Page 30 of Cast in Shadow
Ten minutes passed. Then thirty. Then an hour. A steady stream of people came and went, but there was no sign of Robin. Eventually, a niggling doubt began to make itself known.
Ensuring his cap and shades were in place, Zeke grabbed his phone and went into the café. It wasn’t a big place. Besides the counter, there were no more than half a dozen two-person tables lining the right wall.
And she wasn’t at any of them.
He held up the phone and moved with purpose, checking each one of the tables, ignoring the irritated reactions of those sitting there. At a table in the back, he found what he was looking for. A slim tile the size of a mini SD card, stuck to the underside of the table with ... he sniffed his hand. Peanut butter?
“Fuck,” he grumbled.
“The woman who was sitting here,” he said, raising his voice to be heard among the patrons watching him with curious, wary eyes, “when did she leave?”
No one responded. If they’d caught sight of Robin’s bruises, chances were, no one was going to respond.
Zeke cursed again, and then he moved swiftly to the exit at the rear of the store and scanned the parking lot.
Chapter Fourteen
Aggie
Aggie was used to being invisible. She moved through the parking lot without drawing attention to herself, just like any other woman who didn’t remember exactly where she’d parked. If that path tended to place her behind large vehicles that obscured her from anyone who might be outside the café, well, all the better.
She slipped into the shadows of one of the many brick buildings and paused to look back. Her heart was beating wildly. How could she have forgotten he had the locator app on his phone or that it was how he’d found her in the first place?
Lapses like that could get her killed ... or worse. She shivered, thinking of that farmhouse goon’s threat to start removing body parts as a method of persuasion. It was a completely different scenario, she knew, but this was the second time in a week she’d been caught unaware. She couldn’t chance a third.
She saw Zeke step out of the café and scan the lot. She hated the way the sight of him lit her up on the inside. Hated the way part of her wanted to return to him and make the most of their final time together.
A day or two of pleasure wasn’t worth the risk, no matter how sexy he was.
Besides, chances were, he wasn’t too keen on her at that moment. What had he told her? That having to chase her down would make him cranky.
She smiled at that. Had the inappropriate thought of how she could get him to channel that irritation into something more pleasurable for both of them. Then, she shut those thoughts down and concentrated on what she was going to do next.
It was a shame she wasn’t as adept at stealing cars as Zeke was. There were quite a few of them to choose from.
Her eyes landed on a small covered frame, partially enclosed with Plexiglas and several people waiting. A bus stop. If she could make it there, she could hop on and put some distance between her and her pursuer. She started moving again, angling herself toward the stop. Fate must have been on her side because a bus was approaching at that very moment.
She paused, watching as people got off and more got on. She blended into the waiting crowd, using a tall man as a shield.
Aggie settled in on the side farthest away from where Zeke was. Panic tried to take hold when she realized Zeke had seen the bus, too, and was jogging toward it at a speed far too fast for her liking. The tension increased when an elderly woman getting on held things up, searching in her suitcase-sized purse for her senior citizen’s ride card so she wouldn’t have to pay full price.
Aggie reached into her bag and extracted enough for another fare, then moved forward and dropped exact change into the box for the woman. “I’ve got a job interview, and I don’t want to be late,” Aggie explained.
Instead of showing appreciation, the older woman sniffed and said, “Well then, I suppose you should have left earlier.”
The bus driver gave Aggie a sympathetic look and closed the doors. Aggie retook her seat and searched out the window but didn’t see Zeke. A bad feeling skittered down her spine and set up shop at the base and didn’t relent, even as the bus began to pull away.
One step at a time, Aggie.
Zeke wasn’t on the bus. That was the important thing.
Aggie exhaled, sat back in her seat, and took several discrete, deep breaths in an attempt to calm down.
Her heart raced at each of the next three stops, half-expecting to see Zeke boarding at each one. She’d already moved seats to one in the back with an emergency exit window and committed the opening instructions to memory. If necessary, she could be out within seconds.
But Zeke didn’t make it onto the bus. Nor did she see him skulking around.
Yet she couldn’t relax. Zeke wasn’t the type to give up so easily. In fact, she realized with self-annoyance, she’d be rather disappointed if he did.
