Oklahoma City

Catherine unlocked her boss’ desk drawer with the pilfered key and removed the bank envelope stuffed with hundred dollar bills. With the envelope in her purse, she relocked the drawer. The click of the bolt sliding home sounded loud in the empty office, but she didn’t flinch.

Beyond the smudgy windows of the portable building that served as the offices for Beau John’s Auto Dealership and Classic Car Showroom, a cheerful May sun shone down. Moving to the desk she’d occupied for the last year as Carey Thomas, Catherine went through every drawer, removing all remotely personal items. A small pocket-size package of Kleenex tissues was tossed into a paper grocery sack, as were a bottle of aspirin and a nail file.

She didn’t worry about wiping away her finger prints. The police had no record of her and she planned on keeping it that way. Besides, while Carey Thomas might disappear the same day as Beau John’s slush fund, that didn’t necessarily convict her of taking the money.

Catherine smiled, not planning on allowing the issue to arise. If they couldn’t find Carey Thomas, they couldn’t accuse her of a crime.

The last desk drawer closed with a thud that echoed its emptiness.

Getting up, she put her purse under her arm and picked up the grocery bag. She walked to the door without a backward look, turning off the lights and slipping out of the building as if she’d never been there.

It was always a relief, this process, like shedding an old, constricting skin. She was glad to be leaving Carey Thomas beyond, even more glad to be rid of Beau John’s leering eyes and suggestive sexual comments.

Within minutes, she was in her nondescript Toyota, its trunk already packed with every telltale vestige of her year long existence in this town. Driving across the city to the Quail Springs Mall, Catherine parked near the Sears store and went inside. Walking through the warm, bright store, she spent only a few minutes selecting three, complete new outfits, from underwear out, and a duffel bag. Two of the outfits were casual enough for the lake and the third perfect for job hunting.

Paying for her purchases with cash, she was soon back in the Toyota, headed east. Several miles from downtown, she fished Beau John’s desk key out of her purse and threw it out the car window. Continuing along the interstate until she found a motel, Catherine pulled in at the Travel Happy Lodge. Giving the bored desk clerk an Oregon address from a driver’s license she’d never used before, she registered, paying with a virgin credit card, and went immediately to her room.

This was the part of the metamorphosis that always felt the best. Locking the motel room behind her, Catherine stripped naked, stuffing the clothes she took off into a garbage bag she’d brought in with her. A bag from a drugstore supplied the hair coloring product she took into the shower with her. Fifteen minutes later, she emerged from the blistering spray of water with her dripping hair a natural light shade of brown.

Catherine smiled in the bathroom mirror, an ironic twist to her lips. Blondes didn’t have more fun.

In half an hour, she was back on the road, dressed in one of her new purchases, every trace of the old life bundled into three bulging black trash bags in the back. Whipping off the interstate long enough to toss these and the grocery bag into a dumpster, Catherine drove again to the furnished apartment leased in Carey Thomas’ name.

With a baseball cap crammed over her newly-colored hair, she pulled up in front of the apartment complex. Parking under an oak tree, she opened the passenger car door to retrieve a can opener and a can of tuna from the paper bag on the seat. The stench of tuna filled the car, spilling into the spring air. Catherine reached into the back seat, opening the pet carrier and placing the gleaming, oily-topped can of fish inside it.

Having baited the trap, she went to sit on the curb several feet from the car, her back to the oak tree. Around her were the peaceful sounds of a suburban Sunday in spring time. From somewhere on the block, a lawn mower coughed and sprang to life. Catherine sat unmoving as three boys rode past on bicycles, their voices calling to each other in jeering tones.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, a dark gray shadow appeared under a bush across the apartment parking lot. Catherine didn’t move, not even turning her head. Instead, she watched the floating progress of a small yellow butterfly as it danced along the Toyota’s roof.

The gray shadow separated itself from the shadows under the shrub, swaggering across the pavement. The cat’s ragged ear and general moth-eaten appearance gave authority to the attitude in his untamed golden eyes. He’d lived a rough life, always on his own terms.

Coming up to the car, the cat stopped beside the open car door, glaring at her.

Still Catherine didn’t look toward him, her gaze seeming to be transfixed by the sunlight streaming through the oak’s new bright green leaves.

With a sinuous bound, he jumped into the car. Bob loved cars. Even without the tuna, he’d have jumped in, but she needed him secured in the cat carrier, for a while.

