Shadow Woman: A Novel (24 page)

Seriously, the shittiest day ever.

At least as far as she could recall, which—ha-ha—wasn’t all that far.

She got out of the shower and used her one towel to dry both her body and her hair, then pulled on her oversized tee shirt. She wiped the steam from the mirror and looked again at her new face. She did remember seeing it in the mirror every morning for the past three years, but now she also remembered that it wasn’t her face. And she remembered without pain. Progress was definitely being made, but she wasn’t certain she’d ever truly get used to that face, as if something deep inside her was mourning what she’d lost.

“What did they do to you?” she asked the face in the mirror, which, of course, had no answers and a whole helluva lot of questions.

She turned on the TV in front of the bed. The motel didn’t get many channels, and it wasn’t a very good TV, but all she wanted was a look at the news. Did they have her name, her photo? By morning would everyone in the city be looking for her?

Get real
, a cynical little voice said. What made her think her little carjacking was of that much importance in a city with D.C.’s murder rate?

While she waited for the news to come on, Lizzy sat on the end of the bed and packed her belongings into the big, cheap bag she’d bought at the drugstore. Her smaller purse went in the very bottom, everything else in the middle, and the scissors placed so the handles were at the very top, easy to grab if she needed them. She wished again for her backpack, those power bars, the knife, her new running shoes.

She wouldn’t make the same mistake with this bag that she’d made with the backpack; from now on she’d take everything she had with her wherever she went. It wasn’t as if she’d be carting around a huge suitcase.

The story about the supposed drive-by at the barbecue restaurant was one of the first stories on the news, and Lizzy held her breath as she waited for the bit about the stolen car and the assault on the driver. It didn’t come. The newscaster mentioned that a bystander had been wounded, but he’d been treated at the hospital and released, and then they moved on to other news.

Huh. Just as her cynical little voice had said: a stolen car wasn’t exactly news in D.C., but the way it had happened, where and when … She felt a little dissed. Here she’d been so worried, wasting all that energy, and evidently she didn’t rate even a blip on the dangerous-criminal radar.

She didn’t change channels but kept listening, in case they added that part of the story later. But—nothing. There wasn’t any mention of a chase and attempted murder—hers, by the way—on the interstate, either.

No, they don’t want anyone else to find you. They want you to themselves
.

Forget the police. That was so much scarier than being wanted by the police.

It was possible they’d shown her face on another news broadcast, or on another channel, but she didn’t think so. The mysterious “they” were controlling everything, even the news that was released to the public. Again she wondered if she was the good guy or the bad guy. She didn’t know, and at the moment she didn’t much care. Her only care, her only priority, was to survive.

Looked at logically, though, she thought she had to be a good-guy type. She didn’t feel any homicidal tendencies, nor did she want to knock over an armored car. If she was a bad guy, her badness seemed to be limited to car theft, which was way too minor to have people trying to hunt her down and kill her. There had to be more. She just didn’t know what that “more” was.

It was too early in the day for her to go to bed—at least, it
would be on a normal day. But this wasn’t a normal day; she didn’t even know what normal was, anymore. She was tired, and she needed to get rest where and when she could. After getting fully dressed, in case she had to run in a hurry, with her bag filled with everything she currently possessed sitting on the floor beside her bed, she closed her eyes.

And slept.

She’d assumed, when she first closed her eyes, that if she dreamed at all her dream would be one of fear, a nightmare about the unknown, about them.

Instead she dreamed about X again: X in her room of color, and in that big bed. Even in her dream she was a little surprised that he’d shown up again. This time she was on top and he was the one wearing handcuffs. He liked it. Not as much as when he was in complete control, but still … he liked it. Interesting. X liked a touch of kink. He liked her. And oh, the sex was good. It was dream sex, but that was infinitely better than nothing. Which was what she’d enjoyed the past however many years. Nothing. Nothing and no one.

