by P J Parrish
Amelia stopped abruptly.
No . . . she couldn’t go to the bus station. It would be the first place Alex would go. He had been smart enough to get Hannah’s phone number from Kristin and he would be smart enough to figure out that she had taken a bus to get here. She couldn’t risk it.
Where could she go?
Straight ahead, she could see the faint glow of Christmas lights, strings of them draped from the streetlamps downtown. She looked right, but saw only small houses, their windows lit with the blue throb of televisions. A car was coming slowly down the street, heading her way. She ducked behind a hedge and waited until it disappeared.
She turned to her left. Far off, maybe a hundred yards or so, she could make out a steady stream of fast-moving headlights. It was a highway, the road Hannah had taken the day she drove her to the mall. And the mall was out by an interstate, she remembered.
Martin the hair stylist was there in her head, and what he had said when she saw her short, dark hair for the first time.
No one’s going to recognize you.
It wasn’t enough, she knew now. It wasn’t enough to just change how she looked. She had to change everything she did, even the way she thought. She had to become a woman, inside and out, who Alex would never recognize.
Amelia Tobias would never do what I am about to do. But Amelia Brody will do whatever it takes.
With a quick look around to make sure no one was following, she headed toward the highway.
It took her about an hour to get to the mall, a cold, tiring walk in the glare of headlights and in the wake of car exhaust. The mall lot was almost deserted and she knew it had to be past nine by now, maybe even later. She saw a road sign for I-95 North and kept going.
Then, there it was, just as she remembered. The towering yellow Waffle House sign, a Motel 6, a Shell truck stop, and beyond that the entrance ramp to the interstate. She trudged across the high wet grass of the median and headed toward the gas pumps.
If you ever get stranded, Mellie, hitch a ride with a truck driver. You can trust them.
Who had told her that? And Mellie? Who had called her Mellie? Her head hurt from the effort of confronting these frayed bits of memories that came at her out of nowhere without warning, like strangers emerging from the mist.
She paused at the first bank of gas pumps to adjust the duffel strap on her shoulder and looked around the sprawling station, gauging her chances of getting a ride. Three huge 18-wheelers sat silent and dark on the edge of the Motel 6 lot. Another one was just pulling out, grinding slowly up the ramp toward I-95. There was one rig left, idling at the diesel station. Amelia walked slowly to it.
The cab was empty. Amelia let out a long tired breath, lowered herself down onto the driver’s-side step, and took off her glasses. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes.
“You scratch that paint job and I’m gonna have to kick your ass.”
Amelia opened her eyes. The figure standing in front of her was in soft focus, no face in the harsh backlight of the station lights, just a squat body in black clothes. A woman?
“Sorry,” Amelia said, standing and hoisting the duffel onto her shoulder.
“You look skinny and strung out, kiddo. You a tweaker?”
“A what?”
“Tweaker. Meth head.”
Drugs. The woman was talking about drugs.
“No, I had to leave my house and I’m—”
The woman took her chin and turned Amelia’s face to the light. Amelia pulled away, her hand going up to cover the stitches on her chin.
“I guess you got other problems then,” the trucker said.
“Yes. But right now I need a ride.”
The woman eyed her hard. “I’d like to help you out but we got new rules because of the insurance. No freeloaders.”
Amelia scanned the parking lot. It was empty except for a dark sedan with a man inside. Who was that? Was that the same car she had seen earlier?
She looked back at the woman. “I can pay you.”
“It’s not the money, it’s the rules.”
Amelia studied the woman. Her hair was spike-cut and two-toned, yellow and black. She had a tattoo of a parrot down her neck and a tiny sapphire piercing in her lower lip.
She couldn’t let this woman get away. “You don’t look like a woman who always obeys the rules,” Amelia said.
The woman stared hard at her. “What happened to your face?”
“I ran into something.”
“Yeah, some fucker’s fist, right?”
Amelia started to explain, but suddenly she was too tired. And too desperate. “Yeah, that’s what happened. Please help me.”
The woman glanced around the parking lot and then back at Amelia. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere.”
“I’m heading northwest through Memphis and then straight west.”
“That’s fine. I just need to get out of here.”
The woman motioned for Amelia to follow and walked her around to the passenger side of the massive truck. She opened the cab door.
“Climb on up and toss your duffel in the rear.”
Amelia climbed into the cab, taking note of the bed tucked into the space behind the seats. The other door opened and the woman climbed inside. She set her thermos in a holder between the seats and hit a button on the dash. With a roar, the truck’s engine sprang to life.
“My name’s Dolly,” she said, as she pulled the seat belt across her chest.
“Amelia Brody. And thank you.”
The truck started to move, first like a train, then more like a monorail, smooth and heavy and not as rumbling as Amelia thought it would be. She could see the truck was new, with clean windows and a leather dashboard lit up like an airplane cockpit. A photograph was wedged into the edge of the clock but the cab was too dark for her to see it clearly.
