Читать книгу Nancy Bush's Nowhere Bundle: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide & Nowhere Safe - Nancy Bush - Страница 13

Chapter 5

Liv threaded the key into her apartment door lock with quaking fingers and a field of vision that had narrowed to a two-inch square. Blackness was creeping in on all sides. She’d made it home. To her apartment. In her Accord, which was parked a bit cockeyed in the lot. And now . . . and now . . . the familiar panic from her youth was taking her over.

“I can’t . . .” she whispered, shaking her head furiously. No, no, no!

No.

The police. She should call the police.

But the officer from her youth invaded her thoughts, followed quickly by the memory of the supercilious policeman who’d come to Hathaway House over a disturbance during her teen years and had treated them all like criminals.

No. No police. She couldn’t trust them. She couldn’t trust anyone!

Why? Why Zuma Software?

You know why. It’s not Zuma. It’s you.

She clapped her hands over her ears, hyperventilating. This was her own paranoia talking. Talking, talking, talking. Always talking. Always convincing. But she knew better. She—knew—better. Didn’t she?

Didn’t she?

She’d slammed the apartment door behind her, and now she leaned against it, eyes ravenously searching the room. Maybe Kurt Upjohn was into something she knew nothing about. Maybe there were financial concerns. Bad debts to the wrong people. Maybe Aaron was involved in more drugs than she knew.

It’s about you, Liv.

Maybe there was some military connection after all. War games. Sensitive information running beneath the guise of computer games.

But no one went upstairs to the control room, where it all happens.

Or, did they?

Her heart seized. Maybe the killer had still been there. When she returned. Maybe he thought she’d seen something and was coming after her!

“Don’t . . . don’t . . .” she whispered aloud, willing her vision to expand outside the shrinking box closing in on her.

You have to leave. You have to go. Now. Get your things. Go. Drive. No, walk away.

Blindly Liv searched through her closet for her backpack, something she could carry. Her hands closed upon it and she squeezed her eyes shut and offered up a silent prayer, asking for what? Help? For a wild moment she thought about calling Dr. Yancy. They hadn’t spoken since Liv was at Hathaway House but the doctor had been kind; she’d talked straight.

But Liv had no number for the doctor. She would have to call Hathaway House to reach her.

With that thought in mind she crossed swiftly to the phone. She reached out and it suddenly rang shrilly beneath her hand. She screamed, a short, aborted sound that may have been in her own head. Heart galloping, she counted the rings but didn’t answer, was afraid to.

Someone was leaving a voice mail.

A voice mail.

She waited three minutes that felt like an eternity, her ears filled with a dull buzzing that wouldn’t go away. Then, with unsteady hands, she picked up the receiver and retrieved the message.

“It’s Lorinda. I know you’re at work, but I just wanted to call you about . . . your father. He’s with your brother. It’s not good for him. He and Hague aren’t good for each other.” Her voice rose. “If you could just try to help me,” she said harshly, as if growing angry with Liv. “I don’t ask for much, and you’re making this so hard!”

Liv’s brain ran in a circle. How did she get my number?, she thought first. Does she know where I live? Does the killer know?

“It’s because of you that he’s not listening to me,” Lorinda went on in a complaining voice. “And Hague. I’ve been his wife for nearly twenty years, but you and Hague . . .” She broke off, sounding like she was about to cry, and the line went dead.

She doesn’t know about Zuma . . . she hasn’t heard. Maybe no one knows yet.

With that thought in mind, Liv quickly catalogued what she would need for a long trip away. Money. She had cash in an empty ice cream carton in the freezer. Quickly she retrieved that roll of bills, then found the jacket of her running gear and zipped the money inside a pocket. She needed her gun. Running shoes. An extra shirt and pair of jeans. Undergarments. A raincoat even though the sun was shining like it would never stop. The manila envelope.

She stuffed everything into the backpack, the gun on top.

Rummaging through the bathroom drawers, she grabbed her toothbrush and several hair bands, then looked in the mirror at solemn hazel eyes flecked with gold as she snapped her hair into a ponytail and then smashed a baseball cap with a Mariners logo on her head, drawing the ponytail through the back hole above the adjustable strap.

Erasing the message from Lorinda, she unplugged the phone. She did a fast but thorough search to assure herself she hadn’t left some scrap of paper with information about her family. Let it take whoever was out there as long as possible to learn whom she might contact.

Unless they already know . . .

She was running on instinct, and a sense of being the prey. She wasn’t going to sit down and try to think it through. There was time for that later, when she was somewhere safe, wherever the hell that might be.

