sure your ego can take another whipping?”
He shuffled the four jokers into the stockpile and placed the pile facedown off to one side of the bed they were using as a table. “Cast iron, honey. Can’t be dinged.”
“We’ll see if you’re still singing the same song in half an hour.” She accepted her twenty-six cards and turned the top one faceup.
Nerves had her stomach churning and her heart bumping. The chemicals and her inability to eat made her light-headed. She hunched her shoulders and tried to concentrate on her cards, instead of Gray’s strong fingers as he played his turn. He’d always had nice hands. She hunched her shoulders further to hide the heat creeping up her cheeks because her crazy brain had just flashed her a picture of Gray’s hands on her bare skin. Crazy, this whole mess had made her totally insane. The last thing they both needed was to make this situation even more complicated.
For the next twenty minutes she misplayed, miscalculated and misread the cards. The sexy stubble of Gray’s jaw distracted her. His playful teasing when he managed to better her hand distracted her. His nearness on the bed, with the inevitable bump of knees and fingers, distracted her. And when Gray’s watch beeped, she realized that Gray being Gray had kept the fog that usually clouded her brain when she was afraid from shutting off her mind.
Jitters returning with a vengeance, she slid off the bed and patted the plastic cap on her head. “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair.”
If only it were that easy.
Gray cocked a finger at her. “South Pacific.”
“Yeah,” she said, surprised he would know.
In the narrow shower stall, bumping elbows against the turquoise fiberglass, she shampooed until the water ran clear. The sound of water gurgling down the drain swirled away her tears—and a little bit more of her essence.
Steam fogged the mirror, but Abbie refused to wipe it away. She didn’t want to see the results. She dried herself in a hurry and put on the itchy clothes.
“Your turn.” Putting on a brave face, Abbie reached for the second box of dye.
Gray twirled the lone hard-backed chair to face her and patted the seat. He armed himself with the barber scissors and a comb. “Not yet.”
A ripple of dread arrowed down to her stomach. “No, please, Gray. I can’t lose any more of myself.”
“Just enough to change the look of your style.” He tipped his head and sadness misted his smile. “Remember, you get a chance at payback when it’s my turn.”
Defeated, she let herself fall into the chair.
Feet flat on the threadbare carpet, hands stiffly in her lap, back ramrod straig
ht, she psyched herself up for the first slash of scissors.
Don’t think. Don’t feel.
What are you willing to do to survive, Abbie?
Anything.
As long as Rafe lost.
As the steady snip of scissors clicked around her, she focused on her breathing. In. Out. Don’t think. Don’t feel. At regular intervals, a snow of hair cascaded down her arms and prickled her neck.
Finally Gray said, “All done.”
Body encased in ice, Abbie rose, shook off the snippets of too-blond hair and walked to the bathroom, carefully placing one foot in front of the other.
Hands braced against the cold porcelain of the sink, she inhaled a long breath. Be brave, Abbie.
She forced her gaze up and worked up the courage to look into the mirror.
Hello, stranger.
Where was she? Who was that?
The stranger in the mirror frowned at her. Four inches were missing from the foreign blond hair. The shaggy cut gave her a hard edge that made her look as if she could chop her way through a field of ninjas. Alias undercover.
She cranked her head to the right, then to the left. If this was supposed to make her feel safe, how come she wanted to run? How come she wanted to bury her head in the sand? How come she wanted to cry?
She reached for a strand of hair. It’s for Daddy. Someone had to restore his good name. It’s for you. To get her life back.
Once Rafe was put away in the deep, dark dungeon of a maximum-security prison, everything would be all right. Her hairdresser could fix this. Everyone in Echo Falls would understand that her father wasn’t the criminal who’d sold them out but the man who’d given his life to save their town. And she could return to her cameras and her studio. Everything would go back to normal.
Just a bit of patience, Abbie. That’s all you need. This is nothing.
Really, she had a lot to be grateful for. She wasn’t alone. She had Gray, who was risking his job and his life to protect her. Once this was over, he would disappear from her life, but for now he was here when she needed him. She was alive. And once she testified, Rafe would lose what was most important to him—a town under his control.