Chapter One

by Judith Rochelle

  Please don’t let them be able to follow me, find me.

  God, what a naive simpleton she’d been. What a dense, gullible fool.

  Her chest felt so constricted she could barely breathe. Her heart still raced wildly, beating in cadence with the raindrops thrumming against the windshield. Fighting to get herself under control, she gripped the steering wheel so hard her hands were cramping.

  Despite the inner chill that invaded her body, she was sweating heavily. Her long hair was coming loose from the clasp that held it away from her face, and her once-neat tailored pants suit felt sticky and uncomfortable.

  Her hands were slick with sweat, slippery on the wheel. The sound of her heart beating was like a kettle drum inside the car.

  Damn it! Get out of the way, she swore at the cars in front of her. Move, move, move.

  She could still hear the voices, so cold and matter of fact.

  ...kill her...kill her...kill her...

  And the swooshing of the door to the garage just as she backed her car out, tires screeching. The panic as she listened for another car engine to start.

  God, if only she hadn’t been so clumsy and knocked those files to the floor. If only she’d been faster down the stairs.

  If only...

  Shut up, Kathryn, and think. This is no time to fall apart.

  There it was now, up ahead. The On ramp to the interstate. But which way to go? Which way? Which way? She took the northbound ramp, the first one she came to, and became lost in the lanes of speeding cars.

  OhGodohGodohGod. They’re going to kill me. I have to get away.

  She drove through the rain, forcing herself to think. In an instant her life had turned upside down. She could never go back. She’d be dead if Peter got his hands on her. But where could she go? What could she do? She had no one to turn to. And the little data storage unit was burning a hole in her pocket.

  There was really only one thing she knew for sure. Some how, some way, she had to disappear.

  Chapter Two

  “Goddamn it, Miguel, I don’t know what she was doing here.”

  Peter ground his teeth in frustration.

  His normally immaculate office looked like the aftermath of a tornado, papers and files scattered everywhere. Usually a calm person, at the moment he gave every appearance of coming unglued. He picked up the folders from the floor, dropped them, shoved others aside as he scoured his desktop for the precious storage.

  “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” Each word was punctuated by the pounding of his fist on the desktop. Rage tightened the muscles in his face.

  “It seems she’s not quite as manageable as you think,” Miguel snapped, each word like the snick of a knife.

  “She assured me she was staying home tonight.” Now he was pulling out drawers, dumping their contents on the floor and digging through them.

  Miguel was pacing, something he rarely did, hands in his pockets, his face set in angry lines. “It seems she changed her mind.”

  “Kathryn never changes her mind.”

  “She did so at least twice in her life,” Miguel pointed out, his voice lethal-sounding. “The night she was supposed to be with her parents, and again tonight.”

  “I can’t begin to think why she did tonight.” Furious, he swept a pile of papers aside, tumbling them to the floor to join the rest of the chaos. “Damn it. The flash drive isn’t here.”

  “You assured me the office was locked up. How did she get in?”

  “I don’t know.” He avoided Miguel’s stare. “I guess she still had one of her father’s keys. I thought I’d collected them all.”

  Peter knew he was in big trouble here. The air in the office was thick with tension and rage. And something else. He had finally reached a moment in his adult life where he knew what real fear was.

  “You’ve put us all at risk,” Miguel said, still gripped by rage. “Not just our little corner of the world, but Carlos as well, and our entire operation. I cannot believe how careless you’ve been. Now you know why leaving that thing out was a mistake.”

  “Damn it, Miguel. She never, ever comes here unexpectedly. Certainly not like this. Why should I expect she would tonight? Of all nights?”

  “In our line of work you must expect the unexpected. Your lapse in judgment will cost us dearly. You won’t like the reaction from the top, I promise you.”

  Peter scrubbed his hands across his face. “I was ready to make the new entries, but decided to leave it until after our meeting. No one was supposed to come near this place. It’s safe.”

