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“Maybe, maybe not.” He coughed, the sound deep and achy in the silence between them. “Word’s out that the Anarchists will do anything to ensure their leader, Derrick Reese, doesn’t serve time. Maybe if I put in a word with the sheriff’s office we could have this thing escalated to a federal level. We could live with that.”
“I can’t.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “If we don’t do that, if you run, that only makes you guilty of a crime.”
“I can’t. I’ll run. Can you help me?”
“Erin. Are you out of your mind? Did you hear what I just told you? If I can get to the feds, if you admit everything, they can keep you safe.”
“They’ll want me to testify,” she repeated, her heart thumping.
“Of course.”
“Under oath?”
“Under oath,” he agreed. “Erin, what is this all about? Who are you protecting?”
Silence hung between them.
“Who was it, Mike? Who turned me in?”
He took a long drag on a hand-rolled cigarette, his thick brows drawing down over narrow eyes.
“Word has it that only this morning that no-good boyfriend of yours squealed louder than a pig facing a luau.”
“Steven,” she whispered. And despite everything, the betrayal still hurt. She couldn’t trust anyone, not with the truth, not with who was really the witness.
Smoke curled around them and her nose tickled. She wanted to sneeze but instead she coughed.
“Mike, I can’t give you details. Just trust me. I have to run. I need to disappear.”
“Erin?”
“Mike. Please, can you help me? It’s life or death. Please, just trust me.”
He stood there looking at her for a long time before he nodded. “For how long?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “As long as it takes.”
“Come.” He motioned with one hand. She followed him and together they worked out a plan.
She shuddered. She ached to go home, to where it all began—San Diego. And she knew she might never go home again.
She opened her eyes and for a moment she froze, thoughts of home driven from her mind.
“The children,” she murmured. She would have stayed for them, if it had been necessary. But the children were safe. She’d made sure of that. The principal had corralled many of them before they’d exited the building. The ones who had managed to slip outside were under the watchful eyes of two senior teachers.
She’d miss them, even the troublesome ones. Her life had become one of loss, of regret—it was what she hadn’t expected of a life on the run, or more aptly what she hadn’t thought of until the reality hit.
Focus, she reminded herself as the cab swung onto the congested street that she called home. Overhead, signs advertising products of the East and West vied for attention as the cab pushed farther into the crowded streets, and she wondered if this had been an error in judgment. Should she have gone directly to the airport? Were they on her trail even now? Or did they think her dead?
They.
She had been running from the faceless they for too long.
She could see the Victorian elegance of a former British mansion, the timeless beauty of its stone exterior a sign that she was almost home. She took courage from the familiar sight as the building pushed its stately presence into a world that seemed to be fighting for space. It was as if it refused to relinquish the hold it once had had, standing rock solid as the world around it changed.
The cab swung around the corner and the landscape changed again. If there was anything she loved about Georgetown it was how the old laced its presence through the new, how British traditions merged with Malay. She had purposely taken an apartment relatively close to the school within the hustle and bustle of daily life in Georgetown. Her apartment was a low-slung building in a cluttered section of the city where shops and open-air stalls dotted the landscape and fronted the more traditional brick-and-mortar buildings behind them. She’d loved this area from the first moment she’d laid eyes on it.
Not today.
Today, even under the brilliant afternoon sun, it seemed flush with shadows. On the sidewalk a man walked in a djellaba as his leather sandals skimmed easily across the concrete. His wife walked by his side in her traditional burka, her face and her thoughts hidden from the world by a layer of cloth and a veil. It wasn’t an uncommon sight in Georgetown. Yet today, despite the fact that he held her hand—it all seemed to take on a sinister edge. Erin turned away to look out the opposite window.
The cab pulled over, and as she opened the door, the scent of curry intermingled with the smell of sewer. It was familiar and had begun to remind her of home, of here. After two months Georgetown felt comfortable, safe. Had, she thought with regret.
“Could you wait, please?” she requested as she stepped out of the cab.
Inside the apartment building, the narrow hallway with its faded morning glory wallpaper was empty. Only the chatter of a television set coming through one door and the clunking of the ancient washing machine down the hall broke the quiet. She stopped at the dark wood door at the end of the hallway. For a minute it was as if she wasn’t here, as if this nightmare had never happened.
