Free Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) by Brian Freeman Page B

see anyone. It was dark, after ten o’clock. She headed for downtown, past the city’s old buildings. The Union Gospel Mission. Antique and pawn shops. Liquor stores. A Cantonese restaurant. The brick-lined streets were slick with fresh snow. On the side streets, cars nudged their way up and down the steep hills.
    At Sammy’s Pizza, in the middle of downtown, she turned right. That wasn’t the direction she wanted to go, but she checked to see if anyone turned behind her. No one did. She coasted around the next corner, still watching the mirror, and then she parked and waited with her engine running. Paranoia.
    No one showed up. She was alone.
    Janine retraced her route to 1st Street. She continued several more blocks, then turned downhill to Michigan Street, which was more industrial than the rest of downtown. She pulled into a deserted bank parking lot and took the ramp to the open-air roof, where she parked in a corner.
    She got out. Despite the darkness, big sunglasses covered much of her face. A scarf was wrapped around her chin, and she pulled the fur-lined hood of her winter coat low on her forehead. She didn’t look any different from other Minnesotans bundled against the cold, so no one would recognize her. These days, people stared at her wherever she went. She was that woman from the TV news.
    The woman who shot her husband.
    On the street, Janine limped in the snow. She wore calf-length black boots. Her head was down, and her hands were in her pockets. The spasms in her leg reminded her of the fall she’d taken the previous winter, in which her ankle had broken and the tendons torn. She would never lose the slight limp that dogged her steps.
    She crossed under the skywalk that led to the convention center and checked the street again. When she was convinced that she wasn’t being watched, she crossed to an unmarked black steel door on a four-story brick building. Using a loose key, she opened the heavy door and let herself inside. The interior smelled of paint and dust. There was no elevator, just stairs. She climbed to the uppermost floor and pushed through another door into a carpeted hallway. She took two steps to an unmarked apartment and used another key to open it. She slipped inside and closed the door firmly behind her. The pain in her ankle was excruciating.
    Janine began to breathe again. She went to the kitchen and poured herself a large glass of wine. She took it back to the living room, where the windows faced the lake. Light and snow swept the glass. In three long swallows, she finished the wine. She went to the bathroom and then returned for more. She settled into a white armchair and closed her eyes.
    It had been days since she’d been here. Her getaway. She hadn’t wanted to take the chance when someone might be following her. Part of her knew the smart thing was to stay away forever, but she couldn’t. The need to be here drew her back irresistibly. Especially now. The apartment was small, clean, elegant. It wasn’t big, but she didn’t need size. She simply needed a place that no one knew about. Not Jay. Not anyone. The deed to the condo was in the name of a shell company. The correspondence went to a drop box. Only one other person knew about it, and he had no incentive to admit it to anyone.
    Janine smiled as she relaxed. She hadn’t smiled in days. And then she laughed. And then she cried. Life was a crazy, crazy business. She had no illusions that she could hide from the truth forever.
    She thought about Texas. Hot, backward, wonderful, awful Texas. Twenty years ago, she’d been a teenager living outside Austin, serving drinks at a country bar to save money for college. Her first husband Donny, who was no older than she was, had looked down her blouse and fallen in love. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he was as hard-working and loyal as a puppy. Donny adored her. She felt bad that, for herself, he was mostly a stepping-stone on her way to somewhere else. The things he