Cyn pushed the uneasiness down to where she didn’t have to deal with it. The move didn’t feel wrong per se. It just didn’t feel right, either.
But logically she knew she and Lee had to keep each other’s backs. If he was caught, then there was a good possibility that so was she‒it had been that way from the moment she’d first seen him. They were cut of the same cloth. Committed the same acts. Were a danger to each other, just by knowing the other existed. They were far too much alike for all that she was certain they weren’t alike at all.
She had made the decision to move while sitting in the overly comfortable seat of the ‘kitty’, as Lee referred to his car. She got it. The thing really did purr, but she kept having those disconcerting moments where things didn’t match. As a kid, her sister had come home one day and pitched a head-sized piece of granite at her. Cyndy had screamed, but it had bounced right off, causing no damage except the mental. It had been a convincingly painted chunk of foam that Wendy had thought was cool. The kitty was like that. Her brain said the seat should be lumpy, that the wheels should waver, and she should feel every ridge in the road. She was almost made more uncomfortable by the fact that she was comfortable.
The air conditioning kept her at a perfect temperature even though sunlight was streaming in the front windshield and the car had no trouble pulling the small U-haul trailer that Cynthia Ellen Winslow had rented just outside of Boulder. When they’d gotten it, so far from Dallas, Lee had stacked it with cinderblocks and slowed his pace, as though he was hauling something more important than empty metal.
Cyn could only be grateful for the twenty-four hour reprieve the trailer had given her from him. They’d have drawn attention had she followed the kitty at the sedate speed Lee kept it at. So she went on ahead, knowing that he knew exactly where to find her, a fact that had bothered her from the start. Her consolation was that in a short while she would know exactly where he lived. On the downside, she’d live there, too.
She’d dumped her car and rented another as early in the day as possible. Once she got to her house, Cyn used the space of time before Lee arrived to pack what she needed, cover what she didn’t, and figure out what the hell she could leave behind. She stored a few things in the attic, put slipcovers on the furniture, and fought the tightening in her chest as she looked around her increasingly alien house. She cleared the back room of anything that looked even vaguely martial arts related, surprised to find that when she bundled her entire sword collection together, she had more than she could lift, and a handful that she’d forgotten she even had. After a moment of thought, she divided the bundle into two parts and grabbed another tarp to wrap the second bundle. She packed the swords jelly-roll style in the blankets, rolling tightly then adding another sword, so that none of the blades or even sheaths ever touched.
Clothing was bagged and left behind or packed to go. Her eyes rolled and she re-packed when she realized that she’d included heels and nice blouses. She didn’t need work clothes anymore. She called the office from her cell, as she had no land line to trace, and quit point blank. She offered all the explanations about her dying aunt. Said she was out of state and wouldn’t be back. Apparently, she lied very convincingly, if the amount of gushing Marissa did and the sympathy she expressed, were any indication.
Out in the back woods, in the bright sun of afternoon, she took a break to play on the tall balance posts she had set up by sinking slim logs upright into the earth. Jumping ninja style from one small top to the other, she maintained her center and pushed down the soft bubbling inside that told her she’d have to destroy this, and she only now realized that it had been pride she’d felt when she’d come out here to practice. The tops were only just larger than the ball of one foot, and they weren’t true ninja practice poles. Those swayed more the higher they were. Hers had been built just a little too sturdy for her weight.
She’d given herself a five foot span on two of the tallest ones. The seven foot height had caused countless bruises and the need to grit her teeth and ignore a lot of pain when she had started. But that was months ago and now she could make the jump easily. Her brain simultaneously swept her surroundings, finding them empty, and focused on the five inch circular top of the sawed wood where she’d be landing in a moment. Almost without input, and certainly at this point she needed none other than ‘go’, she pushed off her right foot and leapt. Her left toes hit square in the middle, taking the impact as her right leg came in, the spare motion absorbing some of her forward momentum. The ball of her right foot tucked in behind the left, using what little space there was to the best of her advantage.
Cyn turned, keeping her hips square over her tiny chunk of standing space, and in a heartbeat went over to another pole top. She pushed off with her left foot this time, striving to be truly ambidextrous, and landed a half foot lower than the pole she’d just left. She altered the heights in her poles so she could practice, and therefore remain stable, on changing ground.
Now she pushed herself again, to do what needed to be done. Lee couldn’t stay here. The police would be out in a heartbeat if he fired rounds out of her back yard. Even if the noise didn’t cause trouble, sooner or later someone hunting deer in the expanse out beyond her home would get one of Lee’s bullets in him. Accidentally didn’t matter. That the person would be trespassing wouldn’t matter. It was Texas, everyone but Cyn owned a gun, and you just didn’t shoot your neighbors.
