CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Three Years Ago
I walked out of the courthouse expecting freedom, but only fear followed me.
How long until that crazy woman found me again? Cami. I had loved her, but I’d loved a lie.
I’d always thought whoever was harassing me was a bully. Some jock who liked to pick on the little kids who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, defend themselves. But I’m six foot two now, I work out at the gym every morning, and I can defend myself.
But only if I see them coming.
I changed my name for a second time. The first had been to protect me from the media, and I’d taken Grams’s last name. But this time, I needed to do more than fill out a form. I needed to be a new person. Someone the woman who wanted me dead couldn’t find.
I was getting in my new car, the one registered under “Gray Manning,” and saw Detective Charlie Mead striding toward me. He’d made detective fast, but I wasn’t surprised. He was a smart man and the only person on earth I trusted.
No bad news. I can’t take any more bad news. “Gray Manning,” he said.
It would take a bit of getting used to, I realized.
“Charlie.”
He stopped just short of my car and scratched the back of his neck. I was going to miss him. He was like Rachel, only a big brother rather than a big sister. We’d become friends. I went to his wedding last year. I liked his wife, and she liked me. It was normal. The only normal I’d ever had.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t find her.”
“You tried.”
Trying didn’t satisfy him.
“I’ll keep on it.”
I shook my head. “No prints, no photos, no name. She found me when I transferred from SU. The sketch gave us nothing. This is the only way.”
“I’m not giving up,” he stated. “You deserve to have your life back.”
“No. I don’t want that life. I’m going to make a new one. But I’m going to miss you and Tina.”
“We’ll keep in touch—through that account I set up for you, okay?”
I nodded. “You’re the only one who knows where I’m going.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re in witness protection, of sorts.”
Some people might think that a twenty-one-year-old man going into hiding—legally changing his name, burying his past, teaching at a poor public elementary school in Brooklyn to avoid seeing anyone who might know him—was a weak man.
But I need peace. Anonymity that a big city can provide. I need to be someone else. I don’t need to know why someone wants to hurt me just like I don’t need to know why my parents are selfish or why my sister was murdered or why I’m here.
These things just are.
I said, “Thank you.”
“Peter,” Charlie said softly. “If anything feels strange to you, if you think she’s found you, call me, okay? Anytime, day or night.”
“I will.”
But I knew I wouldn’t. If she found me again, she’d kill me.
Because even now, after everything she’d done to me, I don’t think I could kill her.
How can I kill someone I don’t even know?