Flee the Night (6 page)
“She was born three months premature. If it weren’t for you …” She looked away, and he saw her fight a tremor in her jaw.
Oh, boy, this was a bad idea. He should have known it from the way his heart had leaped from its grave and pounced on his cell phone callback button, connecting him to the switchboard at Baptist Hospital in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. He should have done the smart thing—sat down and waited for his heart, along with his common sense, to come crawling back. Instead he let it lead the way out to his pickup and across the state line. Evidently, she still had the power to make him think with his emotions, not his brain.
“C’mon, Lacey, I was there. I saw your injuries. I saw you. You didn’t look any more pregnant than I do.”
She gave him a look that could take out ten men. “I hid it. From you. From John. From the company. I have to live with my mistakes, but I’m not going to fabricate a daughter just to get you to help me.”
Micah took two steps closer and clamped his hand over her mouth. “Shh. I don’t need the cavalry interrupting us.”
She shook herself free and shot a look at the door. “Something you want to tell me?”
“No.” The last thing he needed, besides having the NSA arrive and mar his return to active duty through a suspicious liaison, was Lacey Montgomery’s sympathy. “Let’s skip ahead. Assuming that you’re not lying—” he held up a warning finger at her flush of color—“tell me when you last saw her.”
She swallowed hard, corralling the look of curiosity in her eyes. “Okay. On the train. We were taking the Eagle to Chicago, and it derailed last night. I have no idea where I am, because no one will give me any information. I don’t know if she’s dead, wandering around the forest, or safe in the hospital somewhere.” Her voice fell at the end. “Please, Micah. You’re my only hope.”
He closed his eyes and turned away. He didn’t need to hear that.
Lord, give me wisdom here. Don’t let me be duped by my longings or her wiles.
“What’s her name?”
“Emily.”
“My mother’s name.” He winced at the way his tone betrayed him.
Lacey stayed silent.
He turned and met her gaze. In it, he saw the woman she’d been. His Lucky Penny—the clarinet player, the homecoming queen, his prom date, the MIT graduate, and master spy.
Please,
her eyes cried. “How old is she?”
“Six. Blonde curly hair, John’s blue eyes. She’s probably still in her jammies.”
He broke her gaze. “I’ll see what I can turn up.” He made to leave, but she grabbed his shirt with her hand, stretching out her slung arm. A flash of pain across her face made him flinch. He hadn’t wanted her to see that her pain could needle him right in the heart.
“Thank you, Micah. I’ll make it up to you.”
“You can pay me back by forgetting my name,” he said harshly, then strode out before she could see him totter over the fine precipice of control.
“LACEY, THIS CAN be easy or difficult. It’s up to you.”
How she wished those words might be coming from the doctor, the one who’d x-rayed her arm thirty minutes ago. Her shoulder still ached from the way they’d twisted it, hoping to get a good angle. She might have picked easy, given the choice.
But, no. The question came from NSA Deputy Director Roland Berg, a fifty-three-year-old relic who she had always assumed was on her side despite her wild ideas.
Agent Michael Brower stood behind him, and his demeanor hadn’t stepped down from the lynch-mob posture. If anything, the gray hues under his eyes only gave him the appearance of a street thug.
Maybe they were serious about this murder charge. She moved her wrist inside the cuff. It rasped against the metal of her bed rail. “You know we’re on the same side here, Director.”
“At the moment, Lacey, you’re going to have to convince me. Did you know you had an NSA agent shadowing you?”
She stared at the men without blinking as Roland turned a chair around and straddled it. He looked tired himself in a rumpled suit, as if he’d slept hard on the plane.
“Of course not,” she said. “And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have sliced open his chest.” Berg narrowed his eyes at her. She didn’t look at Agent Brower. “Think about it. If I was trying to kill Agent Mitchell, I wouldn’t have used my own knife to do it.”
