Fight or Flight
Fight or Flight
By Natalie J. Damschroder
Eighteen years ago, a group of men killed Regan Miller’s boyfriend and tried to kidnap her daughter, Kelsey. Since then they have lived in hiding, always vigilant and never getting close to anyone.
When Kelsey goes away to college, Regan finally begins to relax. She even starts to think she can have a real relationship, perhaps with her flirtatious neighbor, Tyler Sloane. Then Regan is attacked again.
Desperate to get to her daughter, Regan accepts Tyler’s help—despite her suspicions about him. She knows nothing about Tyler but he knows a shocking amount about her past. Tyler can’t tell her what he knows or who he works for, but he insists she can’t face her enemies without him. Tired of living in fear, Regan is ready to take the offensive, with Tyler by her side. But is she relying too much on a man she can’t trust—and falling for him, too?
Dear Reader,
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For Vicky B and DeAnn, because of the Mom Finger.
Dedicated in memory of my mother, Teresa Miller, for a variety of reasons. No one was ever more supportive or proud of me, or gave me such fodder for a story like this. I love you.
Special thanks to Liz Bass, my editor, for being such an absolute delight to work with; to the rest of the acquisition team for giving the yay vote for this book; to Tracy Madison, the most enthusiastic critique partner in the world, without whom none of my characters would feel any emotions; and most of all, to my Boot Squad, Megan Hart, Vicki Smith, Misty Simon, and Vicky Burkholder, who have elevated this journey to something I could never have imagined five years ago.
Regan Miller followed her daughter Kelsey up the dormitory stairwell, their footsteps thudding on the cement. Clangs, shouts and squeals echoed around them, the acoustics making it difficult to tell where the sounds originated. Regan gripped the handrail to keep herself from putting a hand on her daughter’s back to urge her upward.
When they reached the third floor, Kelsey flashed a grin over her shoulder. “This is it.”
Regan managed to smile back, but noted that someone had propped open the stairwell door with a folded piece of paper. She toed the paper out and let the door close, then nudged it with her fingertips. It drifted open again. Great. The latch didn’t work.
“Don’t use the stairs when you’re by yourself, Kelsey.”
“I know, Mom.”
Regan could almost hear the eye roll. At least she’d kept the sarcasm out of her voice. “What’s your room number again?”
“Three ten.” Kelsey stopped halfway down the hall, distant from both elevator and stairwells. Some of Regan’s tension eased.
The door to room 310 was locked, and Kelsey gleefully used her key to open it. Regan suppressed a sigh. Until the full-tuition scholarship had come through, she hadn’t been willing to consider letting Kelsey go away to college. Even afterward she’d been reluctant, since the scholarship had an anonymous backer. But Kelsey had pitched a fit over her mother’s insane caution—only the third time she’d ever rebelled—and Regan had finally let her win one. Watching her joy now, Regan was glad.
The suite’s center room held four built-in desks. Twin beds showed through the small gaps in the slightly open sliding wooden doors on either side of the room. Regan went straight ahead to the large window that looked out over the grounds behind the building rather than the parking lot. Kelsey wouldn’t be able to see who was coming in the main entrance, but she’d be less vulnerable on this side.
“There’s a tree out here, Kels.” She glanced behind her. Her daughter had gone into the left bedroom. “It’s close to the window.” She slid it open, grimacing against the late-August heat, and flipped up one of the hooks holding the screen in place. “You can shove this out and climb out onto the limb, and then—”
“Mom, let it rest, will you?” Kelsey came up behind her and gently pushed the window closed. “You’ve trained me to recognize all this stuff, but when have we ever needed to use it?”
Regan hesitated, then stroked her hand down Kelsey’s long brown hair. “You’re right. We haven’t.” Not that Kelsey could remember, which made Regan both damned grateful and more afraid every day. “I just—”
“I know what you just. You don’t have to explain.”
Regan could see she meant it and swallowed the guilt. She never had explained, not fully. She hadn’t wanted to frighten her daughter with the story of her attempted kidnapping. Kelsey deserved to know about it, and how it connected to her father’s death before she was born, but Regan didn’t know how to tell her. Why would an eighteen-year-old care about a five-minute event that occurred so long ago? How could she understand why Regan had let a few words dictate every decision she’d made for her daughter’s entire life?
Anyway, now wasn’t the time. Kelsey had never known a different way to live and had come to accept her mother’s idiosyncrasies—or mental illness, as she often called it. Regan had always struggled between keeping her daughter safe and making her life as normal as possible. Today’s milestone illustrated her success at both, but made her think maybe it was time to come clean. Soon. It had waited eighteen years, it could wait a few more weeks. Give her time to figure out
how
to explain, and brace herself for all the questions she had no answers for.