Five minutes later, she was out the door. She had the keys to her car in her hand, but she left the Accord in the parking lot, heading for the street. Just another pedestrian. Walking slowly—strolling, really, to avoid drawing attention—she wound along a newly revitalized street in this suburban, hoping to be urban, part of Laurelton, with its new cobblestone crosswalks and lampposts and shops with green awnings and outdoor seating. A place to mingle and maybe sit down and catch her breath.

Somewhere, if not safe, at least safer.

With an effort she kept her mind off the images of her friends and coworkers at Zuma sprawled across the floor, blood oozing beneath them, the life force draining away. If she thought about it, she was lost. If she remembered Aaron . . .

Swallowing hard, she moved into a late afternoon crowd just beginning to gather at their favorite bars and bistros for happy hour, merriment spilling onto the street from open doorways.

Aaron, she thought, a smothered cry wrenched from her throat.

Shhh . . . don’t think . . . don’t think . . . don’t draw attention. . .

Blinking back cold tears, she turned into a sandwich shop with a long line of customers at their counter service and a smattering of tables.

It had grown hot outside and she was overdressed, but she was shivering like she was consumed with fever as she took the only empty table, situated in the center of the room with a good view of the door and street.

She collapsed into the seat like she’d just completed a marathon.

It fell on Phillip Berelli to show September and Gretchen where the security tapes were. The man was fast losing what little control and backbone he’d ever possessed and was sprawled like a limp rag in a chair in Kurt Upjohn’s office, where there was a videotape monitor and a number of tapes. Upjohn had been taken in the ambulance earlier, and Aaron Dirkus in the coroner’s wagon. September and Gretchen were left with blood on the floor and asked by the techs to step around it, which they all did.

“Mr. Upjohn is cautious,” Phillip said in a thready voice. “Paul . . . Paul de Fore gives him the security tapes . . . I think they look at them. It’s old-school technology but Kurt liked that. No one really thought it was that important. I mean, the door to the upstairs is always locked. That’s where everything is and you have to know the pass code. Kurt . . . Mr. Upjohn was vigilant about it.”

“What about the main floor?” Gretchen asked.

“Paul was . . . he cared . . . but it just wasn’t that important. Not really. There’s no reason to care. There’s nothing here. There’s nothing here.” He cut himself off on a hiccup.

September had called in Ted, one of the techs, and he’d hit the rewind button on the tape currently being recorded. The tape stopped and he then pressed PLAY and they could see only one camera angle, but it encompassed most of the front parking area.

“You can’t see the side door,” Berelli said on a swallow.

“It’s all right. He came through the front,” September said.

“Aaron was lax about the side door. They had a fight about it, Aaron and Kurt. Aaron just didn’t think keeping it locked mattered.”

“But Mr. Upjohn felt it was worth keeping locked?” Gretchen asked.

“He didn’t like the side door. I think that’s why . . .” He trailed off.

“You think that’s why, what?” September asked.

“I think that’s why Aaron was so lax about it. He just kinda wanted to needle his old man, and it worked.” He rubbed a hand viciously over his face as if to rub the whole tragedy away. “Aaron took the side door key and Kurt was mad.”

“There he is,” Ted said.

They all looked at the monitor. There, indeed, he was. The killer was one man. At least it looked like a man, dressed in navy pants, lace-up boots, a navy shirt like the kind security teams sometimes wore. A black vest. A black ski mask and a gun.

“That’s a Glock,” Gretchen said.

“He just walked up as boldly as you please,” September said.

They ran it back again and watched it three more times. There was no sound and as soon as the man entered the building he disappeared.

“Can’t see what vehicle he came from, but he sure didn’t walk far looking like that,” Gretchen said.

“Does he seem nervous to you?” September asked.

Gretchen considered the question. “No. He seems like he came here to kill some people, and that’s what he did.”

“He sorta has a stutter-step. Right there.” September pointed to the screen where the man did a bit of a shuffle about three paces from the steps. “Like he’s hesitating.”

“Maybe,” Gretchen conceded. She looked at the puddle that was Phillip Berelli. “We’d like you to come to the station, Mr. Berelli.”

“Am I under arrest?” he squeaked out.

“No, sir. We just want to talk to you somewhere—else,” Gretchen said.

“I need to call my wife,” he said, his gaze sliding around the room.

“We’ll call her on the way.” To the tech, she said, “See if you can get a close-up on that uniform. I don’t believe for one minute he’d be idiotic enough to wear something that connected him to a job, but maybe it’s a costume? From a costume shop? Or, like Goodwill or something?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ted promised, as he pulled the tape from the recorder.

“Did J.J. leave?” she asked, looking around.

“With the Dirkus and de Fore bodies,” September answered her. She’d watched through the front windows as the coroner and an assistant had slammed the back of the wagon closed and pulled away, feeling slightly sick to her stomach.

Phillip Berelli shivered and suddenly leapt up and ran for the bathroom again.

