Flee the Night (5 page)

LIGHTNING FLASHED, CRACKING the dark pane of night and illuminating the bowing hickory and oak trees. The winds picked up the loam and decaying leaves and strewed them across the road. Few knew this route like he did, but still, Nero eased up on the gas. A painful plummet into the gulley flanking the road didn’t fit into his short-term goals. His headlights carved out a mournful path through Mark Twain National Forest as the thunder now groaned its misdeeds.

He’d do well to hole up and wait until morning. It wouldn’t help the situation if he showed up at Baptist Hospital in the middle of the night, drenched, bone weary, and furious. Not if he wanted the NSA boys to keep their distance. One whiff of trouble and they’d put Lacey in custody so tight he’d never wheedle the truth out of her constricted throat. No, he wanted to be the one to tighten the noose, thank you. He owed her. He deserved the honor.

Lightning strobed again, two long flashes, and this time Nero made out a figure huddled in the opposite lane. A deer? Nero hit his brakes, not wanting the animal to flee into his bumper. He slowed and his lights skimmed it.

Not an animal.

A child.

He stomped his brakes and a screech pierced the air. The child stood up, eyes wide, arms out, screaming. A snapshot of pure fear. Then she turned and ran into the forest.

Nero slammed the car into park and barreled out. “Stop!” Could luck have finally dealt his card? After searching and planning and waiting, could fate have dropped in his lap the one collateral that guaranteed his success?

“Wait, little girl!”
Emily?

Crashing, screams. He dived into the forest, his eyes making out only hulking trees, the web of brush as it scraped his face, his hands. “Emily! I’m a friend of your mommy!”

More screams. He followed the sound, stopped, and listened to his own heartbeat. Branches caught his suit coat, blackened his shirt. His feet felt soggy and cold. The wind found his ears and drilled them with the humid breath of early fall. “Emily! I’m here to help you!”

A whimper. He plunged through the dark, holding his breath, and nearly fell on her. She crouched between the thigh-thick roots of a tree, her legs drawn up, her skinny arms around her knees, her head tucked into her body.

“No, sweetie, I’m here.” He sat down and forced away the image of another little girl, crying,
“Daddy, don’t leave!”
He touched the little girl’s arm.

She jerked, looked up at him, and howled.

The sound churned a hole through his soul. Overhead, the lightning crackled, and he glimpsed her terrified face. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to recall how his voice should sound. “I’m here to help. Your mommy sent me.”

She looked at him again, a black outline against the night, but she didn’t scream. He slid his arms behind her, under her legs, lifted her, and held her close. She tensed, but as the lightning scraped the sky, she dug her hands into his shirt.

“That’s right. Just relax,” he soothed as he wrestled her out of the forest, back to the road, and into his car. He settled her in the backseat, dragging out a coat from his suitcase. He tucked it around her, wiping her wet face with his hand. “There, there. Don’t worry. You’ll be just fine.”

Oh yes, fate had been kind.

Lacey dreamed of her escape. Because no one else was going to look for her daughter.

Micah’s incredulous snort still echoed in her mind. The conversation started ugly and mutated fast. She knew she shouldn’t have called the second he said hello. His voice still sent a rumble of warmth to the center of her body. Thick. Salving. Quintessential Micah. How she longed to hear him laugh.

“It’s me, Lacey,” she’d said, as if he hadn’t just recognized her. Even now, the fact that he’d known her after all this time made her tingle. Her voice had trembled. “I need your help.”

Then he
had
laughed. A short burst of disbelief. It felt like a knife sliced through her chest.

“I’ve been arrested.”

“Finally.”

Tears lashed her eyes. “They’ve accused me of murder, but I didn’t do it.”

He sighed. “Is there a point to this conversation, or are you just calling me up to prove that cats can’t change their stripes?”

She flinched. “I know what you think. But I’m innocent. Again.” She swallowed, wishing she could spill out the story, wishing history wasn’t classified. Tears ran down her chapped face. Her voice dropped to a desperate whisper. “Listen, Micah. I was in a train wreck. In Missouri. I’m in the hospital and my little girl is missing. Please, please I need your help.”

Silence. She could imagine him rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger, looking like he had the night she told him she was moving to Massachusetts to attend MIT. He handled it par for Micah—passionless, like he didn’t care in the least that she was walking out of his life and slamming the door.

He’d blown out a breath, pursed his lips, and nodded. No “Please don’t go.” No outcry of frustration. Not even a wince that he might never see her again. Just a nod. Sometimes that nod, in memory, made her want to slap him hard.

Other times, memory seduced her to grab him by the lapels and kiss him, freeing the emotions that swirled in her chest. He’d looked beautiful that evening—nearly regal in his army dress uniform. To think she’d actually dreamed of that night for weeks, not caring in the least that John was off risking his neck while his best friend, Micah, took her to senior prom.

She’d hoped that seeing her in the blue chiffon gown would suddenly alert him to the fact that she wasn’t the fifteen-year-old fan that had tripped into his arms, but a grown-up lady, with a grown-up mind to match. She’d hoped it would shatter the frozen Jim Micah facade and release a man of passion, of emotion. A man who loved her more than a friend.

Just like she’d loved him. Regardless of her feelings for John Montgomery, Micah had been her friend through her darkest hours. He’d been the one to whom she’d wanted to give her heart.

Oh, the foolish, romantic fantasies of a teenager. Instead of taking her back in his arms, running his wide, strong hands through her hair, and kissing her with the same emotions she thought she’d glimpsed in his eyes, he’d nodded. Iceman. Wasn’t that his new nickname? He’d earned it.

