Read Online Nowhere to Run by Nancy Bush - Free Book Online Page B

cat.”
    â€œWell . . . no.” She smiled.
    â€œFigured.” His answering smile was faint. “Just thought maybe you and I . . . could do something? Before I’m gone for good.” He made a face, as if he’d tasted something bad.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œMy father . . .” He looked back inside through the glass door with an unreadable expression. “He and my mom don’t get along. At all. Ever. She hates it that I’m here. Says it’s too dangerous.”
    â€œDangerous?” Liv repeated.
    â€œOh, it’s all bullshit. She doesn’t even mean it. She just mainly wants to irk my father any way she can. And it works, ’cause he starts yelling that he should just fire me to get her off his ass. And she tells him where to stick it, and blah, blah, blah. It just goes on and on. God. They can’t stand each other.”
    â€œBut you’re leaving Zuma?”
    â€œI overheard the old man tell her that he was really gonna do it this time. By the end of the week.” Aaron shrugged. “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But if he does, I’ll survive. Just wanted to make sure we could stay friends.” He peered at her through heavy blond bangs. A scraggly beard darkened his jaw. His clothes looked like they’d come straight from the clothes hamper and his pants rode low enough on his hips to make her wonder exactly when gravity would win and puddle them around his ankles.
    She liked Aaron. She really did. But not in the way his eyes said he was hoping for. “We’re friends,” she said lightly.
    â€œOlivia . . .” he said, disappointed. “Give me something more than that.”
    â€œGood friends?” To his crushed look, she added, “Maybe later, we could talk? I’m just on my way to lunch now. I’m late already.” She half-turned back to the building.
    â€œSneak out this way,” he invited, opening the gate. Now, this was definitely against all the rules. “Paul won’t like it.”
    â€œPaul doesn’t have to know.”
    Liv felt a stirring of rebellion fueled by the encouraging light in Aaron’s eyes. Add to that, she didn’t want to turn him down again, for anything. She hesitated a moment, then shrugged her shoulders and said, “All right.”
    He swung open the gate. “I’m not trying to push you, or anything. I just would like to . . . keep things going between us.”
    â€œOkay.”
    He smiled and swung the gate shut behind her, satisfied.
    â€œBut when I come back through the front door, Paul’s going to rip me a new one,” she said.
    â€œCall me on my cell. I’ll sneak you back in.”
    â€œI don’t have a cell.”
    â€œOh, God, that’s right.” He shook his shaggy locks. “I’ll leave the door propped open.”
    â€œNah, I’ll go through the front and just take the heat.”
    â€œCheck the side door. If it’s open, it’s open. If it’s not, the old man or somebody caught me.”
    â€œYou don’t have to do that.”
    â€œHey, I’m a short timer. I want to.”
    â€œOkay, then.” Liv waved to him as she headed out. Aaron was a slacker and a truant and a bit of a slug, but at least he amused her. Everybody else on the main floor seemed to have had the humor centers of their brains lobotomized.
    She went to a local deli whose chicken salad was to die for and ordered a chicken salad sandwich, Diet Coke and a packet of Miss Vickie’s Jalapeño Chips. She sat at a bistro table and watched the passers-by outside the window, her mind flitting back to the packet and Hague and his comments about the zombie man.
    If I look he’s always there. Out of the corner of your eye . . . there!
    Gooseflesh rose on her arms beneath the three-quarter-length sleeves of her V-necked shirt. It was late August and hot, and she could feel her skin break into a