Shadow Woman A Novel

Chapter Nine



Lizette warily approached Saturday; Friday had been such a day of upheaval that she was almost afraid of what the new day would bring. The wrong face still stared at her from the mirror, she still had at least two years missing from her memory, but at least she wasn’t spending the morning either curled up in pain or hanging over the toilet puking her guts out. She’d take any improvement she could get.

But the day felt odd, as if she were just waiting for something else to happen. Briefly—very briefly—she entertained the idea of going back to Walgreens to see if by chance Mr. X would be there, but she had to roll her eyes at herself on that one. Not going to happen. He’d bought his shampoo yesterday; he wouldn’t be back for more.

Saturday was her day for errands, one of which was grocery shopping. Normally she shopped at Walmart for the majority of her groceries, and at the small neighborhood store closer to the house when she needed only a few things. Today she went to neither, and she couldn’t have said why, other than breaking out of her routine seemed like a good idea.

Instead she stopped at a store she passed on the way to and from work every day but had never entered. It was a nice store, large, clean, just a bit fancy, so she took her time. The prices were a bit higher than at Walmart, but she was actually having fun finding different foods.

Leisurely shopping was a decent enough way to spend a Saturday afternoon when it seemed as if her body and mind were turning against her and nothing about her life made sense anymore. It was nice to get away from her worries for a while, to deal with nothing more dramatic than what this store had or didn’t have, to study labels, plan a meal or two, and think about … nothing.

Except—suddenly, the damnedest things were perplexing. She stopped, staring into the case of frozen foods. Blueberry pomegranate frozen yogurt. Something about it resonated, though she couldn’t remember ever trying it before. Did she like it? Would she like it? She tended to stick with vanilla, and she was damn tired of vanilla. So … maybe. Opening the door, she took out a carton of blueberry pomegranate and placed it in her grocery cart, next to the cinnamon raisin bagels and the oatmeal raisin cookies. Carbs, much? She usually made certain her diet was more healthy than not, but today she was having problems with her selections. What if all this time she’d been eating foods she really didn’t like? After everything she’d gone through the day before, that didn’t feel as ridiculous as it sounded.

She couldn’t live on carbs alone, so she made herself go back through the produce aisle, adding fruits and vegetables to the cart. Normally she ate turkey: turkey breast, ground turkey, turkey bacon, turkey sausage … she was so sick of turkey, she never wanted to see it again. She bought some real bacon, though a package of chicken breasts probably balanced that out. Before she totally flipped out and added something like sardines to the growing pile, she wheeled the cart to one of the checkout lanes.

As the cashier efficiently scanned the items, Lizette looked out the wide front windows, studying the parking lot. Her car was parked to the right and several spaces down, facing out—again—so she could drive straight out of the space and into the lane that led to the side exit of the parking lot. She didn’t even remember purposely choosing that space, but looking at it now, from this distance, it was plain to see. She was poised for a quick getaway.

And, huh, no headache or nausea, just a clear observation of her surroundings.

She paid with a swipe of her credit card and plucked the keys from her purse so they were in her hand and ready. She grabbed her bags—plastic, not paper—and placed them so they hung over her forearms but didn’t restrict her hands. The plastic straps of the heaviest bag bit into her flesh and pinched a bit, but she wanted both of her hands free. She couldn’t remember ever worrying about that before, but she had a new reality now.

She stepped off the curb and headed toward her car, her gaze automatically scanning the area. She was alert, in a way she hadn’t ever been. No, that wasn’t quite right: she hadn’t been this aware in a long time. So what if she couldn’t remember exactly when she had been this aware? What was fascinating was how oblivious most people were.

The woman who had checked out beside and just before Lizette was loading her groceries into the back of her Highlander, while two children—one boy, one girl—argued about who was going to sit where. Most of the other cars were empty, though a man sat in the driver’s seat of a gray sedan, probably waiting for his wife or girlfriend. He was looking down, as if texting or playing a game on his phone, but she couldn’t see what was in his hands. A store employee, a young and bored guy probably working a summer job, was collecting grocery carts. One young couple was headed into the store; she held a piece of paper, most likely a list, in her right hand. Lizette could tell they’d probably been arguing. Neither spoke or looked directly at one another at any time, and there was a good three feet between them, a distance neither felt compelled to narrow. His shoulders were tight; her mouth was pursed.

