Fight or Flight (20 page)

“We had nothing against you,” Ben assured Regan. “We always liked you. But no parent wants their son to be a teenage father.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“We made…suggestions.”

Regan didn’t need him to spell out what those were. She would have done the same had Kelsey come to her with similar news. She couldn’t blame him, though knowing what it would have meant to her life, to her daughter, made her sick to her stomach.

“I was afraid he was going to hate us by the time it was over,” Jeanne said. “So we told him the truth. He was furious with us. I didn’t want to let him go, but we couldn’t exactly lock him up. And we didn’t understand what the truth really meant.”

“He missed his call-in,” Ben continued before Regan could ask what truth. “He was supposed to call when he got back to school. He didn’t answer his phone in the dorm, and you didn’t answer yours. So we called campus security—”

“They’d just found him.”

Regan cringed inside, waiting for Jeanne to lay into her for leaving her son lying in his own blood, but she didn’t.

“You know who killed him,” Regan accused.

They both nodded.

“Who?”

“We have to back up again,” Ben said. “The information is still classified—”

“Screw classified!” Regan clenched her fists and forced herself to remain still. “You’re not going to hide behind that.” Her hand tightened on the pistol.

“No, of course we’re not,” Ben scoffed. “I’m simply trying to impress upon you the need for secrecy.”

Regan rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’ll scrap my plan to run out to the media.”

“Twenty years ago Jeanne and I worked on a project. Despite appearances—” Ben motioned to his wife’s attire, “—we are less fighting soldiers than scientific explorers. The program was benign. We were seeking a way to boost soldiers’ immunity without requiring complicated immunization plans or forced exposure to dangerous illnesses. Increased immunity would allow the body to fight a wide range of pathogens, including those we had no immunization for. It would make our military less vulnerable.”

“And like any such program,” Jeanne took up, her eyes sparking with obvious passion for the subject, “it had vast non-military applications, as well. Decreasing frequency of illness in a population would also decrease health care costs and pressure on the medical system, as well as increasing productivity and competitiveness in business and other arenas.”

Despite herself, Regan was fascinated with the idea. “Did it work?”

“We’d succeeded in developing a compound that had promise, but its duration was too limited. We believed a second-generation product could provide near-immediate and lasting effect.”

“How do you develop a second-generation product?” Regan wasn’t surprised to see guilt color both the Harrisons’ faces. She hadn’t finished high school or gone on to college, so the science of such a thing was well beyond her. But with what she did know, horror began to fill her before Ben made his admission.

“It varies, but in this case you use the first generation product on a live subject. His offspring’s blood should contain the elements needed to process the new compound.”

“Oh my God.” Regan stared at him. It was worse than she’d ever expected. “You
planned
all this?”

“No!” Jeanne burst out. “No, none of it! Scott was given the compound simply to keep him healthy. Schools are always so full of pathogens,” she explained weakly, as if knowing how ridiculous she sounded. “I know it sounds stupid to use something so new on your child, but we wanted what was best for him.”

“But when he got me pregnant, you decided it was the perfect time to try phase two,” Regan said bitterly. She realized she’d wrapped her finger around the trigger of the pistol and eased it out to rest along the guard.

“No, that’s not it at all.” But Jeanne’s guilty expression deepened. She glanced at her husband, who nodded.

“We didn’t have time to decide anything, Regan,” he said. “But there was a lot more going on. Just days before Scott arrived home, we’d learned some disturbing news about our partner on this project. He believed he could reverse the effect of the compound to create an undetectable killer. The implications of such a thing were against everything Jeanne and I believe in—”

“You were working for the military!” Regan cried. “That’s what the military does! It kills!”

“We worked for the military,” Jeanne informed her, “because they have the resources to do the research and development that was so important to us. We never worked on weapons.”

“It didn’t matter, because your research could be used to create them, anyway. Especially if Archie had no such principles.” She looked from one to the other. “Am I right? This Archie you mentioned earlier? He was your partner?”

“Yes,” Ben said. “And yes, he could have gone on to develop the weapon under the Air Force’s aegis. But he wanted more.”

Jeanne went on, “He tried to convince us we could all be hugely rich if we developed the reverse compound independently of the government and sold it commercially.”

“You mean, to terrorists and opposing governments,” Regan said.

