Obsession

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “Can’t they, like, trace cell phone calls or something? ”

  Dan threw her a quick look. “Only to the place from which the call was placed. For instance, if you called him back now and they traced it, all they’d find out is that you’re close to home. Which, considering that you just got attacked there, someone already knows anyway.”

  Good point again. The problem she was having, though, was that she didn’t trust herself to make a good decision. Real exhaustion was starting to set in. No matter how many times she blinked, or how determinedly she shook her head to clear it, it was hard to think clearly. She had a killer headache, her body hurt all over, and she was so tired that it was all she could do to stay upright in the seat. Add in the whole brain-damage thing, and she realized that mentally, she was flying blind.

  “What would I say?” Her mouth was dry. “I don’t want him to know that I’m running away from him.”

  It was more than she’d meant to tell him, but she needed a friend. And right now, in the people-she-could -trust stakes, Dan seemed to be the only game in town.

  “Give me a minute,” he said. “I’m thinking.”

  At least, Katharine registered, he didn’t seem to be shocked. He appeared, rather, to actually be thinking the matter over as he drove. Reaching the end of the alley, the Blazer came to a stop at Wilkes Street. A delivery truck rattled past, inches away from the front bumper, followed by a seemingly endless procession of cars. More vehicles clogged the opposite side of the street. Pedestrians, including another tour group with a guide dressed as, if she had to guess, Martha Washington, crowded the sidewalks. The shops were open, the tours were under way, and the tourists, on this hot, sunny Saturday, were out in force. Being surrounded by so much activity should have been reassuring. Instead, Katharine felt terribly exposed.

  Danger could be anywhere.

  Dan made no attempt to pull out into traffic. Instead, he looked over at her. His expression was hard to read.

  “You’re going to tell him what just happened, right?”

  Katharine thought about that. The thing was, she wasn’t convinced that he didn’t already know. “Yes. I guess. Only . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Dan looked at her keenly. “Only you think he might have had something to do with it. Which is why you’re running away from him.” It was a statement, not a question.

  She hesitated only a moment before nodding.

  “Wow,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not helping.” Just to be sure he understood where she was coming from, she spelled it out: “I don’t want him to know I suspect him. Otherwise, he’ll guess I’m running away.”

  “Yeah.” He grimaced thoughtfully. “You realize that the natural thing for you to do would be to tell him you were just attacked. It’s what you would do if you didn’t suspect him.”

  She blinked. That was so obvious she couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her.

  “You’re good,” she said.

  “Okay, you could tell him, then say something like you’re not up to talking to anybody right now. That you’re scared, and torn up over your friend’s death, and you just need to be alone for a while. That you’re probably going to spend the night in a hotel.”

  Katharine’s eyes widened slightly as she considered that. If Ed thought she was going to a hotel, he would start checking hotels. There were hundreds of hotels in the area. Even for him, with his resources, checking them all would take hours.

  Hours she could use to find a place to hide.

  “That’s actually a really good idea.” But still her fingers curled tightly around the phone. The idea of calling Ed terrified her, she realized.

  “If you’re going to call him, you want to do it now,” Dan said. “While we’re still close to home.”

  Katharine glanced at him and nodded. Right. So if Ed did trace the call, which he certainly could and probably would do, he’d have no more information than that she was at the corner of the alley behind her garage and Wilkes at the time she made it.

  The Blazer was still idling. A big silver Suburban rolled out of the busy parking lot to her right and pulled in behind them. Time to move.

  It was now or never.

  Dan accelerated, turning right onto Wilkes, heading toward Union. Sunlight glared off the green-painted metal roof of the art gallery/ice cream shop/candy-maker that they were heading toward, making Katharine squint. Beyond the two-story complex, the Potomac looked smooth as glass.

  “How about we circle the block once?” Dan suggested.

  Katharine nodded again. Gritting her teeth, she opened the phone, then realized that she had no idea what Ed’s number was. For a moment, as she stared down at the tiny keypad, she was stymied. Then it hit her: Look at the call history. She did, punched a button, and the phone automatically dialed Ed’s number.

  As she waited for it to connect, her heart began to thud.

  “Katharine?” Ed answered on the first ring. Good thing, too, because she was losing her nerve fast.

  “Hi.” Every muscle in her body had tensed. She was suddenly freezing, cold to the bone, so cold that she could feel goose bumps prickling to life all over her skin. She had to take a deep breath before she could continue. “I, uh . . .”

  “Where are you?” he interrupted fiercely.

  She ignored the question. “Somebody just attacked me. I went home, and he was in the house, and he grabbed me. He was looking for something, and he thought I knew where it was.”

  “What? What was he looking for?”

  She ignored that, too. Stick with the script.

  “I can’t take this, you know? I’m scared to death. And I’m sorry, but I can’t face talking to you or the police or anybody else right now. I just need to be alone for a little while. I—” As she spoke, her voice grew increasingly shaky. Ed cut her off without a qualm.

  “Are you losing your tiny little mind?” He roared the question so loudly that she almost dropped the phone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dan grimace in unspoken sympathy.