  “Apparently not,” Miguel spat at him. “You should consider yourself lucky that she didn’t take any of the hard copy files with her. They were sitting right next to the computer. And unlike the ones on the flash drive, they aren’t encrypted.”

  “I don’t know why she took anything, for God’s sake.” He slapped his hand on the desk. “I’ll find her. Count on it.”

  “We need to make some arrangements.” Miguel pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “I’m not sure we can trust you to handle things by yourself after this.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m going to use our available resources. As soon as I make a phone call, our men will start looking for her.” He punched in a number, and in a moment began speaking in rapid Spanish. When he paused, he looked over at Peter. “Give me that picture of her on your desk.”

  “Picture?” Peter frowned.

  “Never mind.” Miguel picked up the framed headshot himself and snapped an image of it with the camera in his phone. A few more sentences and he disconnected his call. “They have her picture and general description. People will start looking at once.”

  “She can’t have gone far,” Peter told him. “She hasn’t the experience or the guts to figure out how to hide.”

  “Do you think after what happened tonight I’d put any confidence in your assessment of Kathryn Holt?”

  He was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He listened for a few minutes, then hung up without saying a word to the caller.

  “She’s not at the condo. There’s no sign of her car, and we know she hasn’t had enough time to get there and leave again. Wherever she went, that wasn’t it.”

  “I can’t believe she’d just drive off into the night with nothing,” Peter said, his jaw set in frustration.

  Miguel skewered him with a murderous look. “It seems there’s a lot you can’t believe, unfortunately for us. Especially unlucky for you.”

  Peter tried furiously to think of what to do next. He looked at his computer, snapped his fingers, and in a moment his hands were flying over the keyboard. “Money. She’ll need cash. She never carries much with her.”

  “What are you doing?” Miguel asked.

  “Checking her bank accounts. Maybe she used her ATM card. It will tell me where she’s been, anyway.” He sat back and watched while information scrolled across the screen. When it stopped, he leaned forward. “There it is.” He shook his head.

  “What did you find?” Miguel demanded.

  “She’s hit some machines in town, pulling money out. But not enough. My guess is she’s still running. When she thinks she’s far enough away, she’ll hit the ATMs again or cash a check. But the pattern shows us she’s heading north.”

  “Where would she go?”

  “God knows. I don’t think she’d call any of her friends, and she has no close relatives left.”

  Miguel stabbed a finger at Peter. “I hold you completely responsible for this. There will be consequences. You know I’ll have to make a rather unpleasant phone call tonight to report everything.” He was gone before Peter could frame a reply.

  Peter slumped back in his chair, rubbing his temples. Hell and damnation. He’d planned so carefully for everything. How had it fallen apart like this?

  Where are you, Kathryn? When I find you, you’ll be begging me to kill you before I’m finished.

  Chapter Three

  Charlotte, No
rth Carolina

  Kathryn didn’t think the rain would ever stop. The storm followed her up the east coast, getting worse the further north she went. She tried not to startle every time lightning streaked across the sky and thunder boomed in her ears. It was bad enough that she was afraid every car pulling close to her carried Peter or his friends.

  The sun was full up when she pulled off the interstate into Charlotte. She was exhausted from tension and the long distance driving—stoked only by industrial strength coffee from two gas stops—and she was about at the end of her rope. This needed to be the end of the line for Kathryn Holt, but she had some things to care of to make that happen.

  She knew Peter would be tracking her, which meant her credit cards were useless. She had about two-hundred dollars in her wallet, which wouldn’t take her far, and she needed to change her method of transportation.

  She could ditch the car, no problem, leaving them at least a temporary dead end. But airplanes were out. She’d have to show identification. A Trailways bus blew past her at a light and she took that as a sign. Buses were very innocuous.

  But first she had to take care of the money thing. The insurance check was like a live coal in her purse. She could deposit it, take cash back, and hopefully be gone before Peter could follow her tracks. Did he know people in the area? At this point she wouldn’t be surprised at anything.

