Chapter 1
It was something McKenzie could not get used to—sitting at a public bus stop in a tourist town without feeling like she might be recognized. Listening to Jamila talk nonstop about the trials of raising teenage boys, McKenzie leaned back against the wooden bench and forced herself to relax.
No one here knows who I am. She repeated that mantra to herself each and every day.
On this mild afternoon in the middle of the week, tourists streamed out of hotels to enjoy the late-September sunshine. Teenagers, just out of school for the day, cruised the strip in their souped-up cars, windows lowered, music blasting. A bright sun kept the cooler air at a perfect temperature. McKenzie tipped her head back, drew a deep breath of salt-laced air, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was looking straight into the eye of a high-powered telephoto lens, aimed down at her from a hotel balcony across the street.
She jerked upright, then peered around hoping to identify something close to her that explained the need for a photo. But there was just a parking lot on one side, a street on the other. Suspicion skewered her as she looked back at the camera. Its owner swiveled, disappearing back into his room.
McKenzie's scalp tingled.
Why would he have taken pictures of the bus stop? To capture the lifestyle of the working class in Myrtle Beach? Or to positively identify her?
"Caroline? Hey, there!" Jamila's face swam into view. "You're looking all peaked, girl. You best not be gettin' that flu. You know your friend Nadia won't cover your shift like you cover hers."
"I know. No, I'm not sick. I'm just…" Scared. And probably paranoid.
But this was how it always started. Men she'd never seen before started taking an interest in her, following her around. It had happened twice before. In Omaha, a young man had been filming her at work, and WITSEC had swept her away the very next day. In Portland, she'd been chased down a dark alley on her way home from work. That same night, WITSEC had moved her clear across the country. McKenzie's stomach cramped. Not again. "Actually, maybe I am sick."
"Don't breathe on me, honey, 'cause I can't afford to be ill." Jamila slid farther down the bench, putting space between them.
Tears pressured McKenzie's eyes. Jamila had been her first and only friend in Myrtle Beach. She'd taken McKenzie under her wing, made her feel welcome. I don't want to start over, Lord. Please, this has to stop.
A bus rolled up with a screech and a cloud of noxious fumes. McKenzie made a quick decision. Standing abruptly, she met her friend's startled gaze with regret. "Jamila, I might not be here tomorrow. Thank you for your friendship."
Jamila gawked at her. "That's not your bus, girl! Where're you goin'?"
If she moved fast enough, maybe she wouldn't be followed. With a grimace and a wave, McKenzie bounded onto the near-empty bus, took a seat by the door, and peered back up at the balcony. Her pulse skipped to see the man standing there again, this time with a cell phone plastered to his ear and his eyes fixed on the bus she'd just boarded.
She dug in her purse for her own cell phone and dialed her case handler.
"Higgins," he answered after three rings.
"Some man just took my picture while I was sitting at the bus stop." McKenzie pitched her voice low, though the nearest person to her sat several rows away.
"You think he recognized you?" Higgins didn't sound too worried.
"I don't know."
"Are you being followed?"
Now he sounded like she had no right to worry, even though she'd been relocated twice already.
McKenzie turned in her seat, peering down the length of the bus and out the back window. Any one of the cars dogging the bus might be following her. "I don't know."
Her handler grunted. "Look, just go home and set your alarm. If it goes off, enter your safe room immediately and call me from there."
WITSEC had installed a tiny room at the back of her closet. Reinforced with steel and padded with Kevlar, it was supposedly unbreachable. While the safe room assured protection from immediate danger, it failed to banish the suspicion that the Centurions had found her yet again, and that wasn't supposed to happen. The trade-off for giving up her old life was the guarantee of not having to live in constant fear, so why was she still afraid?
"Okay." Putting an end to the call, McKenzie looked outside to get her bearings. Her stomach churned with uncertainty.
At the main terminal, she would have to switch busses to get on the bus that went to her neighborhood. Apparently, it was up to her to lose whoever might be tailing her.
* * *
Shifting her head on the pillow, McKenzie checked her bedside clock. It was 2:00 A.M., and no one had attempted to kill her yet.
A good sign. Maybe the man with the camera hadn't been singling her out, like the guy with the cell phone in Omaha or the man in the alley in Portland. Except instinct warned her she was still in danger.
Restless, she rolled out of bed and padded to her kitchen.
