Elusive (On The Run Book #1)

by Sara Rosett

  She didn’t realize she had drifted off until a jolt ran through her body, jerking her from the dregs of a deep sleep. It took her a second to work out where she was.

  Jack’s room? Then it all came rushing back. Jack missing. Connor dead. Search warrants and rolls of money.

  Yeah, all problems still present and accounted for. She stretched. Reluctant to move, she watched the fan blades rotate above her. Then she blinked and focused on the ceiling fan.

  She wasn’t sure what brought back the memory. Maybe it was because she was lying there staring at the ceiling fan, still groggy from sleep. Or maybe it was a fragment of a forgotten dream that kicked up an old memory. Whatever the reason, she suddenly remembered that one time she came into this room and found Jack on a ladder with his head tucked up to the ceiling, the fan blades in an awkward embrace around his chest. For a second, when Zoe walked in the room she thought he looked startled, but then he’d smiled and asked how her meeting went. This was back in the early days of their marriage. In fact, it had happened shortly after they moved in, probably within the first few weeks. Jack had said the ceiling fan rattled and he was adjusting it.

  She struggled onto her elbows and tilted her head back to study the ceiling fan. She hadn’t remembered it ever rattling, and his expression when he first saw her...he’d looked almost...guilty.

  She surged up and stood on the bed, but ducked down so the blades didn’t knock her in the forehead. She pulled the chain to turn off the fan. The blades whispered over her fingers a few more turns until she stopped the rotation with her palm. Her head was slightly below the level of the housing that covered the fan’s motor. A light layer of dust coated the metal. She patted and tapped the exterior, but it was solid. Nothing was loose.

  She hopped down off the bed. Ten minutes later, she was on Jack’s ladder unscrewing the housing around the motor. It was warm near the ceiling, and she felt beads of sweat on her forehead. She removed the cover and poked gently inside the fan. Wires. Lots of wires.

  Zoe wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and set to work, replacing the cover, feeling a bit silly—silly to think that if Jack had hidden something else in this house that she’d be able to find it. There were a million hiding places, and just because he’d been surprised to see her that day didn’t mean anything. Neither did the fact that she’d seen him on a ladder “working” on a seemingly functioning fan. She gave the screw a final turn and was about to step down when her gaze ran up the short rod that dropped from the ceiling and held the fan suspended a foot or so from the ceiling. At the top of the rod there was a small cone-shaped cover attached to the ceiling.

  She was up here with a ladder and had a screwdriver in her hand. She might as well look there, too. She moved up a step on the ladder. It only took a few turns of the screwdriver to loosen the cover. She gave it a twist and it dropped down, exposing more wires curled into a tight ball. Okay. There you go. Nothing. Now you can go to bed and sleep easy...after you figure out where to stash the rolls of money.

  She shoved the cover back into place, but it stuck. It wouldn’t slide into the grooves so she could replace the screws. She pulled the cover away and ran her fingers along the inner rim. Instead of the smooth metal she expected, her fingers touched something with a slightly bumpy texture. She ran her fingertips along the uneven surface until she found an edge, then slid her finger under it and pulled it out. It was a small book.

  She recognized it even before she flipped the dark blue book over and saw the gold lettering on the front. It was a passport. The face in the picture belonged to her ex-husband, but the name didn’t.

  Chapter Eight

  Dallas

  Wednesday, 11:22 p.m.

  “BRIAN Kenneth McGee,” Zoe whispered as she read the name off the passport, shaking her head. “What have you gotten me into, Jack?”

  Almost fearfully, Zoe reached back up and felt around inside the rest of the cover. Sure enough, on the other side there was another passport, this one with a woman’s picture. Irena Anna Whitehead. In her thirties, she had dark hair, cut in a shoulder-length bob, which framed her pale face. She wore severe rectangular dark-framed glasses and had a wide face and a delicate mouth. Not a beautiful face, but striking. There was a confidence that showed through even in the personality-erasing identity photo.

