Chapter 5
She formulated her plan quickly.Speed was important here. Her best chance was if Nick didn’t know that she’d spotted him, and thought he could simply reappear at the park tomorrow morning with some explanation about the board meeting getting canceled. The faster she acted, the bigger her head start would be. If she could hit the road immediately, that would be best.
But first she needed to grab some things from home.
Including, she decided as she dashed around her house filling up a travel bag, Goldilocks. She couldn’t arrange for a goldfish-sitter because that might tip off Nick that she was gone. And she couldn’t leave Goldilocks to starve.
The next problem was the Buick. It was so goddamn slow, and a gas-guzzler too, not to mention that Nick knew it. She needed a different car. But she couldn’t buy another one, not without leaving some kind of record. She had a good amount of cash to work with, but purchasing a reliable vehicle would take a chunk out of it.
The solution seemed obvious. Drive to New York. Borrow Molly’s BMW. Sure, Nick might manage to catch wind of her departure. But it would be easy to disappear in the big city. Molly had offered Red to her when she left New York, and it still sat in its overpriced garage, waiting for something to do. Charlie had been paying that garage bill until she could get her ass to Manhattan for a road trip.
Perfect opportunity. Hell, she could even leave the Buick in Red’s spot in the garage. Or she could abandon it on the street. No one would steal that old beast of a car. Eventually the city would give it the infamous yellow boot. When she got back, she’d pay the fines and reclaim her sweet granny’s car. In the meantime, Nick would spin his wheels in New York while he looked for her there.
And then she made a decision that broke her heart a little. She deleted the fund that held the money from Hobbs, and snuck that two million back into their system. Maybe all they wanted was their money back. Or maybe Nick Perini wasn’t working for Hobbs. For now, she couldn’t take a chance. She’d figure out another way to fund her father’s escape.
She tooka long nap so she’d be able to drive through the night. As she drifted off, she kept picturing Nick’s dark eyes and the gentle way he’d handled that injured bird. If he’d hurt that bird himself just to get her attention, he was going to have hell to pay someday. But no, as jaded as she could sometimes be, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that he’d done that. She wouldn’t be attracted to someone like that…would she?
She was generally extremely cautious about who she got involved with. Men were usually drawn to her because of her appearance—from a distance, she looked like she could be a model, although it would have to be for some obscure Italian label that liked strong features and elongated necks. No one would ever mistake her for a classic cover model. But a certain type of man saw her as a mountain to climb, or prey to be bagged. Other men simply found her intimidating.
Until Nick Perini, she’d never enjoyed a casual, friendly relationship with a man. Of course there had been that undercurrent of attraction giving everything that extra punch of excitement. But mostly, they’d just…hung out. They’d jogged in the park—sometimes together, sometimes at different paces. They’d gone out for breakfast and chatted comfortably about everything from movies to funny vacation stories to weird parents (sanitized version only) to relationship disasters. The vibe between them had been so low-key that she’d let down her guard.
What had she told him about her friends, for instance? One conversation in particular kept coming back to her.
“I keep in touch with my buddies from high school, but I wouldn’t say we’re close,” he’d told her. “A lot of them are married now.”
“Only one of mine is married. And I wouldn’t count on that lasting.” Since she wasn’t using Ani’s name, she’d felt comfortable sharing details. “He’s an asshole who doesn’t treat her right. They just had a big blowout, so I took her on a trip to get away for a while. He was cheating with her fertility doctor.”
“Ouch. Does she live around here?”
“Not far.”
“Where’d you take her for that getaway?”
“Not far enough, apparently. I was hoping, since there’s no cell service there, that she’d get a break from his manipulations.”
“What kind of place has no cell service?”
“A very remote place surrounded by mountains. I thought it would drive me crazy but it was a nice break. You have to actually walk to a general store to get Wi-Fi. So it’s available, but you have to work for it. And then you pay by the half-hour, so you tend to be more selective when you’re online.”
He’d buttered his English muffin as he listened. “All right, I need to know where this magical place is. I keep thinking I need to take an internet break, but I’m addicted.”
“Aren’t we all? We should all have parental controls on our phones.” At that moment, a dog trailing a leash had veered under their outdoor table, with a woman apologetically scrambling after it. They’d never circled back to that topic.
Or had they?
Had she ever said the name Firelight Ridge? She’d had no reason to hide it. No premonition that she might need to disappear there. But her habitual caution meant that she rarely shared specifics about such things.
But had she unintentionally dropped enough clues that he’d be able to figure it out? No cell service, Wi-Fi at the general store, a remote location in the mountains…that could describe any number of places, right?