Ben nodded. “We would have no part of it and reported him. He was removed from our project. I thought the Air Force was detaining him, but at some point he escaped custody. He had to have someone inside. Here. And we think that person intercepted our son.” His voice cracked, and they sat in silence for a minute.

It was a fantastic tale, but Regan couldn’t disbelieve any of it. The worst part was…it had worked. She had always thought it beyond lucky Kelsey never got sick. As a baby she escaped the usual ear infections, colds, fevers and flus that plagued other families. Even when she started kindergarten and was exposed to so many more germs, she never got sick. She had perfect attendance all through school, and if she hadn’t been so normal in her development and everything else, Regan would have worried.

It had never occurred to her it might have been deliberate.

She swallowed against an increasingly dry throat. She’d expected to feel different after learning the truth. As if understanding why Scott died, why someone tried to take her baby, would fill some hole inside her, one carved by the years of fear and precaution. But she felt as empty as ever, and realized that no words, no intentions, could ever make up for the lives they’d been forced to live. Bitter as it was, it was more important to accept it and move on.

“What happened after Scott died?”

Suddenly, Jeanne seemed unable to look at Regan. Ben didn’t avoid her gaze, but did appear more discomfited than before.

“We assumed Archie had something to do with Scott’s death, but he disappeared. We knew he’d go after the baby.”

“I disappeared, too.” Regan knew it was stupid as soon as she said it. “Those were your men? Who came for Kelsey?”

Ben shook his head. “We tracked you down and as soon as the baby was born, sent someone to protect you. But we were too late. They got to you first.”

“Too late!” Regan couldn’t believe it. “Why the hell didn’t you just
call
me?” Except she hadn’t been able to afford a phone back then. And the hovel she lived in, at the back of a house not designed for its one-room “apartments,” wasn’t conducive to reliable mail delivery.

“Look,” Ben said defensively, “I’m a scientist. This entire situation was out of my realm. The government wasn’t going to help us, and I was afraid if we tried to get them to, it would lead Archie to you more easily. When we found out those men had tried to take Kelsey, we decided it was safer for you if we didn’t contact you directly.”

“It doesn’t seem out of your realm now.” Regan looked at Tyler, then up at the cameras she’d identified in the corners of the room. “In fact, you seem very well-equipped and well-staffed.”

“For the same reason you are so well-trained and knowledgeable.”

Regan gave him points for that. “Reactive security?”

Ben nodded. “You kept running, of course, and we couldn’t find you immediately. Archie went underground, as far as we could tell. He had no equipment or samples, no facilities or staff, so we let it go. We focused on building our defenses and protecting you.”

“How?”

“The key to disappearing, we learned, is misinformation. The more false leads the searcher has to track down, the more time and money they waste. So we laid trails, updating them over the years, giving your enemy enough false information to keep his investigators busy for years.”

“But if he wasn’t looking…”

“We didn’t know he wasn’t,” Jeanne said. “There was no evidence he was working on his project, but we couldn’t be sure. And if he didn’t have the resources to develop the compound, he had no need for you or Kelsey. So we set up utilities and leases and video rental accounts in your name, all over the country, at different times and far away from where you really were.”

“You knew? The whole time?” She didn’t know what to think. It had been bad enough to fear she might have kept Kelsey from her family needlessly, but to know they could have made contact at any time and hadn’t? Hadn’t they wanted to know their granddaughter?

“Most of the time, we knew,” Ben confirmed. “We lost you several times. Most recently about ten years ago.”

Regan reflexively looked at Tyler. That was how long he said he’d been working for the Harrisons. He sat ramrod straight on his chair and looked at no one, but again she could see behind the mask. He looked—afraid.

And that made Regan afraid.

“Unfortunately, we lost you at the same time we got intelligence that Archie had resurfaced.”

“How did you manage to do all this?” Regan asked. “It had to be outrageously expensive.”

“We sold the patent for one of our creations, which allowed all this—” Jeanne waved a hand to indicate the house, “—and the development of a security team and the resources to track and protect you. When we retired from the Air Force and went private sector, our finances were well secured.”

She smiled, but Regan could tell she wasn’t sure how her next words would be received.

“It allowed us to finance a scholarship for Kelsey’s education.”

“You—” It was all she could manage, with her jaw hanging halfway to her chest. The scholarship was from them? Gratitude twisted around resentment, but the huge unimportance of it—at least for now—let her shove it aside. Still, curiosity had her asking, “What was it? The patent?”