As always, she took in the tiny bungalow she called home with contentment. She'd painted a mural on one wall of each room—nothing personal enough to betray her identity. If forced to move again, the landlord would paint over all of them, since the bungalow wasn't really hers. Having graduated from the Savannah School for the Arts, painting murals inspired by her late mother's garden was her dream job. One day, I'll paint them for a living. No more cleaning hotel rooms or inspecting cans on the assembly line or soothing panicked animals.
She heated a mug of water in the microwave. Steeping a bag of chamomile tea in the hot water, she carried the mug into her living room to brood.
In the dark room that surrounded her, not a single object was a memento from her past, except, perhaps, the mural of her mother's favorite camellia bush. The shawl she wrapped around her slim shoulders only resembled the one her mother used to use before they'd gone into witness protection together. Genevieve had died in her sleep later that summer. Since then, McKenzie had been on her own, without a single relic or photo of her mother, her past, or even…
Memories of Miles drenched her mind like snow melting on the first sunny day in spring. The recollection of his toe-curling kisses made her stomach swivel pleasantly.
She would never forget the day she had stumbled on her mother's journals and realized their incriminating information could free her from her father's dominion. Giddy with relief, she had kissed Miles, thinking he was just their gardener—handsome, clever, and only eighteen years old. Half in love with him already, she'd had no idea he was a twenty-six-year-old undercover agent working in the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division.
Falling in love with Miles had changed her life, but not in the way she'd hoped. Yes, her father and many of his associates had gone to jail. But Miles's and her relationship had been nipped in the bud. Communication between them was forbidden. As always, to comfort herself, she replayed their last shared words when he'd stuck his head into the back seat of the U.S. Marshal's vehicle.
"Once I'm sure it's safe, I will find you again. I promise, McKenzie."
She had thought that day would have come by now. Only, it wasn't here yet.
Did she still love Miles, whose youthful features she could scarcely recall? Her heart said yes. But to expect that he would wait all this time was just na?ve. After three long years, he had surely moved on with his life, found someone else to love.
The thought deepened the chasm in her heart.
Resolved to try and sleep again, McKenzie plodded back to the kitchen with her half-empty cup. She had just placed it in the sink when a flicker of movement made her spin toward the moonlit window, where the silhouette of a man leapt onto her lowered shade.
McKenzie startled back, and the man disappeared.
Had she just imagined him?
A scratching at her back door nixed that optimistic hope. Someone was attempting to break in! In the next instant, her home security system started to wail.
Recalling Higgins's advice, McKenzie scuttled to her bedroom. She snatched up her purse and her cell phone, then headed straight for her closet, where she felt inside for the tiny button that triggered the door to her safe room. With a hiss and a glow of ultraviolet light, the door slid open.
She dived into the four-by-six-foot space, hit another button, and sealed herself inside.
The supplies at her feet, the retractable latrine, and the mat all meant she could survive here for up to a week if she had to, but it wouldn't come to that. The alarm would bring the U.S. Marshals to her rescue in half an hour, at most.
Higgins had told her to call him if her alarm went off. Let him worry a bit. Her pounding heart rocked her. He should have taken immediate action to protect her.
Through the ventilation shafts that tunneled under the house, she heard her alarm go abruptly silent. They had to have gotten inside to turn it off. Putting her ear to the steel wall, McKenzie strained to hear anything over her shallow breaths. Muffled voices reached her, sounding like they were being spoken under water.
"She's not here." The deep voice summoned an image of a large man.
"You sure this is the right place?"
The first man said something about following her home.
So, she was followed. She gulped against a dry mouth.
"Look under the bed. She has to be here."
They'll never find me.
"Call that number you got from her friend. Let's see if her cell phone rings."
What?Jamila would never have given her number to a stranger—oh yes, she would, if the man resembled Prince Charming. Hands trembling, McKenzie set her phone to Do Not Disturb.
"You hear anything?"
Sweat filmed her upper lip.
"Nah. She must be staying somewhere else tonight. Girl that pretty has to have a boyfriend."
"So, what do we do? We can't stick around. The alarm's gonna bring the Feds."
"I guess we follow her more closely tomorrow, see where she's going at night. Come on. Don't touch anything on your way out."
As the voices grew fainter, McKenzie sagged against the enclosure, her fear draining away.
Any minute now, the U.S. Marshals—possibly Higgins himself—would be here to whisk her away. Again. She couldn't stand this. They'd had their chance to keep her safe and they'd blown it. How was the Cohort finding her over and over again?
Higgins had blamed the last two incidences on McKenzie, who'd admitted to making phone calls she shouldn't have. But not this time. She hadn't called anyone from Myrtle Beach. So maybe she wasn't the problem. Maybe there was a leak in WITSEC. Or maybe Higgins himself had betrayed her location.
