Free The Serial Killer's Wife by Blake Crouch, Robert Swartwood Page B

He knocked twice, entered, closed the door behind him.  
    Thirty seconds passed—she counted them down in her head, imagining them as bright red digits—and then the door opened again and two men appeared, both white. They gave her a once over before the man standing guard outside the office motioned them to follow him down the steps.  
    The door remained open. Through it was the office, and at the desk sat Donovan Riley.  
    When Elizabeth stepped into the room, she shut the door behind her. Then she just stood there, staring back at the man who had helped her escape her past life with the promise that she would never return to it.  
    “So,” Van said, his elbows on the desktop, his hands folded in front of him, “just what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?”

 
     
     
     
     
     
    PART II:
    THE WIDOWER MAKER

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 21

    W ITHIN MINUTES OF abandoning her old life—Foreman and Sheila now miles behind her—Elizabeth knew she had made a terrible mistake. Just what was she thinking? Running away from her troubles, from her husband’s sudden bad name, yes that was all true, but how was she going to do it? There had been a plan, but a weak plan, and it had mostly come off way too spontaneous, Elizabeth deciding that it was now or never and her friends had gone along with it, given her the help she needed, and now here she was, her baby asleep in the backseat, the rising sun shining down on his head, and what were her friends going to say when she had no choice but to return?  
    But she couldn’t do that—she just couldn’t—and so she kept driving west, across the state, glancing in her rearview mirror every minute certain that a state trooper would appear, the cruiser’s lights flashing. By now someone would know she was gone—the police, the FBI, the media—and word would spread quickly, and an APB would be put out for her like she was a fugitive, a criminal, which she guessed she now was because she was on the run.  
    Then again, what if nobody noticed or even cared?  
    The first week was the hardest. She had no direction in mind, no destination. She stayed at the cheapest motels she could find, the ones with the not-so-clean sheets, and she would hold her baby and cry and tell herself that he was not like his father, that the evil inside her husband had not been brought into their child and so she did not have to kill him.  
    After that first week she realized her money was running out faster than she thought it would. She needed to find a job, something that would pay under the table and not ask any questions. She needed to stop staying at these cheap motels whose management never cleaned the bathrooms and allowed mildew to form on everything.  
    Just outside of Pittsburgh she found a rooming house run by an old Jewish woman. The rent was, unbelievably, eighty dollars a week. The woman, Mrs. Mesika, wasn’t going to take her in at first—it was clear she smelled trouble—but Elizabeth convinced her that she was on the run from her abusive husband and just needed time to get back on her feet. He was a cop, she explained, which was why she couldn’t call the police on him, because he had cop friends everywhere.  
    In the end Mrs. Mesika took pity on her. She even agreed to watch the baby while Elizabeth looked for a job. She found one in two days, working at a truck stop diner along the Interstate, the owner willing to pay her under the table by hardly paying her anything at all. Most of her money came from tips, and she smiled more than she had ever smiled in her life, trying to be friendly with the patrons no matter how rude or perverted or slimy some of them might be.  
    Two months passed and Elizabeth knew she had to move on. Despite working nearly every day she was making no money. The tips were okay, just keeping her afloat, but still she hadn’t even left the same state she had decided to escape, and she was certain—very certain—that at some