Shadow Woman: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  She’d been pleased with the planning and preparation. The plan had evidently fallen apart in execution, though. Damn it! She’d been assured that only top-notch people would be used. Evidently, instead of the A-Team, she’d gotten the B-Team—and “B” stood for “Bozos.”

  Despite her tension, she reached home without incident. Still, the tight feeling between her shoulder blades didn’t ease until she had parked in the garage and lowered the door. Even then, she carefully examined every corner of the garage before she got out of the car. She knew what Xavier was capable of, and she didn’t take anything for granted. When she unlocked the door and entered, the alarm system began its warning beep; she punched in the code, relocked the door, then went straight to the den and got her weapon from the desk drawer. She checked every room in the house before she dared let her guard down. Until this was over, she’d have to be very careful.

  Then she retrieved the burner cell phone from her purse. She’d have to get a new one; they were intended for one-time use—hence the term “burner,” though of course sloppy people disobeyed that protocol all the time. She’d never thought she would be one of those people, but she didn’t have time to get a new phone and she needed to know exactly what had happened.

  She took both the gun and the phone into her bathroom. She turned on the water in the whirlpool tub, then flipped the switch that activated the modern rock-and-water feature in the corner. Normally the sound of the rushing water was very soothing to her, but now she didn’t notice it other than as a means to an end. When the tub was full enough, she turned on the whirlpool motor. She stood between the tub and the waterfall; anyone who was trying to listen in would have a hell of a time trying to make out words over the white noise.

  She made the call. When her contact answered she said tersely, “What happened?”

  There was a short pause. Maybe he was trying to come up with some reasonable excuse for his failure, but in the end he said simply, “Both projects failed.”

  Felice was stunned. “Both?” Good God, how could that happen? Xavier was a difficult proposition at any time, but the other should have been a cakewalk. This was worse than the worst-case scenario. “How is that possible, unless your people are completely incompetent?”

  “The attempt was at a restaurant. The owner decided to play hero with a shotgun. My men got away, but they missed the target.”

  “You colossal fuckup.” She was so angry she could barely speak. She seldom resorted to vulgarity, but she was the one who could pay a very large price for this man’s failure. He could shrug and move on to other clients, while she was left to deal with a catastrophe.

  “The shotgun wasn’t expected. Things happen.”

  “I expect your men to do as they’re instructed.” Lizette should be dead. For God’s sake, she was barely human! Okay, that was an exaggeration. But you couldn’t wipe away a portion of someone’s memories and a chunk of her basic makeup and expect her to continue to function at her previous level. Getting to her should have been child’s play. “Tell me they picked her up again.”

  “Not yet. She stole a car in the parking lot and got away.”

  “So she isn’t in her own car now?” Felice pinched the bridge of her nose. “That doesn’t make sense. Her car was right there; why steal another one?”

  “I can’t say, unless she was so panicked she wasn’t thinking.”

  “In which case she’d return for her car when she calmed down. Has that happened?”

  “No, her car is still sitting at the restaurant.”

  Felice looked at the ceiling as she pulled in a deep breath. She’d been right all along, then. The little things out of the ordinary that Lizette had been doing were because, against all odds, she was recovering her memory. It wasn’t supposed to be possible—but they all did things every day that a hundred years ago would have been considered impossible. Even Al wouldn’t be able to explain away leaving a perfectly good car behind and stealing another one.

  “There’s more bad news,” continued the deep voice at the other end of the call.

  “I suspected as much.” Her voice was tight.

  “The team I sent after the other target were both found dead in a park a little more than an hour ago.”

  Even though she’d been expecting that, she still felt as if the ground dropped out from under her. She put a hand on the bathroom vanity for support. “I didn’t hear anything about bodies being found this afternoon.” And she would. The NSA heard everything.

  “You wouldn’t. We tracked their car when they didn’t check in, found the bodies, and cleaned it up.”

  “And the target?”

  “He didn’t go home. We haven’t picked him up yet, but we will.”

  Scenes from The Terminator flashed before her eyes. Xavier would be like the robot; he would keep on coming no matter what they did, killing everyone who got in his way. That was the downside to providing intense, advanced training to people like him; it was great when he was on your side, but if he ever turned on you—

  She had a panic room; she’d installed one five years go. But she couldn’t live there forever, and what about her daughter? This could continue for some time, if Xavier was on the run. Besides, it wasn’t in her nature to hide from trouble. She had to handle this; she had to come up with a plan to finish the mission. Felice grabbed onto her rioting emotions and tamped down the fear she couldn’t afford to wallow in.

  “My daughter, Ashley—I want her picked up and secured.”

  “If she objects?”

  “She can object all she wants; I want her under lock and key until this is done.” Ashley wouldn’t like it, and she was definitely her mother’s daughter, Felice thought; she would carry a grudge for a long time. But she’d take having her daughter angry at her over having to bury her only child any day of the week, without hesitation. Xavier was ruthless. If he couldn’t get to her any other way, he would use her daughter against her. Anything was possible: kidnapping, torture, murder. If the situation were reversed, Felice had no doubt that she’d do whatever was necessary. And if she herself would do it, she had to assume Xavier would go to the same lengths.

  She would protect her child at all costs.

  The cost would be high. Ashley was independent, or trying to be, and she wouldn’t like being hidden away, missing out on the two summer classes she’d been taking, removed from her friends and all their social activities.

  Tough shit. Ashley’s safety was more important than anything else in this world.

