Chapter 4
Alice
Present day
The chest of the man who couldn’t possibly be Anderson Holt brushed against Alice’s back. “Okay, Alice,” he said. “I’m gonna open this door. But you gotta look cool. We need the kids to say they saw you leaving with your boyfriend. Your legendarily sharp boyfriend.”
No one in the world, let alone a teenager, would believe a guy who looked like him was dating her. “Shouldn’t we call the police or … someone?”
He scoffed like she was insufferably naive. “Not until I know more. Act normal, now, for both our sakes. Worst-case scenario, you can tell the cops later that you have no idea what’s going on.”
“I don’t have any idea what’s—”
“Though, to be frank, the cops are way down your threat list.”
“The cops are a threat to me? Am I in trouble with the law?”
“Thanks to your moonlighting, we’re on the radar of about every authority in the U.S., and a few in Russia—as well as a few less-official bodies.”
“And where do you come in my threat rankings?”
“Depends.” She tensed. “Hey, I’m messing with you. I’m low. Fifth. Maybe sixth. Ready?”
Without waiting for a reply, he opened the door and led her by the hand through the throng of students, a bodyguard leading a celebrity through paparazzi. She tried to stay close to him, like a girlfriend would, practically tap-dancing in her heels to keep up with his long stride.
“Back in a minute, guys,” she called back, as cheerfully as she could muster. “Work on your scripts.” She glanced up at the security camera along the corridor.
“Don’t worry,” he said quietly, “I’ve taken the system offline.”
“That makes me so much less worried,” she said, deadpan.
He laughed quietly as he pushed the door to the boys’ bathroom and coaxed her inside, his hand dropping hers and brushing her lower back again. Two students looked around, one zipping up in alarm. She snapped a palm up to shield her view.
“I can’t be in here,” she whispered, digging her heels into the linoleum.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight, sugar.” He’d put on a low, sexy voice. “Out, gentlemen.”
The boys sidled past, exchanging looks. The gossip would be around the school in minutes—and probably on social media—given the classroom of unsupervised sophomores down the hall.
The door swung shut and Holt strode to the trash can and pulled out another pair of coveralls. The smell wafted up, weaving in with the prevailing stench of stale urine.
She smacked her hand over her nose and mouth. “Did you steal those out of an actual trash can?” she mumbled.
“Had to be authentic. Put them on over your clothes.”
“You expect me to…?” She gagged. “Is that a maggot?”
“It’s a grain of rice—look. For now, I expect you to survive, with my help. We don’t have much time.” He tossed her the coveralls, leaving her no choice but to catch them, then jerked his head, indicating she should change in a stall.
“Much time before what?”
“Before I don’t know what. I’m hoping you can shed light on what that might be.” He pulled out a cap and sunglasses. “In the meantime, we’re playing a safety game.”
She stared at the coveralls. Was she really going to go along with this?
Were her students right now lining the corridor, phones at the ready, one-click from immortalizing her as a prize viral idiot when she appeared in the corridor in stinky coveralls, having swallowed their elaborate prank?
Was this how she would go down in history?
“None of this makes any sense,” she muttered.
“And yet here we are.”
But … but … the things this guy knew. His uncanny resemblance to Anderson Holt.
The instinct that told her he was legit.
All reasons to believe him but somehow her decision came down to this: pull on the stinking coveralls or don’t pull on the stinking coveralls.
Accept that this craziness was happening, or reject it, walk back to her classroom and hope it would all disappear.
“Look,” he said, softening his tone and stepping closer, “I’d love to tell you this is all a big joke or promise to make it go away, but all I can say is this—the best thing we can do is take this first step.
Get you out the gate and get this laptop.
That’s as far as we have to go.” He laid the sunglasses and cap on the sink and gently took the coveralls from her hands, opened them at the waist and gathered up the trouser legs.
He crouched in front of her left foot, inviting her to step into the bunched leg.
“Let’s just get outta here while they have no idea you’re onto them. ”
“I’m not onto them. I don’t even know who ‘them’ is.”
“Oh, but I am. Kinda. And don’t forget that my body alone is… What was it? Ninety percent deterrent?”
“Ninety-nine,” she corrected, kicking herself even as the words came out, because it was obvious from his grin that he knew the number; he just wanted to hear her say it.
“Though now I’m thinking Nika meant your smell rather than your…
” Her eyes lowered to the abs she knew were under his clothes, assuming he was still as fit as when he’d been a fictional character.
“Rather than my…?”
Muscles. Abs, pecs, biceps, glutes, quads—she’d pictured them all. She’d practically sculpted them. He was her Michelangelo’s David, but better endowed. “Than your height.”
“My height.”
“Tall people can be intimidating.”
She inhaled deeply and gagged on a hit of rotten … something. Even so, she found herself planting one foot in the leg of the coveralls, then the other.
He turned up the trouser hems a few folds, and stood as he pulled them over her capris. “Make sure the pant legs hang down low enough to cover your high heels. And walk as if you’re wearing work boots.” He held out first one sleeve for her, and then the other.
And so she let this stranger dress her, let him transition her in the slowest superhero quick-change ever, from mild-mannered high school teacher to …
what? Enemy of the people? And which people?
Once her arms were in, he hoisted the coveralls over her shoulders and drew the two sides together at her chest. She was reminded of being strapped into a jumpsuit for the tandem skydive she’d done for her thirtieth birthday—only because her sisters had bought it for her.
No way would she have stepped from a plane of her own volition, but the instructor she’d been attached to had made all the decisions, and she’d gone along with it in a vague hope it would make her fearless in other parts of her life.
It hadn’t. God, she’d hated that jump.
Holt fastened the snaps, starting at her waist, his head bent as he concentrated.