Gretchen almost yelled something after him but thought better of it. To September she said, “How’re you doing?” but her voice held a hint of disparagement that did not foster honesty.

“I’m okay,” she said, and felt Ted’s gaze slide over her quickly. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

A few minutes later a white-faced and weak-kneed Phillip Berelli followed them out to the Ford Escape.

The café was crowded, noisy and exposed. Liv would have liked a table in a corner, her back to the wall, with a view of the street instead of this one in the center of the room, but it was not to be. Her brain felt too big for her head and her pulse beat like angry, tribal drums inside her ears. Boom, boom. Boom, boom. Boom, boom.

It was surreal. A dream. It wasn’t reality. She’d had a taste of that once before, of believing in lies and visions. It was a defense mechanism, Dr. Yancy had told her. Her own invention. A protection against her darkest fears.

Protection? That wasn’t going to help her now. Now, she needed to think about truth.

Why? she asked herself, seated in the uncomfortable café chair. There was a table of three teenaged girls between her and the window to the street. The girls were looking through the glass and talking about someone named Joshua, who may or may not have been right outside. One of them blew the paper off her straw at one friend who seemed the most obsessed with this guy. They were laughing and teasing and just hanging out. The kind of thing Liv might have done as a teenager if the bright, sassy six-year-old she’d once been hadn’t found her mother’s body hanging from the kitchen rafters.

To Liv’s left was a table with a middle-aged man in John Lennon glasses and spiked hair, a style way outside of his era. Instead of looking hip, he seemed a little pathetic. He was drinking a Widmer beer and absorbed in the sports page from the day’s paper. The Portland Timbers, the city’s soccer team, had won two nights before in an exhibition game of some kind.

Liv could feel pressure building inside herself. Looking past the girls and through the window, she could see a lighting store across the cobblestone crosswalk, chandeliers ablaze in the windows. A coffee shop sat next to it: Bean There, Done That. She knew that coffee shop. It had booths with brown leather seats and a dimmer ambiance. She’d already ordered a cup of soup and a can of Diet Coke, however, and when the waitress brought her order, she had her money ready.

A tempo was beating inside her ear: Get out, get out, get out.

She couldn’t stay. Couldn’t. Taking a sip of the Coke, she carried the can to the recycle bin, dumped it, then left the rest of the food untouched. She was out of the café, across the street and inside the coffee shop before she had another conscious thought. She took the booth one in from the door, as the couple who’d been seated there were just leaving. Then she realized she would have to stand in line to order. She needed a cup of coffee in front of her so people would know the booth was occupied. She debated leaving her backpack on the table to save her seat, but couldn’t risk it.

Chafing, she found her place in line, and saw her booth immediately taken by a young couple who slid inside it on one side, laughing together. Damn. Now what?

The boy got up and stood in line behind her.

She felt herself start to sweat. A row of glass pendant lights in red shades lined the top of the counter, sweeping a slash of color over her. Garnet red. Blood red.

Her pulse beat in her head. Boom, boom. Boom, boom.

I’m going to faint, she thought, just as the customer in front of her paid for his order and moved aside, allowing her to step toward the barista.

“Coffee,” she said in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own.

“Latte? Mocha?” the girl asked brightly.

“Black coffee. Large.”

“I guess I don’t need your name then,” she said cheerily, plucking a to-go cup from a stack and turning to the machine behind her to serve the coffee immediately.

Liv felt the boy’s eyes on her neck like daggers. She dared not turn around. Facing forward felt like a supreme effort. As soon as the barista took her money and handed her the brimming cup, the boy shouldered past her and said, “A latte, and a double mocha.”

“Names?” the girl said, a Sharpie poised over the paper cup.

“Alana and Mike.” He turned and grinned back at his companion in the booth. “She’s the latte.”

Liv moved away. To the station that held the lids and cream and nonfat milk. She poured a quick shot of cream into her cup and then reached for a plastic lid. It was all a ploy to pass time until there was a seat. Her hands felt disembodied but at least they’d stopped violently shaking.

Two men and a woman filed into the line at the counter, but her gaze swept past them as she looked for somewhere to sit. Finally a table opened up. Not a booth, but a table. She hurried over, pulled back the chair and seated herself so she could look out the door and front window.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

The male voice brought her up short. She did mind. Very much so. But she couldn’t afford to cause anyone to remember her. Her heart resumed its heavy beating.

“No, go ahead,” she heard herself say, sounding breathless. No wonder. She felt strangled for air. Suffocating.

Her new companion was probably around forty, she determined, and looked like he worked out. He was losing his hair and seemed to be sensitive about it because he kept swiping a hand over the front wisps, smoothing them back in place.