Lizette used the remote to pop the trunk open. After storing her groceries there she closed the trunk, and once again looked around. A car was just pulling into the parking lot—a female driver, alone. The woman circled the parking lot, looking for a slot as close to the store as she could get.

Lizette unlocked her door, got inside, and immediately relocked the door.

She sat there for a long moment before starting the engine. A long chill ran down her spine. Someone was watching her. Damn it, she felt eyes on her, though she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

But maybe not. Maybe being hyper-alert was just putting herself in the mindset that she could be watched, and her imagination was taking over from there. Half convinced she was being watched, half certain she wasn’t, Lizette pulled out of the parking slot and turned toward the traffic light.

The gray sedan, the one with the man who’d been texting, or whatever, in the driver’s seat, was just leaving the parking lot as well and he fell in behind her. Frowning, she glanced into the rearview mirror. He was still alone.

What were the possibilities? Rapidly she ran through a few scenarios. Maybe he’d run into the store, picked up a few things, checked out ahead of her and then sat in his car for a few minutes to send a text. She hadn’t seen him in the store, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he had planned to shop, but something or someone had called him away before he could take care of that chore. That was plausible. Unlikely, but still plausible.

Then again, maybe he was following her. Had he picked her out of all the women who’d walked in that parking lot and chosen her as his victim? She had been careful, she’d been alert, so what had marked her as an easy target? Or had he been behind her on the drive from her house to the store where she had never shopped before? Would she have noticed?

No, an inner voice said, you wouldn’t have. You were thinking about Mr. X, and doing normal things, like getting on with your life as if nothing had changed in the past day and a half. Her big thing today had been shopping at a grocery store she hadn’t been in before.

Her heart jumped up in her throat. What should she do?

A left turn would take her toward home. She didn’t dare lead this guy to her house, though if he’d followed her from there he already knew where she lived. She tried to think through the ramifications of that, but things were happening too fast for her right now and she needed to concentrate on what she was doing. When the traffic light changed to green, Lizette turned right.

So did the car behind her.

She drove down the main street that would, eventually, take her past the office building where she worked. This was a part of town she knew well. She’d driven these streets enough. For the past three years—maybe three—she’d driven this route to work five days a week. She had rarely deviated from the route, though every day she’d gone out for lunch and gotten to know the area that way. Once, for a five-week period, a detour had taken her by another route while this one was being repaired and repaved.

Now, as she kept her speed at precisely the speed limit, she realized that while she’d never consciously paid much attention, she really did know a lot about this area. It was as if a part of her subconscious had been operating on a different level all along.

The road coming up led to an apartment complex: dead end. The next three streets to the left would take her into a middle-class neighborhood. She wasn’t sure what was back there besides houses: cross streets, maybe a park. Farther down this street there were a number of restaurants, an office building much larger than her own, and a couple of nice strip malls.

The gray car was still behind her, but it wasn’t right on her tail. A Highlander—maybe the one with the woman and two kids and their groceries—had passed the gray car and then pulled between them. Lizette flipped her turn signal and moved into the left lane. So did the Highlander. Her heart pounded; her palms began to sweat. Surely she wasn’t being followed by two vehicles, especially since the one behind her had kids in it. On the other hand, what great camouflage! And multiple cars doing a tail were always better than one—

Not now, not now! she thought frantically as pain stabbed through her head. She couldn’t afford to be blinded by a headache. The only song she could think of at the moment was “Oscar Mayer Wiener,” so she hummed it and concentrated on the words until the pain dimmed and she could see clearly again.

Then the Highlander turned into the middle-class neighborhood, and Lizette breathed a sigh of relief.

The relief didn’t last long. The gray sedan was still a short distance behind her, not riding her bumper but staying fairly close.

Without using her turn indicator, she took the next left, sharply and cleanly. Huh. The Camry, which she didn’t think she’d have chosen for herself, handled pretty well. On the side road, she slowed her speed. She checked the rearview mirror and saw the gray car turn onto the road behind her.

Her pulse rate jumped. She took a deep breath, and something deep inside her seemed to settle down. Coincidence, like the Highlander? Hell, no. One coincidence was more than enough for one day. She wouldn’t take the risk that this was another. She checked for oncoming traffic, then slammed on her brakes and spun the steering wheel, making a one-eighty turn in the middle of the street and heading back toward the main road. As she zipped past the gray car she didn’t look at the driver, not directly. She could see well enough with her peripheral vision to identify him as the man from the grocery store parking lot, though.

