1. Eva
At some point, every girl has to embrace her natural hair color, right?
Granted, I didn’t think I would be trying to re-dye my hair in a drugstore bathroom while on the run, but I mean, hey...cool dinner party story!
That is, if I ever make it to the point where I can settle down long enough to actually tell anybody any story about myself.
With a sigh, I stand in the aisle, clutching a box of hair dye like it’s the key to survival. Which, honestly, it kind of is. Distinctive chestnut curls won’t cut it anymore.
I need to disappear. I need to be unrecognizable. And I needed that to happen literally fucking yesterday.
With my ex, Cristian Vega, on me like a goddamn bloodhound, things are definitely reaching level DESPERATE on the scale.
It’s gotten worse, actually. Lately, every time I think I’ve shaken him, one of his goons shows up.
A year ago, I could settle somewhere for months. Now I’m lucky if I get three weeks.
Lately, it’s starting to feel like we're down to a few days at best.
My stomach twists as I study the shelf. Fast processing, no-fry formula, and it almost matches my old hair color, which should make me unrecognizable but (hopefully) not end up turning my hair green or something crazy like that. Easy, right?
I chew my lip, eyes darting between the boxes like they might whisper their secrets. If I get this wrong, I’ll be bald and on the run. Well, I guess that works too. Nothing more unrecognizable than going from butt-length brown curls to Pitbull.
Okay, Eva, focus. The plan is simple. New hair, new name, new me. ‘Georgia Brown’ is officially burned out. Too bad too, Georgia was probably one of my least favorite fake identities.
But I have a new one shoved in my bag. ‘Sarah Easton.’ Two towns and several days ago, I found a wallet left behind on a bar floor—my little gift from the universe. The woman could’ve been my twin if my twin were still my natural brown. That was all the confirmation I needed.
So, taking this blonde hair that Cristian forced on me several years ago back to brunette, and then, next stop, Vegas. With luck, I’ll get the documents I need to truly start over. In a different fucking country this time.
I have exactly one lead to contact in Vegas that I know I can get to. Benji Bartan is known for his documents. I met him a few times with Cristian during one of the many times he had to go somewhere to wait out a charge.
So, while I know where he is, the words to say, and even how much I need for everything, there’s no fucking way I can go to him looking like Eva Marlowe.
Benji would call Cristian’s henchmen before I even got the question out.
Actually, anyone in the criminal world would turn me in the moment they found out who I was.
There isn’t a fucker alive that would choose helping me when it meant putting them on the bad side of the Vega family and their cartel empire.
So, I was going to be Sarah long before I went to Vegas. Maybe changing my look and my name this time would be enough to buy me enough weeks to work up the money I needed to pay Benji, get my documents, and get the fuck out of Dodge.
I need $15,000 for an entirely new life and identity. With a little luck and a push-up bra, I could pull that in a couple of weeks dancing on the Vegas strip. Not exactly what I’d want to do, but whatever it takes to stay alive is the mantra.
Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I shift the box from one hand to the other, fingers trembling even though I tell myself I’m steady.
Taking a deep breath, I turn to take the box to the register.
There’s only one register open since it’s so early in the morning. I’m practically the only customer here.
Just as I come to the end of the aisle, the doors slide open across the way from me with a hiss. My head snaps to the sound on instinct.
And I freeze.
Broad shoulders stuffed into a too-tight leather jacket, greasy ponytail hanging down his back, and that jagged scar running across his chin that he’s so damn proud of. Fuck, it’s Miguel. He’s Cristian’s favorite errand boy, mean as a snake, but twice as stupid.
Like the universe is actually plotting against me, his eyes find me almost immediately. His mouth curls into a taunting grin.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The dye box still gripped in my hands, I don’t think about it. I bolt. Sneakers squeak against the tile. I weave through the aisles, heart hammering, lungs burning. I know from experience, he’s fast, but I’m faster, and desperation makes me slick.
I reach the end of the row, take a sharp left, cut through cleaning supplies in a sprint, and double back around the way I came. From under the shelves, I see his feet padding the opposite way, and relief slams through me, but I know that I am nowhere near free and clear.
I circle toward the entrance, where he came from.
There’s a wide block of space where I am in the open and unprotected.
But that's the only way out. My pulse roars in my ears as I shoot across the empty floor, the box of dye still gripped in my fist like a lifeline.
The cashier calls out to me, probably for running, but I ignore the voice and shove through the doors and into the morning sun.
The air feels too sharp, too bright, slicing down my throat as I sprint.
I race across the parking lot and slam, palms first, into my beat-up used car just as I hear the doors slide open and yelling in Spanish behind me.
Jamming my key into the driver’s door, I don’t look in the direction of the store until I yank the door open and slide into the driver’s seat.
Behind me, Miguel is running straight at me, face like a thunderstorm.
With less than five feet between us, I get the engine cranked up and tear out of the lot.
My tires squeal, smoke curling off the asphalt behind me as I whip out of the lot and around the corner.
In the mirror, I see Miguel throw his hands up before turning and running back for an SUV.
I know he won’t give up easily. This is not the first time he’s nearly caught me, and of all the people Cristian sends after me, he’s the most relentless. I have got to get out of here and now. But, this also confirms something I’d started wondering when they kept catching up with me quickly.