Daniel, she thought, and a sob hitched deep inside her and threatened her control. She took a deep breath. She needed to focus on running, but she could only think of Daniel. He was one of the few friends she’d made in Georgetown, and he’d still be alive if she hadn’t loaned him her car. He hadn’t asked to borrow it any more than he’d asked to die. It had all been her fault.
Her fault. Those two words kept reeling through her mind.
Stop it, she told herself. Just stop it. Now wasn’t the time for recriminations or even grieving. She had to get out before she jeopardized someone else’s life.
Erin reached for the knob and hesitated. She ran her tongue along her bottom lip. She looked down at the key in her hand. This time when she reached she touched the heavy brass knob, but then dropped her hand and took a step back. A small knot of white tissue lay on the floor. She worried her fingers against her palms, staring at that tiny piece of tissue.
“Erin.”
She jumped, bit back a shriek and swung around.
“Yong, you scared me.”
“There was someone asking for you earlier today. Did they find you?” the apartment owner asked. His face was downcast, and his slight shoulders slouched as they always did. “I’m sorry. After he left I opened your door just to do a check. We’ve had to replace some of the locks in the building.” He shrugged. “I didn’t go in, but I wanted to make sure your lock was working, that it couldn’t be easily compromised. Besides, I’m sorry if he was a friend of yours, but I didn’t like the look of him. And a double check is never a bad idea.”
She unclenched her hand and took a step back. “I thought someone had been here.”
“I thought you might.” He smiled. “The old tissue in the door frame trick. Not a bad idea for a single woman. Not that we have much trouble with break-ins but you never know.” He cleared his throat, the sound raspy and raw in the narrow hallway. “Just glad you haven’t needed it.”
“Thanks, Yong. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“No trouble,” Yong said, but his eyes narrowed and he took a step closer. “You’re all right?”
“Fine. Thank you.” She turned the key over in her hand.
“That doesn’t sound fine to me. Remember, like I’ve said, you need anything. I have daughters your age. But you know that. You met one of them.” He hesitated. “You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he said and turned away, jingling keys in his hand.
“Yong.”
“Yeah.” He stopped.
“What did he look like? The man, I mean.” She fumbled with words and struggled to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“A big guy, six feet, maybe more. Hard to tell from my view down here.” He chuckled. “I don’t know. Not bad-looking.” He paused. “Why? You think you might know him?”
“Was he Malay?” she asked.
“Don’t think so. Had an accent, not Aussie or anything. Something else.”
“Thanks.” She hadn’t asked his hair color or his race or... Did it matter? She knew he wasn’t Malay. If he got close enough for her to see him, did she stand a chance? She had to get out of here and fast. But she needed to know. She had to ask at least one of those questions. “What color was his hair?”
“Don’t know. He was wearing one of those knitted caps.”
He jangled his keys, his sneaker-clad feet almost twitching as he answered her. “Look, I don’t think he’ll be back. And I’ll be keeping a closer eye on things.”
Her hand shook as it went to the door frame.
“No worries,” he said over his shoulder as he headed down the hallway and to his own apartment.
“No worries,” she repeated.
She turned the key in the lock with fingers that still shook. She stood in the doorway for a minute, then two. She pushed the door open wider. Her eyes darted back and forth, taking in micro snapshots of the room. Behind her a door slammed, and she jumped.
Hesitantly, she leaned one hand against the door frame as if that would ground her, make everything normal or turn back the clock. But nothing changed. The cot folded down from the wall, the kitchenette was jammed against the opposite wall, the tiny television in the far corner. Through the narrow window that faced the street, she could see the cab waiting.
“This is it,” she murmured. “This is goodbye.” She wiped the back of her hands across both eyes. She took a breath and then another, pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.
She grabbed her bag from the top shelf of the closet, tore clothes from hangers and emptied her drawers. Within a few minutes she was packed.
She never looked back as she closed the door behind her, as if this was just another day, and hurried out the door and into the waiting cab.
“The airport, please,” she said. Her hand knotted around the straps of her knapsack and a small bag that carried her few personal items as she perched on the edge of her seat. She pressed her free hand to her temple as if that would still the headache that was beginning to beat dully and then dropped it to clutch the seat in front of her.
* * *
JOSH SLIPPED OUT the back entrance of the school and tucked the brochure he’d stolen from her classroom into his pocket. He would disappear as silently as he had arrived, leaving the retreating flames and tamped-down chaos to the authorities. He glanced at his watch, which functioned as a GPS as well as registered the time among other things. He hadn’t expected the car bomb. As a precaution, he’d planned to mount a small tracking device on her car that would have followed her anywhere she went.
