LITMIR.BIZ

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the one who works for the government,” a woman with a long face and stringy gray hair said.

      “No,” Liv answered, surprised.

      “War games,” the man next to her said knowingly. He had eyes that didn’t quite focus properly.

      “It’s that company,” another man, younger and rail thin, said, clearly rolling the idea over in his mind.

      Liv’s anxiety level spiked. If they came up with Zuma Software . . . “Could I talk to you for a minute alone?” she asked Hague.

      He slid a darting, birdlike look at her. For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, then he gestured to a chair while his four listeners reluctantly scooted their own seats back and walked a few steps away. They perched just out of earshot, apparently waiting to return at the first indication that Hague and Liv were finished.

      “What?” he asked.

      “I’m in trouble. Someone could recognize me.”

      His gaze narrowed on her, cataloguing the way she was dressed. “What kind of trouble?”

      She leaned toward him. “There was a shooting earlier today . . . did you know about it?” Hague shook his head, so she quickly brought him up-to-date on what had taken place at Zuma, finishing with, “I know it sounds crazy, but I think they were after me.”

      “We’re both crazy, Livvie. Everybody says so.”

      “And as a result, I’ve done something—irresponsible.” She lightly tapped one fist against her teeth, seized with anxiety.

      “What?”

      “I’ve . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Auggie. How she’d kidnapped him and tied him up. Every moment she spent away from him and out in public felt like an eternity.

      “Who did the shooting?” Hague asked in a low voice, matching her tone. His eyes darted around the room suspiciously.

      “I don’t know.”

      His eyes came back to hers, holding her gaze tautly. “Yes, you do.”

      “No, I don’t.”

      “You know who they are,” he insisted.

      She shook her head. “Really, Hague, I don’t. But this has got something to do with the package from Mama. It’s about my past. Our past. Yours and mine.”

      “Our past,” he repeated.

      “I’ve had this feeling for a while, that someone’s stalking me. And then when I got the pictures from Mama yesterday and then today. . . .” She swallowed hard. “I just want to know what you think. Have I got this right? Do you believe me?”

      His eyes were dark pools of an emotion she recognized as fear. “It’s us,” he agreed. “They’re after us. Could be any one of them,” he added, glaring tightly at his disciples, who were still waiting for Liv to leave.

      “Not them.”

      “I told them about the package. I told them yesterday.”

      “You weren’t here yesterday.”

      “I was. I came later. They said you’d been here . . .” He glanced over to Jimmy and Rosa and the bar. “I told them. I told all of them.” Now he looked at his four listeners. “There were more here last night. They knew.”

      Liv’s heart clutched. Though she felt his paranoia as if it had jumped to her like a spark of electricity, she didn’t agree with him. It wasn’t these people. Quixotically, and like always, the more he agreed with her, the less she felt certain of herself.

      “I think it’s the Mystery Man who knew Mom. He’s at the center of it.”

      “It’s not these people?” He glared at them, turning his head suspiciously as he looked at all their faces individually.

      “I think it’s about the zombie,” she said.

      “The doctor,” he said.

      “The doctor?” she repeated. He nodded, waiting for her to continue and she questioned him, “The man in the picture? The one who’s stalking to the camera?” She drew the picture from the envelope and slid the photo to him again. “He’s a doctor?”

      Hague pulled back from it, as if the paper were covered in germs, but his gaze was zeroed in on the man. “He looks like . . .”

      “Who?” Liv asked when he trailed off. “I got the same hit. Like I knew him.”

      “We both know him. From when we were kids.”

      She gazed at him helplessly. “How can you know him from when we were kids? You were so little.”

      “I grew up though,” he said, his eyes starting to lose focus.

      “No, Hague. Don’t leave. Please.”

      “He’s always there . . . out of the corner of my eye.” Slowly his head turned and he focused on the bar and Jimmy and Rosa and the red pepper lights looping around the glasses hanging upside down.

      His hand shot out and grabbed her upper arm and Liv yelped in surprise. “Don’t let him get you, too.”

      “The stalking man?”

      “He’ll drill holes in your head. And he’ll put receivers inside the folds of your brain. And you’ll be a zombie, too.”

      She saw his eyes start to roll.

      “Wait. Hague, wait.” He was going into one of his fugue states again. “Don’t . . . don’t . . .”

      “We saw him again, didn’t we?” he asked in a drifting tone.

      “Hague!” she hissed harshly.

      But he was gone. Into that distant place. His eyes becoming slits and then closing altogether. Liv looked around for help and the four acolytes rushed back.

      “What’d you do to him?” the woman with the long face and straggly hair asked.

      Liv edged away. “He does this sometimes.”

      “But you sent him there!” the younger man accused her.

      She shook her head vaguely as she backed toward the door. Della had been right: she wasn’t able to get Hague back to the apartment. Especially not now.

      With thoughts of letting Della know about Hague, she stumbled toward the cantina’s entrance but when she got to the door Della was already there, blocking her exit. She glanced past Liv to Hague, muttered something furious, then pushed on past her.

      Liv didn’t have time to care. She was filled with wriggling eels of anxiety herself. She needed to get back to Auggie and away from places and people who might recognize her. She needed a place to hole up and think. Time.

      How long would it take? How many hours, or days? Or weeks?

      She’d embarked on this crazy journey and now she didn’t quite know what to do next.

      “Groceries,” she said aloud, halfway back to his place.

      Exiting Sunset Highway, she wound the Jeep down Sylvan hill and toward a strip mall with a Safeway as the anchor store. Keeping her head low, she hitched her backpack over one shoulder, grabbed a shopping cart and headed inside the brightly lit grocery, winding through the aisles, grabbing items for more sandwiches, her mind far away from the errand at hand.

      In line at the checkout, she heard the checker behind her talking over the Zuma massacre with a male customer.

      “Two of ’em are dead,” the female checker was saying in a conversational way. “They’re not saying who yet. Gotta inform the family first and stuff.”

      The man answered her: “How many were shot?”

      “Half a dozen, maybe?”

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