After plenty of tossing and turning, she finally slept. When she woke up, it was dusk. Time to make her move. With Goldilocks strapped into the passenger seat, one lone travel bag in the trunk, and fifteen thousand dollars of cash in a hidden compartment in her cosmetics bag, she hit the road.
As far as she could tell, no one followed her. But since all her expertise at spotting such things came from movies, she couldn’t be entirely sure. She drove through the night, arriving in Manhattan before dawn. The city streets were blessedly empty at this hour, save for early delivery trucks and cab drivers working the late-late shift. Red and green light from the traffic lights reflected in the slickness left by an overnight rainfall.
Should she risk driving the Buick to the garage where Molly’s car was stored? She was ninety-nine percent sure she hadn’t been followed. But just in case, she left the Buick on a street in an industrial area near the Hudson River, with a nice view across to New Jersey.
Then she waited until the streets filled with early morning commuters and street vendors and office workers hurrying to work. A crowd to lose herself in, yes please.
In her running shoes—for comfort and to minimize her height—she wheeled her travel bag fifty blocks across the slowly awakening city to the parking garage. Goldilocks’ tank was nestled into a messenger bag slung across her shoulder, but it kept clunking against the front of her rib cage. Every few blocks, she’d switch sides and contemplate emptying the tank into the New York sewer system.
“How does a river trip sound, huh?” she murmured to the oblivious fish. “I bet you’d love it. The first part would be like a water slide. Woohoo. Then you’d be free. Maybe you’d find Nemo out there. Finding Nemo, have you seen that one? I should have watched more fish movies with you. Maybe we could have bonded that way.”
Talking to a fish. Great start to this trip. That nap yesterday hadn’t been quite enough to keep her completely clearheaded.
She stopped at a bagel shop and picked up enough lox and bagels and cream cheese to get her to Canada. A girl could live on bagels alone if necessary. She ordered a coffee and drank it down on the spot. That should get her to E. 57th Street. Once she was underway, she’d find a Dunkin’ Donuts on the road and fuel up again.
When she finally reached the parking garage, she felt a flash of panic that she’d forgotten to bring Molly’s keys in her rush to pack. But nope, there they were in the bottom of the cross-body bag zipped under her jacket. She knew they were Molly’s not only because of the BMW logo on the fob, but because Molly had added an I Love Lucy keychain—one of her favorite redheads.
The relief of slipping into Molly’s expensive car was indescribable. Not just because the BMW felt safe, but because it was Molly’s. Charlie trusted and respected Molly more than almost anyone on this earth. She felt that way about all her friends. Ani was a doctor and even though she was a pediatrician, Charlie would trust her with any medical issue that came up. Lila had that eerie intuition that had saved all their lives when they were teenagers.
But Molly…Molly was smart and extremely capable and relentlessly loyal to her friends. If she ever found out the truth about Charlie, she’d probably yell at her for a bit, then busy herself with figuring out how to help her. One reason Charlie had never told Molly about her hacking was that she was a lawyer, and Charlie didn’t want to implicate her and get her in trouble.
Taking her car on the run might do exactly that…but it wasn’t as if she was running from an arrest warrant or a subpoena or something official like that. If Nick was trying to arrest her, he would have done it already. There would have been sirens and police cars and handcuffs and Miranda rights and all that sort of thing.
Something else was going on, but she wasn’t going to wait around to find out what.
She carefully extracted the goldfish tank from her messenger bag and strapped it into the passenger seat. “I guess we’re still stuck with each other,” she told the fish. “Are you hungry?”
Assuming the answer was yes, she pried open the tank’s lid and sprinkled in some fish food. Goldilocks darted from one crumb to another, a blur of copper-red iridescence with an elegant feathery fin and tail. “Should we wait here for a bit and take a nap, or hit the road before anyone catches on?”
Goldilocks swam in a busy circle around the tank, then dove to the bottom and disappeared under her little castle.
“Run and hide, is that what you’re saying?” Charlie rubbed her tired eyes and laughed. “Look at me, hoping a fish will tell me what to do. I must be desperate. The thing is, Goldilocks, I’m just a hacker. I don’t know any other criminals and I don’t know how criminals do things. Maybe I should have taken an extension course. ‘Criming 101, How to Skirt the Law and Not Get Caught.’ Do you think someone teaches that?”
Nothing but silence from the fish tank. She sighed. “I know I shouldn’t talk to a fish, but like it or not, you’re my only companion until we get to Firelight Ridge.”
She pressed the BMW’s start button and its high-performance engine purred to life.
“Well, hello.” She patted the dashboard. “I guess we have another companion. Welcome to the crazy, Red. I hope you’re ready to rock and roll.”