by Jaime Rush
She cracked the door open and looked for any suspicious vehicles. She didn’t even know what the guy drove. He probably knew what she drove, though. She had to get another vehicle. Her yellow Jeep wasn’t exactly inconspicuous; she’d had the bright yellow surface painted with the name of her shop, Creative Ink, along with some of her designs.
“This is not real. This is totally not real.”
Despite that statement, she dashed to her Jeep. The guy had been at the tattoo shop the evening before, which meant he probably knew where she’d spent the night. She couldn’t go back to RJ’s or home. She drove through the city, taking a circuitous route, cranking her Russian music.
A buy here-pay here car lot caught her attention. Not the kind of place she’d ever think of buying a car, but it gave her an idea. When an old friend had come in for a tattoo last week, he’d told her he was selling his car. She couldn’t remember what kind of car it was, but he’d asked her to keep her ear open for anyone needing a car.
Her client’s art studio was several blocks away, and it took her ten more minutes to find a nearby parking garage. She took a spot in the far corner and watched the cars that pulled in soon afterward. None were driven by a man missing a chunk of arm.
When a family alighted from their SUV, she got out and followed them down the stairs, staying as close as possible without violating their space. The father kept glancing back at her. A tattooed woman with black-streaked hair and shirt with skulls on it, not what he wanted too close to his precious white-bread children. He gathered them like chicks, putting himself between her and them.
Zoe cherished being different, even being an outcast. Why, at this moment, when she had much more severe things on her mind, did the father’s actions bother her?
She didn’t give herself time to worry over it. Once they reached the sidewalk, she split off from them, headed around the back of the building to the rear entrance, and knocked hard. All the while she kept looking around, fully paranoid.
Finally, the sound of a lock disengaging, and the door opened. Ronald Frundmeir stared at her curiously, his long, stringy hair framing a long, stringy face. “Zoe? What are you doing back here?”
She pushed past him and closed the door. “I need to buy your car.”
He blinked, at the bluntness of her statement or the desperation she was oozing, who knew? “Uh…sure.”
She let out a breath of relief. He still had it. “How much? I can give you a deposit now and have RJ withdraw the rest from the business account. And you can’t tell anyone about it.”
That made him cock his eyebrow.
“Don’t ask,” she said, raising her hand at the question in his expression. “It’s better that you don’t know.”
“Uh…okay.” He nodded to the right. “Come on, I’ll get the paperwork.”
She followed him down the short hallway, her stomach turning at the smell of burnt coffee. Two other offices contained employees who looked at her curiously, the chick who had banged on the back door. Zoe gave them a smile as she closed Ronald’s door.
He turned down the Grateful Dead tune and opened a drawer.
“What kind of car is it?” she asked.
That halted him. “You don’t even know?”
“I don’t even care. I just need transportation. Oh, jeez, it’s something really lame, isn’t it?”
His body stiffened. “It’s not lame. It’s a 1976 VW Bug, the best car ever made. I’ve had it for ten years. I need the money for the business, which is the only reason I’m even selling her.”
“Cool. How much are you asking?”
“Three thousand.”
“It runs, right? If I take it on a long trip, it won’t break down on me?”
“I’ve taken loving care of her since the day I bought her.” He paused as though he wasn’t sure, after all, if Zoe deserved such a car.
“I’ll take good care of her, too, Ronald. Here’s two hundred. I’ll call RJ—” That’s when it hit her; she’d have to explain all this to him, including the blood and the mess at the shop. She cleared her throat. “I’ll call him, and he’ll get you the rest. You trust me, right? I mean, we’ve known each other since design class in high school.”
“I do trust you. It’s just that this is so weird. You’re usually so…cool. Composed.”
“I know. I’m not into anything illegal.”
He laughed. “I know you wouldn’t be into drugs. You wouldn’t even drink a beer with us at the party spot.”
Nothing that would loosen her absolute control over her emotions. She flashed him an innocent smile. “Exactly. I’m just in a bind right now, some bizarre stuff I can’t get into.”
He hesitated.
“I love Bugs,” she said. “Does…she have a name?”
His tense expression softened a bit. “I call her Betsey.”
“Betsey it is.” She gave him a bright smile, but he wasn’t buying it. She dropped the smile. “Look, I need the car, and you need the money. I’ll take good care of her, I promise.”
He nodded, opening his file drawer and rifling through the hanging folders.
“How fast does she go?”
He stopped.
She waved her hand. “Not that I’m planning to go really fast or anything. Just curious.”
He shook his head slightly but continued to look for the paperwork. “If I didn’t need the money…she’s not a speed demon, but she’ll get up and go when she needs to.”
Zoe glanced around his cluttered office, papers everywhere, a collection of postcards tacked haphazardly to the walls, no order to anything. Before her fingers started twitching over that, her gaze fell on one of the postcards. Most were of vacation spots or of motorcycles with chicks draped over them. The one that had caught her eye was of the Duval Street sign. Not long ago she thought she was going to die before she’d ever seen the islands. Now she needed a place to go to get her thoughts together. By damn, she was going to Key West.