She spotted the ground and hopped down with ease, even though her feet had been well over her own height to start with. A deep sigh settled into her chest even though she fought it and she pulled on work gloves before picking up the shovel and hacking at the dirt around the tallest pole. She’d worked so hard to sink these.
“I can get that.”
A hand appeared over her shoulder, startling her, but she didn’t let it show. Giving herself a swift mental kick for not knowing he was there, she spoke. “I can do it.”
“I know you can. But I can probably do it faster and you need to finish up inside. I can’t sort your things for you.” He plucked the shovel from her fingers and went to work bare-handed.
Cyn hadn’t protested. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway. She went back into the house where the air was cooler and less disconcerting. She berated herself again for letting him sneak up on her, and promised herself she’d be hyper-vigilant. Now was not the time to become lax, what with the move and the new partner, all of which might very well spell more trouble. In any case, it was a new M.O., and that alone created a need for greater awareness. New was when you were likely to make a mistake.
She had packed and stored and made several trips in her rental car, carefully putting throw away items in a series of dumpsters that made a circle around a central point fifteen miles away. Her house lay just outside the circle. She then swung by her post office box, in the small town almost twenty miles the other direction. She’d chosen it specifically because it didn’t have video surveillance. She spoke to an employee for the first time since she’d opened the account two years ago, and picked up the large cardboard box that had been delivered for her. She played dumb and sweet, thinking she’d make less of a scene if she allowed the nice man to carry it to her car for her than if she just threw the thing over her shoulder and hauled it off herself. After it was situated in the backseat, she headed home for maybe the last time.
Many of her bags were missing when she returned, and Lee’s car was nowhere to be seen. Lee himself was gone, but she just couldn’t work herself into believing that he’d stolen her stuff. She’d feel like a Class A fool if that was indeed what had happened, but she wasn’t even going to consider it for another, what? eight to ten hours. There was no way the man talked her into moving then ran off with what she’d packed when her back was turned. Also there was the problem that he knew she would hunt him down and kill him with the very weapons he’d taken, if that were the case. No, he’d be back.
Only fifteen minutes later she spotted him walking up to the house through the woods. He passed the spot where her poles had been and, to his credit, he’d flattened the earth back and covered it with the usual smattering of leaves. You would never guess what had been there. The choking sensation threatened her again, but Cyn ignored it, which was easy to do‒she’d been ignoring everything that bothered her for so very long.
Lee was halfway across the grass, just a shadow in a yard of shadows created by the deepening dusk, when the spitting noise came.
“Shit!” He yelled it loud enough for her neighbors, none closer than a mile, to hear, and bolted for the house.
Cyn laughed even as he barreled into her. He knocked her off her feet because she simply hadn’t reacted, and made it in the door only after the sprinkler heads had popped up one by one and started spraying. He beat the water by a hair.
“Oh yeah, laugh it up.” Lee pushed to his feet from where he’d toppled them both.
“I’m guessing you made friends with my sprinklers before.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, still brushing imaginary carpet fibers off his t-shirt in an attempt to regain some dignity. “Out in the woods, too. I didn’t see that coming.”
“Well, then it did its job.”
He had conceded a little. “It’s brilliant. It looks stupid rather than fortified, and no one wants to steal anything through a soaker.”
After she pointed out the final things to go into the trailer, including the new box, they’d eaten the last of the food in the fridge and camped out. Lee took the white sheet draped couch and Cyn used a sleeping bag on her now bare mattress. Her room wasn’t the same, everything was gone except her traveling weapons‒they were here, unstitched from their bears and under her pillow‒and the straight backed chair that she tucked under the knob.
She hadn’t been sure that she’d needed it. Her feelings now were that she needed protection from what was outside the house, rather than what was in it. The screamers would have done far more good stuck to the windows, but she’d packed all but three thinking that would be the maximum necessary for any hotel room, but it wasn’t enough for her room. And not enough was the same as none, so she hadn’t stuck them on.
Still, she’d slept soundly, and they’d left before first light, Lee downing the last of the milk straight from the jug. They’d tossed their trash in a restaurant dumpster two miles away and then officially hit the road. They stopped for lunch in a little mom-and-pop that was too busy to chat them up or remember anything about them, and too small to have any kind of video surveillance going.
