Shadow Woman: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  “Not that I know of, and if there was, there’d be someone in here bitching about it all day,” she said.

  “Okay, thanks.” When she’d left, he checked the image on his phone again. He watched for a while, puzzling it over as he finished his coffee. After a few minutes her speed varied. She moved along pretty slowly for a few minutes, then there was an increase in speed before her speed leveled out again.

  Something occurred to him. There was one rather far-fetched possibility that actually made him smile. He switched the mode to topographical and laughed. That slow speed had come on one side of a hill, the burst of speed on another.

  She was on a bicycle.

  He was impressed by her thinking. No ID was required to buy a bicycle, no registration to worry about, she had enough cash on her to afford one, and she wouldn’t have to worry about driving a stolen car or hitchhiking and being picked up by a nutcase. And who would think to look for her on a bicycle? She’d surprised even him. That was part of the fluidity of her thinking, because absolutely no one would expect her to escape on a bicycle. With a helmet and sunglasses on, she’d also have a damn good disguise. No one would look twice at her.

  The road she was on would eventually lead to Charlottesville. He checked a couple of things with his phone and discovered there was a bus terminal there. She could dump her bike and buy a ticket to anywhere. That terminal was far enough away from D.C. that it probably wasn’t being watched, close enough that she might remember the location from her training. She’d had multiple escape routes memorized, and one of them might have included the Charlottesville terminal.

  He definitely didn’t have to worry about catching up with her, not as long as she stayed on the bicycle. He’d been worrying about when and where to confront her, her reaction to seeing him again, the difficulty of any witnesses being present. If he let her wear herself out, the coming confrontation would be much easier … for him, that was. It wasn’t a small consideration. When he’d been training her, she’d occasionally cleaned his clock. Not on a regular basis, but often enough to make her cocky. Not many people could take him down, but she was just sneaky enough to surprise him a couple of times, and she didn’t mind playing dirty. In his mind, he could still see the glee in her smile the first time she’d managed to put him on his back.

  Another cup of coffee was called for, after all. Xavier lifted his empty coffee cup in a silent request for a refill. There was no reason he couldn’t sit here for a while and let Lizzy get a bit farther down the road. He could even think of it as payback for what she’d done to his motorcycle.

  She had her bike, and he had his. The coming chase would be no contest.

  Oh good lord, yes, she had let herself get into terrible shape. Lizzy simultaneously pedaled and cursed every cookie she’d eaten in the past year, every extra pound. There weren’t many of them, thank goodness, but oh, if only she’d started running a couple of months ago instead of just this week. If only she were in the same shape she’d been in back in the day.

  She paused in her thoughts. What day was that, exactly? She didn’t know, but she did know she once would have been able to handle this trip without feeling as if she were being tortured.

  The straps of the cheap backpack, being thin on the padding, cut into her shoulders. Her legs ached. Her butt was numb. Sometimes she’d stand up to pedal and give her butt some relief, but that was harder on her legs.

  She’d been on the bike about an hour. There was currently little traffic on the two-lane road, so she chanced a glance at her wristwatch. Assuming it was keeping correct time … make that forty-five minutes. Evidently being tortured made time pass more slowly. By her calculations she had another four hours and fifteen minutes of cycling time, and that didn’t take into account the breaks she’d have to take along the way.

  She ached everywhere, and she needed a bathroom already. Maybe she should have said no to that third cup of coffee at breakfast. If necessary, she could make a trip into the bushes on the side of the road, but that would be a last resort. Not only were there homes behind the trees that lined the road, there could be poison ivy, ticks, mosquitos.

  She would laugh, if she weren’t afraid the laughter would turn to tears. Someone was trying to kill her, and in the past twenty-four hours she’d resorted to car theft—twice—stolen drunk Sean’s cash, lied to an impressionable young woman to get a motel room, and possibly led stone-cold killers to an innocent late-night shopper’s door. She no longer knew who she was, and she didn’t even have time to think about that, not until she was safe, but here she was, worried about modesty and the dangers of Virginia roadside wildlife.

  She couldn’t let herself dwell on that. She had to concentrate on moving, on surviving. When she was safe, then she’d think about stuff.

  One step at a time.

  Every hard uphill battle came with an eventual blessed downslope, but really, how could Virginia be mostly uphill? Why didn’t the down portions ever seem as long as the up portions? That was just wrong. She treasured the moments when she could sit up and catch her breath, let the wind rush into her face, let her aching muscles relax. Traffic was light on the two-lane road, but on occasion she’d be forced to move to the far right edge, coasting along as a car sped past. Usually those cars would shift over and give her some breathing room, but now and then they didn’t, blasting by so close that the force of the air would make her wobble. Some people were jerks.

  She wasn’t oblivious to the possibility that X might be driving one of those cars. All he’d have to do was run her down, plow his car into her and then drive off, leaving her as nothing more than a wet spot on a back-country road.

  Her instincts had tried to tell her about him, there in Walgreens when she’d panicked and run. Then her hormones had played a nasty trick on her with those sex dreams, and she’d let that tangle up her thinking. It really pissed her off now, that she’d wasted perfectly good dreams on the asshole who was trying to kill her.

