Shadow Woman A Novel Page 0,70

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