"Not that I'm trying to wound your pride," I said, "but if I really were Mia Duncan, I have a feeling you'd be dead by now. For real."
"You think so, huh?"
"You forget that Emily was a friend of mine. At least I thought she was."
"So you've said."
"It's the truth. And we may be semi-doppelgangers, but the one thing she has that I don't is muscle. You should see her arms. That Zumba class isn't her only form of exercise, and I'm pretty sure she would've taken you down on that bus the moment you tried to put the cuffs on her."
Parker shot me another look. "I was a U.S. Marshal for three years, and that gave me enough field experience to learn how to deal with perps—female, musclebound, or. . ."
He swiveled his head suddenly, looking toward the street, then grabbed hold of me and pulled me into the shadows of an alleyway. I was about to protest when he shushed me, and seconds later I heard the rumble of an engine and saw something I had hoped I'd never see again:
Taggart's patrol car.
Parker pinned me against the wall with his body, holding me there in the darkness until the cruiser rolled past. When it was gone, we both let out relieved breaths, then Parker pulled me toward the rear of the alley into a pool of moonlight behind two Dumpsters. A moment later he was manhandling me again, sticking his hands into the pockets of my pants.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing?"
"Hold still." He kept rummaging around, not finding what he was looking for, then said, "Take off your clothes."
I gaped at him. "What?"
"Do it. Now."
"Are you out of your freaking—"
"Taggart planted a tracker on you. I'm not sure how sophisticated it is, but he couldn't have found us this fast without one. He's got a signal and he knows we're around here somewhere. Trust me."
"But he had me cuffed. Why would he plant a tracker on me?"
"Because he's a professional and he's smart enough to prepare for contingencies. Now take off your clothes or I'll take them off for you. We need to find that thing and we don't have much time."
I just stared at him. There was enough moonlight streaming into the alleyway that he wouldn't have any trouble seeing me in all my glory—mismatched underwear and all. But as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. If that asshole Taggart had planted a tracker on me, we needed to find it.
"Come on, come on," Parker said. "Don't think, just do."
I was wearing what I always wear to work—a pants suit that would need to be dumped if I somehow managed to get out of this alive. I pulled off my jacket, handed it to him, and started unbuttoning my blouse.
"Faster," he said, inspecting the jacket. "He's probably circling the block as we speak."
I picked up speed, got the blouse off, and Parker checked the collar and cuffs as I unzipped my pants and stepped out of them. He took them from me, and had the decency not to stare.
Unfortunately, it didn't last. After finding nothing hidden in the pant legs, he looked up, his gaze falling directly on my bra and thong.
"Those, too," he said.
"Unh-uh, no way."
"What're we in high school? I need to check them out."
"Do what you've gotta do, but I'd like to keep at least some of my dignity. I'm not taking them off."
A car approached and we both froze, relieved as it continued past the mouth of the alley. When it was gone, Parker gestured to my underwear and said, "On or off, I need to inspect them."
"They aren't coming off."
"It's not like you've got anything I haven't seen before."
"You haven't seen me, and I'd like to keep it that way."
At least until we know each other better, I thought, and then cursed myself for thinking it. What the hell was wrong with me?
"All right," he said and reached forward. "Don't say I didn't warn you. Hold still."
He brought a hand up to my left shoulder and slipped a couple fingers under the bra strap, checking for a foreign object. It occurred to me I probably could have done this myself, but I had no idea what a tracker looked or felt like.
He worked his way down the strap, stopping just as he reached the swell of my left breast, then shifted his hand to the right strap and repeated the process.
He found nothing.
He gently spun me around and checked the straps in back, then ran his fingers under the fastener—and don't ask me why, but I was suddenly transported to junior high and the night Mark Bigelow fumbled to unhook me as we did the tongue tango.
Back in the present, Parker was still empty handed. He spun me around again, gestured toward my bra and said, "This really would be easier if you took that thing off."
I sighed and finally gave in. "Oh, for godsakes…"
I quickly unhooked, shrugged out of the bra and handed it to him, covering myself with my arms before he noticed that the friction and the night air had done what they tended to do. He again had the decency not to stare and instead concentrated on the bra cups, once again coming up empty.
He looked down at my thong now and I shook my head. "Forget it. Not gonna happen. Tell me what I'm looking for and I'll do it myself."
"A piece of metal or plastic about the size of a dime or even smaller, probably fastened to the fabric with a small piece of tape."
"All right," I said. "Turn around."
"What?"
"Turn around. I'm not gonna go digging in my underwear with you standing there watching. I've already been humiliated enough. Oh, and give me my bra back."
He studied me, as if weighing the possible consequences of what he was about to do, then handed me the bra and turned around. I strapped it on, then plunged a hand into my underwear and checked the fabric for anything unusual. To my surprise, I found something, but it wasn't attached to the fabric at all, and I suddenly felt a bit queasy.
