And part of the problem was that he couldn’t stop thinking about Gabriela. He felt something for her that he shouldn’t, as if feelings really did reside in the heart. Which, in Michael’s case, still belonged to Jackson Porter.
Maybe he just felt guilty about hurting the girl’s feelings so terribly. Sighing, he leaned his head against the window next to his seat and stared out at the landscape as it flashed by. He was moving so fast it was almost impossible to discern one place from the next. He’d passed a blur of city buildings, a blur of farmland, a blur of forest. Now it was an endless sea of houses and apartment complexes, streaming by in streaks of color.
It had been a busy day. He’d rested far better than he’d expected the night before, sleeping in the same dark alley where he’d ended up after fleeing from Gabriela. But he woke up feeling fresh and nervously excited about getting on with his new life, especially by finding Sarah. And then the day had unfolded in a flurry of errands to prepare for his trip.
He’d written a short note to Jackson Porter’s family and dropped it off at their apartment, unable to think of a better way to do it than the old-school method of pen and paper. He had to hope his handwriting hadn’t changed when he took over Jackson’s body and that Kaine didn’t have more people watching the house. The message was brief to lessen the risk of saying something that didn’t sound like their boy, simply telling them that he had things he wanted to see in the world, things he wanted to do. That he was sorry for taking so much money but he wanted them to know he’d be okay. That maybe he’d come back someday.
Blah, blah, blah.
It was, of course, ridiculous. They’d call the police and come looking for him, no matter what he wrote. But at least they’d know he was alive. After seeing the broken door, their minds would no doubt go wild with awful possibilities of where he might be.
He signed the letter, saying he loved them. Which almost made him choke up, because it felt as if he were saying it to the parents he’d known in Lifeblood Deep. The ones who still felt like his parents. Whom he’d never see again.
After showering and eating, he’d packed a suitcase he found in Jackson’s closet, then stood for a moment in the hallway outside the apartment. The apartment that should’ve felt like home but didn’t. As for the broken door, he didn’t know what to do, so he propped it up against the wall. Who knew what they’d think. Feeling a sadness that just confused him even more, he walked away.
The first thing he’d done after that was go to a bank station. He needed to make sure that what he’d done on Jackson’s NetScreen had worked. He breathed a great sigh of relief when the account of one Michael Peterson appeared, filled with plenty of money. From there Michael went to a Net store and bought one of the finest EarCuffs on the market, then had the old one destroyed and the new one installed. He arranged his travel and booked a hotel in a town near Sarah’s, and now here he was, on a train, heading toward the girl who’d become one of his two best friends. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been melting in a pool of lava. Hopefully she’d fared better in real life.
The dizzying view rushing by outside the window was starting to make him queasy. He shifted and scanned the other passengers sitting around him. The seats of the train alternated direction so that groups of people could face each other and chat during the trip. His gaze fell on a woman about five rows away, whose eyes met his for the briefest of moments. She quickly—too quickly—looked down and studied something intently on her NetScreen.
She was older, maybe sixty, dark hair streaked with gray. She was slightly plump, wearing a blouse and skirt, her legs crossed primly at the ankles.
And Michael had no doubt that she’d been staring at him for as long as he’d been looking out the window. Watching him.
He felt a chill.
His gaze flickered back to the woman every few seconds, waiting to catch her staring again. But she didn’t return the look, not once, removing any doubt he might have had that the woman had been casually watching him. No person would naturally resist at least a cursory glance when being stared at. There could be other reasons why a creepy woman had been observing a kid, but only one seemed likely to Michael in this case.
Kaine.
Did the Tangent already have spies trailing him, watching him? Could Kaine really be that all-knowing? Michael had been good at deception in his old life, and he thought he’d covered his bases pretty well in escaping and creating a new identity.