“You look like a zombie,” Dolly said. “If you want to crawl back there and sleep, that’s cool.”
Amelia glanced back toward the bed. She was exhausted but still keyed up, like she could almost feel the sting of adrenaline running through her veins. She leaned her head against the side window, and as she watched the lights of the gas station recede in the side mirror, she thought about the man in the car Hannah had seen.
Was she being paranoid? Was someone really after her or was this strange fear just a result of the concussion? It wasn’t like the headaches that came and went. The fear was always there in her gut.
“You mind some music?” Dolly asked.
“No, go right ahead,” Amelia said.
Dolly plugged in an iPod. “I sleep by day and drive by night because there’s fewer weirdos on the road. Usually, I just roll the windows down and listen to the whine of my turbo and my heartbeat. But when it’s cold like this, I need my rock and roll to keep me going. I’m working my way through the decades, and I’m up to the seventies now.”
The cab filled up with the sounds of a guitar and a man’s buttery voice. Amelia closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
“You sure you don’t want to go catch forty?” Dolly asked.
Amelia opened her eyes and glanced back at the blanket and pillows. “Yeah, I think I will,” she said softly.
Dolly turned the music down to a murmur. “I’ll wake you for breakfast.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Turn off the lights.”
Alex turned to face his partner Owen McCall. “What? Why?”
“That’s what Buchanan said to do,” McCall said.
Alex switched off the headlights and steered the rental car into the dark parking lot. He pulled to a stop and leaned forward, peering out the windshield.
“Where is he?” he asked.
When McCall sat forward in the passenger seat, the streetlight turned his face into a cha
lky mask. He was silent, his eyes scanning the lot. Alex waited, knowing not to say anything. They had barely spoken on the flight up here, McCall sitting rigid in his seat, drinking club soda. Alex had finally gotten tired of his silence and retreated to the back of the firm’s private jet. By the time the Learjet touched down at the Brunswick airport, he was two vodkas deep into his brew of hope and despair. Hope that they would find Mel. Despair that she wouldn’t come home with him. But why would he even consider the second possibility? She loved him, she trusted him. She didn’t know what he had done, and it wasn’t too late for him to make everything right again.
“That’s his rental car over there,” McCall said.
Alex looked to his left just in time to see the glow of a cigarette lighter inside a darkened car.
“Let’s go,” Alex said, opening the car door.
McCall grabbed his sleeve. “Wait. Close the damn door.”
Alex shut the door and the overhead light went out.
“I want you to listen to me, Alex. Let me handle this.”
“She’s my wife, Owen, goddamn it. She’s not thinking straight and—”
“And neither are you right now. I need you to stay calm. We need Amelia to stay calm. We don’t want to scare her. You want her to come home, right?”
Alex ran a hand over his face. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay, I just want to talk to her.”
They got out and walked quickly through the cold wind to the other car. Alex started toward the passenger side, but McCall was there first, yanking open the door and getting in. Alex slipped in the back.
The car’s engine was off, and Buchanan had his window rolled halfway down. The cold night air, stinking of fish, poured in, and Alex pulled up the collar of his sports coat. It had been seventy-five degrees when they left Fort Lauderdale. It was so cold here, he could see his breath pluming in the air.
He realized he was breathing too fast. He took three deep breaths to calm himself and sat forward between the front seats, staring hard at the house across the street. In the glare from the streetlight, he could see the house clearly, see the peeling yellow paint, the picket fence with its missing slats, the overgrown bushes, and the sagging porch. What the hell was Mel doing in a place like this?
“Is she in there?” he asked.
Buchanan didn’t turn around, his eyes fixed on the house. “It was 6:15 when I called you,” he said. “She stayed out on the porch with an old woman until 7:10 then they both went in.” Buchanan looked at his watch. “I haven’t moved from this spot in the last three hours and no one has come out since they went inside.”
“How do you know for sure that it’s Amelia?” Alex asked.
“I told you when I called you. She made a phone call from this house and I was able to trace it.” He held out a piece of paper. “Plus I was able to ID her with this.”
Alex took the paper. It was a five-by-seven black-and-white photograph. He stared at it for a long time. “This is Amelia when she was dancing. She doesn’t look like this anymore.”
“She does now.”
“Where did you get this?”
“From her closet.”
Alex stared at the back of Buchanan’s head, a spasm of disgust moving through him, like the time that rapist had reached through the bars of the Tallahassee jail and grabbed his arm, grinning and saying he had never touched that little girl. Alex had gotten the man off. Two months later, he quit his public defender job and signed on with a small Orlando firm specializing in corporate law. It wasn’t only for the money. He just wanted to feel clean.
He wanted to feel clean again. He wanted this man Buchanan out of his life. He wanted Mel back. He wanted everything to go back to the way it used to be. He started to put the picture in his coat pocket.
“I need that back,” Buchanan said.
“Why?” Alex demanded.
