And Now She's Gone(85)

Maybe tell them about the breakup with Hank?

Yeah, they’d get that, and they’d understand the need to find another cantina.

Gray kicked away the tangled bed linens and stood on new legs like a wobbly doe. Her mouth tasted funky and metallic, like old blood, and sound danced in her head like Ginger Rogers wearing tap shoes turned up to MAX VOL. She plopped back on the bed and whispered, “Gimme a second, will ya?” and waited for the dancing to stop.

No booze. No narcotics. Yet she still felt like crap.

Gray whispered, “Okay. Now,” and then stood without wobbling. One small step for woman …

After brushing her teeth and washing her face, she pulled on black slacks and a black shirt, then settled at her home desk.

First, she called Farrah Tarrino at UCLA.

“Is Isabel back yet?” Farrah Tarrino asked.

“No, but I’m hoping you have some news that can help me.”

“Maybe. Did I mention that Isabel applied for a job to work directly with the students?”

“You did.”

“Did I mention that this role required additional background checks and fingerprinting?”

“You did not.”

“Isabel got her prints taken a few days before she left for the Memorial Day weekend.”

“Have the prints returned?”

“A while ago, but they’ve been kicked back to us, and that’s why I’m glad you called. I’m going to send you the results.”

Farrah’s email arrived.

Hello, Ms. Sykes. Here you go. It’s strange but the woman in HR told me that these were the correct results.



Gray clicked the attached PDF of the Live Scan report.

… in response to your record check … As of the date of this letter, the fingerprints submitted by applicant ISABEL LINCOLN identified as those fingerprints belonging to …



Elyse Miller.

She started to type a thanks to Farrah Tarrino, but her phone buzzed again.

An alert from her video doorbell app.

A white guy was standing at her door. He was heroin skinny with dirty-blond hair pulled into a ponytail. His black Metallica T-shirt hung over the waistband of too-big jeans. He looked dead, and Gray could smell him from her bedroom.

She reached beneath her pillow and touched the gun she’d only shot at a range.

She should never have found her way to Sam Jose’s.

She’d been so careful for so long. No mail sent where she lived. No long-lasting relationships. No history. Forsaking vodka and nose rings and her name. Not visiting her parents’ graves. No attachments to anything she couldn’t leave behind in five seconds.

Had Sean been searching for her all this time? Or had it been dumb luck that Hank had recognized her and had called him?

It was time to disappear. To become someone else again.

Her mind bristled with the thought of starting over. Since birth, her life had been one big do-over and she was tired of it. At three days old, Baby Girl Natalie had already been grinding. She’d had new starts with every new family or agency that had taken her in. Back then, the only thing she’d kept that hadn’t been attached to her by muscle and bone had been her first name. Nothing else had stuck.

And now Grayson Sykes thought of disappearing to her house off the Pacific. She’d never told Sean that she owned anything other than that Jeep—that secret, about the house, she’d kept. A part of her had known …

Back then, Sean had told her, had promised her, that he’d never leave her alone.

Nearly a decade later, he was keeping that promise. Until death.

Out in the kitchen, the refrigerator grumbled.

Out in the hallway, the white guy looked at his phone, shook his head, then shuffled away from Gray’s apartment. He knocked on the hipsters’ door across the hall. Conner answered and said, “Took you forever, man.”

Gray’s shoulders slumped with relief. Dude had the wrong address.

She slipped the gun back beneath the pillow.

Shaky.

And sober.





SHE FACED THE DRAGON





46


It was one hundred ten degrees in Las Vegas and the sky was a dirty white. The sidewalks were crammed with lobster-red and burned-toast-skinned visitors wearing baseball caps and sun visors. They clutched margaritas in neon plastic sippy cups, beer cozies, and Big Gulps. Cars were everywhere, and where there were no cars, there were busses and trollies.

The town Gray had escaped five years ago hadn’t changed.

She had thought about canceling her trip to Vegas. She’d come up with excuses to Clarissa on why she had to remain in Los Angeles.

This Lincoln case just blew up in my face.

You will never believe what Nick needs me to do.

But Gray offered no excuses. She couldn’t—not after receiving from the bride-to-be a bouquet of BFF cake pops and a three-hundred-dollar gift card to Target.

And really, the Lincoln case had threatened to boil over, but Isabel hadn’t texted again with a picture of Kenny G. or with demands that Gray hand over the insurance check. And Ian arriving at the coffee shop right then—that coincidence still bothered Gray. And, since Tuesday night, Tea had been hunkered down in her house in Westchester. Gray had called Myracle Hampton as she sat and surveilled Tea, but there had been no answer. No return call, either. So here she was.