She linked her fingers and stretched her arms over her head. “My parents took my brothers and me here on a vacation one year. I was fascinated by that bridge, and when we walked across it and I looked back toward the city and out to Alcatraz, I decided then and there I’d come back.”
“And here you are.”
“The other night when I was out in the bay scrabbling for my life, I almost felt like the bridge was protecting me, looking over me.” She glanced up, a blush flagging her cheeks. “Silly, huh?”
“No.”
“Anyway—” she stood up and brushed off the seat of her jeans “—that’s my sordid story.”
“I knew it took guts to escape from a killer, but it really took guts to run out on your wedding.”
Screwing up her face, she shook her head. “Not really. I was a wimp. I didn’t want to marry Ty even before I found out he’d cheated. I let myself be railroaded by him, my family and what everyone expected of me.”
Sean wedged a knuckle beneath her chin. “You’re too hard on yourself.”
“I just don’t think it’s all that admirable to run out on a wedding that should’ve never taken place to begin with.”
The radio crackled from the car, and Sean dropped his hand and stuffed it in his pocket before he could do anything stupid again. “Keep safe and get that phone. I’m off tomorrow, but you have my personal cell. Give me a call when you get your new number.”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted. “I’ll probably get it today if the phone store is open.”
He waved and ducked into his car.
Sean kept an eye on Elise in his rearview mirror as she watched his car pull away. She looked small and defenseless against the dark force hanging over her head, but he knew better.
She had a lot of courage and pluck packed into that lithe frame, and she wasn’t the kind of woman to back down from a challenge...or a killer.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Elise drove across the Bay Bridge to her school in Oakland. If Ty could see the school where she taught her kindergarteners, he’d kidnap her to take her back to Montana.
She’d confronted Courtney and discovered it was her brother, Oscar, who had called Ty. Once he’d discovered where she lived, Ty had made it a point to contact Oscar, befriend him and enlist him as a spy.
She’d have to give Oscar a piece of her mind when he returned from his trip.
Turning onto the school’s street, she swerved around a trash can that had tumbled from the sidewalk. She slowed down to glare at a couple of older boys hanging out on the street corner. Her kids had to dodge so much just to get to school.
She pulled into the parking lot, dragged her bag from the back and hitched it over her shoulder.
One of the second-grade teachers held the door open for her. “How was your weekend?”
“Not long enough.” Elise slipped past the other teacher and headed down the hallway to her classroom. She had no intention of telling anyone at her school about her terrifying brush with a serial killer.
The students hadn’t filtered in yet. They lined up outside until the bell rang, and the teachers in the lower grades always escorted their pupils into the school.
Elise unlocked the door to her classroom and bumped it open with her hip. She breathed in the smell of crayons, books and stale bread—all hallmarks of a kindergarten classroom.
“Ready for the last week of school?” Lydia Cummings, one of the other kindergarten teachers, poked her head in the room.
“I don’t know.” Elise’s gaze scanned the colorful artwork tacked up on the walls and the fledgling lima bean plants growing in the windows, finally resting on the big, red number four she’d written on the whiteboard to indicate the number of days left in the school year. “I always miss them over the summer until I get the new batch in the fall.”
“Spoken like a true kindergarten teacher.” Lydia gave her a misty smile. “We’re really lucky you came to us this year.”
“I feel exactly the same way.” Elise pulled a new book and a deflated beach ball out of her bag and dropped them on her desk before leaving to collect her students.
She tugged her sweater around her body and held it closed with folded arms as she walked onto the playground shrouded in a gray mist indistinguishable from the blacktop. Kids scurried between the white lines to get in place before the bell rang.
She approached the line for her classroom, which resembled a worm, wriggling this way and that.
Three of her students chanted in unison, “Good morning, Miss Duran.”
“Good morning.” She put on her brightest smile.
A small boy darted from the line and wrapped his arms around her legs in a kindergarten hug.
She patted his back. “Good morning, Eli.”
This is what she’d miss over the summer, this pure, honest affection—no deceit, no subterfuge.
The bell blared over the playground, and the older kids shuffled off to their classes, bumping each other and snickering at private jokes. Elise clapped her hands. “Here we go.”
The line of squiggling children wended its way through the double doors down the hallway to the kindergarten rooms.
The kids sensed their impending freedom in four days. Restlessness bubbled throughout the classroom, and Elise had to raise her voice and rap on her desktop more than once to get her students back on task.
Her gaze wandered to the big clock on the wall several times. The antsy kids were having an effect on her. Finally the bell rang for recess and lunch. Elise escorted her kids to the playground and then headed for the teachers’ lounge to grab some lunch. The kinder teachers rotated lunchtime duty every day, two of them helping the aides and two enjoying the luxury of lunch in the staff room.
Elise popped the lid of a plastic container of Courtney’s leftover pasta and shoved it into the microwave. She turned toward Viola, the other teacher on break. “Are you headed to Alabama right after school ends or later in the summer?”
“Leaving next week.” Viola kicked off her shoes and propped her feet up on the chair across from her. “I’m enjoying the cool weather while I can, although I’m kind of looking forward to getting out of the city.”
“Really?” The microwave beeped and Elise removed her container and carried it to the table next to Viola’s. “You were dreading the thought of heat and humidity and extended family just a few weeks ago.”
Viola wiggled her toes and glanced up from her smartphone. “That’s before we had a killer on the loose.”
Elise’s hand jerked and the steam burned her wrist. She dropped the lid. “Y-you mean that woman found by the bay?”
“She’s not the only
