Five-thirty on a weekday made the grocery store a particular vortex of crazy. Dawn's fellow office drones wore their ties loosened, or walked with wincing footsteps; she navigated around stay-at-home parents shepherding their chattering flocks through the aisle. Canned music crackled from overhead; unintelligible announcements interrupted it at irregular intervals, but she couldn't tell what any given song was supposed to be, anyway. Neighbors who seemed to see each other every day stopped to chat just in front of endcaps loaded with sale items Dawn needed. Piercing beeps from the checkout lanes carried almost as far as the peculiar scent of fish from the meat section.
Dawn maneuvered her cart through the store like a cantankerous bull. She traded smiles, quick as minnows, with each harried housewife or burned-out shift worker that met her eyes. Most of them did a double-take at her heterochromia, she knew, but Dawn was already past them.
"Excuse me, miss." Dawn turned to smile down at an elderly woman. The woman craned her neck far back. "Please, can you get me--" The woman gestured up at the top shelves. Dawn fiercely regretted her next, cat-scented, inhalation.
"Of course! The seventeen pound, or the forty?"
"Seventeen, thank you. They could use the forty!" Dawn felt her phone buzzing on her belt, but she ignored it in favor of fishing out the pail of litter from the back of the shelf. Her cell vibrated again, for the voicemail. She waved away the old woman's thanks with another of her ubiquitous smiles. Dawn managed to find somewhere to park her cart. She flipped open her phone. Unknown caller. She strained to hear the message over the chaos around her.
"I'm so sorry," a voice sobbed. Dawn clenched her teeth. "I'm so sorry. He said he'd let me go if I told him what you said to me. I tried. I tried so long, but I just can't--I can't. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. Please, please--he said he'd let me go. He's coming. Eve, he's coming for you."
Dawn lowered the phone. She cut her way through the confusion with her cart, up to the checkout lane; she waited through coupon spats and price checks. She waited for the cashier to scan her items, making cheery small talk with the exhausted man. Dawn paid, rolled her cart out to her SUV, and then checked the back and the rows of seats. The woman piled in her groceries, returned her cart, and then took her usual route home. She was sure to stay a few miles under the speed limit.
No other car in the driveway, or in the carport. Dawn's only concession to the panic coiling in her veins was the keys she clutched in her hand like claws. No one here. Dawn indulged in one moment of hyperventilating while slumped against the door. Then, she sprinted for the packed bag waiting under the coffee table.
"I'd like a bus ticket, please," she said on her landline a few minutes later. The bag sat beside the door; she sat in her computer chair. "Tonight, if possible. Yes, that's fine. Dawn, D-A-W-N, Smith. May I pay by card now?" Dawn's cursor wandered over a train site, choosing times and seats. She texted on her work cell with the other hand: Remember that road tip u wanted to take down to florica? Now good? Two hours later, plastic bags on the table rustled in the breeze as she slammed the door.
It was amazing how cheap a plane ticket could be when the buyer didn't care where she went. Three hours after takeoff, Dawn's plane landed in Ohio.
Dawn frowned across the way at the airport bathroom. She glanced down at her bulky pack. The woman reluctantly set her bag down and padded off to squeeze between another woman and the concrete wall. Two minutes later, she emerged to see an empty space where her bag had been.
"Wow," said a voice at her side. "Boss said, 'tall, dark, and lovely,' but I didn't think you'd be that big." Dawn turned to meet a blonde's smirk. She was everything Dawn wasn't: short, petite, and amused.
"I don't know what you're--"
"The doc really builds you ladies to scale, huh?" Dawn's shoulders slumped.
"I never did give her my number. Just my address," she said.
"Yup." The stranger hoisted Dawn's oversized bag more comfortably on her shoulder. "Guess they were keeping eyes on a couple matching your deets. She called a few, but they called the police or, I guess, ignored her." She grinned up at Dawn from underneath her baseball cap. "You're gonna be happy to know that she--Eve II, if you want--really is out free now." Dawn staggered, and the blonde's expression constricted for a moment; she moved to catch the bigger woman. Dawn steadied herself, first.
"This is it, yes? We're going to see--him," Dawn said. The blonde snorted.
"As if." The stranger's grin widened in the light of Dawn's stare. Her teeth contrasted with the rest of her: almost as yellow as her hair, and chipped. "I don't work for him, or the doc. This is just a--call it a favor, from my boss." She looked Dawn up and down. "Promise, if it was somebody coming to collect, it wouldn't be me getting my windpipe crushed. 'A' can handle his own wrangling." Dawn grimaced.
"So, what is this?" she said. The blonde swung the bag, bigger than her torso, at Dawn. The latter caught it easily.
"A heads-up, I guess. Take care of yourself." The blonde turned to go, and then paused. "Oh," she said over her shoulder, "And if you try running like that again, 'A' says, both you ladies are done for." The blonde waved a flippant parting gesture at Dawn's glare. Within moments, the stranger lost herself in the sparse crowd.
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