Chapter 22 Chapter 22
The bartender was a big woman; her arms were covered in faded tattoos and a stare that could melt steel. I walked up to the bar and ordered a soda water. My hand was shaking as I put the five-dollar bill on the counter. When she placed the glass in front of me, she leaned in, her voice low and gravelly, fitting the place perfectly.
"You look lost, sweetheart. Wrong side of town for tourists."
I kept my voice flat, trying to sound tough, like I knew the rules. "I need something. Something to help me go further south."
She gave me a long, hard look, assessing my cheap hoodie, my choppy hair, and the way I clutched my backpack. She saw the fear, but she must have also seen the desperation. "That kind of trip takes tickets," she murmured. "Expensive tickets. You got the fare?"
This was the terrifying part. I had to show her I was serious, that I wasn't wasting her time. I didn't pull out the duffel bag. I just reached into the backpack and pulled out a single, thick bundle of cash—ten thousand dollars, wrapped tight. I placed it discreetly on the bar between us, covering it instantly with my hand.
Her eyes didn't widen, but they went flat and dangerous. She didn't touch it.
"That'll do," she said. "You wait here. Don't talk to anyone. Don't look at anything. I'll be back in thirty."
I slid the cash back into the bag and went to a dark booth in the corner, pressing my back into the rough vinyl. Thirty minutes felt like a lifetime. Every time the door opened, I nearly leaped out of my skin, expecting to see a dark suit or a pair of cold, clear blue eyes. The paranoia was chewing me alive.Finally, the bartender came back. She didn't sit. She just stood over the table.
"He's in the back room. You go in, you tell him what you need, you pay him, and you get out. No names. No mistakes. You talk to him about tickets and nothing else. Got it?" she said I nodded, standing up instantly. I walked through a doorway covered by a thick, velvet curtain into a back room that was even darker than the bar. In the center, at a small metal desk, sat a skinny bloke with wire-rim glasses, looking more like an accountant than a criminal.
He didn't look up when I entered. "Tickets?" he asked, his voice reedy.
I laid the backpack on the desk. "I need to travel a long way. I need a full itinerary. Passport, driver's license, birth certificate. The works. And they need to be good. Real good. I can't be stopped." He finally looked up, his glasses magnifying his bored, cynical eyes. He glanced at my backpack.
"That's a five-minute conversation, then a two-day wait. And the fare is two hundred thousand for a package that won't fall apart at the first checkpoint. Cash only."
Two hundred grand. It was a massive hit, but essential. "I have the cash," I said, pushing the bag forward.
He hasn't touched it yet. He slid a piece of paper and a pen over the table. "I need the basics for the passport. Name, date of birth, place of birth. Something utterly forgettable. Something that can't be traced to you." I looked at the paper. This was it. The final cut. Tessa Jansen was signing her own death certificate and giving birth to a ghost. I had to choose wisely. A random name that felt nothing like me. I scribbled down Clara Walsh. Born somewhere random, in a state I'd never been to. Colorado. February 1996.
He studied the paper. "Clara Walsh. Fine. Plain. Now, sit and wait. You'll give me the money when I give you the papers, but I need a down payment now for the materials." I counted out fifty thousand dollars in five thick bundles and pushed them across the table. It felt sickeningly easy to give away that much money. It was just paper, though. The currency of my freedom.
He nodded, sweeping the cash into a drawer. "Come back here, at this exact time, in two days. If you're early, you wait outside. If you're late, I'm gone, and you lose the deposit." I didn't argue. I didn't negotiate. I just stood up, nodded, and walked straight out of the curtained room, through the bar, and out into the afternoon light.
I had thirty-six hours to kill in a city where I couldn't trust a soul and couldn't risk renting a room.
I spent those two days living like a vagrant. I found a massive, 24-hour food court in a busy downtown building. It was busy enough that I wasn't noticed, and I sat there, nursing lukewarm sodas and picking at cheap sandwiches, my backpack chained to my ankle, always awake, always watching. I only used public restrooms, always changed locations every two hours, and I never, ever took a direct route anywhere. I was running circuits, burning through the time, all while the massive, cold presence of my owner felt like it was stalking the hallways just outside my vision.
I thought about Zaiel. I thought about the kiss, the intensity of it, and his apology. Then I thought about Carlo delivering the money. Zaiel knew something he had to or had an inkling. Why would he offer 1 million just for a few seconds unless he knew something? Or because he thought money was the way to get everything he wanted.
When the two days were up, I was a wreck running on fear and caffeine, but I was on time.
I walked back into The Iron Lock right at the agreed-upon time. The same bartender gave me the same cold stare and waved me through to the back room.
The accountant was sitting there. On the desk, neatly stacked next to his laptop, were my new identity documents. They looked incredibly real. The passport had my terrible, new mugshot staring out of it—jet-black hair, hollow eyes—but it wasn't Tessa Jansen. It was Clara Walsh.
"They're perfect," he said, not even a trace of pride in his voice. "Guaranteed to pass standard scrutiny. They'll get you anywhere you need to go."
I didn't argue. I didn't compliment. I just pushed the remaining $150,000 across the table. He counted it quickly, his fingers moving like spiders, and then nodded, satisfied.
"Good luck, Clara," he said, a grim smirk touching his lips. It was the first time anyone had used my new name. It felt terrifyingly final. I grabbed the papers and shoved them deep into the most hidden pocket of my backpack. I left the bar and didn't look back. I was no longer Tessa Jansen. I was Clara Walsh, and I had the tools to disappear. The fear hadn't lessened, but now I had a weapon. I found the airport transit center. I needed to fly internationally, and I needed to book the ticket last minute, with cash, using my new identity.