  “I gave you two assignments, one easy and one admittedly not so easy. You assured me both would be handled, and instead your people have been completely incompetent. The situation is royally screwed up. How are you going to fix this?”

  “I have someone in mind,” her contact said. He didn’t even sound urgent. Perhaps he was accustomed to jobs going wrong, which wasn’t a good thing. On the other hand, he did have an impeccable reputation. “If you want to pay the money to get him, he’s a real badass, a specialist in his field. He isn’t required often, but in special circumstances he’s … invaluable.”

  Felice didn’t ask how much money he was talking about, because at this point it was immaterial. And if this badass guy was the best, why hadn’t he been employed to do the job in the first place? Deeply annoyed, she snapped, “I don’t care how you get it done, just do it.” She wouldn’t be safe, her daughter wouldn’t be safe, until Xavier was dead. And none of them would be safe until Lizette was in the ground. She should have been put there years ago.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get him on the hunt.”

  “Call me when my daughter is secured.” She ended the call and stood there in deep thought for a moment, mentally running through scenarios and possibilities. One in particular stood out: if she had to get her hands dirty and take care of matters herself, she was starting with him—and she had no doubt that he was well aware of that fact.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Room 107 hadn’t been occupied
in a while. In addition to the hole in the wall and a catty-wampus towel rack, the room was musty-smelling and dusty, which told her the small hotel had a problem with cash flow. A hideous gold and orange bedspread covered the single bed, and—she noted, pulling a corner of the spread back—there were no sheets. Lucky for her, there was one forgotten towel in the bathroom.

  “Great,” she muttered. “I’m not completely shit out of luck.”

  Priorities. She was starving. Lizzy grabbed some ones from her wallet, along with the loose change from the drugstore, and headed for the vending machines three rooms down. Key to her room in one hand, money in the other, hat and sunglasses on, she strode to the lineup of machines. Junk food wasn’t what she’d had in mind for supper, but since she’d never gotten to the barbecue sandwich her stomach was trying to crawl through her spine. She was so hungry she didn’t care if all the offerings were stale.

  There wasn’t much to choose from: sodas, water, chips, cookies, crackers. She loaded up, went back to her room, and once the door was closed behind her she dropped her “dinner” on the single table in the room, removed the hat and sunglasses, and sat down in the only chair.

  For one moment, one horrendous split second, she thought she was going to lose it, just break down and sob. She swallowed hard, looking up at the ceiling as she willed herself not to break down now.

  She’d been running since she’d realized those men were shooting at her, so until this moment she hadn’t really had time to think about how truly bad this all was. But she wouldn’t cry. She refused to let them get the best of her. She focused on the next step, which was to get herself fed. Then she’d shower, get some sleep. She had to get some rest or she wouldn’t be able to keep going. Those things she could handle. After that, she needed a plan … and she didn’t have one.

  She had to get out of town, but how? Public transportation would be under surveillance. Considering the number of cameras in the Metro, her hat and sunglasses wouldn’t be a sufficient disguise. Bus? Maybe. That was a possibility. She could pay cash and hope she could change her appearance enough not to raise any alarm. But still, the idea gave her the heebie-jeebies. Her car—which wasn’t a safe option anyway, obviously—was out of the picture. And she couldn’t very well walk out of D.C.

  Damn it, she thought irritably, she was going to have to steal another car. A bit more discreetly this time around, so the theft wouldn’t be reported for several hours. Which meant she couldn’t snatch the keys out of a driver’s hand, unless she was willing to resort to kidnapping. Lizette Henry, carjacker.

  Maybe.

  It would be better, though, to hot-wire an older car. New cars with their computers and antitheft systems weren’t an option, but something older, maybe with a really kick-ass engine: a gas guzzler, an engine that roared. Why did that thought give her a bit of a thrill?

  Exactly how did one hot-wire a car? Lizzy thought about it as she opened a pack of cheese crackers with a thin smear of peanut butter sandwiched in between. She took a big bite. They were stale. No surprise there. Damn it, she should have bought some food at the drugstore. They would have had protein bars, which would be better than this. But she’d been in a panic at the time, and she hadn’t been thinking clearly—not clearly enough, anyway. It was the kind of stupid mistake that could get her killed. Yeah, she might starve to death.

  Back to the immediate question: did she know how to hot-wire a car? She asked herself this again as she wolfed down the rest of the first stale cracker and moved on to the next one, washing it down with a long swallow of cold, sweet Coke.

  Yes. Yes, she did! She could almost see her hands confidently crossing and twisting wires. The process was so clear in her mind, she might have done it just yesterday. No, not yesterday, but more than three years ago, in that two-year blind spot.

  She waited for the blinding headache, the nausea, the internal warning that she could not go there. Nothing. She closed her eyes in relief. With everything else that was going on, she didn’t think she could deal with those headaches now. If one of them hit at the wrong time, it could get her killed.

  Two packs of crackers, two Cokes, and a bag of potato chips later, she was finally full. Tiredly she dragged herself into the bathroom. This long-neglected unit wasn’t stocked with shampoo and soap, but she’d bought the basics, so she was set. Maybe while she was in the shower she could come up with more of a plan than “steal a car,” which, as far as specifics went, left a lot to be desired. Where to find the car? When should she leave this room? Where should she go after she stole a car?

  Under the spray of the shower, she tried not to think about anything but getting clean, washing the day off her body and out of her hair.

  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.