“In case I have to show it around.”
“But you said she was in—”
“Give it back to him, Alex.”
Alex hesitated and then handed it over the seat. His eyes went to the house. “I’m going up there.”
“No,” Buchanan said.
“Why not? I know if I can just talk to her—”
“You don’t know shit about her,” Buchanan said. “At least not the woman she is right now.”
“Now look, you asshole—”
“Shut up,” McCall said sharply. “Just shut up for a second and hear him out.”
Buchanan tossed out his cigarette and rolled up the window. “Your wife was scared enough to run from a hospital. I don’t care why. But something changed her. Maybe it was her head injury, maybe it was something else. But she’s different. Look at that house over there. It’s not like that pink palace of yours back home, is it?”
Buchanan held up the photograph. “And look at this woman. She’s not your pretty blonde Armani Barbie.”
“What are you saying?” Alex asked.
“She’s a different woman. And you’re going to have to be a different man to get her back.”
Alex shook his head. “This is bullshit.”
McCall held up a hand. “What do you suggest we do?”
“You have no legal right to go into that house or make her do anything,” Buchanan said.
“So we wait for her to come out?” McCall asked.
Buchanan nodded. “You wait until she’s out in the open. You wait for the right moment when she doesn’t feel threatened.” He paused. “Maybe I should talk to her first.”
The car was quiet.
“Fuck this,” Alex said.
He jerked open the door, almost falling out of the car. He heard McCall yell something, but he kept going.
Wrong . . . they were both wrong. He knew Mel. He knew that if she could just see him, everything would be clear. She loved him, and somewhere inside her she had to remember that.
He started across the parking lot, breaking into a near run by the time he got to the fence. He hurried up the steps, yanked open the screen door, and pounded on the front door.
A dog barked from somewhere deep inside the house. But no one came to the door. His eyes caught movement at the nearest window—a curtain and a shadowy face. He pounded on the door again, harder.
The porch light went on, and another light inside. A moment later the door opened a crack. An old woman with white hair stared out at him. He could hear the dog barking but couldn’t see it.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded.
Alex looked around her, trying to see inside. For one second, he thought of brushing past the woman.
Calm . . . stay calm.
“My name is Alex Tobias,” he said.
“What do you want?” the woman asked.
“I want to see my wife, please.”
“Wife? What the hell are you talking about?”
“My wife, Amelia. She’s here and—”
“Nobody’s here but me and my dog.”
She started to shut the door, but Alex thrust out a hand, stopping her. The old woman stared hard at him. The barking grew louder and frenzied.
“You best take your hand out of there, mister, if you don’t want it smashed up,” the old woman said.
Alex dropped his hand and took one step back. “I’m sorry. Look, I know my wife is here. I know she made a phone call from this house.”
The old woman’s eyes drifted, as if she were glancing at something or someone off to her left.
“Please,” Alex said. “My wife is not well. Please let me talk to her. I just want to take her home.”
In the glow of the porch light, he saw something shift in the woman’s face. Was she smiling?
“She’s gone,” the woman said.
“What?”
“You heard me. Your wife was here. But she’s not now.”
>
“I don’t believe it.”
The woman held the door open. “You want to come in and look?”
Alex felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder, and he spun around.
“Let’s go,” McCall said.
“No,” Alex said. “I’m going in there!”
McCall stepped in front of him, his hand tightening on his shoulder. “Go back to the car, Alex. Now.”
Alex stared at McCall’s face, harsh yellow in the porch light. He had seen this expression only once before, eighteen months ago when he had stood next to McCall in the moonlight on the edge of that black-water drainage canal. He had wanted to fight McCall then, but he couldn’t. Just like he couldn’t now.
He spun out of McCall’s grip and stumbled down the steps. He heard McCall say something to the woman but he kept going, heading back to the car.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Buchanan sat slumped in the seat, disgusted. Mostly with himself but with Alex Tobias as well. The man was in the backseat, wringing his hands and crying. What a fucking jackass.
What had spooked Amelia Tobias, he didn’t know. No way would she have noticed his nondescript car sitting in a parking lot in the dark. This woman had no experience at running. She would not be that observant.
“We need to find her,” Alex said. “We should be doing something.”
Buchanan glanced in his rearview mirror. The man looked like a drunk after a three-day bender. Owen McCall was slumped in the passenger seat, staring at the house. Buchanan was still wondering why the hell the partner was even there, but this wasn’t the moment to bring it up.
“We’re lucky the old lady didn’t call the police on you for pushing her,” Buchanan said.
“Maybe we should get out of here before she changes her mind,” McCall said.
Alex’s head popped between the front seats, into the dim glow of the streetlights. His face was tear-streaked but his eyes held a sheen of rage.
“Maybe we should call the police,” he said. “They can get in there and—”
“No police,” McCall said.
Alex sank back into the shadows. McCall looked back at the house and then turned to Buchanan. “So now what?” he asked.