Out of Hiding

By John Feldman

"Could not put it down!" - Amazon reviewer

 

The last woman to walk in her shoes has been missing for years...

 

Emily Geiser walks into a trap. The new world she sees is sugarcoated. A group of merciless killers hiding behind smiles welcome Emily into this new world

• Language: English
• Publisher: Worn Key Publishing
• Release date: Mar 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780986283437

Book preview

John

Feldman

OUT OF HIDING

Copyright 2018

by

John Feldman

Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any portion of it in any form without permission from the author.

Also available in Paperback and Hardcover

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-9862834-4-4

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9862834-2-0

This work is one of fiction. All character names, storylines, locations, businesses, etcetera, are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to real life are entirely coincidental.

For Greg,

Gone too soon.

Prologue

The reflection in the rearview mirror does not show the same man who had left Oklahoma, but that’s just the way Herb wanted it. Beyond the disguise looking back at him is a two-lane highway splitting through two open, grassy fields. You could travel ten feet or ten miles on a road like this and not know the difference.

Mild air pours through the windows and envelops the car with a sunshine-induced happiness. The wind slides between the sheets of yesterday’s newspaper that sits on his passenger seat—the only other object in the car. The cover page jumps up and down, waving. The headline is throwing itself at him, and even after seeing it a hundred times over the last twenty-four hours, Herb can’t help but smile.

The gas tank nears empty but he isn’t worried. He planned for it. Mapped it out. Drew the entire route strictly based on the stops he’d need to make to refuel. Leave no room for error.

His faded sedan makes a slight right turn into the gravel parking lot of Roger’s Gas ’n Go and leaves a trail of dust kicking up from the rear tires like a jet stream. The car rolls to a slow stop beside one of four pumps in the small station. When the dust cloud fades, he looks around to scope out the area before he steps out. All clear.

Herb exits and stretches before walking into the station store. His attire consists of tan work boots, jeans, a flannel shirt, sunglasses and a dull grey hat that looks like it could have been made from the outer paneling of his matching car—he could pass for either a trucker passing through or a fellow countryman driving his typical ten miles to find the closest store.

Wind chimes hanging from the door alert the store clerk that he has entered—seemingly the first person in hours. The overweight and balding clerk stands up from behind his counter. Hey there, he says. 

Hi. Smooth. Calm. Head down. I’d like to fill on number three, please. He hands over a twenty.

Sure thing, the clerk says, and for the first time meets Herb’s eyes.

Herb removes his cap and takes a long swipe across his hair with his palm—take a look at the hair, man.

Y’ain’t gotta do that here, sir, the clerk dangles the money from his fingertips. Ya pay after. We go off trust ‘round here.

Well then, Herb says. He places his cap back on his scalp, smiles and says, I trust you to give me change when I come back.

Will do, sir, the clerk says with an agreeing nod of his head, pulling the twenty back to his side of the register.

Herb exits with a little less anxiety than he had when he walked in. There were no cameras inside. No TVs to broadcast the news. Just a simple guy running a simple business—exactly the type of location Herb planned this route in accordance with.

Herb strolls to his car, then takes his time removing the nozzle and his gas cap before beginning to pump. He leans against the corner panel and reaches into his pocket for a smoke. The calming effect of the cigarette only lasts his first puff, as the sounds of moving rubber on the gravel lot breaks his jovial spell.

A minivan pulls in and up to the pump behind Herb. Three young children run out and into the store, their father following close behind, yelling for them to slow down.

Herb remains leaning against his car, right hand pinched under his left armpit and his left hand pushing the cigarette into his face—a minding-my-own-business look. He holds this pose until he senses a stationary figure out of the corner of his eye: the mom.

Discreetly he looks over, then indiscreetly, and that’s when he sees the woman’s squinting and curious eyes on him. He drops the freshly-lit cigarette into the gravel and steps on the cherry, twisting his foot over top so not to blow up the ground he stands on.

Shit.

He lowers his head and pulls down the brim of his faded gray baseball hat to the top of his sunglasses. He holds the gas pump as the fluid pours past his hand and into the hunk of metal.

Look away or I’ll fucking kill you.

He can feel her still looking over at him and the gas cannot pump fast enough. He’s made it two states away and he’ll be damned if this one woman is the end of him. He’ll kill her right here if he has to. Right here in this parking lot. Let her nosey ass get a little closer and then slit her throat. Dump some gasoline on her smug body and watch her squirm until the life drains out of her. That’ll teach her to look over here.

She starts to walk toward him.

It’s not full yet, the tank, but he’s not taking any chances. He removes the nozzle, replaces the gas cap and heads for his car door.

Don’t do it, Lady, he thinks as he yanks back on the door handle. But she does it.

Excuse me, she says.

Herb stops, shuts his eyes. Breathe. He looks at her and smiles, but receives no smile in return. Instead he gets the look of curiosity, only magnified. She is within mere feet of him now and those squinted eyes show crow’s feet attached. Her mouth is open, lower jaw just hanging there lazily as she thinks.

Are you…? she begins, but then stops. And right at that very moment, Herb can feel the cold steel of the switchblade in his pocket. Hey, it’s saying to him. Come and get me. 

