Breaking Protocol

by Michelle Witvliet

  “See that she’s examined by a doctor when you get her to the facility,” Carter instructed when he handed the men back their ID wallets. “She fell during questioning and I want to make sure there’re no internal injuries.”

  “Yeah, that happens sometimes,” said Number One Thug, giving more than her face the once-over. “She does look like hell.”

  Carter had to agree with the man’s assessment. He didn’t know what she’d done to make herself look so dreadful, but he’d swear she was genuinely ill. Other than the assorted bruises and scrapes in various stages of healing, her normally honey-tanned skin was chalky under the brilliant Florida sun. He also noted dark smudges under her eyes when she cast him one last hateful glance as she was led away. That, too, was more convincing than he cared to admit.

  “She’ll get all the attention she deserves,” assured Thug Number Two.

  That was precisely what Riggs feared most. If he had any residual doubts about Pritchard’s involvement in all of this, they vanished with the blink of a certain woman’s last chilling glance.

  The threesome had no sooner disembarked when Piper jumped into action. She doubled over, clutched her cuffed hands against her abdomen and groaned in horrific agony.

  When Number One tried to see what was wrong by leaning down to her hunched-over level, she brought her fists up hard into his nose. It sounded like the crack of a dry twig when it broke. An elbow to his windpipe sent him sprawling, and a hard toe-kick to his groin finished him off, leaving him gasping for air through a series of yelps and squeals.

  Before Number Two could react to her blitz attack on his partner, Piper turned on him, swung her leg up high and caught him on the side of his head with a sharp thrust. The momentum of the blow spun him around. Before he could catch his balance, she scored another hit to his chest, knocking him flat on his back. One last well-placed punch rendered him unconscious. She snatched the guns from their holsters, tossed them into the nearby bay and took off running. In less than thirty seconds she had managed to incapacitate both burly men and relieve them of their weapons.

  Intrigued by her every move, Carter almost forgot his part in her escape. Spurring himself into action, he propelled down the gangplank just as she planted her last punch.

  “Piper, stop!” he shouted without bothering to draw his gun. At that time of day there were people milling up and down the walkways. Discharging the weapon, even a warning shot, would only cause panic and draw undue attention to the situation.

  Although it galled him to offer assistance, he obligingly stopped to see if the men she’d disabled needed medical attention. He didn’t think she’d done any serious damage, but procedure required that he check, and that was one rule he intended on following. That it gave Piper additional time to escape never entered his mind. Well, almost never.

  Once certain the two men hadn’t been permanently disabled, Carter took off in the direction Piper had headed, all the while hoping she was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t. A grin split his face as he searched for a dockside payphone to call his mother about a very important COD package coming her way.

  * * *

  Piper slowed her pace to a brisk walk long enough to catch her breath and spit out the cuff key. She watched with wide-eyed horror as the key slipped through her fingers, hit the toe of her shoe and sailed into the air. It bounced three times, skittering across the concrete with a tinny ting, ting, ting before plunking into the briny Biscayne Bay.

  “Shit!” she hissed, already realizing what her next move needed to be. Ducking into an isolated alcove between two buildings, she gripped the metal ring around her wrist and started tugging and twisting. Riggs had left it somewhat looser than normal but it was still smaller than the widest span of her hand. With one long strenuous tug, the ring popped off, leaving her thumb joint dislocated. She allowed herself one throaty yowl as she gritted her teeth and pressed her hand against the side of the building until she heard the joint pop back into place. The second cuff was slightly looser than the first and came off with a shade less effort. She pitched them into a trash receptacle and hopped into the first taxi in the line she found waiting curbside.

  The cabbie cast Piper a wary glance as she climbed into the back of his taxi. Flipping her hair with the haughty air of a spoiled heiress used to giving orders, she rattled off the address from the slip of paper, all the while exuding enough confidence to more than make up for her borrowed jeans, ill-fitting tee and oversized chambray shirt.

  After checking out the back window to be certain she wasn’t being followed, she settled into the backseat and rolled down the window to infuse some much-needed fresh air into the back of the cab.

  It was only then that she noticed the quarter-sized piece of skin peeled back from her left thumb knuckle. She pushed the loose skin over the wound and applied light pressure with two fingertips on the tender joint. Blood oozed and trickled from beneath her fingers and ran down her hand, creating a spreading crimson stain on her shirttail.

  Dirty, bloodstained and in desperate need of a shower, she could only imagine what a fine first impression she was going to make on Carter’s mother.

  * * *

  Meeting Hannah Morley wasn’t nearly as awkward as Piper had envisioned it would be. In fact, when she took the time to truly examine the initial experience, she likened it to finding her way home after a long absence.

  In the short time she’d been there, she already felt as if she’d known Hannah forever. Riggs’s mother was one of those people who never met a stranger. She’d opened her door and welcomed Piper into her home as if she were an old family friend coming for an eagerly awaited visit. The moment Piper stepped across the threshold, she was handed a stack of clean clothes, directed toward the bathroom and told to hurry because the chicken was already in the fryer.

  Clean for the first time in days, her belly full of by far the best chicken she’d ever had and feeling more at peace than anyone in her present position had any right to be feeling, Piper stood in the middle of Hannah Morley’s Miami backyard wearing a pair of cutoff sweatpants and a faded red tee she was sure were remnants of Carter’s younger days, because they fit her smaller frame perfectly. She studied the coral-colored stucco ranch with brick-red trim and faded tiled roof. She’d barely been there an hour before she’d learned that this was where Riggs had been born and raised by his single mom. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the house to set it apart from the rest of the cookie-cutter houses on the block, but she sensed something solid and settled about the house’s occupant.

  Piper hurried to help when she spotted Hannah pushing on the screen door with her backside while struggling with an overflowing basket of wet laundry.

