Free Shadow Woman: A Novel by Linda Howard Page A

the closest one to her house. She’d gone directly there, hadn’t made any unscheduled stops—in other words, she was acting exactly the way she should.
    The big question was: would she do anything differently whether she’d remembered or not? If she’d remembered anything at all, wouldn’t she logically try to carry on as normal while she figured things out and made arrangements? From a distance, there was no way to tell.
    Despite taking quick looks at the laptop to make certain she wasn’t on the move again, he drove hard and fast; he cut through parking lots, raced through yellow lights, and in general made it impossible for anyone to follow him without being spotted. His six stayed clear, though. In another few hours hemight have eyes on him, depending on what Lizzy did, but not yet. He knew he didn’t have a tracer on the truck because he made damn sure it was clean, and it was an older model that didn’t have navigation or any of the other Big Brother shit that made it possible for anyone to know where he was, how long he’d been there, or how fast he’d been driving. His gas mileage sucked, but his doors were reinforced to stop anything short of armor-piercing rounds, he had enough power in the big eight-cylinder to outrun most street cars, a large-capacity gas tank, and with the big push bars on front he could bull his way through most attempts to block him. So far he hadn’t needed the truck’s extra capabilities, but he always planned for the possibility.
    He was sweating the time factor. If she went into the store, got what she wanted, and checked out without taking the time to browse, he’d miss her. She might go straight back home, in which case this chance was blown. He wanted to see her for himself; he’d stayed away from her for years, not even driving past her house, but that was when the status quo was holding. If things were changing, he needed to know. He was taking a big risk, but because it was such a risk it wasn’t a move Forge would anticipate that he’d make.
    Sometimes the smartest thing to do was the one that made the least amount of sense—especially when others expected him to hold the line.
    Getting around the D.C. area was an exercise in patience at the best of times, but thank God it wasn’t rush hour; he wheeled into the Walgreens parking lot in record time. If he hadn’t had the tracer, allowing him to move at almost the same time she had, he wouldn’t have made it.
    Rapidly he scanned the parked cars; he knew her make and model, the color, even the license plate number. There were several empty parking slots right against the building, close to the door, but none of the cars were hers. Then he spotted theunremarkable silver car, which she’d parked toward the back of the lot and pulled forward through a double space so she was facing out.
    His heart gave one hard thump. He himself always parked that way. Everyone he knew in the trade parked that way, because a split second could save their lives. Park so you’re ready to go, without having to back out, turn, change directions—all little things that caused delays and could make the difference between getting out alive, or not.
    And now Lizzy had parked like that, even though there were empty parking slots closer to the building. Maybe those slots had been full when she’d arrived, but that didn’t explain the way she’d parked now. Maybe he was reading too much into it; people did park that way, sometimes on a whim, or because they sucked at reversing. Maybe she was pulling into the parking slot and the person parked in front of her had just been leaving, so she’d simply pulled forward. He shouldn’t read too much into it. Neither should he ignore it.
    He circled around, backed into an empty slot in the very last row, and got out of the truck. Before leaving the condo he’d thrown a denim work shirt on over his tee shirt, leaving it unbuttoned so he had easy access to his weapons. A discerning eye might catch