What should have been an eighteen hour drive looked like it would be closer to twenty-four. Night was creeping up and they’d decided to drive straight through, as a U-haul at a motel was not only going to be memorable, but would prove tempting for anyone wanting to steal a wad of stuff already loaded and ready to go. The real problem was that if this U-haul was stolen, they were in deep shit. It was full of weapons, and leather outfits, and all kinds of things that could tie Cyn definitely, and Lee maybe, to a handful of homicide scenes. Driving straight through was the way to go.
They stopped at a rest area to stretch and walk a little and do anything but rest, then exited for the next drive-thru that offered something other than burgers identical to what they’d had for lunch. After the fruit and yogurt was gone, and her sandwich carefully and silently chewed, Cyn started the first conversation of the day.
Her roiling feelings about being talked into picking up stakes and moving with someone she knew both far too well and not at all had kept her quiet to this point. “Am I going to have to ask to borrow the car?”
He laughed and sucked down the last of his coke, having refused to order water because he thought it would be just another thing someone might remember, and there was nothing they wanted like they wanted to be invisible. “Can you drive a stick?”
She snorted. “Of course I can. I bought an old car and ground the gears to dust until I learned.”
“Why did you do that?”
“This boy in high school was teasing me saying that girls couldn’t drive a manual.”
Lee nodded, as though the machinations of high school were something from his distant past, like they were in hers. “You showed him.”
“Not really.” She started in on the fries while she talked. “I got access to my money when I turned eighteen. That’s when I bought the car and finally started doing what I needed to. I had already dropped out of high school by then.”
Lee shook his head a little like it was all just a bit too much to digest. “You dropped out of high school?”
“Sure.” She shrugged and swallowed the fries she was chewing, although she wasn’t really sure why she was still eating them since they tasted like salted cardboard. “Look, Mr. CPA, not everyone needs to attend Trigonometry through to the last day in June.”
“But how’d you get your job without a diploma? Don’t you need that now, even in the mall?”
“I got my GED.” She laughed. “I took that fucking test four times.”
He frowned into the night ahead of him. “It doesn’t seem like you to go do something and fail it.”
“Who said I failed? I’ve got four GEDs under four different names.” She shook her head, as though that might dispel why she’d felt so compelled to actually test each time. “I’ve got driver’s licenses in all the names by using forged birth certificates, but for some reason I felt it necessary to take that test each time. The birth certificates are the only things that are fakes.”
“That’s kind of crazy.”
“It keeps me alive.” Cyn tilted her head and went back to eating the cardboard fries. She figured if she was hungry enough to chew them, then she ought to do so. There was no telling when they’d get to stop again.
With no warning he changed the subject. “I still don’t see why we didn’t sell your car.”
“I don’t need the money. My folks’ life insurance policies were big. Millions. And selling the car makes us memorable.” The last fry came up covered in visible granules of salt, but since the salt only improved upon the lack of flavor, Cyn ate that one, too.
“When they find the car and trace it to the owner of that house, then we might just be screwed.”
She sighed. She’d gotten rid of the car before he returned and had rented another for just the previous day. “Look, I spent a long time dumping that car. It isn’t going to come back and bite me in the ass, and therefore isn’t going to bite you in the ass either.”
He hugged the right hand side of the freeway, gearing up for the long exit onto I-40 as they left Little Rock. Because darkness had descended, they hadn’t seen anything of the town, just an abundance of exits and a few extra tall lamps lighting their way. The kitty’s high-beams cut through the gradually opening country as they made their way out the sprawl that was nearly identical to what they’d driven through on the west side of town. After a minute of following road signs Lee picked up his previous thread. “All that car has to do is get linked to the owner of that house, or the girl who works in the mall, and all is fucked. Royally.”
“Not gonna happen. Do you think I didn’t think of that?” She crushed the fry box and sucked down the last of her soda, pushing all of it down into the now empty food bag and shoved that to the side of the foot well. There wasn’t room in the back, it was crammed with suitcases and the things they had gathered this morning. Normally she would never have traveled with so much visible, but the U-haul was stuffed, and the trunk had other suitcases, and if they were‒God forbid‒pulled over, the search would yield nothing in the car and it would look normal to have all the gear as they were clearly moving.
