Woman on the Run (new version)

  Julia clutched the receiver and listened to his computer gobbledygook, trying to breathe, wondering what to do to calm herself down. There wasn’t even a drugstore in Simpson. No Prozac. No Xanax. Whisky gave her heartburn. Not even bad sex was available.

  “I just asked whether you’d seen someone suspicious out of a sense of duty, but believe me,” Davis continued, “no one knows who or where you are.”

  Well, that makes sense. I don’t know who or where I am, either, Julia thought. She stamped her frozen feet. The telephone receiver once again filled with static.

  A sudden noise made Julia whip around, heart thumping. It was only an old, faded Coca-Cola poster, wildly flapping in the freezing wind against a cracked concrete wall. Julia slumped back against the shell in relief. The force of the wind ripped the poster from the wall. It tumbled crazily down the empty street, buffeted by forces beyond its control.

  I know just how you feel, she thought.

  “Connection’s bad again,” she yelled, hand cupped around the receiver, and hung up. She’d had her fill of bad news. It wasn’t enough that she would be stuck here for at least another six months—someone had apparently come close to finding out where she was.

  Julia stopped for a moment, frozen more by a chilling thought than by the cold. Davis had seemed terribly certain than no one could crack the Justice Department’s files, but she’d read the newspaper stories about pimply twelve-year-old hackers breaking into corporate and military computer networks.

  What if Dominic Santana was a computer expert? Her mind raced back to that terrible, terrible day one month earlier. Usually, she tried to wipe the images out of her mind, particularly at 2 a.m. when the nightmares threatened to swamp her sanity, but now she deliberately conjured up the scene, imprinted on her mind forever.

  It had been hot then. A muggy day on an unusually hot Indian summer afternoon.

  She ran through the scene in slow-mo in her head…the scrawny man on his knees, the sweat of fear dripping on the oil-stained pavement, another man holding a gun to his head, finger slowly tightening on the trigger, the report, the scrawny man’s head exploding in a pink mist…this was where she always shut off the film in her head, but now she continued, concentrating on the man holding the gun. He’d been tall. Heavy-set. She zoomed in on his face. There had been a feral coldness stamped on his features, violence, brutality—but not intelligence. Julia started breathing again. No, she thought, that man could not crack a computer code. A safe, maybe, but not a code.

  Besides, Julia thought, as she walked back into the empty school building, she’d been around Simpson long enough to recognize everyone by sight. She hadn’t seen any new faces lately.

  The sky rumbled as she made her way down the corridor and the lights flickered once. Great, she thought. Just great. She really had to hurry home now. Something in her house was leaking and she didn’t want to have to try locating the source by flashlight.

  She entered the classroom, with its familiar smell of chalk dust. Mr. Big leered at her from his corner perch. She’d have to remember to tell Jim to leave it on the school steps when he finished cleaning.

  The lights flickered again in the shadowed room. Heavy footsteps sounded in the corridor outside the classroom, loud in the silence of the school. Someone was striding quickly, then stopping, then walking quickly again, as if—her heart started racing—as if looking for something…or someone.

  Don’t be silly, she told herself, but her heart continued its wild thumping, anyway. She pushed papers into her briefcase with shaking hands, cursing as one slipped to the floor. She could hear herself panting and made a conscious effort to slow her breathing. The footsteps stopped, then started again. Each teacher had his or her name taped to the door. If someone was looking for Sally Andersen…

  Stop, start…

  She grabbed her coat, trying to calm her trembling. Davis had spooked her, that was all. It was probably Jim…

  …except that Jim was an old man and shuffled…

  …or one of the teachers…

  …except that all the other teachers had gone home…

  Closer, closer…

  The footsteps stopped at her door and her gaze froze on the glass pane that covered the upper half of the door. She had to see who was out there, reassure herself that it was just one of the harmless citizens of Simpson and not…and not…

  A face pressed against the window. A man. He reached inside his jacket to pull something out.

  The lights went out.

