Shadow Woman: A Novel Read online

  Instead of working her way out of the city, Lizzy worked her way in. D.C. was a big, crowded city teeming with people: tourists, politicians, everyday residents living their lives. She could blend in if she had to. There was abundant public transportation, especially in the heart of the city, but there was no way she could risk the Metro. There were too many cameras, and too few exits if she was cornered.

  Thank goodness she had some cash. Her paranoia—which had not been paranoia at all, as it turned out—had served her well.

  She strode down the sidewalk as if she knew where she was going. Her mind churned. What the hell good were all her supplies, when she’d left them at home? Damn it, she should have put everything in the backpack and thrown it in her car. Yeah, she’d had to dump her car, but … oh, hell, she was second-guessing herself. Would she have had the opportunity to swing by her car, grab the backpack, and take off again? As things had played out, no. She’d screwed up. She should have taken the backpack into the restaurant with her. A lot of people used backpacks in the city; she wouldn’t have stood out.

  But now those things were as lost to her as if they were locked in a vault somewhere, and she’d wasted the money buying them. She didn’t dare go home. If the bad guys didn’t get her there, the police would. She was a car thief, and, oh, yeah, she’d also committed assault while stealing the guy’s car, so she was pretty sure that had moved her into a whole different category of criminal. She wasn’t just a thief, she was a dangerous thief. Yeah, home was pretty much out of the question.

  Which begged the question: were they the bad guys, or was she? If she couldn’t remember, how was she to know? She might have done something really horrible in the past. After all, she seemed to be pretty good at evasive driving, and she was drawn to hunting knives and guns and pepper spray. Why?

  She waited for the question to trigger a headache, but nothing happened.

  No, she had to be logical about this. They had obviously known exactly how to find her. If she was such a bad guy, why wouldn’t they have done something before now?

  Instead they’d waited, and watched. Nothing had happened until she’d started remembering. Despite her best efforts to act normal, she’d done things out of the ordinary, such as ditching the people following her, destroying her cell phone and not turning on the replacement, and oh yeah, let’s not forget the surprise trip into Virginia. To anyone on the alert for such clues, she’d practically taken out a billboard.

  Hindsight was so crystal clear, which did her a hell of a lot of good. She should have done nothing for several days, maybe even a week or so. Crap.

  Moaning about it didn’t do her a damn bit of good. She needed to figure out what she should do now, under the circumstances as they were rather than what she wished they were.

  Her first instinct was to run, to get as far away from the area as possible, but wouldn’t they be expecting that? Good guys or bad guys, they would be expecting her to run.

  She needed time to think, time to get her bearings and come up with a plan.

  The woman she’d become, the boring, predictable woman whose face she didn’t recognize as her own, would be in a panic now. But the woman she’d been before, the woman who was trying to come through, that woman wouldn’t panic. She knew the value of control, calm … a plan.

  She felt as if she were divided into two people: Lizette who never did anything, and … who? Who was she, really?

  Lizzy.

  The name sounded in her mind like an echo from far away, so faint she could barely hear it. Instantly pain shot through her head, but it faded almost before she could begin focusing on something else.

  Did this mean … hell, she had no idea what this could mean. She remembered her parents sometimes calling her Lizzy, so that wasn’t exactly a missing memory. In college she’d been Liz, but … somewhere along the way she’d morphed into Lizzy, so had she somewhere along the way morphed back into Lizette? Why couldn’t she remember exactly when?

  Because it had been something gradual, something that had just happened, rather than an event. “Lizzy” felt right, though. “Lizette” now felt like a shoe that pinched. Too bad the two were still at war; she knew she needed to do something, but what?

  Follow your instincts. They’ve gotten you this far.

  She was a target; she knew that. She didn’t know who was after her, or why, but she knew she had to find a way to hide. There would be no going home, no calls to friends, no retrieving her car. She’d never go to work again, never walk or jog around that familiar block. Whoever was after her knew what she looked like, but at the moment they didn’t know where she was. How long before that changed?

  On instinct, she swerved into the next drugstore she passed. She smiled at the cashier near the front door, grabbed a basket, and started shopping. Hair dye? No. Her hair was brown, a common color. Hair that was obviously dyed would stand out, and they might be on the lookout for that, they might expect her to go blond or red. Instead she bought hairpins, so she could pin her hair up. That would disguise the length and style, and was preferable to a bad haircut accomplished with a pair of scissors in front of a hotel room mirror.

  Scissors might come in handy, though. She selected a good, sturdy pair and put them in the basket. Scissors weren’t as good as the knife she’d left behind, but were better than nothing. The drugstore didn’t stock hunting knives or pepper spray, damn it.

  She also got a hat with a wide brim, which would come in handy not only in hiding her face, but in protecting her from the heat of the summer sun. She bought an oversized tee shirt, cheap tennis shoes, and socks. The store didn’t stock any pants, but thank goodness she’d worn pants to work that morning instead of a skirt. They would suffice until she could do more shopping. She also tossed a cheap, oversized purse into her basket, along with some travel-sized toiletries and a pair of too-big sunglasses.

  They—whoever the hell they might be—were looking for a frightened middle-class businesswoman on the run. That meant she had to be someone else.

  She could do that, she thought with an unusual surge of confidence. She could be someone else.

  She’d done it before.

  Because he knew where Lizzy was, thanks to the trackers in her wallet and cell phone, Xavier didn’t rush to intercept her. She was okay, for now; she’d be scared and confused, but given the evidence that she was regaining her memory, likely not as much as an ordinary citizen would be. She’d given Felice’s men the slip, and been smart enough to abandon her car, so now they had no way of tracking her. She hadn’t been hurt, and she’d acted decisively. Giving her time to settle down some seemed like a good idea. He’d never hear the end of it if she managed to take him down, too—and she had, in the past; not often, but he knew better than to let his guard down around her.

  He had to dump his truck and secure other transportation, and that took time. J.P.’s car was out, because Felice’s people would pick him up again when he went back to the condo. He might get away with leaving from J.P.’s garage instead of his regular unit, but why take the chance when he could get to the motorcycle in the same length of time? On the motorcycle, he could go faster and get into tighter places, be completely anonymous, and the helmet would prevent any facial recognition program from nailing him.

  If he knew Felice, the failure of her assassination teams—both of them—would make her double down in her efforts. Whether or not Al had been in on it was debatable; probably not, or outside teams wouldn’t have been used, but with Al it was always best not to assume you knew what he’d do in any given situation. Briefly he thought about calling Al, but in the end decided the call would be a waste of time. Even if Al wasn’t in on the attempts, by now he’d know about them, and what he did from here on out was his call. Whether he was teaming with Felice or not, what he’d say to Xavier would be the same thing in both instances, therefore nothing was to be gained. In any case, Xavier would rather let them worry about the complete lack of contact from him. Felice would be scurr