She handed him two hundred dollars as he signed the bill of sale. She wasn’t going to freak him out any further and tell him she wouldn’t be registering it anytime soon.
Speaking of time…it was after eleven. She called RJ on his cell phone. “Hey, it’s Zoe. Ronald Frundmeir’s coming in today. Give him twenty-eight hundred dollars out of the company’s account in cash. I’ll explain later.”
She hung up, took the registration and keys, and said, “Thanks, Ronald. For the car and your trust. And your confidentiality.”
He tapped his chest and held up two fingers at her, love and peace. “Take care of yourself.”
She mirrored the gesture. “You bet.”
She’d already fought off an assassin. That was pretty good so far.
Ronald’s directions led her to the Bug, which was parked in a small lot. “Oh…wow.” So much for inconspicuous. Its lime green paint job could be seen by freaking satellite. Once in the car, she called RJ. “Hey, me again. Can you get to the shop early? I need to explain what you’re going to find there.”
“I’m already here. I had to drop Cindy at work, which is one street over, so I figured I’d come in and clean up a bit.” Why didn’t he have three thousand questions?
“And you didn’t quite expect that much of a mess.”
“It’s only a mess by Zoe standards. The newspaper was all over the waiting-area floor, but other than that—”
“What about the storage area?”
“Yeah, that’s a mess, all right. Nothing’s in alphabetical order. I guess we were all in a bit of a rush whenever we went back there yesterday to get what we needed.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Everything was on the shelves?”
“Of course.”
“The shelving unit was standing upright?”
“Yeah,” he said, drawing out the word.
He hadn’t mentioned blood. He would mention blood, right? That wasn’t a normal thing to see, and it would catch his eye. So she wasn’t going to mention it.
&nbs
p; This meant that the assassin had cleaned up the evidence of the assault in case she had gone to the police, which would have made her look like a loony.
“Zoe?”
She blinked. “RJ, I have a huge-assed favor to ask. I need you to manage the shop for a while.”
“Zo, what’s going on?”
“I can’t…” Her throat tightened as her fingers curled around the steering wheel. “I can’t explain.” Because I don’t even know what’s going on. “I have to disappear for a while.”
“Does this have anything to do with that guy you were freaked out about last night?”
“Yes. And I can’t tell you any more than that. It’s better if you don’t know, trust me.”
“I trust you. But if you’re in trouble, let me help. Let’s go to the police—”
“No!” She took a breath, inhaling the smell of old vinyl. “He has connections to the police. Look, I have to get out of town for a bit. I’m sorry to dump this on you, especially without being able to explain why.” Yeah, government conspiracies, CIA agents being killed, and the public being lied to about it, that would sound sane and reasonable.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s you I’m concerned about. This isn’t normal for you.”
Neither was being chased by assassins. “I’ll be fine. I just need to get away for a bit and figure out what to do.”
“Promise you’ll keep in touch and let me know if you need help.”
“I will. Bye. And thanks.”
Hanging up felt like severing the cord to her life. Her business and apartment meant everything to her. Her employees were as close to family as she had. She took a deep, ragged breath and started the car. On the upside, if the assassin had been busy cleaning up, he hadn’t been following her.
Unless someone else had.
“Glass half-full,” she admonished. “If there had been two of them, they would have both been at the shop.”
She had one place to go before leaving town: hospice. Though the cancer ravaging her granddad’s body left him with fewer and fewer lucid moments, she had to tell him that she wouldn’t be there for a while. The thought of it crushed her heart. Even worse, she didn’t know what might happen before she could come back.
CHAPTER 3
A
fter a day and a half, Zoe finally believed that they—whoever they were—hadn’t followed her. She’d been careful during the long drive down, sure that no one pulled off the two-lane highway leading down to Key West whenever she did. She’d crashed for twelve hours at the little bed-and-breakfast where she was staying, then carefully crept out, more concerned about suspicious-looking men than enjoying the scenery. She paid cash for everything. Zoe had gone to an Internet café and looked up the newspaper article on Cyrus. It gave little information. He’d supposedly been mugged and shot in the Quiet Waters Park after-hours. No one knew what he’d been doing there, though a CIA spokesperson said he wasn’t there on CIA business. He’d been hit by two bullets, the fatal one piercing his heart.
On her second night, she actually dared to enjoy herself for a while, needing to push away thoughts of dying and figure out how she was going to keep that from happening. She paused under a lamppost and watched drag queens play badminton in the street in between traffic. As soon as the cars cleared, someone yelled, “Game on!” and a guy pulled the net across the street while the queens, in shoes higher than her own platforms, batted the cone back and forth. The bubble of laughter that came out of Zoe’s throat felt so good.
The night brought out the serious partiers and ripened the smell of beer and fruit drinks spilled on the sidewalks. Most of the lightweights and families were back at their hotels. The breeze had picked up, sweeping away some of the humidity an afternoon storm left behind.
She’d eaten out on the patio of a nice restaurant and even treated herself to a Guinness—in honor of her Irish granddad—to take off the edge. Now the edge was definitely off, and she breathed in the scents of the street as she walked: fruit from the smoothie stand, the occasional waft of perfume, and the gorgeous aromas from all of the restaurants lining Duval Street. She loved the older buildings in their pastel colors with balconies that reminded her of New Orleans. She wandered into art galleries and boutiques, and bought a couple of fun tops. In a darker moment, she bought a pair of sneakers and stuffed her platforms into her large leather bag. Just in case, a voice whispered in her mind.