She whispered into X’s ear, as she moved slowly, taking all of him in, riding him as if it were the last time, the only time.
I should’ve let them kill me
 … 
It would have been better than this, easier … No, no, they did kill me, and you let them…

Lizzy woke with her hands clenched and her heart pounding. It was dark outside. She wasn’t wearing a watch, the clock on the bedside table was blinking the wrong time, and she didn’t dare put the battery in her cell phone just to check the time. She should probably dump the cell, but she couldn’t make herself do that quite yet. What if there were an emergency and she needed it? As in making a call to 911, screaming for help because someone was trying to kill her? Yeah, she’d keep the phone for a little bit longer, at least until she had some sort of concrete plan.

She didn’t dare turn on a light, since there was likely a new
desk clerk on duty by now and if he or she looked this way and saw there was a light on in room 107 … well, she didn’t want to take that chance. But with the heavy curtains tightly closed, she took a small risk and turned on the television. Just seeing what program was on helped her to narrow the time to within the hour. Flipping through the channels until she found a twenty-four-hour news station, she stopped. There, in the bottom left-hand corner, was the precise time.

She needed the precise time. Time was important. With a flick of her thumb, the television went dark again.

She’d slept five hours, which was amazing, all things considered. Another hour, maybe two, and she could venture out, find an old car, and hot-wire it. No way could she stay here until morning. The desk clerk’s intentions had been good, but what if Cindy had second thoughts? What if she told a friend who told a friend who told the wrong friend?

She couldn’t trust anyone.

If she stole a car that was parked overnight, it shouldn’t be missed for several hours. She should find a house, then, or an apartment building. Maybe a motel like this one, where maybe someone had been careless enough to leave his keys in the ignition. It happened all the time. But she wouldn’t do it at this motel, because it would bring too much attention to the place. Cindy would definitely talk if she thought a woman she’d helped had stolen a paying guest’s vehicle.

By tomorrow morning she could be well into Virginia, maybe even North Carolina. She could dump the car before sunup, and at that distance away from the city a bus would be safe enough. Well, as safe as anything else.

A plan. Finally.

And until then? She didn’t think she could sleep anymore. If she tried she’d be worried that she’d sleep too long, and that would keep her awake. Since the pain of remembering seemed to have disappeared, she sat and tried to remember … something,
anything. Just some small things, such as where she’d lived, whether she’d worn her hair short or long, if she’d gotten a flu shot every year. She had for the past three years, but what about before that? That two-year gap remained stubbornly blank.

Less than an hour later, she heard the roar of a powerful motorcycle engine as it pulled into the parking lot. Someone coming in late would probably also sleep late, and the idea of stealing a motorcycle and flying out of town with the wind in her hair was oddly appealing. Did she even know how to ride one? Oh, hell yeah. She couldn’t pull up any particular memories, but she was suddenly certain that she was no stranger to a motorcycle. She’d already decided not to steal a car from this parking lot, but she was curious. She had to look.

With the lights in the room off, no one should be able to tell that she’d parted the curtains just enough to peer into the parking lot. The motorcycle’s parking lights went off just as she looked out, so she knew precisely where to focus.

The bike was on the other side of the L-shaped lot, parked beneath the one broken streetlamp in the area. For a moment the man who stepped away from the motorcycle was so lost in darkness she could barely make out his shape, but then he moved through a lit section, and her heart stopped.

Him. The man from Walgreens.

X.

Okay, this was taking coincidence way too far.

He stayed in shadows as much as was possible, given that the parking lot was so well lit. Was it her imagination, or was he walking straight for her? His gait was smooth, strong, confident, as if he knew right where she was—and he was coming to get her.

Shit! He was one of them!

Lizzy moved fast. She slung the strap of the big bag over one shoulder, smoothly pulled out the scissors, and darted into the
bathroom. There was enough light coming through the small window for her to at least orient herself. She could go out the window, but there might be a better way. Swiftly she unlocked and opened it, hoisted herself up, and used the tip of the scissors to break one of the frosted glass panes. The sound of breaking glass wasn’t horribly loud, but it was … enough. Maybe. Leaning out the window slightly, she made a soft sound, an exclamation, and then she made a fist and popped it against the window frame.

