LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      Zoe Marks was being followed. That tingle on the back of her neck was constant as she pulled her ball cap low and stepped inside the Laundromat. Had he found her? She’d been so careful, but maybe this was it...the day he finally caught up.

      And killed her.

      Downtown Salt Lake City was busy just after eleven at night, and she’d hoped to disappear in the crowds. Maybe it hadn’t worked.

      Moose wasn’t behind the counter. The man had been recommended by a mutual contact, and he should be here. He’d said as much at their first meeting.

      Moose had a craggy face, the nose that had earned him the moniker and a huge belly that hung over his belt buckle. He didn’t exactly blend in. If he was here she’d be able to spot him, but he wasn’t out behind the register tonight. Was he waiting in his office?

      Zoe made her way down the center aisle, between rows of washers and dryers stacked on either side of the room. The long, low bench in the middle.

      A young woman in the corner folded a pair of skinny jeans. Probably two sizes smaller than the ones Zoe wore. Her hair hung over most of her face, and she didn’t make eye contact. That was fine with Zoe. Behind the counter an older woman with purple hair sat reading a fashion magazine.

      During the three weeks she’d been in hiding, Zoe had learned more than she wanted to about the criminal element. Top of the list was the fact that she had to talk the talk with these people. She couldn’t give away anything personal, or emotional. Least of all was the fact that Zoe Marks was an office assistant, a divorcée and the single mom of the most precocious seven-year-old boy in the world. No, she had to be one of them. An anonymous lady who wanted a way out of this life.

      Zoe rapped her knuckles on the Formica. “Lookin’ for Moose.”

      The counter woman didn’t look up from her magazine.

      Zoe pushed aside the depressing thoughts of what her life had become. She couldn’t even think about Tyler, or she’d start blubbering because she hadn’t seen her son in a week—the longest they’d ever been apart. Right now, Tyler was safe with her sister, which meant it wasn’t time for crying; it was time for action. The kind that would make the two of them free of danger for the rest of their lives.

      Hence, Moose. And the duffel bag of thirty thousand dollars of borrowed money she was going to have to figure out how to pay back.

      Freedom wasn’t cheap.

      The purple-haired woman pointed one white-tipped finger to the interior door. “Moose is back there.”

      “Thanks.” Zoe straightened her shoulders and headed for the back door. Politeness wasn’t something the people in this world she’d fallen into understood, but it was ingrained in her. At the last second before she pushed the handle down, another ingrained part of her—some latent warning instinct—flared to life. Danger. She glanced back at the front door of the Laundromat just as he walked through.

      Gun raised, pointed at her.

      No life in his eyes.

      No emotion in the flat line of his lips.

      The woman folding clothes dropped her basket and ran behind him out the door. The gunman made no move to stop her.

      Ice-cold terror froze every part of her. It wasn’t Zoe’s life that flashed before her eyes—it was Tyler’s. Memories raced through her mind of those long-gone happy days. Before Nathan decided he liked his girlfriend better than his wife and moved to New England.

      The life Tyler once had was gone now, but he still had her. She wouldn’t let him become an orphan today. Her son was everything to her, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep him safe. There was no room

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