Fight or Flight (16 page)

Regan smirked. “If you don’t lord it over me forever.”

She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but she finally accepted that whatever it was would include the entire group. Which made it all the more important to come up with a plan.

One putting them in control.

Tyler pulled up with the car and they all hurried into it. Regan got into the front seat, the déjà vu so strong she knelt on the edge of despair. Nothing was going to change. They were going to keep running and being attacked and running again, until they couldn’t run anymore. Or couldn’t fight. Either way, it would lead to failure.

“Don’t worry,” Tyler said. “I figured something out.”

“What?”

“When I realized you’d stopped here I remembered it.” He slowed for the red light and glanced at her. His lopsided smile reminded her of a little boy who’d made his mother a clay pencil holder. “My stepfather’s mother left me a house in Minnesota. I haven’t been there in years. A property management firm rents it for me, but no one is there right now.”

“Sounds convenient,” Regan retorted.

“It is.” Either oblivious to or ignoring her sarcasm, he explained, “I lived with my father growing up and saw my mother once a month. Dad hated my stepfather and was very resentful of my grandmother—step-grandmother, though I thought of her as blood—so I never told him when she left me the house. No one knows about it.”

“What about your stepfather?”

He went quiet even before he spoke. “He and my mother died in a plane crash when I was nineteen, four years before my grandmother passed away.”

“And the Harrisons don’t know about this place, either?”

“Nope.”

Regan was skeptical. What little she knew about the Harrisons pointed to their being the kind of people who learned every possible tidbit about those who worked for them.

But they needed a place.

“Did you see the guy in the bathroom?” she asked him.

“Just his feet.”

“Didn’t happen to recognize his feet, did you?”

Tyler chuckled. “No. Should I have?”

“He said his employer sent him.”

“Doesn’t mean his employer and mine are the same.” He glanced at her. “Really, Regan, I don’t think the Harrisons would have killed Alan the same night they sent me to protect you.”

Unless they’d recognized Tyler’s growing feelings for her and couldn’t trust him anymore.

It was the first time she’d thought of his feelings since she’d left the last hotel. It unlocked a floodgate of its own, and suddenly she was glad he’d found her. She rested her hand on the console between them and Tyler immediately took it in his, raising it to his lips and pressing a tender kiss to her knuckles. His fingers trembled as he lowered their hands to his thigh, and this time he stared straight ahead, obviously avoiding looking at her.

For the first time, Regan believed he cared about her. She’d scared him when she left. Her inner cynic reminded her he could have been scared about what the Harrisons would do when they realized he’d lost them, but she didn’t think, despite the performance he’d put on for the last two years, he was that good an actor.

Or maybe she just needed to believe in something new.

She looked over her shoulder. Tom cradled Kelsey on his lap, and Regan didn’t have the heart to tell him to put her in a seatbelt. His face was taut, his hands clutching her against him, and he even rocked forward and back as he watched the side mirror through his window.

“She’ll be okay, Tom,” she told him. “It’s just a sedative.” She hoped. There was no reason to believe otherwise, at least, not at this point. Kelsey’s breathing was still steady, and when she reached back to check the pulse in her wrist, it was strong.

Van, who held Kelsey’s lower legs on her lap, sighed. “Too bad I wasn’t there to help kick his butt.”

Regan turned around so Van didn’t see her smile. The girl was tough-minded and fearless, no doubt, but Regan didn’t think she had the kind of background that led to a lot of butt-kicking.

Then again, neither did she or Kelsey. Not in actuality.

“So what happens after we get to this house?” she asked Tyler. “We can’t just keep running. We have to go on the offensive or this will be a very short game. One we’ll lose.”

Tyler squeezed her hand. “We’re going to try,
again
, to rest and get clean and up to full power. Then we’ll figure it out.”

Regan didn’t say so, but she planned to have something figured out long before then.

Three days passed before they had a workable set of plans in place.

They’d arrived at the house, Kelsey awake and fine, if groggy, and once Regan discovered how truly isolated they were—the bungalow was a mile up a private dirt lane twenty miles from the nearest town with no TV, phone, internet access, or cell signal—she finally relaxed.

