“I’ll take the front.” I jumped into the cab before Mara could stop me, leaving her to squeeze in as fourth in the back.

As soon as we were off, the driver was talking—chatting with a working-class, New Orleans Yat accent, the low O’s and A’s reminding me vaguely of my time in Boston. I did my best to tune them out, rolling down my window for air then digging through my handbag for my cell phone.

I had turned my phone off deliberately while paying for long-term parking at the airport. My friends had encouraged me not to leave my expensive Beemer in the long-term lot at the airport, but with the way things had been going in my life, I couldn’t care less about seeing my car or returning to my old life again.

Although this weekend getaway was meant to be temporary, there were many reasons for me to avoid going home.

My hands were trembling as I slid the phone out, leaning my body toward the window to get some privacy. I pressed the on button and waited, watching as the Apple symbol appeared and my home screen bloomed into view.

No beeps, no ringing. Maybe if I’m lucky, I thought…

But then my phone came to life like the half-dead villain in a horror movie, one sharp ding followed by another.

“My, my! Someone’s awfully popular,” Elizabeth teased from the backseat. I pretended I couldn’t hear over the rushing wind flowing in from my window.

“Probably her yoga clients wondering when she’s coming back,” Bri said, quietly. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Yeah, my yoga clients. All five of them.

“Or all her loving Instagram followers,” Mara chirped. I noticed the sarcasm dripping from her voice but chose to ignore it. I had bigger things to worry about than Rosalee’s bulldog of a best friend.

Since leaving the nursing field and opening my own fitness studio, I’d failed miserably at building my client list, and I was struggling to keep the lights on and water running in my corner-lot building with its slow, non-existent daytime traffic. The yoga studio was an epic failure, by any measure. Sure, I had lots of Instagram and Twitter followers who liked my fitness posts and seemingly random selfies, but that didn’t always compute into actual interest in my yoga classes. There were companies that offered me free products sometimes, but products don’t pay the bills…

There were ten messages waiting in my text app. I clicked on the first one, tucking the phone close to my chest and toward the window, and scanned the words. They were written in all caps.

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE BITCH.

And the second one:

I KNOW WHERE YOU WENT AND I’M COMING.