And he appeared to be everything that Devon had said he was.
But she didn’t recognize him, she realized with relief. It wasn’t that he was traveling under a false name; he hadn’t been on Nicos’s island when she’d been there. The relief lasted for only the briefest moment.
That didn’t mean Nicos might not have hired Lassiter after she had escaped from Vadaz Island. Since she had never set eyes on him, he had no other reason that she could see to go after her.
It had to be Stan Nicos. Nicos, with his fat wallet and hideous soul, had found a man as talented and corrupt as himself to hunt her down. Nicos, who controlled the major percentage of drugs and arms that made their way from South America to the rest of the world, wouldn’t have found it that difficult. Just a small job in the scheme of his crime network, but he’d given the order to go and find her.
To bring her back to that house on the hill, as he’d told her he would.
Blood on the black-and-white tiles of the guest house.
“Too late.” Nicos met Margaret’s eyes. “Remember this, Margaret.”
His gun pointed execution-style at Rosa’s head.
“Please, Margaret.” Tears running down the young girl’s cheeks. “Make him stop. I’m begging you. I don’t want to die. He’ll listen to you.”
Blood on the tiles. Blood on the tiles.
*
Don’t think of that day. It had taken her years to move beyond it and come to terms. No, that was a lie. She had never come to terms with anything connected to that day or Stan Nicos. It still haunted her dreams and it only took a chilling threat like this to bring the memories flooding back to her.
She swallowed hard. Okay, Lassiter represented a threat and she had to deal with it. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had to run from Nicos before. But that had been during the early years, when she had been skipping from island to island in the Caribbean, just trying to stay one step ahead of him. Once she’d managed to come back to the United States, it had been merely a question of, as Eve had said, staying under the radar.
So that’s what she had to do again. Just get out of here and lose herself as she’d done so many times before. Stay away from the friends she had made over these last years to protect them. After a while, maybe she could afford to make contact again.
So text Eve and tell her that she wouldn’t be able to meet her Michael yet. If she didn’t, Eve would start to worry, and that would mean that she would be likely to start a hunt of her own. But not with this phone. She just hoped Lassiter hadn’t been able to tap her calls for the last two days.
Get moving. Time to get out of here.
She turned and headed for her closet across the room. She could be out of here and on the road within thirty minutes. She pulled out her backpack and started stuffing it with clothes from the paper grocery sacks on the floor. It took her only a few moments and then she headed for the bathroom. Toothbrush, comb, hairbrush, soap, washcloth. Anything else she could do without or pick up later. It was amazing what you could live without if you were forced to do it. She had found that out when she had lived those years in the woods. Sometimes it was even emancipating not to be dependent on—
She stopped.
She had caught sight of her face in the mirror as she turned to leave the bathroom. Good God, she was a mess. Her lips were tight and the blue eyes looking back at her were wide with strain. She looked pale, tense, and on edge.
No, be honest, she looked scared.
Nicos has made me look like this, she thought with self-disgust. Three years and he could still cause her to feel this fear. She wasn’t that kid any longer; she was over twenty. He shouldn’t still have this effect on her. Three years and he could cause her to run like a rabbit because he’d sent some creep after her who had even been able to intimidate Devon.
Okay, she would run because it was the smart thing to do. But she was no rabbit and she would not abandon the things she had to do before she had to leave. It shouldn’t take that long. Her duties at the zoo could be done by someone else, except for that tiger cub. It had become clear that no one else could do that adjustment but her. She’d stop on the way out of town and spend enough time to try to reconcile the tigress to her cub.
She was already feeling better because of the decision, and the woman in the mirror was no longer looking like someone she wouldn’t want to know.
She tilted her head and made a face at her reflection. Hey, you’ve had it too easy lately. We can get through this. Just stick with me, kid.
She opened the bathroom vanity drawer and took out the small wallet photo album and stuffed it in her pocket. You could do without most things, but memories were important and photos helped. Same for music. She took out her iPod and earphones and jammed them in her other pocket. Then she took the SIM card from her phone and smashed the phone against the porcelain bathroom sink until it was in pieces. She’d pick up her new phone at that shopping center near the zoo. She slipped on her backpack and headed for the door.
As usual, she had left nothing behind that meant anything to her, nothing that could show anyone who she was or where she would go next.
A broken phone, a few dishes in the cabinet, a couple paperback books.
Try to put that together and find me, Lassiter.
She didn’t look back as she slammed the door behind her.
*
Lassiter isn’t going to like this, Neal Cambry thought, as he looked around Margaret Douglas’s one-room studio flat. He had orders to locate the woman and not let her get away. But she had clearly abandoned this place. Bite the bullet. Call Lassiter and let him know that Margaret Douglas was in the wind again. He reached for his phone.
“We have a problem,” he said when Lassiter answered. “She’s not here. I talked to her landlord and she slipped an envelope in his mailbox with this week’s rent this morning. No forwarding address.”
Lassiter was cursing. “Of course there’s no forwarding address. She never leaves one. Did you search her apartment?”
“I’m there now. There’s not much to search. It’s pretty basic, a minimum studio apartment. I can’t find any leads.”
“Look harder. I’m on my way there from the airport now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Find something by the time I get there.” He hung up.