Free Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) by Lisa Hughey

concern. “You going to be okay?”
    “I’ll be fine,” I said softly. Not about to tell the truth. Even now I was protecting my mother.
    “Let’s go.” Blue herded Mama toward the back door.
    “Love you, Sunny.” Mama’s eyes crinkled with concern and maybe a touch of guilt. And she hesitated, as if maybe she was going to change her mind. It had always been me and Mama. But then Blue tugged on her arm. She gave me one last look. “Use our separation protocol and let me know where you are.”
    “Go.” I shooed them away, even as inside my heart was breaking. “I’ll be fine.”
    I lugged my escape bag to the store room in the back. “Love you too, Mama,” I whispered to the empty store. I inhaled slowly, taking in the familiar smells, the fragrant aroma of lavender, the comforting perfume of vanilla and lemon, and the crisp fresh scent of the ocean.
    As I looked around the place that had been my home for the last nine years, I wondered if I would ever be back.
    Hell yes, I vowed. I refused to let the bastard win.
    I ignored our cute little Bug, and cranked the engine on our getaway car. An ancient blue Volvo, parked in the garage behind the store. We started it once a month and had it serviced once a year in another town. The car was registered to an old lady up in San Francisco. The floppy sun hat I’d tugged on slanted over my face. It wasn’t much of a disguise but it would work to get out of town.
    I turned away from our home and toward Highway One. I’d head down to San Luis Obispo and enact our plan. Part of me, the woman who’d managed to disappear in plain sight and build a life and livelihood with my mother, wanted to confront the man who’d ruined my childhood. But the other part of me was still that scared little girl clutching her Lunette doll and running for her life.
    I knew what part I wanted to triumph.
    In the last few years, I’d let myself relax, convinced after all this time he couldn’t still be looking for us. Even though we stuck to the plan, I’d believed that he’d finally given up.
    He shouldn’t still be looking. It had been thirteen damn years.
    And yet he was.
    Obsession, or something else? As I pressed on the accelerator I wondered why he’d kept searching all this time. And even more importantly, how did he find us? Why now?
    I would need to trace everything, trace him, track our movements and figure out how the hell he found us after all this time hiding in California, laying low. We’d completely submerged our identities, hidden away, hidden our assets, hidden our very existence behind a corporate shell in another state. Besides the legal precautions, I’d hidden myself, denied myself the education I’d always wanted, to keep us safe. So how the hell had he found us?

Eleven
    Zeke slipped his phone into the zippered pocket in the lower back of his compression tank top and jogged down the center of town. Traffic had picked up in the last hour. More people wandered the picturesque sidewalks, meandering in and out of stores, and stopping indiscriminately to peer in shop windows. A lot of couples held hands, and snuggled together against the crisp October morning.
    Up ahead, an older model Ford F150 with a Semper Fidelis sticker in the back window turned down the street toward his hotel and Blue’s bar. Sunshine’s mother was visible in the passenger seat.
    That was a little surprising.
    Zeke continued to jog, picking up his pace as possibilities and patterns filtered through his brain, and his mind searched for a reasonable explanation for why her mother wouldn’t be at the store.
    He realized that Sunshine had never really explained why she’d been upset when he’d burst into the shop. They’d gotten sidetracked by the kiss.
    That amazing, shouldn’t happen again, kiss.
    Zeke followed the truck to the front of the bar where Blue normally parked. He’d noted the cars in the lot when he’d arrived yesterday. Except Blue didn’t park in his regular spot in