  Julia whimpered and tried to think around the icy ball of fear that had formed in her mind. What could she use as a weapon? There was nothing in her purse but a pocket diary, keys and makeup. The kids’ desks were too heavy to lift, and the chairs were of lightweight plastic. Her hand brushed something hard and round. Mr. Big!

  Panting wildly, she angled her chair next to the door, climbed up on it and hoisted the enormous pumpkin in her arms. She stood, trembling, at the side of the door, ready to smash the man out there over the head. Her body tensed, going into fight and flight mode.

  The knob rattled.

  Julia closed her eyes and saw again the face that had been revealed in the bright fluorescent lights of the corridor.

  Overlong, straight black hair, framing a series of slabs angling harshly together to form cheeks and chin, a straight slash of a mouth, black eyes.

  An unfamiliar face.

  An unforgettable face.

  A killer’s face.

  Chapter Two

  Sam Cooper felt like killing someone.

  Preferably his foreman and best friend, Bernaldo Martinez. Or, failing that, Bernie’s faithless, two-timing wife, Carmelita. Either one would do.

  They should be the ones here, ready to talk to little Rafael’s teacher, not him. He’d rather walk across hot coals than have to deal with all this emotional shit. He had enough problems, what with rising feed prices and falling roofs.

  He hadn’t the faintest idea what he could possibly say to Rafael’s teacher. He only knew that Bernie was in no condition to talk to anyone right now.

  Cooper reached into his jacket to touch the notes the teacher, a Miss Andersen, had sent home with the little boy. He knew them all by heart, having reread them a dozen times since coming home after a business trip to Boise and finding Bernie passed out, clutching an empty bottle of cheap bourbon in one fist and the notes in another.

  He’d pried the notes out of Bernie’s hand, hoisted him over one shoulder and put him, fully dressed, in the shower stall and turned on the cold water tap.

  Bernie had come out of his stupor long enough to curse him weakly, then had fallen onto his bed, which hadn’t been made in a long, long while. Cooper had been tempted to leave Bernie as he was, in his sodden clothes on the unmade bed, but he’d given in with a sigh, undressed him and heaped blankets on him.

  Bernie would be feeling bad enough when he faced his hangover without tossing in pneumonia.

  But Bernie would owe him. Big-time. Playing nursemaid and facing grade school teachers were not high on Cooper’s list of favorite pastimes.

  Cooper stood outside the door of the schoolroom. He didn’t have any more reason to wait. The little plaque outside the door confirmed that this was Miss S. Andersen’s classroom. He pressed his face against the glass pane of the door, hoping the room would be empty, but the lights in the corridor were so bright all he could see was his own face reflected back at him.

  He looked as annoyed as he felt.

  Fuck. I don’t want to do this, he thought, pressing his lips together. He moved forward anyway, wondering if he should knock on the door. Then he thought…what the hell…turned the knob and pushed the door open. A thousand tons of bricks fell on his head.

  “Wha…?” Cooper found himself against the classroom wall, legs splayed out. He raised his hand to his head and felt a large sore area he was certain would start turning into a whopper of a goose egg very soon. His hand came away wet and for a moment he thought it w
as blood, then he saw it was orange glop and big white seeds.

  Pumpkin? He stared for a moment at his hand, covered with pumpkin pulp and seeds. He’d been brained with a pumpkin?

  “Don’t move,” a high tight voice warned him. A small, slender, beautiful woman faced him, panting and shaking.

  She was terrified, Cooper realized.

  She should have been a redhead. Though her hair was a dull shade of brown, she had the pale skin and deep turquoise eyes of a redhead. She reminded him of a fox cub he had once come across, paw caught in a trap. The cub was mortally wounded and he wanted to free it from the trap but the cub had hissed and growled and tried to bite him with baby milk teeth.

  So he sat in the puddle of pumpkin glop and stared at her while she hyperventilated and trembled.