She didn’t want him at her table. She didn’t want his eyes on her. Kind eyes? Or knowing eyes? What those eyes weren’t were indifferent.

Does he know who I am? Is he after me?

She tried to act normally, if she could remember what normal was with all the physical reactions wildly coursing through her body: rocketing pulse, shaking legs, fevered brain, hysteria climbing up her throat.

Stop. Stop. Calm yourself.

At Hathaway House she’d learned to control her bouts of panic, and she’d believed, wrongly, it appeared, that she’d put them to bed for good. The pictures of Aaron and Kurt and Paul and Jessica’s bodies sprawled over the floor were right behind her eyes.

A sound on the street caught Liv’s attention and she glanced past the man to the window and the sunny street beyond. A man’s shadow traveled by. She watched fearfully, but it was only in her imagination; gone in an instant. There were, however, people outside stopping to witness the results of a fender bender across the way, from the side of the street she’d just crossed. Two people, a man from one car, a woman from the other, were stepping stiffly toward each other to exchange insurance information.

Her mouth was dry. The shadow . . . was she being watched? It felt like she was being watched. Gooseflesh rose on her arms.

“You’re wearing a jacket,” the man observed. He was watching her. They all were. Everyone in the coffeehouse.

“I run cold,” she murmured. She was sweating inside, though. She hoped it didn’t show on her face.

The line had grown longer; the barista unable to keep up with the demand, so a sullen-looking, male coworker with dark, suspicious eyes joined her. Liv tamped down the tide of fear threatening to wash over her and picked up her coffee, drinking a slug of liquid as if it were water to a lost desert traveler.

Her companion’s eyes were on her face. “I’m fine,” she said.

“You don’t look fine. You don’t have any color, at all.”

“Did you hear about the killing at Zuma Software?” a voice called from somewhere in line.

Liv whipped around. It was a woman’s voice. She was standing at the counter, digging through a coin purse for change, making small talk. The sullen helper was waiting for her to count out the coins, a peeved expression on his face. The two men in line in front of her had already been served.

“It’s breaking news,” another woman answered her, now several people behind her. “Broke in while I was watching TV. The owner, Kurt Upjohn, is in critical condition. Somebody else, too.”

“There were two women,” the first lady said, turning around to gaze at the second. “One got shot, but one wasn’t there. They think maybe she did it.”

Liv nearly gasped. Who? Who thinks that?

“She killed all her coworkers? Mowed ’em down?” the second woman sounded disbelieving.

“They’re looking for her. That’s all I know.”

The man across from Liv was staring at her as if he knew—knew—who she was. Liv warred with herself as several more people went through the line. She wanted to bolt out the door. She needed to escape. They were looking for her. Of course, they were looking for her.

But she didn’t want to be caught. Couldn’t be caught.

Carefully, she took several more swallows of her coffee, then she scraped back her chair, picked up her backpack and stood.

“Leaving so soon?” the man asked her, his lips smiling, his eyes cold. Or was that her imagination?

She didn’t answer, just sidestepped around the tables toward the door that seemed miles away even though it was only twenty feet. She reached the handle, and it burst inward, and she was nearly mowed down by two policemen in uniform.

Her vision blurred. She couldn’t turn around. She heard them address the barista: We’re looking for someone....

Panic licked through her again. She stepped out. On the street it was hot. The sidewalk sent up a wave of heat. A dark gray Jeep was parked directly in front of her. A man was circling the front of it, unlocking the doors, sliding into the driver’s seat, balancing a cup of coffee.

She walked toward the passenger door and flung it open just as he slammed the driver’s door shut and was in the act of putting his drink into a cup holder. “Hey,” he said, gazing at her in surprise.

She slid inside and closed the door behind her, clutching her backpack, her heart jumping crazily inside her chest. “I need you to take me somewhere.”

“Yeah?” he asked cautiously, looking for all the world like he was about to throw her out.

With deceptive calm, she withdrew her .38 from the backpack and leveled it at him. “I’m a pretty good shot. I’m sorry. I really am. You just need to drive me away from here.”

He was good-looking. Black hair, blue-gray eyes, a strong jaw and maybe the hint of a dimple as he clamped his teeth together and stared at her gun. Thirtyish. In dusty jeans and a faded gray T-shirt with a list of words crossed out across its front.

“You are kidding me,” he said slowly.

“You think so?” she asked, a lump building in her throat. “I might not be able to kill you. But I could hurt you. I could do that, I’m pretty sure. If you won’t help me, I could hurt you.” She glanced at the coffee cup and read his name: AUGGIE.

She felt tears building in the corners of her eyes.

He stared at her another long moment, as if assessing the truth of her statement. Then he sat back in his seat, switched on the ignition and silently guided the nose of the Jeep into traffic.