McKenzie swallowed hard. As her father used to say, every man had a price.
Among the supplies in her hiding spot was a change of clothing, flip-flops, two water bottles, trail mix, and some cash she'd been saving up, just in case she had to split. That possibility had been rooting in her mind since the second incident. Now she was grateful for her forethought. She had just enough to get shelter for a night or two.
Hefting the bag that held her supplies and her money, she dropped her phone and purse into it, slipped on the flip-flops, then pushed the button to leave her safe room.
The lights dimmed as the door swept soundlessly open. Headlights strafed the walls of her bedroom as she stepped from her closet. That was either the hit men leaving or the U.S. Marshals coming to see why her alarm had gone off. Either way, she would slip right past them by sneaking out of her window. All she had to do was remove the bar that kept intruders from sliding it open from the outside.
Touching down on damp grass, she took off running as fast as the flip-flops allowed through her backyard and then through her neighbor's, putting her a block away. She followed that street to a thoroughfare lined with cafés and souvenir shops. At the first public trash can she came across, she took her phone from the bag and, gulping down her misgivings, threw it away.
Out of necessity, she would remain Caroline Dillard, since she had the ID to prove it. But one day, she would get to be McKenzie Jones again. God, You have to help me survive. I can't do this on my own.
* * *
"I'd like a room, please."
With a thinning of his lips, the motel clerk took McKenzie's wad of cash, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
She wore pink plaid pajamas and one flip-flop, having lost the other one running across a busy street to avoid being struck by a car. Her face was flushed with exertion. Heaven only knew what the young man was thinking.
His neutral tone gave nothing away as he slid a keycard toward her. "Checkout's at eleven."
"Thank you." With her knees jittering, McKenzie rode the elevator to the third floor. To think she'd actually gone and done it, broken away from WITSEC and struck out on her own.
Locating her room, she let herself in and locked the door. What else could she do but call Miles? She crossed straight to the phone beside the king-sized bed and sat beside it. Miles was the only soul she trusted; the only person who knew her circumstances and could give advice. Trepidation filled her as she pulled the phone closer.
The morning he'd turned her over to the U.S. Marshals, he'd pressed a business card into her palm, whispering in her ear, "Memorize my number, but don't call unless it's life or death."
She'd memorized his number on the spot. Weeks later, she'd bought a prepaid phone card so she could place that life-or-death call if the need arose.
Desperation had tempted her to use it twice already—once in Omaha, the night her mother died, and again in Portland on her twenty-sixth birthday. She'd admitted as much to Higgins who'd grilled her after Centurions had found her in both places.
"But I never even spoke,"she'd insisted. "How would anyone know it was me?"
"It doesn't matter. They're obviously still watching Miles. Do you want to put him in harm's way? Don't call him again."
But Higgins had to be wrong because she'd never called Miles from Myrtle Beach; yet the Cohort had found her here, regardless. So they couldn't be monitoring Miles's calls. Lord, please let that be the case.
Mastering the tremor in her fingers, she tapped out the numbers on her calling card, followed by Miles's phone number, all memorized. Her heart seemed to stop beating as she waited for his phone to ring.
Then it rang and rang.
Just as she was sure her call would go to voice mail, he picked up.
"Ellis. Hello?"
Three years of loneliness, fear, and regret strangled McKenzie's vocal cords. She clutched the receiver with both hands, pushing his name through her tight throat. "Miles."
His mattress creaked. "Don't hang up." He sounded suddenly wide awake. "Please don't hang up this time. You hear me, Angel?"
Angel. That was his special name for her since she used to minister to the homeless men at the shelter where they'd met. How quickly he'd recognized her voice!
"That's it, now tell me what's wrong."
Where to start? "C-Centurions came for me again. This is the third time it's happened."
"What's the program doing about it?"
"Nothing. I ran away. They're not keeping me safe like they're supposed to."
"Where are you now?"
"In a motel room in?—"
"Don't say it. All I need is the room number."
"Um…" It took her a moment to remember. "314."
"Got it. Now, don't go anywhere. I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Wait, h-how will you find me?" Panic made her heart race. "When will you get here?" What if she never heard from him again?
"Soon, Angel. Believe me, I could find you anywhere."
His answer assured her that there was no Mrs. Miles Ellis lying in bed next to him. Thank goodness. Miles was going to rescue her, just like he had three years ago when she'd been faced with an arranged marriage to her father's friend Ashton.
"I'll be here," she promised.
Her only answer was a beep as he ended their call.