Free Shadowed Ground by Vicki Keire Page B

bites and was almost halfway through by the time he got his straw in his cup.
    “Sometimes, the best place to hide is in plain sight.” He imitated her, folding his slice in half and eating just as rapidly. The cottage had been well stocked with food, of course, but it was all shelf-stable, fairly healthy stuff. He’d really missed greasy junk food.
    She pursed her lips around her straw, eyes slightly out of focus and narrowed as she drank. “Hide in plain sight,” she repeated thoughtfully when she was done. She took a breath, held it, let it go. Her index fingers made circles on the condensation clinging to the cheap plastic cup. “Eliot. I’ve been wondering. On the night you, um, found me?” She looked at her finger, at the stream of wet rapidly pooling in a circle at the bottom of her cup. “If that’s what you can call it.” She looked up at him, searching, unsure.
    He leaned back in the metal chair with thin vinyl padding. “Sure. I mean, we’d already met, so I guess ‘found’ works as well as anything.”
    “I was just wondering. Looking back, knowing now what she must have known was out there, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my mother.”
    “Mmm,” he murmured as attentively as possible, a string of hot cheese rippling off onto his hand.
    “When she let me go, she was so upset. I couldn’t believe she let me. I was even upset about it. But then I remembered.” She leaned forward, whispering. “She told me if anything strange happened to go to the nearest public place and call her.” She frowned in concentration. “The most well-lit public place, I think. Is that what she meant? To hide in plain sight?”
    “Probably,” he affirmed, scraping up errant cheese.
    “They’re not strong enough yet,” she murmured thoughtfully, toying with pepperoni. She rearranged them into a line on a rapidly cooling piece of pizza. “When they come at us in plain sight, in a crowd without holding back, then we’ll really be in trouble,” she said decisively. “We’ll know they’re not afraid to show themselves anymore.”
    “That’s what we’re guessing.” He started on his third piece. She looked pensive. She rearranged the pepperoni again, into a smiley face this time. “Eat, Chloe. Please?” She took a single, resigned bite. “Cheer up. You wanted to go shopping.”
    “It’s so open. There’s so much space. I feel…exposed.” She shuddered.
    “All the better to see them coming. Besides,” he cracked a smile. “It’s not exactly hopping, at one o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon.”
    “Ah, yes. I should be in school. James Thatcher, twenty one, flush with cash, I assume you have some identification in there that absolves me from truancy?” Her smile had reached her eyes again. He was relieved.
    “That, and more.” He fished out a driver’s license and a zippered wallet, the kind that didn’t fold. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you this sooner,” he said when he slid the wallet across the table to her. “It was the last thing on my mind, what with the running and the fighting and the almost dying stuff.”
    Her eyes rested on the driver’s license. She didn’t seem to have heard him at all. “Anna Townsend. Nineteen years old. Charleston, South Carolina.” She tilted her head sideways, studying the card. “It could be worse. At least I’ve been to Charleston. We all went, Mom and Dad and me, for some conference of his. Four years ago? Hmm. I could probably handle some very light small talk about the town.”
    He nodded around his straw. “A lot of effort went into these documents. Your parents kept us informed.” He grimaced. “Somewhat. Enough to do some decent forgeries.”
    Her eyes flicked back to him. “Forgeries? Plural? There’s more than one?”
    “I’ve got two complete sets with me. Birth certificates, license, social security card, everything. And cash. We each have a debit card and two major credit cards to go with each identity, but those are just