And she waited.

He didn’t make her wait long. It was darker here, behind the hotel, but she knew where he’d appear and her gaze was there when he came ghosting around the back of the building thinking he’d find her there, either halfway out the bathroom window or sitting dazed on the ground after falling on her head. Sucker.

She eased down, tiptoed toward the door, and left the room as quietly as possible. She ran along the concrete sidewalk that ran the length of the motel. For a split second, she thought about stealing his bike. No, that wouldn’t work. This guy, these people, obviously had some sophisticated way of tracking her down. He’d surely have a way to track his own vehicle, maybe through some satellite GPS system that could disable the bike when he called it in.

She didn’t have much time before X realized she hadn’t gone out the window and headed back this way, so she had to move. Her direction was chosen by patches of darkness, by paths where she could remain out of sight.

Lizzy found a shadow along the hotel wall, where she stopped, held her breath, and listened. X might search for her out back for a while, he might investigate the immediate area beyond the broken bathroom window and attempt to track her from there, but he wouldn’t spend a lot of time doing that. In no more than a minute or so, probably sooner, he’d figure out
what she’d done and come steaming back this way. And she was on foot, at least for now.

Just to make things fair, she thought he should be on foot, too.

Taking a chance that he was alone, that there wasn’t someone close by, watching, Lizzy took off at a run toward X’s motorcycle. Her first thought had been to run away, to head in the opposite direction, but this was too good a chance to pass up. She didn’t have a plan, but she was quickly learning to trust her instincts, to listen to that inner voice that had kept her alive until now. When she reached the motorcycle, happy for the moment that he’d parked it in the darkest spot in the parking lot, she took a couple of seconds to look it over. She had to tamp down her appreciation for the fine machine in order to do what had to be done.

She dropped to her haunches, took the scissors, and cut the spark plug wires. How did she know those were the spark plug wires? Who knew? She didn’t understand where the knowledge came from, but it really didn’t matter. As soon as it was done, she felt a short-lived rush of relief. Then she stood up and walked away. It was tempting to run, but if anyone was watching, a brisk walk would raise less alarm.

She didn’t dare go back toward her room, so she kept walking away, onto the narrow strip of pavement between this motel and the next and then toward the main road. She kept an ear cocked for sounds behind her but didn’t hear anything. She let herself enjoy the luxury of a small smile. He was going to be so pissed when he couldn’t start his bike.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t take the time to truly enjoy her act of vandalism. Bits and pieces of knowledge were coming back to her, and while she’d seen cars quickly and easily hot-wired on TV, TV generally sucked at accuracy. She did remember hot-wiring a car, could see her hands doing the work, but her memory was telling her it wasn’t quite that easy. She either had to get under the hood or else she needed a portable drill to remove the ignition. Either method would require tools;
her bag felt damn heavy, but unfortunately there weren’t any tools in it, unless you counted the handy-dandy scissors. They wouldn’t get her a car, though, unless she used them to threaten a driver and take his keys.

She reached the main drag and turned left, breathing a sigh of relief that she’d made it this far without being tackled from behind. She hadn’t heard any footsteps, but she was beginning to not assume anything was beyond X’s capabilities. She risked looking behind her, and almost went limp with relief when she saw no one following her. Deep down, she’d really expected to see him coming toward her, his steps completely silent, a menacing figure of darkness.

Who the hell was he? She was suddenly, irrationally furious that she’d had those great erotic dreams about a man who was trying to kill her. It was as if her subconscious had pulled a really sick joke on her.

Forget about that. Who he was, and why he was after her, was far more important. This meant their initial meeting in Walgreens hadn’t been accidental, and, if she had to take a wild leap here, not their initial meeting at all. He was someone from those missing two years. On some level she’d recognized him, and that was why she’d abruptly panicked and run. It was the running that had tipped him off that some of her memories were coming back and that she was now, somehow, a threat to him.