She hardly ever wore sneakers, and even the rhine-stone-studded ones felt odd on her feet. She never wore normal clothing. She wasn’t normal and didn’t want to be. Of course, no one would guess how not normal she was.
Live music drew her to the Hard Rock Cafe, where Marker 24 was playing a charity gig. Being a sucker for charities, Zoe joined the small crowd on the patio. Jimmy Buffett favorites pumped up everyone, mixed with jokes and some kind of margarita blender powered by a lawn-mower engine. It was nearly midnight, and even without having a drink, Zoe found herself getting into the mood. Tomorrow she would sit out by the pool at the bed-and-breakfast and figure out her next step. Not knowing what was going on, she didn’t want to think about how few options she had.
She stood at the far edge of the patio, tucked against the planting beds, with palm fronds tickling her back as she moved to the music. For a while she could lose herself in the party that was Key West. For a while—
A cold, eerie feeling crawled up her spine like a furry caterpillar. As a gale of laughter rose from the crowd, dread filled her chest with deadweight. She relaxed her expression as though she were just taking everything in. She looked for the man who’d tried to kill her in her shop. She’d know his face anywhere. Her eyes locked onto another man standing by the entrance. He wasn’t looking at her, was in fact watching the band. Except he didn’t smile like everyone else. He was nice-looking, of perhaps Latin descent, but something about him didn’t belong there. A drink tipped over on the table beside her though no one noticed.
Calm down. Think about it.
No way could these people, whoever they were, find her. She’d left no paper trail, and if by some miracle someone had followed her, why had it taken him so long to come into her orbit? Still, her instincts were flying the danger flag, and she wasn’t one to ignore them. So now what? She was cornered, nowhere near the entrance. She would have to walk past him to get out. She twisted around to the planting bed behind her, pretending to move the palm frond that tickled her. The bed was at knee level, and there were spaces between the plants to duck through.
Just in case.
When she looked toward the entrance again, he was gone. Her heart jumped. She scanned the area and found him. He was only three tables away, watching the band and ignoring the old woman who was knocking her hips against his in drunken glory. He was moving closer.
Her heart went into hammer mode. He was still between her and the exit. If she was just being paranoid, he would think nothing of her climbing through the bushes. Worst case, those nearby would think she was skipping out on her bill.
She glanced out to check the surroundings. An alley made of red bricks led back off the street. Ducking out of sight seemed the best option.
One, two, three…
She clambered through the gap between the small palms. Her feet pounded across the uneven bricks. The alley led back to buildings that closed it in. Crap, no outlet. Why hadn’t she studied the maps and familiarized herself with the layout of the town? A sign announced the Vagina Monologues. A theater then, but obviously no play that night since no one was around. Only two lights illuminated the small parking area that contained two cars.
Thankfully, the music covered the rasping of her breath and her footsteps. She ran up the ramp toward the theater’s entrance and tried the door. No luck. She slid into a narrow gap between the railing and a wall, edging through the thick layer of dead, damp leaves. The scents of decay and earth filled her nose. The passage jogged and continued toward the building, latticework on one side and a rickety fence on the other. She c
ouldn’t see what was on the other side of the fence or if the passage opened out or dead-ended. Hopefully, it wouldn’t matter.
I’m going to feel really silly in a few minutes when no one comes after me.
In a crouch, she watched through the horizontal slats of the lattice.
A man walked into view.
She didn’t feel silly. She was scared to death.
He was definitely the man she’d seen, the second man to give her the heebies—and he was definitely looking for her.
A man stepped out of a door at the other end of the building. “Can I help you? The theater’s not open tonight.”
Zoe had to hold back her gasp when her hunter slid a gun out of his waistband and held it behind him.
Was he going to shoot the man? He’s just an innocent bystander. Wait a minute! I’m innocent! Fear tightened her throat. Who was this guy? Who were the people he worked for?
“My dog got off the leash and ran back here,” he said. “You happen to see a black Lab?”
“No, sure didn’t.”
Keeping the gun by his thigh, he turned and started searching around the bikes and bushes. “Here, boy.” He whistled, ruffling his hand through the palm fronds, his face dark in the shadows.
The door closed behind the theater guy, and her pursuer dropped the lost-dog ruse. Unfortunately, he didn’t put the gun away. Fear pounded through her, making her breath come in shallow pants.
He walked over to the cars parked next to the ramp. “Come on, let’s finally score one for the good guys,” he muttered as he knelt and peered beneath them.
The good guys?
Those at the bar whooped and hollered when the band launched into “Margaritaville.” She needed the music to cover any noise she might make, though it wasn’t as loud back here. Any movement would stir the leaves beneath her feet. She dared to look to her left, but it was too dark to see where the gap led. She swiveled her head and looked between the slats of the old fence but couldn’t make out what lay beyond.
She turned back to the parking lot. To the man hunting her.
