“Good. Muir is a good choice. If you don’t know her, her size helps her come across as very nonthreatening. Natalie will respond to the suggestion more easily.”
They needed to direct Natalie’s path without making her suspicious.
“Brandon and I want to stop Freihof more than anyone,” Andrea said, staring at him. “Trust me, I can still feel the explosives he strapped around my neck. So I hope you can get what you need from Natalie, Ren. And in a lot of ways I hope you’re right and she is working with Freihof.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Because if not, we’re about to ruin an innocent woman’s life.”
* * *
NATALIE HAD BEEN taking the bus from the Santa Barbara oceanfront to downtown since she started house-sitting two weeks ago. She’d always been cautiously aware of anyone around her.
Now she was downright suspicious.
Were some of these people cops? Were they following her? Did they work for that Omega-whatever that Brandon and Andrea mentioned?
Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to her, which she hoped was a good sign. Maybe she had gotten out faster than the cops had expected. She’d grabbed her bug-out bag and left.
That was the point of a bug-out bag, right? So you could bug-out the instant you needed to.
Her bag wasn’t a true survivalist kit, but it had changes of clothes, all her spare cash, some nutrition bars and a bottle-size water filtration system. It even contained a high-end sleeping bag that folded into the size of a bowling ball, but only weighed a pound and a half. She’d balked at the price at the time, but now took comfort in knowing that if she needed to walk or hitchhike out of California, she could. Although her paints would have to go if she did that, which she hated to even consider, hoping to one day get the courage to use them again.
But there was no way she was staying here, even though she was losing her only means of employment. There had to be somewhere she could go where law enforcement wouldn’t find her. She wasn’t a violent criminal. Her picture wasn’t going to show up on some Most Wanted list at the post office.
But she wanted to get as far away from here as possible. She would start heading to the East Coast—Boston or New York or Atlanta—somewhere where she could get lost in the crowd.
Flying was out since that required an ID, but she was hoping to get a jump on her escape by catching the first bus out. Hopefully it would take a day or two before the agents came back—and Natalie had no doubts they’d be back—and discovered she was gone.
Fifteen minutes after she left the beach house she was stepping off the bus in downtown Santa Barbara. The bus station, pretty tiny and nondescript, was another quarter mile down the main drag, far enough away from the tourist section to not be an eyesore.
The station was really just a large room with a series of benches and hard plastic chairs, and a small office where the ticket seller sat behind a glassed-in counter. The room was empty and the man working behind the counter was reading a magazine.
The first thing she needed to decide was where she wanted to go. But honestly, she didn’t care. She would just see what was available.
“Can I help you?” the guy asked without looking up from his magazine as Natalie stepped up to the counter.
The door opened behind him. “Hey, George. Need you out here.”
George turned from Natalie. “What? Who are—”
“The main office is on the line and some bigwig asked for you by name.” The dark-haired woman in her midthirties, wearing the same uniform as George, walked into the small office and squeezed his shoulders, obviously urging him to stand. “Dude, just go. Rick’s got the call on hold in his office. He sent me in here to relieve you.”
George just looked confused. “But who are—”
The woman glanced over at Natalie and rolled her eyes with a look that screamed, Men. Am I right? “George, honey, I don’t know who it is. But I’m thinking promotion, so just go.”
George stood. “Yeah, okay. A promotion would be good. Um, you’re okay here?”
The woman rolled her eyes again before shooing him out. “No need to mansplain it. Lily’s got it handled.” Once George was out the back door, Lily turned back around to Natalie. “Okay! What can I do for you now that we’ve got the dead weight out of the room?” She winked at Natalie again.
Despite the panic crushing down on her, Natalie had to smile at the pocket-size woman who’d handled George so deftly.
“I need a ticket.”
“That I can do. Where’re you headed and when do you want to go there? We’ve got some great sales coming up next week if you want to go north.”
“No, next week won’t work. I know it will cost me more, but I need to go today.”
Lily smiled. “No problem. Where to?”
“What are my options?”
“We have daily buses that go to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. From any of those you can get to just about anywhere. Where are you ultimately trying to get to?”
Natalie shifted back and forth, finding it difficult to look the friendly woman in the eye. “East Coast. Honestly, anywhere. But I was thinking Atlanta or maybe Philadelphia. I just need to get out of here today.”
“I see. Well, do you prefer Atlanta over Philadelphia?”
Atlanta would be less cold and didn’t tend to get snow. “Sure. Atlanta. But just...it’s important that I leave as soon as possible.”
Lily nodded, a little more solemn. “Okay, hon. Let me see what I can find.”
Natalie waited as Lily began typing. After a few moments, a frown marred her forehead and a minute after that she began to grumble.
“Is there a problem?” Natalie finally asked.
“There’s a California drivers’ strike affecting buses from both LA and San Francisco. So neither of those are available for the next few days.”
“Okay. What about Vegas?”
Lily nodded. “I’m checking that now.”
The woman’s fingers flew along the keyboard. Her grimace didn’t reassure Natalie. “Completely full until Saturday. I’m so sorry, honey. What about flights? I know our municipal airport isn’t much, but they have some flights. Or renting a car?”
Natalie could feel the panic clawing up inside her again. Neither of those would work; both required identification that would put her in the system, making note of where she started and where she ended.
To her utter dismay she could feel tears welling up in her eyes. God, she could not lose it in the middle of this tiny busy station. She just needed to get out. She would hitchhike or walk.
“No, that won’t work. Thanks for your help,” she muttered, trying to wipe her eyes before the tears fell.
She was almost to the door when Lily called out. “Hang on there a second, hon, do you have any problems with trains?”
Natalie stopped and turned slowly. “Trains?”
Lily motioned for her to come back to the window and she did. “Look, you can’t mention this to anyone here, and we need to handle it before George gets back from his big promotion or whatever.”
“The bus station sells train tickets?”
She shook her head. “No, but we have access to information and ticketing about flights and trains in case of emergencies. Normally I wouldn’t even mention it, but since you need to leave today and can’t get out on a bus...”
“I