  Wimp, she chastised herself silently. But still, her mouth was dry, and her heart raced, and the hand holding the phone shook, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about any of it. Wimp indeed.

  “You need to tell me where you are.” Ed had his voice under control again, but from its strain, it was obvious that he was having to work to keep it that way. “Right now.”

  “I’m going to a hotel for the night,” she continued doggedly. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Damn it, Katharine, you . . .” He was getting louder again.

  Before he could reach full throttle, she disconnected, closing the phone with a snap. Taking a deep breath, she sat there staring down at it. She was gripping it so hard that her fingers were white. Her pretty pink nails looked incongruously frivolous against the businesslike black.

  I don’t have pretty pink nails.

  The thought was despairing.

  “You did good,” Dan said. Glancing over at him, she encountered a reassuring smile. She didn’t smile back—a smile seemed beyond her capabilities just at present—but it helped to know that he could. It made her feel a little less like an escapee from the Twilight Zone.

  The Blazer had stopped at yet another stop sign. Dan’s attention returned to the road as he accelerated again. Katharine realized that they had completed their circuit of the block and were now heading away from the river, away from Old Town. A sign promised that Interstate 395 lay straight ahead.

  Hello, moto.

  Katharine gasped, nearly dropping the phone as it went off again in her hand. This time she didn’t even need to see the name or number to know who it was: Ed.

  A glance confirmed it.

  Hello, moto.

  Pulse racing, she stared down at the eerily unfamiliar phone as it jangled in her eerily unfamiliar hand. It was terrifying to realize that the call was coming from her eerily unfamiliar boyfriend, who might or might not be trying
to have her killed for some unknown reason that had something to do with her eerily unfamiliar life.

  Though he probably didn’t know it, Ed’s question had been right on the money: It was entirely possible that she was losing her—okay, she objected to the tiny little part—mind.

  Hello, moto.

  It was a good thing, she thought, that Dan was distracted by negotiating the corkscrew-like turn onto the expressway. Otherwise, there would be a witness to her quiet little meltdown in the passenger seat.

  “Give it here.” As soon as they were on the straightaway, Dan held out his hand for the phone. There was a quiet authority in his voice that had her obeying before she even thought about it.

  Hello, mo—

  The thrice-damned thing went abruptly silent as he pressed a button on the side.

  “I turned it off,” he said in response to her shell-shocked look. The merest hint of a grim smile quirked his mouth as he handed it back to her. “I would have thrown it out the window, but I figured you might want it again later.”

  “Yes. Thanks.” The words came out on a gust of air as she released a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

  So much for Ed. But turning off the phone didn’t eliminate him—or his power, or his henchmen—from her life.

  Oh, God, she was cold. So incredibly cold. If she wasn’t careful, her teeth would start chattering.

  “Put it in your purse,” he said, and she did. Then she closed the vents, shutting off the flow of icy air that was exactly what she didn’t need. Folding her arms tightly over her chest for warmth, she dropped her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and tried to regain her composure. Dan drove in silence for a while, and she was grateful for that. The sound of traffic rushing by outside the window and the vibrations of the vehicle itself were surprisingly soothing. Gradually, her pulse rate slowed and her breathing steadied and her tense muscles relaxed. In fact, if she hadn’t been so acutely aware of the direness of her situation, she might have succumbed to creeping exhaustion and dozed off. But she couldn’t. They would be at the airport soon. Then she would be on her own. If she was going to pull this off, she was going to have to stay alert. She needed to be smart and strong and able to think fast on her feet—none of which seemed remotely possible just at present.

  “We’re almost there,” Dan said. “I take it you did mean National?”

  Katharine felt her stomach start to tighten again as she opened her eyes. Directly ahead, on one of the green signs that overhung the expressway, she read Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport 11⁄2 miles.

  “Yes.” Her pulse was speeding up, too. Her head pounded. Her ribs hurt. Her knees felt weak. She had a bad taste in her mouth. The good news was, she was no longer chilled to the bone, although that was probably just because Dan had turned down the air-conditioning.

  “So where you off to?” Dan asked.

  She slanted him a look. No way was she telling him or anybody else her plan—just in case.

  “Right. Mind my own business,” he translated in a resigned tone.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “You know, in my professional opinion, you might want to rethink flying off into the wild blue yonder for a day or two. Besides your physical injuries, which, granted, aren’t all that severe, you’ve experienced some real psychological trauma. It’s obvious you’re not thinking straight. It’s equally obvious that something bad’s going down in your life. I would suggest that you take some time to regroup.” His attention returned to the road. “Not that I’m poking my nose in or anything.”

  Katharine looked at him without replying for a moment. She watched the play of light and shadow over his face, and was once again struck by how familiar he seemed to her. He was only a neighbor, and to the best of her knowledge, she’d had only the most casual of relationships with him before today, but the truth was, her relationship with him didn’t feel casual. It felt important, and solid, as if he were someone on whom she knew she could rely. Add in that hint of tension between them that she’d felt when he’d been looming over her bed when she’d first opened her eyes, and she suddenly wondered if, sometime in the past, he’d been more than just a neighbor. Asking him about the details of their acquaintance was an option, but if she did that, she would have to admit she didn’t remember much. She wasn’t sure that, until she had a better sense of what was going on, revealing her ignorance was a good idea. If someone was clever, it could, she realized, be used to manipulate her. Anyway, she was running out of time. They were rushing up on the exit, and once he let her out at the airport, he would be gone.

