After he left I opened your door just to do a check. We’ve had to replace some of the locks in the building.” He shrugged. “I didn’t go in, but I wanted to make sure your lock was working, that it couldn’t be easily compromised. Besides, I’m sorry if he was a friend of yours, but I didn’t like the look of him. And a double check is never a bad idea.”
She unclenched her hand and took a step back. “I thought someone had been here.”
“I thought you might.” He smiled. “The old tissue in the door frame trick. Not a bad idea for a single woman. Not that we have much trouble with break-ins but you never know.” He cleared his throat, the sound raspy and raw in the narrow hallway. “Just glad you haven’t needed it.”
“Thanks, Yong. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“No trouble,” Yong said, but his eyes narrowed and he took a step closer. “You’re all right?”
“Fine. Thank you.” She turned the key over in her hand.
“That doesn’t sound fine to me. Remember, like I’ve said, you need anything. I have daughters your age. But you know that. You met one of them.” He hesitated. “You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he said and turned away, jingling keys in his hand.
“Yong.”
“Yeah.” He stopped.
“What did he look like? The man, I mean.” She fumbled with words and struggled to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“A big guy, six feet, maybe more. Hard to tell from my view down here.” He chuckled. “I don’t know. Not bad-looking.” He paused. “Why? You think you might know him?”
“Was he Malay?” she asked.
“Don’t think so. Had an accent, not Aussie or anything. Something else.”
“Thanks.” She hadn’t asked his hair color or his race or... Did it matter? She knew he wasn’t Malay. If he got close enough for her to see him, did she stand a chance? She had to get out of here and fast. But she needed to know. She had to ask at least one of those questions. “What color was his hair?”
“Don’t know. He was wearing one of those knitted caps.”
He jangled his keys, his sneaker-clad feet almost twitching as he answered her. “Look, I don’t think he’ll be back. And I’ll be keeping a closer eye on things.”
Her hand shook as it went to the door frame.
“No worries,” he said over his shoulder as he headed down the hallway and to his own apartment.
“No worries,” she repeated.
She turned the key in the lock with fingers that still shook. She stood in the doorway for a minute, then two. She pushed the door open wider. Her eyes darted back and forth, taking in micro snapshots of the room. Behind her a door slammed, and she jumped.
Hesitantly, she leaned one hand against the door frame as if that would ground her, make everything normal or turn back the clock. But nothing changed. The cot folded down from the wall, the kitchenette was jammed against the opposite wall, the tiny television in the far corner. Through the narrow window that faced the street, she could see the cab waiting.
“This is it,” she murmured. “This is goodbye.” She wiped the back of her hands across both eyes. She took a breath and then another, pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.
She grabbed her bag from the top shelf of the closet, tore clothes from hangers and emptied her drawers. Within a few minutes she was packed.
She never looked back as she closed the door behind her, as if this was just another day, and hurried out the door and into the waiting cab.
“The airport, please,” she said. Her hand knotted around the straps of her knapsack and a small bag that carried her few personal items as she perched on the edge of her seat. She pressed her free hand to her temple as if that would still the headache that was beginning to beat dully and then dropped it to clutch the seat in front of her.
* * *
JOSH SLIPPED OUT the back entrance of the school and tucked the brochure he’d stolen from her classroom into his pocket. He would disappear as silently as he had arrived, leaving the retreating flames and tamped-down chaos to the authorities. He glanced at his watch, which functioned as a GPS as well as registered the time among other things. He hadn’t expected the car bomb. As a precaution, he’d planned to mount a small tracking device on her car that would have followed her anywhere she went.
The victim—collateral damage. It was the only way to think of such things without losing it. He’d seen a number of breakdowns in the field from either mental or emotional stress; he didn’t plan to become one of them.
Collateral damage.
School caretaker. That information hadn’t been too hard to obtain. He’d overheard the hysterical words of a female teacher, confirmed that the car was his target’s and that she’d lent it out, confirmed that Erin Argon was still alive.
Would she flee by land or air? Where? He considered the trajectory of her five-month flight. She’d begun her flight fueled by fear and misguided advice rather than immediate danger. Lucky and wily, her changed name and Canadian passport had kept her hidden until these past few weeks when he had been assigned the case. Still, she was damn lucky, and he knew he had little time to find her before the Anarchists beat him to it.
Luck aside it was amazing what she had accomplished and how easily she had slipped out of sight. So far she had crossed no fewer than ten international borders. Other than the weeks in Singapore, this had been the only place where she had settled. So where would a woman go who had crossed continents and countries, who had thought she was safe and who now had to come up with an alternate plan?
He was under her skin. An inkling of doubt rose at that thought. Doubt that maybe it was the other way around. He shrugged it off. She was an assignment, nothing more. He’d studied her, he knew her. She was tired. She’d go somewhere to regroup, to come up with a plan and another place to hide, because this time she had run, more than likely, without a plan. Where would she go? He touched the brochure in his pocket and wondered if it could be as easy as that.
“It’s a risk,” he muttered and smiled. There wasn’t anything better than a risk; throw in one of his infamous hunches and he was betting that he was bang on right. After all, who else would know that she was fascinated by Malaysia’s bat caves in Gunung Mulu National Park? He was guessing she had kept that information to herself. He certainly wouldn’t have suspected it if she hadn’t left her canvas satchel and run, taking nothing from her classroom but her purse. And if he hadn’t snuck into her classroom before he left he would never have known, either, for he would never have found her brochure on the Mulu Caves and literally stumbled on to where he was now sure she planned to go next.
He jumped in a cab and gave the driver the order for the airport even as his mind churned through the options. She was panicked. Would she take the slow route out of here or just hop a plane? He suspected the latter. If she were smart, and so far she’d proven she was, a few transfers around the country and her trail would become a little grayer, a little more
