Page 19 of Runaway
The hours raced by while I typed away on my computer, peeling sticky notes off the wall as I accomplished each task. 2:00. 3:00. 5:00. When darkness fell and a whistling wind began to pick up, the lump in my throat grew. I shut my laptop on an email that confirmed the bank accounts would close in 72 hours. Heat prickled at the back of my eyes as I stood, unable to dismiss the ugly truth.
My old life was gone.
I had no job, no clients, and no hope of getting one in the future.
What few friends—more like acquaintances—that I'd held onto over the years might not even notice that I'd gone off the radar. Not for a while, or until something big happened. Then they'd remember that they'd forgotten me, which was fine.
Frustrated, I let the tears finally fall. I'd held onto them long enough—for at least three weeks, since the day I first figured out that the companies Joshua had me applying for a government program for wasn't real.
Sniffling, I grabbed a sweater and yanked it on.
Stupid Joshua.
Stupid men.
Stupid corporate greed.
Dadgummit, but I needed those pain relievers and those tampons.
A knock came at my door. It was so tentative at first, I almost didn't hear it. But the door groaned open slightly, and that's when I realized it hadn't totally shut, which explained the whistling wind. That my room felt icy cold because I'd forgotten to attend to the fire.
Mark stood outside, a mug in his hand. He'd frozen as if about to take a step back when our eyes met through the thin crack.
“Stella?” he asked. “Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I'm a little early, but I was worried. Are you—”
I reached out and pulled the door open further. Cold wind raced past him, shocking me. He straightened, hot chocolate in hand. His gaze hadn't left my tear-stained cheeks. The fact that I looked like a mess didn't even matter.
“Stella?”
With a wave, I beckoned him inside.
“C'mon.” I folded a jacket more tightly against me. “I have some explaining to do.”
8
Mark
We sat on the floor, our backs braced against the twin bed that Lizbeth had replaced the old metal cot with a few months ago.
The wooden floor was creaky and cold, but the fire I'd prodded back to life was crackling fast now. The heat came with it, filling the small space almost instantly. Stella stared at the flames with the dazed, exhausted expression of someone that had just been through hell. Night had fallen, and with it came a massive drop in temperature. The wind brushed by outside, heralded by rain on her windows. She'd drawn the blinds, but theplunk plunkleft no doubt.
“Three weeks ago,” she said suddenly, breaking apart the quiet, “I went to work just like any other day. Sat at my desk and answered some emails. Joshua, one of my supervisors, brought some paperwork by and said some of our smaller companies needed to file for government assistance.” She waved an airy hand. “Nothing massive, but it seemed odd that there were so many to fill out.”
A dark feeling started in my chest then, and I could already see where this went. I stayed silent, however, and listened while we both stared at the fire. Several inches remained between our shoulders, but the cozy cabin felt intimate all the same.
“Anyway, I decided to look into the companies because some of the paperwork didn't quite line up. Eventually, I discovered that the companies weren't real. They were fake. Joshua wanted me to obtain government assistance for businesses that didn't exist.”
“Money laundering,” I murmured.
Dejected, she nodded. When she took a sip of the hot chocolate, her eyes closed briefly while she savored it. I fought back an exultant shout. It had taken me five tries to make a single mug of “real” hot chocolate off a googled recipe. The previous four had been disgusting. She had another sip before she continued.
“Once I realized that it wasn't some fluke, of course, it wasn't, but I kind of wanted it to be, I wasn't sure what to do. For a few days, I just kept going to work and pretending everything was fine. Joshua checked on me daily but he had always done that. Always been . . .tooattentive.”
My body immediately tensed, but she didn't notice. Just kept speaking, every now and then tucking a piece of hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture.
“Joshua didn't seem overly suspicious of my behavior and didn't ask about the applications much. But there was . . . something there. So I just tried to figure out what to do and how to gain the evidence.
“By the end of the week, I felt like I had all the proof I needed. So I stayed late, cleaned out the important things at my desk, erased everything that could show my deep research off my computer, and met with a woman named Anya. A federal investigator. I gave her everything.”
