Free Nowhere Safe by Nancy Bush Page A

want to see her anymore. It’s over. And I just don’t want to think about her.”
    “Okay.”
    He expelled a long breath. “She called me today,” he admitted. “I was cleaning out my desk and she called and I just started feeling . . . bad . . . guilty, I guess. It’s not about the job. You were right on that. It’s about Loni and how I don’t want to deal with her anymore, and that makes me feel like a shit.”
    “I know it’s a cliché, but her problems are her problems, not your problems.”
    “I know. It’s just that I’m happy, she’s not, and I don’t know that she will be, ever. So . . . yeah. Not good.”
    “Sounds like survivor’s guilt,” September said.
    “Well, she’s not dead.”
    “You know what I mean. So, you’re staying with the job?”
    “Is that a problem?”
    “Not at all.”
    September snuggled back down against him, aware that her pulse had jumped raggedly but was now settling into a normal rhythm. She could talk big about Jake with Loni, like she understood everything about their years and years of a long relationship, but secretly it worried her a little. “Maybe I can rustle up Auggie to help with the move this weekend,” she murmured, her voice muffled against the skin of his chest.
    He leaned down and looked at her. She glanced up. “What?”
    For an answer he kissed her on the lips. The kiss lingered and when he finally pulled back, he asked, “You won’t back out?”
    “ No.”
    “Cross your heart, hope to die?”
    A shiver slid down her bare back and Jake pulled her in closer. “Just cross my heart,” she said.
    “Any more interest in the Johnson file?”
    “Tomorrow, bucko.”
    “Shucks.”

Chapter Five
    Stefan was hanging up his coat in the back of Mrs. Runderfeld’s—Mrs. Run, to the kids—classroom where he was in the middle of a six-week training cycle when there was a knock on the open doorway. That bitch from the office, Lazenby’s suck-up gopher, stuck her head inside.
    “Mr. Harmak, could you come to the office, please?” she asked.
    The second-graders were still coming in off the playground from the first bell, rushing to their seats, talking and bustling their way to their desks.
    Stefan’s heart seized up. “What for?” he asked.
    “Principal Lazenby wants to see you.” She ducked out and disappeared.
    Mrs. Run had been talking to a kid’s mother, a scatterbrained blonde with implants whose son ran in a pack of snotty little shits, entitled monsters with too much money and no discipline. Now, the teacher turned and lifted her brows to Stefan. So damn self-righteous he wanted to smack her.
    “She probably wants to make sure you’re over that flu,” she said.
    Stefan left the room, wading through the line of kids arrowing into the room. There was little Melissa with her sweet smile and little green dress. She was the best behaved of the girls, kind of forgotten in the back of the room. He tried to help her whenever he could.
    Lazenby’s office was toward the front of the building in a group of rooms behind the visitors counter. His heart was knocking as he entered the administration area and went to her office. When he looked inside, she wasn’t there.
    “Go on in. She’ll be right back,” Maryanne said. Her chair was right behind the counter and she greeted parents and kids by name.
    She was a suck-up gopher, too.
    He seated himself in one of the chairs opposite Lazenby’s desk and anxiously waited for the middle-aged hard-ass bitch to return. Maybe it was like Runderfeld said and they were worried he would send another round of the flu through the school. They didn’t know it was his excuse for being out the day before.
    Lazenby bustled in. She was about five two with big breasts atop a barrel-shaped body, short, gray hair, and a pair of reading glasses perpetually on her nose. She shut the door behind her as she said, “Hi, Stefan. How are you feeling?”
    “Better,” he said.
    She nodded as she took her seat behind her