Herb could end this lady now. End any threat of her. Her family of fat ass little kids is still in the store. By the time they got out he could be gone. If the clerk hadn’t already seen him, she’d be dead by now. There’d be no hesitation. But he has.

Leave no trace.

Her mouth remains open during her pause. If she only knew that certain words pouring from that pit could have her killed right now she’d slam those lips so tightly together they’d mend into one.

…you look like… she continues, then pauses once again.

The ball cap, glasses and bleached hair can hide most of his face, but it cannot hide it all. He shaved off his beard before fleeing Oklahoma also, but that can only do so much. This woman is studying the depths of his face. And without a clue what to do and beginning to feel the urge to kill with no hesitation, Herb slides off his hat and rubs his palm across his yellow hair—look at the hair.

Once again, it works.

I’m sorry, she says. Just seeing things. And with that, she turns and walks toward the store to force-feed her fat ass children.

An odd feeling of dissatisfaction runs through Herb’s veins as he safely returns to the seat of his car. The urge is coming back to him, quicker than he’d hoped.

He takes off from the lot, slow and steady. The only red flag he could have raised here was not going back to get his change, but that has to happen a lot doesn’t it? He tells himself it does, and he drives, pulling out into the road that looks to lead nowhere. His speed picks up and he looks in his rearview mirror once again to see that his is the only car on the road. His smile comes back when he looks down at the newspaper that begins waving at him again. He reads the title to himself for the hundred-and-first time:

Manhunt Underway for Murder Suspect

Sixteen years later…

1

Emily Geiser pulls into the parking lot of Express Liquors in a car looking just as disheartening and hopeless as her life. She parks and gets out and the strength of the early afternoon sun hits her like a train. She's here much sooner than her usual 5 PM trip.

She enters the building through the automated doors, the doors that remind her every day that chivalry really is dead. Men can't even hold open doors anymore. But the beauty of automated doors is that you don't have to sleep with them in return for a kind deed.

She enters and the roof over her head and the air-conditioned interior give her relief from the heat.

She knows what she wants, but rather than quickly grab it and get back into the Freon-free car, she hangs around for a while pretending to browse through the wine sections. She knows she's getting vodka, but walking around the hard liquor section of the store for long periods of time looks a little trashier than searching for the perfect Cabernet, or at least pretending to. And classier men will be in the wine section. She must always remember that. A new rich man could be anywhere and she always has to be on the lookout.

Once the slow-trickling beads of sweat can no longer be felt rolling down her back like tiny marbles and there are no more strands of her long, brown hair glued to her neck, Emily walks over to her vodka, grabs a bottle and makes her way to the counter.

Early start today? asks the mid-thirties clerk.

Yeah, Emily responds with a sly smile. Fuck you, dude. You work at a liquor store. But she assumes he’d be more judgmental if he found out she was just fired from yet another mediocre job.

She can feel his eyes on her as she walks out. Whether they're judgmental or seductive, she cannot tell. Regardless, not a bone in her body cares. She's not settling for a clerk. She's made her way past the employee level. She's better than that now.

Neck sweat grips her hair and pulls it tight to her olive skin once again as the heat within her car is only intensified by the hot air blowing in the windows. The screech of the car door as it opens and closes is a low, steady sound, like the moo of a lazy cow.

The ride home is muggy and unpleasant.

Emily’s car finally makes it into the apartment complex, driving past the faded two-story brick buildings on either side, each one set back from the road, separated by patches of weeds advertised by the property management company as grass. Most of the parking spots are empty and if the occupied spaces had the ability to be embarrassed, they would be. Antique cars are beautiful, but only when maintained and updated. These cars couldn't be placed in that category. Shiny chrome wheel covers are the only distraction keeping an onlooker's eyes away from the rusted holes in the side panels and cloud-shaped spots of primer pushing through the stock paint.

Emily has no problem finding a parking space in front of her apartment. She turns the wheel and pulls into the opening. In a scattered grouping of piece-of-shit cars, at least hers is the best-looking.

The vodka bottle is tightly clinched between her elbow and her side as Emily scrolls through her keychain to find the one that opens her apartment door. Over the years she has had so many jobs and been issued so many keys, and her key ring gives off the impression that she hoards them. Not that she had upper-level positions that required keys, but the men who she'd slept with held those titles. She would throw some in the trash after being fired, knowing she would no longer need them, but some she wouldn't. Some she would keep, for some reason or another. The collection of keys began to grow and before she knew it she couldn't remember which key went to where and instead of throwing them all away, she kept them all. Better safe than sorry. Or maybe she would keep them in hopes of a blackmail situation one day. But now her key ring is out of control. It looks like something a janitor would carry around. Or a prison guard. But once she finally finds the correct key, she opens her door and walks into what she is normally so excited to forget: her apartment.

There isn't much wrong with the apartment itself. Surprisingly it's pretty nice inside. Well maintained, at least. Clean carpets, modern cabinets and countertops, newish appliances. It isn't bad. But it doesn't have that hominess about it that many houses do. There are no pictures on the walls or plants or standup lights occupying the corners. No decorative vase or knife block sitting on the kitchen counter. And no kitchen table. None at all. But Emily is never here. Why would she take the time to decorate? She'd rather hang out in a public place, or at a man's house—one decorated by that man's wife.

