LONG GONE ________________________
MARLISS MELTON
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This book is a work of fiction and is a product of the author’s imagination or is used fictitiously. Names, characters, places and incidents in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone, living or dead, bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual, known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
©James-York Press, P. O. Box 141, Williamsburg, VA 23187
All rights reserved.
First James-York Press electronic edition: October 2012
Edited by Sydney Baily-Gould and Rachel Fontana
Cover Design by Wicked Smart Designs.
ISBN-10: 1938732057 (digital)
ISBN-13: 978-1-938732-05-8 (digital)
ISBN: 10: 1938732065 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-938732-06-5 (paperback)
FOREWORD
The characters and premise for this novella were born out of my Nov. 2008 release, TOO FAR GONE. At the end of that book Skyler and Drake were separated, their blossoming relationship cut off prematurely with Skyler’s departure into witness protection. Readers have often asked me whatever happened to this couple. Read LONG GONE and you’ll find out!
Prologue
Stepping out of the employee elevator, Skyler hurried down the hotel corridor toward the housekeeping cart being pushed by her colleague, Jamila. The Sea Dip Hotel stood nearly empty on this weekday morning with scant guests visiting the ocean so late in the season.
At the sound of her approach, Jamila glanced back, slowing the cart to wait for her. “Caroline!” Her face reflected surprise. “What are you doin’ here, girl? I thought you were off today.”
“I was off,” Sklyer conceded, catching her breath and tying the loose string on her apron. “But Nadia called this morning to say she wasn’t feeling well, and she talked me into taking her shift.”
“Shoot, she ain’t sick.” Jamila rolled her eyes. “You know she just drank too much last night, right? You shouldn’t let her use you like that.”
“I know, but I need the money.”
Jamila ran an assessing gaze over Skyler’s petite figure. “What’s a classy girl like you doing workin’ in a place like this, anyway? You should be sellin’ time shares or somethin’, not cleanin’ up other people’s messes.”
“It’s as good a job as any,” Skyler insisted. “I don’t need to be rich.”
She’d been wealthy all of her life up until four years ago. When wealth came at the expense of other people’s fortunes, it was an empty luxury. Her father, head of the Centurion mob headquartered in Savannah, Georgia, had taught her that bitter truth. Luckily for Skyler, she’d inherited not only her mother’s decency but also her journals detailing her husband’s crimes. The journals had been her only weapon against her father, and she’d used them to send him to prison. Or rather one handsome FBI agent had used them.
“True, but it ain’t no sin to use what God gave you,” Jamila said with a pointed once-over. “With a face and body like that, you could snag a rich ol’ man and never have to work another day again.”
Skyler shook her head. “I like to work,” she insisted. It made the time go by faster. Besides, her face and body were the last things she wanted anyone to take note of, lest she be recognized. Being in WITSEC, the U.S. Marshal’s witness protection program, she had adopted a whole new identity and look, coloring her golden hair auburn and wearing it long instead of short. WITSEC told her where to live, and in places like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a menial job was the only one she could find with her degree in interior design.
In many ways, being in WITSEC was like having made a pact with the devil himself.
Skyler pulled the master card-key from her apron pocket and picked up a stack of freshly folded towels. “I’ll take this side,” she offered, ignoring Jamila’s shrug as she knocked on the door with the Make Up sign hanging on the doorknob. “Housekeeping.”
As expected, the room was empty with the curtains flung open and sunlight streaming in. Throwing herself into the mindless task of stripping the bed, she realized she’d been cleaning rooms at this mid-price hotel for almost five months now. Little chance of her running into her father’s entitled friends in a place like the Sea Dip, that was certain.
It beat her first job in Omaha, inspecting cans in a food processing plant. The best job she’d found so far had been in Portland working as a veterinarian’s assistant, but she couldn’t stay there, either. It was all WITSEC could do to stay one step ahead of the Centurions. While her testimony had put hundreds in jail, there were others who’d escaped imprisonment because her mother’s journals proved insufficient evidence. It was those men who kept Skyler on the run.
The wages of my father’s sins are still being paid, she reflected, using a razor blade to scrape purple bubblegum off the bathroom tiles.
The debt was a heavy one. Heavy and lonely.
Especially lonely.
Chapter One
It was something she had yet to get used to—sitting at a public bus stop in a tourist town without fearing that she’d be recognized. Listening to Jamila jabber nonstop about the trials of raising teenage boys, Skyler leaned back against the wooden bench and forced herself to relax.
No one here knows who I am, she assured herself.