He obviously hadn’t shaken it in twenty-some years either. “Why should I help you?” he asked.

Her breath caught, as she chose to hear hope instead of disdain. “Because you were John’s best friend. And because my little girl is John’s daughter.”

She could hear him swallow, absorbing the information across two states. “And,” she said, her voice tremulous, “deep down inside, you know I’m innocent. You know I could never kill anyone.”

Silence again, and in it Lacey’s optimism mushroomed.
He believed her.
He had to know that she could never—would never—kill the man to whom she pledged her life. She’d nearly died trying to save John. Even if Micah couldn’t be privy to the private files of the CIA, he knew her better than anyone. Knew that she spoke the truth. She bit her lip, tasting salt, feeling nearly buoyant.

“No, Lacey. I don’t know that. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re lying to me right now. I can’t believe you actually had the nerve to mention John.” His voice shook. “Please don’t ever call me again.”

“No—!”

The telephone droned in her ear.

She began to shake as she cradled the receiver to her chest. The night pressed against the windows, sweeping despair into the room. She stared into the darkness, seeing her wretched self in the reflection, imagining a six-year-old huddled against the elements, terrified, abandoned … dead. A moan started in the pit of Lacey’s stomach and emerged in a feral cry that frightened her. She let the receiver drop, pulled the cotton sheet up to her nose, and wept.

The agent had stomped into the room at the noise, then skulked out. Nothing but the sound of her hopes shredding, piece by piece, remained.

She must have succumbed to the grasp of exhaustion because the sound of a food cart rattling down the hall woke her like the ghost of Christmas Future. She lifted her head, dazed, and scrambled for comprehension.

Nighttime had surrendered to the sun, and it trumpeted into the room like pure oxygen, reviving and full of joy. Lacey felt hollow and raw in the face of such brilliance. She went to scrub her face and her arm caught.

Handcuffs. Oh yeah. She closed her eyes, longing for the oblivion of unconsciousness, even as her brain wrapped around ideas for escape. Micah may have deserted her, but she was going to go down kicking. And they’d have to catch her first. She examined the cuffs.

She hadn’t forgotten all of her training.

A knock at the door. She turned away, her back to the food service. The last thing she needed was prying eyes on her pain. Besides, anything she put in her stomach would return in an ugly rush.

The door clicked open. “I’m not hungry,” she said in a voice she hoped barked, “get out.”

“That’s good, because I don’t have any food.”

Even as she turned, disbelief washed over her, dislodged her heart, and swept it clear away.

Jim Micah stood in the doorway, appearing big and bold and fierce, the cutting edge of handsome in a leather jacket, a gray shirt, and black jeans that doubled his stun power. Even from six feet away, she could feel a seductive power in his presence, one that made her feel at once both weak and uncannily safe. The materialization of her every dream.

Except for the fact that he looked about as happy to see her as he might his executioner. His gray green eyes drilled through her, and the grim set of his mouth held no welcome.

She dredged up a smile. “Hi.”

“You’d better not be lying to me or so help me, Lacey, I’ll find a way to convict you and see that you hang myself.”

Nope, not thrilled to see her. But he’d shown up, hadn’t he?

Lacey couldn’t help but smile.

Micah still didn’t believe her. He resolved that to himself as he stared at her, feeling his heart rip from its moorings just a little. She looked … awful. Her penny red hair in stringy ringlets, her face red-streaked from the coarse pillow. Her left arm had been slung tight to her thin body. The other was shackled to the bed. It twisted his gut to see it, even if she deserved it.

Believing that part still took his breath away. He ground his feelings to a nub and gave her a hard look, hoping to match his voice to it. “I mean it, Lacey. If you’re lying—” he shook his head—“what am I talking about? I know you are.”

“You don’t believe that.” Her gunmetal gray eyes held the texture of hope, and he knew he’d just made a serious mistake. Either that or the fatigue of hopping in his car and flooring it eight-plus hours from Tennessee to Missouri had left him with his defenses on idle.

“I do,” he managed.

“Then why are you here?” Her smile could still knock him to his knees, and she wielded it now with painful accuracy.

“Because … well …”
Okay, yes, I want to believe that you have been telling me the truth.
“If you’re on the level, then I owe John.”

Her voice dropped, devastatingly soft. “Deep inside, you know I could never lie to you.”

He stalked to the window, where he looked out at the parking lot. The sun glinted against pools of rainwater. “I don’t have time for your games. If you want my help, you have about five minutes to convince me before your bodyguard returns from the little boys’ room.”

He heard her sigh, as if giving up on their past, and for a moment, he longed to let her run her litany by him again, just once, to see if there was something in it he could grab on to. Some shred of unturned evidence that might help him unravel the truth. He ached to believe something other than what he’d seen with his own eyes.

“I was pregnant with John’s baby in Kazakhstan,” Lacey said. “I didn’t tell anyone, and I begged the CIA to keep it hushed.”

“Obviously.” Micah turned, clenched his jaw against rising emotions. Pregnant. With John Montgomery’s child. A child who should have been his. “And just how did this mythical child survive your wounds?” He looked pointedly at her stomach, from where he’d extracted a six-inch knife. As clear as if it were yesterday, he remembered her groans, smelled the blood caking his hands and fatigues, and tasted the fear lacing the back of his throat as he raced her to the nearest international hospital. He again tried to deny what he’d seen, but the image of John’s corpse sprawled on the warehouse floor saturated his mind.