The aluminum bottle cap hits the countertop, bouncing and clicking as Emily presses the vodka to her lips, gripping it by the neck. No need for a glass. She has no one to share with, anyway. No co-workers; she doesn't have a job. No family; she's never really had any. No friends; she's fucked all their husbands. This bottle is all hers.

Once the sweet taste of Fuck Life doesn't taste so sweet anymore, she puts down the bottle. Her eyes scale the apartment, scanning the place she’ll surely be spending more time in now that she’s unemployed again. The countertop meets the connecting wall with what looks to be seventeen different layers of caulk, the base molding shows the same symptoms with different shades of off-white paint streaked across them, and the wall plates over the light switches have been painted over so many times that they’ve gained weight. Everything screams rental. And she's sick of rentals. She's twenty-seven. Living in shitty conditions can only be cute for so long. At a certain point, living with your parents seems more respectable than living in a shitty rental.

Looking out from the kitchen and into the living room, Emily sees her laptop sitting on the couch. The new MacBook Pro that, from an outsider's prospective, does not match the lifestyle of someone who can barely hold a job most teenagers claim. And that's true. Because she didn't pay for it. Not with money, anyway. But with her body. The body that, back when she was eighteen and in the graduating class of 2006, was thin and firm. The body that she’d let her older, horny bosses have in order to gain perks around the workplace. The body that she’s since let go, bouncing from job to job and boss to boss. And though she isn’t fat—not yet, anyway—she’s put on a few pounds.

Emily walks over to the couch and opens the laptop. She places the vodka bottle on the floor next to her as she sits—that sweet Fuck Life taste wasn't completely gone just yet.

Internet searches for Retail pull up a listing of over two thousand jobs within a twenty-five mile radius. Seems like it will be simple enough to have a new place of work in a short amount of time. But as she begins scrolling through the pages of listings, she remembers what she had always forgotten about these sites, which is that two-thirds of the listings are scams or advertisements. ENTRY LEVEL!!! (Always in all caps and always followed by an unnecessary amount of exclamation points, as if the world's worst salesman was somehow appointed the position of pissing off the recently unemployed). Everything is apparently entry level, although entry level usually means college graduate, which doesn't pertain to her high school diploma.

Not completely demoralized yet, Emily continues scrolling. She sees a few she's interested in, but has to disregard some of them right away as she notices she's already worked for the company before, and been fired.

Continuing to scroll, head a little lower and eyes a little heavier, one job title catches her eye. Nothing is written in caps. No gimmicks or sales pitch in the title. Just a simple ad: Factory Employee - Assembly Line Worker. Simple. Maybe a little lame of a title—nothing like a Rite Aid Wellness Ambassador or a Starbucks Barista—but a title isn't what she wants. She wants a job. And this is one. A new one. In a new line of work. No more working with high school kids, and for the same pay. She could have a full-time job, with full-time employee benefits. She's never had benefits before. Not official benefits.

Excited, Emily hovers over the job title and clicks on the hyperlink. A pop-up appears. Dammit. Annoying as shit. She hasn't seen many advertisements since getting the Mac, but there have been a few. This one just comes with bad timing, killing Emily's enthusiasm to get to this link and apply for this job. She moves her cursor up to the top corner to close out of the screen but before she does, she glances at the window. There, staring back at her is a woman, about the same age, and underneath her is the phrase Get a jump start with 1- and 2-year programs. The woman is in a cap and gown, holding in her hand that infamous rolled-up piece of paper tied with a ribbon, looking out with a grin that shows big, beautiful white teeth. She's happy. And she should be. She's getting paid to smile for a camera. She's a model. Or a struggling actress. One of the two. But there are people who really graduate. And they must be just as happy, if not happier. No one graduates college with a frown.

She wonders what her life could be like with a degree. If she could finally be in a managerial position. How would she be able to benefit from the lower employees like her bosses have always benefited from her? Would she wait for some young guy to come hit on her? What would a young guy in a lower position than her have to offer? Maybe a big dick and a nice body, but that's about it. That's not what she's looking for, though. She's not looking for hot sex. She's looking for sex. Sex with benefits. Sex where the reward isn't to have an orgasm while grabbing a man's back muscles that are ripping through his silky, sweaty skin, but to have the man get off quickly and easily without much effort being put forth by her. Lie there and take it. That's the only kind of sex she wants. Come to think of it, that's the only kind of sex she’s ever had. She can't remember a time where she had passionate, all-around great sex. It's never happened to her.

A college degree. That's what she was contemplating. Not about sex. She'd gotten off track. A college degree would be nice, but there would be no way she could pull it off. She wouldn't have enough money to live. Sure, she could increase her student loan amounts to cover the cost of living, but that just increases debt for the future. And who's to say getting an associate’s degree will guarantee more money? Instead of taking the risk, she closes the window, leaving her laptop monitor on the website for Damper Paper Products.

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