Page 8 of On the Chase
After another quick look around, he turned the knob and slipped into a small, dim entry. Lexi brushed past his leg in her eagerness to get inside and immediately trotted up the stairs. Drawing his gun, Hugh followed, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible.
At the top of the stairs, Lexi took a left. Hugh paused, looking at the three closed doors to the right. Someone could be hiding in one of those offices, and Hugh didn’t want to turn his back until he checked them. His hand tightened on the leash as the impatient dog hauled against him in her hurry to follow the scent. An almost silent command brought her back to him, albeit reluctantly, and they headed down the hall to the right. Keeping an eye out for anything behind them, he listened as he walked softly toward the first closed door. All he heard was the click of Lexi’s nails and the occasional creaks of the elderly wood floors under his weight.
The first knob resisted turning under his grip. Locked. He tried the second and the third. Both were locked as well. Only then did he allow Lexi to lead them down the hallway in the other direction. She surged forward eagerly and sat in front of the first door on the right.
This doorknob turned easily under his fingers. Pushing open the door, he stepped into the room in the same movement, gun up and ready, turning right and then pivoting to the left to check the entire space.
It was empty. The small area had been an office at some point, but now the only evidence of its former occupation was the cables that snaked out of the wall, the ends sprawled uselessly into dust and cobwebs. The dirty blinds were down, but the slats were at an angle, as if someone wanted to look outside without anyone being able to see in.
Lexi trotted to the window, sniffing along the baseboard. As he moved to follow, Hugh noticed the dust on the floor was smudged. There weren’t any shoe prints that he could make out. Instead, it looked more like someone had knelt or sat next to the window. He walked to the spot where the dust had been rubbed away and looked around the room. There were other marks in the dust, including where his own boots had scuffed, but nothing as distinct as the area where he stood. Hugh crouched awkwardly, extending his injured leg out straight, and peered through the slats of the blinds.
He had a clear view of the VFW parking lot and the top of his pickup.
A door slammed. Shoving to his feet and ignoring the spike of pain in his thigh, Hugh ran out of the room. Lexi quickly took the lead as they tore through the hallway and down the stairs. Hugh shoved the door open, and he and Lexi tumbled out into the sunshine.
Squinting as his eyes struggled to adjust to the brightness after the dim, dusty interior of the building, Hugh swiveled his head back and forth, looking for whoever had just exited the building. There was no sign of anyone, no sound, not even a chirp of a bird. Lexi wasn’t hauling on her leash. Instead, she made uncertain circles, facing one direction and then another. Hugh swore under his breath.
Whoever had been in that building, whoever’d beenwatchinghim, was long gone.
* * *
This new life Mr. Espina had given her was a nightmare.
Sure, it beat getting strangled by a Jovanovic and being buried in a shallow, unmarked grave, but it still wasn’t good. There was one bathroom. One single, solitary,oldbathroom…for six people. It was as if all her struggles, all her hard work, had been erased, leaving her as poor and powerless and trapped as her twelve-year-old self had been.
And this time, there was no escape.
Turning from the ancient claw-foot tub, she found five pairs of eyes watching her with everything from friendly interest to deep suspicion. Kaylee forced a smile. “I like the lion feet.”
“Me too!” the youngest, who had been introduced as Dee, blurted out, bouncing in place. She quieted quickly when the oldest boy—and the most silently hostile of the bunch—put a hand on her shoulder. Although Dee went obediently still, she snuck Kaylee a quick, conspiratorial smile.
As if she could read Kaylee’s mind, Jules—the only adult there except for Kaylee—made a face. “I know. One bathroom sucks. We’ll make it work, though. I’m up really early, and the kids are quick getting ready for school. Dee takes a bath at night, so that’s one less person hogging the tub in the mornings. Did Mr. Esp—Uh, do you have any idea where you’ll be working?”
“Not yet.” Kaylee fought to keep her expression untroubled. After going over the new persona that Mateo Espina had created for her, Kaylee had wanted to cry. No, she’d wanted to scream and kick things and roll around on the floor and have a complete and utter tantrum like a two-year-old. The disappearance expert had stripped her of her six years of hard-earned college education, both her undergrad and grad-school work, and replaced it all with a GED. AGED.She didn’t even get to keep her status as high-school valedictorian. All of those double shifts at the factory and sleepless nights spent studying had been for nothing.
She took a deep breath, reminding herself for the hundredth time that a life of minimum wage and limited personal space was a small price to pay for not getting tortured to death.
“I have to go job hunting,” she added. Her tone was as flat as she felt.
“Okay, well, just let us know when you need the bathroom in the mornings, and we’ll work around your schedule.” One of the teenage twins made a sound of protest, but a look from Jules had him turning it into a cough.
“What’d you do?” the other twin asked.
Kaylee looked at him quizzically, but Jules must have understood his meaning, because she gave him a stern glare. “Tio, zip it.”
It finally registered with Kaylee what he’d been asking. Although he didn’t press the question, everyone except for Jules was staring at her with varying degrees of interest and wariness. Not for the first time, she wondered why Jules and her siblings had had to run. Mr. Espina had told her that they’d take Kaylee in because Jules owed him a favor. Kaylee figured that had to mean that he’d helped this family disappear, too. Had they witnessed something, like Kaylee had? They stared back at her, obviously wondering the same thing about her. From the wary looks they were giving her, she could only imagine what heinous crimes they thought she’d committed to be forced to change her identity and share their house.
“Nothing.” Kaylee figured she’d better say something before they mentally convicted her of mass murder. “I just…saw something. Something bad that a powerful man didn’t want me to see.”
“Like a mob hit?” the other twin, Ty, asked.
Kaylee couldn’t stop a wince when his words touched a little too close to home. “No.”
“A drive-by shooting?” Apparently, the twins weren’t going to leave it alone.
“An assassination?”
“Someone planting a bomb?”
