Woman On the Run Read Free Page B

yellow waterstains of the walls.
    Julia stopped for a moment at the entrance to the building and looked up and down
Main Street
. The only street, really, in Simpson ,
Idaho
, population 1,475. Almost two thousand souls, actually, if you counted Greater Metropolitan Simpson, which included the inhabitants of the ranches scattered over the wide, empty countryside.
    It had stopped sleeting for the moment, but the bruised-looking clouds over Flattop Ridge heralded a possible flurry later in the evening. She knew the kids would brave the weather to go trick-or-treating, no matter how frigid. They were tough little survivors. They had to be, in such a harsh country.
    Davis was wrong, Julia thought bleakly. I need a passport to be here.
    The wind lifted and she pulled her sweater more tightly around her. For a moment, just a moment, she felt as if the wind were pushing her until she stood poised on the edge of the world. One more step and she’d fall off…
    She remembered a medieval map she’d seen once. The earth was flat and at the outer rims was wilderness, where the mapmaker had penned in “Here be lions”. The end of civilization. It was like that now, the only difference being—“Here be cougars”.
    Santana can never find me , she thought. How can he, when I can’t find myself?
    Simpson was like the old joke: you either wanted to be there or you were lost. It didn’t lead to anywhere, it wasn’t on the way to anywhere. Thirty miles back down the potholed road was a turnoff that led either to Rupert, a buzzing metropolis of 4,000, or to Dead Horse, a smudge on a crossroad as sophisticated as its name.
    A single tiny snowflake drifted by. It melted before it hit the ground, but one quick glance at the sky told her that there was more up there where that came from. And her boiler had chosen now of all times to go temperamental on her.
    A huge lump of homesickness lay heavy and sodden in her chest. Back home, if anything went wrong with her heating system, she would have called the super, Joe, from work and it would have been fixed by the time she got home. Back home, on a cold, dank day like this, she’d have made a point of doing something special. Maybe rent a movie classic, buy herself a new book or arrange to meet a friend for dinner. Dora, say. Dora liked hot spicy meals on cold, sleety days, too. They could go to The Iron Maiden, that funky new Ukrainian restaurant on Charles, or maybe try for some Szechuan…or even order in some Mexican…
    Or she could call Mason Hewitt. They’d track down some standup comic, have dim sum at Lo’s and late night coffee at Latte & More. Lately she’d been thinking seriously about letting Mason seduce her. It had been a long, long time since she’d had sex. Since her parents’ deaths, as a matter of fact. She hadn’t planned it that way but that’s the way it had turned out.
    Mason might be a good person for her to dip her toe back into the waters of sexuality. Though he wasn’t sexy, he was funny and if it went badly, they could always have a good laugh about it.
    A flurry of ice needles hitting the side of her face pulled Julia out of her reverie. She wouldn’t be going anywhere with Dora this evening. She wouldn’t be renting a movie or buying herself a book. She definitely wouldn’t be getting any sex. She probably wouldn’t even have heating at home.
    What am I doing here? Julia thought bleakly, fifty miles from the nearest Estée Lauder outlet, where the only fast food is deer?
    The irony of it was that Dora, Mason and everyone else thought she was in Florida. Davis had had her call the office on an untraceable phone line and ask for unpaid compassionate leave to tend a sick grandfather in St. Petersburg. At irregular but frequent intervals, postcards signed by her were mailed from Florida to her office colleagues and to a list of friends Davis had had Julia draw up. Probably Dora and Mason were envying her right now, getting to spend time down in Florida,