Ben smiled proudly. “A treatment for erectile dysfunction.”

Her mouth dropped again. They’d sent their granddaughter to college on… “Viagra?”

“No, but a similar idea. And many other things since. But it’s not really relevant.” He looked at Tyler. “Perhaps you’d like to take up the tale.”

Tyler’s jaw flexed. He turned to Regan, who felt pressure in her chest she recognized as apprehension. She trusted him. Had put herself and her daughter fully in his hands. If he hadn’t been straight with her, she didn’t want to know any more.

“I came to the Harrisons deliberately,” he admitted. “They didn’t simply hire me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I told them about Archie.”

She couldn’t catch a breath. Her body knew what her brain didn’t want to grasp. “What about him?”

“He’d reached a point in his research where he was ready for the next stage. The stage where he—”

“Needed Kelsey.” Regan got that part, it fit with the rest. But what she didn’t get was, “How did you know?”

Before Tyler could answer, the room exploded in showers of glass.

Kelsey never stopped fighting.

She’d learned from pretty much every instructor she’d ever had, from her mother to her teachers to her soccer coach, the only way to get anywhere in life was to set goals.

Her first goal was to get the people in the house away from her friends without them being discovered or hurt. She assumed they only wanted her, and if she could lead them away, she’d meet her goal.

She crouched behind the barn door, focusing intently on keeping her breathing inaudible and listening to her pursuer. Her hand cramped around the barrel of the gun and she carefully loosened it. The brush of footstep on dirt. A shadow. And then…

The first guy crept around the edge of the barn door. Kelsey pounced, clocking him hard across the face with her gun, gritting her teeth against the impact that reverberated up her arm. Exhilarated when he rocked back, his hand automatically going to his jaw, she shoved him backwards and stepped on him. He’d be down for at least a few minutes. She thought. But hot fingers closed around her ankle and she crashed to the ground. She sucked back a scream, her mind on Van and Tom. The impact knocked the air from her lungs and the gun from her hand, but she scrambled to recover both quickly. He hung on to her leg, his grip sending snakes of disgust and panic writhing through her belly. She
had
to get away, get them away from her friends! Bending her knee hard to pull her foot out of his grasp, she immediately drove her toe downward into his stomach again. This time he didn’t grab her.

But he’d slowed her down. Two more men ran out of the house and across the lawn by the time she got to her feet. Her heart went into overdrive. She started to run to her right, but another guy came around the side of the house. Shit, how many had they brought?

Now she was trapped with the barn behind her, one recovering attacker on her left, and three spreading in a semicircle to cut off her options as they approached her.

“She’s got a gun,” one of them said.

Kelsey waved it, grinning. “I do. And I know how to use it. Wanna see?” She squeezed off a shot, aiming high but sweeping the gun so they’d all duck. She darted around behind the barn and took off across the field, cursing the turned soil that made running difficult. Assuming they were behind her, she zigzagged across the field. On one zig she glanced back, dismayed to see only two pursuing her. The others were probably looking for her friends, hoping to use them to lure her back. Well, screw that. She reversed direction and angled for the far corner of the field, arcing her way back to the house.

She widened her stride, but her right foot landed on a clod and twisted, sending her stumbling and a zing of panic into her brain. A few steps proved there was no damage to her ankle, thank God, but she took a hit on her speed. The gap between her and her pursuers closed quickly, forcing her to fire another shot over their heads. This trigger pull was easier, and her aim better. They hit the dirt and she sped on. They shouted for their companions, who emerged from the barn, spotted her, and joined the chase. She went around the house to the open front door, darted through, and crouch-walked to the back door to watch what happened next.

“Yesss!” she hissed when all four shapes converged, then parted to go around both sides of the house and meet in the front. She went out the back door into the center of the yard, and…crap. She’d underestimated them—only two guys had gone around to the front. The other two hovered in the shadows, watching. She’d barely registered this when the one on her right raised his gun and fired.

The bullet snagged her hair, then went through the door of the barn. Kelsey froze in shock, practically departing from her body for an instant while her brain processed what had just happened. One second later, every nerve ending screamed
move!
and she reversed back to the house, ducking inside.

“What the hell are you doing?” the other guy screamed. “You can’t hurt her, asshole!”

