Flee the Night (14 page)

If he hoped to be God’s man, he had to do what was right. He had to haul her back to the National Security Agency. Kicking and screaming, if need dictated.

A woman exited the bathroom. Her blonde hair bobbed just below her chin, and her face glowed with fresh makeup. She wore a pair of jeans and a lime green T-shirt short enough to hint at skin, and she clutched a jean jacket thrown over her shoulder. She strode by him and left in her wake a fragrance that could awaken an army of dead.

Micah caught her by the arm. “Good try.”

When she whirled and quirked an eyebrow, all his wounds reopened with a single slash. Oh, this woman could tangle his brains and sweep the breath out of him with a smile. “So, what do you think?” she asked.

“I think that the NSA better be on their toes or you’ll walk away with the nation’s secrets
and
the key to Fort Knox.”

Or maybe what was left of his heart.

Chapter 9

“OKAY, I KNEW you were hungry, but c’mon, three orders of pancakes
and
an omelette?” Micah stared at Lacey over the menu, his face partially hidden, but she saw the smile in his eyes.

She’d called herself a fool a thousand times during the past three hours since their stopover at Wal-Mart, but she couldn’t get past her personal name-calling to actually ditching this man who had so completely come to her rescue … again.

It was a habit she’d have to kick if she hoped to keep him out of this mess—and alive.
No Jim Micah.
That meant that whoever had Emily knew Lacey’s past and her heroes.

Micah did look like a hero in the full, late-morning light. A man-sized, slightly rumpled, dark, frowsy-haired, whiskered, smoky-green-eyes-etched-with-concern hero.

“Okay, maybe you’re right. But definitely the Denver omelet and at least one order of cakes to start. I need the carbo load.” She felt ravenous, despite the bag of pork rinds and half a bottle of Diet Coke. She smiled at the waitress, a barely updated version of Aunt Bee, who nodded approvingly.

Micah closed his menu and handed it to Bee. “I’ll have a bowl of grits, lots of butter, a cup of coffee, and a piece of whole-wheat bread with honey.”

“Yuck.”

He smiled. “Yeah, well, I’m not trying to eat for a small nation.”

“I don’t know when I’ll eat again,” Lacey mumbled. The reality of her situation loomed like a guillotine, despite the uplift from a change of clothing. She had tied her hair up with the panty hose in the Wal-Mart bathroom and shoved on a blonde wig, picked up at the accessory counter. It felt hot and itchy on her head. Now she just needed to use her new toothbrush and she might be able to live with herself for another twenty-four hours.

Then again, if she didn’t have Emily back in her arms—and soon—she might never be able to live with herself again. She already flinched every time she looked in the mirror. How had she gone from sophomore clarinet player and choir member to fugitive with a record?

One bad choice at a time. Until she’d gotten so far down the road, so far from God and the memories of faith, she couldn’t find her way back.

She couldn’t scrape from her mind the split-second look of admiration on Micah’s face when she came out of the Wal-Mart dressing room. She knew she’d almost fooled him when she walked quickly past him, which meant she might also be able to ditch him. Probably another bad choice, but again, she’d backed herself into a corner with her abysmal decisions.

She turned over the fork and studied it, remembering how she’d screwed one like it into Micah’s neck. As if he couldn’t have sent her sprawling onto the pavement.

Only he hadn’t.

In fact, he’d been … kind. She swallowed against a rising tide of longings. It would do her—and Emily—no good to remember his friendship and how she’d wished for nothing but his protective presence in her life. Desperation had made her call him … and that same desperation would send him packing.

The small-town café near Ashleyville smelled of frying bacon and buzzed with the early morning chitchat of patrons. The bell over the door clanged every few moments, and Micah eyed each person as they entered or left, like some sort of PI.

“So, you know how I found you … how did you find
me?
” Lacey asked.

He glanced at her. “I haven’t forgotten your tricks. I figured you’d head to the safest place you know. Remember the time you and John got in that fight—what was it about?”

She smirked. “Theology. Probably our usual fight—God’s plan versus our free will.”

His eyes held sweet amusement. “Oh yeah, you were so angry, I thought you were going to wallop him.”

“I should have. He was always so smug. So right. It drove me crazy.” She felt a real smile tug her face. “I ran home, got on Sugah, and rode to the caves. You scared me nearly out of my skin when you crept up like a cougar.”

“I didn’t want to get hit either.” He grinned, obviously remembering her sitting in the dark, huddled against the chilly summer night, fury sizzling in her bones.

“Well, I eventually came over to his point of view. He believed in choices, said that without them, we were puppets and our salvation didn’t bring any glory to God.” The words in her mouth felt dry, raw. It seemed as if she had done nothing but make God cringe for over a decade.

“But that’s the mystery,” Micah said. “Without God completely in charge, foreknowing, we are left with a handcuffed God. Someone who isn’t in charge of circumstances, who has to go with the flow, at the mercy of our whims.” Micah leaned back for the waitress to place his coffee before him. “Decaf, right?”

She gave him a Southern glare and waddled away.

“Micah, you were always so cerebral in your faith. You believe God is in control, but you don’t think with your heart. How could God be in control of tragedy? of heartache? If He sees what will happen, He can change it and keep us from—” she rubbed her finger around the rim of her cup—“making mistakes that will destroy lives.”

“You’re precluding the fact that He doesn’t want it to happen,” Micah said, concern in his eyes.

She felt slapped. “I can’t believe that God would want John to be killed in cold blood. He was a good man. Idealistic maybe and sometimes too reckless, but a good man.” She turned back to Micah, barely able to form words. “No, it was my choices that caused that. Not God’s.”