  Thinking about X distracted her for a while, but not long enough. Soon her aching legs had retaken priority in her thoughts, damn it.

  When she rounded a gentle corner in the road and saw the gas station straight ahead, she could have cried, she was so happy. Bathroom, more water, something to eat, a few minutes of rest, however brief. She had to keep moving, and she was already so sore that she knew if she stopped for too long she’d never get started again.

  Two meetings with Felice in the tank in less than a week was noteworthy. Al hoped that no one in the building was actually making note. He was surprised that she came as quickly as she did when he contacted her, but considering what she’d done…

  This time he was waiting for her, standing with his arms crossed. As soon as the door closed behind her, he spoke.

  “You stupid bitch.”

  She stopped in her tracks; her shoulders went back and her face tightened. He had her on the defensive.

  “I did what needed to be done,” she responded. “I did what you wouldn’t do.”

  “No, you’ve royally fucked things up. It’s bad enough that you made this decision on your own and then went outside, but to go to an outside team of incompetents calls into question your competence. It was a stupid move.”

  It wasn’t smart to call Felice stupid twice in a couple of minutes, but at this point he didn’t care if he pissed her off. If she was going to send a team after him, she’d already done it. Even worse, if Xavier thought for a minute that Al had been in on the plan, he was coming, too. Al had always known what they’d done might come back to bite him in the ass, and here he was, waiting for a bullet or worse. Xavier was the “worse.”

  Felice recovered her composure and walked toward the coffee machine. “I have people on it.”

  “Your people,” he said, “not mine.” She continued to methodically make herself a cup of coffee. Al hadn’t heard from Xavier since the failed hit on Lizzy, not a word. And that meant Felice hadn’t just gone after Lizzy, she’d also made an attempt on
Xavier. She’d obviously failed, or she already would have bragged about her success in taking out the infamous Xavier.

  “I understand that this isn’t what you wanted, but now that it’s under way, you have to agree that we can’t call it off. The ball is in play. We have to see it through.”

  “Agreed,” Al said curtly.

  Felice sipped her coffee, fighting to keep her gratification at his acquiescence from showing on her face; that would be too much like gloating. “I ordered the elimination of both Subject C and Xavier. Given his interest in her, I saw no other choice.”

  “You should have come to me.”

  Her look was withering. “You never would’ve agreed. You’d have tried to talk me out of it, at the very least. I saw what needed to be done, and I took care of it.”

  “No, you tried to take care of it and you failed.”

  Again, that withering look. Felice didn’t like to fail, and even more hated having her few failures pointed out. “I’ve brought in a specialist to finish the job.”

  “That’s all well and good, but how do you expect your so-called specialist to find Xavier?” If Xavier was in the wind, they’d never locate him—unless and until he wanted to be found. And if he did, that would be very bad news for them.

  “That’s his problem.” Felice took her coffee cup, cradled it, took one sip.

  Al stared at her for a long moment, burying his rage deep. They knew that Xavier had trip wires that would make the details of what they’d done public, in order to protect himself and Lizzy. It would be devastating for the country if that were to happen. Even if they managed to plant doubts about him and the story, to clean up the mess, to paint Xavier as nothing more than a conspiracy theorist, the details he released would remain. The conspiracy theory would live, perhaps forever. And if enough people believed it…

  “No, it’s your problem. He will come after you.” Al tried to remain outwardly calm. “Tonight, two years from now, at any time in between.” He noted the way her shoulders tightened again. “I suggest that you put your specialist on your house. If you’re lucky, Xavier will show up sooner rather than later. He’ll find Subject C, secure her, and then he’ll come after you. If he decides to wait, if he takes more time to plan and doesn’t act while he’s still pissed, you won’t have a prayer. But if he reacts in anger and attacks now, it’s possible your specialist can intercept him at the house and end this.”

  “And Subject C?”

  “If I were you, I’d deal with Xavier first and then worry about what your fuckup cost us where Subject C is concerned.”

  “You could offer to help,” she said. “You have the personnel.”

  Was she fucking kidding? Al clenched his jaw, but he kept his cool, as much as was possible given the situation. “That wouldn’t be smart, at this point.”

  Her quick agreement to meet this morning finally made sense, though: she wanted him to help her clean up the mess she’d made. She didn’t know him at all if she thought he’d risk any of his people to track down another one of his own because she’d screwed up.

  “If he contacts you …”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” Al said dryly.

  Felice left her half-full cup of coffee sitting on the table and left the tank without looking back.

  Al followed her, retrieved his weapon and cell phone, and headed for the room where Dereon Ashe was on duty, listening for activity at Subject C’s house, watching the monitors on her car, listening to activity in her office. If that duty had been dull before, it was now beyond boring. There was nothing to listen to. If enough of Lizzy had come back, there was no way she’d risk returning to any place or person she’d known as Lizette. The question was, how much had come back? Just enough to make her run, or enough to make her dangerous?

