Chapter 11 #3
When she emerged from the basement of the hospital and walked four blocks to hail a cab, she knew that she was running for her life. If Tom ever found her, her life would be over.
With shaking hands, she called the number and set in motion the events that led her to Seattle, to the life of a waitress in a dive, barely making ends meet, with no future to speak of. It wasn’t much, but it was still definitely better than being six feet underground, food for worms.
Sam Reston had saved her life and she wondered if someone had saved Irene’s. Of course, Irene wasn’t her real name. Whoever she was, she was a good kid and had somehow stumbled onto the same awful planet of dangerous men Alice/Kerry had.
God, she’d had no idea that place had even existed until she’d married Tom. And Irene still seemed a little shell-shocked herself.
Kerry knew Irene was in trouble when she told her a man had been asking for her.
Irene had turned icy white and just like that, Kerry knew.
Turned out the guy was harmless, just wanted to go out with Irene.
That was normal, Irene was a pretty woman.
But the guy after her wouldn’t want to go out with her.
He’d want her dead. Irene had landed on Kerry’s planet.
That was when she gave Irene Sam Reston’s number. Just in case.
Where was Irene? They’d gotten into the habit of taking tea at Kerry’s a couple of times a week. Kerry was good at decorating. She’d turned Tom’s home into a showcase. And even on a nothing budget, she’d managed to turn her hole in the wall into something inviting.
Both of them avoided public places. Kerry’s little bolt hole had been a safe haven for them both. Kerry never told her story, and neither did Irene tell hers. They didn’t need to. They both knew.
Once Irene accepted the number, the last refuge of a desperate woman, they both knew she’d some day call it.
In the meantime, in their little time outs over the expensive teas Kerry splurged on, they talked of quiet, gentle things.
Never anything personal. No information that could be used against them.
Just books and movies and music. Kerry hadn’t even known that Irene was a world-class singing talent until that evening when she’d stepped in for old Honorius.
She’d nearly fainted, Irene had been that good.
And she hadn’t hinted, not once, that she sang or played.
Kerry didn’t mind. She didn’t need to know Irene’s secrets. God knew she had enough of her own. The whole point of a secret was that it stay hidden. Her secrets could kill. She suspected Irene’s could, too.
Where was Irene? She’d been gone for a week now, without communicating in any way.
They had a secret message board, set up by the two of them, as casually as if every person on earth needed a secret means of communication.
Neither of them talked about it, but they used it often.
To set up appointments, to exchange a few words.
For both of them, Kerry suspected, this was their only form of human connection—the odd cup of tea in her cozy, cheap little apartment. They never spoke at work. They had different shifts anyway. There was an unspoken imperative—don’t let anyone know we’re friends. They both respected it.
Kerry was just starting to get worried. Whoever was after Irene—had he caught up with her?
What kind of man was after Irene? Was he like Tom—a pillar of the community? The kind of man people instinctively looked up to? The kind of man no one would ever believe was capable of cruelty?
Where was Tom? Had he hooked up with some other woman-victim?
God, she hoped so, though she pitied any woman under his harsh rule.
But if there was another woman, maybe his obsession with her was abating.
Maybe she was hiding out here in cold, rainy Seattle, doing a server’s job for a pittance, for no discernable reason.
Maybe she could go back to her first love—interior decoration.
Oh God. For the first time in a long while she allowed herself to think of the future. Or at least a future. Something more than merely staying alive.
The rain was pelting now, drops splashing down so hard they bounced almost a foot high.
She chanced a glance at the sky. It was pewter-dark, without a break at all in the clouds.
She knew by now what that meant. Rain for at least the next couple of hours.
Holing up in a storefront wasn’t going to help.
She was going to have to run down the street to the Blue Moon.
She dashed down the street, glancing for a startled second at a man who was coming toward her fast. He was an idiot without an umbrella. You got drenched with an umbrella, without one…well.
He was tall and thin and blond. For a horrified instant she thought he looked like Tom, only without that pampered spa look, and dressed in casual clothes.
He wasn’t Tom, though. That thought made her so happy she nodded at him as he walked by, the nod two strangers caught in a downpour would make.
Lousy weather, isn’t it?
You can say that again!
Suddenly, Kerry felt a strong hand grip her arm from behind, almost lifting her off her feet. A sharp prick in her biceps. The rainy world turned entirely to water, long streaming silver stripes that were fast turning black.
She had time for one panicked thought.
Tom found me.