It was mid-afternoon on a weekday. Tourists streamed out of the hotels to enjoy the mild September weather and teenagers, already out of school, cruised the strip in their souped-up cars, windows lowered and music blasting. The sun was warm, the air blessedly cooler than it had been in August. Skyler tipped her head back, drew a deep breath, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was looking straight into the eye of a high-powered, telephoto lens, aimed down at her from a hotel balcony across the street.
She sat up straight and looked around. What could the photographer possibly be taking pictures of but the ugly parking area and the bus stop where she sat? With a stab of suspicion, she peered back up at him. At her intent stare, he swiveled toward his room and disappeared.
Skyler’s scalp prickled.
Why would he have taken pictures of the bus stop? To capture the lifestyle of the working class in Myrtle Beach? Or to positively identify her?
“Caroline? Hey, there!” Jamila’s face swam into view. “You’re looking all peaked, girl. You best not be gettin’ that flu. You know your friend Nadia won’t be working her sorry ass for you, not even if you were dyin’!”
“I know. I’m fine, I’m just…” Scared. And probably paranoid. But this was how it always started. Men
she’d never seen before started taking an interest in her, following her around. It had happened twice before. When she’d caught one man filming her with his cell phone, she’d told WITSEC, and they’d moved her the very next day. Another time she’d been chased down a dark alley on her way home from work. That same night, WITSEC had made her pack a bag and they’d moved her clear across the country. “You’re right. I’m really not feeling well.”
“Don’t breathe on me, honey, cause I don’t have time to be sick.” Jamila put a good foot between them on the bench.
Tears pressured Skyler’s eyes. Jamila had been her first and only friend in Myrtle Beach. She’d taken her under her wing, made her feel welcome. The last thing Skyler wanted was to be ripped from her new home just when she was settling in. This has to stop.
A bus rolled up with a screech and a cloud of fumes. “Jamila, I might not be here tomorrow,” she announced, standing up and heading toward it.
“Hey, that’s not your bus! Where’re you goin’?” Jamila protested.
If she moved fast enough, maybe she wouldn’t be followed. With a final wave at her friend, Skyler boarded the crowded transit. She found an empty seat near the rear and peered out of the window. Her pulse sped up as the man with the camera popped out on his balcony again, a cell phone plastered to his ear and his eyes fixed on the bus she’d boarded.
Digging in her purse for her own cell phone, Skyler dialed her case handler.
He answered on the first ring. “Higgins.”
“Some man just took my picture while I was sitting at the bus stop,” she whispered.
Higgins remained quiet for a moment. “You think he recognized you?” he asked on an odd note.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you being followed?” he asked. Now he sounded bored.
His lack of urgency made her blood boil. Having had to relocate twice, she had a right to worry, didn’t she? Craning her neck, she peered out of the bus again. Any one of the cars behind it might be following her. “I don’t know.”
Higgins grunted. “Look, just go home and set your alarm. If anyone breaks in, enter your safe room immediately and call me from there.”
WITSEC had installed a tiny room at the back of her closet. Reinforced with steel and padded with Kevlar, it was unbreachable. While the safe-room assured protection from immediate danger, it failed to banish the suspicion that the Centurions had found her yet again.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. The tradeoff for giving up her old life was supposed to be a guarantee that she wouldn’t have to live in constant fear.
“Fine.” Putting an end to the call, Skyler gazed outside to get her bearings. Her stomach churned with uncertainty.
At the main terminal, she would have to switch busses to get on the one that actually went to her neighborhood. Apparently, it was up to her to lose whoever might be tailing her.
**
Shifting her head on the pillow, Skyler checked her clock. It was 2 A.M., and no one had attempted to kill her yet.
She would like to believe that was a good sign and that the man with the camera hadn’t been singling her out, like the guy with the cell phone in Omaha or the man in the alley in Portland. Only, she couldn’t convince herself that was true.
Feeling restless, she rolled out of bed and padded to her kitchen.
She’d made the best possible use of space in the tiny bungalow she called home. The walls were a cheery yellow, the hardwood floors polished to a shine. If forced to move again, she would have to redecorate on another shoe-string budget. At least it kept her skills sharp. One day, she would use her degree to make a living. No more cleaning hotel rooms or inspecting cans on the assembly line or soothing panicked animals.
She heated a mug of water in the microwave. Steeping a bag of chamomile tea in it, she carried the mug into her living room to brood.
In the dark room that surrounded her, not a single memento held any personal significance. Even the afghan she wrapped around her only reminded her of one that her mother used to cherish. She hadn’t been allowed to keep a single relic or photo, not of her mother, her friends, or even . . .
She tried squelching her memories, but they rushed into her mind like snow melting on the first sunny day in spring. A vision of Drake Donovan gazing down at her in the aftermath of their lovemaking made her heart clutch.