  She held a small spray can aimed at him, held in unsteady hands. It was a replica of the breath freshener he had in his bathroom. “This is Mace,” she lied. “If you make a move…just one move, I’ll spray you.”

  He’d already brushed his teeth, so he stayed put.

  Now what?

  Julia kept her finger on the spray nozzle, hoping the can wouldn’t just squirt out of her sweaty, trembling hands. Sweat fell into her eyes but she didn’t dare wipe it away. She could barely breathe. Oxygen deprivation was shooting colored sparks in front of her eyes. Trying to knock this terrifying man out was the bravest thing she’d ever done in her life, but it was useless pulling a kickass act if she fell into a dead faint right after.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Keeping wide eyes on the terrifying man sitting against the wall, she edged towards the door.

  “Jim!” she yelled. “Call the sheriff! Tell him I’ve got a dangerous criminal here. Tell him to get over here now!” Julia shifted her gaze slightly and saw Jim drop his mop and hustle out the door. Her eyes flickered back to the man sitting against the wall.

  Even sitting down, he was scary as hell. Braining him with Mr. Big hadn’t knocked him out. Long, massively built with shoulders a yard wide, dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, black bomber jacket and jeans, with hard dark features and dark glittering hyperaware eyes, he looked every inch a killer. Her hand trembled. Thank God she had the little spray can of breath freshener in her purse.

  “Don’t move,” Julia said again, breathlessly, trying to crouch in a gun stance on unsteady legs. She was so frightened it felt as if her chest were being squeezed in a giant’s grasp. The terror of the past month came rushing back tenfold, all wrapped up in one long, lean, broad-shouldered package. Obsidian-black eyes fixed on her, and she knew that the man was calculating his next move. This man was a professional killer. How long could she hope to keep him at breath spray point?

  The door to the school opened and running footsteps sounded in the corridor. The classroom door was yanked open and Sheriff Chuck Pedersen filled the doorway, a pistol in his hand.

  He skidded to a stop, taking in the killer sprawled on the floor and Julia holding him at bay.

  “Sheriff.” Julia’s voice came out a squeak. She coughed to clear her tight throat and began again. “Sheriff, arrest that man! He’s a dangerous criminal!”

  Sheriff Pedersen holstered his pistol and leaned against the doorframe. “Hey, Coop.”

  “Chuck.”

  Julia locked her knees because she could feel that they were about to give way. She looked at the sheriff and took a huge gulp of air into her starved lungs. “You know this man?”

  Sheriff Pedersen shifted his considerable weight and transferred his chewing gum from one cheek to another. “Know?” he asked philosophically. “What does it mean to ‘know’ someone? You can spend years with a man and never really understand…”

  “Chuck,” the man on the floor said again, his deep low voice a growl.

  Pedersen shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, turning to Julia. “I know Sam Cooper. Known him all his life. Knew his dad. Hell, knew his grandpappy.”

  “Oh, God,” Julia whimpered. She couldn’t get her insides to stop. They were racing at a thousand miles an hour. Gallons of adrenaline were still pumping through her bloodstream and she couldn’t connect her thoughts.

  She had fully expected to die, she had bravely defended herself against a vicious contract killer and then had knocked out a good citizen of Simpson.

  The man was still sitting on the floor, glaring up at her.

  Julia tried to think of something reasonable to say. How on earth could she apologize? Excuse me for having attacked you, but I thought that you were a hired killer, sounded insane.

  Still, it hadn’t been such a wild leap of the imagination. The man—this Sam Cooper—certainly looked dangerous. Exactly the way a hired gun would look. There wasn’t a thing about him that wasn’t frightening as hell. Dark coiled power emanated from him and, even sitting down, he gave the impression of a tiger ready to leap to destroy its prey. His face was like something carved from stone not flesh, all harsh angles. Everything about him was dark, which was why she’d instinctively assumed he wasn’t from Simpson.