“That’s the unclear part. Your behavior over the years has been iffy at best, but we tolerated this cloak-and-dagger routine because of your paranoia—”
“Paranoia? My father was run off the road in broad daylight, my brother attacked on our farm in Kentucky, and my arm broken in Seattle during a mugging. He would have broken more if I hadn’t scared him.” Lacey’s mind traced the shadows that followed her, the feeling of her fine hairs rising many times when she was being tracked. “Shavik has been after me since Kazakhstan.”
“So you say.”
“You can’t seriously believe that his being on the train was a coincidence.”
“We haven’t found Ishmael Shavik or anyone matching his description.” Agent Brower seemed to relish delivering this bit of gut-wrenching news.
Lacey gave him a hard stare. “I didn’t dream it. I saw him.”
Roland stood up, walked over to the door, opened it, and left.
Lacey watched him go with a sinking heart. A short interrogation meant he was only warming up. She swallowed and turned her attention back to Agent Brower. He shifted his weight, his eyes boring into hers. “I had nothing to do with any murder.”
“Shut up.”
She looked out the window. The sky was turning gray again, low clouds obscuring the sun. Leaves skittered across the window view, flung into oblivion by the breeze. She knew how that might feel.
Her daughter was out there. Shivering in the cold rain. Or worse, wounded. Afraid, for sure. The thought grabbed Lacey around the throat and threatened to cut off her breath. Don’t. Fall. Apart. Now.
Micah, please find her.
The memory of Micah, his dark eyes tinged with just the finest edging of sympathy had kept her from dissolving into a pile of despair. She felt brittle. And on the fine edge of shattering into a million pieces. Never in her worst nightmares did they include her daughter lost, herself in custody and accused of murder. She had to get out of the hospital, retrieve Ex-6, and clear her name.
Funny how time repeated itself. She stared back at Agent Brower, pretty sure that she had seen him before. At least she’d seen his type. Narrow-minded. Angry.
Oh yeah, that was
Micah
.
Only Micah had driven across two states for her, hadn’t he? Hope stirred her heart. She shot another glance at heaven. Strange how God answered sometimes. Then again, He’d been silent for so long, she shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions.
For now, despite Micah’s—and God’s—apparent intervention, she should still assume she was on her own.
Situation normal.
She felt the acrid edge of despair fill her throat and fought it. Now wasn’t the time to let fatigue blur her common sense.
The door opened. Director Berg returned with a newspaper. He tossed it onto her bed, the front top headline screaming: Sixteen Dead in Train Derailment.
“Ouch,” Lacey said and gave the paper a nudge with her knee.
“Tell me that you didn’t plan the entire thing. That you’re not planning to steal Ex-6 and sell it to the highest bidder,” Berg said.
Lacey was hardly able to digest his words.
“Here’s the deal,” Berg continued as if he hadn’t just accused her of industrial treason, the very crime she was trying to prevent. “You hand over the Ex-6 program now, we’ll finish it, and we’ll make sure you’re sentenced to minimum security instead of lost in the labyrinth of DOJ maximum security dungeons.”
Lacey looked at his hazel eyes, at any traces of duplicity found there, and scrambled to make sense of his request. Where was her laptop? Surely it survived the crash. Where was the Ex-6 program? The thought of it in Shavik’s hands sent a chill into her belly.
“I know you were nearly finished. Did you fix the glitches that still remained—like encrypting the transmission signal?” Berg’s question sliced through the scenarios of terrorism waging through her brain.
“The fact that I’m even answering this question should give you some pause as to my traitorous plans,” Lacey said, unflinching. “Yes. I just need to test it with the hardware a final time; then it will be ready for production.”
Director Berg nodded like all this wasn’t completely over his head. But developing the Department of Defense’s most advanced on-field encryption/decryption system pushed even Lacey’s PhD in mathematics to the limit. “Then faking its destruction now would be advantageous to your selling it into enemy hands.”
“Hardly. I’ve never hidden my agenda from you, Berg. I want nothing more than to put this program in the hands of our field agents and retire quietly with my daughter in some safe place, with a nice white-picket fence and a pack of Dobermans. Selling Ex-6 would betray everything John and I fought for and everything he died for. How dare you accuse me of treason after everything I’ve given to you and my country.” She started to shake.
