Elusive (On The Run Book #1) (2 page)

“Oh, there’s great security in
that...renting office space to your ex is not the smartest business move. Don’t
you think he’ll look around for someplace to move his office as soon as the
lease is up?”

“No, I don’t. I know you’re not
Jack’s biggest fan, but he’s...steady, solid. He’s not going anywhere. I can
count on him.”

Helen narrowed her eyes. “I’ve
never understood what happened between you two....but it begins to make sense
now.”

“Why we divorced?”

“No, why you got married in the
first place! I mean, I understand why he fell for you—you’re vivacious and
beautiful and fun, but Jack is so...well, dull. Sure, he’s good looking—that dark
hair and those blue eyes.” She raised her eyebrows and nodded. “I totally got
that
, and he can be witty in
a sort of dry way. But after you get over his looks, he’s kind of stuffy. But
you’ve hardly ever had anyone you could count on. Who knew,” she mused, “stodgy
as sexy. Well, there are plenty of guys who are down right dull at the county
offices. You can have your pick of them.”

Zoe cleared her throat. Helen had
hit a little too close to home. Zoe didn’t want to dwell on why she’d jumped
into a hasty wedding. Once the fireworks had fizzled, she and Jack had found
themselves at opposite ends of the spectrum in almost every area of life. She
was a live-in- the-moment kind of girl. Jack lived by his calendar. She loved
surprises. Jack loved routine. They were just too different.

“Look, Helen. I know you’re trying
to help, but I’m not like you. You’ve gone all domestic and settled down with
Tucker. You’ve got a great job. That’s terrific for you, but I don’t want to
live like that. I don’t want to dress up and go to the office every day. I like
wearing this to work.” She gestured to her droopy, oversized waffle weave sweater.
It had been navy blue, but now she’d washed it so many times it had a faint
gray cast to it. Rumpled North Face khaki shorts, boat shoes, and jingly
miniature coin earrings completed her look. Helen stared at her for a moment, a
hurt look spreading across her face. Zoe said hurriedly, “I’m not saying
there’s anything wrong with your life, just that I don’t want it.”

“But how can you not want it? How
can you live from paycheck to paycheck, or, actually, job to job, not knowing
if you’re going to have enough money?” Helen leaned forward. “Think of all the
fun we could have, if we worked in the same building. My cubicle would be down
the hall from you. We could eat lunch together everyday and see each other a
lot more than we do now.”

Zoe’s stomach clenched. “And be
trapped in an office all day, filing papers and typing on a computer, a cog in
the massive machine of government.” She shook her head so adamantly that a few
strands of her dark red hair came loose from her low ponytail and brushed her
cheeks. “No way.”

“You make it sound like a death
sentence. You type and file papers here all day.”

“But I only do the work I want. I
turn down jobs, if I don’t want to do them. I’m in control.”

Helen narrowed her eyes. “When was
the last time you turned down a job?”

Zoe busied herself gathering up
the trash. “A few weeks ago. I told Kendra I couldn’t housesit.”

“Because she has a cat! Come on,
Zoe, tell the truth. You didn’t take the job because you’re allergic.”

Zoe turned away, dumped the trash,
and then hid behind the refrigerator door. “It wasn’t the cat. It was the fact
that Kendra is the devil incarnate. Looks like we’re going to get some rain.”
The overhead lights in the kitchen seemed to glow brighter as the light outside
shifted. The thick layer of dark clouds slid across the sky, bathing the
landscape in sepia tones. “Want something else to drink? I’ve got water and ice
tea.”

“Water’s fine.” Helen had her arms
crossed, and a stubborn frown crinkled her forehead. “Don’t try to change the
subject.”

Zoe filled two glasses with water
from the sink. “The point is,” she said as she crossed back to the island,
“that I can set my own hours. I value my freedom, and whatever happens,
happens. I can’t control things. If the Jetta dies, I’ll find something else or
get it fixed. And, I’ll always have some income, thanks to Aunt Amanda.”

“At least you’ve got one sane
relative,” Helen said.

