She nodded to them both and slipped through the door into the hall.
Definitely running.Jack frowned, watching her go.
“Here’s your trap.”
He turned.
Meg held out the cage, a gleam in her eyes. “Happy hunting.”
Three
THE BANK ROBBERYhad left Lauren too aware of her surroundings. She tensed at loud noises. Froze like a stupid rabbit when someone walked into a room. Sometimes she got anxious just walking down the street. Oddly, the constant bustle of the bakery acted as a kind of white noise, screening out distractions, allowing her to concentrate.
But today the shop was almost empty. The sky outside was a cloudless, brilliant blue. Everybody was at the beach, squeezing in one last, glorious sunlit day before the rental week ended.
“Sweet.” The man’s voice cut easily through her absorption. From his tone of voice, low, suggestive, he wasn’t talking about cupcakes.
Lauren flicked a glance toward the cash register. Some guy in a ball cap was chatting up Jane. As distractions went, he was no Jack Rossi. Good-looking, though, in a rough and scruffy way. Dirty blond hair, lean, stubbled face, long, lanky body in ripped jeans and a torn T-shirt. He looked like a grad student who’d spent too much time at the lab, or a homeless guy who’d been sleeping in the park.
He leaned across the counter, pressing in close, stroking Jane’s arm. “You done real good for yourself, Janey.”
Jane closed the cash drawer with a little snap and said something too quietly for Lauren to hear.
It was none of her business anyway.
She dropped her gaze to her laptop, staring blindly at the blank screen, willing the words to come.
Hostage Girl: My Storyhad spewed out of her in a matter of months.Honest and raw,Publishers Weeklyhad praised.An intimate portrait of courage and compassion, wrote the reviewer in theWashington Post.
Nobody would say that about her writing now.
Jack Rossi’s hard face popped into her head, his dark, deep-set eyes, his sardonic mouth.What is it that you do?
I’m a writer.
She closed her eyes.I’m a fraud.
Overgeneralizing. Focusing on the negative, chided her therapist training.Choose a positive, helpful thought.
Fine. She would think about Ben, who had written to her yesterday to let her know that his brother, Joel, had enlisted in the Army and was now at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, doing his Basic Combat Training.
She could write to Ben. That would really be helpful.
She clicked to open a new document. She knew her letters gave Ben a kind of status in prison. Any mail did. She tried to write at least once a week. It hadn’t been easy, at first, finding things to say. Her days were all the same. His, of course, were worse.
They didn’t have a lot in common, except the robbery, which they never mentioned. And her dad was dead, and his dad was gone, and they both had younger brothers. So she wrote to him about her brother, Noah, about to start his senior year, and he wrote to her about Joel. Sometimes the contrast between their brothers—their situations, their opportunities—overwhelmed Lauren, despite the money she sent to his mother every month.
Ben’s mother never wrote to Lauren. Never acknowledged her checks or her existence, never forgave Lauren for getting rich off the story of their ordeal while Ben rotted in jail.
Breathe.
“Travis, please,” Jane said. “I can’t talk to you now.”
“Then I’ll come by later. To the house.”
“No.”
Lauren looked up, nerves skittering over her skin.