The kids didn’t, of course. After the first day, which they spent sleeping and chopping wood and preparing meals and discussing the little they knew of their situation, all three were going stir crazy. The one saving grace was the stereo system and collection of CDs in the master bedroom upstairs, and on the second day the kids remained up there, listening to music, dancing, and hopefully nothing else. In the meantime, Tyler insisted Regan rest until the dark circles disappeared. He prescribed soaks in the hot tub—alone—a novel, and more sleep than she’d managed since Kelsey left for school. When she stopped fighting him and succumbed, she found her injuries finally began to heal, aches and pains faded, and her mind cleared.

On the third day, she and Tyler schemed. By dinnertime, they had a plan Regan was okay with and Tyler was certain would lead to the solutions they sought.

The kids didn’t agree.

“What’s the goal here?” Kelsey scooped mashed potatoes onto her plate and traded them with Van for the meatloaf. “You’re walking right into the lion’s den.”

“But the enemy is the crocodile,” Tyler said. Something in his voice made Regan turn sharply, but he didn’t
look
like he’d said anything significant. He spooned peas onto his plate and handed the bowl to Regan, stopping in midair when he found her staring at him. “What?”

“What do you mean, crocodile?”

He smirked. “I mean the lion isn’t the enemy, the crocodile is. So walking into the lion’s den isn’t unsafe.”

“Hmm.” She studied him for another few seconds, sure there’d been a hard undercurrent in his tone.

“Mom.” Kelsey waved her fork. “Goal? Den? What’s the point of going out there?”

“I need to talk to the Harrisons and find out what’s going on,” she explained. “If they are the ones after us, I want to find a way to stop them. Running from state to state won’t get us anywhere, and I can’t keep Van and Tom out here any longer. Him missing tonight’s game is already going to send up red flags.” He’d notified his coach he was sick, but this had already gone on too long. Regan couldn’t think about how their parents would feel if they knew their kids were missing. “If they aren’t the ones after us, they can tell us who is, and fill in the blanks on their plans.”

“But we won’t have any way to contact you, or know if you’re okay,” Kelsey argued.

Regan swallowed against the terror her daughter’s what-if mentality stirred up. Leaving Kelsey went against every instinct she’d developed for eighteen years. “I’ll check in,” she tried to say casually. If Kelsey balked too hard at this, Regan wasn’t sure she could go through with it.

“How? We have no phone and no service here.”

“I have a way.” Tyler outlined his plan to send a telegram to the office in the nearest town and have it delivered. “The courier service here is very well known and has distinctive uniforms.”

“Doesn’t sound very secure to me.” Tom set down his fork. “Sorry, but that could be easily compromised.”

Tyler nodded. “It’s unlikely but not impossible. So we have a code word to legitimize it for you. We’ll only be gone three days, four maximum,” he assured them. “This is a recon mission, and I trust the Harrisons.”

“But not completely.” Kelsey twirled her fork in her potatoes, making a hole. “If you trusted them completely, you’d take me with you.”

Tyler didn’t answer, and to Regan that was tantamount to agreement.

“So what happens after you go there?” Van asked. “Good meatloaf, Ms. Miller.”

“Thank you, Van, but call me Regan. After all this…” She sipped her milk and took a bite of a dinner roll before answering. “I guess it depends on what we find out.”

Van eyed her roommate and Tom with slight disgust. “You’re leaving me with these two lovebirds?”

“You can go back—”

“No. Thanks. I’ll endure it.” She stabbed at her meat, the scowl still on her face. “Rather go to California with you.”

“Well, so would we!” Kelsey snapped. “We don’t want to be stuck here any more than you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, chill out.” Tom tried to soothe them, but the two girls switched from glaring at each other to glaring at him.

Tyler looked at Regan, who shrugged. “They’ve been stuck in close proximity too long.” She waved her fork at them. “After dinner, separate rooms. You need to get over it because I’m not leaving unless I can trust the three of you to watch each other’s backs.”