Catherine felt the smile playing on her lips. This too was part of the transition ever since she’d found Bob on a different apartment patio in a different town more than two years ago. Then he’d been even more battered, his fierce eyes daring her to touch him even though he was obviously injured. So, she’d simply offered food and water and over time, they’d established this careful, tenuous connection. Regardless of how many lives she slipped in and out of, she couldn’t leave Bob behind. He was her kindred spirit, the only one she’d allow.

Getting up suddenly from the curb, Catherine reached inside the car and shut the pet carrier door, capturing the cat. Without pausing to respond to his sudden, furious yowls, she went around and got into the car.

“Only for a few hours, Bob,” she told him. “Just till we get home.”

A brief fifteen minute drive brought them to a used car lot. Cramming a baseball hat over her hair, Catherine went inside and sold the car.

The rest was simple. A cab to the bus station, with the caged, growling Bob beside her. Another cab to the airport. And then, a flight home.

Goodbye, Carey Thomas. Hello, Catherine Davis.

* * *

“I don’t know why you come here,” Zona Mae sneered, the sunlight from the window beside the hospital bed lighting her harsh, bitter features. “Cain’t do nuthin’ more than come sit in that chair every six months, might as well not have nuthin’ to do with me.”

Unmoving in the cold plastic chair beside the old woman’s bed, Catherine chose not to examine her motivation for this particular pilgrimage. She’d long ago given up on Zona Mae loving her, but she couldn’t quite shake a damnable sense of…responsibility. Eventually, she’d get the better of it. She’d make sure the old woman wasn’t being misused, but nothing more. Beyond that no more ties. Never again would she be trapped into caring for any person so much that her guts got ripped out when she let them down. No more letting affection put her in a no-win situation. That sort of thing brought only dead-end choices.

“Are they taking care of you?” she asked the old woman in the bed, her voice deliberately cool despite the shaky sensation in her gut. Why were childhood feelings the hardest to extinguish? Anger was easier to handle than longing, but even anger was too much to invest in the bitter old hag before her.

“What do you care?” Zona’s gnarled hands convulsed on the blanket covering her knees. “Good for nuthin’. Just like your mother.”

Catherine leaned fractionally back into the plastic chair, willing a blankness to seep throughout her, smoothing over the spiky sharpness in her belly. Saying nothing in response to the old woman’s hostility, she waited, empty inside the way she preferred.

“Yeah, they’re taking care of me,” Zona snorted finally, her shrunken body vibrating with an anger that had always seemed a physical part of her. “Good as any nursing home. Just a place for people who got no decent family.”

Catherine couldn’t help the trace of a smile that curved her lips. “No, I don’t suppose our family is very…decent.”

* * *

Dallas, Eight months later

Catherine sat at her desk in the large clerical offices at Hollister Ford, fighting the cold shiver of fear that ran over her. Maybe she should cut her losses and run. Maybe her luck had just run out.

She wasn’t going to jail, wasn’t surrendering her freedom to loud-mouthed guards with sadistic power issues.

But Ryan Hollister would be going over the books.

“…so my brother, Ryan, will be examining our entire operation, from employee decisions to the financial side of things,” Danny Hollister reiterated, sending a grateful smile to the big man next to him. “Even though his real job as news producer for KVDN keeps him busy, as a favor to me, he’s agreed to be my ‘efficiency expert’. We want Hollister Ford to be the best it can be.”

Clamping down on the fear racing through her, she fought the memories of the uniformed police officers who had hauled her off to juvenile at the tender age of ten when her mother had disappeared. This wasn’t the time to let old horrors take over.

Her hands unmoving on the clean desk blotter, Catherine’s gaze rested on Ryan Hollister’s face. He didn’t look like anyone’s nemesis. His eyes were a cheerful, golden brown in his strong, square face. At nearly six feet tall, he looked like the kind of big, handsome blond guy who’d be doing the sportscast rather than producing the news.

She wasn’t sure how smart he was. There were mixed signals on that issue. On the one hand, producing a news broadcast at a big station in a city the size of Dallas had to take some amount of intelligence. Then again, Ryan had an out-going, smiling kind of personality Catherine didn’t associate with unusual mental acuity.

He smiled a lot and she couldn’t help but be aware that his warm, sherry brown gaze had a tendency to follow her when she crossed the office.