He didn’t look directly at her, either.

Stalker, robber, rapist … innocent bystander? She wasn’t going to take a chance, regardless.

She pulled back onto the main drag and hit the gas. Traffic was light, so she didn’t have any problems swerving in and out between cars, changing lanes, putting some asphalt between her and the man in the gray car. She was so intent on the traffic, on the cars she passed with no more than a hair’s breadth between them, that she didn’t dare check her rearview mirror to see if the gray car was behind her.

But when she hit a fairly clear stretch of road, she checked the mirror. Was that him, a quarter of a mile or so back? His car was so ordinary, it was impossible to tell, and she couldn’t make out the details of his grill and headlights.

Several blocks past her office building she took a fast right, slowing just enough that she could maintain control. She took the next right, too, then a left. She passed a slower-moving black pickup, made another turn, then pulled into the parking lot of a small apartment complex, turned a corner, and slid her vehicle into a small space between a white van and a gray pickup, two high-profile vehicles that hid her smaller car from view, if anyone had been able to follow her to this point.

Just in case, she popped her seat belt and slid down low in the seat so that anyone who did drive by wouldn’t see that she was in the car. Automatically she reached for her purse, as if there should be something there she needed, but her fingers stopped well short of the leather strap. What was she reaching for? Her breath mints? Fingernail clippers?

Yeah, she could be flip about it, but in the back of her mind she knew exactly what she’d been reaching for. I need my weapon.

Her heart was beating hard but not terribly fast; her legs trembled in reaction, to either fear or adrenaline. Right now, she couldn’t tell which.

Maybe she should call the police, but what the hell would she say? She hadn’t gotten a license plate number, and even if she had, the man in the gray car hadn’t done anything illegal. Scaring a paranoid woman wasn’t a crime, last she’d heard. No, no police. Besides, putting the battery in her cell phone and turning it on would let whoever was following her triangulate her position.

Oh, shit. The car had a GPS. It might have a separate tracker hidden on it somewhere, for all she knew. If her pursuer was tracking her movements, the gray car would show up any minute now, and there was no way she could evade him for good, at least as long as she stayed with the car. A part of her mind screamed that she should get out of the car now, that sitting here she was in a position of weakness, but out there … out there in an unfamiliar neighborhood with no gun, no backup, no one to call, was she any better off than she was right here?

No gray sedan showed up, and after a while she had to conclude that it wasn’t going to. If the guy had been following her, she’d lost him. Which brought up two possibilities: either her car didn’t have a tracker on it, or he was some random pervert who didn’t belong with Them. He might have seen where she’d turned off the main road, but there were too many possible routes after that, including more than one that would have taken her back to the main road. In her mind she replayed the drive, the twists and turns, the close calls, the speed.

The freakin’ rush.

Where in hell had she learned how to do that?

Well, maybe she was getting a little too proud of herself. She hadn’t exactly driven a Le Mans race. There was also the more-than-fifty-fifty chance that the guy hadn’t been following her at all, and she’d risked life and limb escaping from nothing.

She waited another five minutes, then finally sat up in the seat. Then she waited some more, wanting to see what was going on around her. Her position here was a good one, she decided. No one passing by on the street would see her vehicle. They’d have to be in the parking lot and right up on her to have a clue. And if that happened she was pretty much screwed, unless she put the car into a low gear and rammed them. She’d have to keep that in mind.

But no one drove past. The only activity she saw was apartment residents coming and going from the Dumpster twenty yards away. She made herself sit there a while longer. How long did she need to wait before she could safely leave? She couldn’t stay here, but she didn’t see how she could leave before dark. Hours from now. Finally she grabbed her purse and pulled the strap over her shoulder, then left the car, easing around the van on the driver’s side to sneak a peek toward the road. There was no traffic, nothing but a few kids playing ball. There wasn’t much beyond this complex, so the road didn’t serve as a throughway to anywhere. Anyone who drove back this way was either coming here or lost.

No one would expect her to hide here.