Micah moved his hand, as if he might touch her. Except he stopped, let it rest in the middle of the table. “Yeah. Well, then again, there’s the mystery. I believe God knew it would happen. Why He didn’t stop it? I don’t know.” His voice was steady, unfazed by her confession. Iceman, even in the face of his friend’s death.

Micah picked up his spoon, turned it between his fingers.

“When my pop was working the streets, he’d come home from the night shift wrung out and grieving the victims. I remember the nights he caught the occasional drug dealer. He’d meet Joey and me at breakfast before we left for school, and you know what we’d do?”

Lacey dredged up a picture of Micah’s father, so much like his son, broad, bold, and brave in his sheriff’s uniform. “What?”

“We’d pray for them. He’d thank God for letting him nab them, then ask God to use the darkness to show them the light. He’d ask for their redemption.” Micah shook his head, and in that action she saw him as a boy, the one she’d admired from three pews behind in church. Micah’s sensible, rock-solid faith had always centered her, like a bulwark against life’s tempest. And now, staring at him, she felt the tingle of old feelings, old longings.

“I remember the day I challenged my dad,” Micah continued. “I asked him the very questions with which you and John wrestled. Is God in control? What about the horrible things that happen to people?” He looked her in the eye. “Do you remember that night I found you after your fight with John?”

She shrugged, but she remembered well the smell of him as he led her horse home. Remembered how she felt safe in his shadow, how she’d leaned into his friendship. The memory made her ache.

“Do you remember the moon?” Micah persisted, unaware that he’d yanked her back to her regrets. “It was full and trailed a path home.”

“Yeah, I remember.”
Mostly because your eyes glowed in the moonlight, and I couldn’t unsnarl the feelings in my heart.
“You said something about darkness illuminating light.”

He grinned, and for the first time since she’d called him and he’d barged into her hospital room with ultimatum in his eyes, she saw genuine friendship. The old friendship, filled with equality. With grace. “That’s right. Light without darkness isn’t remarkable. We take it for granted most of the time. It’s all around us; it helps us live our lives. But put us in a dark room and suddenly the light is all that we long for. It gives us hope. It shows us how to be saved.”

“You’re saying that God let those drug dealers fall into trouble so they’d see … what, salvation?”

“Sometimes we have to see darkness to understand the light.”

She leaned back as the waitress brought her omelette; then she moved her glass of water to make room for the plate of pancakes. The smell of blueberry syrup tugged at her stomach. “Sorry, Micah, that’s a great theory, but the fact is, no one is going to be better off because they’re doomed.” She should know. She’d grown up with the light, and it still didn’t hold a flicker against the darkness permeating her soul. “Let’s eat.”

“Let’s pray.”

“No. You pray if you want.” She picked up her fork, refusing to look at him as he bent his head, fixed to his ideals. She didn’t buy this idea that somehow God might be at the helm of the mistakes she’d made. Because if He was, then maybe, instead of God being helpless and just disappointed in her, it turned God … mean.

Her eyes filled. No, thanks. She liked John’s way of thinking. Free will. Her unforgivable mistakes. Because if the mistakes weren’t hers, and God was in charge, then … she’d have to forgive
Him
, right?

She blinked the tears back before Micah could see. He said amen and began to wolf down his grits. Obviously the man was as hungry as she.

“Thanks for the clothes, Micah. I’ll pay you back.”

He looked at her, raised his eyebrows. “Okay. Pay me back by turning yourself in. If your encryption program is so important and someone wants it, you have leverage. You can do this, Lacey. I promise I’ll do what I can to make sure Emily is safe.” He reached out with a look of pure, one-hundred-watt concern.

Lacey turned away. “You don’t understand. I don’t trust the NSA either.”

“Good girl. Sleep.” Nero pulled up the cotton blanket and tucked it over Emily’s shoulder. A puddle of drool pooled under her lips, and her blonde hair slicked to her grimy face. It hadn’t been hard to get her to scream. He’d simply tape-recorded one of her many nightmares. How he wished he could have seen Lacey’s face when she heard that.

He knew too well how Lacey might feel. The sweaty palms, the kick in the gut, the low moan that emanated from the chest and never fully died. Oh yes, he was well aware of the kind of pain one suffered when a loved one screamed.

Leaning back in his chair, he flicked on the morning edition of CNN. Nothing about the train wreck. Which was good, he supposed. Old news. He thought of Lacey on the run again.

He’d give her another four hours, then call and check on her progress. He had no doubt she’d have good news for him. If anyone could do the impossible, it was his favorite spy.

He took a sip of Pepto-Bismol. He hated the stuff, how it coated his gut. But it made the pain subside, at least for an hour or two.

The little girl stirred, yawned, shifted on her pillow. Nero glanced at her, and the image of his own daughter hit him broadside, nearly knocking the wind out of him. Stacy. Blonde, a sweet smile. Innocent.

Grief welled in his throat. She would have been in her early twenties by now. He took another swig of the Pepto.

Lacey would pay. Even if she found Ex-6 and handed it over, she would pay. He owed his wife. He owed himself.

He owed Stacy.

Micah finished the last of his coffee slowly, watching Lacey sop up her syrup with her final bite of pancake. The woman had the appetite of a horse, just like he’d remembered. The comparison made him grin. She was as stubborn and wild as any of her family’s Thoroughbreds. “Why don’t you trust the NSA? Aren’t you on their team?” The questions nagged at him like a burr under his skin.