Cyn situated herself almost sideways in a desperate need to keep her legs and ass from going to sleep. For all the training and practice that she’d done, she’d never learned how to prevent that one. “The car isn’t registered to the same person who bought the house. I bought it three states over. The night before, I pulled the Texas plates off and packed them in the trailer. The car is wearing a set of Utah plates that go to a car of the same make and color and model year. When I registered the car, I got those Texas plates under a third name, then I pulled the vehicle ID numbers off and replaced them with some from another car of the same make and model year that I got from a junkyard in Florida. And yesterday I sank the car in deep water, long before the sun came up, just outside of Amarillo. I took the bus to Lubbock, where I rented the car to go to Dallas. So even if they see the tracks leading into the water, which I think I covered pretty damn well, and they pull the damn thing up, I just don’t think it’s going to get traced.”
He blinked a few times. “I had no idea you were that paranoid.”
“Sure you did. I’m alive.” She turned back to face the front, “And you’re not one to talk Mr. I-live-in-a-shack. I looked this car up and down and you seem pretty paranoid about your kitty getting traced back to you. What I did was really no more effort than your I-practically-built-my-own-car-so-there-would-be-no-records, you know.”
Lee sighed, they were on the way back from the third army supply store they’d hit in the five days since he’d brought Sin to his shack. He’d known when he packed the U-haul that he couldn’t handle her. But more what he couldn’t handle was the look on her face when they’d arrived.
She’d accepted the generator and the fact that there were only four rooms with grace. She’d looked at the pump by the sink like it was quaint, and maybe to be treasured. But she’d looked at the U-haul trailer and seen that everything would not fit into the shack. Her room was piled high with boxes and bags, and he couldn’t just add another room onto the building.
They’d worked their butts off, making things fit. So Lee had been surprised at the warmth that had suddenly begun to permeate the small log cabin. It wasn’t a shack anymore. Sin cleaned, dusted and washed, and acted incredibly female. She practically nested. He’d had to stop her before she made the place look too lived in, or made it too difficult to abandon.
That was another thing. He’d had an entirely mobile life up until this point. When he’d taken the attacker out that morning on the trail, he’d simply gone back to where he was staying and he’d been out, and out without a trace, inside of a few hours. There were traces everywhere now that Sin was here. She lived a planted life. She had no ties to family, but the girl clearly put down roots. Jesus, if he wasn’t careful there’d be ironed curtains hanging in the windows.
His only consolation was that, aside from the weapons, the place didn’t look like it was inhabited by killers. Still. They’d had to make trips out three times. Sin didn’t want to stay behind, and she didn’t know the area well enough herself to go alone. And they really did seem to function well together. They’d stood shoulder to shoulder in the Army Surplus Store and looked at tarps, tents, and camouflage netting. They’d seen what was there and worked out a plan that they both liked.
In a few hours, the kitty was unloaded and they’d cleared a few small key trees out in a twelve foot by twelve foot space, leaving older taller growth to provide canopy. They laid ground cover for cushioning then used plywood and the cut trunks to construct some crude flooring. They wrapped standing trunks of the large trees in the army green canvas tarps and tented it with waterproof sheeting in the dullest brown color they could find. Then they skirted the whole thing with the camo netting, making it impossible to see until you were nearly on top of it. It was simply a bigger, better constructed version of his ‘garage’.
Sin had worked like a dog. Aside from insisting that she wear leather work gloves constantly, which Lee hadn’t bothered with since he’d hit the road three years ago, figuring the pain of blisters and the toughened hands were both good for him, Sin had done just as much work as he had.
While he stood back to inspect the lean-to, looking for flaws or ways to improve it, Sin was already hauling things inside. He’d seen her weapons collection before, but continued to be impressed by the sheer volume. This was even after she’d gone around with some wicked epoxy and the biggest wad of Velcro he’d ever seen and hidden daggers, swords, and throwing knives all over the inside of the cabin. She wedged a few in key, hidden places on the outside as well, and stuck screamers on all the windows. But even with all that already placed, she unrolled sword after sword. Knives were bound with what looked like ponytail holders. When unpacked, throwing stars clattered in great heaps to the crude floor where she knelt. And Sin looked happy, like a kid at Christmas, even though she was opening all her own stuff.
He would never have tangled with her in his past life. He would never have gotten past the leather outfits or the penchant for weapons. He’d been used to women with careers or kids on their minds, not death. But here she was, not only in his house, but he was building rooms for her and altering his life around her. Because this child with her toys could bring him down.
Because he wasn’t living his old life. It had been ripped out from underneath him. And when he’d opened his eyes from his alcoholic haze after Samantha and Bethany’s deaths, he’d seen that this was the life that had always been lingering just under his own.