  At a diner she ordered coffee again and a sweet roll, and asked for a telephone book. She easily found the listing for the branches of her bank—having one that operated nationwide would make this easy. The book also had a map of the city. How lucky could she get? There was a branch of her bank two blocks away from the bus terminal.

  Programming it into her GPS, she arrived five minutes after they opened, ready to take care of business. The teller, however, turned out to be a pissy little bitch. Eying Kathryn’s disheveled state, she excused herself and came back with the branch manager.

  “We’ll need to see your identification, Miss Holt.” He was polite, courteous—and skeptical. “This is quite a large sum.”

  “But I’m depositing it, not withdrawing it,” she protested.

  “But you’re asking for a large sum back. Usually we put a three day hold on checks of this amount.”

  Kathryn’s stomach knotted, but she did her best to present a calm face to the man. “Fine. Then I’ll just withdraw the money already in there. That should work, right?”

  She dragged out every bit of ID in her purse, trying not to show her nervousness while the teller and the manager examined it as if it might be forged. Finally, grudgingly, the transaction was completed. The money still wasn’t nearly enough for her purposes but it would have to do for the moment.

  She parked her car in a lot down the street from the terminal, took the parking ticket and walked away, checking nervously around her.

  “We pay off everyone—prosecutors, cops...”

  That meant that there was probably a call out on her license plate. Was that brown sedan the same one she’d seen at the diner? At the bank? What about the grey one sliding down the street? And the cop car idling at the light?

  Stop it. He can’t catch up with me that fast. I hope.

  The lot attendant might call the police when she didn’t come to claim it, but by then she’d be long gone.

  At the terminal she bought a ticket for the next bus out of there, leaving in an hour.

  Too much time. Peter will be tracking my bank account and see the deposit. Hurry, bus. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  For most of the hour she huddled in a corner of the room, trying to blend in with the crowd, hoping her fear didn’t emanate from her like a visible cloud. Every time someone came through the doors she tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.

  The hour was almost up when she saw them. She knew in her gut they’d come from Peter. Or his friend, Miguel. They had an air about them—quiet, methodical, deadly-looking. So Peter had caught the transaction at the bank the minute she made it. He probably had people checking the airport, too. Good thing she was staying away from planes.

  The men searched the big waiting room quietly and efficiently, glancing from their cell phone screens to the faces of every woman in the waiting area. The frightening realization that whoever Peter was involved with had tentacles everywhere and unlimited resources to seek her out nearly paralyzed her, but she had to get out of there.

  Picking her moment, she eased her way down the hallway where the rest rooms were and out the side door. Her bus was just pulling up at the curb. Looking carefully to make sure the men were still inside, she blended in with the line of people waiting to board.

  They were thirty minutes out of Charlotte before she slowed down to breathe.

  ****

  Tampa

  “What do you mean, they lost her?”

  Miguel raged as he paced Peter’s office.

  “We covered everything,” Peter told him. “Airports, car rentals. I called our contact there and he sent out several teams. Nada.”

  “She won’t rent a car or take a plane, you idiot,” Miguel stormed. “She can’t use her ID. That means buses. You had people on it right away. So where did she go?”

  “Miguel, calm down. She’ll show up. Maybe she got on a bus before they got there. Maybe she was somewhere else in the area.”

  “I’ll calm down when I have her and that damned flash drive in my hands. Are you still tracking her bank accounts?”

  “Of course.”

  “She didn’t get enough money to do anything with. She’ll need more. I want people on it the minute the hit pops up.”

  Peter tossed another antacid pill in his mouth and tapped his keyboard.

  ****

  Los Angeles

  Her stomach hurt, her head ached, and her rear end was practically numb from riding one bus after another. Five days since her life had been turned upside down and she felt as if she was on the trip to hell. Once she’d been a totally different person, eating at little cafes and worrying about nothing more than dealing with clients and relaxing on weekends. Everything in her life was carefully planned and marked in the little squares on her calendar. That was a person she no longer recognized. She had become someone else.