There’s something that keeps leading them to me. I glance in the rearview, but the street is empty behind me. My reflection looks feral—hair wild, lips chalky, eyes too wide and haunted.
I look how I feel, and I can’t keep living like this.
Motel to motel, car to car, state to state.
Two years ago, I was good at vanishing. When I first left Cristian, I settled in a small town in Maine, and I was there for a year.
I made roots, made friends, and started to build a life before he first found me.
I still don’t know what I did to bring him to me, but since then, I’ve become more and more of a ghost.
I let go of my smartphone and stopped using any cards.
Then, I stopped taking traceable jobs, cash-only, under-the-counter pay.
It often meant I was in situations I didn’t want to be in, and I’ve been underpaid many times.
But, as the time between finding a new place to settle and being found has gotten smaller, so has my ability to be picky.
At the beginning, I had weeks, sometimes months, to settle. I could almost convince myself I was free. Now? I’m nothing but smoke and shadows, burned out before I can take root anywhere.
There has to be something he’s tracing, but what is it? I don’t use cards. I cover my face when I go out because of cameras. I abandoned any traceable phone months ago. There’s nothing else I’ve kept with me other than?—
The car.
“Shit,” I whisper, jerking the wheel into a hard turn. My sedan’s been my lifeline since Kansas City, where I settled right after Maine. I bought her off a junky for five hundred bucks. The air doesn’t work, and I pray I’m not in an accident because the seatbelt’s stuck and the airbags don’t work.
But she runs, and that’s all I really need. I’ve now driven her across three states, slept in the back seat, and cried behind the wheel more times than I’d ever admit at this point. But suddenly, it all lines up. She’s tagged, and she’s nothing but a coffin on wheels now.
That means that Miguel is going to find me in no time. I can’t keep going on like this, and I need to buy myself time. The ideal would be to try to find the tracker, but that’s a risk I can’t take. So, I’ll have to do the hard thing.
As the thought passes through my mind, I drive past a rundown bus station advertising $30, one-way tickets to Black Rock, Nevada. Never heard of it, but the smaller tagline under the price—Only two hours from Vegas!—is all I need to see to form a plan in my head.
I drive a few buildings past the station and turn a corner and find exactly what I need. A flickering sign blazes ahead—cheap gas, cigarettes, and coffee. A gas station. Perfect. If the car’s tagged, let them chase the shell.
I swing in like I’m in Fast and Furious and thank the universe that it’s still so early in the morning that no one is here yet because I definitely would’ve caused a crash by now.
With my heart pounding in my chest, I grab my duffel, throw my door open, and sprint across the street into the dark alley.
Just as I make it to cover and duck behind a large dumpster, I see Miguel’s sleek and heavy SUV pull up next to my car, caging it in.
I watch him climb out and move around to look in the driver’s window.
Seeing it empty, he turns his sights on the gas station and jogs in. No time to think.
I explode from hiding, legs pumping as I dart out of the alley and down the street, retracing my direction to the bus station. Pain sparks in my lungs as my chest heaves, but fear drives me harder.
Several buildings and a corner later, the bus station rises ahead like some busted-down miracle. Every shadow stretches into a threat, every noise claws at my spine. Any second, I expect Miguel’s hand to close around my shirt and drag me back into an alley.
But he doesn’t, and I make it into the building, stumbling inside, bent over, chest heaving, vision swimming. The air smells of burnt coffee and bleach. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, harsh and unkind.
I look around and am grateful that it’s mostly empty besides an older man asleep in a seat in the corner and a single mom with her toddler standing by the vending machine. There’s one teller window open, but no one seems to have noticed or cared about me bursting in like that.
Stabilizing my breath and myself, I straighten and tighten my bag’s strap on my shoulder. Barely more than a tote bag with my last bit of cash, the only other change of clothes I have, and the ID for Sarah in it, it now carries the absolute last things I own.
I force myself to move away from the door and to the teller window.
“Hello, can I help you?” the clerk, an older lady with graying hair and a bored look, drones without looking up from her magazine.
“Um, yeah, can I get a ticket to Black Rock, please?” My voice rasps like sandpaper.
Keys click. “Thirty-one dollars and twenty-seven cents with tax. Cash or card?”
“Cash.” I stick my hand into the bag and, as discreetly as possible, I peel off the bills from the lump sum.
It’s been two towns since I last had a job, and I’m living off the leftovers of an under-the-table job as a bartender.
But, my stash is shrinking fast—at this point, probably about five hundred left if I’m lucky.
No other choice, I hand over the bills. “Um, I don’t need the coins back.”
She doesn’t acknowledge my words, ringing up the price and passing over a receipt and three dollars, forgoing the change.
Then, the ticket prints with a snap, and she passes it over to me.
“Your bus departs in three hours.”
I gulp at that, and my eyes dart to the door. But, this place has small windows, and if I stick to the corners, and without the supposed tracker in my car, Miguel shouldn’t find me here, right?
I don’t have another choice, so I nod and whisper a quiet thanks before finding a spot in the corner, as far away from the windows and door as possible.
I sink down, the ticket resting on my knee.
I trace the letters—Black Rock. Never heard of it.
Doesn’t matter. They said it’s close to Vegas.
Vegas means a chance at survival and a life.
All I have to do is make it until the bus leaves, just three hours. Three hours doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things.
But it’s forever when you’re prey.