Betrayal - Fern Michaels [83]
That was about to change. Tonight was the seventh anniversary of Alex’s death. The first year after Alex was murdered was a blur. The second year she spent planning. All of her and Alex’s holdings remained in Gertie’s name to this day. Since moving to Orlando, Kate hadn’t touched a penny of their money. She lived on what she earned as an employee of the government. She had excellent health coverage and a small life insurance policy.
Alex’s killer had eventually died of his wounds, inflicted by Alex. She supposed there was some sort of justice in that, but it hadn’t eased her grief. Coleman had made all the arrangements for Alex. He’d been cremated. His ashes were the only possession of her former life that she’d allowed herself to bring with her when she decided to relocate to Orlando.
It hadn’t been an easy decision given what she’d set out to do. She’d had to find the perfect job to fulfill her plan. That it was in Orlando was even better. She’d gone to a training center in DC for a few months after she was hired. She was a quick learner. Computers were her only friend now. Kate took to computers like a duck to water. She could find almost anything she needed to know. The one extravagance she allowed herself was a top-of-the-line computer system with 512 megabytes of RAM and an 80-gigabyte hard drive. She could view CDs and some DVDs. She had six USB ports, a camera, and a two-channel audio speaker. She had a scanner, a printer, and a fax machine. She’d recently purchased a digital camera. That was enough for her needs. Y2K had been a threat to those with a computer system of any kind. Banks, department stores, gas stations, anyplace that depended on Internet services, their computers would supposedly crash. Just as Kate had predicted, it never happened.
Kate didn’t feel the least bit of guilt for what she was preparing to do. It was all she had lived for the past five years. She had to do this. For Alex. For herself. And for all the innocent men who died in prison.
Tomorrow her coworkers would be shocked when she didn’t show up for work. After a while they would call only to find her telephone disconnected. Since her address was in her personnel file, they would come to check on her. She had arranged for her utilities to be disconnected at eight tomorrow morning. Garbage pickup had been discontinued. She didn’t need to worry about closing her bank accounts. She wouldn’t be making any deposits. She did all of her banking online. She received no mail, other than advertisements, so she didn’t need to cancel any magazine subscriptions. She wouldn’t be forwarding her mail to her new address. That was the point. She wanted to disappear. When she felt it was safe, she would call Gertie and tell her she’d moved. Only the name of the town, never the address. She hadn’t seen Gertie in five years. She called her once a week from a different pay phone each time. She wanted nothing that could be traced back to her. Investigators were sharp, with all the technology a mere click away. From that day forward, she hoped that finding her would be very difficult, if not impossible. And if she was found out, she’d simply face the music. She didn’t have much of a life anyway. It mattered little to her whether she spent the remainder of her life in some crummy rental apartment or a jail cell.
Kate Rocket had a mission to fulfill.
She removed all her clothes from the closet. She placed them inside a dark green lawn and leaf bag. Her shoes went, too. From the top shelf in the closet she removed a small black duffel bag she’d ordered from L.L.Bean. She had two pairs of jeans, a pair of khakis, a pair of black capris, and five white shirts she’d purchased online from The Gap stuffed inside the bag. Ten pairs of Victoria’s Secret plain white briefs and three bras. One long nightshirt. She had a pair of black slides and a pair of white