“Good to know,” she muttered, heart pounding, brain scrambling. Coming back was a foolish move, since it trapped her again. But her mother’s training triumphed. When guy number one came in the front and number two in the back, she rolled over the back of the couch and let them collide where she’d been standing, giving her enough space to get out the front. Three and four were on either side of the porch, but she was too fast for them and flew up the driveway before they could reach her.

Score one for soccer. Playing intramural at school this year was paying off in speed and stamina.

When she was a hundred yards up the drive she looked back. All four were chasing her now, her friends apparently forgotten.

Goal one accomplished.

Goal two immediately became evasion, which failed because she somehow passed their car without seeing it. When they reached it, their horsepower trumped her soccer-built running skills. When the car neared her she took off cross country, but all-wheel-drive was better than two feet and they caught up to her easily, passing her and disgorging Number Three to tackle her and press her into the dirt.

Winded and with a couple hundred pounds on her back, Kelsey could do nothing. Instinct and helplessness drove her struggle to get free, but didn’t totally kill the exhilaration of the chase. Her friends were still safe, and these guys had orders not to hurt her. There’d be an opportunity to get away, probably more than one. She just had to be smarter than these guys…and keep setting goals.

One of the other guys tied her hands behind her back and a third roped her feet together. They hauled her up, tossed her into the car, and bounced back to the road, where they took off away from the house.

Kelsey closed her eyes and prayed.
Please let Van and Tom be okay.
She focused on the fact that she’d protected them, kept them safe, until her body adjusted to her circumstances and she could keep the anxiety from turning into full-bore panic.
Fear gives you the means to save yourself, panic takes it away.
Another lesson of her mother’s, and so far, it was working.

Goal Three. Escape. Big goal. How? Listen. Plan.
She lay across the laps of the two jerks in the back seat, tuning in to their conversation. Big goals should be broken down into smaller ones, but she needed information before she could set them.

“Did you call it in?” the guy in the passenger seat asked the guy driving once they were on the main road and their teeth were no longer clacking together from the bouncing.

“Not yet. No signal out here.”

There was a beep. First guy said, “Shit, you’re right.”

“I told you. You never listen to me.”

Kelsey was facing forward so she could see the driver, the second guy, yank the phone out of the first guy’s hands.

“We’ll call when we get to the airport.”

Okay, so they planned to fly her out. To where? California? Didn’t matter. She couldn’t let them load her on the plane. If she managed to get out of the car now, though, she would just be running across empty farmland again. Her best bet would be to get out while they were in town, before they got to the airport. It left her a small window, but with town traffic she might be able to do it.

Of course, being tied up presented a bit of a problem. She’d held her hands so the rope around her wrists was pretty loose, but she couldn’t slip it with her hands up against the third guy’s abdomen. The fourth guy’s hand rested on the rope around her legs, so she couldn’t work at that, either.

You’re pretty screwed, Miller.
But wait. She held herself still when she really, really wanted to squirm away from their smelly bodies and icky hands.

“Why is everyone starin’ at us?” One wondered as they did a rolling stop at a stop sign.

“Dunno,” Two answered, sounding wary. “That guy’s pointing at us.”

“Shit, he’s a cop! Step on it!”

“I knew we shouldn’t have stolen this friggin’ thing!” Four shouted from Kelsey’s feet. “It’s red! They always pay attention to red cars!”

She couldn’t stifle a laugh. Driving back through the town you stole a car in, especially a tiny, isolated town with a matching grapevine, was very stupid. She felt a little less okay with letting these idiots get the better of her, but determined to best them first chance she got.

Two squealed around a corner. Three and Four lost their grips and Kelsey rolled to the floor. This was her chance! She wiggled and writhed against their hands, and when they dragged her back up, this time facing them, her feet were loosened and hands free, masked by the rope still hanging around her wrists. So when they slammed to a stop at the airport and Kelsey toppled off their laps again, she had the element of surprise. She thrashed her feet until one came out of the binding, kicking Four multiple times, once in the face.

“Ow! Goddamn it! Help me!”

Two opened Four’s door. But young athletic soccer stars with paranoid mothers were excellent fighters with their feet. Kelsey nailed both of them good before she dragged herself across Three’s lap, kneeing him in the groin in the process, and scrambled out his door.

