Fight or Flight (25 page)

“No, she misunderstood. They were supposed to bring her back here. If they could,” he added in a mutter.

Regan had had enough. “Look. We don’t need to go through the whole Scooby-Doo scene here.” She pulled her pistol and aimed it at Archie’s head. “Let us out.”

There were a couple of chuckles behind Archie, but he didn’t look amused. “Don’t be foolish, Ms. Miller.”

“Oh, I’m not. See, you put yourself in a bottleneck. You’ve got four machine guns back there, but only two can shoot without plowing down you and their own men. I can get three shots off before anyone else fires. That kills you.”

“But they
will
fire, and you’ll be dead, as well.”

“Yeah, and so will Kelsey. I’d rather have her dead than part of your program,” she lied, her heart clenching at the words of bravado, but her hands steady on the pistol. Cold determination had set in the instant she saw the men, and now it sank down into her, icing out everything else.

“Hey!” Kelsey cried indignantly.

Regan didn’t waver. “Let us out.”

Tyler pulled his own weapon. “You gonna kill your own son, Dad? Can you watch any of us die right in front of you?” He waited, but there was no response. “I don’t think you can. You never liked that part of the business. The reality of death, an inescapable aspect of being in the military. You know what, though?” He took one step forward, then another. The group ahead of them backed up a step. “I was STT. I’m pretty used to death.” He yanked on the slide of his pistol, chambering a round, then aimed again at his father’s head. “You want to risk it?”

Archie backed up a little more, but having four guys behind him made retreating problematic. He stopped, eyed his son and Regan, then gave a tiny nod. “Hand to hand.” Then he stepped aside.

The hallway filled with grunts and thuds as the guards surged forward, meeting Tyler with gloved fists and the butts of rifles. He went down on one knee and was swarmed.

But Regan didn’t stand helplessly by, watching her future be destroyed and waiting her turn. She let out a screaming yell, reversed her pistol in her hand, and started slugging away. Her first blow landed on the skull of a guy bent over Tyler and he dropped like the proverbial ton of bricks. Tyler surged to his feet and slammed an elbow into another’s solar plexus.

And then the corridor was a haze of black uniforms and flying fists, warlike bellows and grunts of pain. Tom and Kelsey didn’t hang back. Regan saw flashes of color among the black. At first she tried to shield her daughter, but that made them both more vulnerable, and as long as the kids remained on their feet, she concentrated on her own fight. Time stretched, and minutes or hours passed with pain sweeping over her in waves, from the glancing blow on her right cheek to the ache in her hand where she clutched the pistol, to a kick she took in the left kidney.

Then, suddenly, it was over. The soldiers were on the floor, she, Kelsey, and Tom were not. Tyler held his father against the wall with a forearm across his throat.

“Get out of here,” he shouted at them. “Call the police.”

Regan stood in the hall, her chest heaving. She looked from him to Kelsey and Tom, who were already near the door. They could get out easily now. She took a step that way.

But then she looked back. Tyler appeared invincible, even oozing blood, but the men at his feet would not stay there for long. And there could be more. She couldn’t leave without him.

“Go,” she told Kelsey and Tom. Her heart split in two. But her daughter, her mature, bright, brave daughter, only nodded.

“Be fast,” was all Kelsey said. Then she grabbed Tom’s hand and ran.

“Archie’s pleading guilty to the kidnapping and to misuse of government funds,” Ben told Regan on the phone a few weeks later. Tension she hadn’t been aware of fell away, and the rush left her light-headed. She sank onto her sofa and lay back, suddenly without the strength to hold her body upright.

“What about all the goons?”

Ben chuckled. “We’ve gotten them all taken care of, don’t worry. I have a lot of connections. There are no strays. And the facility under the park, which was originally supposed to be a Cold War bomb shelter, has been closed up.”

“They’re going to have the data,” she said. Her neck ached. Maybe not all the tension had disappeared. “The government. They’ll know about Kelsey, and—”

“Nope.” Ben’s voice went gruff, the way it always did when he got emotional. “It was all destroyed. I supervised the operation personally. Mine, too. My granddaughter will never be in danger again.”

Regan knew that was impossible to promise. There had been too many people, too many years, and today’s storage systems allowed easy backups and redundancies. But she couldn’t live the rest of her life the way she’d lived the past eighteen years. If Ben said he’d destroyed it all, she’d hope it was true and move on.

“Thank you, Ben.”

“How is she, by the way? We talked to her yesterday, but it’s so hard to tell.”

Regan smiled. “She’s great. Back in her routine like nothing ever happened.”

Not totally true. Kelsey had insisted on returning to Whetstone immediately, not wanting to derail her education before it even started. Van had taken a little longer to convince her parents, but managed to get back mid-week. Tom’s coach was livid at his disappearance and had benched him, and his father had stayed in a hotel for two weeks, shadowing his son and making sure he was truly safe before deciding things would be okay.

Regan thought the transition back was too abrupt, and expected nightmares, jumpiness, and clingy behavior, but she drove down to Whetstone twice, and both girls seemed as close to fine as possible. They talked about Kelsey’s father, and except for a lingering sadness, Kelsey seemed far lighter than she ever had in her life, now that the burdens they’d lived under were gone.

“We’d like to have you for Thanksgiving,” Ben said now. “House is still a bit shot up, but…that is, if you can handle…my wife tells me I’m being an insensitive prat. I’m sorry.”

“Prat?”

“She’s reading Harry Potter again. Anyway, we’d like to see you for the holiday.”

