Nowhere to Run (12 page)

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Authors: Nancy Bush

Tags: #General, #Fiction

BOOK: Nowhere to Run
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Driving to Hague’s apartment, Liv kept her eye on the speedometer, careful not to drive too fast, careful not to drive too slow. She wasn’t used to Auggie’s Jeep, but she didn’t want to show it on the road. She didn’t want to give any quota-anxious cop a reason to stop her.
She crossed the Willamette and wound down the narrow eastside streets to Hague’s apartment building, passing in front of it once to get the lay of the land, spying the green and yellow neon script of Rosa’s Cantina as she went by. She parked at the end of the block, left her backpack behind the front seat after a moment’s thought, removed the envelope to take with her, pulled down the brim of her baseball cap to hide her face, and headed toward the building’s entrance. She nearly ran into the same woman with the three children from the night before and turned away quickly so the woman wouldn’t be able to see her face.
Up the elevator she went. She hurried to Hague’s door, rapping so hard against the panels she bruised her knuckles in the process.
Come on, come on, come on.
Time was running out. She’d left Auggie tied up and if anything should happen, like an unforeseen disaster, like a fire, or . . .
She shook her head. No. She just had to make this quick and get back and—
Della yanked open the door, a sour look on her face. “You.”
“I need to talk to Hague,” Liv said, trying to step inside, but Della was planted firmly in the door.
“He’s not here.”
“What? He’s not?”
“He’s at the cantina. Holding court. I’m about to go down and get him.”
“No, let me. I’ll find him and send him up.”
She laughed harshly. “Won’t do any good. He doesn’t listen to anyone when he’s in one of his moods. He’s talking. Ranting. Telling the whole world that it’s fucked up and he’s not gonna take it anymore. He just has to wear down.”
Liv didn’t care. It was a chance to see Hague without Della. An opportunity. “I’ll do my best.”
“It won’t be good enough,” she predicted, then closed the door with a firm thud in Liv’s face.
She headed back down the elevator, out to the street and to Rosa’s front door, reflecting that Della hadn’t commented about the Zuma killings. She would have, if she’d known about them, because she knew it was where Liv worked. But Della, because of Hague and his fears, stayed away from the news; more government conspiracy, according to Hague. So, at least that was a good sign. Fairly soon, however, if Liv didn’t turn herself in, someone else would.
She just needed a little more time.
Pulling her hat down yet further, Liv entered the cantina and looked around. Jimmy and Rosa were behind the bar, busy on a Friday night, and didn’t notice her arrival.
Hague was seated in his corner and practically bellowing at a small group of people who were sitting nearby, raptly listening. His rant was about government interference in everything, particularly, for some reason, how it was influencing the medical profession. By the sound of it, Liv half-expected him to launch into his theories about secret studies on humans without their knowledge or consent. Hague definitely believed he’d been subjected to tests and drugs at the hands of various mental health professionals over the years.
Liv walked toward the gathering slowly.
“The government plans these things,” one of the men in the group was agreeing with Hague. “They don’t see us as individuals. We’re like crash test dummies. No feelings! No thoughts! Available and expendable.”
“The government keeps a lid on this stuff so we can go about our daily lives,” Hague stated. “But it’s the hospitals you have to worry about.” He wagged his finger at his listeners. “That’s where the mindbenders are. That’s where experimentation takes place. Hi, Livvie.”
She hadn’t thought he’d even noticed her. “Hello, Hague.”
“This is my sister,” Hague told his followers and all four of them gave her a hard once-over. She was glad for the baseball cap and the jacket. Did they watch the news? Maybe. Maybe not. This was dangerous territory, but she desperately needed to talk to her brother.
“You’re the one who works for the government,” a woman with a long face and stringy gray hair said.
“No,” Liv answered, surprised.
“War games,” the man next to her said knowingly. He had eyes that didn’t quite focus properly.
“It’s that company,” another man, younger and rail thin, said, clearly rolling the idea over in his mind.
Liv’s anxiety level spiked. If they came up with Zuma Software . . . “Could I talk to you for a minute alone?” she asked Hague.
He slid a darting, birdlike look at her. For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, then he gestured to a chair while his four listeners reluctantly scooted their own seats back and walked a few steps away. They perched just out of earshot, apparently waiting to return at the first indication that Hague and Liv were finished.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m in trouble. Someone could recognize me.”
His gaze narrowed on her, cataloguing the way she was dressed. “What kind of trouble?”
She leaned toward him. “There was a shooting earlier today . . . did you know about it?” Hague shook his head, so she quickly brought him up-to-date on what had taken place at Zuma, finishing with, “I know it sounds crazy, but I think they were after me.”
“We’re both crazy, Livvie. Everybody says so.”
“And as a result, I’ve done something—irresponsible.” She lightly tapped one fist against her teeth, seized with anxiety.
“What?”
“I’ve . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Auggie. How she’d kidnapped him and tied him up. Every moment she spent away from him and out in public felt like an eternity.
“Who did the shooting?” Hague asked in a low voice, matching her tone. His eyes darted around the room suspiciously.
“I don’t know.”
His eyes came back to hers, holding her gaze tautly. “Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You know who they are,” he insisted.
She shook her head. “Really, Hague, I don’t. But this has got something to do with the package from Mama. It’s about my past.
Our
past. Yours and mine.”
“Our past,” he repeated.
