Shadow Woman: A Novel (26 page)

He had to deal with his motorcycle, too, get the spark plug wires replaced. The motorcycle was still the best way for him to travel anonymously.

He also needed to come up with a plan, move some people into place. If Felice thought he wouldn’t hit back, she was bat-shit crazy. No way would he let this go unanswered.

It went without saying he’d be burning his bridges in this country. Taking out a high-ranking employee of the NSA would bring down all kinds of shit on his head, especially if Al had gone along with Felice in the assassination attempts. He’d thought about it some more and even though Al would have used different people and different methods, that didn’t mean he hadn’t agreed to let Felice handle it. Xavier couldn’t assume Felice was acting on her own authority.

If she could use the NSA’s resources to track both himself and Lizzy, they were probably as good as dead. The average citizen had no idea of the extent to which their own government spied on them. But if she did use the NSA, that was an official link between them that might bring up questions. She could resort to that later, but for now Xavier bet that she would still be using her outside sources. As she lost each battle, she’d escalate to the next step.

That wasn’t Xavier’s way. One step at a time was stupid. If it were him, he’d go straight for the big guns, annihilate the threat, and move on. Why waste time dicking around?

But getting to her wouldn’t be easy. She’d take precautions now, after her first attempt had failed. He might have to take out Al at the same time, something that would be infinitely more difficult. And he had to deal with Lizzy.

Tactically, he should remove the threat first, then go after Lizzy. That was what Felice and Al would both expect him to do, to follow training and deal with the immediate threat. But
even though he’d been protecting Lizzy all these years, none of them knew that he and Lizzy had been lovers during most of the training and operation phase. Al thought it bothered Xavier because a woman had been killed during the action, and afterward he had become more protective, angrily rejecting the need for the memory wipe that they’d performed anyway. When he and Lizzy had been together, they’d gone to great lengths to keep their relationship private; hookups and affairs did happen between operatives, but because of the extremely sensitive nature of the mission, they’d both thought their connection should be kept on the down-low.

That was then. This was now. When it came to Lizzy, to hell with tactics. She was on the run, she was scared, and Felice would still be searching for her. Xavier wanted to get to her first. Even if she didn’t remember him, even if she was now running from him as much as she was from Felice, he could calm her down and get her to a safe place, convince her that he’d never hurt her. He wanted to know how much she remembered, how much of Lizzy had surfaced. The essence of Lizzy was back; that she had even partial recall was more than he’d ever hoped.

He placed a call, knowing his chops were going to get busted, big time. “I need a tow for the Harley.” He gave his location, and waited for the fun to begin.

There was a pause. “You have an accident?”

He could just say it had quit on him, but he wasn’t going to put the blame on such a fine machine. “She cut the spark plug wires.”

He heard a muffled snort of laughter. “No shit? Fuck, I’m in love.”

“Don’t get any ideas, dickhead. She’s mine. Just make the arrangements.”

*   *   *

Sitting in Sean’s sister’s car in the parking lot of a Leesburg, Virginia, twenty-four-hour Walmart, Lizzy watched the people around her, looking for anything suspicious, and furiously thinking.

She had to figure out how X had found her.

She’d ditched her car; that had been the most likely means of tracking her. But he’d still found her within hours. So there
had
to be a tracker on something she was carrying. But what?

She pulled her purse from the bottom of the shopping bag, took out the cell phone and battery, and stared at them. The phone hadn’t been turned on, hadn’t even been activated. She’d been so careful, was there any way in hell X could have tracked her through this phone? But how else could he have found her so soon?

Maybe “They” had implanted a chip in her skull, or something. Maybe they weren’t tracking her phone; maybe they were tracking
her
.

Except the idea didn’t trigger even a glimmer of a headache, unlike the memories she’d come to accept as a real part of her unknown life. Still, she spent a few minutes raking her fingers through her hair, feeling her skull for a small raised section.
Nada
. Finally she shook her hair back and sat there feeling like the fool she would definitely have looked like to anyone who’d happened to see her.

