Run to Ground(113)
His intake of breath was audible. “I-I-I-I c-c-can’t stand i-it anym-more, Ju.”
“I know. That’s why we’re going with plan…heck, I don’t even know what letter we’re on anymore. Probably triple-Y or something.”
His laugh was just a short huff of sound, but it still made Jules smile.
“I’m calling the mob.”
EXCERPT #2
SUMMARY: After meeting with Mr. Espina, Jules rushes to the park where she meets disappearance expert Dennis Lee—her only hope of getting her siblings away from their abusive stepmother.
She was only five minutes late when she leaned against the stegosaurus, gasping for air. If she’d known that going on the run was going to be so literal, she would’ve started jogging a while ago. More comfortable shoes wouldn’t have hurt, either. Jules scowled down at her pumps. “Practical, my sweaty butt.”
Once she was able to concentrate on something other than sucking in precious oxygen, she scanned the crowd for Dennis. The dinosaurs were scattered through the playground equipment, and the place was packed with the eight-and-under crowd. Once she’d dismissed the too-young-to-forge and the old-enough-to-forge-but-appeared-to-be-female individuals, she was left with two possibilities: a blond thirtysomething leaning against a tree, messing with his cell phone, and a slender, dark-haired man sitting on a bench, holding a baby in his lap.
Picking the more likely of the two, she started to make her way toward the guy with the cell phone, but the other man waved at her with the hand not securing the baby. Startled, she stopped and gave him an “Are you sure?” look, to which he responded with a firm nod. Either Dennis was the one with the baby, or this man was a client she didn’t recognize. He didn’t look familiar, and Jules was fairly sure she would’ve remembered his striking, vaguely Asian features and almost-colorless blue eyes.
“Dennis?” she asked when she got close enough to keep her voice low.
In response, he buckled the baby into a stroller that butted up against the side of the bench. “Ready to walk?”
Unsure of whether the question had been directed at her or the baby, Jules answered, “Sure.” Her feet would’ve preferred some bench time, but the area was crowded with too many would-be eavesdroppers. She mentally told her feet to suck it up and quit whining.
The baby secured, Dennis pushed the stroller briskly along the asphalt path. “Beautiful day.”
The back of Jules’s blouse was soaking wet from perspiration. If her shirt hadn’t been white, she would’ve left her stifling suit jacket in the car, but she figured that flashing her new-identity-maker would be inappropriate—or at least misleading. “Uh…sure.”
They reached the turn where the path began to circle a swampy pond. “So, which Mr. Espina gave you my number—Luis or Mateo?”
“Um…Mateo.” She was happy to let him lead the conversation. Now that she was here, Jules wasn’t sure how to go about asking for illegal goods and services.
The baby tossed a plastic ring onto the path. Without losing a step, Dennis scooped up the discarded toy and tucked it into the diaper bag lodged in the back of the stroller. “How do you know my boss?”
Jules hesitated. Was this a test of her secret-keeping abilities? When Dennis just glanced at her, his expression mild, she mentally shrugged. There was no harm in his knowing. “I am—was—his brother’s accountant.”
His unexpected laugh made her jump. “I bet that was…challenging.”
That, she knew not to answer directly. Instead, she hummed noncommittally. “Can you help me?”
“Depends.”
An approaching jogger smiled into the stroller. “Beautiful baby,” she said as she passed, her voice obnoxiously not at all breathless. Jules scowled, thinking of her one-block, panting sprint from the parking lot to the dinosaurs, before pulling her focus back to the man next to her.
“Depends on what?”
“What it is that you need.”
Glancing around, Jules didn’t see anyone within earshot, but she still leaned toward Dennis and lowered her voice. “New birth certificates and social security numbers for me and my four siblings, and a place to live a long ways away from here.”
His eyebrows shot up as he stared at her. “Five of you?”
She nodded.
“That will be expensive.”
Jules had been afraid of that. “I have some money.” She could say that only thanks to the twenty thousand dollars Mr. Espina had handed to her like it’d been a dime. Every penny of her own had gone to her get-the-kids-away-from-the-witch fund, leaving her with an apartment only slightly bigger than a refrigerator box and minimal groceries. The lawyers had eaten all of her savings, and her clenching gut thought that Mr. Espina’s gift probably wasn’t enough for Dennis’s services. “How much?”