Nowhere Safe by Nancy Bush Page A

made Stefan write the sign, draped it around his neck, then had left him in front of his place of work for maximum humiliation.

Chapter Four
    Leaves skittered beneath the tires of Mr. Blue’s truck and blew into the deep ditches on either side of Highway 26. The tires spun at an even fifty miles per hour—well, as even as she could make it given the truck was a bucket of bolts with a small dent in the driver’s side door and a rusted area along the top of the back tailgate. It had once been white beneath the layers of road grime, but now it was closer to dirty gray.
    But she was lucky to have its use.
    Lucky. Like her name.
    She hit a pothole and bounced upward, slowing down to forty-five. She was anxious to get back. Anxious to put distance between herself and the scene of the crime. It had taken her most of the day to work her way from Twin Oaks to the mall where she’d left the truck, mainly because she’d been careful not to be seen by anyone and had spent more time whiling the hours away than actually walking or catching the west-side train during rush hour, when she’d be least remembered. Lying low was her best defense as she knew the police would be asking about anyone seen in the general vicinity of where Stefan Harmak had been left. She’d taken him to the school in the dead of night and then had driven his van to a residential area with a lot of cars parked along the streets, easing the van into a spot. It might not be found for days, if all went well. She turned off the overhead light before locking the van and slipping into the dark, moving like a wraith through the silent streets to a deserted commercial office building that she’d scoped out days earlier at the far end of the residential district. There, she went around the back side, dropped her backpack on the ground beside her, and simply slid down the wall and sat, her back against the side of the building until just before rush hour. Then, she hoisted the backpack over one arm and walked toward a street that was lined with fast food restaurants, a Red Roof Inn, and a couple of gas stations. She dropped the keys into a trash can filled with leftover food and cardboard boxes from a Burger King, then switched out her baseball cap for a straight, black, chin-length wig with bangs. Next she stuck several pieces of gum in her mouth, enough to keep her chewing like a cow, partly because she wanted to be remembered for the chewing, if anyone saw her, and less for her appearance, partly because she was hungry. And then she headed toward the main intersection. Thank you, Christopher Ballonni , she’d thought, remembering the mailman with the penchant for gum. Part of his shtick, but it worked for her in other ways.
    At the intersection, she’d hit the WALK button. Across the highway was a Park and Ride for the bus and she could see commuters unlocking their cars, coming from the bus stop. She’d figured if the police got that far, the commuters would only remember the wig and the gum. She’d climbed onto the bus and then let it take her all the way into Portland, where she’d gotten off and hit a busy Starbucks, lined with customers. In the restroom, she removed the black wig and brushed her natural light brown hair down straight, tossing the gum in the trash. She put on a pair of slim-lensed glasses with no prescription, then left the restroom holding Stefan Harmak’s cell phone, which she pretended to be rapidly texting into as she walked out of the coffee shop. She had her own fake cell phone, one she’d appropriated earlier in the year from a loud, rude asshole who’d been in a huge shouting match over politics at a different Starbucks in a different city. She’d taken it because he’d pissed her off and everyone else in the place, too. Later, she found the phone was useful as a prop.
    But Stefan’s phone was hot, so she’d carefully wiped it down and as she walked into Portland, tossed it into another trash can, before heading to another bus