I suck at this stealth shit.
I climb in the front seat of the car, and the first thing I do is check on my baby.
“Zoey, honey,” I say, turning to face my daughter. “How was the hot dog? Do you want to go inside and use the bathroom?”
Zoey has a little ketchup on her chin, and when she nods, I reach between the driver’s and passenger’s seat to wipe at her face with a napkin. So much for keeping a low profile. I’d left her in the car so I could check out the gas station, scope out the bathroom, and make sure there weren’t too many people around. I can’t—won’t—be too careful.
Alice Sparrow. Mother. Unemployed waitress. Soon-to-be total failure as a runaway.
“Yeah, Mommy. And I want to wash my hands. I got all sticky.” Zoey unfastens her seat belt and scoots forward to climb out of her car seat. She’s six, but she’s small enough that she’ll need that booster seat in the car for probably at least another couple years. But this isn’t her booster seat. The nice one with high-tech performance fabric that wipes clean of crumbs and, well, ketchup. The one with roomy side compartments to hold juice cups and toys safely within reach and a nicely padded neck rest for long road trips.
Zoey is sitting in a broken-down, used booster seat. No cupholder, no performance fabrics, and no secret compartments to hold tiny toy parts and shoes. I picked this one up from a thrift store last week. Paid cash—I actually had cash back then. No receipt. No registration or warranty. It’s not one she’ll be using for long, but we needed something for the drive.
I’ll buy her a replacement, a new one, as soon as I can. There’s so much I’ll need to replace, to give her. For now, her real seat is still back in my SUV, parked at the airport’s long-term parking lot. Where, God willing, no one is looking for it. Or us. At least not yet.
“Come on, then, sweetie,” I say, climbing out of the car. “I’ll take you.”
Before I help Zoey out of the car, I pull her baby-blue princess-themed baseball cap over her hair and tuck her braid through the adjustable plastic clip at the back that fits the cap to her head. I thought a lot about every detail of this plan in the months before we executed it. But our hair was something I struggled with. In the movies, women on the run always change their hair color. I finger the ends of my distinctive blond hair just thinking about it.
Maybe it’s vanity. Maybe it’s pure foolishness to think that we should be able to leave, to get away, without fundamentally hiding who we are. But eventually, the decision was made for me. With all the other logistics, I ran out of time to color our hair before we hit the road. So, for now, we both still have our distinctive honey-blond hair. Recognizable, yes, but that was a risk I knew we’d face no matter what. That’s the risk we took by leaving. And yet, here we are. On the road, on the run, and it’s way too late to change now.
I grip Zoey’s hand and lock the car door behind us. We walk back into the gas station, and I avoid the eyes of the smug cashier. I walk straight to the bathroom, yank open the door, and wait inside with her while she goes.
I open my phone and look through my contacts. With a few quick strokes, I change Morris’s name to Mary Morris.
I smirk, thinking back on the man. Who uses one name like a celebrity? Bikers, I suppose. If the big-ass motorcycle, the enormous muscles, and arms loaded with tats didn’t give him away, the logo embroidered on the back of his black leather vest didn’t leave much room for interpretation.
A biker. Go figure.
The good guys never look like heroes, but the villains somehow always do. A lesson almost every woman I know learned the hard way. I run my hands over my upper arms, the skin where he held me still warm from the firm, but gentle, pressure.
That’s the difference between a man like Morris and an asshole like my husband, Jerry Cruz. Morris seems like the type who understands the difference between pressure and pain. If a guy like Cruz ever knew, he doesn’t give a fuck anymore. A man like that chooses to inflict hurt. And is good at it.
“Mommy, there’s not much soap.” Zoey looks up at me for help. She presses the soap dispenser, and it sputters a tiny speck of blue liquid onto the dried soap splatters already coating the sink.
“It’s okay, baby.” I dig in my tiny teal bag for hand sanitizer and squirt a nice dollop onto her hands. “Just rub that really good and then rinse it off with water. We’ll wash up when we get settled.”
I swipe my phone to close the contacts. Just having Mary Morris in my phone makes my heart beat a little faster. Which is straight-up crazy. There is no way Cruz will find us. But just knowing that another man’s number is in my phone… And one with kind eyes and a seductive grin. I shake my head to rid myself of thoughts of anyone but Cruz. There is only room for one man in my universe. And until I know he can never, ever get at my daughter and me again, I need to keep my eyes focused on one goal—escape.
Zoey uses the air dryer to dry her hands while I wad up a fistful of clean toilet paper to pull open the bathroom door.
I lead ZoZo back to the car, my head down, eyes darting around to make sure there are no familiar cars or faces among the few customers now filling their cars at the pumps.
I see a black SUV parked behind my car, and my breath catches in my chest. Without meaning to, I slam to a halt in place, jerking Zoey’s hand in the process.
“Mommy?” she asks, not hurt but startled. “What is it? Is it Daddy Jerry?”
I flutter my eyes closed and fight back a wave of nausea. “You don’t have to call him Daddy anymore, honey. You never need to say his name again, baby. He’s never been your real dad, you know that.”
I see an older woman dressed in bright tennis clothes slowly climb out of the SUV, and I breathe a little easier. Unless Cruz has hired a staff of lady enforcers, my anxiety can relax.
“Come on, honey.” I duck my head and drag my baby back to the car. I settle Zoey in her booster seat, making sure she can reach whatever she might need while I’m driving.
“Your juice is here if you need it, okay?” I point to where I tucked the bottle snugly between the booster seat and the seat cushion. “But try not to sip it while the car is moving, okay?” I remind her, poking her belly and giving her a grin. “Remember…”
“Mommy!” Zoey covers her face with her hands in exasperation. “I was four!” She giggles hysterically as she remembers what I like to call “The Orange Juice Incident.”
I shrug and try to keep the mood light. Even a couple minutes of laughter is a welcome departure from the stress of the morning. “I don’t know, Zo,” I tease, “I think I saw you looking really thirsty back there when we were speeding along the highway. I wouldn’t want your special vacation dress to get a juice bath.”
Zoey gives me that too-mature, too-knowing look she has when she knows I’m pulling her leg, and I climb into the front seat, lock the doors, and pull the paper map from the glove box. I have been so, so careful. For weeks, I’ve been planning how to give Zoey and me enough lead time to get far enough away from Jerry Cruz, so that when he does realize we’re not just gone, but that I’ve left him, he’ll have no fucking clue where to start.
I disabled the “find my phone” function from my smartphone and mapped out routes the old-fashioned way. Using paper maps. I resisted the urge to ever map the route on my phone. The damn thing was in Jerry’s name. Who knows what information he could access once he knew to look?