Zoe’s Aunt Amanda believed real
estate was the ultimate investment. When she’d moved to Florida to live in her
Sarasota condo, she’d asked Zoe to act as the property manager for her
commercial properties, two stand-alone offices built side-by-side, like a
duplex, in a business park. After five years, her aunt decided to live in
Florida year-round and she’d deeded the commercial properties to Zoe, saying
she had plenty to live on from her other real estate investments. Zoe had tried
to talk her out of it, but Aunt Amanda had refused to listen and told Zoe to
consider the properties an early inheritance.

“Amazing that I’m even halfway
normal, isn’t it, considering Mom carted me from one audition to another from
the time I turned three months old until I was eleven.”

“Well, at least you got to live on
a tropical island for three summers in a row. I was jealous.”

Zoe sipped her water, then said,
“Yeah, the island was great, but the downside is that now the three most
mortifying years of my life are available on DVD for $14.99.”

“What is your mom up to these
days? You haven’t mentioned her lately.”

“She’s at a spa outside of Sedona
for the next two weeks for a ‘Freeing Serenity Treatment,’” Zoe said.

“What’s that?”

“Not sure, but it involves total
separation from the stress of everyday existence and silence. No television, no
music, no phones, no computer.”

“Your mom is going a week without
TV? Without E! News? How will she survive? And why would she do that to
herself? Won’t she go through withdrawal?”

Zoe shrugged. Her mom lived in
continual hope of a new reality show contract and followed celebrity news like
some people followed politics. “I think it has something to do with a certain
producer’s wife being at the spa during the same time mom is there.”

Helen said, “It all makes sense
now. And I bet she expects you to be in it, too.”

“Which I never will. If only I’d
known what
emancipated minor
meant ten years ago.” Zoe said it flippantly, but she was only half-joking.

The floorboards at the top of the
stairs groaned. Helen looked at Zoe. “Is that Jack?” Zoe nodded and Helen
asked, “What’s he doing here?”

“He lives here, Helen. He always
stops here after his run to shower and change before he goes back to the
office,” Zoe said, listening for his tread on the stairs.

“I don’t think it’s good for you,
living this way,” Helen said with a glance at the ceiling. “Still together.”

“What is this? Pick on Zoe day?
Well, I can play the same game. When will you have a baby?”

Helen held up her hands. “Okay, I
get it.” Her tone softened. “I worry about you, that’s all.”

“I know you’re concerned, but it’s
not like Jack and I are living together. We live in the same house. It’s really
no different than living in an apartment building or duplex. We hardly see each
other.”

“But you’re still...connected to
him,” she said, her tone gentle. “You’ve got his drawings on the refrigerator,
for God’s sake,” Helen said, swinging a hand to the fridge. Jack had a tendency
to draw when he was bored. Not crosshatches and squares that Zoe made while she
waited on the phone, which turned into splotches of ink that only resembled a
blob of Play-Doh. Jack’s impromptu sketches were more art than doodles. Zoe
looked at the fridge where she’d used poetry magnets to attach Jack’s sketches.
There was the Dallas skyline drawn in the margin of the phone bill, a sketch of
a book splayed open in the corner of a sticky note, and her favorite, ivy
leaves climbing into the text of a magazine article like the words were bricks
in a wall. “They’re just little sketches,” Zoe said. “It doesn’t mean
anything.”

Helen didn’t reply, only dropped
her chin and looked at Zoe with a sorrowful look.

“You’ve still got that
Pirates of the Caribbean
poster with Johnny Depp—the one you got when you were fifteen. I know it’s on
the inside closet door in your guestroom. You haven’t thrown it away.”

Helen shifted on her barstool.
“That’s for my nieces. They stay in there when they come to visit. Besides, a
movie poster is different from personal mementos. And if I had any personal
mementos from Johnny Depp, they wouldn’t be tucked away in a closet, let me
tell you,” Helen said with a grin and they both laughed, breaking the slight
tension between them. They might argue, but they were good enough friends that
they
could
argue.

Another noise from upstairs caught
their attention. “Will he come in here?” Helen asked.

“No. He never does.” She paused,
listening for his rapid descent and the solid thump of the front door as it
closed—Jack always came down the stairs fast, but it was absolutely quiet.

Helen raised her eyebrows at Zoe.
“Is he gone?”