“Besides, I already checked out both bedrooms,” Kelsey said. “That one,” she pointed to the left, “has a closer branch. And the bathroom is a deathtrap or a shelter, depending on whether we’re talking fire or hurricane.”
“Oh, baby.” Regan pulled her into a tight hug. “I love you.”
Kelsey’s response was muffled, but Regan heard her. Her heart welled with joy and fear. Her arms tightened until Kelsey squeaked, but she hung on, trying to memorize her daughter’s scent, the feel of her hair against her cheek. Trying to hold it together when all her cells seemed primed to explode.
“Hey, y’all!”
They broke apart and turned to the pixie who’d burst into the room. Her short hair spiked and swirled from her scalp, and even the tallest spike only came to Kelsey’s shoulder. She was dainty from the teardrop earrings on her mini earlobes to the size five feet dancing toward Regan and Kelsey.
“I’m Van. Short for Savannah, of course, but that’s such a prissy name I never use it. Kelsey, right? When we got the letter saying who our roommates would be, I glommed on to you right away.” She eyed Kelsey up and down. “Yep, we’re gonna be friends, I can just tell.”
Kelsey’s eyes sparkled in amusement when she looked at her mother, and Regan winked. Van was right. Her bubbly charisma would complement Kelsey’s serenity. But Regan sensed aural exhaustion barreling toward them. How could anyone with such a strong southern accent talk so fast?
Van turned her attention to Regan. “And you must be Kelsey’s sister. Let me guess, I’m good at this.” She pressed a finger to her lips and narrowed her eyes. “You’re probably twenty-five, twenty-six. Yeah, you got the look of a woman who’s been in the world a while.”
Regan laughed. “Van, you may be southern, but you’ve definitely kissed the blarney stone.”
Van looked between them, puzzled. “What? You’re twenty-eight? I’m usually within two years.”
“She’s my mother. She’s thirty-seven.”
“No
way!
” Her mouth dropped open. “You gotta tell me what you use on your face. You don’t look near thirty!”
“Thank you, Van.” Regan held out her hand, still chuckling. “Regan Miller.”
“Pleased to meet ya. Wow.” She shook her head. “So anyway, I took this room.” She pointed to the left. “I haven’t met the others yet. Wanna share? I know I like you and you’ll be a considerate roommate. But it won’t hurt my feelings if you say no, ’cause I know my mouth keeps runnin’ like that battery bunny, you know, in the commercials? I even annoy myself.”
“I’d love to room with you,” Kelsey said. “Mom, let’s go start unloading my stuff. Will you let me use the elevator?”
“Of course I will.” They started out of the room, and Regan gave Kelsey a little shove. “It’s the least I can do, since you’ll be carrying all the heavy stuff.”
“As if.”
They spent the next two hours unloading Kelsey’s belongings from the back of the Highlander and getting it put away in the dorm room. At noon, Regan took Kelsey and Van to lunch. Van’s parents had dropped her off the night before, since they had a longer drive home to Georgia than Regan did to nearby Columbus. Regan asked Van, once they’d been served their wraps at the little bistro downtown, how she’d ended up in a small college in Ohio.
“My dad’s from Ohio, actually. My mother is a proper southern belle and refused to move. They met at a conference—they’re both Realtors with a capital R—and did the long-distance thing for about a year until Momma got pregnant with me. You know, it’s nice to be able to say that without worrying about bein’ judged. Not that I care.” She took a large bite of her wrap and chewed furiously before continuing. “It’s not like I did something wrong, and anyway, everyone has something they could be ashamed of if they really wanted to be. But since you were a teenage mom, you, like, automatically won’t judge me, right?”
“Right.” Being a teen mom had become the least of Regan’s problems, but she imagined it had been a bigger deal for Van’s mother. “So, Ohio?” she prodded.
Van flashed a grin. “My dad grew up in Delaware, you know, outside Columbus? And he went to Ohio Wesleyan and really
really
wanted me to go there. Momma of course said a nice southern university would be best, but dad convinced her my personality’s not quite nice southern, you know? I didn’t get into OWU, it was probably my essay, who knows how people will take personal politics, right? So this was the next best thing. Excuse me, I gotta tinkle.” She got up and trotted toward the restrooms, and the silence was almost oppressive.
“Sure you can handle her?”
Kelsey shrugged and licked mayonnaise off her thumb. “She’s cool. I can tune her out and she won’t care. And I won’t have to talk much.”
Regan pulled out a notebook. “So, your room’s mostly settled. You have registration this afternoon, and we can take a tour of the campus from the admissions building.”
