Woman on the Run (new version) Read online

  WOMAN ON THE RUN

  Lisa Marie Rice

  © Copyright 2013 Lisa Maria Rice

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  To all my indie buddies. You know who you are. Without you, this wouldn’t have been possible.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  EXCERPT: I DREAM OF DANGER

  EXCERPT: HEART OF DANGER

  About Lisa Marie Rice

  Prologue

  Boston

  September 30

  “Your new name is Sally Andersen,” the U.S. Marshal said.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Julia Devaux snapped testily. “Do I look like a Sally?”

  “Nope.” The Marshal looked her up and down. “What you look like right now is a mess.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Julia pulled the smelly, worn hotel blanket closer around her shoulders. Gah. Probably whole generations of traveling salesmen had jerked off on it. At least it was warm. For three days now, she’d felt chilled to the bone. Of course, for three days now someone had been trying to kill her, which would be enough to chill anyone’s bones.

  The Marshal sat down next to her on the dingy hotel bed in the dingy hotel room and took her hand. As U.S. Marshals went, Herbert Davis was no Gary Cooper. Not much taller than she was, he looked more like a CPA than a U.S. Marshal.

  Had Julia worked for Central Casting, she would have chosen someone else to play the role of a U.S. Marshal. Had anyone asked Julia, she would have said that Herbert Davis simply didn’t have le physique du role. Marshals were supposed to be tall, athletic, steely eyed, a six-shooter strapped to lean hips. Not short, roundish and nearsighted, with a cell in the holster. But no one had asked her opinion and she had to go with what she had.

  “Listen, Sally—”

  “Sally?”

  “From now on, you are Sally Andersen.” Herbert Davis pulled some papers from his rumpled suit jacket. “Your full name is Sally May Andersen. You were born on August 19th, 1987, in Bend, Oregon, to Bob and Laverne Andersen, bookkeeper and homemaker. You have lived your entire life in the Pacific Northwest and have never been abroad, not even to Canada. You graduated from the local teacher’s college in 2009 and you’ve been teaching school and living at home in Bend ever since. You wanted to get away from your parents, so you have just accepted a job in Simpson, Idaho as a second-grade teacher.”

  A grade school teacher? Ewww.

  “No way,” Julia said firmly, standing. The tiny mud-colored carpet with coffee stains and cigarette burns was too small to pace so she quivered instead. “This isn’t going to work. I’ve never been to Oregon and I’ve never been to Idaho. I’ve never been further west than Chicago, actually. I couldn’t possibly pretend to be a grade school teacher. I’m an only child. I’ve never been around kids, I don’t know anything about them. I’m an editor—a good one—not a teacher. My father and my mother are both dead. They were definitely not a…a Bob and Laverne. I was born abroad and have never in my life been without a passport. And I am definitely not…a…Sally. And most certainly not a Sally May.” She stopped to drum her fingers on the cracked plastic shelf holding the few personal effects Davis had picked up for her at Walgreen’s, then dropped back onto the bed, hugging the scratchy, stained blanket. “So you’ll just have to come up with something better.”

  Herbert Davis listened to her rant with his head bent to one side, looking at her soberly, letting her have her say. “Well.” He rubbed his hands on his knees and pursed his lips. “I suppose all of this is not really necessary.”

  Julia blinked. It wasn’t?

  Davis sighed. “I guess you could always decide not to testify against Santana and we’ll just go ahead with the evidence we’ve got. The law says we have the power to restrain you as a material witness, but we don’t really enforce it. Nobody can force you to do your duty as a citizen to put the scum of the earth away behind bars. If you really want to, you can simply walk out of this room, go home and pick up your life where it was before you saw Dominic Santana blow Joey Capruzzo’s sick brains out of his head last Saturday.”

  Hope zinged through her. Yesss!! The nightmare could simply fade away. Julia felt warm again for the first time in three days. That sharp three day-old pain in her chest started to abate.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that there might be a way out. Of course, it was her duty as a citizen to see justice done. For about two seconds, Julia weighed good citizenry against getting her life back.

