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44
Annie
Cole had kept my badge. At some point during the last confused months, he'd given it to me, absently-mindedly from all appearances, but I didn't think he did anything absent-mindedly. The badge was a reminder of what I had to lose, a tangible connection to the life I claimed I wanted to get back to.
I'd brought it with me. I didn't have any other identification, just the photo ID inside the badge case. If word of my disappearance was out, any police I contacted would probably know. If Seattle even knew I was missing and not on whatever extended leave Cole had arranged.
I paced myself, running a couple miles, then walking. Obviously if Cole sent his men after me on ATVs or in Range Rovers or Jeeps, they could move much faster than I could. I didn't think he would. I thought I'd be ten miles away by the time he woke, and approaching the city by the time he sent someone after me.
If I was wrong, I was wrong. I'd face the consequences. Not really much choice, was there?
But I made it to the city. I made it into Vegas and found a substation of Metro and gave them a story about being undercover and traveling with the gang I'd infiltrated. They didn't bother to point out I didn't have jurisdiction here. I didn't talk to anybody high up in chain of command or the outcome might have been different. Instead I talked to officers who patrol and told them a buy had gone bad. I needed to get back to Seattle and find my way back to the gang, with a plausible story of how I got there.
I referenced the deaths of the kids.
I referenced one of the busts made because of my work months ago.
Back before everything went crazy.
Three of them loaned me bus fare, which I would find a way to repay. I got a ticket for a bus going through in half an hour and drank acidic and scorched coffee until the bus rumbled out.
I didn't have a phone with which to research anything online. I didn't want to use the pay-for-time computers in the bus station, leaving a trail of my research into Cole. Or any trail of my research into my own disappearance if there was anything to be researched.
I didn't want to leave a trail into my research on anything.
I didn't have a book. I finally bought a copy of a domestic thriller from a Walmart down the street and tried to read it before the bus boarded. I might as well have held it upside down.
I wouldn't contact my parents or Mark until I was in Washington. I'd give Mark warning this time that I was coming home.
By the time the bus lumbered out of the station I was considering whether or not to come clean, at least to my family about the drugs. Mark already knew, and I thought that having a support system now that I was on my own, that couldn't hurt.
By Northern Nevada I was considering my father's acceptance and sorrow.
By the Oregon border I was considering trying to start up a normal life with Mark again.
By Portland, I was trading buses with Cole's warning in my ear that if I ran, I was on my own. He wouldn't bring me back.
I didn't believe it. But I didn't want to test it.
By dawn the next day, I was in Vegas again.
No one met me at the bus station. I didn't have a phone or a number to call. I was cold and tired and wanted a bath and a bed.
The rain had stopped. I wondered if I could find my own footprints out on the desert trails.
Ten miles from the city, the city itself looks like a mirage.
Fifteen miles from the city I was no longer running segments but walking. I had water and new protein bars and not much hope. My footprints had, of course, washed away in the rain. Even if I'd been able to find the exact place I entered the city.
At what I assumed was twenty miles away I was scared. I'd be out overnight if I didn't find the compound. Or if I found it and it didn't open to me. I didn't have the time or energy to get back to the city today.
At twenty miles and some change, the helicopter dipped low enough for me to see St. Martin Pharma emblazoned on the side.
I sat down in the cold December mud and cried.