  The new person ate from vending machines and fast food restaurants, and switched haphazardly from one bus to another, praying that Peter, a man she realized she’d never actually known, didn’t find her and kill her.

  She was getting much better at this, surprising herself. The night she’d fled Peter’s office in such terror the panic had almost incapacitated her. At first she was on autopilot, knowing only that she had to get away. Somewhere. Anywhere. And hide where they couldn’t find her.

  She figured out very quickly that she was out there alone. No one was going to save her but herself. She couldn’t even contact her friends or her boss. Peter would be watching them. The urgent need to stay alive forced her to think and plan. And somewhere, on her crazy bus odyssey from city to city and state to state, strength she didn’t know she had welled up from inside her.

  The metamorphosis had begun. Goodbye, Kathryn Holt. Hello, Kate Griffin.

  The fear hadn’t disappeared. Just been pushed to a place where she could manage it. Kathryn would have let it consume her to the point of helplessness. Kate used it to stay alert as she rode the edge of danger.

  Kate. It took some practice, but she’d finally gotten used to her new name.

  By now the bus terminals had all begun to look alike to her, the only difference being size. This one, in Los Angeles, was the largest yet, and she blended easily into the mixture of people. They were all sizes and shapes, enough of them in clothes as scruffy as hers that she didn’t stand out.

  Shielded by the protective bill of the gimme cap she’d picked up at a truck stop, Kate’s eyes never stopped moving, scanning every inch of the waiting area, registering the crowd filling the benches, standing against the walls, reading, napping, listening to iPods.

  She’
d learned to be extra careful, to watch everything that was happening, to study the scene before ever making a move. When she was sure no one was paying attention to her, she slipped into the line at one of the ticket windows.

  “That bus outside?” she asked when it was her turn at the window. “Where is it going?”

  “Albuquerque.” The bored ticket clerk didn’t even look up at her.

  “When does it leave?”

  “About forty-five minutes. You want a ticket?”

  Make up your mind, Kate.

  “Okay. Yes.”

  “One way or round trip?”

  “One way.”

  She fidgeted while the clerk, with slow, unconcerned movements, completed the transaction. Grabbing the ticket and stowing it in her pants pocket, she found an end seat on a bench and scrunched into the corner. Fatigue pulled at her, but she willed her eyes to stay open.

  She was so tired, more than she’d ever been in her life. Too many hours of hyper-awareness and too little rest. Keeping her guard up, trying to ignore the itch between her shoulders as if someone’s eyes were pinned to her. And fighting the panic that always threatened to overwhelm her. She clenched her fists around her duffel, willing the fear to disappear, forcing back the sound of the voices in her head.

  God, what if she hadn’t decided to surprise Peter at his office? What if she hadn’t overheard that conversation?

  “Get off my back, Miguel. How many times do you want me to repeat it? I’ll be getting rid of Kathryn this weekend and we’ll be free and clear.”

  “I need you to repeat it until I’m sure it will happen, Pedro.”

  Peter’s fist banged on the desk. “And quit with the Pedro.”

  A sarcastic snort. “Why? It’s your name, isn’t it?”

  His name? Since when? What did the man mean by that?

  Who were these people Peter was involved with? What kind of resources did they have that they could reach out anywhere?

  Now she’d taken another chance in L.A. Another risk, but it was her only option. Otherwise, she was out of both options and money. Unconsciously, she rubbed one hand against her stomach, feeling beneath her jacket and shirt for the fanny pack where the money was safely tucked away in tight little rolls, along with the all-important flash drive nearly burning a hole in the cloth. Her only bargaining chip, providing she lived to use it. What a stroke of luck that had been, even though she’d almost been caught. Seconds. That was all that had separated her from capture, all that had allowed her to get away.