Zoe walked over to the kitchen
doorway. Unlike the popular open floor plan of Helen’s newly constructed house,
Zoe’s house was designed in an earlier era when each room was self-contained.
Nothing flowed, and there were few open spaces, which suited Zoe and Jack just
fine. The choppy design was exactly what they wanted, but it meant that Zoe
couldn’t see the stairs or the hallway that ran along the stairs to the front
door. She leaned around the doorframe then peered up the stairs, listening, but
the only sound was a crack of thunder.

“Jack?” she called. She returned
to the kitchen, flexed a large envelope, and pulled out a stack of pictures.
“He missed these,” she said with a little frown. She and Jack communicated
mostly by message. They left notes or bills on the hall table, which was where
she’d placed the envelope, figuring he’d pick it up on his way back to the
office. She debated invading the upstairs for a moment to leave it in his room,
but dismissed the idea. She wouldn’t want him poking around in her room.

“Oh, pictures,” Helen said, wiping
her hands on a napkin. “Let me see. You hardly ever see actual pictures
anymore. Everything’s digital now.”

“These aren’t mine, and they
aren’t high quality. They’re on printer paper. Connor mailed them,” Zoe said,
referring to Jack’s business partner. “I have no idea why he’d mail anything snail
mail in the first place or why he’d send it here.”

“Maybe he forgot the office
address?”

“But remembered Jack’s home
address? No, I don’t think so. I don’t know Connor’s address off the top of my
head.”

“Where were these taken?” Helen
asked, squinting. “They’re cute. I love the cobblestones and the sidewalk café,
but they’re so grainy they’re almost Impressionistic.”

“I couldn’t figure it out either.
Connor’s afraid of anything made after 1995, so he probably took them with his
phone, which has a terrible camera. I heard him complaining the other day about
how he couldn’t use his regular camera because he couldn’t find a place to
develop film, if you can believe it.”

Zoe flipped through the pictures
again, which were all street scenes, except one. She paused at a close-up of a
Madonna, the paint faded and crackled. The figures were flat, almost
one-dimensional, barely standing out from the blue background with its
sprinkling of stars. She fingered the corner of the photo, thinking it was an
odd sort of thing for Connor to photograph. He wasn’t especially religious or
interested in art, either.

“Weird,” Helen said, handing the
pictures back. She stood and slipped her Coach bag on her shoulder. “Well, I
have to get back, too. Maybe I can beat the rain. Looks like it’s going to be a
huge storm. Think about the job,” she instructed as she left.

“Fine. I’ll think about it,” she
said to placate Helen. As she shut the door behind Helen, she felt a twinge of
misgiving. A job at the county would be a smart move—secure and safe, but she
couldn’t do it. It might be wise, but she’d be miserable. She knew she would,
and it’s not smart to make yourself miserable, she reasoned. A prick of doubt
wiggled inside. She squashed it down and went back to work.

Half an hour later, the storm
unleashed torrents of rain, and she spent fifteen minutes in the hall bathroom
after the tornado siren sounded. She emerged from the hall bath and noticed
that besides missing the envelope, Jack had also forgotten to lock the front
door. “That’s odd,” she said to herself. He was such a stickler for locking
doors and windows. Strange that he would forget.

––––––––

Dallas

Tuesday, 1:15 p.m.

––––––––

JACK Andrews pushed the windshield
wipers to HIGH. Rain pounded his windshield in thick torrents of water that drowned
out the local news on the radio. He’d hoped to catch the latest market report,
but he could do that when he got to the office. GRS, an abbreviation for Green
Recyclable Services, was located in a business park made up of single story
stand-alone businesses designed to look more like homes than offices. The
developer hadn’t skimped on trees, sprinkling islands of oaks and cottonwood
trees along with plenty of hedges for privacy. Most of the tenants were
dentists, accountants, or small medical offices.

He wheeled the car into the slot
directly in front of the door to GRS, still slightly amazed at the heavy rain.
These Texas thunderstorms that swept across the plains were unlike anything
he’d seen growing up in middle Georgia where rain usually meant steady storms
that skimmed overhead, gently soaking the land. Here, thunderstorms were
vicious, bearing down quickly with winds that drove rain slicing through the
air. Tiny pellets of hail tapped against the roof and hood of the car. His blue
Accord was seven years old and already had plenty of dents and dings. He’d
bought it used when he moved to Texas and wasn’t going to worry if it got some
hail damage.