While his life had been solitary for years, he realized now that it had been that way because there hadn’t been anyone else to bring into it. But he was human, he craved company. Sam had read him an article once about abused children; she’d said they thrived, while it was neglected children that died. Humans needed contact, even if it wasn’t favorable, and he had to wonder if he’d been neglecting himself and had maybe moved into the ‘abuse’ category by bringing Sin here. But there’d been nothing else for it‒this was the human contact he was getting.
And maybe it could work. Although this was turning out to be a damn lot of work for that ‘trial period’ they’d discussed it as. Still, he was determined, even if he wasn’t sure if he was making a friend or simply keeping his enemy close. “You got a minute?”
Sin looked up from her toys and frowned. “Sure.” Even while looking at him and getting off the floor in a single liquid motion, her hand automatically moved to cover the gleaming metal at her feet before she followed, the frown still in place.
He traipsed through the woods, noisy for him, but still far quieter than the usual human. Leading her about a tenth of mile, Lee decided he liked the fact that she didn’t chatter, didn’t ask questions, just followed.
When he stopped, he heard her breath suck in. “You didn’t.”
“I did. Happy Birthday, Cynthia Beller.” He’d had to state her last name, her real last name, so she’d know it wasn’t just a saying. He knew he’d given her the gift out of kindness, and had reminded her of her birthday as a way of letting her know that he knew who she really was.
She was walking around and through the standing poles. “They’re the same ones from my yard.”
“I packed them up and brought them in the trailer.”
Sin sounded awed. Immediately, he regretted rubbing her face in his knowledge, both because it had been a little mean, and because it apparently had been wasted. She hadn’t caught the slight. She was too busy rubbing her hands along the smooth trunks of the slim trees she must have chopped herself when she first set them up in Texas. She paced the distances between them, “Wow, you even got the dimensions almost exact.”
He tapped his head, and couldn’t help smiling at her wonder. “I memorized them.”
Of course, he should have known Sin would point out that they were ‘almost’ exact and not dead on. But in her sneakers and stretch jeans she climbed them like a cat, leaping agilely from one post top to another until she stood, happy as he’d ever seen her, perched far over his head.
For a moment he wondered if she was going to jump down on him and strike a nerve bundle and go all way-of-the-ninja on him. But she didn’t. She beamed down from high above.
Lee felt . . . he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t categorize it. It had been so long since he’d felt it. Felt anything. And that was what surprised him‒he felt.
Owen blinked at his wife. Annika had just told the hostess that they’d look at menus and place an order to go. She smiled up at him, seeing, but not soothing, his bewilderment.
They sat at the bar not talking much. So it came as a complete surprise when he asked why they were getting the food to go and she’d replied with, ‘we need to talk.’ Why the hell they couldn’t talk here confused him until he figured it out and realized he was in deep shit.
Keeping his feelings to himself, he stayed silent while they waited, and then paid for the huge bag of food. He followed his wife out into a day that was far too beautiful for what he was now certain was coming. She pressed the keychain button, setting off a short series of beeps on the nice car that she’d protested when he’d gotten it for her. Owen pulled at the passenger door and slid in, waiting for Annika to take the wheel and not liking the trapped feeling that was slowly washing over him. Even though he knew he deserved every ounce of it.
Annika had swung by and picked him up just beyond the front parking lot at the Bureau for a lunch together. He tried to manage one of these meals each week while Charlotte was in school. Just the two of them. Just to keep in touch with his wife. Now she looked at him sideways a few times on the drive home and he wished that his stomach wasn’t churning, that he could really enjoy the smell of the food, because in his brain he knew it smelled wonderful. If only he didn’t feel like he was going to vomit.
Pulling smoothly into the driveway, Annika pushed the gearshift into ‘park’ and started to get out. But Owen stopped her with a hand on her arm, not able to stand any more. He would have heaved but the deep clenching in his stomach prevented it. “Are you going to divorce me?”
Cold dread congealed in his gut and his eyes stared blankly ahead, his ears tuned for her answer. He knew she was going to say ‘yes’ and he also knew that he couldn’t take it. He was horrible at showing it, but there was nothing in this world that was worth more than Annika and Charlotte.
Her hand passed in front of his face, forcing him to focus on her, on the here and now, no matter how certain he was that he wouldn’t like it.
“I’m not divorcing you.” Her head tilted and her eyes swam with pity. He didn’t like Annika pitying him, but Owen figured it was about five thousand times better than what he’d expected, so he took it.
She spoke again before he could register his good luck and form words. “I knew what you were and what you did when I married you. I don’t want to change you. I’d like to have you around more. But I’d rather have you a little than have you a lot and have you resent me for it.”