  Felice would take his advice and put her specialist on her own home. Maybe she’d even think of him as a double-duty off-the-books employee, a bodyguard for herself as well as someone who could take Xavier down when he came after her. Xavier would be looking for that move; when he moved in on Felice he’d be looking for someone like her specialist. If he didn’t, then he wouldn’t be the man Al himself had trained, years ago.

  Felice thought she had everything well in hand, but Al would put his money on Xavier any day.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Three hours. Three hours and fifteen minutes of misery and determination. This section of road was straight, thank heavens, but she could use a downhill coast right about now. Her muscles were on fire, from her neck to her ankles. Her butt was beyond numb.

  She was passing through a small collection of businesses that likely constituted some kind of township, but if there had been a sign she’d missed it. She had seen a sign that said the speed limit was 3.0, which had distracted her until she’d realized the decimal point was a bullet hole.

  For the past hour, her entire focus had been on moving forward while her body screamed for her to stop. Curse words she hadn’t even realized she knew slipped from her lips as she pedaled. To anyone watching, with her backpack, helmet, drugstore clothes, and the now constant muttering, she probably looked like a crazy bag lady with a bicycle instead of a shopping cart, and she didn’t freakin’ care.

  Maybe it was the constant pedaling, the rhythm, the steady sound of the tires on the road, or simply the fact that for the first time in a long while her mind wasn’t entirely occupied with how to survive from one minute to the next, but as she struggled up one hill and coasted down the other side, a few memories suddenly eased into focus. She tensed, expecting the wallop of a headache that would knock her off the bike, but … nothing. No pain, no nausea. She relaxed and let the memories come.

  The memories weren’t anything earth-shattering, and really not all that specific, just kind of general-knowledge memories. She hadn’t always worked in an office, hadn’t always been a predictable, routine-bound, never-miss-a-day, nine-to-five employee. Chicago. A security firm. Not some little fly-by-night PI outfit, but a top-notch security firm with offices located in a tall building in downtown Chicago, with windows that overlooked the city. The firm had attracted a lot of high-profile clients. She’d worked as a bodyguard on more than one occasion; men especially liked her because she didn’t look like a bodyguard, but she could shoot like one.

  And drive. Her heart skipped a beat. So that was where she’d learned evasive driving, how to spot a tail and lose it. The job also explained why she’d so often reached for a handgun that wasn’t there. Once there had been a time when she’d never been without her weapon.

  There was still nothing that would explain why she’d lost her memory of that time or why anyone would want her dead, but her previous occupation explained a lot. It was a relief to know that these newfound skills she possessed had come from a legitimate job and not … well, not.

  When she actively tried to remember, something blocked her, something got in the way. So as she pedaled along the side of the road she didn’t make an effort to think about anything in particular; she just let her mind go free, and that’s when the images played through her mind.

  There were faces, the images of people she’d worked with; some were clearer than others. She didn’t reach for names, didn’t want to force anything, but at this point any memory of her previous life was welcome. She hurt, she was tired; at times she just wanted to stop and pull onto the side of the road and sit there until someone found her. The memories kept her going.

  If she just pedaled and let her mind go, more would come to her. And they did: a target range where she’d honed her skills. There’d been an office, too, but she hadn’t spent much time there. She remembered getting on a plane to go … somewhere. If the memories didn’t come easily she didn’t force them, so when the plane didn’t go anywhere she relaxed and let it sit there while she thought of other things, other places and memories.

  A football game at Soldier Field, watching the Bears; laughing over a beer with … someone. Maybe a coworker, maybe just a friend.
She remembered being grabbed from behind, caught by surprise by a well-muscled and very tall man while on a job and still coming out on top, thanks to her martial arts training. She’d taken classes in college and had discovered an affinity for it. How had she forgotten that?

  Stupid question. How the hell had she forgotten anything?

  So, she’d worked as a bodyguard. She’d even been something of a whiz kid, picking up new weapons and skills with ease, managing to appear deceptively harmless when she needed to, while never losing her focus. She’d been more than a bodyguard, though that had been her primary area of expertise. On occasion she’d tailed a subject or two, she’d infiltrated a company to learn more about the CFO, she’d…

  A car horn, too close and too loud, jerked Lizzy back to the present. She’d drifted too far to the left and had alarmed or annoyed the driver who wanted to pass. She jerked the bike back to the right, lifted a hand in acknowledgment of the car, and pulled her brain back to the present. Wouldn’t that be a trip, to shake X, come up with a plan, start to remember, and then get run over by a random car? That would just be too unfair.

  The car passed, and Lizzy had the road to herself again. Maybe it was best to just accept what she’d remembered and not push for more—not yet, anyway. It wasn’t in her nature to let something like that drop, but now wasn’t the time. She didn’t want to deal with the pain and nausea, and she knew she shouldn’t let herself get too distracted. She wasn’t safe yet.

  None of what she remembered explained the memory loss or why someone was trying to kill her. There were a couple of possible explanations for the selective amnesia and even the facial reconstruction: a car accident; a bullet in her head—though surely there would be physical evidence of that, a scar no surgery could completely disguise. She could come up with explanations for the surgery and the memory loss, but there were very few that covered both. As to why someone would now be trying to kill her … she needed more information before she could make sense of that.