“How can you say that?” Kelsey shot at her, in time with Van’s “She’s my best friend!” They gave each other sheepish grins. “We’ll be okay, Mom.”

“I hope so. I’m afraid you’ll fight and one of you will go off, believing everything will be fine because it has been for two days, and that’s when something will happen.”

Kelsey rolled her eyes. “This isn’t the movies, Mom. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

Regan had doubts about that, but she was also aware she could be looking for reasons not to leave her daughter.

After dinner she stood on the porch, leaning against the rail and looking out across the pitch-black space surrounding the house, trying to convince herself she was doing the right thing.

“You are.”

She turned her head enough to see Tyler leaning against the doorjamb inside the screen, the light inside casting him in shadow.

“I am what?”

He came out and leaned on the rail next to her. “Doing the right thing.”

She shook her head but couldn’t help the tiny smile. “You think you know me.”

“Tell me I’m wrong, and you weren’t fretting about the danger you’re putting Kelsey in by leaving her without your protection.”

She didn’t answer, because of course she couldn’t deny it. “I know she’d be in more danger if she went with us.”

“I don’t know that.” His voice had hardened a bit. “I keep telling you—”

“The Harrisons are saints.”

“No, far from it. But they aren’t the ones trying to hurt you.”

“You don’t know for sure.”

He hesitated before saying, “No.”

The soft admission was one he’d never made before, and Regan twisted to look at him, her mouth open slightly. “What?”

“No, I don’t know for sure. Not well enough to put Kelsey’s life on the line.”

“Tyler.” Something swelled in her chest and started to close her throat.

He put a finger against her lips. “Besides, the threat is there whether it comes from the Harrisons or not. They might get more determined to stop us when we get close to safety.”

It would be petty arguing to say she doubted the Harrisons’ would be safe, so she turned away to face out into the fields again. “It’s so dark,” she commented. She didn’t live in the city, was used to farmland surrounding her, but even then there were highway lights or street lamps or the ambient glow from downtown. Here it was dark black as far as she could see, with only a faint difference on the far horizon between the slope of land and the sky. It was also overcast, so no stars sparkled overhead.

“That’s a good thing. It would be difficult for anyone to get here without being spotted.”

“Not at night,” Regan countered. “If they have NVGs and the kids aren’t watching—and face it, they won’t be watching. They’re kids.” She waved a hand at the six-foot circle of light the windows cast into the front yard. “Someone could be feet away from us right now and we wouldn’t know it.”

He looked out for a minute, then back at her. “You’re right. There’s risk. I think it’s a small one, but you’re already shouldering too much and I wanted to lessen your worries.”

Regan’s shoulders slumped, and Tyler slid a hand across them and tugged her against his chest. “Come here. I promise you, I won’t do anything to endanger Kelsey any more than she already is.”

She sighed and turned her face into him, letting him wrap his arms around her and rub his hand up and down her back for just a few seconds. She’d been without this for so long, it didn’t bother her that she craved it so much. That she was so tempted to give in to the need to be comforted and protected.

But she couldn’t let it go on. Not until she had answers. So she pulled back too soon, and Tyler let her.

“You don’t know what they did to him? To Scott?”

He shook his head slowly. “I wish I did. But I don’t think it was anything that would have caused harm to Kelsey. I mean—”

“She’s been fine for eighteen years, I know. She’s pointed that out several times. Enough that I know it scares her.”

“That’s understandable.”

Regan sighed and stared out into the darkness again. She still felt impotent, unable to soothe Kelsey’s fears or fix whatever was wrong. But the only way to make it right was to do what they were about to do. So she turned her attention to the plan.

“How long will it take us to get there?”

“Not long. We’re chartering a flight out of Fairmont Municipal. Flight will be about four hours.”

“What?” She’d assumed they were going to drive, because by the time they got to Minneapolis and took a connecting flight to Sacramento, got a vehicle, and drove to the Harrisons’ secure property, they could almost have driven there for a lot less money. “I can’t afford a chartered flight, Tyler.”

“The Harrisons are paying.”

Her whole body tightened. “They know we’re coming?”

“Nope. But they’re paying nonetheless.”

