The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “The leers. All those references to ‘getting laid.’”
    He pushed away his plate, leaving his pancakes half eaten, eyeing her with distaste. “Here’s the way I see it. Rich girl thinks she can add a little excitement to her life by slumming it with a guy like me. Am I wrong?”
    She reminded herself who had the upper hand. “Well, the experience is definitely making me rethink the importance of decent table manners.” She gave him the same dead-eye look she gave her sibs when they misbehaved. “Tell me where we’re going.”
    “ I’m going to Caddo Lake. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be going to the airport.”
    “Excuse me.” A sixtyish woman in a peach pantsuit approached their booth. The woman gestured toward a nearby table where a jowly man with a walrus mustache pretended to look in the opposite direction. “My husband, Conrad, said I should mind my own business, but I couldn’t help noticing …” She stared at Lucy. “Has anybody ever told you that you look like the president’s daughter? That Lucy character.”
    “She hears it all the time,” Panda said. He looked across the table at Lucy and said in fluent Spanish, “ Ella es otra persona que piensa que te pareces a Lucy Jorik. ” And then, to the woman, “Her English ain’t too good.”
    “It’s amazing,” the woman said. “’Course, now that I’m closer, I can see she’s a lot younger. Hope she doesn’t grow up to be like her.”
    Panda nodded. “Another spoiled brat who thinks the world owes her.”
    Lucy didn’t like that at all, but peach pantsuit lady was on a roll. “I used to admire the way President Jorik raised her kids, but obviously she missed something with that Lucy. Running out on the Beaudine boy. I see his mama’s television show all the time. And Conrad’s a big golfer. He never misses watching any tournament where Dallas Beaudine’s playing.”
    “I guess some women don’t know what’s good for them,” Panda agreed.
    “Confidentially, neither does Conrad.” She smiled at Lucy. “Well, y’all have a nice day. Sorry to have bothered you.”
    “No bother,” he said, as courteous as a small-town preacher. But the moment she disappeared, he crumpled his napkin. “Let’s get the hell out of here before more of your fan club shows up. I don’t need this crap.”
    “Snarl all you want,” she told him. “You’re the one who invited me on this joy ride, and I’m not calling it off.”
    He tossed some bills on the table a lot harder than he needed to. “Your funeral.”

Chapter Four

    T HE SMALL RENTAL HOUSE SAT on one of Caddo Lake’s hidden bayous. A pair of aging window air conditioners protruded from the faded mustard-colored siding, and a square of artificial turf covered the front stoop. They’d spent the previous night at a motel near Nacogdoches, where Panda had made a point of ignoring her. Early this morning, they’d headed northeast toward the lake, which sat on the Texas-Louisiana border and, according to the pamphlet she’d picked up when they stopped for gas, was the largest freshwater lake in the South—and surely the spookiest, with its primordial swamps rising out of brown water.
    The house was shabby but clean, with a small living room, two even smaller bedrooms, and an old-fashioned kitchen. Lucy chose the room with twin beds. The orange plaid wallpaper curled at the seams and clashed with the cheap purple and green floral quilted bedspread, but she was too grateful to have a wall between her bed and Panda’s to care.
    She changed into her shorts and made her way to the kitchen. It was outfitted with metal cabinets, worn countertops, and a gray vinyl floor. The window above the sink looked out over the bayou, and a nearby door led to a small wooden deck that held a molded plastic table, webbed lawn chairs, a propane grill, and some fishing gear.
    She found Panda gazing out at the palmetto banking the bayou, his feet