Allyson flipped the cell phone open and punched in a number. She held the phone to her ear and listened as it rang. The man answered on the second ring. “Hello, Allyson. Have you accepted my offer?”
Allyson allowed a moment to pass before responding. She was still thinking. Still unsure. She didn’t know what she would say until the words came out of her mouth. “You’ll never find us, you son of a bitch,” she said, voice emerging without even a slight quaver. “And there’s not a threat in the world you can make that scares me. I’ve told Chad everything and he’s forgiven me. And even if you do figure out where we’re going, I’ll kill anyone you send after us, just like I killed those men last night.”
There was a long pause from the other end. Then the man grunted and said, “Next time you won’t have the advantage of knowing my men are coming. One night when you’re sleeping they’ll slip into your room and take you. And then they’ll bring you to me. And then—”
A soft laugh.
And then the line went dead.
The phone slipped out of Allyson’s hand and landed with a clatter on the floor. She stared at her shaking hand, willing it to be still again. The man’s final, implied threat had rattled her more than she would’ve expected given everything else she’d been through. The voice of cowardice rose within her again, imploring her to pick up the phone and call the man back to tell him she’d reconsidered.
Allyson did pick up the phone. Then she stood up and smashed the delicate device against the concrete wall. The casing cracked, but that wasn’t good enough for Allyson. She wanted to destroy the thing completely, to vent her fear, frustration, and rage on this symbolic link between herself and the bad people she’d so foolishly aligned herself with all those months ago. So much had changed since those early days in Georgia. She no longer felt dead inside. The world was wide open and alive with possibilities she’d never imagined for herself. And she’d be damned if she’d allow that snide cocksucker and his threats to taint that. So she flipped the phone open. The hinge connecting the two halves of the device let go with a snap as she smashed it against the wall two more times. Then she separated the two halves with a savage twist and stood there breathing heavily for a moment.
Then she stepped out of the stall and strode to the end of the bathroom, where she dropped the pieces of the ruined cell phone in a waste bin. She moved to the basin and examined her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, but otherwise she looked okay. Definitely nothing like a woman who’d just been forced to make a potential life-and-death decision. She slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder, slid her sunglasses back on, and exited the bathroom.
Remembering what she’d said about getting a soda, she paused at one of the vending machines and fed change through a coin slot. A can of Coke thunked into the slot. As she bent to retrieve the frosty cold can, she glanced in the direction of Chad’s car and dimly perceived a shape behind the wheel. Jim was leaning against his pickup and smoking a cigarette.
The old man made her nervous. She was certain he suspected her of something. It was in the way he looked at her and the subtly doubting tone of his voice when he questioned her. In the aftermath of her confrontation with the intruders, he’d asked her a series of questions that made her uncomfortable. He wanted to know why she’d been up at that late hour. Wanted to know every tiny detail of how things went down. She explained everything in minute detail. It helped that much of it wasn’t made up. She’d been restless and had come into the kitchen for a late night snack, she’d told them, and that was fiction. The rest was stone cold truth.
More or less.
So it was aggravating that Jim clearly wasn’t buying it. This despite understanding why he was suspicious of her. She was an unknown quantity as far as he was concerned. He was a hard guy to figure out, not much at all like the wild rock-and-roll madman portrayed in movies and books. He was calmer, quiet, and coldly analytical. He’d hauled the dead men away in the bed of his pickup and disposed of them somewhere. It was chilling how unfazed he’d been by that.
Once the cleanup chores had been completed, Jim made the offer of sanctuary at his “place in the mountains.” He made the offer explicitly to Chad, pointedly leaving her out. But Chad would only go if Allyson accompanied him. Jim acquiesced without argument, but his demeanor told the real story—he’d didn’t trust her.
Allyson straightened and took a large gulp from the can. The cold soda felt good going down. Slightly invigorated, she set off toward Chad’s Lexus. She smiled at Jim as she passed him and he nodded, his eyes unreadable behind his dark sunglasses. Then she opened the Lexus’s passenger door and slipped inside.
“Thanks for stopping. I feel so much better after getting—”
Then she saw the thing propped on the dash and her voice died in her throat. It was an ID card with her picture on it. At the top in cobalt blue block letters were the words FRANKLIN SECURITY CONSULTANTS. Beneath her picture in small black type was the name Jennifer Campbell, and beneath that the title Senior Solutions Specialist.
The back door on her side opened and someone slid into the seat behind her. The door thunked shut and Allyson detected a faint scent of tobacco. Jim. No one said anything at first. Allyson’s face reddened as sweat appeared on her forehead. The air in the car felt close and hot. The slick Coke can began to slide from her fingers. She set it in the cup holder with a shaking hand and tried to think of something—anything—to say.
Chad cleared his throat and said, “Is there anything you want to tell us, Allyson? Or should I call you Jennifer?”
His tone thrummed with equal measures of anger and hurt. Hearing that hurt snapped her out of the state of speechless panic. The partial admission that followed came before she could take even a moment to consider it. “I’m an ex-porn star and drug addict. Allyson Vanover is my real name. I’m from Los Angeles originally, but I ran away from my life there because it was out of control. I did twenty-four pornos in just under two years, and the ten thousand dollars is what I had left from that when I met you. I used to do so much coke my nose bled all the time and I wouldn’t sleep for days. I had to get away from that or I was going to die. Jennifer Campbell is the alias I came up with in case I needed a new identity to really start over.”
The words had come out in a rush, tripping over the tip of her tongue like pebbles tumbling wildly down a waterfall. As with her previous explanations in the aftermath of last night’s carnage, her story now was comprised of interweaving strands of truth and fiction. And, again, much of it was truth. But she had no faith at all they would buy the whole package this time. She suspected the combination of Jim’s paranoia and Chad’s hurt feelings would conspire to put her out on the street. The thought filled her with a black despair. She’d done many bad things, but she was doing her damnedest to make up for them. The unfairness of it burned, coming so soon after taking her stand against the bad guys.
Chad blinked slowly, his face registering shock. “Um…porno?”
Allyson’s nod was emphatic. Her eyes were shining, imploring him to believe her. “I swear to God.” She glanced at the rearview mirror, met Jim’s stoic gaze, and looked again at Chad. “I don’t know what you guys are thinking or what you suspect, but I swear it’s fucking wrong.” A quaver entered her voice and tears began to roll from the corners of her eyes. “I’m not a bad person. I love you, Chad, and I didn’t tell you the truth about my past because I knew you wouldn’t want anything to do with someone so…trashy.”