  Still perched on the top of the ladder, Zoe repositioned her hip and leaned against the top step of the ladder. Her whole world had been thrown out of sync in the last twenty-four hours, and she felt a little unsteady. Why did this passport for Brian have Jack’s picture? Who was Irena? Why did Jack have her passport? Were the passports fakes?

  They certainly looked authentic. When she angled the page with the photo to the light, a film of embossed seals glittered. She made sure there was nothing else unusual inside the cover of the ceiling fan, then replaced it. It slid easily into the track this time. She quickly replaced the screws then scrambled down the ladder. Downstairs in her room, she pulled open her top dresser drawer and pushed aside a tangle of jewelry along with a pile of notebooks. She found her passport under a twist of scarves. She’d only used it once, for Helen’s destination wedding in Cancun.

  Zoe compared the passports and couldn’t see any difference between the two she’d found in the ceiling fan and hers, except that the passports for “Brian” and “Irena” had never been used. Zoe stacked all three passports and tapped them against her chin. Why have a passport with a name other than your own? A thought struck her, and she felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. What if Jack wasn’t his real name—what if it was Brian? She felt slightly sick at the thought. Had he deceived her for years? Who was he? And this Irena person, who was she?

  Zoe opened the Brian passport. No one looks good in their passport photo, but Jack’s squared off jaw and blue eyes insured that he looked passable, despite the horrible lighting that gave his skin a yellow cast. His hair was different, longer around the ears, and it was a bit darker than it was now. He looked...younger, more fresh-faced and eager than he did now. The issue date of the passport was four years ago. What had he been doing four years ago?

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at the ceiling. Jack had never been one to talk about his past. She hadn’t pressed. His dad died during his senior year of college. His mom had been fighting cancer for years and died a year later, so Zoe had always assumed that talking about his past was too painful.

  Jack had graduated from college in Georgia with an engineering degree, then gone to work for a pharmaceutical company right out of college, but he’d hated it. She squinted up at the corner of the room. What had he said? Something about a friend from school had helped him get a federal job. He’d moved to D.C. and lived in a condo in Georgetown, he’d said. Cubicle work, he’d called it. Boring. So boring that he’d quit after a few years and put every penny he had into the GRS with Connor. Had he ever traveled outside the U.S.? And why did he have a passport for Irena?

  “You’re not going to get any answers sitting here,” she muttered to herself and went to get the ladder. There were three more ceiling fans in the house. By the time she’d worked her way downstairs to the flea market room, she’d found two more thick rolls of cash. Her short nap had rejuvenated her, and she was wide-awake, almost jittery, as she climbed down the ladder into the debris of the flea market room after replacing the cover of the last ceiling fan.

  She surveyed the chaos, thinking this would be a great place to hide something. It was a life-size Where’s Waldo puzzle. She began in the corner by the door and worked her way though the room. The only interesting thing she found was her polka dot flip-flops that she had lost. One hand on her hip, she surveyed the room and considered what to do next.

  Look through the kitchen? Her gut reaction told her that Jack wouldn’t have hidden anything there. It was the room she was in the most of the time. The island was basically her office, and since she worked from home it was her default location. There hadn’t been anything hid
den in the ceiling fan in her room either, so it appeared that Jack avoided areas that they had designated as her space.

  She had looked through his car, his room, and his computer files. Had Helen checked his e-mail? Zoe absentmindedly pushed her hair off her forehead as she rewound what Helen said. No, she’d said she checked his documents. Zoe had only glanced at the recent e-mail. There might be something in his sent mail folder...

  Fifteen minutes later, she’d changed into a tank top and silk pajama pants and was lounging in her bed with Jack’s laptop balanced on her legs. Her hair, damp from her quick shower, was twisted up in a clip on top of her head. She’d placed the passports and rolls of money in the envelope with the pictures Connor had sent. It was on the bed among the scattering of throw pillows.

  As she opened Jack’s computer, she felt none of the qualms she had earlier. Clearly Jack was involved in something and, with his disappearance, he’d pulled her into it, too. She opened the e-mail program. The more she knew, the better she’d be.

  Her burst of energy burned off quickly, and by the time she’d worked her way through a week’s worth of boring e-mails about routine GRS business, she could barely keep her eyes open. Discussions about how much copy paper to buy and whether or not they should upgrade their printer did not make for thrilling reading. This is why I don’t want to work in an office, she thought to herself as she rubbed her eyes. Across the room, her phone buzzed. Zoe shifted the computer to the bed and lunged for her jeans that she’d dropped over the back of a chair in the corner. Both her phone and Jack’s were in the pockets of her jeans. She grabbed the hem, reeled the jeans to her, and pulled the ringing phone out before the call could go to voicemail.

  “Zoe Hunter, please,” said a rich, languid female voice with a trace of a Southern accent.

  “Speaking,” Zoe said. She hadn’t checked the incoming call and didn’t recognize the voice.

  “This is Eddie with Murano Glassworks, returning your call. How can I help you?”

  “Oh, right.” Zoe thumped back onto the bed. She’d forgotten about the call to Eddie. How to break the news? She fiddled with a strand of her hair that had escaped from the clip. “I called about Jack...I have some bad news.”

  “What was that? The connection isn’t good.”

  How had the Highway Patrol said it? What words had they used? Zoe scrambled to remember, but she couldn’t recall their exact phrases. Better to just come out with it, she decided. “I have some news about Jack, Jack Andrews. I’m really sorry to tell you this, but Jack is missing.”

  The line went silent.

  After a few beats, Zoe asked, “Are you still there?”

  “Ah, yes, but you must have the wrong number. I don’t know a Jack...what did you say his last name was?”

  “Andrews.” Maybe Helen was right and there were two people named Eddie at the business?

  “No. Sorry,” the woman said, her voice indicating the call was over.

  “Wait! Don’t hang up. Is there another Eddie there?”

  “No.”

  “But there has to be,” Zoe insisted. “Jack’s cousin Eddie works at Murano Glassworks.”

  “We have exactly four employees, including myself and there’s no other Eddie. I’m the owner—I should know.”

  “Then it’s got to be you,” Zoe said. “Jack talked about his cousin in Vegas, even met with you on his business trips out there.”

  “I don’t know what this Jack guy told you—”

  “He’s my ex-husband, and I have an e-mail he sent you,” Zoe’s free hand dug into the comforter, twisting and wrinkling the lush fabric.

  “I wish I could help you, but I don’t know him,” the woman said and hung up.

  Zoe pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it, checking the number. Yes, she recognized the pattern of the last four numbers. It was the number she’d dialed earlier, the number from Jack’s e-mail to this Murano Glassworks place. “What is going on?” she asked aloud, rubbing her forehead.

  Dallas

  Thursday, 8:37 a.m.

  THE sun had barely cleared the treetops, and the humidity was already building, but Zoe barely noticed as her feet pounded the asphalt. She had awoken with all the questions still buzzing around her brain and decided a run might clear her head. It felt good to focus inwardly, settling into the comforting rhythm of her breathing and the pulse of the music in her ears. On her tight budget, she couldn’t afford a gym or the martial arts classes that she and Jack had briefly taken together during the early months of their marriage. Any kind of fitness classes were out of her reach financially now, but she didn’t mind. She had some kickboxing and yoga videos for when the weather was too bad to go outside, but running was her most frequent workout—cheapest, too. She splurged on a pair of Asics running shoes once a year, and she was set.

  She made the turn in the cul-de-sac near the end of her run at Whispering Wind Court, her cue to crank up the speed. She loved her sprint home, and she shot out of the short cul-de-sac, her ponytail beating against her shoulders as her arms pumped. She glanced left and right before she dashed across the street and that was when she caught a glimpse of the brown car again. She stumbled, regained her balance, and automatically returned to her quick pace.

