yellow and red flowers muted in the gathering smoke. On the main street cars continued to move in a steady stream as if smoke and fire were a normal part of their daily commute.
He scowled. He’d been so close. It had been gut instinct to check the primary schools in Georgetown, suspecting she would hunker down, consider herself safe again for a time. On Sunday, with the help of a local investigator that he’d met on a previous assignment, he’d acquired access to and checked the records of every school in the city that taught in English and that had acquired a foreign female teacher in the past few months.
He’d gone to her apartment just as school would be beginning for the day. While he was fairly certain that they’d located her, he’d hoped to find something that might prove that the woman they’d found in school records was her. He’d jimmied the building’s back door. Fortunately the building was old and unalarmed, but who he suspected was the building’s owner had found him just as he left her apartment. In fact, he had just closed and locked the door, leaving it as he had found it including the small piece of tissue tucked in the latch, meant to alert her to an intruder. It had taken a bit of acting to back out of that situation, but he’d had what he wanted—confirmation that she was the teacher he was seeking and—what he’d thought at the time was an interesting tidbit of information—that she was the owner of a new Naza Sutera.
In the distance, the Penang hills cast a sinister shadow as they cradled one against the other, their dark protrusions muted by distance. His gaze cruised across the bystanders, did a mental calculation of faces, numbers, positions. Nothing.
Josh gritted his teeth over the expletive that wouldn’t change the reality.
She was gone.
Erin was fighting for breath as she rounded the corner and stood out of sight of the school. A lorry swished past belching exhaust as a convoy of motorcyclists followed close behind. It seemed as though they were all fighting for space as a truck jammed in behind the cyclists and the loud red of Coca-Cola overlaid it all as a delivery truck squeezed into the street. A horn honked and a bicyclist swerved as pedestrians weaved their way through the intersection’s traffic snarl.
Her jaw was clenched so tight it ached, and her hand worried the strap of the bag as her eyes strained for a cab to flag. One broke with the traffic and pulled to the curb. She rushed to meet it, throwing open the door and flinging herself inside.
“Focus,” she muttered. She fired off her address in panicked words that she had to repeat when the driver turned around with a puzzled look.
Behind her, flames still punctured the otherwise quiet late-morning sky as sirens wailed and trouble inched closer.
“Daniel,” she whispered. She dashed a tear away and unclenched her hands. She looked out the window as sun glared through the windscreen. A motorcycle pulled up beside the cab, a chopper. The driver’s legs were propped up as he sat back on the low-slung seat. He turned, a dusty-brown beard covering much of his swarthy face, and smiled. The smile was not one of friendship. It was a leer, maybe, or worse. She hit the door lock.
She swallowed and clenched her free hand so tight that her nails dug into her palm. Her throat closed and her eyes burned with unshed tears.
She’d hated to run but she didn’t have a choice. The conversation with Mike Olesk had made that fact clear. A retired police officer who had been a friend of her father’s and a man she hadn’t seen in years, Mike had been the only person she could think of whom she could trust and who might help her sort out her options. The conversation that ensued was one she would never forget, for it had changed her life.
He tapped ashes into a glass ashtray, the Hollywood emblem once sharply emblazoned on it now blurred with ashes. “I know how these things go down. The authorities make promises. But face it, on this one we’re talking local police up against the Anarchists. They don’t stand a chance. If it were the feds it would be a different matter.”
“Why isn’t it?” Her stomach turned over, anticipating what he would say.
“It will be soon. The local authorities will be calling you in for questioning, unless you come forward first. I suspect you maybe have a day, maybe less.”
“No,” she said shortly. “I can’t. I won’t answer their questions.”
“You know you don’t have a choice. Why are you balking at this, Erin?”
She shook her head.
“It would be for the best. They could charge you with obstruction of justice.”
“I’d go to jail?” There’d be safety in jail.
“Maybe, maybe not.” He coughed, the sound deep and achy in the silence between them. “Word’s out that the Anarchists will do anything to ensure their leader, Derrick Reese, doesn’t serve time. Maybe if I put in a word with the sheriff’s office we could have this thing escalated to a federal level. We could live with that.”
“I can’t.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “If we don’t do that, if you run, that only makes you guilty of a crime.”
“I can’t. I’ll run. Can you help me?”
“Erin. Are you out of your mind? Did you hear what I just told you? If I can get to the feds, if you admit everything, they can keep you safe.”
“They’ll want me to testify,” she repeated, her heart thumping.
“Of course.”
“Under oath?”
“Under oath,” he agreed. “Erin, what is this all about? Who are you protecting?”
Silence hung between them.
“Who was it, Mike? Who turned me in?”
He took a long drag on a hand-rolled cigarette, his thick brows drawing down over narrow eyes.
“Word has it that only this morning that no-good boyfriend of yours squealed louder than a pig facing a luau.”
“Steven,” she whispered. And despite everything, the betrayal still hurt. She couldn’t trust anyone, not with the truth, not with who was really the witness.
Smoke curled around them and her nose tickled. She wanted to sneeze but instead she coughed.
“Mike, I can’t give you details. Just trust me. I have to run. I need to disappear.”
“Erin?”
“Mike. Please, can you help me? It’s life or death. Please, just trust me.”
He stood there looking at her for a long time before he nodded. “For how long?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “As long as it takes.”
“Come.” He motioned with one hand. She followed him and together they worked out a plan.
She shuddered. She ached to go home, to where it all began—San Diego. And she knew she might never go home again.
She opened her eyes and for a moment she froze, thoughts of home driven from her mind.
“The children,” she murmured. She would have stayed for them, if it had been necessary. But the children were safe. She’d made sure of that. The principal had corralled many of them before they’d exited the building. The ones who had managed to slip outside were under the watchful eyes of two senior teachers.
She’d miss them, even the troublesome ones. Her life had become one of loss, of regret—it was what she hadn’t expected of a life on the run, or more aptly what she hadn’t thought of until the reality hit.
Focus, she reminded herself as the cab swung onto the congested street that she called home. Overhead, signs advertising