Promises I Made Read Free Page B

my stuff close in case I had to run, eating something from my stash, dozing off when we were safely in motion. I took everything with me when I had to use the restroom and made a point of finding a new place to sit when I was done. People came and went in the seats next to me. Old people, young people. Men, women, and once a small girl traveling with her mother, clutching a coloring book and a plastic bag full of crayons. I gave each of them a polite smile and turned back to the book in my hands, rereading the same ten pages across eleven hundred miles. Time was my enemy. There were endless amounts of it, hour upon hour when there was nothing to do but think of Logan. I still felt a hitch in my breath at the thought of him, still felt the hollow place throb in mychest when I remembered his arms around me. I noticed his absence constantly, like those people you hear about who lose a limb but still feel it ache when it rains. I tried to focus instead on coming up with a plan to rescue Parker, but my mind drew a blank. I never got past the point where I arrived in LA with no place to sleep and no one to call for help.
    We pulled into Union Station just after one a.m., a little over twenty-four hours after we’d left Seattle. My body was stiff and a little sore as I grabbed my stuff and disembarked the train, and my footsteps echoed across the cavernous rooms as I made my way through the old building. The stained-glass windows were dark overhead, the ceiling rising so high that I almost couldn’t see it beyond the shadows. The station was nearly deserted, but I stayed alert anyway, my gaze skimming over the few people who sat on benches or leaned against the wall. Now was not the time to be sloppy.
    I stepped out into a cool California night. It was mid-May, and the heat of summer hadn’t yet settled into the concrete. I felt a pang of fear when I realized there were no cabs outside the station, no buses, no people. Just a big empty parking lot sporadically lit with streetlamps and a neighborhood that looked like it had seen better days.
    I walked to the sidewalk and headed for the corner, looking around for a hotel. I hadn’t gone a block when I passed a group of men leaning in the shadows of a crumbling brick building. They called softly to me as I passed.
    â€œHey, pretty mama . . .”
    â€œAll alone?”
    â€œOye, muchacha bonita.”
    I was suddenly aware of how alone I was, how vulnerable. No one in the world knew where I was. No one cared. I’d left my cell phone in Bellevue in case Cormac tried to track me with it. I could disappear off the face of the earth and no one would even notice.
    I turned and headed back for the station, remembering a bank of pay phones near the exit. I couldn’t afford to get mugged in some back alley. Who would help Parker then?
    I located the phones and was reading the directions to dial information (who knew you could dial 411 for information? Would it be the kind of information that would find me a cab? A motel?) when I noticed a sticker advertising a taxi service. It was half peeled off, but I could still make out the number. I dug in my pocket for some change and dialed.
    The dispatcher said it would be twenty minutes, so I waited inside the station, watching out the window until fifteen minutes had passed. Then I ventured outside, careful to stay under one of the streetlights near the parking lot. A couple of minutes later a yellow taxi came to a stop at the curb.
    I slid into the backseat, tugging my backpack in after me. The driver was a middle-aged woman, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She held one hand near the cracked window, a swirl of smoke rising from a cigarette in her long fingers.
    â€œWhere we headed, honey?” she asked.
    â€œTorrance.” I said it almost without thinking, but then I realized it was the perfect place. Only fifteen minutesfrom Playa Hermosa, Torrance was clean and suburban, big enough to get lost in but not