  That can’t be a coincidence. Her thoughts raced as quickly as her feet. It was the same car she’d seen yesterday, doing the slow roll by her house, and now it was back again. She made the turn onto her block, and instead of running home, she dodged into her neighbor’s yard and slipped behind the tall hedge that bordered their house.

  Breathing noisily, she crouched, wishing she hadn’t worn a hot pink tank. At least her running shorts were black. She waited, her heart hammering and her calves tightening from the abrupt halt in exercise and her awkward position. She shifted on the balls of her feet. The street remained empty and quiet, except for the chatter of a squirrel. Maybe I am losing it.

  Then she heard the low purr of an engine and the brown car slid past. The older FBI guy, the quiet one, was on the passenger side, and his gaze scoured the street.

  Zoe leaned back against her neighbor’s house. The rough brick bit into her bare shoulders. They were following her. Watching her. The thought made her heart rate climb more than her jog had.

  Zoe quickly shadowed the hedge and slipped into her backyard. She slammed into the kitchen, grabbed a paper towel, and wiped the sweat from her forehead and the back of her neck as she sprinted upstairs. In Jack’s bedroom, she stood to one side of the window, careful not to let her sweaty back touch the gold curtains. Her breathing had returned to normal, and she was doing some calf stretches by the time the brown car eased up to the curb a few houses down and parked.

  Zoe bit her lip as she stared at the car. No one got out. Why were they following her? What did they have to gain from watching her? She knew nothing about GRS and after her discoveries last night, it was apparent that she didn’t even know Jack that well. Heck, they probably knew more about him—the real Jack—than she did. She stepped away from the window and went to shower, hoping it would be a blazing hot and humid day. Maybe that would send them on their way.

  After her shower, she placed another call to Murano Glassworks. She’d called before her run, but they hadn’t been open, so she was relieved when a human answered. It was a woman, but she didn’t have Eddie’s sultry Southern accent.

  “Eddie, please,” Zoe said, crisply.

  “Who should I say is calling?”

  Zoe gave her name and listened to the Black Eyed Peas singing about how it was going to be a good night. Zoe didn’t share their optimism. The same woman came back on the line. “Sorry. Eddie can’t take your call, and she would like for you to stop calling.” The dial tone sounded before Zoe could form a reply.

  “Of all the...” Zoe muttered, hitting redial. Eddie had answers. Zoe knew she did. Jack had gone to Las Vegas. Zoe had seen the travel confirmation messages in his e-mail, and he’d mentioned Eddie plenty of times. Zoe even had th
e e-mail they’d exchanged.

  The call rang, then finally went to the store’s voicemail. They obviously had caller ID. She needed another phone. She dialed on the home phone and asked for Eddie, but the same woman sighed with exasperation. “I recognize your voice. I’m not going to put you through, so you might as well stop calling. If you persist, it’s harassment, you know. We’ll contact the police.”

  “Listen, I’ve got the FBI practically camped out on my doorstep—” The woman hung up on her. Zoe let out a growl.

  Chapter Nine

  Dallas

  Thursday, 10:12 a.m.

  WHEN the phone rang, Jenny Singletarry was chewing on the cap of her pen as she proofread an obit for an eighty-nine-year-old woman who’d written a book on birding and was a ballroom dance champion. She recognized the number and considered letting it go to voicemail. Victor was in a primo spot—the county offices—but the last couple of times he’d called her it was with the news of a DUI arrest of a local hockey player and another time with a tidbit that a D-list celebrity had been arrested for punching a photographer outside the Anatole. They were great tips, but entertainment news was not where she wanted to make her mark. Unfortunately, she had to take what she could get right now, she thought as she picked up the phone.

  “Victor, who’s misbehaving now? Wait, let me guess. Professional golfer? Or is it the child of some local politician? Too much to drink before they pulled onto the Tollway?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Victor said as he chewed something crunchy. Jenny heard the crinkle of a wrapper in the background. Probably Cheetos, his favorite. “I think you’ll like this one. It’s hard news, like you want. It’s about that tech guy who disappeared on the same day his business partner got whacked.”