She sat upright and pried open her lids for a second or two but couldn’t focus. Her eyes were still too sensitive to the light. She struggled to lift her head. Nausea roiled in her stomach, and the bitter taste of bile was strong in her dry mouth.
Her entire body ached. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and the early morning sun beat relentlessly down on her.
It took several tries before her blurry vision settled into cohesion, and adrenaline kicked through her system, rapidly dispelling her symptoms.
Horror slammed through her as healed tattoos on her left upper arm and below her navel brought reality crashing in.
Her mind provided her with cold, hard facts gleaned from hours of staring at their files to keep her from panicking.
The card shook her to her core, and she shredded it before dumping the flowers in an outside trash can. She had hated lying to her curious colleagues, shrugging it off as a “thank you” from a former colleague.
The wind whipped a strand of hair across her face. It was not the shade of blonde she had dyed it for the last four years.
Instead, it nearly perfectly matched the dark brown of her natural color, and the usual irritation of the colored contacts, which made her eyes seem grayish-blue, was absent.
Without them, her eyes were the same intense azure as those of her mother and sister.
She spotted a black rucksack lying close to her and scrambled over the sand, hoping it contained clothes. She glanced up and froze with her hand on the leather bag.
The far-off drone of a car caught her attention, and shielding her eyes against the sun, Liz made out a road in the distance.
She dumped the bag’s contents on the sand and gratefully recognized sunscreen. After wiping the sand off with a small towel, Liz quickly rubbed the expensive moisturizing sunscreen over her sensitive skin.
She took a few careful sips before inspecting the bag’s contents. The care and thought someone took to provide these things made her frown.
She discovered a wallet with 500 dollars, a driver’s license for Elizabeth McGrath Rayburn with her correct date of birth and ID number tucked inside, and a photo of her mother and sister sitting on their porch in Glenwood.
“Damn it,” she groaned, another stabbing pain shooting through her brain.
A small envelope with her name in the elegant hand of Muriel Rayburn, Caleb’s mother, drew her attention.
Liz carefully pulled free the embossed off-white card.
Liz fingered the old-fashioned, filigreed ring with its sizable, tear-shaped blue-white diamond surrounded by tiny sapphires.
The memories arrived in flashes as she stared at those images.
The first grainy telephoto picture showed her taking the lead on her final Rayburn warehouse raid.
Her earpiece had buzzed with static, then stopped as the world exploded into white light. Her ears had rung like bells in a church tower as she lay on the ground staring up at the roof.