She would never forget the day she had stumbled on her mother’s journals and realized their incriminating information could free her from her father’s ruthlessness. Giddy with relief, she had invited Drake into her bedroom to initiate her first taste of freedom. At the time, she’d thought he was just a gardener, handsome, sweet, sexy. Half in love with him already, she’d had no idea he was an undercover agent for the FBI.
Falling in love with Drake had changed her life, but not in the way that she’d hoped. Because her mother was stricken with Alzheimer’s, Skyler was obliged to testify against her father’s associates on Matilda’s behalf, thus condemning herself to witness protection. How naïve she'd been to believe, even for a moment, that Drake could protect her! In their determination to quell her testimony, Centurions would have killed him, plus any member of his family they could lay their hands on. But Drake had known that was the case. He’d done his job, helped put a lot of bad men behind bars, and then grudgingly surrendered her to WITSEC, for her own safety and for his.
There wasn’t any question she still loved him. But to expect him to wait for her was a pipe dream. After all this time—four years now—he had surely moved on with his life, found someone else to love.
The thought carved a deeper chasm in her heart.
Resolved to try and sleep again, Skyler plodded back to the kitchen with her empty cup.
She had just placed it in the sink when a flicker in the corner of her eye had her turning toward the moonlit window. The silhouette of a man leapt onto her lowered shade.
She startled back on a gasp, and the man disappeared.
Had she just imagined him? A scratching at her back door nixed that optimistic hope. Someone was attempting to break in! In the next instant, her home security system started to wail.
Recalling Higgins’ advice, Skyler scuttled to her bedroom. She snatched up her purse and her charging cell phone and headed straight for her closet, feeling inside for the tiny button that triggered the door to her safe room. With a hiss and a glow of ultraviolet light, the door slid open.
She leapt into the four-by-six-foot space, hit another button, and sealed herself inside.
The supplies at her feet, the retractable latrine, and the mat all meant she could survive here for up to a week if she had to, but it wouldn’t come to that. The alarm would bring the U.S. Marshals to her rescue in half an hour, at most.
Higgins had told her to call him right away. Let him worry a bit, she thought, resentment bubbling in her breast. He should have taken immediate action to protect me.
Through the ventilation shafts that tunneled under the house, she discerned a loud smash.
What was that? The alarm fell suddenly silent. Skyler put her ear to the steel wall and listened over her pounding heart. The muffled voices that reached her sounded like they were being spoken under water.
“She’s not here,” said a distorted male voice.
“You sure this is the right place?”
The first man said something about following her home.
I knew I was followed. Her heart beat faster.
“Look under the bed. She has to be here.”
They’ll never find me.
“Call that number you got from her friend. Let’s see if her cell phone rings.”
What? Jamila would never have given her number to a stranger—oh, yes, she would, if the man resembled Prince Charming. Oh, God, if Skyler’s phone rang and the intruders heard it, they would know that she was still here. She quickly powered it off, shoving it deep into her purse. She put her ear back to the wall.
“You hear anything?”
&n
bsp; “Nah. The bitch must’ve turned her phone off.”
Sweat filmed Skyler’s upper lip.
“So what do we do? We can’t stick around. The alarm’s gonna bring the feds.”
“I guess we try again tomorrow. Don’t touch anything on your way out.”
As the voices grew fainter, Skyler sagged against the enclosure, her fear draining away. All she could hear now was her own shallow breathing.
Any minute now, the U.S. Marshals—possibly Higgins himself—would be here to whisk her away. Again. She couldn’t stand this. They’d had their chance to keep her safe and they‘d blown it. How could the mob have found her yet again?
The two last times, Higgins had blamed it on Skyler, who’d admitted to making phone calls she shouldn’t have. But not this time. She hadn’t called anyone from Myrtle Beach. So maybe she wasn’t the problem; maybe there was a leak in WITSEC. Or maybe Higgins himself had betrayed her location.
Skyler swallowed hard. As her father used to say, every man had a price.
The bag of supplies contained a change of clothing, water bottles, trail mix, and a wad of cash—enough to get her through the next few days. Hefting it off the floor, she looped the strap of her purse over her head and released the lock.
The lights dimmed and the door swept open. As she stepped from her closet, headlights strafed the walls of her bedroom. That would be the hit men leaving or the U.S. Marshals coming to see why her alarm had gone off.
Either way, she wouldn’t be around to find out.
“I’d like a room, please.”
The motel clerk took Skyler’s wad of cash with a thinning of his lips, but he kept his comments to himself.
She wore pink plaid pajamas and no shoes. She had lost her flip-flops running through someone’s muddy back yard. Her face was flushed with exertion. Who knew what the man was thinking?
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