Immortal Secrets (14 page)

“That is all fine and good, but where is Jeff right now?”

“I don’t actually know.”

“Okay, then where does he live? I can’t believe I never thought to ask that before, but where’s his place?”

“I’m quite sure Jeff always avoided telling you where he lives. That is because he doesn’t have one certain place he stays. He is always on the move.”

Jenny’s suspicion about Jeff being some sort of spook seemed right on the money. “So if I want to see him, it has to be tonight?”

“I’m afraid so. Knowing Jeff, he probably is staying fairly close to you, without you realizing it. At the same time he is probably trying to do some damage control.”

“Damage control?”

“I believe he is trying to use his contacts within the government to convince the Lubbock police to back off of him, Allison, and most importantly you.”

“Well then, I guess I will have to wait until tonight for my answers.” I left Dr. Greene’s office with a lot more questions than answers.

After my meeting with Dr. Greene, I walked out of Holden Hall. I found Jenny sitting on a bench, waiting for me. It was immediately apparent, from the look on her face that she was in a foul mood. Now, Jenny had never shown me a happy personality, but today she was in a particularly dark mood. Something was up. I could feel it.

I tried to act like I didn’t notice. “So, I had a really good meeting with Dr. Greene.”

Jenny stood up. “Really, what did he want to talk about?”

We talked as we walked to the car. “Oh, he just wanted me to know how important it was for me to be at the review session tonight.”

We both got into the car. Jenny turned the key in the ignition and the car roared to life. “That’s too bad.”

“Why is that?”

“You are not going. We can’t take the chance.”

That meeting was my path back to Jeff. I had to convince her to let me go. “I’m going to that review session. It’s important for my grade that I’m there.”

She looked over at me. “You don’t understand. You’ve been withdrawn from the university. You
no
longer attend classes at Texas Tech.”

“You can’t do this.”

“The decision’s been made. Your profile is getting too high. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. I did manage to convince my boss to let us stay in Lubbock, at least temporarily.”

“This can’t be happening. I just now started making friends.”

“Maybe after the trial, you might be allowed to contact them.”

I dug my cell phone out of my purse and started dialing.

Jenny was staring straight ahead. Maybe she couldn’t look me in the eye. “Don’t bother, the service to that phone has been disconnected as well.”

“Well aren’t you little Miss Wicked Witch of the freaking West?”

She sighed. “That’s not fair. This wasn’t my decision.”

“Oh, and you guys are being fair with me, right? Give me a break!”

“Lisa, you need to calm down. You are only making things worse.”

“Calm down or what? You’ve already grounded me and taken my phone away. What’s next? Are you going to make me stand with my nose in the corner when we get home?”

She turned and looked at me with rage in her brown eyes. “That is enough.”

I didn’t say anything else. There was no need. I obviously wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind and I had made sure that Jenny knew I was pissed. I still hadn’t played the one card that I still had left. I could always threaten not to testify at trial. Unfortunately, there was no way I was going to play that card without knowing that Jeff could get me away from the marshals and make me disappear someplace with him.

Once we got home, I managed to make it all the way to my room and shut the door before I started to cry. I’m sure that Jenny could hear me crying but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing it. I hated the marshals. I hated all of them, even the ones that I had never met.

Even as the tears flowed from my eyes, I was trying to form a plan. I still had to make it to Dr. Greene’s house. There was no way that Jenny and her marshal buddies were going to let Jeff get anywhere near me. It was so unfair. I had finally made it into college and I liked it. I had finally met someone that loved me for who I was on the inside.

My past was continuing to ruin my present. Even Jenny had said we were staying in Lubbock temporarily. It was clear that I’d be relocated. Would Jeff be able to find me once they moved me somewhere new? I wasn’t willing to find out. Like an echo, my past sins were coming back to spoil any chance at a happy ending. I needed the happy ending. Living without Jeff would be the same as not living at all.

Chapter Twelve

I had a plan. Okay, so it wasn’t much of a plan really. It was more like a desperate attempt to escape. I didn’t think it had much of a chance. The problem was that there was a lot more than just Jenny to contend with. Assuming that I could get past her, and that was a huge assumption, ther
e would be at least a couple
more marshals watching the house. I had no idea where the
y would be stationed. So even if
I did manage to make it outside, I would likely have to physically get past one of them to escape.

I got up from my bed, where I had been crying my eyes out, and looked for anything that I might be able to use. I was still looking when I heard a knock at my bedroom door. I didn’t answer it. Maybe Jenny would just go away. There
was
about as much
a
chance of that happening as there was of pigs learning to fly.

Instead of her leaving, the opposite happened. She opened my door and let herself in. She wasn’t alone. Bart Tucker was with her. I immediately noticed that both of them were wearing their sidearm in a belt holster. Any pretense that they were anything other than federal marshals was gone.

I cut my eyes at him. “Well, if it isn’t Marshal Tucker. Don’t you have some books to shelve down at the library or something?”

“I never did think that you bought my cover as your boss at the library,” Bart said.

“Whether you like what is going on or not, we still need your cooperation,” Jenny said.

“You’ve been holding out on us
,”
Bart said. It wasn’t a question. He said it like it was a fact.

My mind was racing. The only information that I had held back was information about Jeff, Allison, and Dr. Greene. Did they already know about them? I tried to sound confident. “I don’t know what the two of you are talking about.”

“Apparently there is some sort of hard and irrefutable evidence against the Demarco family. It was supposedly given to you. Perhaps it was given to you without your realizing it”, Jenny said.

