Remember to Forget (9 page)

From the corner of her eye, she watched Mr. Blakely cross the parking lot and go into the convenience store. She launched into her final performance. “I can’t wait to see you either, Jenny,” she said, speaking loud enough, she hoped, to drown out the stranger’s frustrated shouts.

She clicked the phone off and handed it back to Mrs. Blakely.

“Is everything all right? You got directions?” The woman craned her
neck and turned a skeptical eye to the information on the notepad.

Maggie whisked the paper into her palm. “Yes, I got it.” She was in deep now and had no idea how she was going to get out of this.

“What street do your friends live on?”

Maggie opened her palm and stared at the scribbled R on the page. “Remington,” she plucked out of thin air. “Fifteen eighty-seven Remington.”

“Did your friend say how to get there from here? I didn’t hear you tell her where we were.”

“She said it’s just off of Main Street.” Did Kansas City even have a Main Street? She didn’t know, but she was on trial now. Mrs. Blakely’s pinched face made that clear. Somehow she had to extricate herself from her lies before Mr. Blakely got back to the car.

She reached for the door handle. “I’m going to go use the rest room. I’ll be right back.” She climbed out of the car before the woman could protest.

When Maggie reached the door, Mr. Blakely was coming out with three steaming coffees in a cardboard drink tray. He smiled, oblivious to her charade. But Maggie knew he’d get an earful as soon as he got back to the car.

“I’ll pull up in front of the door for you,” he said. “I got us a little something to tide us over.” He pointed to several granola bars clustered in the fourth compartment of the drink holder.

“Oh . . . great.” She forced a lightness to her tone. “Thanks. That was very kind of you.”

Which made what she was about to do even worse.

She located the rest room in the back corner, thankful it was a single stall. She locked the door behind her. Her hands were trembling as she stared into the soap-splattered mirror. What had she done? These people had been kind enough to help her, and she was treating them like dirt. Worse, she’d probably made them late getting to their daughter’s house.

But she’d dug her own grave. She couldn’t go back out there. For all she knew, the Blakelys were calling the police right now to report the psycho girl they’d hauled cross-country in their backseat.

She inspected her reflection in the dingy, pitted mirror. Her hair had worked itself out of the braid and hung in limp strings around her face. Desperation sharpened her bloodshot eyes and turned the blue of her irises to a dim gray. She glanced back at the door, her heart thudding in dull rhythm, her thoughts scrambled like so many eggs.

If she didn’t hurry, they’d come looking for her. They’d be knocking on the door, wondering if she had fainted or something. And how would she get out of her predicament then?

She had to leave now. There had to be a back entrance to the store—the one the delivery trucks used. It wouldn’t be locked from the inside. She went through the motions of flushing the toilet and washing her hands, in case anyone was listening outside the door. Then she turned the handle, opened the door a crack, and looked outside.

Two teenage girls waited in line, but she didn’t see either of the Blakelys. She couldn’t see through the plate-glass windows in front to tell if their car was there, but she couldn’t risk going out to check.

She made a dash, sidestepping the two girls and turning the opposite way she’d come in. She walked through a break room where a petite, older woman was mopping the floor. Behind the woman was the back door, an emergency bar crossing the front to discourage use. It appeared to be the kind that set off an alarm if it was pushed. She’d have to risk it.

She strode toward it as if she knew what she was doing.

“Hey! You can’t use that d—” The woman lofted her mop, but in vain.

Maggie pushed through the heavy door and broke into a run. She raced across the side parking lot and made a beeline for the auto body shop next door. There were no alarms going off behind her, but
the janitor probably thought she’d stolen something, so the police would no doubt be summoned.

She wondered if the Blakelys had figured out yet that she wasn’t coming back. Behind the shop, clumps of scrap metal and concrete seemed to sprout up wherever she set her feet. She ran blindly, instinctively in the direction that would take her farthest from Kevin, and the Blakelys, and everything about the life she’d known before yesterday.

She whipped around, searching for the source of the voice.

Chapter Eleven

I
n spite of the heat that still rose from the concrete early the next morning, Maggie shivered on her haunches in the corner of a derelict playground. Last night she’d zigzagged through a dozen city blocks, trying to get as far away from the convenience store as possible. She’d slept for a few hours curled up under a grove of spent lilac bushes. It seemed she’d spent forty of the last forty-eight hours sleeping . . . or pretending to.

The sun rimmed the school buildings beyond the playground in pink. That had to be east—the direction she’d come from. But she was thoroughly lost. She only hoped that meant she was lost to the Blakelys too. And to the police.

How had it come to this? Two days ago she had been the victim of a crime—carjacked on the streets of New York. Now
she was the criminal. A virtual fugitive from the law, for all she knew.

