Shadow Woman A Novel Page 0,86
he remained wary. Good. He’d remember her. When X showed up maybe he’d waste some time searching the aisles for her, because he’d be so sure she was here. He’d be wrong.
But when the hell had he gotten his hands on the phone? The only possible answer was that he, or someone else, had broken into her house while she was asleep and planted the tracker. God, that was a creepy thought, but what else could it be?
That also brought up another question: if someone had been in her house, and this someone wanted her dead, why hadn’t she been killed in her sleep?
Because something had changed—and the only thing she knew of that had changed was herself. By taking the small steps she’d taken, she’d set off a situational alarm. The thought had occurred to her before, but the tracker on the cell phone was proof positive.
Finding the tracker was a relief. Now she knew how he’d been doing it, and she knew for certain what to do. She placed the purse in the cart seat and wheeled toward the grocery section, trying to move fast without looking as if she were in too much of a hurry. She grabbed a bag of orange-slice candy from an end of the aisle display and tossed it into the cart, just to make it look as if she were actually shopping. Paper plates went on top of the candy.
People who shopped at this hour of the morning apparently weren’t in a hurry. Why would they be here at this hour? They worked weird shifts, or wanted to avoid the crowds, or maybe they were just night owls. They meandered down the aisles, stopping with their carts turned to the side, blocking anyone else who wanted to go down the same aisle. And man, what a motley crew they were: druggies, men on their way home from a bar, people who looked as if they never left their houses at all by the light of day. That one looked as if he might live in his car. She shouldn’t judge; she might be next. But, damn—over there was a woman wearing pink camouflage tights two or three sizes too small, teamed with a lime-green tank top and no bra. Lizzy blinked and hurried past, lest she be blinded.
She passed a man with a black eye, a limp, and a cart filled with beef jerky and beer. Dang. With her hat and sunglasses, and her too-big drugstore tee shirt, Lizzy fit right in. She even qualified as one of the better-dressed shoppers.
Come to think of it, she’d love some beef jerky of her own, just to have something to eat that didn’t come out of a vending machine, but she couldn’t take the time to actually go through a checkout line. X would be behind her, and she didn’t know how close he was. He might not be the only one, this time.
Her heart jumped at the idea. Fear could stop her in her tracks if she allowed it, so she shook off the feeling of panic. She had to push forward, one step at a time.
There were a few people in the grocery section of the huge store, but she found an aisle that was momentarily deserted. She popped the battery into her cell phone and switched it on, then swiftly pushed her cart to the next aisle, where a short, plump Hispanic woman intently studied the labels on two different cans of soup. Like Lizzy, the woman had placed her purse, a huge red tote-bag kind of thing, in the cart’s seat that was intended for a toddler’s butt or a loaf of bread—or an unguarded purse. And, hallelujah, that purse was wide open at the top. Lizzy didn’t even slow down as she walked by and dropped the phone into the bowels of the big red bag. Considering the depth and girth of that purse, it might be weeks before the phone was discovered—if it didn’t ring.
She moved on to the frozen foods, plucked Sean’s wallet from her purse, and reached into the cold case for a pizza, leaving the wallet behind as she removed a large pepperoni and tossed it into her cart. Another crumb. Figure that one out, Mister X.
On the next aisle over she parked her shopping cart, with the empty purse, candy and all still in it, and made a beeline toward the exit. As she went past the checkout lanes she whipped off her hat