I didn’t know anything about any evidence. “You can search my room if you think it’s here.”

“Marshal Mull has already searched this room at least twenty times. We need that evidence
,”
Bart said.

I felt like a fool. I finally understood what was going on. “Was I ever going to testify at the trial?”

Jenny’s eyes got wide. “What do you mean?”

“This was never about me, was it? The government was never after my testimony. You’ve been chasing this evidence all along. That’s what you really wanted.”

Burt gave me a cold stare. “Do you really think the government wants to put its star witness on the stand and have the defense attorney tear her to shreds while showing the jury what
a
tramp she is. I’m curious, just how many of the defendants did you sleep with?”

Jenny gave Bart a dirty look. “That’s not fair. Everyone makes a few mistakes. I certainly wouldn’t want to be judged solely on what I did between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. If Lisa is all the government has, I’m sure they will want her to testify.”

Bart dismissed Jenny with a wave of his hand. “Whatever, I don’t have time for all this touchy, feely, let’s all feel good about ourselves cr
ap. What I want to know is this: W
here is the evidence?”

I couldn’t tell if they were both on the level or just playing good cop/bad cop with me. “You can ask as often as you want, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

The two marshals finally gave up and left my bedroom. I thought Jenny probably believed me about not knowing anything about the evidence. Bart acted like he didn’t think talking to me any further would do any good. I didn’t even want to think about how far he might be willing to go to get that information if Jenny wasn’t here to stop him. Of course, they could be playing me and trying to make me think that.

Either way, I was now more convinced than ever that my best option was to make a run for it. I just didn’t have anything to lose. I looked out my bedroom window at the backyard. The sun was still up; it wouldn’t be dark for a few more hours. I knew I had no chance of escaping as long as it was light outside. I decided I would make a break for it as soon as it got completely dark.

In the meantime, I continued my search for things I could use. I dumped my purse out on the bed, but there wasn’t much I thought I could use. I found some body spray that I thought might come in handy. I put everything else back in my purse and looked through all the drawers in my dresser and my night stand. I found a can of black shoe polish that I had bought to touch up my dress shoes that I hadn’t any reason to wear since I’d gotten to Texas.

I put the shoe polish and the body spray in the pockets of my black Texas Tech hoody that I had picked up to show my school spirit. I left the hoody in the closet and tried to act as normal as possible. I looked over at my laptop and wondered why I hadn’t thought of that before. I could email Dr. Greene and he could get word to Jeff. I was saved.

I popped open my laptop and waited for it to load. Naturally, the internet connection had been disabled. My connection with the outside world was completely severed. I was a prisoner whether anyone called it that or not. Sure, I wasn’t officially under arrest. I had no illusions that I would be arrested if I tried to leave. They would have some legal term for it like protective custody or something like that.

So I pretended to read a book while I kept an eye on the sun as it continued to sink into the western sky. I knew that the marshals probably expected me to try something. I knew that it probably wouldn’t work. I didn’t care. I was going for broke. I wasn’t dumb enough to think that the marshals were just going to trust me to stay in my room. They would make a point of checking on me. I needed to delay any discovery that I had left.

The first thing I did was turn my radio on and tune in the heavy metal station. Hopefully, this would mask any noise I would make later. Just before sunset, I decided it was time to make an appearance in the kitchen. I walked through the living room on my way to the kitchen. Bart glanced up at me from where he was sitting on the couch. His attention quickly returned to the football game he was watching on TV.

I really wasn’t hungry but made a show of looking through the pantry before settling on a package of crackers. I sat down at the table and made myself eat some of the crackers that I really didn’t want.

Jenny joined me at the table. “Look, I know how bad all of this looks to you right now.”

I asked in my most sarcastic tone, “So what do I do now, besides sit in my room and listen to the hick radio stations in this town?”

She put her hand on my arm. “I don’t know yet. The truth is that Washington is basically siding with Bart on this one. At this point, I am really just along for the ride, and it’s really pissing me off.”

“So, I guess we’re both stuck, huh?”

She looked to make sure that Bart was still preoccupied with the football game. “I’ll try and make some phone calls in the morning. Maybe I can get permission for some sort of outing tomorrow. Of course, we would be joined at the hip if we did go somewhere.”

I tried to sound excited about the whole idea. “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing. Let me know as soon as you get an answer, okay?”

I put the remainder of my crackers back in the pantry. I seriously doubted that any part of what she had just told me was true. But it really didn’t matter if it was true or not. If my plan worked and I escaped, I would never see her or Bart ever again. If I failed, I would probably be in handcuffs and under armed guard by tomorrow morning.

I went back to my bedroom, closing the door behind me. I knew it made more tactical sense to wait until the middle of the night to sneak out. There were two problems with waiting. First, I knew where Jeff was right now. He was at Dr. Greene’s house waiting for me. I didn’t know where he would be later or if Dr. Greene would be home later.

The second problem was that the marshals also knew it made more sense to wait until the middle of the night. They would be waiting for me to try something after everyone went to bed. I tried to lie to myself and say that I would catch them off guard. The only thing working in my favor was that Dr. Greene lived in the same neighborhood as I did. I didn’t have to escape for long or make it very far.

The sun finally set and it was starting to get dark outside. It was time to get ready. I took the mirror out of my make-up case. Next, I opened the can of black shoe polish and started covering my face with it. After tonight, I would go back to being plain old Lisa Wilson, but for tonight I was turning into Kathy Commando. With my face blackened, I put on my black hoody and made sure my body spray was still in the pocket.