The Great Escape

She gathered her pack, pulled on her ball cap and sunglasses, and made her way into the terminal. Let her have the freedom she needs, she imagined them telling him. But keep her safe.

Now she saw what she should have comprehended from the moment he’d so conveniently shown up in that alley. He’d never left her alone. Not once had he taken the boat out by himself. He’d dogged her whenever they’d gone into a store, and in restaurants he’d been lounging by the door when she’d emerged from the ladies’ room. As for those motels … He’d insisted on one room because he was keeping guard. And when he’d tried to scare her into going home, he’d only been doing his job. Considering how much private security cost, he must have gotten a real kick out of the deal she’d struck to pay him a thousand dollars.

She stopped at a bench inside the terminal doors, her thoughts bitter. With no effort at all, Panda had picked up a great job perk last night. Maybe sex was a service he always provided his female clients, a little something extra to remember him by.

If she didn’t get to the security office soon, someone would be out looking for her. They probably already were. But still, she didn’t move. The memory of that kiss kept intruding, those troubling emotions she’d seen in his eyes. She only wanted to feel anger now, not this uncertainty. Why had he looked so troubled? So vulnerable? Why had she seen a need more complicated than desire?

Nothing more than a trick of the light.

She thought about the way he’d cradled her face, kissed her. His tenderness …

A self-created illusion. She didn’t know anything about him.

So why did she feel as though she knew everything?

He should have told her the truth. Regardless of what his agreement was with her family, he should have leveled with her. But that would have involved being straightforward, something of which he was incapable.

Except just now, as they’d stood at the curb, he’d told her the truth with his eyes. That final kiss had told her these past two weeks meant more to him than a paycheck.

She grabbed her backpack and walked out through the terminal door just as she’d walked away from her wedding.

Half an hour later, she left Memphis in a rented Nissan Sentra. The clerk at the rental car desk hadn’t recognized her name when she’d passed over her driver’s license, but then he’d barely been able to operate the computer, and she knew she couldn’t count on that kind of luck again.

She glanced over at the map spread out on the seat. On top of it lay the phone she’d just used to text her family.

Not ready 2 come home yet.

Chapter Six

LUCY STOPPED FOR THE NIGHT at a Hampton Inn in central Illinois. She registered under a phony name and paid with cash she’d withdrawn using the ATM card that had been tucked in the envelope and that she had no doubts her parents could trace. Once she reached her room, she pulled the detestable pregnancy padding out from under her shirt, tossed it in the trash, and withdrew the purchases she’d made a few hours earlier.

The idea had come to her at a rest stop near the Kentucky border where she’d watched two goth girls climb out of a beat-up Chevy Cavalier. Their dark makeup and crazy hair gave her an unexpected, but vaguely familiar, stab of envy, a feeling she remembered from high school when the alternative girls had passed her in the hallways. What if …

Mat and Nealy had never made her feel as though she needed to conform to a higher standard than other girls her age, but even before the drinking incident at the party, she’d known, so she’d sublimated her desire to pierce her nose, wear funky clothes, and hang around with the more disreputable kids. It had been the right thing to do then.

But not now.

She consulted the directions on the packages and started to work.

DESPITE HER LATE NIGHT, SHE awakened early the next morning, her stomach sour with anxiety. She had to turn the car around and go home. Or maybe travel west. Maybe search for enlightenment on one of those mythic road trips along what was left of Route 66. Her psyche was too fragile to probe the mystery of a surly, enigmatic bodyguard. And did she really believe that understanding more about him would help her understand herself?

She couldn’t answer that question, so she climbed out of bed, took a quick shower, and pulled on the clothes she’d bought. The bleeding red rose that adorned her tight-fitting sleeveless black T-shirt clashed perfectly with her short, lime green tutu skirt, which was strapped at the waist with bands of black leather and a pair of buckles. She’d traded in her sneakers for black combat boots and applied a couple of coats of sloppy black polish to her fingernails.