“Why don’t you come here?” she said, and he quickly accepted.

She hung up a few minutes later and returned to her home office, where she’d been juggling the bills that had piled up. It was amazing how wrong the stupid little things that made up a life could go in eleven days. She’d lost her job at the club, who she hadn’t bothered to call once, not even right after the attack. They would have been understanding if she had, she was sure, but when she’d “disappeared,” they’d cut her off. She’d managed to find a new job, a better one, but she hadn’t gotten her first paycheck yet and things were getting dire.

The front door opened and she jerked, adrenaline spiking, before she heard Tyler’s voice. Dammit. She rubbed her forehead, suddenly just as exhausted as she had been when she and Tyler emerged from the tunnels into the bright sunlight in the park. Kelsey and Tom had gotten the police there in record time—must have been a slow crime day—and they’d found four trussed guards, a sedated Bulldozer, and a furious and talkative Archie Sloane tied up in the main corridor.

Tyler came into the room and bent to kiss her. “You okay?”

“Ben just called.” He sat on the futon and listened as she told him about the conversation. “So you shouldn’t have to testify against your father or anything.”

“Good.” He looked pensive, but didn’t say anything more. Regan wondered if he was ever going to let her in. He’d stayed in California for a while to help Ben and Jeanne ferret out the traitor and manage cleanup, and had returned to his house next door just a few days ago. Somehow they’d fallen into a comfortable routine, coming into each other’s houses and sharing meals and sleeping arrangements as if they’d been together for years, without sharing the important things.

Like how they felt about each other.

“You scared me when you came in the door,” Regan said.

“I’m sorry. Should I knock?”

“No, I need to adjust. It’s been very weird not having to…you know.” She blew out a breath. “I’m still taking six different routes home from the grocery store.”

“You’ll get there. It’s a lot of training to undo.” His mouth turned down and he studied the carpet. “We haven’t talked about the last moments—you know, in the tunnel.”

“I know.”

When he lifted his head, she was shocked to see torment in his eyes. “Did you stay because you thought I was going to kill my father?”

Regan’s mouth fell open. “What? No! The thought never crossed my mind!”

“Then why?”

“Oh, man, we should have talked about this sooner.” She laughed. “I stayed because you needed me more than Kelsey did. I couldn’t leave you with all those guys and risk losing you.”

He slumped in relief. “I didn’t bring it up because I was afraid of the answer. I know you didn’t fully trust me, but…” He shook his head. “If you thought that about me, I was afraid there was no chance for us.”

Regan got up from the desk chair and sat next to him on the futon, weaving her arm around his and threading their fingers together. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this trust thing.”

“I understand, Regan, I do.” But she could tell by the heaviness with which he said it that understanding wasn’t enough.

“The thing is, I did trust you,” she admitted, the words coming more easily than they should have. “All along. I convinced myself I couldn’t, but every step of the way, no matter how much I questioned you, I gave you far more than I would have if that trust hadn’t been real.”

But how she felt about Tyler was only one small part of the equation. The rest was so much more difficult.

His hand tightened on hers. “And?”

“And what?” she hedged.

“I’m glad. It means a lot. But it’s not enough.”

She sighed. “Tyler, I’m a mess.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Seriously, though.” She stood and started pacing, ignoring the déjà vu. She’d had it a lot since she came home. “You’re rebuilding. You’ve opened your security firm and have three clients already. I’m working a desk at an insurance company, which, by the way, is not my life’s ambition. I don’t know what my life’s ambition
is
, now that Kelsey seems like she’s going to be okay.” She stopped. Her eyes filled with tears. “She and Tom are engaged.”

“I know.” His voice was right behind her, but he didn’t touch her. “But they’re not getting married until she graduates.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She pressed her hand to her mouth, hating her weakness. “The worst part is this isn’t empty nest. It’s—” she choked on the word, “—it’s jealousy.”

“Ah, babe.” Tyler turned her and pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay.”

“She’s getting everything I wanted for her.” But it was everything she’d wanted for herself, too. She closed her eyes against the guilt. How could she be jealous of her own child?

“She’s getting it because you made it possible for her to have it.” Tyler rubbed his hands up and down her back, and the tension ebbed away again. “You just need to figure out what
you
want now. You’re so young, Regan, you have as much life ahead of you as she does, even if you don’t feel it.”

She hadn’t thought about it like that. Suddenly, everything looked different. “I could go back to school.”

“Yep.”

She had no idea what she would study, what she wanted to do, but hell, she had time, didn’t she? Something loosened inside her, relief unfurling like a baby fern. She leaned back and smiled up at Tyler. “Thank you.”

He returned the smiled, but it looked sad. “You’d have figured it out.”

“What?” She touched the corner of his mouth. “What’s wrong?”

“I just—I’m afraid—shit.” He dropped his arms and moved away.

“What?” she asked again.

“I’m part of the old life. What if there’s no place for me in the new one?”

“Are you kidding me?” Regan grabbed the edges of his shirt and pulled him back to her. “Tyler, I’ve spent nineteen years being afraid. I lost my parents, Scott, my future. As long as I can remember, I was afraid of losing Kelsey, the only thing in my life I loved. So determined to never love anything else I’d have to leave behind. That’s over now.” She kissed him, trying to tell him physically what she wasn’t sure was coming out right verbally. He wrapped himself around her, devouring her mouth, and they poured their love into the kiss, the power of it taking over all her senses so that she actually felt the shift. The transition. The past was over, its hold no longer active.

The fear was gone. She was ready to live.

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