She could push him away and do it herself.
She should push him away. But her arms hung at her sides with no intention of getting involved.
She was having even more trouble breathing now than when she’d discovered him in her classroom.
Now he was closer she could smell his skin—sweet, fresh, and tangy like a caipirinha.
Now there was a line she could have put in the novel.
She’d put a lot of thought into the way Anderson Holt looked, how he walked and talked, how his skin felt to the touch (rough over his jaw, smooth and firm over his abs), even how he’d kiss (she’d put a lot of thought into that), but she hadn’t considered how he’d smell.
As he worked his way up, his hands brushed her lower belly through her clothes, then her navel, the center of her bra, her shirt where it bowed out across her breasts, her collarbone.
Whoa. Her book boyfriend had come to life and was turning her on for real—in the boys’ bathroom of her high school while dressed like a trash collector and possibly kidnapping her.
Not quite the tuxedo and Baroque restaurant in the book, but the guy in front of her did have the advantage of actually existing.
She’d come around to being reasonably certain of that.
She sidestepped him and snatched the cap and sunglasses.
As she pulled them on—as smoothly as a cap went on curly hair like hers—he ripped the liner from the trash bin and tipped out the contents.
He shoved her purse into the liner, padded it out with paper towels from the dispenser until it looked full, and tossed it over his shoulder.
So if he was Alice’s book boyfriend, was he also Nika’s real one-night stand?
That super-hot sex scene in the book—truth or fantasy?
Nika had typed the draft of that chapter herself, tapping away with a sad smile.
Alice had interpreted her expression as regret at dying without a partner, the bleak certainty she would never again experience love or sex.
But maybe it wasn’t wistfulness, maybe it was …
nostalgia. Alice was going to have to reread the entire book.
She’d invented the ending for their romance subplot after Nika drifted into oblivion, just as she’d invented the thriller ending.
A blissful happy-ever-after between Galina and Holt hadn’t seemed right.
Though he’d killed a man to save her life, Galina had sensed his heart wasn’t in it, wasn’t able to be in it because of his tragic backstory, so Alice had written a poignant, aching separation, which was totally in her own field of expertise.
And given that Holt—this ‘Holt’—hadn’t been there for Nika at the end of her real life, maybe that was accurate—minus the murder, presumably.
He opened the door and stood aside to let Alice leave the bathroom first—less about chivalry and more about keeping an eye on her.
He flanked her as they set out down the corridor.
He even walked like he did in the book—unhurried but with the open posture of someone aware of his surroundings.
Laughter and shouts echoed out of the open classroom door behind them.
She pulled the cap lower. There went any chance her absence wouldn’t be missed—she was already on the principal’s bad side for letting her work slip while she’d nursed Nika and finished the novel.
Novel? Could she even call it that now? For months she’d been fantasizing about walking into the staff lounge and casually slipping into conversation that she’d hit the New York Times bestseller list and was quitting teaching to write full time.
Being escorted out by the trash collector wasn’t the triumph she’d imagined.
All that work, the naive hope that this would be a pathway to something else…
Maybe she could collect the laptop, give him the slip and deliver it and herself to the Montrose Police Station.
She could explain everything before this got any crazier, quietly take the ebook down from the retailer sites, hand over her recordings and notes, let the grown-ups deal with the fallout.
Surely he was exaggerating her predicament—and his.
She’d done nothing wrong—nothing she’d been aware of at the time.
And like being caught speeding and claiming you hadn’t known the legal limit, was ignorance no defense?
From behind them came a familiar metallic squeal—the external door at the far end of the corridor was opening. She’d been begging the janitor to oil it for weeks.
“Don’t look,” Holt muttered as she went to turn. “Keep walking. Don’t change your pace.”
Shoes squeaked across the vinyl, a couple of pairs. Voices rumbled. She couldn’t make out words but she’d swear she detected a Russian accent. The window cleaners, or whoever they really were? The back of her neck prickled.
“But the kids!” she hissed. “You said these guys are armed!”
“Kids’ll be fine. Whoever they are, these people won’t want any kind of incident—they’ve gone to a lot of effort to fly under the radar. It’s you they’re after. They’ll wanna be in and out fast, without blowing their cover or raising alarms.”
Holt adjusted the garbage bag over his shoulder, making it out to be heavy.
He stepped directly behind her, touching her back to urge her ahead.
Masking her from their view? He made a good wall—he had to be a foot taller than her and half a foot wider.
But any second the cleaning crew would realize she wasn’t in her class.
And then the kids would tell them she’d left with the garbage man…
The walk to the exit seemed three times longer than normal, her legs moving of their own accord, her vision distorting until she had the sense she was in a primitive 3D computer game, all converging lines and disorienting perspective.
Finally, she pushed open the exterior door. Coach Jamal was crossing the path in front of them, hauling a string bag of footballs. She lowered her gaze and pretended she was rubbing her eye, to shield her face with her cap. As if her big brown hair wasn’t enough to give the game away.
Or should she ask him for help? Signal him? What would Galina do? She straightened but he’d already passed, his back to her. Holt planted himself at her side, blocking her view of him.
“Don’t even think about it,” he growled. “And walk faster—but not suspiciously fast.”
Galina—Nika—would follow her gut. “Moscow Rules,” she’d say.
If this guy was who he said he was, Nika had trusted him with her life.
Alice’s gut was no help—it was mostly just trying to keep down the chicken wrap she’d had for lunch.
If she chose to believe he was Anderson Holt, it stood to reason that she’d have to accept that the defamation suit was real, a troupe of Russian fake window cleaners was on her heels, and Nika had deceived her. She didn’t want any of it to be true.
But refusing to believe it wouldn’t make it untrue.