~ No Escape From Love ~

by

Jeannine D. Van Eperen

The bus pulled into the station in downtown Chicago.

As Felicity picked up her suitcase and disembarked, she got a prickly sensation on the back of her neck. She glanced around, noticing among the winos and scruffy looking people a well-dressed male figure in the shadows who quickly turn away. Had Bruno Fuller’s men already learned she’d left town? Was he one? In her terror she felt the oppressive humidity and heat suffocate her. The putrid smell of the terminal assailed her nostrils. She wanted nothing more than to leave the cursed place she had arrived at and continue moving. Felicity saw a bus close its doors in preparation to leave. She ran to it, hammered on the glass, and bounded up the steps as soon as the driver opened the doorway.

“Ticket, lady,” the driver said.

“No ticket. I’ll pay you.”

“Where to?”

“Uh, where are you heading?”

The driver gave her a quizzical glance, but made no remark about her ignorance. “This bus goes as far as Oklahoma City, ma’am. Is that how far you want to go? Makes stops in St. Louis, Kansas City, and lots of little places in between.”

Felicity set her suitcase on the floor as the man talked. Jumbled thoughts ran across her mind. There probably was a sign on the front of the bus denoting its destination of Oklahoma City. Police might be looking for her, too. She took a deep breath. Both types of men, crooks and police, at the moment, were equally distasteful. She wanted no part of either.

“If I buy a ticket to Oklahoma City, can I get off somewhere else and then get a later bus?”

“Sure. That what you want to do?”

She shrugged, wishing she was not so scared and so tired.

“Why don’t you just take a seat right there?” He indicated a space several rows behind him. “When I get out on the highway, then you let me know.”

“You’ll trust me?”

“Why sure. Don’t think you’re out to stiff me, are you, ma’am?” He grinned broadly, white teeth gleaming in his dark face. “I gets lotsa ladies in your position, and I ain’t been taken advantage of yet. Don’t think you’re gonna be the first.”

Felicity shoved her suitcase down the aisle and slipped into the empty seat. Few people were on the bus, but she suspected that business would pick up. If it weren’t for dire circumstances, she certainly would not choose the wee hours of the morning to board a bus. She glanced at her watch. Two forty-three. She closed her eyes to rest them for a moment. Sleep quickly overtook her.

~ * ~

Felicity’s body convulsed as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Her heart beat wildly in fear before she gained full consciousness.

“Ma’am. Ma’am. I hate to wake you, but we’re at a rest stop, and now seems like a good time for you to pay for your ride.” The bus driver’s dark, pleasant face hovered in her view.

“Heavens.” She blinked her eyes as the bus’s inside overhead lights glared, and glanced to the side while her eyes adjusted. Outside her window tall pole lamps brightened the rural area and travelers milled around stretching their legs. “I’m sorry. I meant to tell you right away.”

The driver smiled genially. “No problem. It’s just that if a supervisor came on now, he’d wonder why you didn’t have a ticket. And I don’t need no problems. Got enough as it is.”

“I know what you mean.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll pay for Oklahoma City, but I might get off in Tulsa or somewhere in between and then finish the trip later.”

“Or if you find a place you like, you can get a refund. If you don’t mind my saying, I see a lot of women, like you, running away from their husbands.” He shook his head. “Never could understand why some men are such brutes.”

Felicity looked away. Let him think what he wants, she thought, and wished her flight was that uncomplicated. An unwanted husband would be easier to elude. Police wanting her to testify and crooks wanting her dead--dead witnesses can’t talk--loomed more terrifying in her mind.

At first she had every intention of testifying, she did, in fact, tell all to the police, to the district attorney, and the grand jury. She, alone, remained alive to tell of the carnage, her husband’s death, and the deaths of two others, innocent bystanders like her. Then came the telephone rings, muffled threats, the sense of being watched. Police guarding gave her a sense of security until she heard the evening news and learned the one other witness had been found dead. Within a half-hour, she had thrown clothes in a small suitcase and fled, hoping she lost everyone who tailed her. She still wore the hunter green suit she wore to work, as well as high heels.

After purchasing her ticket and after the driver walked away, she looked down at her left hand. On her finger was the diamond wedding ring Ron had placed there ten months ago. Now, she removed it, and shoved it into a change purse deep into the recesses of her black leather handbag. Felicity wanted to fling the ring away, but was too practical. She might need to pawn it. Her funds would not last forever.

Before the other passengers returned, she opened her suitcase, took out white sneakers and changed her shoes.

Felicity caught snatches of sleep as the bus sped down highways, skirting past some cities and stopping in others. Mostly, she kept to her seat, ignoring terminals and rest stops, hurrying out to restaurants only when her stomach rumbled or when a driver said everyone must leave the bus. Drivers, all sizes and colors, came and went as did the day and night. Several times someone took a seat beside her. A few tried to start up a conversation, but she turned her head away and peered out at the highway and countryside, from rolling green hills to red clay to stark somewhat grey-looking land, spacious with little between each town except miles. That’s just what she wanted miles, distance, and more distance between her and those who would hunt her. But could she travel far enough to escape?