“I wouldn’t-”
Her hand on his arm effectively cut off his attempt to gush into an explanation. He was used to being calm and cool. He found dead bodies, the latest chain of cadavers had been killed in the most creative of ways, and rarely did he get worked up. But the thought of Annika leaving put his fear on high alert and his heart at risk. Owen wanted to tell her about his plan to quit the FBI. But he hadn’t so far because he couldn’t say when the ninja case would end. And he didn’t want her and Charlotte hanging onto something that might be a while coming. He knew he couldn’t live with himself if he left that one hanging.
“Let’s go inside.” Annika’s hand slipped gracefully from his arm, and Owen was forced to find his legs and use them. Once inside it was Annika who gushed at him. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to talk about the ninja and we can’t do that when we’re out. I don’t want to get you fired, but I love hearing about your cases.”
She took the food from him and began setting it out on the table. Only the table had been draped with a linen tablecloth and set with a few candles and the nice china. She smiled at him, that wide, Russian, big-eyed look that had caught him deep in the gut years ago. He’d had a visceral reaction the first time he’d seen her, and while he didn’t feel the punch to his chest anymore it wasn’t because he didn’t react the same way, but simply because he’d gotten used to it.
He was definitely leaving the Bureau.
She set out the meals, pushing them from their covered tinfoil pans onto the plates and frowning at the loss of presentation. Having missed his moment, Owen didn’t try to grab her and haul her off to the bedroom. She wanted to hear about his work. Since she wasn’t leaving him, what Annika wanted, Annika got.
He pulled her chair out for her, earning another big smile, and lit the candles, figuring she wanted the lighting that way if she’d set them out. They certainly hadn’t been there this morning. He seated himself across the small table, all of its scars hidden now under the linen, and enjoyed the way the candles lit her face up. “What do you want to know?”
She sighed. “You said you were hoping to get more hair off the ninja. That would help prove she was female.” Here she frowned. “Long hair doesn’t prove the ninja is female.”
“No, but double-X DNA in the hair does.” He dug into the steaming plate of pasta, finally able to savor the smells wafting up to him.
“That just proves you have female hair, not a female ninja.” She took a delicate bite of fish then continued. “I mean, I’m certain the ninja is female. I just don’t get what the other hair proves.”
He sighed. Then he was off and running, talking about the ninja even on his date with his wife. “That’s the problem, none of it proves anything. But it would be damn circumstantial, because it would prove that the same woman was at two sites. If one is the campus rapist and the other is any mafia man, then the grudge ninja is the only link and therefore it must be her.”
Annika nodded. “That’s a shame you’re not going to get any more hair then.”
Owen stopped mid-bite. He’d twirled a forkful of linguini, but now it was poised halfway between the plate and his lips. “Why not? We got it once.”
“That’s the problem. You got it once.”
She took another bite, and Owen took that as his cue to eat his own food, Annika was about to give up something good. He really wished he could have the FBI write out a portion of his salary to her and give her access to all the files. But they would never go for that. Instead, he chewed and waited.
Sure enough, Annika spoke when she finished the bite. “See, I’ve been researching your campus rapist online when I had the time. Reading police reports and the crime log from the campus paper.”
Owen cocked his head and took another bite while he listened. He hadn’t gone very far at all in that direction. The ninja had killed the guy, so good riddance. And he’d clearly fallen in her non-mafia pattern: bad guy hurting innocents. What else was there to research? But Owen was eating his nice lunch at home, so there had to be something. He took a moment to be glad he’d shown Annika how to research police reports.
“You don’t have any other hair samples, because she’s been very careful and knows what she’s doing. You only have that one because she had to give it up to get the rapist.”
“Continue.”
“The rapist was grabbing his victims by the ponytail and cutting off their clothes. He preferred overalls, or girls in loose jeans. So that’s how she dressed to bait him. Unless you want to send a rapist out with a similar M.O. you won’t get any more hair, or probably clothing fibers, off her. She probably purchased the clothing for just that reason, and it won’t lead anywhere.”
Owen sat back. Annika was right. It hadn’t been a fuck-up at all. The ninja had trapped the rapist, and who knew how long that had taken? The hair and the clothing fibers had been a calculated risk, a freebie. She wouldn’t give them more. And Owen couldn’t harm innocents, or let a criminal go unstopped just so they could bait her.
The more they learned about her, it seemed the less evidence they had.
“Besides,” Annika spoke again after another few bites of her lunch. “Do you really need matching hair samples? You have the handwriting. It links most of the scenes, as does the M.O.”
