Hide and Seek - Lara Adrian Page 0,76

in her throat, Michelle jumped out of bed and slipped on a T-shirt and a pair of yoga pants. When she entered the hallway, she heard the shower running. She flipped the light switch in the hallway. Careful not to make a sound, she looked around and quickly found what she was looking for.

Nick had dumped his backpack underneath the side table. Darting a look back to the closed bathroom door, Michelle crouched down and opened the zipper. She peered inside. One compartment held his laptop. She didn’t pull it out, but instead looked through the rest.

There wasn’t much: a set of keys, a cell phone with a charger, and a power cable for the laptop. She was about to close the bag again, when she felt a bulge. She opened the zipper as wide as she could, but there was nothing to see. However, there was clearly something there. She let her fingers do the searching, until she finally found a hidden zipper.

Glancing back at the bathroom door to assure herself that Nick was still in there, she took a deep breath and unzipped the hidden compartment. Holding her breath, she reached her hand inside.

Her fingers connected with something cold. She ran them along the metal item and felt its outline. Her heart stopped as her hand wrapped around the handle of a weapon. Slowly, carefully, she pulled it out. A handgun. She wasn’t an expert, but she could tell it was a pistol with a magazine.

Her hand shook. The trembling spread to her entire body.

Fuck! What was Nick doing with a gun?

Fear suddenly gripping her, she shoved it back into the compartment and zipped it up again, then closed the backpack and placed it back where she’d found it.

Looking around, she tried to think what to do. Was Nick dangerous? Was he a criminal? Who the hell was he? Her eyes darted around and she looked back into her bedroom. There, over the back of a chair hung Nick’s pants. He hadn’t taken them into the bathroom with him.

She dashed into the bedroom and took the pants off the chair, searching the pockets. She pulled out his wallet. Casting a nervous look over her shoulder, she opened his wallet and examined the contents. Cash. A drivers license. She pulled it out, read it. The name was Nicholas Young, the address was in Washington D.C. It had been issued two years earlier. Hadn’t he said that he’d only just moved to Washington? How could he have a drivers license that was already two years old?

She looked through the remaining compartments of the wallet and felt something rigid. She dug her fingers into it and pulled out the item: a credit card. Her breath caught in her throat. Last night, he’d paid cash, claiming that his credit card had been stolen and he hadn’t received a replacement card yet. Why would he say that, when clearly he had one? Was it an old one that had expired? She looked at the expiration date. No, it was still valid. Then her eyes darted to the left of it, where his name was embossed.

She slapped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. The name didn’t match his drivers license. Marcus Tremont it said there.

Shit!

Shaking now, she shoved the wallet back into his pants pocket and ran into the living room. She pulled her computer from her bag and switched it on. While it booted up, she drummed her fingers on her thighs, continuously darting nervous looks back to the hallway. But the water in the shower kept running.

The moment her computer was on, she unlocked the screen with her password and pulled up a browser. She first searched for Nicholas Young. There were too many hits. The name was too common. Even an actor and a baseball star were among the search result. She would need time to go through them all.

Damn!

She typed in Marcus Tremont instead. There was only one Marcus Tremont. She clicked on the Facebook link. The profile picture was blank and there were no posts in his timeline, none she could see without being his friend anyway.

Who was Nick? And why was he here?

The answer hit her in the face like a closing door. Smith! Her Deep-Throat-like handler had to be behind it. Had he sensed that she was getting desperate to make a run for it? Did he already realize that she was preparing for her escape and wanted to make sure she didn’t get