“Do you go to Valley High,” one of the girls asked her.

Do I look that young?

“UCLA, actually,” Eliza lied.

“Cool.”

A city bus was pulling up to the curb, and Eliza made her break. “Nice talking to ya,” she said, waving at the girls.

Eliza overpaid the bus fair and found a seat by the back door. Acting the part of clueless kid, she tucked ear buds in her ears and pretended to listen to music. A couple of rough twenty-year-old kids watched her from across the aisle, trying to get her attention with a smile.

Five stops from the movie theater, Eliza stepped off the bus just as the door was closing. Two blocks on foot, she found a bathroom at a fast food restaurant. She changed back into age appropriate clothes. One taxi ride later and she was sipping a cocktail at an outside lounge in Santa Monica.

No Joe.

No Dean.

No Jim.

After the third time her cell phone rang, she finally turned it off.

A smile crept onto her lips. You still have it, Lisa. She’d manage to escape those following her and fade into the world undetected.

She managed to hide.

Again.

****

Carter debated on using Samantha’s key and letting himself into Eliza’s home to wait for her return. But then what? She’d kick his ass out, and he’d be no closer to answers than he was when she stormed out of his hotel room.

Blake knew nothing. And Samantha knew even less. How was it that two women as close as they were could keep deep secrets from the other for so long? Carter thought men held the award for silence.

Apparently, he needed to reevaluate his assumptions.

Blake pulled a couple of favors and discovered that before Eliza was nineteen years old she didn’t exist. There were no school records, no teenage job, and no driver’s license at sixteen. Carter would have dug deeper but couldn’t shake the feeling that he was violating her privacy.

After the third time he called her cell phone, he left a simple message. “Call me.”

She had to know they were all worried. Detectives don’t knock on your door every day and ask to talk to you without explanation.

Or did they?

Carter ran his hand through his hair in frustration.

Every time he watched the media coverage of his press conference, he was struck with how amazing Eliza appeared before the cameras. She couldn’t have been more perfect from the way she dressed to the way she teased the reporters. If he could convince her to be his wife, if only for a little while, his political future would be that much more secure. At least that’s what he told himself. He knew that marrying her might give them both a reason to give into the simmering heat between them. The hammering inside his chest wasn’t due to his political career.

Her flat out refusal of his proposal shot his plans to hell. He should have expected it. Her utter revulsion to the idea rocked his world and not in a good way. He knew now he’d blown his proposal. But that wasn’t going to stop him from making Eliza his wife. He just needed to change his strategy.

His thoughts swam around about how to do that when his cell phone rang.

“Yeah?”

“She’s home.” It was Joe who had taken watch over Eliza’s house awaiting her arrival.

“What about the two cops? They still hanging around?” According to Joe’s earlier conversation the detectives who escorted Eliza from the hotel were just as dumbfounded when she disappeared in a movie theater as Joe was. “She vanished like a pro, boss,” Joe had told him. “She’s done it before.”

“They took off as soon as she showed up.”

Carter wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Okay. I’m on my way. Go ahead and take off once I get there. Get some sleep. I think we’re all going to need some.” Carter hung up, grabbed his keys, and left his house. Even if Eliza didn’t tell him what was going on, he wasn’t going to leave until he knew she was safe.

Cross-town traffic was light, and he made it to her Tarzana home in less than twenty minutes. He signaled Joe who waved back and left once Carter parked in her driveway.

A shadow behind the living room window, followed by the curtain moving made him realize that he was stalling. Sitting in her driveway like a stalker wasn’t his style.

He pushed out of the car and marched to her door.

He knocked but she didn’t answer.

“I know you’re home, Eliza,” he said through the door.

After knocking a second time, he said. “I’m not leaving.”

He heard the click of locks disengaging before she opened the door.

Her hair had been brushed out, her makeup scrubbed clean from her face. Even still, she was beautiful. Although there was a heaviness in her gaze he hadn’t seen before. Worry maybe or perhaps it was doubt.

She stepped away from the door in a silent invitation for him to enter.

At least she gave him that small comfort.

He closed the door and walked into the hall.

She quickly stepped behind him and slid the deadbolt in place. The move caught him as strange, but he didn’t comment.

Walking past him she said, “If I wanted to talk to you I would have called.”

Carter followed her into her kitchen.

“When would that have been? Tomorrow? The next day?”

Water boiled on her stove inside a kettle, and the steam was starting to hum. Without an invitation to sit, Carter leaned against the wall and watched her mill about the kitchen as she made herself a cup of tea.

“Maybe.”

Translation, no. Damn she was stubborn.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

She ripped open a tea bag and placed the packet inside a cup. Each movement was slow and deliberate. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

From the confusion set behind her eyes, he believed she was just as torn about revealing her secrets as he was torn up for not knowing them.

“Are you going to tell me anything? Like did you know those detectives?” He asked both questions deliberately.

Unfortunately, she didn’t fall for his bait. “I’ll tell you what I want, when I want. Yes and no questions aren’t going to work to whittle away answers.”

An entire line of questions, ones he’d practiced en route to her home, now needed to be rewritten in his head. “I hope you know you can trust me.” Not a question. She couldn’t diss him for that.

“This isn’t about trust.”

He should take some comfort in that.

She brought the tea up to her lips and blew across the hot beverage. She peeked over the brim to look at him.