That didn’t rule out the possibility of an implant on her back, but there wasn’t any way she could check herself for that. Or maybe laparoscopic surgery had implanted a chip on her liver, or something like that.

No, no Band-Aid scars on her belly.

She was running out of ideas, and was back to the phone. Except that didn’t make sense. The phone hadn’t been out of her possession since she’d bought it, and had never had the battery installed, much less actually been turned on and used.

She could have tossed the cell phone out the window miles
back, just to be on the safe side, but she hadn’t. Watching people come and go at Walmart gave her a better idea, anyway.

She took a long, considering look at her handbag, then sighed. She really liked that bag, and she carried it a lot. She liked it so much, in fact, that she probably hadn’t changed bags in at least a month, which was a long time for her. That made the purse a suspect, too.

She sighed again, then seized the bag and turned it upside down, dumping the contents into the plastic drugstore bag. The purse was leather, butter soft, and just the right size for her essentials, but it wasn’t impossible that it was bugged—unlikely, but not impossible. It had to go. If she had the time she’d search it, take it apart seam by seam, to be certain, but time was not her friend. Every delay held the potential for disaster. She had to keep moving.

She’d slowed X down by cutting his motorcycle’s spark plug wires, but she didn’t kid herself that the delay was anything more than temporary. All she’d done was buy herself a little time—if she was lucky, if he was working alone. If he wasn’t, which was far more likely, then he’d have backup, maybe just around the corner. He could be closing in on her right now.

No, if he’d had backup close by, X would have found her by now and she’d be … what? Dead? In custody?

Beneath him in bed, her legs wrapped around him…

God!
She shoved the thought away. She had to be one sick puppy, having sex thoughts about the man who was trying to kill her. Damn those dreams; if she had another one, she might have to punch herself in the face, just because.

She removed the cash—less than sixty bucks—from Sean’s wallet and stuffed it down into the shopping bag, wishing as she did that he was a wealthier man who’d carried more money on him. She considered his credit card, dismissed it as too risky, then dropped his wallet into her purse.

Even though the lit parking lot was an oasis of light in the
darkness, she put on the hat and sunglasses. Let people think she was weird, or some politician’s wife up to no good, though why anyone would meet a lover at Walmart she didn’t know. People did weird things every day, especially at Walmart. There were cameras
everywhere
, and she wasn’t ready to be spotted.

As she walked toward the well-lit store, she fingered the cell phone, searching for some clue as to how X had found her. She ran her fingertips along the phone, the case, even the battery. Her attention was split between the phone and her surroundings, because she couldn’t let anything slip by her, but she wanted to know
how
. She wanted to know why, too, but at the moment the how was more important.

Then she felt it. There, under the 7 on her keypad, the smallest of bumps. She could barely feel it, would never have paid any attention if she hadn’t been looking for something, anything, out of the ordinary.

“You
asshole
,” she said beneath her breath as she walked into the Walmart. An employee standing by the shopping carts looked up sharply, and Lizzy smiled at him. “Not you.”

The man acknowledged her with a nod, but he remained wary. Good. He’d remember her. When X showed up maybe he’d waste some time searching the aisles for her, because he’d be so sure she was here. He’d be wrong.

But when the hell had he gotten his hands on the phone? The only possible answer was that he, or someone else, had broken into her house while she was asleep and planted the tracker. God, that was a creepy thought, but what else could it be?

That also brought up another question: if someone had been in her house, and this someone wanted her dead, why hadn’t she been killed in her sleep?

Because something had changed—and the only thing she knew of that had changed was herself. By taking the small steps she’d taken, she’d set off a situational alarm. The thought had
occurred to her before, but the tracker on the cell phone was proof positive.

Finding the tracker was a relief. Now she knew how he’d been doing it, and she knew for certain what to do. She placed the purse in the cart seat and wheeled toward the grocery section, trying to move fast without looking as if she were in too much of a hurry. She grabbed a bag of orange-slice candy from an end of the aisle display and tossed it into the cart, just to make it look as if she were actually shopping. Paper plates went on top of the candy.