  Her life won, hands down.

  She threw the reeking blanket down on the bed. “Well, if that’s the case, then I guess—”

  “Of course,” Davis mused, picking at the lint on the blanket, “you wouldn’t last more than fifteen minutes out there. Santana’s put out a contract on you and word from the street is that the first person to bring him your head—and I’m not being poetic here, lady, he wants your head, cut from your shoulders—gets a cool five million. Five million buckaroos, Sally—”

  “Julia,” she whispered as she slumped back onto the lumpy bed. She could feel the blood draining from her head.

  “Sally,” Davis said firmly. “As I was saying, the first person to bag you gets five million dollars. Cash. Lotta people out there would do a lot worse than murder and decapitation for a lot less. It’s hunting season, Sally. And you’re the prey.”

  She made a noise in her throat, and Davis nodded.

  “Now.” Davis consulted his notebook again. “Let me tell you about yourself. You were born in London on March 6th, 1987, the only child of elderly parents. Your father was an IBM executive and you grew up all over the world, attending American schools. Your parents are both dead and you have no other living relatives. You came back to the States for college and got a degree in English at Columbia. You’ve been working as an editor for a prestigious publishing house in Boston since 2010. You earn $48,000 a year with benefits. You bought a small apartment in Boston with what your parents left you. You live alone in that apartment with your cat, Federico Fellini. You love films, the older the better. You love books and spend most of your free time in secondhand bookshops. Your best friend’s name is Dora. You like spicy food. You occasionally date a man named Mason Hewitt.” He looked up, face bland. “How’m I doing so far?”

  Julia gaped at him, wordless.

  “Everything I’ve told you is a matter of public record and your neighbors and colleagues were more than happy to tell us your habits. Believe me, anyone could find out what we know. Five million dollars is a great incentive. So here we’ve got a portrait of a very sophisticated and well-traveled young woman who loves cities, books and art films and has always lived on the East Coast. Now do you see why we have to put you out West in a town so small it doesn’t have a bookshop and turn you into a grade school teacher who doesn’t have a passport?”

  Davis put on his old-fashioned tweed jacket and headed for the door.

  “Please,” Julia whispered. “I can’t do this.” Her voice was a shaken whisper.

  Davis regarded her somberly out of basset hound eyes. “Welcome to the food chain, Sally.” He turned the tarnished greasy doorknob a
nd let himself out.

  Five million dollars.

  The professional stared at the computer screen. Not that many years had gone by since the professional had been an ace hacker and cracker at Stanford. The power was still there. Information was power.

  Most people thought contract killers were thickheaded goons. They were wrong. It was a wonderful profession for the upwardly mobile and ambitious. You made your own hours, the money was fabulous and above all, it was tax-free. The final act, pulling the trigger, was the easiest part. A few hours a week on a firing range took care of that.

  No, finding the victim, the hunt—that was the hard part. That was what distinguished the million dollar professional from the hundred dollar thug. This John—the professional smiled—or rather this Joan, was a perfect target. Once found, a single shot would do it.

  Hell, probably a simple cyanide capsule slipped into a cup of coffee would do it. It wouldn’t be hard to coax her into a cup of coffee. Everyone agreed that Julia Devaux was a friendly soul. Likeable, hard worker, bookworm, film buff. Grew up abroad, spoke three languages, degree in English, job as an editor. Cat’s name was Federico Fellini.

  It hadn’t been hard to come up with information on her. It was amazing what people would say to a well-tailored suit flashing a ten dollar fake FBI badge.

  Five million dollars. A tidy sum. With the money from the other jobs already completed, it was enough to retire on in that beachfront villa in St. Lucia, with the Swiss francs arriving every month, steady and sure, and the IRS far, far away. Retirement at thirty, in a luxury villa in the sun. What a wonderful job.

  Julia Devaux had to die.