Like a lot of girls my age, I tend to wax quite thoroughly, and there, directly above what Josh alternately referred to as my "snizz" or my "lady bits" (yeah, I know, I know—what was I thinking?) was what felt like a small Band-Aid. I peeled it back, ran my thumb over the inside and found a hard piece of metal—which, as Parker had described, was about the size and thickness of a dime.
How could I not have noticed this?
I mean, I'd been a bit distracted—but seriously?
I thought about Taggart's refrigerator hands taping the tracker in place, and felt the sudden urge to hurl those vending machine cookies I'd scarfed down at the office. It was an image I would never be able to un-see no matter how much I might try to bleach it from my brain.
My humiliation was now complete and my legs felt weak—but not in a good way.
I ripped the Band-Aid free. "Give me my clothes back."
Parker must have noticed the distress in my voice. "You found it?"
"Yes. Now give me my clothes."
He did and I handed him the Band-Aid and tracker and got dressed faster than a quick change artist at a Las Vegas magic show.
After tossing the device into the nearby Dumpster, Parker grabbed my wrist and led me out of the alley. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"
"You have no idea."
EIGHTEEN
There are three ten story dorm towers at Hunter City University.
Adjacent to the lobby of each are several private study rooms, a small communal kitchen, and a twenty station computer lab.
I was aware of all this because of a project I had worked on with a girl from my econ class several months earlier. She was a grad student like me, who had opted to be a dorm captain rather than move into her own apartment, and we'd spent many nights laboring at the computer in hopes of whipping the project into shape.
I had asked her a number of times if she wanted to come over to my place—which I was sharing with Josh at the time—but for some inexplicable reason she had always refused. I never bothered to ask what made her so skittish, and once the project was completed—(we squeaked a B minus)—she never spoke to me again.
I
found out later, after Josh broke up with me, that he had been sleeping with this girl in the waning days of our relationship—in our bed, no less—and she had done everything she could to get out of doing the project with me. The chance of the three of us occupying the same space at the same time was apparently too much for her to handle.
Imagine that.
She reportedly had no problem with pink fuzzy handcuffs, however.
Anyway, since Parker and I couldn't go back to my apartment to use my laptop, the first thing I thought of were the HCU dorms, that had quaint names like San Jacinto Hall and Woodland Court, but were nothing more than tall stacks of gray cement with a lot of windows.
It was just past three in the morning when we approached Blue Ridge Court and waited for some late night partiers to come along and let us in.
We didn't have to wait long. HCU had always been known as a party school and had no shortage of drunken freshmen staggering toward their dorm rooms at all hours of the morning. We heard the peel of laughter and two girls in outfits that only a stripper could envy zig-zagged their way toward us, arm in arm, doing their best to hold each other up. When they got close, they gave Parker the once over (and who could blame them?), then whispered to each other and giggled before stumbling to the lobby door.
Parker and I followed, waited for one of them to use a key card, and a moment later we were inside and moving to a door next to the elevators marked COMPUTER LAB. Not surprisingly, this one was also locked, so Parker quickly turned to the drunken freshmen, who were now inside the elevator trying to figure out which button to push…
A few seconds and several giggles later, he held a shiny new key card. They probably would have given it to him even if they hadn't been drunk.
He let us inside and I flicked on the overheads, then moved to the first computer station and fired it up. A moment later I was online.
"So what is it you're planning to show me?" Parker asked as he rolled a chair over and sat next to me.
"I thought we'd go shopping for shoes," I said.
It was a joke, of course, but the soles of my feet were sore as hell and I wouldn't have minded a pair right about then. Going barefoot is highly overrated. Especially when you're on the run.
Parker ignored the comment and watched as I navigated to a page and started to log in.
He frowned. "Photogram? You're logging onto Photogram?"
Photogram was an online social network/photo sharing site that was popular among the students at HCU.
"Just bear with me," I said. "I've got a bunch of pictures posted and I'm pretty sure there's at least one of Emily here."
I typed in my username and password and hit send, but to my surprise a window popped up that read:
PLEASE ENTER A CORRECT NAME AND PASSWORD
Say what?
Figuring I must have typed too fast and made a mistake, I tried again, but got the same result:
PLEASE ENTER A CORRECT NAME AND PASSWORD
"This is just fascinating," Parker said, "but when's the part where you prove to me you're not Mia Duncan?"
"Look, I have an account. I don't know what's wrong."
"Maybe you're entering the wrong username. Try 'Contract Killer'."
I shot him a look and tried logging in a third time, but wasn't surprised when I was again prompted to enter the correct name and password.
Shit.
It was obvious to me now that Emily had hijacked my account and deleted it, destroying any photos of herself. Sure, they were probably still out there in the ether somewhere, but where? And how would I ever find them?
I sighed and bit my lower lip, feeling tears start to well up, but I knew it wouldn't do me any good to get emotional. Crying wouldn't solve this problem.
Then I remembered something and quickly started typing.
"Where to now?" Parker asked.
"The campus athletic site. There's an activities page that lists the Zumba class that Emily and I go to and the teacher likes to take a group photo every semester. We're both in it."