“Hell of an expense account you’ve got.”

She sounded bitter, but didn’t care. These people were her daughter’s grandparents. If they had nothing to do with Scott’s death, she’d cheated her daughter out of a connection with the other half of her family. In the meantime, they had resources she couldn’t even imagine. Resources she could have used to protect Kelsey, if they
weren’t
the ones after them.

In other words, she might have completely and unnecessarily fucked up her daughter’s life.

“Stop it.” Tyler lifted her chin. His eyes looked almost black in the dim light, but she couldn’t miss the intensity in them. “You’ve done the best you can, Regan, and it’s been an incredible job. Look at the girl you’ve raised.”

She nodded slightly, his hold on her chin restricting her movement. “You’re right. Thanks.”

But his attention had shifted away from her neuroses. His head tilted slightly as his eyelids went to half-mast, and slowly his mouth descended. Slowly enough so she could stop him. Slowly enough for her mind to list all the reasons she
should
stop him.

Slowly enough to build her anticipation and need exponentially for every inch he crept nearer.

When his mouth touched hers it was hot and hungry, despite the excruciatingly slow pace he maintained even after contact. His hand slid from her chin and up to the side of her head, where his fingers cradled her skull and his palm cupped her jaw. His mouth opened and hers followed, letting him in, deeper than he’d been in the shower. His other hand came up to mirror the first and she felt cherished, desired.

Her fists wrapped around the loose fabric of the untucked polo shirt at his waist so they wouldn’t wander. Her knuckles brushed bare skin and he jerked before angling his body closer to hers. He loomed over her, yet instead of making her feel threatened, it turned her on.

She heard the scrape of a foot on wood floor before she heard her daughter’s voice at the open doorway.

“You guys can go upstairs if you want to. We won’t bother you.”

Kelsey sounded matter-of-fact and encouraging instead of teasing or annoyed. Regan watched Tyler back away, still slowly, and a rush of air cooled her cheeks as he let her go.

“Thanks, but no.” He never looked away from Regan as he backed across the porch and started down the steps. “I’m going to walk the perimeter. I’ll be back in a bit.”

As Tyler disappeared in the darkness, Kelsey came out and took up his position against the rail.

“So you haven’t shut him down yet,” she observed.

Regan studied her, expecting resentment or disgust, but Kelsey still showed nothing but mild interest.

“No, I guess I haven’t.”

“But you’re not letting it go anywhere.”

“How can it? There’s too much unknown. Once I can prove he’s not part of—”

“Come on, Mom, it’s pretty obvious he’s on our side.” Using her fingers to tick off her points, Kelsey listed all the reasons Tyler could be trusted. Each one resonated in Regan, but her mind also had a counterpoint for each. She’d conditioned herself not to trust for so many years it had become reflex, unconnected to her true feelings. Add the image of Alan with the knife in his chest, the consequences of trying to change, and she was left tangled and uncertain, and hating it. In the end, she could only err on the side of caution, and tried to explain to her daughter.

“Trust isn’t always about measurable factors, Kels. There are intangibles at play I can’t ignore.”

“Like what?”

She raised her hands, palm up. “I don’t know yet. That’s why they’re intangible.”

Kelsey blew out an exasperated breath. “Just take a chance for once, will you?”

“I did. With Alan.”

The silence that followed rang with Kelsey’s shocked chagrin. She didn’t need to voice it; Regan felt it as much as saw it in her daughter. She let their mutual grief and regret flare and fade.

“Tyler’s not Alan, though,” Kelsey finally said softly. “He’s not defenseless.”

“No,” Regan agreed. “But I’m surprised you’re in favor of it. Most kids in your position—”

“There are no other kids in my position.”

“—would resent the idea of me moving on, especially with all this about your father being dredged up.”

“I didn’t know my father. And I think Tyler’s good for you, and you’ve lived for me for far too long. Maybe there’s no—” she lifted her hands in the air to indicate something big, “—
grand passion
here, like you had before, but a little nookie ain’t gonna kill ya.”

“Are you just saying that so you don’t feel guilty for the nookie you’re getting?”