The Great Escape (10 page)

She stood on the sidewalk, her heart in her throat, her backpack at her feet, long after he’d disappeared. Car rental shuttle buses passed. Taxis pulled up. Eventually she gazed down at the envelope he’d handed her. She slipped her finger under the flap, opened it, and took out its contents.

Her driver’s license. Her credit cards. And directions to the security office inside, where someone would be waiting to handle her trip back to D.C.

The evidence of her parents’ wonderful, suffocating love stared back at her. She’d known they could find her if they wanted to. Now she understood why they hadn’t. Because they’d known from the beginning exactly where she was. Because they’d hired a bodyguard.

Two weeks, Lucy.

She should have realized they’d do this. Over the years there’d been a few incidents where people had gotten too aggressive around her … A couple of wacko letters … Once she’d been knocked over—nothing serious, but enough to put them on edge. After she’d lost her Secret Service detail, they’d ignored her objections and hired private security for big events where they felt she’d be too exposed. Did she really think they’d allow her to go unprotected through a highly publicized wedding? Panda had been on her parents’ payroll from the beginning. A short-term contract they’d extended to two weeks after she’d run off. Two weeks. Enough time for the worst of the publicity to fade and for their anxiety about her physical well-being to ease. Two weeks. And the time was up.

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

L
UCY 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.

D
ESPITE 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.

But the biggest change was her hair. She’d dyed it a harsh coal black. Then, using the directions on the special jar of wax, she’d formed half-a-dozen random dreadlocks that she’d sprayed orange. Now she lined her eyes top and bottom in smudgy black, then clipped in a nose ring. A rebellious eighteen-year-old stared back at her. A girl who looked nothing like a thirty-one-year-old professional lobbyist and runaway bride.

Later, as she passed through the lobby on the way to her car, she pretended not to notice the covert glances of the other lodgers. By the time she’d backed out of her parking place, the tutu skirt was already making the back of her thighs itch. Her boots were uncomfortable, her makeup over the top, but she began to relax.

Viper, the biker girl.

P
ANDA TOOK A MORNING RUN
along the lakefront path. Normally, the beauty of the Chicago skyline cleared his head, but that wasn’t happening today.

Two miles turned into three. Three to four. He swiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his sweat-soaked T-shirt. He was back where he belonged, but after the quiet of Caddo, the city was too loud, too fast.

A pair of weekend idiots on Rollerblades blocked the path ahead of him. He swerved into the grass to pass them, then cut back onto the pavement.

Lucy was a smart woman. She should have seen it coming. But she hadn’t, and that wasn’t his fault. He’d done what he needed to.

Still, he’d hurt enough people in his life, and knowing he’d hurt one more—knowing exactly how far he’d stepped over the line—was something he couldn’t forgive.

A biker sped past. Panda ran faster, wishing he could outrun himself.

Out of nowhere, an explosion ripped through the air. He threw himself off the path and hit the ground. Gravel scraped his chin and dug into his hands. His heart slammed against his ribs, and his ears roared.

Slowly he lifted his head. Looked around.

Not an explosion at all. An old junker of a landscaping truck had backfired.

A dog walker stopped on the path to stare at him. A runner slowed. The truck disappeared, leaving a trail of exhaust hanging over Lake Shore Drive.

Shit. This hadn’t happened to him in years, but two weeks with Lucy Jorik and here he was. Flat on the ground. Dirt in his mouth. Something to remember the next time he tried to forget who he was and where he’d been.

A
S THE MILES ROLLED BY
, Lucy kept glancing at herself in the mirror, taking in the harsh makeup, dead black hair, and orange dreadlocks. Her mood began to lift. But was she really going to keep going? Even Ted, who was smart about everything, wouldn’t be able to figure this one out. Neither could she, but she loved this feeling of slipping into a new skin.

Before long she left Illinois behind and headed into Michigan. Would Ted ever forgive her? Would her family? Weren’t some things beyond forgiveness?

Near Cadillac, she abandoned the freeway for the secondary roads that led to northwestern Michigan. By evening, she was waiting in line with half a dozen other cars to drive onto the day’s last ferry to Charity Island, a place she’d had difficulty locating on a map. Her muscles were stiff, her eyes scratchy, and her good mood fading. What she was doing was crazy, but if she didn’t follow through, she’d wonder for the rest of her life about Panda and that kiss and why she’d fallen into bed with a virtual stranger two weeks after she’d run out on a man who’d been too good for her. Not an entirely logical reason to make this trip, but she wasn’t exactly in the best shape these days, and it was the best she could do.

The old ferryboat, painted black with highway yellow striping, smelled of mildew, rope, and spent fuel. A dozen passengers boarded with her. One of them, a college kid hauling a backpack, tried to strike up a conversation by asking where she went to school. She told him she’d dropped out of Memphis State and walked away, her heavy combat boots thumping on the deck.

She stayed in the bow for the rest of the trip, watching the island gradually materialize in the fading light. It was shaped like a reclining dog—head at one end, harbor where its belly would be, lighthouse raised like a stubby tail at the other end. The island lay fifteen miles out in Lake Michigan, according to a tourist brochure. It was ten miles long by two miles wide with a year-round population of three hundred, a number that jumped into the thousands during the summer. According to its chamber of commerce, Charity Island offered visitors secluded beaches, pristine woods, fishing and hunting, as well as cross-country skiing and snowmobiling in the winter, but she only cared about finding answers to her questions.

The ferry bumped against the dock. She headed below to get her rental car. She had friends all over the country—all over the world—who would have given her a place to stay. Yet here she was, getting ready to disembark on an island in the Great Lakes on the strength of nothing more than a farewell kiss and a resident ferry pass. She pulled the ignition key from her backpack and told herself she had nothing better to do with her time, which wasn’t quite true. She had amends to make, a life to rebuild, but since she didn’t know how to do either, here she was.

The harbor was filled with charter fishing boats, modest pleasure craft, and an ancient tug anchored near a small barge. She drove down the ramp into a gravel parking lot bordered by a sign reading
MUNICIPAL DOCKS
. The two-lane main street—optimistically named Beachcomber Boulevard—held an assortment of stores, some weather-beaten, others spruced up with bright colors and kitschy window displays to attract the tourists—Jerry’s Trading Post, McKinley’s Market, some restaurants, a couple of fudge shops, a bank, and a fire station. Sandwich boards propped along the road advertised the services of fishing guides, and Jake’s Dive Shop invited visitors to “Explore Nearby Shipwrecks.”

Now that she was here, she had no idea where to go. She pulled into a parking lot next to a bar named The Sandpiper. Once she got inside, it wasn’t hard to pick out the locals from the sunburned tourists, who had the glazed look of people who’d squeezed too much into one day. While they clustered around the small wooden tables, the locals sat at the bar.

She approached the bartender, who eyed her suspiciously. “We card here.”

If she hadn’t lost her sense of humor, she’d have laughed. “Then how about a Sprite?”

When he brought her drink, she said, “I’m supposed to be staying at this guy’s place, but I lost his address. You know a dude named Panda?”

The locals looked up from their drinks.

“I might,” the bartender said. “How do you know him?”

“He … did some work for this friend of mine.”

“What kind of work?”

That was when she discovered Viper had no manners. “You know him or not?”

The bartender shrugged. “Seen him around sometimes.” He went off to help another customer.