She got halfway to the little terminal—almost far enough to feel a hint of relief—before, out of the blue, two men in black jackets and cargo pants caught her arms and lifted her right off her feet. “Oh, come
on!
” More furious than scared, she twisted and screamed and yanked, but they stood solidly, holding tightly but not actively fighting her. She knew they were letting her tire herself out.

It didn’t matter. They didn’t know how fierce she was, how much she needed to keep her friends safe. She wasn’t going to tire. She wrenched her right arm free and landed on her feet in a half-crouch, but then there was a sting in her left arm. She looked, and saw a needle sticking out of her skin.

“Oh, shit.”

***

Regan hit the floor automatically. Despite the size of the room, the force of the explosions from both sides sent shards flying in all directions. Pieces landed on her back. Her hands, covering her head, stung with cuts. Sound had disappeared, and her breathing came with such a gaspy quality she thought she’d die.

The explosions were immediately followed by the thuds of booted feet and chatter of automatic weapons fire. Regan could hear them through the cotton in her ears enough to recognize them, but could see nothing. She had no idea who wielded the weapons, where the bullets were coming from—and where they were aimed.

She hadn’t even had time to lift her head when someone hauled her roughly to her feet. At first she thought it was one of the Harrisons’ security team, he was dressed so much like them. But he wore a ski-style mask and instead of a gun, he held a wicked-looking knife.

A knife she’d seen before, or at least one like it. Adrenaline kicked in.

She fell toward the man, surprising him enough to release her arm. But not enough for him to forget what he was doing. He drew back the knife, aimed at her gut. She scrambled back a few steps and kicked. Her foot missed his wrist, but her heel glanced the knife blade. It got caught in the hard rubber just long enough to pull it partway out of his hand. While he struggled to secure it, she slammed her elbow into his nose.

He went down without a sound. She stood over him, waiting, but the blow had been hard enough to splinter the cartilage. He was unconscious.

She snatched up his knife and her gun from where it had been knocked to the floor and huddled beside the chair, taking stock.

Black-dressed figures were everywhere, fighting, firing guns, jumping in and out of the blasted windows. She couldn’t tell who was friend and who was foe without scrutiny, and taking the time to do that would be deadly.

Jeanne Harrison was nowhere in sight. Ben fought fiercely with two men, one of whom drove him backward into the wall. His head hit the stone around the fireplace and he fell, his eyes rolling. He was too far away for her to help him.

Other figures converged on Regan, half a room away but obviously coming toward her. She rose to a crouch, trying to keep all three of them in view. She spared a quick glance behind her and was surprised to see Tyler standing, untouched save for some glass cuts on his face, the toppled chair still attached to his leg. No one went near him, and the occasional bullets remained near the back windows where the fiercest fighting was going on. As she watched, one of the men in a ski mask ran past Tyler without even looking at him. The man barked something at the men descending on her, and they leaped into action.

Slipping into a cold warrior mode of which she’d never expected herself capable, Regan raised both knife and gun. She fired, hitting one man in the leg. He yelled, took a step on the injured leg, and collapsed, clutching it. Her knife swipe missed the guy on the left, who dodged, and the guy in the middle came too fast for her to react. His fist was heading for her face when out of nowhere a chair flew at his head. Regan fell back over a small table, barely registering the chair was still attached to Tyler’s leg. He’d done a spin kick, flinging the chair into the guy. Regan’s fall kept her from getting caught on the follow-through.

She fired the pistol again, fear and chaotic confusion making her hand shake a little. The bullet grazed the upper arm of the guy on her left. He didn’t stop coming. She rolled right and onto her feet, but he hit her wrist with the side of his hand. The nerve vibrated, numbness taking over. Her fingers went limp and the gun clattered to the floor.

But she still had the knife. She swept it at his face, but he easily caught her wrist and held the knife away, baring his teeth in a feral growl as he bore down. Rage boiled, flooded her. No way was she letting one of these guys keep her from Kelsey. She didn’t stop fighting before, and she wouldn’t now. She moved her right foot behind her to brace and slammed her right forearm against his throat. She didn’t have the strength to really hurt him, but it held him away and kept the knife aimed at him. He gurgled a little, the grin dropping, but twisted her left arm downward, centimeter by centimeter. Her muscles burned, the knife trembling. He was stronger, and if he kept turning her hand, all it would take would be one shove to plunge the knife into her heart.