  After about a week in the town, Julia realized why Herbert Davis had given her the assumed name of Sally Andersen. It seemed as if everyone in Simpson was a Jensen or a Jorgensen or a Pedersen. She was sure that sometime in the last century a bedraggled group of Scandinavian settlers aiming for the Pacific Ocean had just given up the ghost by the time they reached western Idaho. Everyone in Simpson seemed to share the same gene pool. Bland, pale faces and bland, pale hair.

  Not the man she’d had a little round of assault and battery with, though. Nothing pale and bland about him.

  He had jet-black hair and jet-black eyes, matching his jet-black bomber jacket and the black stubble covering his cheeks. About the only light-colored thing about him was the pumpkin pulp.

  Julia swallowed around a lump of guilt in her throat. She surreptitiously slipped the breath freshener back in her purse. “Er…how do you do? My name’s Ju…Sally Andersen.” She tried to keep the waver out of her voice, but it was touch and go.

  “Sam Cooper,” he said. He braced a large hand on the ground and stood up in one lithe, powerful movement so sudden she found herself stepping back in fright. He started brushing off seeds and Julia had another guilt attack.

  “Most people call him Coop,” the Sheriff offered.

  Julia wondered what her stickler of a mother would have thought about the etiquette of the situation, using a nickname for someone you’d done your best to knock senseless. “Mr. Cooper.”

  “Miss Andersen.” She had a momentary pang of doubt. His voice sounded like a killer’s voice…deep, low and raspy. She sneaked another look at him.

  He still looked dangerous.

  “You’re sure you know this man, Sheriff?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sheriff Pedersen grinned. “Breeds and trains horses on a big spread between here and Rupert. All kinds of horses, but mostly thoroughbreds and Arabians.”

  “I…ahm…I guess I owe you an apology, Mr. Cooper.” Julia tried to think of something logical to say. “I…I mistook you for someone else.”

  An embarrassing silence fell over the room.

  “Can’t believe you let someone get the drop on you, Coop.” The Sheriff chuckled. “’Specially a girl.”

  “Woman,” Julia murmured, refraining from rolling her eyes.

  “What? Oh, yeah, can’t call girls girls no more.” The Sheriff shook his head in sorrow at the ways of the modern world. He looked Julia up and down and cackled at Cooper. “I’ll bet you have a foot and ninety pounds on her, Coop. You must be getting soft.” He turned to Julia. “Coop used to be a SEAL, you know.”

  A seal?

  For a moment, Julia wondered whether a solid month of non-stop terror had shorted out her brain. A seal…?

  Oh. He meant a SEAL. A commando. Trained killer.

  So she hadn’t been so off the mark, after all.

  Julia absorbed this information as she looked at Sam Cooper, brainee. Splayed on the floor, he had looked d
angerous. On his feet, he was terrifying, huge and menacing. Prime commando material, if she ever saw it. She observed him carefully, paying particular attention to his alarmingly large hands, and turned to the sheriff.

  “That may be,” she said politely. “But his flippers are gone now.”

  The Sheriff stared at her for a moment. He wheezed heavily once, then twice. It was only when he bent double, shoulders shaking, that Julia realized he was laughing.

  It was the last straw. The whole miserable day came crashing in on her. Herbert Davis and his less than reassuring news that killers might have come close to discovering where she was; the terror when she thought one of Santana’s hired killers had found her; her heroic last stand at the Alamo; the overwhelming relief when she’d discovered that she might live, after all.

  Then the Sheriff running to her rescue, only he didn’t rescue her at all. Actually, he could probably have her arrested for…for what? Assault with a deadly vegetable?

  And to top it all off, the Sheriff was doing this lousy imitation of Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo, except he had all his teeth and didn’t limp. Julia hated Rio Bravo.

  Come to think of it, she hated The Alamo, too.

  “If you don’t mind, Sheriff,” she said coldly.

  Chuck Pedersen wheezed once more and wiped his eyes. “Flippers,” he said and wheezed again. He shook his head. “No, Miss…”

  Devaux, she thought. “Andersen,” she said.

  “Andersen, that’s right. Sorry. You just moved here, right?”