Shadow Woman: A Novel Read online

  “I’ll be happy to do that for you. Just give me a list.”

  Aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, an ice bag, a throwaway cell phone… The items ticked off in her head. She shut that inner voice off before it triggered another attack.

  “Thanks, but I think the fresh air will make me feel better.” That was a polite enough way of saying “Thanks but no thanks, and bye-bye.”

  But Maggie didn’t take the hint. She went to the sofa and sat down; the dog squirmed to get down, but she held him tighter. Glancing down, she saw the photo album that was open on the floor near the coffee table. “Oh, you’ve been looking at old pictures.”

  “Yes.” Lizette stood at the end of the couch and looked down at her neighbor, who had made herself comfortable and showed no sign of taking the hint and going home. An idea niggled at her; maybe she could ask Maggie if she remembered exactly when Lizette had moved in—was it three years ago, or five?—but that was a strange question to ask anyone. Not only that, what if the house was bugged?

  Maggie gave her a strange look. “Are you all right?”

  “Hmm? As well as I’ve been all day, so far. Why?”

  Maggie made an odd sound in her throat, one of either concern or curiosity; sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the two. “You were humming. Not that humming is strange,” she added hastily, “just that you had the weirdest expression on your face.”

  “Sorry,” Lizette said, though she wondered why she was apologizing for humming. When one of those thunderbolt headaches threatened, switching her thoughts to the song she’d heard yesterday had become so automatic, she’d barely been aware that she’d started to hum. “You know how annoying it is when you hear a song and then can’t get it out of your head? Like that old Oscar Mayer wiener song? That kind of thing.”

  Suddenly she found herself wondering exactly why Maggie was here. Why had she come over, instead of just calling? Before, she’d simply accepted the woman as the stereotypical nosy neighbor, but what if she wasn’t? Lizette covertly studied her visitor. Exactly how old was she? Fifty, maybe? She could be younger than that; the silvery gray hair made her look older, but she wasn’t what anyone would call elderly. Her skin was smooth, a lot smoother than her hair color should indicate. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, and what she did wear was tasteful and almost undetectable, which took skill. And beneath the baggy, nondescript outfit she wore, she was trim. Was she also muscular? In good physical shape? Maybe. She didn’t move as if she had any problems with arthritis or worn-out joints.

  Maggie’s hands were all but hidden in the thick, long hair of the yapper. Lizette studied what she could see, because hands could say a lot about someone’s age. What little she could see seemed to be smooth and spotless.

  And the dog. The ornate collar could be hiding anything—a camera, a voice recorder—

  Lizette grabbed her coffee cup and stepped back. This time she didn’t sing or hum aloud, but she let the song play in her mind, concentrating on the words until they drowned out everything else. Normal, her mind shouted behind the lyrics, be normal.

  “I’m sorry,” she said swiftly. “My manners are terrible. I’ll blame it on the bug; I haven’t been sick in so long I can’t remember the last time. Thank goodness these things don’t last very long.” She headed for the kitchen. “Would you like some coffee? I’m going to make a fresh pot.”

  “That sounds great,” Maggie chirped, killing Lizette’s hopes that instead of accepting she would say she’d just wanted to check that everything was all right, and now she’d get back home.

  Lizette breathed deeply as she stepped into the kitchen. Normal.

  Almost an hour had passed before Maggie finally took herself and the yapper—whose name happened to be Roosevelt, which came close to taking first place for the most incongruous name for a tiny dog she’d ever heard—back to her own house. What kind of woman would have such a lengthy visit with someone who’d had such a recent bout with a nasty bug? A hypochondriac who wanted to really be sick for a change? Someone who was so hungry for companionship she’d run the risk of catching the bug herself? Just a nosy neighbor? Or was she snooping around trying to find out … what?

  Every time Lizette reached that point in her thought loop, a headache would threaten and she’d have to mentally back away.

  While she was getting ready to go out, Diana called to check on her. Lizette dutifully reported that she was feeling better, hadn’t thrown up in several hours, and was about to go pick up some OTC stuff in case things got worse. It was weird, but she felt as if she had to carefully choose every word, that everything she said was being analyzed and weighed—

  Quickly she began humming, and the pain faded. Dang, she was getting good at this. Paranoid, but good.

  What was the saying? Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you. But if you were paranoid, how did you know which enemies were real and which were imaginary? Look how suspicious she’d been of Maggie; would she have been as suspicious if Maggie didn’t insist on taking that rodent-dog with her everywhere she went? Was dislike of the yapper coloring her thoughts about Maggie?

  Well, sure. But that didn’t mean she was wrong.

  Being paranoid was a lot of work; she had no idea what to think.

  But she knew what she knew, and she knew what she didn’t know. She didn’t know when she moved into this house. She didn’t know when she went to work for Becker Investments. She didn’t know anything that had happened during that two-year gap in her life.

  The most alarming fact of all was that she’d spent three years not noticing any of this stuff, not even that she had a different face.

  Until she knew exactly what was going on, wouldn’t the safest thing be to assume that all of her paranoid thoughts were true? If they weren’t, no harm, no foul. But if they were, then she should do her best to protect herself … from whatever.

  She locked up and went to her car, which was parked in the driveway between her house and Maggie’s, very deliberately not looking up at Maggie’s windows in case the other woman was standing there watching. Her car was a silver Camry, with all the bells and whistles available, reliable, unremarkable. A chill went down her back when she realized she didn’t know how long she’d had it, that she had no memory at all of buying it. She didn’t even know what model year it was.

  The insurance card and registration were in the glove compartment. She started to open it up and take the paperwork out, but remembered that Maggie would have a very good view of what she was doing if she did it there, so instead she started the engine and smoothly reversed to the end of her driveway, where she stopped completely and checked in both directions, as she did every time she left, before continuing to back out.

  It was as if caution, routine, and a complete lack of curiosity were as much a part of her as her blue eyes. And it felt wrong—not the blue eyes, those were definitely unchanged, but everything else about this life she was living. She didn’t let herself actively think about it because she didn’t want to bring on one of those killer headaches while she was driving, but deep inside she accepted that everything about her life now was just wrong. The car was wrong, the house was wrong, her job was wrong—she was wrong.

  She didn’t know what she could do about it, but there had to be something, damn it. Maybe she should stop trying to reason everything out, which gave her nothing except a headache—with vomiting thrown in as a bonus—and just go with her instincts.

  She was on the move.

  Thanks to the extra electronics installed in her car, he’d be able to tell exactly where she went. So would Forge’s people, but with luck, they wouldn’t bother putting extra eyes on her. They knew where she was, what she was doing, and why. Besides, right about now Forge had his hands full trying to figure out how Xavier had gotten so much information on Forge’s people, and plugging the hole in his security. That should keep them busy for a while.

  In the meantime, he had things to do.