  Bit of a pity, that everyone spoke so highly of her. And she seemed pretty, judging from the only photograph the professional could find—a smudged print in the company newsletter. Still…five million dollars was five million dollars.

  Santana’s goons would be fanning out now, beating the bushes, making fools of themselves, leaving trails even the blind could follow.

  No, the professional thought, tapping steadily on the keyboard. There were other, more intelligent ways to find Julia Devaux.

  Chapter One

  One month later

  Halloween

  Simpson, Idaho

  “Hey, Sally,” a breathless voice called out. “Wait up!”

  Julia Devaux kept on walking down the school corridor, then suddenly froze. Sally. She was Sally now. Sally May. Would she ever get used to that name? She didn’t feel like a Sally though, glancing down at herself, she sure looked like one.

  Dark brown skirt, dull brown sweater, sensible flat-heeled brown shoes. All of which matched the blah brown Herbert Davis had insisted she color her hair, covering the glossy red Julia had been so proud of. Idiotically, it was when she’d had to dye her hair that her predicament had truly come home to her. She had read the instructions on the box through streaming eyes—which might explain the lifeless, light-absorbing mass on top of her head. She’d cut it herself. She looked like a female Justin Bieber.

  Herbert Davis hadn’t let her bring any of her own clothes. She had found two suitcases full of clothes waiting for her at the airport. All stodgy, dull, shapeless and unfashionable, made from material manufactured in some factory in China that used underage labor.

  At the time she hadn’t cared. That’s why God invented shopping. She hadn’t counted on the fact that the best-stocked store in Simpson, Idaho would be Kellogg’s Hardware Emporium.

  One thing for sure—she did fit right in. Fashion was not a major priority in Simpson, Idaho. Julia shivered, and pulled her cardigan tight. Survival and warmth were.

  “Hi, Jerry.” She tried to drum up some enthusiasm for the principal. He was mainly harmless except for trying to rope her into his endless rounds of amazingly pointless good works. His last triumph had been to ship four hundred pounds of ham and woolens off to an earthquake-shattered Islamic country where the median winter temperature was ninety degrees.

  “Hi, Sally.” Jerry Johnson smiled and pushed his glasses up his pug nose. He had dark, narrow polyester trousers that ended at his anklebone but were not designed by Thom Browne, a short-sleeved polyester shirt though it was sleeting outside and cheap plastic horn-rimmed glasses. Who dresses this guy? Julia thought, clenching her teeth. Elmer Fudd?

  “How ya doing?” Jerry asked, a puppylike smile on his face.

  People were trying to kill her. She had been banished to Simpson, Siberia. Federico Fellini, her beloved finicky cat, was in a foster home. Would his foster parents remember to feed him only the choicest cuts of meat and take him to the homeopathic vet? She had lost a job she loved and was living in a house where not only the roof, but now the walls were leaking.

  She smiled thinly. “Great, Jerry. Just great. What can I do for you?”

  He smiled back, showing acres of white teeth. His wife’s brother was studying to be a dental hygienist and practiced on Jerry. A lot.

  “Elsa and I are having some people over for dinner tomorrow night and we’d like to know if you can make it.” He leaned close and Julia caught a whiff of mint. He’d had his teeth cleaned again. “Elsa’s making her macaroni special. You wouldn’t want to miss it.”

  Pasta.

  Julia perked up.

  Visions of her favorite trattorias in Italy swam before her eyes and she almost wept. Gorgonzola and penne. Amatriciana. Pesto. She would give her soul for a taste of real food.

  “I didn’t know Elsa cooked Italian,” she sighed.

  “Oh sure.” Jerry beamed proudly. “Great recipe. We have it all the time. She just cooks the noodles for about an hour until they’re nice and soft, then adds ketchup and cheddar and shoves it in the oven.” He grinned, big brown eyes gleaming behind the oversized lenses. “Yummy.”

