Fugitive Family

Fugitive Family
Pamela Tracy

Six months ago, Alexander Cooke's life was wrecked.His wife was killed, his workplace was robbed…and the evidence pointed to him. He saw one way out–he grabbed his daughter and ran. Now he's got a new life. Yet even with his new identity as Greg Bond, he's still looking over his shoulder. Still waiting for danger to reappear.Then he meets charming schoolteacher Lisa Jacoby, and forgets to keep his distance or protect his heart. When the killer returns, Alex won't run again. He's found a love–a family–he'll face anything to protect.

He hated living someone else’s life.

He wasn’t a laborer; he was a banker. Greg wasn’t wealthy like the real Greg Bond, the man whose identity he’d stolen—borrowed. Alex Cooke was an upwardly mobile man with a wife and child.

He had to remind himself he no longer had a wife.

And Greg knew that just to get at him, whoever had killed his wife wouldn’t hesitate to come after his daughter, too.

He had to remember his number one rule: stay as private as possible; don’t involve others.

That included his daughter’s pretty teacher, Lisa Jacoby.

PAMELA TRACY

lives in Arizona with a newly acquired husband (Yes, Pamela is somewhat a newlywed. You can be a newlywed for seven years. Ack, we’re on year seven!), a confused cat (Hey, I had her all to myself for twenty years. Where’d this guy come from?) and a preschooler (newlymom is almost as fun as newlywed). She was raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and started writing at age twelve (a very bad teen romance featuring David Cassidy from The Partridge Family). Later, she honed her writing skills while earning a BA in Journalism at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas (and wrote a very bad science fiction novel that didn’t feature David Cassidy). Please visit her Web site at www.pamelakayetracy.com, or enjoy her blog at http://ladiesofsuspense.blogspot.com/ or write to her c/o Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Fugitive Family

Pamela Tracy

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

—Isaiah 41:10

To my father, Albert Hammonds Tracy,

who continually demonstrated that fatherhood

wasn’t a job, it was a passion.

Also, as always, to the people who help along

the way to completion: my editors, my critique

group, my husband and son, and special thanks to

Roxanne Gould and Paige Dooley—

my final readers.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

PROLOGUE

Six Months Ago

The bank teller flinched and tried to go faster. Tried being the operative word. She was going as fast as her shaking hands would allow. As she continued to stuff money into the old, blue backpack, he managed a quick look at the customers. Some were hunkered down on all fours. One big man in a wrinkled business suit sobbed louder than the pair of twentysomethings next to him. He never moved his face from between his legs. The twentysomethings did a strange hiccupy thing when they looked at the bleeding security guard. They stopped making any noise at all when they looked at him and his gun. Fear was a powerful motivator. Their forgotten paychecks and deposit slips lay on the floor beside their purses.

Funny how money became unimportant when faced with mortality.

He could see the frantic activity around him, feel the raw energy. He planned for the robbery to take six minutes. He knew the response time, and he knew the dangers of the getaway. Before entering the bank, he’d put an orange cone at the lot’s entry. It wouldn’t completely deter, but it might keep someone new from entering the bank for at least six minutes. Every detail had been perfectly planned, and in this moment, he felt a clarity he would never forget.

Without taking his eyes off the teller, he carefully pulled a pencil from his pocket, inserted it under his mask and scratched at a nonexistent itch. He intended to leave a pencil behind. Not the one he scratched with, but an identical one. One that had taken him three days to snatch; one that did not have his fingerprints on it, but someone else’s.

He moaned in pretend relief. Then he lay the other pencil on the counter.

Ingenious.

He’d chosen the mask wisely, too. He wasn’t wearing a boring black ski mask or impersonating some ex-president. Instead, he looked like a walking maggot infestation. The larvae had taken over his head, neck, and only those with very strong stomachs would wonder what was going on under his plain blue jacket. No one looked especially inclined to get too close.