The victim—collateral damage. It was the only way to think of such things without losing it. He’d seen a number of breakdowns in the field from either mental or emotional stress; he didn’t plan to become one of them.
Collateral damage.
School caretaker. That information hadn’t been too hard to obtain. He’d overheard the hysterical words of a female teacher, confirmed that the car was his target’s and that she’d lent it out, confirmed that Erin Argon was still alive.
Would she flee by land or air? Where? He considered the trajectory of her five-month flight. She’d begun her flight fueled by fear and misguided advice rather than immediate danger. Lucky and wily, her changed name and Canadian passport had kept her hidden until these past few weeks when he had been assigned the case. Still, she was damn lucky, and he knew he had little time to find her before the Anarchists beat him to it.
Luck aside it was amazing what she had accomplished and how easily she had slipped out of sight. So far she had crossed no fewer than ten international borders. Other than the weeks in Singapore, this had been the only place where she had settled. So where would a woman go who had crossed continents and countries, who had thought she was safe and who now had to come up with an alternate plan?
He was under her skin. An inkling of doubt rose at that thought. Doubt that maybe it was the other way around. He shrugged it off. She was an assignment, nothing more. He’d studied her, he knew her. She was tired. She’d go somewhere to regroup, to come up with a plan and another place to hide, because this time she had run, more than likely, without a plan. Where would she go? He touched the brochure in his pocket and wondered if it could be as easy as that.
“It’s a risk,” he muttered and smiled. There wasn’t anything better than a risk; throw in one of his infamous hunches and he was betting that he was bang on right. After all, who else would know that she was fascinated by Malaysia’s bat caves in Gunung Mulu National Park? He was guessing she had kept that information to herself. He certainly wouldn’t have suspected it if she hadn’t left her canvas satchel and run, taking nothing from her classroom but her purse. And if he hadn’t snuck into her classroom before he left he would never have known, either, for he would never have found her brochure on the Mulu Caves and literally stumbled on to where he was now sure she planned to go next.
He jumped in a cab and gave the driver the order for the airport even as his mind churned through the options. She was panicked. Would she take the slow route out of here or just hop a plane? He suspected the latter. If she were smart, and so far she’d proven she was, a few transfers around the country and her trail would become a little grayer, a little more difficult to follow. Keep on doing that and she could disappear. He needed to get to the airport to confirm he was right and get a ticket on that same plane. He leaned back.
“Damn,” he muttered as his thoughts went back to the one man she’d reached out to, the man who had been the catalyst to send Erin Kelley Argon on her five-month flight.
“Mike Olesk, we finally meet.”
He held out his hand.
“I don’t have time for this,” the grizzle-faced burnout said.
“You used to be a city cop,” Josh said.
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m with the CIA.” He held out his identification.
“And you want to know about Erin.”
Josh’s lips tightened. “I didn’t expect it would be this easy,” he said drily. He seriously hadn’t thought the man would admit to knowing her, never mind that he would just blurt out her name.
“That’s about all I’m going to tell you,” he said with a surly edge to his voice.
“She’s in danger,” Josh said. “And you have the power to help me find her.”
“How do I know you are who you say you are?”
“I could get a warrant,” he said, but it was only a mild threat.
“You don’t have time now, do you? The trial begins in a little more than a month. They need Erin, and the Anarchists need her dead. She’s the witness that can put them all away.” Mike shook his head.
“Why?”
“As if you don’t know. She witnessed a murder, and it wasn’t just any murder, was it? No, the gang leader up and shoots what looks like the gang’s link to crime-based money out of Europe.” He ran a hand through hair that shone with grease. “You’re not the only one in the know, and you’re not the only one hunting Erin.”
“How well do you know her?” Josh asked quietly. There was something else going on here or at least he suspected so. Information was flowing too quickly, and that, he had learned during his six years in the field, was always suspect.
Mike looked surprised and there was a secretive cast to his bloodshot brown eyes. “Not that well. I knew her as a kid when her father and I worked together. As an adult, we lost touch until... Well, until she came to me for help.”
“And you helped her disappear.”
“Something like that. But I don’t know where she is now. I haven’t heard from her in months.”
“Fourteen days,” he muttered as outside the traffic continued to flash by. That was the number of days since he had spoken to Mike Olesk, and then had cobbled together her flight path that had taken him to Singapore and finally to this point.
