Present Danger Read Free Page B

wasn’t uncommon for classes to be dropped in the first week, so there was still a very good possibility that Aunie could get the ones she desired. Sitting in her hotel room, she finished selecting her alternate choices and filled in the registration form to be returned to the school tomorrow.
    Then she didn’t know what to do with herself. Her dinner was delivered and she ate it while watching the news on the television. Setting her tray out in thecorridor, she wandered around the room, rechecking all its features. She scanned the pay movies listed inside the armoire that housed the television set. Nothing appealed to her. She picked up a paperback, tried to read, then threw it down on the nightstand next to the bed.
    Crossing slowly to the window, she pulled back the curtain. It was dark now and her room boasted a panoramic view. Lights formed a cityscape that stretched out before her, and she watched the lighted windows of a ferry in Elliott Bay as it glided slowly toward town. She shivered in the cold emanating off the plate glass and dropped the curtain.
    Picking up the evening paper, she read an article about a man who’d been arrested for making obscene phone calls to approximately a hundred women. The article also reported that in an unrelated case, the telephone company and the police were working together to track down a different caller responsible for placing an alarmingly high number of harrassing phone calls to female students at a local college. Aunie tossed the paper aside. She didn’t need to hear about other people’s troubles; she had enough of her own.
    In her wanderings around the hotel room, she had avoided looking into any of the mirrors, but finally, she crossed over to one. Bracing her hands on the small built-in vanity, she slowly lifted her head.
    All her life, she had heard how beautiful she was. Sometimes it had been a blessing; sometimes it had been a curse. However she viewed it, one thing was certain. The woman reflected in the mirror would surely never hear such compliments.
    There had not been sufficient time for most of the swelling to go down. She had walked out of thehospital emergency room two days ago, closed her account at the bank, called a company to crate the few belongings she would eventually want shipped to her, packed as many herself as she could carry with her, and called the airlines for flight information. She hadn’t known exactly where she was going, but she’d felt the need to cover as much ground as possible while Wesley was still in jail. She only hoped he wasn’t paying private detectives to keep an eye on her while he was incarcerated. But, surely not. He hadn’t had time to arrange it.
    Unless, of course, he hadn’t really dismissed the one he’d already had in his employ, as he’d told her he had. She wouldn’t put anything past him.
    Leaving Jordan in charge of her stored belongings and of putting her house and car up for sale, she had caught a red-eye to Chicago. At O’Hare, she’d decided on Seattle as her final destination because it was far away from home and she didn’t know a soul there. Wesley would have no reason to assume that she was heading there. She had slipped into a women’s rest room and tried her best to change her appearance. It hadn’t been an easy task with her face in this condition: the swelling and discoloration made it conspicuous. Desperate to escape detection if she were being watched, she had explained her situation to a large group of businesswomen on their way to a seminar, and one of them had gone to purchase her ticket for her. They had then buried her in their midst, carrying her from the rest room to the gate of departure.
    She didn’t recognize that face in the mirror. The contusions affected its shape, effectively disguising her much-lauded bone structure. There was a stitched tear in her left earlobe where Wesley had ripped outher pierced earring. Both eyes were blackened, but thankfully no longer swollen shut.