  Julia closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer to that Great Director in the Sky to get her out of this terrible cheesy B movie she was trapped in. She wanted a new script—a nice sophisticated romantic comedy, starring, say, Cary Grant. Charade, or Bringing up Baby. Not American Pie.

  “You can bring someone along, if you like,” Jerry added. “A date. Elsa always makes extra.”

  A date. Was that something soft and cylindrical that grew on trees? In her month in Simpson, all the males she’d met had either been married since they were twelve or lacked a faculty or a limb or struggled to reach 3 digit IQs. Not a Cary Grant in sight. Heaven knew what the single female population of western Idaho did for sex. Emigrated to Alaska, maybe.

  Then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to date, wasn’t even supposed to fraternize with the locals and grew even more depressed at the thought of maybe never ever having sex again in this lifetime.

  “Thanks, Jerry. That’s kind of you, but I’ve got a lot to do.” File my nails, alphabetize my spice rack, rinse out my stockings. “I’m really behind on my grading. But thank Elsa anyway. Maybe I can take a rain check.”

  “Okay.” His cheerfulness grated on her already sensitive nerves. “You’re missing a fun evening, though.”

  Julia smiled weakly then screamed. “Damn it! Er—darn it! Can’t you do something about that bell, Jerry?” Her ears were still ringing and she slapped the side of her head. “Where on earth did you get it? From a decommissioned submarine?”

  “It gets the kids’ attention,” he replied mildly. “Well, gotta go. Sorry you can’t make it tomorrow.”

  Julia dredged up a smile. “Another time, Jerry.” She braced herself and tried not to flinch as the second bell sounded—the one the kids called the “or else” bell, because the teachers shouted for them to settle down in their room—or else.

  Her own kids were remarkably well-behaved. She clearly remembered walking gingerly into the class of twelve second-graders expecting…what?

  It was hard now to remember the trepidation bordering on fear she had felt a month ago. Visions of black-jacketed tattoed hoodlums with knives and machine guns, driven crazy by whatever street drugs were currently popular, had
flashed through her head. They would carve her up and dump her body on the outskirts of town and the law wouldn’t even be able to touch them because they were underage.

  As it happened, she had walked into her classroom, introduced herself as the new teacher, taking over from Miss Johanssen who had to move suddenly to California to take care of her ailing mother. She’d taken roll-call, opened the reader’s primer to page one and that had been that. The kids were shockingly well-behaved, had only minor scuffles amongst themselves and called her ‘ma’am’.

  Actually, in the beginning, the kids were so nice she had had the crazy notion that she had walked straight into a re-remake of The Body Snatchers. The kids were really aliens grown in tiny little pods down in the basement of the school. Gradually, though, she realized that they lived in such a harsh environment, growing up doing chores as soon as they could walk, that they were used to unquestioning obedience.

  She walked into the classroom, then stopped as a small brown cannonball barreled straight into her stomach. She let out a whoosh of air, then laid her hands on two narrow shoulders. The small bones felt as fragile as a bird’s under her hands.

  “Rafael.” She smiled and hunkered down. Rafael Martinez was her favorite pupil. Small, shy, with a sweet nut-brown face, he had hovered around her the past month, bringing her fistfuls of late-blooming daisies, a piece of filthy tea-colored bone he assured her was a dinosaur fossil and—her favorite—a tiny spring green turtle.

  Julia had been worried to see him growing sadder and sadder over the last two weeks. Something was happening at home. She could have resisted the temptation to interfere if Rafael had become aggressive and violent, like kids did in the movies. But he had simply turned quiet, then morose, waves of unhappiness palpably quivering in the air around his little round, dark-haired head.

  “Hey, buddy,” Julia said gently. She reached out a finger to casually wipe away a tear. “What’s the matter?”

  He mumbled something at the floor. She thought she heard ‘Missy’ and ‘mother’ and glanced sharply at Missy Jensen, her cropped straw-colored hair and overalls making her look more like a little boy than a little girl.