What’s done is done, she thought, silently addressing her reflection. Just leave it be and when you board that flight tomorrow morning start working on forgetting there ever was a Chad Robbins.
Right.
She had a feeling that was going to fall into the category of things easier said than done.
And as if she didn’t have enough to fret about, there was the matter of this mystery man. Chad clearly liked and respected the man a great deal, which added yet another layer of regret to her betrayal. There was something so naggingly familiar about the man. So she’d decided to eavesdrop on their conversation, kicking off her shoes and padding on her bare feet to a spot in the hallway just outside the den.
They had talked of small things at first. But the tone of the conversation abruptly shifted when Jim at last told Chad why he had come to see him after all this time. Allyson’s eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat as he talked of danger on the horizon. Some survivors of the House of Blood had gone missing and another had been found brutally murdered. He urged Chad to “go underground.”
Allyson had been able to bear no more of it, retreating from her eavesdropping position and heading in a hurry to the spare bedroom. There she retrieved from the closet the bag she’d packed months ago. It was a big black canvas bag stuffed full of clothes very unlike the fashionable wardrobe she’d adopted for her big role as Chad’s love interest. Tucked away in a zippered side pouch was the $10,000 cash advance she’d been given for the job. Her getaway money. Another pouch contained an array of flawlessly produced false credentials and ID, including a passport, a Tennessee driver’s license, a birth certificate, and a card identifying her as a consultant for something called Franklin Security Solutions. All bore the name Jennifer Campbell.
Chad likely would invite his friend to spend the night, and she could too easily imagine the man stumbling upon the stuffed traveling bag. A man like that would operate at a base-level of paranoia every day. He would open the bag, see the fake ID and documents, and…so she stashed the bag at the back of her own closet in the bedroom she shared with Chad.
Well. It was taken care of now. No one had any reason to suspect she was working with the bad guys. She turned away from her reflection and returned to the bedroom. She went to the bed, watched Chad’s sleeping form. He was snoring lightly. She prayed for him to turn over and see her in the expensive Victoria’s Secret lingerie they’d picked out together from a catalog. It would arouse him. It always did. A good, energetic fucking might be just the thing to get him talking again. She pictured herself in his embrace, their bodies naked and covered with a sheen of sweat in the afterglow of love. The intimacy of the moment leading him to confide in her again, sharing his fears and telling her of the danger Jim claimed they were facing. And it would then be so easy to fuel the fires of that fear, manipulating him with her own show of terror.
They would run.
Rouse Jim, grab a few necessities, and get the hell out of Dodge.
Chad shifted position on the bed, rolling from his side onto his back. Allyson held her breath for a hopeful, tense moment.
He didn’t wake.
Damn.
Allyson pulled on a tiny silk robe and slipped out of the bedroom. As she moved down the hallway toward the living room, she paused at the doorway to the guest bedroom. The door was partly open, but the interior was dark. She could just vaguely make out the sleeping form of Mr. Jim, Lazarus, or whatever his name really was. She heard an intake of breath and thought for a moment that he might be awake. Awake and watching her watch him. Her heart raced at the thought. Without waiting to verify whether the man was awake or asleep, she hurried past the darkened doorway.
She retrieved Chad’s laptop from his office and carried it into the living room. She settled into the plush sectional sofa and propped the little computer on her lap. She opened it and tapped the power button. The computer came out of hibernation mode to present her with a screen that offered the option of signing on to her desktop or Chad’s. She moved the cursor to Chad’s name and clicked on it. The desktop icons quickly loaded and she signed on to Chad’s AOL account. She opened his mailbox and scrolled through the list of e-mails, looking for anything that might be from someone looking to tip him to Allyson’s true role here. She couldn’t imagine who might be in a position to do that, but paranoia drove her to periodically check his messages on the off-chance anything that needed intercepting did show up.
Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she clicked over to his saved mail folder and opened the two-year-old e-mail from Dream Weaver. She read through it again, even though she knew the words by heart. And she felt again the familiar stab of ridiculous jealousy. Ridiculous because the woman seemed to be gone from Chad’s life forever. And doubly ridiculous given the true nature of her own relationship with Chad.
But the feeling was there nonetheless.
The note read:
Chad,
Yes, I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. Yes, I know you’re worried. I can tell because there’s about a gazillion e-mails jamming my inbox. I don’t even need to read them. The subject headers tell me all I need to know.
Sorry if that sounds cold. Sorry if I sound like a bitch. But you need to let go and move on with your life. Stop pining for me, because I’m telling you right now, once and for all, I am never coming back.
I don’t say these things to hurt you. I honestly don’t. It hurts me to say them this way. I’m trying to be forceful and firm—yes, bitchy—because I need you to accept the way things are. What we had is broken and cannot be fixed. I’m broken. I love you with all my heart, more than I could ever love anyone else, but our lives are on very different paths.
Paths, Chad, that will never cross again.
This is the last time you will ever hear from me.Please don’t reply to this message. I’m cancelling this account and it will just bounce back to you.
Have a nice life, Chad. Please find someone nice and forget about me.
Goodbye,
Dream
Allyson closed the e-mail and clicked out of Chad’s AOL account.
Dream Weaver. As usual, Allyson’s blood boiled at the thought of that gorgeous woman and her ridiculous name. That fucking cunt. Dream had put Chad through so much drama and strife. He always swore he was over her. But why, then, would he continue to save a two-year-old e-mail?
Cunt. Fucking cunt.
She’d been asked to keep an eye out for her, too. She wished the bitch had been the one to show up tonight. She would’ve called hell down on her without a second thought. But she’d been told from the beginning that Lazarus, as they still called him, was far more likely to one day grace Chad’s door. And…
Allyson frowned.
Wait a minute…
Chad’s name for the elusive Lazarus was Jim. It didn’t require a lot of thought to conclude that Jim was far more likely the man’s real name. Allyson clicked over to Google Web search and entered the following: