The overstuffed backpack landed on the scuffed counter with a thud.
Alyssa Anderson rolled her shoulders and rang the bell. Five minutes later, she was still alone in the motel lobby. Granted, this wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton or even a Holiday Inn. But someone ought to at least be manning the front desk.
“Hello?”
Moments later, a young woman came from the back and stepped up to the counter, looking a little harried. “Sorry to keep you waiting. How can I help you?”
“I need a room for the night.” Maybe more than one night, depending on how long it would take the mechanic to get to her hunk-of-junk car.
“Sure thing.” She made several clicks of the mouse, squinting at the computer screen.
The clock on the wall behind her said almost four thirty. Alyssa shifted her weight to the other foot. Her mother’s graveside service would have ended an hour ago. More than a decade had passed since she’d been killed, and she was finally getting a proper burial, her death, the mourning it deserved.
The service had probably been beautiful, with friends and family members remembering a life well lived but cut short. The words spoken over the casket had likely included the 23rd Psalm and other verses of comfort.
Alyssa wouldn’t know. She hadn’t made it. One more reason for her sisters to judge her.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried. She’d left Atlanta in plenty of time to make the five-hour trip to Pensacola. She’d only gotten as far as LaGrange when the old Tempo had made a sound resembling an explosion and started rattling as if trying to shake off all four fenders.
The clerk straightened and met Alyssa’s gaze. “I’ll put you in room 106. That’ll be $54.88 with tax. How did you want to pay?”
“Debit card.” She hesitated. “On second thought, I’ll pay cash.”
She was probably being overly cautious. Maybe even a bit paranoid. No one had access to her bank account, so there was no way for anyone to follow her trail through her banking transactions.
Regardless, she pulled two twenties, a ten and a five from her wallet and laid them on the counter. If there was anything she’d learned over the past decade, it was how to take care of herself.
After printing a receipt, the clerk slid the room key into its sleeve and wrote 106 on the outside. “Checkout is at eleven.”
“Thank you.” Alyssa folded the receipt then palmed the room key and slipped both into the back pocket of her jeans.
She hoped she wouldn’t have to extend her stay. Even if the mechanic didn’t get her car fixed until late tomorrow, she’d do what she’d done today. After having her car towed, she had spent seven hours riding public transportation, roaming the LaGrange Mall and strolling the park to pass the time until check-in.
She hadn’t bothered to call either of her sisters. One of them would have driven from Pensacola to pick her up as soon as the service was over. But she didn’t want charity from anyone, least of all her uppity sisters.
She dragged the backpack from the counter and slid an arm through one of the straps. The pack was remarkably light considering it held all of her worldly possessions. She heaved a sigh. She was pretty pathetic—twenty-five years of life and all she had to show for it fit into a space the size of a carry-on.
After walking out the door, she turned left and made her way along the front of the building. Her room was six doors down.
Her burner phone rang before she’d even made it halfway. She fished it from her pocket and eyed the 706 area code. Her pulse kicked up speed. Maybe the mechanic already knew what was wrong with her car. Now if she could just get it fixed without having to wipe out her entire savings.
Whatever happened, going back to Atlanta wasn’t an option, not if she hoped to escape the latest mess she’d gotten herself into. And since her mother’s graveside service was over, there was nothing for her in Pensacola. Nothing except a couple of sisters who would probably rather she not return anyway.
She swiped to accept the call and pressed the phone to her ear. She’d guessed right. The call was from Jim’s Garage, where they’d towed her car, and the mechanic had already diagnosed her engine troubles. Not only that, he’d fixed them.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
Was that all? She breathed a sigh of relief. The problem had to have been extremely minor. She would call a cab, try to get her money back from the motel clerk, pick up her car and be gone. The sooner she could get out of LaGrange, the better. Actually, the sooner she could leave Georgia behind, the safer she would feel.
When the cab arrived, she walked out of the lobby fifty-five dollars richer than when she’d gone in. A few minutes later, the driver dropped her off at the garage. Her Tempo was parked out front, next to a Chevy Trailblazer. A Nissan pickup waited along the side of the building.
She stepped into the office area where a man sat at a desk that was covered in papers, a phone pressed to his ear. While she waited for him to finish, she glanced through the door leading into the side of the garage. Another man was leaning forward under the open hood of a Chevy pickup truck.
He straightened, and she wandered in. “Are you the one who repaired the red Tempo?”
He closed the hood and pulled a rag from the pocket of his overalls. “That was me.”
“So what was wrong with it?”
He wiped his hands on the rag. “You threw a piston rod. It’s a good thing it went into the cylinder head instead of out the side of the block or you would have needed a new engine. As it was, it didn’t even damage the crankshaft.”
Her breath released in a rush. Finally, good news. For real this time.
Lately, she’d thought everything was looking up. After years waitressing in greasy spoons where tips were often in the form of coins rather than bills, she’d run into a girl she’d worked with years earlier. Rachel’s recommendation had gotten her a job at La Maison D’Elise. It was one of those places with linen tablecloths, candlelight and live background music. And patrons who thought nothing of adding a forty- or fifty-dollar gratuity to their bill.
She’d even had a new boyfriend, someone with some class—someone who picked her up in a shiny, new Audi A5 convertible and took her places requiring attire other than holey jeans and a tank top.
He’d been a regular patron of La Maison, a successful photographer, with some high-profile modeling clients. She’d been so sure he was too good to be true, she’d turned him down for a solid three weeks before she’d finally agreed to go out with him.
Then, less than twenty-four hours ago, everything had blown up in her face. Now she had no boyfriend, no job and no home.
Alyssa had seen something she wasn’t supposed to have seen and now some bad men wanted her dead. Her ex-boyfriend was one of them.
At least she still had a car and she hadn’t needed to wipe out her savings to get it fixed.
“Thank you. I appreciate you getting the work done so quickly.”
“No problem. Jim said it was a rush job and put two of us on it.”
She thanked him again and stepped back into the office as the man she’d seen earlier was hanging up the phone.
“Are you Jim?”
“I am.”
“Alyssa Anderson, owner of the ´92 Tempo.”
“We’ve got you ready to go. That’ll be two hundred dollars.”
She took the pack from her back and removed ten twenty-dollar bills from her wallet. She had hit the ATM on her way out of town and pulled out five hundred dollars. Now her cash was almost half gone.
In the garage, one bay door and then the other rolled down on their tracks, the metallic rumble drifting into the office. The mechanic she’d spoken with earlier walked through the open door.
“´Night, boss.” He gave Alyssa a salute. “Safe travels.”
“Thanks.”
She picked up her pack from the counter but didn’t bother slipping her arms through the two straps. When she turned her attention back to Jim, he pulled a handwritten invoice from the top of one of the haphazard stacks on his desk. After writing “paid in full” across the bottom, he rose and handed it to her, along with her car key. “I’m right behind you.”
He followed her out and locked the door then disappeared around the side of the building, probably headed to the Nissan she’d noticed earlier. The Trailblazer pulled from the parking lot, the mechanic at the wheel.
Alyssa glanced down at the invoice as she made her way toward her car. The top line of the description said, “Repairs to 1992 Ford Tempo.” The list of what was involved was lengthy.
Far too lengthy for the two hundred dollars she’d been charged.
Her breath caught and her hands started to shake. The garage hadn’t discounted the charges because they’d felt sorry for her. They knew nothing of her situation. No, the amount she owed was so low because someone else had paid the rest of the bill. Making sure the repair was affordable with her meager savings was the way to guarantee she would return. Otherwise, she would have abandoned the car and kept running.
She looked frantically around her at the empty parking lot. Nearby, the Nissan’s engine roared to life. Then a car shot from the business catty-cornered, across the four lanes of traffic, barreling toward the Tempo.
Alyssa spun and retraced her steps at a full run, still clutching the loop on the top of the pack. She needed to reach Jim before he left.
As she rounded the corner of the building, the Nissan pulled onto the side road, headed away from her. Behind her, the car roared closer. Trees lined the property on the other side of the street. If she could make it across before the car hit her, she might have a chance at escape.
She shot into the road…right into the path of an SUV. The driver braked hard, the squeal of tires setting her teeth on edge.
As she glanced over her other shoulder, the car that had pursued her swerved toward the highway. Relief flooded her, but only for a moment. An arm extended through the open passenger window, and sunlight glinted off the barrel of a pistol.
Two shots rang out as she dove and rolled, tossing the pack. A searing pain stabbed through her left shoulder. She came to a stop in the narrow stretch of patchy grass lining the side of the street, the trees she had targeted only six feet away.
She sat up and grasped her shoulder with her other hand. The bullet had grazed her. At least, she hoped that was all it was. The sleeve of her shirt was already wet. When she drew her hand away, her palm was covered with blood. Her wrist hurt, too. So did her knee. She’d probably injured them hitting the pavement.
When she tried to rise, pain shot through her right knee, sending her right back to the asphalt. No, not this on top of everything else. She looked frantically around. The car was gone.
The SUV had stopped—a later model white Land Rover. Its door swung open, and a sneaker-clad foot appeared beneath it. The driver likely wanted to make sure she wasn’t hurt. She would tell him she was all right, thank him for stopping and send him on his way.
Alyssa pushed herself upright, hands splayed against the pavement, her weight on her left leg. After snatching up her pack, she again pressed her hand to her left shoulder. There was more blood than she’d initially thought. She’d deal with it later. Right now, she had more pressing things to concern herself with—like staying alive.
She limped toward the Good Samaritan, trying hard not to wince with each step, all the while casting frequent glances at the highway behind her. Still no sign of the car.
How had she even wound up in this situation? The scene had seemed so harmless: four businessmen sitting around a table discussing famous works of art. But what she’d witnessed had had more significance than she had initially thought. Maybe the art had been stolen. Or maybe the paintings they’d been talking about had been copies or fakes and they’d been marketing them as the real thing. The details didn’t matter.
Because now some dangerous men were determined to keep her quiet.
She had to get out of there.