Was that a smirk on Brower’s face? How she longed for two minutes alone with the creep, even if she had only one good arm.
“I am not a traitor,” she told Berg. “I have full intentions of handing over the program to the NSA as soon as it is finished. Just like I promised.”
“Then I trust you have a copy?” The deputy director’s voice held the urgency that should have been reserved for younger, less experienced men.
Lacey studied him. Berg understood as well as she the importance of Ex-6. Hadn’t he looked at her with the same gleam when she’d come to him shortly after Em’s birth, with the plans for a quantum-based encryption system? He knew the price she’d paid in Kazakhstan seven years ago, the price too many agents paid in the age of electronic communication. She’d felt his excitement burn behind her heart. Maybe she wasn’t quite as vulnerable as it might seem.
She gathered her courage and produced an even, flat voice. “Yes, I have a copy.” She took a breath. “You’ll get the encryption system when I find my daughter.” She would have gotten less of a response if she’d slapped him. How he’d ever been John’s handler baffled her. Even she had a better game face. She remembered when Omar Al-Akim had stood toe to toe with her and told her that he would some-day send her home to Kentucky, one body part at a time. She hadn’t even flinched.
“You’re not in a position to bargain with us, Lacey. You hardly have a stellar reputation for loyalty. A few well-placed suggestions in the right ear and you won’t just serve time for murder; you’ll be walking the green mile for high treason.”
Lacey didn’t respond. The fact that Berg waved her past before her eyes like a red flag should have had her swallowing, blinking back ugly scenarios, and protesting. But Emily was still out there, and past experience told her that her best ally was her own wits.
Except … well, maybe now she also had Jim Micah. Still, he hadn’t exactly jumped for joy at seeing her. He might be on the telephone right now, ordering out pizza and hightailing it to the nearest Marriott, wishing he’d never answered his cell phone.
Somehow, however, she didn’t think so. Micah may believe her a traitor, but he was a man of his word. He kept his promises. At whatever cost.
“Think about your daughter. We’re the only ones who know about her. You’d hate for her to get picked up and placed in the foster-care system.” Berg shook his head, and suddenly Lacey knew why he was in his position. He may not be a field agent, but he delivered ultimatums like a one-two punch right to the kisser.
He pursed his lips as if he might actually care and pulled back for his final jab. “She might be lost forever or adopted out—she is still at that sweet, tender age when a loving family might want her.” He smiled, jackal-like. “And you, well, you really don’t know if we haven’t already done that, do you?”
Lacey fought a betraying expression. No. If they had Emily, they would have told her. It would have been Berg’s first line of offense.
Still, she could use this threat. Perhaps it was time to remember just how this game was played.
Until she figured out what Ishmael had been doing on that train and what had happened to Ex-6, and until she proved her innocence again and Emily was in her arms, she’d be the woman they thought she was. Broken. Afraid. Guilty.
Cooperative.
“Okay, yes. I’ll give you the copy. But promise me that you will take care of Emily. You’ll return her to Janie’s ranch.” She didn’t have to fabricate the desperation that laced her voice.
“Of course.” Berg frowned.
And, yes, that was a smile on Agent Brower’s face. Made him look like a wolf—all teeth and lots of bite.
Lacey enacted a sigh. “You’ll find a copy in Chicago in a safe-deposit box at First National Bank.” She motioned for a pencil.
Berg took her scribbled information, stood, and patted her blanketed legs. “Good girl, Lacey. You get better now. See how easy that was?”
Easy? Easy was her dreams—living on the farm, mothering Emily, teaching her to ride. Easy was falling for the memory of Jim Micah in her arms, dancing under a canopy of brilliance strewn across the Kentucky sky. Easy had nothing to do with sewing together the tattered remains of her shattered life, always looking over her shoulder. Or trying to prove to a man who hated her that she wasn’t a woman with murder in her past.
No, there was nothing easy about tomorrow. There was only one way she was going to get better. Get free. Get Em.
And run.