I hit a few keys and soon found myself staring at the HCU website. I navigated to the activities page, clicked on Zumba Class and waited for the page to load.
And waited.
And waited some more.
And after what seemed an eternity, a message filled the screen that said, "404 Not Found," meaning the link was broken.
Shit, shit, shit.
Emily again.
This couldn't be a coincidence.
"Either you're wasting my time on b.s.," Parker said, "or you've got the worst luck of anyone I've ever met. What now? Facebook? Google Plus? Liars R Us?"
"I know you think you're funny, but you're about one joke away from a smack in the face."
"Ahh, so now your true nature comes out."
Oh, I so wanted to hit him. Especially after what he put me through in that alleyway.
"Tell me something," I said.
"Yeah?"
"Why did you even agree to come here? You're still acting as if Emily is a figment of my imagination, so why are we here?"
He shrugged. "We've got time to kill, and you gave such an impassioned speech in the truck, I figured it wouldn't hurt to let you play this out."
"Then you really don't believe me."
He sighed. "I was a deputy U.S. Marshal for three years, remember? And in that time, every single perp I ever encountered tried to convince me I had it wrong."
"So I get punished because of them?"
"That's usually the way it works, yeah."
I shook my head. "I think you're the one who's lying."
"About what?"
"I think you really do believe me. Even more than before."
"You have no idea what's going on in my head."
I held up my hands. "Still no cuffs. That must mean something."
"We've been running a lot. You move faster without them."
"You turned your back on me in that alleyway."
"A mistake. Believe me, it won't happen again."
"You are such a man."
"Meaning what?"
"You're stubborn, you're arrogant and you're letting your need for that reward money override your instincts."
He shook his head. "My instincts tell me that I should assume you're trying to fake me out and get my sympathy." He gestured to the computer screen. "And so far you've shown me nothing that proves otherwise. Just a story like all the other stories."
I really wanted to hit him.
But he was right. I had nothing. And unless I could find a photo of Emily, there was no reason for him to take my word for any of this.
Still, I didn't think I was wrong, either.
Parker wanted to believe. As tough and cynical as he was trying to be, I could feel it in the way he looked at me. I may not be the best judge of character in the world, but that brief moment in the bathroom told me that beneath the skin he was a reasonable, caring human being.
He looked around the room. "Are we done yet? Because I wouldn't mind getting a little sleep before we hit the road and this place is a good as any." He produced a pair of cuffs. "And you will be wearing these."
A sudden thought occurred to me and I returned my attention to the computer screen and started typing. "I just remembered something."
"Another dead end?"
"Maybe," I said. "But a couple weeks ago I emailed a photo of Emily and me to my work address so I could print it out and put it on my desk."
I navigated to my office's encrypted web mail system and quickly logged on. And I can't say I was too surprised that all of my emails had been wiped from the folder.
But as thorough as Emily had been, I didn't think she would know that all of our deleted emails were diverted to an archival backup server, in case someone needed to retrieve one.
I clicked over to that server, keyed in a special code and found all of my messages waiting there. It took me a moment to find the email I was looking for, but the one with the photo attached was still
there.
Thank God.
My hands were trembling as I clicked it open. Then the screen filled with a shot of Emily and me—a selfie we had taken at The Hungry Mug, the campus coffee shop. Emily's hair was pulled back, while mine was down, but there was no doubt that we looked a lot alike. She had those glorious, athletic arms that I'd never been blessed with, but other than that it was easy to see why she had chosen me.
I turned to Parker and he was staring at the screen, a look of disbelief in his eyes.
And disappointment, too. Like a man who has just seen a very hefty reward slip away from him in an instant.
"I don't believe it," he said.
"But you do. That's my point. You know I'm telling the truth."
He looked at me, then back at the screen again, then back at me—as if this would somehow change things.
He lowered his head. "Shit."
"Imagine how I feel."
"No, you don't understand. You don't realize what this means."
"It means I've got a bunch of killers chasing after me for no good reason. It means that Emily or Mia—or whatever her name is—is out there laughing at all of us."
"It also means that Haley is screwed."
"Haley?" I said. "Who the hell is Haley?"
He looked at me again. "My niece. The girl I was on the phone with back at the motel. And without that reward money, she's as good as dead."
NINETEEN
It's funny how a few simple words can alter your perception of someone.
But then maybe it wasn't the words themselves, but the subtle defeat in Parker's voice and that faraway look as he told me about a little girl born with a heart defect. All the macho bluster, all the arrogance, vanished in an instant, and the tender man from that motel bathroom surfaced again.
"I won't sugar coat it," he said. "My sister had a lot of problems with drugs and alcohol, especially after she found out she was pregnant and Taggart dumped her. So Haley came into this world with a couple strikes against her."
We were sitting on the floor now, our backs to the wall. The overheads were off, and only the light of the computer screen illuminated us.
Identity Unknown (A Parker & Coe, Love and Bullets Thriller Book 1) Page 6
