Infinite Possibilities Read Free Page A

could be. And right now, I know why I let six years pass before I looked for answers. Not knowing who to trust, or how to find out what I need to know without dying first, is terrifying. But not knowing was a facade of safety that never existed and is simply no longer an option.
    I will find you. Liam’s words play in my head and I know he meant them. He will find me  if I give him the chance. My nails dig into my palms where my fingers are still curled. If I ever see Liam again, it has to be my choice.
    I sit up straight and survey the area outside the car as we exit onto the highway and I think of the note in the JFK airport. Be smart. Don’t link yourself to your past. Stay away from museums this time. Be smart. We are traveling the expected path in a car that I’ve been spotted in by Liam. That is not smart, but calm slides through me as it had after the diner this morning, and I’m back in that ‘zone’ I’d found years before to escape the memories of the fire that had burned away my world. Stop and think, Amy, I tell myself. Stop and think before you act.
    I resist the urge to scream for the first exit, thinking it, too, would be obvious. “Exit here,” I order several miles later, digging cash out of my bag and dragging the handle of my suitcase open. 
    The cab takes the frontage road. “Right or left?” the driver asks.
    My gaze lands on a truck stop and a light bulb goes off in my head. “Get back on the highway,” I order, slipping my hair back under my ball cap.
    “What?” the driver asks, sounding irritated. “You told me to get off.”
    “I got confused,” I say and he stops at the light directly ahead of us and I open my door, tossing him cash.
    My zone does not seem to stop my adrenaline from spiking like gasoline through my veins at the danger of being out in the open, a danger I’m ready to have behind me. Shoving the bag I’m using as a purse onto my shoulder, my singular suitcase in tow, I dart across the road. This will be over in a minute and I will be out of danger. I have a plan that is much better than the one I started with this morning.
    The instant I’m inside the truck stop, I make a beeline to the back door that I can tell leads to the industrial gas pumps for the big rigs. I’m bypassing my Plan A, which had been to buy a cheap car off of Craigslist, one I wouldn’t need an ID to buy, and drive out of the state. Dangerous as it might be, I’m hanging onto my cash, and hitchhiking. It’s dangerous, but so is staying in the city any longer than necessary.
    Stepping outside again, my plan is to find the most un-serial-killer-like person as possible but as I exit, a short, bearded man in jeans and a cowboy shirt grabs the door from me and stops a few steps from me. “You need help, sweetheart?”
    Already this is seeming like a bad idea. “No, I’m good.”
    He squints, thick lines around eyes that spend way too much time moving up and down my body, before he asks, “You need a ride?”
    “She’s with me.”
    I glance up to find a thin, fifty-something red-haired woman kicking up dust with her cowboy boots. She stops beside me. “You ready to head out?”
    The look she gives me is all motherly authority and my heart squeezes with the memories of my own mother. “Yes,” I say, no hesitation in my reply. “I’m ready.”
    She motions me toward a big red rig and I fall into step with her. “I’m Shell, honey. I’d ask what you’re running from but I’ll spare you a lie. I ride with my hubby Frank. You can join us if you like. Where you headed?”
    “Away from here,” I say. “That’s all that counts right now.”
    Sadness seeps into her eyes and quickly is banked, but I see it. I feel it. Oh how I feel it and once again with a stranger, I feel a connection. But then, all I have in my life are strangers. Who else would I connect with?
    “Who do we have here?” A happy looking gray-haired man with a beer belly asks as we approach the shiny red