“I’ve had this feeling for a while, that someone’s stalking me. And then when I got the pictures from Mama yesterday and then today. . . .” She swallowed hard. “I just want to know what you think. Have I got this right? Do you believe me?”
His eyes were dark pools of an emotion she recognized as fear. “It’s us,” he agreed. “They’re after
us.
Could be any one of them,” he added, glaring tightly at his disciples, who were still waiting for Liv to leave.
“Not them.”
“I told them about the package. I told them yesterday.”
“You weren’t here yesterday.”
“I was. I came later. They said you’d been here . . .” He glanced over to Jimmy and Rosa and the bar. “I told them. I told all of them.” Now he looked at his four listeners. “There were more here last night.
They knew.
”
Liv’s heart clutched. Though she felt his paranoia as if it had jumped to her like a spark of electricity, she didn’t agree with him. It wasn’t these people. Quixotically, and like always, the more he agreed with her, the less she felt certain of herself.
“I think it’s the Mystery Man who knew Mom. He’s at the center of it.”
“It’s not these people?” He glared at them, turning his head suspiciously as he looked at all their faces individually.
“I think it’s about the zombie,” she said.
“The doctor,” he said.
“The doctor?” she repeated. He nodded, waiting for her to continue and she questioned him, “The man in the picture? The one who’s stalking to the camera?” She drew the picture from the envelope and slid the photo to him again. “He’s a doctor?”
Hague pulled back from it, as if the paper were covered in germs, but his gaze was zeroed in on the man. “He looks like . . .”
“Who?” Liv asked when he trailed off. “I got the same hit. Like I knew him.”
“We both know him. From when we were kids.”
She gazed at him helplessly. “How can you know him from when we were kids? You were so little.”
“I grew up though,” he said, his eyes starting to lose focus.
“No, Hague. Don’t leave. Please.”
“He’s always there . . . out of the corner of my eye.” Slowly his head turned and he focused on the bar and Jimmy and Rosa and the red pepper lights looping around the glasses hanging upside down.
His hand shot out and grabbed her upper arm and Liv yelped in surprise. “Don’t let him get you, too.”
“The stalking man?”
“He’ll drill holes in your head. And he’ll put receivers inside the folds of your brain. And you’ll be a zombie, too.”
She saw his eyes start to roll.
“Wait. Hague,
wait.
” He was going into one of his fugue states again. “Don’t . . . don’t . . .”
“We saw him again, didn’t we?” he asked in a drifting tone.
“Hague!” she hissed harshly.
But he was gone. Into that distant place. His eyes becoming slits and then closing altogether. Liv looked around for help and the four acolytes rushed back.
“What’d you do to him?” the woman with the long face and straggly hair asked.
Liv edged away. “He does this sometimes.”
“But you sent him there!” the younger man accused her.
She shook her head vaguely as she backed toward the door. Della had been right: she wasn’t able to get Hague back to the apartment. Especially not now.
With thoughts of letting Della know about Hague, she stumbled toward the cantina’s entrance but when she got to the door Della was already there, blocking her exit. She glanced past Liv to Hague, muttered something furious, then pushed on past her.
Liv didn’t have time to care. She was filled with wriggling eels of anxiety herself. She needed to get back to Auggie and away from places and people who might recognize her. She needed a place to hole up and think. Time.
How long would it take? How many hours, or days?
Or weeks?
She’d embarked on this crazy journey and now she didn’t quite know what to do next.
“Groceries,” she said aloud, halfway back to his place.
Exiting Sunset Highway, she wound the Jeep down Sylvan hill and toward a strip mall with a Safeway as the anchor store. Keeping her head low, she hitched her backpack over one shoulder, grabbed a shopping cart and headed inside the brightly lit grocery, winding through the aisles, grabbing items for more sandwiches, her mind far away from the errand at hand.
In line at the checkout, she heard the checker behind her talking over the Zuma massacre with a male customer.
“Two of ’em are dead,” the female checker was saying in a conversational way. “They’re not saying who yet. Gotta inform the family first and stuff.”
The man answered her: “How many were shot?”
“Half a dozen, maybe?”
Four
. Liv swallowed hard and carefully perused the rack of magazines at the end of her checkout stand. Her mind’s eye flew through the faces of her coworkers: Paul, Jessica, Kurt and Aaron.
Aaron . . .
“Are you all right, miss?”
Liv’s checker was looking at her with concern and Liv realized she’d made some kind of whimpering sound. She swallowed, shook her head, and said in a forced rasp, “Dry throat. Got a cold.”
“Yeah. Been going around.” Liv focused on the woman’s name tag: JEANNIE. She kept her eyes lowered so Jeannie wouldn’t spend too much time looking at her face, then reached in her backpack for her wallet, careful not to let anyone see her gun. She then counted out the cash for the groceries, and watched as a helper put the sacks in her cart. He insisted on wheeling the cart out toward the Jeep, though Liv would have preferred to do it herself. A scream was building up inside her head, one she just managed to tamp down as she thanked the young man and climbed behind the steering wheel, letting out a pent-up breath.
It took another fifteen minutes to drive the rest of the way to Auggie’s house. She’d left the garage door open, but once parked inside she leapt from the vehicle and ran around to the rear, yanking the door down behind the Jeep, cutting off the view from prying eyes, throwing herself into pitch dark. She stopped for a moment, gathering her bearings, then she opened the driver’s side back door and hefted out the two bags of groceries, noting how clean his car was except for the gray hoodie flung across the other back seats.
Juggling the bags, she was closing the Jeep’s back door when her brain kicked in. Setting the bags down, she kept the door ajar to keep on the interior light, then she circled the front of the vehicle and opened the passenger door. Punching the button on the glove box, she held her breath, expecting . . . what? Some big reveal about him?

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