People who shopped at this hour of the morning apparently weren’t in a hurry. Why would they be here at this hour? They worked weird shifts, or wanted to avoid the crowds, or maybe they were just night owls. They meandered down the aisles, stopping with their carts turned to the side, blocking anyone else who wanted to go down the same aisle. And man, what a motley crew they were: druggies, men on their way home from a bar, people who looked as if they never left their houses at all by the light of day. That one looked as if he might live in his car. She shouldn’t judge; she might be next. But, damn—over there was a woman wearing pink camouflage tights two or three sizes too small, teamed with a lime-green tank top and no bra. Lizzy blinked and hurried past, lest she be blinded.

She passed a man with a black eye, a limp, and a cart filled with beef jerky and beer. Dang. With her hat and sunglasses, and her too-big drugstore tee shirt, Lizzy fit right in. She even qualified as one of the better-dressed shoppers.

Come to think of it, she’d love some beef jerky of her own, just to have something to eat that didn’t come out of a vending machine, but she couldn’t take the time to actually go through a checkout line. X would be behind her, and she didn’t know how close he was. He might not be the only one, this time.

Her heart jumped at the idea. Fear could stop her in her
tracks if she allowed it, so she shook off the feeling of panic. She had to push forward, one step at a time.

There were a few people in the grocery section of the huge store, but she found an aisle that was momentarily deserted. She popped the battery into her cell phone and switched it on, then swiftly pushed her cart to the next aisle, where a short, plump Hispanic woman intently studied the labels on two different cans of soup. Like Lizzy, the woman had placed her purse, a huge red tote-bag kind of thing, in the cart’s seat that was intended for a toddler’s butt or a loaf of bread—or an unguarded purse. And, hallelujah, that purse was wide open at the top. Lizzy didn’t even slow down as she walked by and dropped the phone into the bowels of the big red bag. Considering the depth and girth of that purse, it might be weeks before the phone was discovered—if it didn’t ring.

She moved on to the frozen foods, plucked Sean’s wallet from her purse, and reached into the cold case for a pizza, leaving the wallet behind as she removed a large pepperoni and tossed it into her cart. Another crumb. Figure
that
one out, Mister X.

On the next aisle over she parked her shopping cart, with the empty purse, candy and all still in it, and made a beeline toward the exit. As she went past the checkout lanes she whipped off her hat and her glasses, fluffed her hair, and hoped that the employee who’d noticed her walking in wouldn’t notice her walking out, in case X arrived while the woman who now had Lizzy’s purse was still shopping.

She thought of all the things she’d like to buy here: boots, a different hat, protein bars, water, a knife or two or three. But not here, and definitely not now. There would be another Walmart, farther down the road. Or better yet, a string of smaller stores that were less likely to have working security cameras. Maybe she could find a flea market, though for that she might have to wait for the weekend. She’d definitely need a
new car before then. Hell, she’d need to dump Sean’s car by morning, because as soon as he woke up and could get to a phone the theft of his sister’s car would be reported.

As soon as she dumped that car, she was going to turn south. Every clue would lead west, and she’d be going toward Florida instead. Would that work? Was it enough of a head-fake to spring her free?

There were still plans to make, decisions that had to be made, but for the first time on this long day Lizzy could truly imagine herself making it down the road.

One step at a time.

While his guy grumbled about being called out in the middle of the night for transport and repair, Xavier leaned against the wall of the windowless garage and once again studied the map on his cell. The mechanic—Rick—was one of his people, a whiz with engines of all kinds as well as a more-than-decent sniper.

Changing spark plug wires wasn’t a difficult or time-consuming job. He could have done it himself if he’d had the parts, but it was a plus to have someone on his payroll who had a quiet place to do the work as well as the spare parts and the expertise.

Xavier had checked Lizzy’s progress often since calling Rick. He’d followed her progress away from the hotel, then west on I-66. Two blinking dots, representing her cell phone and her wallet, had stayed together—until now.