Disappear. Kay David
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house will be sold. The proceeds will go into a bank account and they’ll be forwarded to you. Everything else—any other accounts they might have held—will be sent to you later.” He crumpled his coffee cup and dropped it to the floorboard of the van. “I’m going to put you on a plane in a bit and you’ll fly away from here. People will meet you at the other end. They’ll take care of you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll get a new life.”
“A new life? I don’t want a new life. I want my old one back.”
“That’s impossible. It’s gone.”
“That easily?” She snapped her fingers, her voice breaking. “You can erase people’s existence just like that? Their history? Their lives? Everything they are? You have that much power?”
He ignored the question. “After this, you’re going to be someone else. My organization doesn’t put people into the Witness Protection Program but they will help you. You’ll get a new home and a new name—”
She laughed, an edge of hysteria accompanying the sound. “Do I get a new family, too? A new mom and dad? How about a baby brother? Can we add a little sister, too?”
He didn’t react at all. He simply stared at her, those bottomless black eyes taking it all in without a flicker.
She blinked and looked away, the finality hitting her again, harder than ever. She thought of a thousand things she wished she’d grabbed from the house. Her mother’s fake pearls. The video of her graduation. Toby’s Pooh bear. Her father’s favorite sweater. None of it valuable but all of it priceless. Then she thought of the photo. When Gabriel O’Rourke had ripped that picture from her hands, he’d taken her history as well. Her past was gone. Her family was gone.
She was gone. The person she’d been twenty-four hours ago no longer existed.
And she had a bad feeling that she didn’t even know the real reason behind the nightmare. “Why?” she said almost to herself. “Why?”
Surprising her, the man in black answered her question, his voice a knife. “Your father was an honorable man, that’s why. He always did the right thing.”
“And Mom?”
He shrugged, the emotion he’d allowed her to see already evaporating, already disappearing. “She loved him.” He paused. “Just like they both loved you. That’s one thing that’s for certain.”
“Nothing’s for certain.” Alexis looked down, into her coffee mug. An oily reflection of her face looked back, more real to her right now than her actual existence. She lifted her eyes. “Not anymore. You’ve taken that away from me.”
“But you have your life,” he answered. “And you will be safe. I’ll see to that.”
She tried to doubt him but she couldn’t. For the first time since they’d met, she knew Gabriel O’Rourke was telling her the truth.
HE TOOK HER to a small private airstrip, three hours away from where they’d been. They didn’t speak the whole trip, both occupied with their own thoughts and regrets. He’d let her ride in the passenger seat after they’d finished their coffee, his fears growing dimmer with each mile he put between the house on the quiet street and them. When they arrived and he’d parked, Gabriel turned to the young woman beside him.
He thought he’d aged, but Alexis Mission now looked like an entirely different person. Part of the change was at his insistence. They’d stopped at a twenty-four-hour drugstore and gotten a bottle of bleach and some harsh makeup. In a service-station bathroom near the interstate, the brunette he’d grabbed inside the Mission home had become a blonde with a slash of red lipstick that didn’t match her skin tone.
The changes to Alexis Mission went beyond just the physical, though. Her eyes were completely empty, her demeanor that of another person. She was someone less sure, he decided. Someone less confident, the darkness of depression already settling into her soul.
A small Cessna taxied out of a rusted hangar to their right and headed to where they were parked. Behind the plane, the tips of the mountains were just beginning to glow in the rising sun’s rays. Gabriel handed Alexis an envelope and she took it woodenly, placing it in her lap.
“There’s some cash in there to get you by until the money is wired. My people at the other end will give you more.” He held out a small white card and she took it, too. “That’s how you can reach me. It’s a drop number.”
She looked at him impassively.
“You call it and leave a message,” he explained. “Then I phone you back. You won’t ever get me directly. The system doesn’t work that way.”
Her eyes went to the piece of paper with the phone number written on it. She stared at it for a moment then she crumpled the note into a ball and opened her fingers. It fell to the floorboards.
“You might need that,” he said softly.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “You’ve done enough already.”
Her stiff reply wasn’t a compliment. Alexis Mission held him accountable for everything that had happened because she had no one else to blame. Similar damnation had been heaped on him before.
But he hadn’t cared then.
He felt the need to say something. “Alexis, your family was… Your mom and dad…”
“Don’t bother,” she said. The swosh of the plane’s rotors drawing close, she opened the van’s door, a wave of frigid air sweeping into the vehicle as she stepped out. She spoke through the window, her fingers gripping the edge so tightly her knuckles went white. “I don’t want to hear whatever you’re trying to say to me. I’ve had enough of your lies to last me forever.”
Her glittering gaze met with his, then she turned and walked away.
CHAPTER THREE
Ten years later, Austin, Texas
ALEX WORTHINGTON dusted off the last table in her workroom and picked up an errant paintbrush that had escaped her notice. Tucking the brush into a nearby drawer, she surveyed the area one more time. When Claiborne Academy’s final bell rang at Thanksgiving break, most of the staff fled as quickly as the students, but not Alex. She liked to return in January to a tidy space and a fresh start.
Fresh starts were her specialty. She’d had quite a few of them.
Claiborne itself represented one of the better ones. Alex had been the school’s resident artist for almost four years, her longest stretch anywhere. A private facility, the exclusive Austin school that blended art and technology was the favorite of parents who had plenty of money and wanted to spend it on their kids. When they’d hired her, she’d warned the administrators she wasn’t a teacher and they’d said they weren’t looking for one. Claiborne was innovative—the facility needed someone who would “guide” the children into developing their own creativeness, not teach them.
Atypical in its schedule as well as its philosophy, the academy shut down completely between Thanksgiving and New Year’s so the students and their families could head across the globe to second homes and exotic vacations. The faculty escaped as best they could and collapsed…working at Claiborne demanded a lot.
Alex was different though. She didn’t mind the hours any more than she minded tidying up her area, especially at this time of year. For obvious reasons, the holiday stretch always left her feeling restless and anxious. She usually planned an out-of-the-way trip herself, but before she could make reservations this year, Ben had called.
They’d married six years ago. After two, they’d divorced but had remained really good friends. Ben had asked her to spend Christmas with him and Libby, his twenty-year-old daughter. Alex couldn’t turn him down. Twenty-five years her senior, Ben was dying from a rare liver disease and he wouldn’t see