She popped the trunk, shaking off that weird thought, and ruefully lifted the grocery bag with the softening frozen yogurt in it out. No way would it survive much longer; and she wasn’t leaving this parking lot anytime soon. The chicken would have to go, too. The temperature in the trunk was plain damn hot, and she didn’t want the yogurt melting and the chicken spoiling there. She might as well get rid of them both while she could.

She walked toward the Dumpster, purse strap cross body, one bag of groceries—a.k.a. garbage—in hand. What a waste! Now she’d have to wait until next week to find out if she liked blueberry pomegranate frozen yogurt, because she was damned if she was going back to the grocery store until then. She almost laughed; she was losing her mind—or not—and she was worried about the yogurt.

She was aware of the girl’s presence long before the kid opened her mouth.

“If you don’t live here you can’t use our Dumpster, and you don’t live here. I know everybody here, so don’t lie to me.”

Stifling an inner sigh, Lizette turned to face the girl. Twelve years old or so, she guessed. Skinny, stringy blond hair under a faded blue baseball cap, blue eyes, good bones. She’d be very pretty, one day, if no one messed with her face. She kept a cautious distance between them.

“I didn’t know.” She lifted the bag slightly. “Do you like blueberry pomegranate frozen yogurt? Slightly melted, of course.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. She was so young, but her gaze was already suspicious. “I don’t know. Never tried it.”

“Neither have I, but it looked good. Wanna trade? Frozen yogurt and chicken for that hat.”

A hat would hide her hair, disguise her profile when she finally did leave here. Such caution was probably an exercise in uselessness, but she couldn’t stop herself from making the effort.

“I’m not an idiot,” the girl snapped. She scowled. “Is it poisoned? Drugged?”

“Of course not,” Lizette said indignantly. “I’m just not going home as soon as I thought I would, and I’d hate for it to go to waste.”

“You were headed for the Dumpster with it. Why should I give up my hat for your garbage?”

Good point. At least she was no longer being accused of trying to poison random children. “Fine. Twenty bucks for the hat.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “Deal,” she said promptly.

Lizette set the bag down, reached into her purse for a twenty, and approached the girl. “I’m Lizzy. What’s your name?”

“I’m not supposed to tell strangers my name.”

“I’m not a stranger, I’m the woman who’s about to seriously overpay for a used hat.”

That got a smile out of the girl. “I’m Madison.”

“Anyone ever call you Maddy?”

Madison shook her head briefly and scowled, letting Lizette know she didn’t care for the nickname. “No.” Then she removed the cap and they made the exchange.

Picking up the bag, Lizette turned and heaved it into the Dumpster.

“Hey!” Madison said, shocked. “You threw the ice cream away!”

“You didn’t trade for the ice cream. You want it, you’ll have to do something else for me.”

“I’m not Dumpster-diving for ice cream.”

“Fine. You want to earn another twenty?”

“Doing what? You’re not a perv, are you? I ain’t taking off my clothes.”

“Thank God. I just need some help with my car.”

“I don’t know how to fix a car.”

“It doesn’t need to be fixed. It needs to be disguised.”

A couple of hours later, after full dark had fallen, Lizette tucked her hair under the ball cap and got behind her steering wheel. There was no doubt she’d gone way beyond caution and rode hard on the edge of downright nuts, but in a way she’d had fun. Once Madison had gotten into the swing of things, she’d even laughed. The hubcaps had been removed, and a good dose of mud covered not only the license plate but the bumper and tires, as well. Her neat-as-a-pin Camry now looked anything but. Her car now sported a bumper sticker proclaiming her daughter an honor roll student at the local middle school, and an honest-to-goodness hula girl swayed on her dash. Madison had even gotten some duct tape and put a patch of it on the left passenger window, as if covering a hole. If by chance the man who had followed her out of the market parking lot that afternoon, or anyone else who knew her car by sight, was still out there, watching and waiting, he’d never recognize her or her car.

It was kind of sad that no one came to check on Madison in all that time—she said her mom wouldn’t be off work until after nine—and that she could deface a car that might not be her own with no adult coming to inquire about her activities.

“Hey!” Madison called as Lizette started the engine. Lizette rolled down her window, and the girl leaned in. “I know it’s none of my business, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but … who are you running from?”

Lizette eyed her from beneath the rim of her ball cap and gave a wry smile. “Honey, I have no idea.”