“No, we don’t need it. We don’t need anything in particular, just something that would give us proof.”
“Seems to me you’re going to be hard pressed to get it.”
“Thanks, Anni.” The wry tones had seeped into his voice, his comfort having returned after he believed she wasn’t going anywhere. “If we had a fingerprint, that would be something.”
“No, it’s not.” Annika laughed out loud at him. “It’s like the hair. In and of itself it means nothing. You have to have a match to make it worthwhile. Do you really think this woman has fingerprints on file?”
Owen turned that one over, too. “For a long time I did. I’ve continued to delude myself into a little hope.”
“Please.” Anni gestured with the spinach pasta at the tip of her fork. “With everything else you’ve seen, you think she’s going to let you match a fingerprint? She’s either not on file, so you have the hair problem again‒meaning you have to get her in custody and yank a hair physically off her head to see if matches. Or, if her prints are on file, then I’d bet she’s rubbed her fingers bare or something. It’s never going to happen. You’ll have to get her another way.”
Owen swallowed the last of the pasta, his stomach happy and full. “So what do you propose we do, Sherlock?”
Annika laughed. “Got me.”
“Then I guess I’m up shit creek without a paddle.”
Her face changed again to a more thoughtful look. “You know, I’ve never understood that expression.”
Owen’s mouth twitched. It was very unlike Annika to need an explanation. English was her second language, but she spoke and understood it better than most of the people he worked with. “Well, shit creek would be a really bad place to not be able to get around.”
She tossed him a dirty look. “I get that. But ‘up’ and ‘down’ the creek refer to the movement of the current. So if you’re ‘up the creek,’ then you don’t need a paddle, you should just float along to wherever you need to be. Now ‘down shit creek without a paddle’ would be a really bad place to be.”
Owen leaned over, putting his elbows square on the table and getting as close to her as he could. “Anni, I love you. Don’t ever leave me.”
Cyn ground her teeth, and then pushed the frustration to the back of her mind and ordered her jaw to stop working her molars together. It stopped.
But, while she had supreme control over her outward movement, and therefore appearance, she couldn’t actually stop the frustration that was building inside her, only tamp it down a little. “Can I please drive?”
“I- . . . Well-” Lee paused. “You know.”
Yeah, she knew. It was his baby, he’d practically built it, the ‘kitty’, and all that crap. “It has five gears plus reverse, it’s not a fuckin’ space ship.”
He blinked, but didn’t concede. “I have no idea what your skills are. I’ve never actually seen you drive stick.”
“That’s because you won’t let me drive.” She sucked a small amount of air in through her nose, trying to center herself. It didn’t pay to be frustrated, and she so rarely was, but Lee worked his way under her skin easier than anyone had since Wendy. For a brief moment, pangs shot through her as she remembered the fights she and her two-years-older sister had been having before that night. Cyn shook it off.
“Can it wait until we unload the trailer?”
“Of course it can.” It was his damn car and his damn choice. At least it would be until she snuck out in the middle of the night and put a hundred miles on it joyriding. But that would only prove that she actually was as immature as he seemed to think. She fought off the sigh that would sound like more of the same.
They were almost to Chillicothe, having just crossed the Kentucky / Ohio border, where they were going to return the trailer. Cyn had used the generator to fuel her hair dryer, and in an attempt to look non-lethal, curled her hair this morning as well. Lee had dried his hair, too, turning it into some big mass of curls and fluff, and rendering his face virtually invisible with the hair drawing enough attention away from any of his otherwise memorable features.
She’d had to hear this puffball tell her she couldn’t drive his beat-up old car for almost a week now. She wanted her nice sedan back. The one she could park curbside, or at the mall, and have it blend in perfectly. She’d dented the back door on each side, just for that purpose, but Lee had taken that to a whole new level.
“You know,” she started. “I need my own car.”
Lee watched the overhead signs, taking the exit off I-75 for I-77, offering a slightly more direct route. “True.”
“Let’s get me one while we’re here. Then I’ll never have to drive the kitty.” She pressed her advantage, trying to keep the tone of bribery out of her voice and only partially succeeding.
“Not in Chillicothe.”
“Of course not. Jesus.” She shook her head. “You know, I’d be long dead if I operated the way you seem to think I do.”
The trailer was getting returned to Chillicothe because it was nowhere near Lee’s cabin. Her cabin now. They’d set up the drop off point when they rented the U-haul in Boulder. Neither end was anywhere near either house. And, since it was just a pull trailer, it didn’t log miles. Lee had discretely checked for a small odometer attached to either tire when they’d rented it, and found nothing.
