make myself as small as I can, pressing between the car and the wall. After a minute, I hear doors slam, then silence. I grimace as I pull off my shoes and my bare feet touch icy pavement, toes curling painfully. The scar on my thigh throbs, reminding me that I’ve been hurt worse, and I stay ducked low as I dart toward the stairwell, bolting back up to street level and flagging down a passing cab. The driver stops, no doubt hoping a girl carrying her shoes in February is drunk enough to rip off, and I slide in the back, lying flat on the seats, like I’d done so many times in the past. Except this time I’m not fleeing anything as predictable as the paparazzi.
11
IT’S THE LAST SATURDAY of the month, so I dress in dark jeans and a hoodie for my shift at the Food Bank, then toss a change of clothes in a bag for my trip to the prison. I grab a frozen pasta dinner from my mostly empty freezer, pretending I’ll buy groceries later like a normal person and not a girl who’s in a fake relationship with a guy who secretly follows her, with men who secretly follow him.
I call the elevator and wait impatiently. Now that I have a mission, I’m anxious to get it underway. I start to barge in the second the doors glide open, but I’m brought up short when one of Mr. Pedersen’s “dates” gets off. My septuagenarian neighbor has no shortage of money or expensive company, and today’s visitor is dressed in a miniscule scrap of gold fabric, her hair curled, lips plumped. Unlike me, she dresses to be seen, and like me, everyone’s gaze slides right past her. When we lived in the penthouse, the building had a separate elevator for “special guests,” so the moneyed residents didn’t have to confront the realities of the world. After the FBI raided the place and took everything worth taking—and a lot of things that weren’t—Alex and I had to ride the “special guest” elevator back to the ground floor, shouldering our way through the screaming mob so we could get to a hotel to regroup. Alex cried the whole way down.
Mr. Pedersen’s date doesn’t say anything as she slips past, and I step on for the ride down. I know other tenants have complained about Mr. Pedersen’s visitors because I’ve spent many an afternoon with my ear pressed to the door as management had a “quiet word” with him about his extracurriculars. I could have complained too, but I’m not enough of a hypocrite to judge someone else’s sex life.
I take the elevator to the parking garage, pulling my puffy black jacket tight around me as the freezing air pummels my skin. It’s crisp and dry, promising snow, and I stride past the parking spot assigned to my suite, occupied by a gleaming black Lexus. I rent the spot to the guy in the next unit, who already owns the maximum three parking spaces. Anyone trying to reverse engineer my address by running plates will find just another investment banker anxious to showcase his wealth.
I hurry through the smells of rubber and gasoline, into the tunnel to the garage on the next block, and down to the second level, where I pay for two spaces. This is where I park my Mercedes. After all these years, it feels a bit like overkill to take so many precautions when coming to and from my apartment, but it’s a routine now, and I take comfort in the ritual.
Of course, Chris has seen the car—he nearly crashed into it—but if he ever managed to track it to this location, he still wouldn’t be able to find me. These plates are registered to my mother’s apartment in the art district. It’s been in her family since Holden was first built, and because the deed is in her name, it’s one of the few things they couldn’t take when they came for my father. It’s been sitting dusty and abandoned for years, and if anyone’s staking it out, they’re in for a long, boring wait.
I make the twenty-minute trip to work, the sky managing to be both too gray and too bright. I pull up my hood as I drive and add a pair of sunglasses, flashing my middle finger at a few traffic cameras for old time’s sake. If anything, it’ll help me fit in. At the very least, it makes