Page 72 of Gone Tonight
I start to put the burner back in my locker, then change my mind and secure it and the charger in my purse.
The risk of missing a call is far greater than the risk of Catherine discovering my secret phone.
I exit the restaurant, waving goodbye to Melanie and tamping down the flicker of guilt I feel when she cheerfully waves back.
I walk down the sidewalk and stand outside the bus shelter, shifting from foot to foot, my exhaustion erased. I’m acutely aware of the small black flip phone zipped inside the inner pocket of my purse.
If this phone rings and the caller asks for Diane Brown, I’ll know they’re seeking information about me.
Diane Brown doesn’t exist. Her name is a snare I set in a fewplaces. I wrote it down, along with the number for my burner phone, on rental apartments and job applications so I would be alerted if someone was digging into my past and trying to track me down.
Just another misdial,I repeat to myself as I compulsively check my surroundings.
Still, even after I board the bus, I’m too uneasy to sit. I hold on to the silver rail by the rear exit and keep my head on a swivel, searching the faces of everyone on board. A woman across from me is working the crossword puzzle, tapping her pencil eraser against her newspaper while she frowns down at the empty white squares.
The faint, rhythmic noise of the eraser hitting the page sounds like an echo from my past.Tick-tock.
I suck in a raggedy breath as the bus heaves forward. Catherine is safe, I remind myself. She is home—she left Ethan’s around 9 a.m.—and I’ll be with her soon. No one is hunting us.
I am seven stops away from getting off the bus. I’ll walk down the familiar streets, my eyes alert behind my sunglasses. I’ll scan every vehicle in the parking lot and take out my can of Mace before I climb the stairs to the fourth floor.
I will do all of this even though we are perfectly safe. It’s just another precaution.
After I get home and change, I’ll take the Bonneville and drive to the library to do my checking. Catherine and I will stay in tonight and make dinner—something fun like tacos—and we’ll flop on the couch together and watch a show. Our relationship will ease back onto its warm, familiar track.
No one can find us. I’ve hidden our path well for twenty-four years.
I don’t notice that it has begun to rain until I hear the bus’s big, heavy wipers drag across the windshield.
Tick-tock.Tick-tock.
Dread infuses my body. I begin to tremble. Something is terribly wrong. I spin around, looking again at the faces on the bus.
The woman’s pencil is still tapping.Tick-tock,it whispers, matching the rhythm of the wipers.
James is getting close. I know it not just because of these signs. I feel it deep in my core.
My body tenses as I inch toward the exit, my hand scrabbling in my purse for the Mace.
Then I break one of my cardinal rules.
I reach for my phone and google the name James Bates. The results pop up quickly. I click on the first hit, fromThe Baltimore Sunonline newspaper.
It was published right around the time I started my shift this morning.
Then I see it, the news I’ve been dreading for most of my life.
The reckoning I’ve always known is coming.
A photo of James is staring at me below a headline that reads, “Oak Hill High Killer to Be Released Today.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVECATHERINE
I unlock the door to our apartment a little before 9 a.m. and kick off my shoes, then immediately head for the shower. I want to scrub Ethan’s scent off me as quickly as possible.
I twist the knob to turn on the water, and because it always takes a few minutes to heat up, go back into my bedroom to toss my clothes in the hamper. My room is just as I left it yesterday. My cream-colored comforter is smoothed across my bed; the lights are off; and my clothes are hung according to color in the tiny closet, creating the rainbow effect my mother and I replicated after we saw it onThe Home Edit.
I pause, looking around. Something feels off. It’s the strangest thing, but I have the creepy sense someone was in here, running a hand through my clothes, scanning the titles of the books on my shelf, and picking up the picture on my nightstand to study the image of me as a baby with my young mother.