  I’ll be all alone.

  The idea suddenly appalled her. Without him, she would be left to fight through this terrifying maze she was lost in on her own. She was so bone-tired, so confused, so frightened—she realized she couldn’t face it.

  Not just yet, anyway.

  “Look, could we get some coffee?” she asked as the Blazer curved off the interstate toward the airport.

  If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Sure.”

  There was not, of course, a single Starbucks to be found in the blocks leading up to the airport. Dan pulled into a McDonald’s drive-thru lane, ordered coffee, juice, and breakfast sandwiches for both of them, settled the drinks into the cup holders between them, then nosed into a parking space so they could eat. As soon as she got her hands on the coffee, Katharine pulled off the lid, stirred in a packet of Sweet’N Low, and took an eager sip.

  Coffee, minus its enticing aroma, lost something, she decided. Like its flavor. Still, she drank.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She nodded and watched as he attacked his Egg McMuffin with gusto.

  “You don’t suppose somebody could have followed us?” The thought occurred just as she was unwrapping her sausage biscuit with hands that she was dismayed to discover still shook a little, and she stopped what she was doing to glance nervously all around. The influx of even flavorless caffeine plus the prospect of food seemed to have perked up at least a few of her discombobulated brain cells, and all at once she wasn’t so tired that she couldn’t appreciate the danger she was in. The concrete jungle surrounding them boasted a furniture store, a Jiffy Lube, a Big Lots, a run-down strip mall, and a couple of low-rent apartment buildings. Lots of vehicles buzzing in, out, and all around. Lots of people in the vehicles. Pedestrians everywhere. She could feel herself tensing up again.

  Bad guys could be anywhere.

  Dan shook his head. “I don’t think so. I kept a pretty good eye out, I think.”

  She blinked at him as he took another hearty bite out of his Egg McMuffin.

  He chewed, swallowed, and grinned at her. “Hey, I watch TV. Besides, I figure since you’re on the run, and I’m with you, that means I’m on the run, too.”

  She felt a flicker of remorse. “I’m really sorry I got you involved in this.”

  Shrugging, he polished off his sandwich with one last enormous bite. “I didn’t have to give you a ride. If it comes to that, I didn’t have to go to the hospital last night. Or pick you up in the parking lot this morning. So I’m at least as responsible as you.” He washed the sandwich down with a swig of orange juice, then cocked an eyebrow at her. “You going to eat or not?”

  The unconcern in his voice made her frown. She cast another nervous glance around. The parking lot was busy, with a lot of vehicles circling the drive-thru and pulling in and out of the parking spaces, and a lot of people entering and leaving the restaurant. Traffic on the street in front of them was steady and constant.

  If someone was going to attack them here, there would be lots of witnesses.

  “Whoever these people are, they mean business,” she warned. “Last night they murdered my friend. If you’re with me and they catch up with us, I’m pretty sure they won’t hesitate to kill you, too.”

  “You let me worry about me, okay?” he said. “Eat.”

  There didn’t seem to be much else to say,
and since she was pretty sure that dozens of witnesses were the last thing that any bad guys worth their salt wanted, she gave up and took a bite of her sandwich.

  After all, there would be plenty of time after he dropped her off at the airport when the bad guys could catch her all alone.

  The thought almost gave her indigestion. Swallowing, she wrapped what was left of the biscuit back up again and stuffed it down in the sack. No matter how much she needed protein for energy, she had eaten all she could.

  “Is that all you’re going to eat?” he asked. His disapproval was plain in his tone.

  “Yes.” The narrow-eyed look she shot him dared him to comment further. He didn’t. She took another swallow of the tasteless coffee, hoping for an invigorating shot of energy that didn’t come. “Could we go, please?”

  The idea of being on her own didn’t appeal to her any more now than it had earlier, she discovered. But neither did the idea of sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot, where anyone could spot them. Besides, what was the alternative? The answer was simple: There wasn’t one. She was being hunted. She might not know much, but she knew that as well as she knew the sun rose in the east. She had to run while the chance was there.

  If they caught her . . .

  Her heart started to accelerate at the thought.

  “Sure thing.”

  She could feel the tension building in her neck and shoulders as he reversed out of the parking space, then drove toward the exit with only a single stop to deposit the remains of their meal in the trash. Her headache was back, a dull throbbing behind her eyes, and she was so tired she felt boneless. Though she’d been hungry, the sausage biscuit now felt like a rock lodged in her stomach. The coffee had left a bitter taste in her mouth.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” Dan pulled out into traffic as he spoke.

  Looking carefully around, she saw nothing that appeared out of the ordinary. Still, she felt her stomach twist a little tighter around the rock. They would reach the airport access road in just a matter of minutes. She breathed deeply, trying to summon up every last iota of strength, determination, and clear thinking that remained to her.