She reached up to touch her hair. Ugh. It was a tangled mess, laced with leaves and sticks after her night under the lilacs. She felt in her pocket for the comb she’d bought that first night at the bus stop. Careful not to lose the roll of cash, she slid the comb out and did her best to make herself presentable.

But for what? Why hadn’t she thought things through before she’d climbed in the car with those people? Now she was hundreds of miles from home with no way to get back. Sure, Kevin had treated her like a dog. But did she really think life would be any better on her own? At least at the apartment with Kevin she’d had a soft bed to sleep in and food on the table.

Her stomach yowled at the thought. She hadn’t had anything to eat since the cheeseburger at McDonald’s. She’d have to part with a couple of dollars this morning. If she keeled over from hunger, it wouldn’t matter that she had money in her pocket.

She glanced around, making sure no one was watching, then pulled the roll of cash out of her pocket and counted it. She had enough to get a room. She could get cleaned up, get something to eat.

But then what? The answer was disheartening. If she did that, it might not leave her enough cash for the bus. Had she been crazy to think she could survive on her own? Was starving to death, being on the streets homeless, really an improvement over what she’d had with Kevin in New York? If she called him, he’d surely help her get back to the apartment.

Her mind raced, formulating a plan. She’d call from a pay phone, feel him out first. Find out what he knew about the car. If it had turned up in the possession of that jerk who’d carjacked her, maybe Kevin would take pity on her. Maybe he’d believe her story. She could tell him the guy had forced her to drive all the way to Kansas City.

She blew out a puff of air. Yeah, right. Like he’d believe that. Besides, he always knew exactly how many miles were on the Honda. Unless the carjacker had taken it on one whale of a joyride, Kevin would know she was lying the minute he checked the odometer.

She fingered a twenty-dollar bill. If she hung out here in this empty playground, found a grocery store and bought a few snacks, she probably had enough money to last a few days.

But what then? She had no ID with her, she didn’t own a credit card. She had no way to get into Kevin’s bank account. Even if she had, using an ATM card would clue him in to her whereabouts in a flash. Besides, if he figured out what she’d done, he would close the bank accounts she knew about as soon as the bank opened this morning—if he hadn’t done it already.

She scrambled to her feet and shook the kinks from her legs. The oxygen she breathed in cleared her head and brought her to her senses.

I am not going back. Ever.
She didn’t care if she died homeless and alone. She’d been handed the gift of freedom on a silver—well, a
tarnished—
platter, but valuable all the same. She was going to grab on to it and never let go.

But for now, she needed a place to hide out.

No.

She whipped around, searching for the source of the voice, then realized it hadn’t been an audible whisper. Her mind must be playing tricks on her.

But she had heard that word. She was certain. And the thought that followed was as clear as if someone had breathed it in her ear:
Keep moving. Get out of this city. Keep heading west.

An eerie urgency overtook her, and she started walking. She followed the sidewalk, keeping the sun at her back. Half an hour later she came to a small convenience store. She hesitated at the door, leery after what had happened yesterday, but this place had a mom-and-pop feel to
it. It drew her inside the same way the inaudible voice had drawn her westward.

She wandered down the aisles, searching for something to eat that would fill her up and stick with her for a minimum of cash. She chose an oversized PayDay bar and a bottle of chocolate milk. Waiting in line at the checkout, she snagged a large bag of popcorn. The sign said the expiration date had passed, but it was on sale for ninety-nine cents and would provide a couple of days’ worth of filler. The price on a bag of beef jerky was almost three dollars, but it made her mouth water and she added it to her stash.

She’d probably gain three pounds eating all this junk.
Kevin will have a fit
. She nodded to herself and corrected her tense. He
would have
. If he’d known. But he would never find out. Not now. Just one more reason she needed to get away.

Her turn came in the queue, and she placed her items on the counter. But before she counted out the money, a note tacked to the bulletin board behind the clerk’s head caught her eye.

Greyhound—Fare to Salina $45.

She tipped her head. “Where is Salina?”

The clerk followed Maggie’s line of vision. “Oh . . . that? It’s three, maybe four hours up the interstate. You just missed the early route. Next bus doesn’t leave until twelve-thirty.”

“It’s in Missouri?”

“Salina? No, Salina’s in Kansas.” He pronounced it with a long
i
.
Suh-line-uh.

She liked the sound of it. And it was in Kansas. Kevin would be more likely to search for her in Siberia than in Salina, Kansas.

“I’d like a ticket for that bus, please.”

“Oh, we don’t sell tickets here. You’ll have to go to the bus station.”

“Where is that?”

He looked past her and pointed through the windows at the front of
the store. “That’s Eleventh Street. Runs east and west. You want to go west . . . maybe five or six blocks. It’s on Troost Street. You can’t miss it.”

“You want to go west,”
he’d said.

It had to be a sign. She thanked him, paid for her items, and walked to the street. Excitement welled up inside her. Something was going to happen. She felt it in her bones.