Maximum Security - Tracy Montoya

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pale woman greeted him at the doorway, wrapped in a thick, worn quilt even though it was 80 degrees outside. Her large blue eyes, red-rimmed from constant tears, had dark hollows beneath them. Despite the air of pure despair that surrounded her, so sharp he felt it cutting into his own skin, she smiled weakly at him. “Hey, Billy,” she said in a voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in decades.

      “Jenna,” was all he could say in reply, as part of him begged her not to disappear. Again.

      BACON. With a single-mindedness only the house-bound possess, Maggie meticulously searched the contents of the freezer for bacon to go with the Cobb salad she’d just tossed. Shoving aside microwave dinners, plastic bags of vegetable medley and a box of frozen peach yogurt pops, she finally found the package of bacon and tossed it on the counter with a frozen clatter. She’d cook it up fresh, of course, because there was no way she’d have those horrible crumbled bits that came in a bottle and tasted like small shards of plastic.

      For now, she ignored the package, carefully piling the frozen foods she’d displaced back into the freezer—TV dinners she had for lunch went on one side, and the packaged foods requiring more preparation on the other. Dessert boxes and vegetable bags went on top of the entire arrangement, since they were the least stable.

      A faint, icy mist caressed her face, sending a chill down her entire body and raising goosebumps on her forearms, exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of her sweatshirt. She took her hand away, letting the freezer door fall shut.

      So cold. That night in the swamp, so long ago. Naked, alone, and so cold. With only the sounds of cicadas and owls and the smell of the dank, fetid waters of the Atchafalaya to keep her company. Until he came back to the decaying cabin, with a sharp knife and the look of a starving man in his dark eyes—things she’d only read about in her books before that spring night. The chill had gotten worse while he studied her, his mouth forming the words that would haunt her long after that night: “Why don’t you run?” But that was the joke, with her hands and feet completely immobilized by fishing line, she couldn’t run. Not even when he’d started cutting.

      She slammed the heavy frying pan she’d taken off the stove onto the counter, the force of the blow reverberating up her entire arm. Bacon, dammit.

      A little bit of cooking spray. A dash of oil. Bacon. She defrosted the package in the microwave, then peeled a few tepid slices off, tossing them into the pan with shaking hands. Breathe, Maggie. After adding a couple of extras in case Adriana wanted a salad when she came over with the week’s supply of groceries, she turned on the stove burner. Bacon. She could do this. Bacon, bacon, bacon baconbaconbaconbacon…

      Whump. Maggie whirled around at the sound, like a hand smacking the glass panes of one of the windows in the next room. Hard. Operating on pure instinct, she focused her senses on pinpointing the potential danger, only noticing that she was brandishing the frying pan over her head when she felt a slice of slimy, lukewarm meat slide down her arm. It fell to the floor with a soft smack and was soon followed by a larger clump. Warm oil slid down the pan and dribbled onto her hand and wrist.

      The sound of laughter drew her gaze outside the bay windows. A young couple walked near the rocks by the ocean, tossing a tennis ball for their Irish setter, which scampered ahead of them, tongue lolling out of its mouth as a breeze blew back its shiny red coat. Grinning sheepishly, the man—a sandy blonde wearing a backward Angels cap and baggy shorts that went down to the middle of his tanned calves—held the ball in the air and shrugged apologetically at her.

      “Maggie, you paranoid idiot,” she muttered through her teeth, smiling back at him and raising the frying pan in salute. She deliberately relaxed her shoulders, feeling some of the tension leave her body while she watched the boy throw the ball again for the dog. His girlfriend ran to catch up with them and grabbed the brim of his cap, starting a laughing game of tag that continued until they were out of the range of Maggie’s window.

      She set the pan down on the counter with a wistful smile, noticing that her pulse had returned almost to normal. Or as normal as it had been since Billy Corrigan, the FBI agent with more than his share of mojo, had walked through her door.

      The thought made her laugh as she turned off the stove, then pulled a clump of paper towels off the stand near the sink to clean up the mess on the floor. It really had been too long since she’d been on a date. At this rate, she’d be attacking the UPS man the next time he came over with a delivery. A disturbing image popped into her head of herself dressed in Saran Wrap, draping herself across poor Leonard Hobbes in his brown shorts and knee socks while she told him how much she loved a man in uni-foh-am.

      She made a mental note to do a few extra miles on the treadmill that night.

      The sound of the doorbell brought her out of her thoughts. With a hurried swipe, she picked up most of the bacon on the floor with her paper towels and deposited it in the stainless-steel trash can. After quickly washing her hands, she yanked the sunflower-patterned towel off the oven-door handle, drying her hands as she went to the door. One glance through the peephole told her Adriana had arrived.

      When she pulled the door open, Adriana Torres practically skidded inside, the panels of her red tartan miniskirt swirling around legs encased in black tights that were cut off at the ankles. She quickly dropped the groceries, snapping her gum nervously as she ran a hand through her caramel-brown hair, which was streaked with fire-engine-red highlights—temporary, Maggie hoped. Adriana owned a clothing resale boutique—Maggie knew better than to call it a thrift store—on Cannery Row in Monterey, and she had a tendency to look as though she’d just stepped out of a punk-rock musical.

      “What’s up?” Maggie asked, not yet sure whether to laugh at Addy’s drama-queen tendencies or to sit her down and force her to spill whatever was bothering her.

      With a whimper, Adriana lurched forward and enveloped Maggie in a surprisingly strong embrace for someone who couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds wet. True confessions time it was, then. “What’s going on?” Maggie asked, her hands curling upward as she adjusted to Addy’s strong embrace. “You sound like you just sprinted down all of Seventeen Mile Drive.”

      “Ay, I’m just glad you’re okay.” Adriana leaned back and stared at her for a moment, then hugged her tightly again, cracking her gum with a vengeance.

      “Of course I am,” Maggie said, her voice calm and strong as she assumed the once-familiar role of caretaker in a crisis. “Why wouldn’t I be? Girlfriend, you’re scaring me.”

      Adriana put her hands briefly on Maggie’s cheeks, a “poor shut-in Magdalena” look on her face. Then she backed off, twisting the silver bangles on one wrist and muttering to herself in Spanish. One thing about Adriana—she’d been an American citizen for eighteen years, but her English, which was perfect in most circumstances, almost completely deserted her under stress. And if Maggie knew her correctly, she would mutter for a few more moments and then…après muttering, le déluge.

      Addy didn’t disappoint. She took a deep gulp of air and then let it rip. “Okay. First thing we have to do is call James. He’ll know what to do. Then we have to get you over to my house somehow without your flipping over. Maybe with good drugs you can leave the state, even—”

      “Flipping out,” Maggie corrected her automatically. “Addy, breathe.” She was dying to know what had gotten Adriana so spun up, but she knew she’d never find out if the woman passed out in her entryway.

      “But—”

      “Breathe.”

      Adriana threw her slender hands in the air, her rings sparkling under the skylight, and cursed rapidly in Spanish. “Por el amor de Dios, Magdalena Luz, I’m a yoga instructor. I know how to breathe.” The yoga was a new thing. Addy taught classes after hours in the upstairs rooms of her shop in an effort to share her latest obsession with the world.

      “Could’ve fooled me,” Maggie responded. But when a film of water grew over Adriana’s large green eyes, Maggie knew it was serious. “Addy, tell me what’s going on,” she said softly.

      Adriana shook her head,

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