Willing to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

He snorted. “Christ, yeah. The old man? Ivy’s stepfather? He was a real douche. One of those guys who thought he knew everything, so yeah, according to Ivy no one liked him. Not even his own kids. If I were you, I’d start with them.”

Chapter 11

Heart drumming, Ivy glanced over her shoulder and kept moving.

Someone was definitely following her. She could feel it.

Someone who was probably a killer.

She left the convenience store and took off walking fast, moving quickly in the direction of the Lakesider. With a quick glance over her shoulder to make certain Sunglasses wasn’t behind her, she jagged sharply, veering around a corner, and broke into a jog for two blocks before backtracking.

“Come on, come on,” she whispered, hoping the battery on her phone wouldn’t give out as she Googled nearby motels. Her pulse was thundering in her ears, her nerves stretched to the breaking point. Never missing a step, she found the name of another motel, not too far away, and following the guide from the GPS, veered abruptly and cut through a narrow, darkened alley where trash cans were overflowing and a shadow moved.

Someone crouching.

Shifting toward her.

She bit back a scream.

Her heart nearly stopped before seeing that the movement was from the edge of a black garbage bag flapping crazily in the breeze.

Keep moving. Just keep moving. You can do this!

The alley opened to a street. She forced herself to slow her steps, didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention. Cars and trucks rolled by, headlights and taillights glowing in the coming dark, a desert wind cutting through her jacket and flinging her hair in front of her eyes. Her teeth were chattering by the time she cut through a parking lot and back to a side street leading to the Sunset Valley Inn, an L-shaped cinder-block building in desperate need of a paint job.

Steeling herself for a confrontation, she headed into the reception area, brightly lit with fluorescent lights that hummed softly. The interior was small and smelled of day-old coffee, a fake wood-grain stand of brochures about “What to Do in Awesome Albuquerque” was positioned next to a rolling cart where two pressure pots of coffee stood at attention and half-empty packets of powdered creamer and sugar had been left. The girl running the desk looked like she was younger than Ivy despite an overload of makeup.

Ivy approached and the receptionist, her bored expression never changing, checked her in. She wore no name tag but the tattoo on her wrist was of two names held together by a heart. “Tammy heart Drake.” Ivy assumed the girl was Tammy, but she didn’t ask, didn’t want to make any unnecessary conversation, and was grateful that “Tammy” didn’t worry too much about Ivy’s lack of ID.

“I lost it and my credit cards on the plane. In my carry-on.” The girl’s plucked and darkened brows drew together. “I know, crazy, huh? It’s just that I’m so upset.” Ivy swallowed hard. Called up the lie. “I’m going to my mother’s funeral. And my brain just isn’t in gear.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “The airline is supposed to call if they find my bag; until then I’m effed-up, if you know what I mean.”

Tammy gave her the what-kind-of-idiot-leaves-her-bag-on-the-plane look, but said, “I’ll need enough to cover any damage. A security deposit, y’know?”

“Sure. Sure. How much?”

“I dunno. Fifty? Maybe—”

“I’ve got it. Okay. Fifty. And then for the night. I’ll pay in advance. One night.”

Ivy filled out a registration card with the first name that came into her head—Macie Smith—and fortunately the girl at the desk didn’t so much as blink, just handed over an old-fashioned key and said, “Check out’s at eleven.”

Ivy’s room faced the parking lot and she carried her meager belongings with her as she left the warmth of the lobby and headed outside where night had definitely fallen, taking the temperature with it. She raced up the exterior staircase to room 214.

Inside the bare bones room, she locked the door, threw the dead-bolt, dropped her bag of purchases onto a battered TV stand with a bubble-faced television, and cranked the heat up to nearly eighty. The bed, dressed in a floral print bedspread, appeared to sag in the middle. At least it was a place to sleep, she thought, then stripped off her clothes on her way to the tiny bathroom with its telephone-booth-sized shower. After fifteen minutes under a measly spray that was just hot enough to warm her skin, she dried off with a threadbare towel and threw on her oversized T.

Before she could second-guess herself, she swiped the condensation from the face of the mirror over the sink, twisted her hair into a taut ponytail, and with her new scissors, started cutting, clipping off the long strands of her pale hair. It took a little bit of work and a lot of clean-up snips to get the uneven cut manageable. She even chopped the bangs that fell just below her eyebrows. “Ugh,” she said to her reflection, but was determined to see her transformation through and meticulously followed the steps to changing herself from a golden blonde with pale highlights to a blend-into-the-woodwork mousy brown.

After all the processing was done, she showered again, careful with her hair, then rinsed out her clothes.

God, how had she come to this?

She felt the sting of tears again as she thought of her mother, and her heart ached. Blinking, she hung her clothes over the towel rack, then started charging her phone. She flopped onto the bed. The room was warm if dingy, the door locked if not completely secure. The best she could do.

But now, as the events of the past nearly two days washed over her, she felt weak again. Alone. The wind whistled outside, the heater rumbled throughout the small room, and she heard the television from the next unit. The urge to call someone, anyone, overtook her, and she went to her favorites on her contact list and nearly pressed the number, but her thumb hovered over the screen and before she made a stupid mistake, she switched the phone off. She’d heard about the police or parents tracking their kids down by looking through phone records and she couldn’t risk it. Of course, she was probably already screwed. If they were really intent on tracking her they could by her cell phone, she was pretty sure.

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; But if she could just get on that bus tomorrow.