“You don’t have to stay, Mom. I mean, not overnight,” she hastened to clarify, obviously seeing the flicker of hurt Regan hadn’t been able to control. “I want you to take the tour and everything. But there’s no sense paying for a hotel room. Tomorrow I can buy my books and scope out my classrooms and stuff, and you’ll be bored.”
Of course she wouldn’t, but Regan understood. She’d expected it, even. “Okay, then. I’ll leave after dinner. It’s only a two-hour drive, and there will be less traffic at night. Easier—”
“To spot a tail. I know.” There was the eye roll. “Thanks, Mom.”
Regan inhaled deeply against the burn of tears in her throat. “You’re welcome.”
She wasn’t the only parent leaving after dinner. The parking lot was full of tearful goodbyes and teenage exasperation. The kids’ excitement was intoxicating, though, and Regan could barely speak past the ball of emotion in her chest. She’d had a lot of practice combating her fears and was pretty sure Kelsey hadn’t been aware of the panic threatening to overtake her. Threatening to make her shove the teenager back in the SUV and roar out of there. But she had nothing to distract herself from those fears all the way home.
Kelsey’s school, Whetstone University, was about two hours south of their home on the outskirts of Columbus. Not far at all for routine weekend driving, but too long when your thoughts were full of the past and dread of the future.
Regan had avoided thinking about Kelsey’s father today, but really, when most of the parents were in couple units, it was hard to block out how alone she was. She wondered what today would have been like if Scott had lived.
Inevitably, memories flooded her mind. The dark, empty road ahead required little concentration, and it hurt too much to hold back thoughts of the past. There was no one to hide them from now, so she relaxed and let them flow.
She and Scott met when they were both seventeen and enrolled in an elite boarding school in California. Scott’s parents were high-ranking Air Force officers, and he was the third Harrison to go through the Blaydes Academy. He was brilliant, taking courses three years above his age level and starring as the school’s quarterback.
On the other hand, Regan’s poor, uneducated, miserable parents had died in a home invasion when she was twelve. The police and social workers Regan had encountered after the crime had been callous and cold, on top of the trauma of hearing her parents killed while she hid in the basement. “Mistrust of authority” had probably been part of every psychological assessment she’d ever had, and still drove many of her decisions. She disrupted an orphanage for a few years, then out of desperation one of the social workers did some research, found the Academy and pushed Regan into applying. She’d gone from being a freak to being one of the crowd, and thrived for the first time in her life.
Working on a science project together, she and Scott fell instantly and powerfully in love. Most people didn’t think teenagers could fall so hard and so honestly, but they had. Unfortunately, no matter how real their love, they had still been young. She’d gotten pregnant in the middle of their senior year, and suddenly any self-confidence and hope she’d gained at the academy disappeared. Everything frightened her. Being a mother. Having to drop out of school. What Scott’s parents would say, and especially that they’d take him away from her. He insisted they wouldn’t, they couldn’t, but he’d gone home to tell them alone, and her fear had built every minute he was away.
Even the worst scenarios she’d conjured hadn’t come close to what actually happened.
Lights flashed in the rearview mirror and Regan blinked, astonished to find tears blurring her vision. She glanced at the speedometer, but she was cruising at the speed limit. She looked back in the rearview mirror. The red and blue lights were flashing from the dash. It was an unmarked car, and this was a deserted highway in a rural area.
Her breathing suddenly quick and sharp, she kept her speed but turned on her hazard lights, then retrieved her cell phone from the console between the seats. She held it up and flipped it open, making a big show of it, and pressed the buttons for the police. Behind her, the siren chirped once.
“State police.”
“I’m going the speed limit on a deserted highway being followed by an unmarked police car, and before I pull over I want to be sure it’s really the police.” She related her location and vehicle information, maintaining her speed while the dispatcher put her on hold. A few moments later, the woman came back on.
“Trooper Driscoll is stopping you for a non-working tail light, ma’am. It’s safe to pull over. You may remain on the line if it will make you more comfortable.”
“Thank you.” Regan maneuvered to the shoulder and waited for the trooper, her shoulders burning with tension.
“He’s still in the car,” she told the dispatcher.
“Standard procedure, ma’am. He’s running your information.”
Regan bent to get her registration and proof of insurance from the glove compartment. When she straightened, the flashing lights reflected directly into her eyes, making her squint. She adjusted the mirror toward the ceiling. Her head began to throb, and she ran through evasive maneuvers in her mind.
A few minutes later the cop finally stepped out, adjusted his belt, and approached.
“He’s nearly to my window,” she reported. She rolled the window down an inch as the officer bent.
“Regan Miller?”
“Yes, officer.” He’d no doubt got her name off the plate registration, but it was still unnerving.
“May I see your license, registration, and proof of insurance, please?”