“It may mean an extra day out. Or more.” He eased onto the brake, swerving around a pothole in the road.
Even here there was evidence of the winters being colder. The road expanded and contracted with the seasons, wreaking havoc on the pavement. Cyn could feel the tug and sway of the now empty trailer as it was hauled along behind them. “An extra day doesn’t matter. We need another car. I’m not going to last long if I need to ask for the keys all the time. And what would either of us do if we needed to get out while the other one was already out?”
There wasn’t a bus stop, or even a good freeway close enough to walk. If Lee was gone and she went out to the closest road and hitched a ride, well, she might be there a damn long while waiting. In fact, it was likely that Lee would be the first one to come by. She needed her own set of wheels.
When they finally found the small U-haul center, it was only a fraction of the business done by Jed’s Tire and Auto Body. Cyn smiled and batted her eyelashes and signed the paperwork in Cynthia Winslow’s frothy scrawl. Lee had scratched his head and thanked the guy for unhooking the trailer. He’d played dumb, saying they’d had the thing on the whole time, when he himself had hitched and unhitched it on several occasions.
Cyn faked a smile at one of the cover-all’ed and greasy employees as they pulled away. “Let’s blow this popcorn stand.”
“You’re serious about a car?”
She only leveled a gaze at him.
He sighed and accepted. Popping open the glove compartment he tossed a four state map into her lap. “Well then Cyn, where’s your new car?”
She pulled open the large paper and looked at the threads of tiny red lines, running vein-like across the map. Lee was already heading south, so she checked that way first. “I think it’s just north of Charlotte. Where the freeways cross.” She tapped the spot with her finger, and held the map up to him.
Seven hours later they were at a used car dealership. Being lucky, they’d found a car in a shade that would blend into the forest. It needed some work on the outside, which wasn’t going to get done. And it needed some work on the inside, which was going to be Lee’s job. And that left them trying to barter down the cost, to something in the range of the cash Cyn had stashed. She always had large amounts of cash on hand, and extra while traveling. While she didn’t have quite what the dealer was asking, it was enough to cover the car’s value.
They’d dressed casually to return the U-haul that morning, with both of them in jeans and Cyn in a ponytail. She was slugging a liter of coke and worrying some slick pink lip-gloss off her mouth while she argued with Lee. He told the dealer they couldn’t afford the car.
He was right, they didn’t have enough cash on hand. Neither of them had a bank account so an ATM wouldn’t cut it. That also meant no checks. And they sure as hell weren’t going to leave and come back.
So Cyn played what she could. She looked up at Lee, as though he was just deciding against her. She gave him the puppy-dog eyes, and drew the word out to three syllables. “Dad.”
His eyes narrowed just a fraction but he held it together. “Cyndy,” He returned, “we just can’t afford this right now.”
She played it for all it was worth, even pouting to the dealer, and getting him to come down a little, because ‘Daddy’ was being stubborn.
A half hour later she pulled out of the lot driving the old, pale green Toyota behind the kitty, and doing a little victory dance behind the wheel. She was out of cash, only the twenty stuck in her back pocket to save her, and that wasn’t enough to get her either gas or food back to the cabin.
Lee didn’t speak when they pulled over at the rest stop. But there was no need, they simply watched each others backs and the cars before they climbed back in and started off down the road again.
A half hour after that, she was flashing the high-beams at him as the engine sputtered and the car lost all power. Cyn fought the wheel, much harder to turn now without the power steering, and banked the car on the side of the road.
Lee sprayed gravel as he backed up and, leaving the cars nose to tail, he motioned for her to pop the hood. She was already out and watching as, with a paper towel to protect his fingers, he grabbed quickly at wires and swore softly as he looked under hoses and checked her oil level.
He was shaking his head as he headed back to the kitty and returned with a roll of duct tape and a quart of oil. “You’re leaking. Not bad, or we’d have to stay over somewhere and fix it tomorrow, but we won’t take it all the way in with us.”
His fingers deftly ripped off a piece of tape and he wound it around one small cracked-looking hose a few times. He topped off her oil with the quart in his hand, speaking while he did it. “When we get close we’ll park her around the other side, then you hop in with me and we’ll go in the usual way.”
Only managing to get some of the grease off his fingers, Lee pushed the hood back down into place. “That ought to get us home.”
He turned back toward the kitty. But then he stopped and came back square to her, making Cyn wonder what was up.
“And, by the way, I am not your Dad.”