“You can’t stop this,” Jack said softly, the blood flowing from his nose. “They will come for me. And when I get free, I will find you. I will—”
Peri took three steps forward. Hands in fists, she snapped a sharp front kick at him, flicking his head back and knocking him down. Grunting, he levered himself up, hand on his chin as he sat on the pavement and stared silently at her.
Shaking, she backed up to lean against the car. She shouldn’t have done that. Her leg was in agony. Swiping the phone app on, she called Fran. The line clicked open, and Fran’s intent voice barked, “Silas? Talk to me.”
Peri’s eyes went to Silas, his aim unwavering from Jack. The wind gusted, drawing her attention to the loose pages of her diary, shifting in the wind.
“Silas, are you there?”
Peri jerked herself back to the present. “It’s me. Silas and I are at the ferry dock. Can you send someone to pick up Jack? Silas has him at gunpoint. I’d appreciate you locking him up. And thanks for the offer to work for you, but I’m going to have to pass.”
Silas’s face became ashen, and Jack chuckled, his eyes on the muzzle fixed on him.
“I’m leaving now,” Peri said into the phone but talking to both of them. “Don’t follow me. Tell Allen I need his car for a few days but I’ll leave it parked illegally somewhere next week so he can pick it up at impound. Oh, and, Fran? You suck.”
“Agent Reed—”
Peri ended the call, setting the phone down on the pavement where she wouldn’t run it over when she left. Almost immediately it began to hum.
“What are you doing?” Silas asked, but she said nothing as she dropped her diary next to it, not caring if more pages blew into the water. Head high, she limped to the car. The keys were still in it.
“Peri!”
Silas fidgeted, unable to move for worry that Jack might get away. Jack was laughing, bitter and vindictive as she opened the car and got in, lip curling that it smelled like Jack. There was guilt for leaving Silas, but it was outweighed by the horror at the temptation that she knew Jack presented. She hated him for laughing. He knew why she was leaving—running away. She wanted what he offered, and she didn’t dare tempt herself again.
“Don’t let him move until they get here, okay?”
Frantic, Silas divided his attention between her and Jack. “Where are you going? Peri, talk to me!”
“Somewhere else,” she said, then slammed the door shut. “We can fix this,” Silas called out. “I promise.”
She started the car and rolled the window down. “I’m sorry. I have to. And thank you.”
“Don’t do this. God bless it, woman!”
She thought she heard shots as she drove away, but there was no change when she looked in the rearview mirror. Silas was standing there horrified, unable to stop her as he held Jack unmoving. The son of a bitch was laughing, and helpless tears slipped from her. She angrily wiped them away. She didn’t deserve to cry.
She was close enough to the bridge to Canada that she would be across it before Fran’s call could stop her. She didn’t need a passport to go over the bridge, not with her enhanced driver’s license. They’d think she was just a woman on the way home. She probably had time to stop and get her cat and knitting. The clothes she’d leave, though. Allen’s taste in women’s fashion still sucked.
Her helpless bark of laughter sounded fanatical, and she turned the radio on to distract herself from her thoughts. Her heart was breaking, but she couldn’t stay. Jack was alive, a temptation she didn’t know if she could resist. She couldn’t be that person anymore, someone so dependent upon others that she was a danger to herself. So she would leave, and go somewhere far away, pick up the pieces of her shattered facsimile of a life and start anew.
She was done with it. Done with it all.
EPILOGUE
I should have worn white sneakers, Peri thought as she strode purposefully through the wide corridors with their uniform handrails and hidden, indistinct lighting. Her borrowed scrubs were a pale blue to match the stripe on the wall, and a forgotten machine lit up in alarm as she passed it, reacting to her mild radiation level.
She just kept going, taking a dust cap in passing from a nurse’s station and tucking her short hair under it. Behind her, two nurses and an aide went to fuss over the machine.
Pulse fast, she read the names on the doors, trying not to glance in and ruin what little privacy the residents had. She found the one she was looking for across from the communal living room. Someone was at the baby grand, playing music from the forties as three patients and a nurse sang.
MRS. CAROLINE REED.