  “Let me take that,” said Piper, lifting the basket from the older woman’s hands. The weight of the wet clothes tugged at the tender muscle of her wounded arm and most recently dislocated thumb, but she gritted her teeth and suffered through the discomfort, because she couldn’t very well offer assistance then turn around and tell her generous hostess she couldn’t do it. Thank God she didn’t have far to carry it, or she might have scattered Hannah’s clean laundry all over the backyard.

  “Goodness, child,” Hannah exclaimed as she followed Piper. “I may be getting up in years but I still got a few good ones left in me.”

  “My guess is, you’ve got a lot more than that, Hannah.” Piper felt exceedingly awkward calling Carter’s mother by her first name, but the woman had made a point about it from the moment they’d met, so Hannah it was.

  Piper set the basket by the double clothesline strung between two T-shaped poles set in cement. The lines bowed with considerable slack, allowing Hannah to hang the laundry without having to stretch. When one line was filled, she hooked the notched end of a long one-by-two plank against the clothesline to keep the laundry from brushing the ground while they dried.

  The
warm breeze off the nearby ocean snapped and flapped the sweet-smelling laundry, flooding Piper’s senses with fond memories of her early childhood and the loving housekeeper who had given her the attention her mother never had.

  Piper lifted a wet pillowcase from the laundry basket and snatched two clothespins from the canvas pouch hanging from the line. One she caught between her teeth as she pinched the other open. She held one corner on the line with two fingers, pinched it secure with the spring-loaded clothespin and repeated the process on the other side. She lifted the pillowcase’s mate from the heap of wet clothes and started the process all over again.

  “You know, Hannah,” said Piper as she snatched another piece of wet laundry from the dwindling pile. “You took an awful big chance letting a stranger into your home when you don’t know anything about me.”

  “Seeing the way you handle a clothespin tells me a lot about you,” Hannah told her. “Not many girls your age know what one is, let alone how to use it.”

  “You should see what I can do with a mop and broom,” Piper boasted with a prideful dip of her head. Or an assault rifle, she silently added.

  “Shoot, if I can’t trust my own son’s judgment, then who can I trust? If my boy says you’re okay, that’s good enough for me. And so far you haven’t done anything to make me think differently.”

  “I am relieved to hear that.”

  “Although,” said Hannah with a thoughtful expression, “there was that one girl once. He didn’t have much sense at all about her.” Then with a dismissive wave of her hand, she brushed the thought away like she was whisking aside a pesky cobweb. “But never you mind about any of that. The girl’s ancient history as far as he’s concerned. He’s grown up a whole lot since high school.”

  Brushing her bare toes across the grass, Piper turned away and bit down on her lower lip to suppress her amusement at Hannah’s reminiscing. Carter’s mother was as genuine as they came—a straight-shooting, nothing phony or false kind of woman. Her own mother never possessed the inner strength that Hannah obviously had; Sarah “Stormy” Jordan never learned to roll with life’s punches. Instead of pushing back when adversity hit too hard, her mother found it easier to retreat into herself and let life go on without her.

  “You really should be more careful, though.”

  “You sound just like my Carter. He’s always hounding me about checking doors and windows and how I shouldn’t be so trusting, but I’ve always had a knack, a sixth sense you might call it, for sizing folks up. Except for a few crossed signals over the years, that ability has served me well.”

  Intrigued, Piper asked, “Crossed signals?”

  “Seems my sixth sense goes a bit haywire when a good-looking, sweet-talking man comes my way. Carter’s daddy being a perfect example—’course without him I wouldn’t have had Carter.” She paused briefly then added, “He’s been a real good son.”

  “You can be proud of the way he turned out.”

  Hannah finished with a self-deprecating laugh. “I got no problem raising ’em, I just can’t pick ’em worth a damn. Ben Morley was a decent man, but there’s no telling what kind of man he would have been in the long run since he died six months after the wedding. Can’t tell nothing about a man during the honeymoon phase.”

  Piper smiled warmly at her hostess. She saw so much of the son in the mother. They had the same intense chameleon hazel eyes that could wrap a person in their comforting greenish depth like a downy quilt on Christmas morning or stop them cold in their tracks with a solitary deepening glare.

  “So tell me, what does this sixth sense of yours tell you about the woman who showed up on your doorstep this afternoon?”

  “I like her,” said Hannah without a moment’s pause to consider her response. “And what’s more important is I think my son does, too.” She picked up the empty white plastic laundry basket and headed for the house with it braced lightly against her hip. “Sure took him long enough,” she muttered as she walked away.

  Piper chuckled and wondered what Hannah would think of her houseguest or her son if she knew that Piper had escaped federal custody and was running from the law, with Carter’s assistance no less. She hated to think about what Riggs was going through at that very moment on account of her.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe you let a woman—in handcuffs, no less—take you both down and escape!” Jack Pritchard paced the length of his cabin and back again, waving his arms with such outrage and frustration that the two men standing in front of him flinched with every wild gesture he made in their direction. Number Two stood with a towel pressed to his bruised and bleeding forehead, while Number One held an ice pack to his family jewels as shadowy bruising discolored the thin skin under his eyes.

  Carter stood just inside the door, trying desperately to mirror his boss’s stern expression as he internalized his elation at Piper’s successful getaway.

  Jackson’s face flushed with anger and his pale eyes glossed into shards of glacial ice. He looked up and down at the two pitiful men and his face twisted with disgust all over again. “Get the hell out of my sight. I can’t stand looking at you a second longer.”

  Pritchard watched them shuffle out, all the while the vein in his temple throbbed to the beat of a Latin salsa. Carter didn’t think Jackson suffered from hypertension, but judging from the way the old man’s face turned assorted shades of red and purple, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the man collapsed from a massive stroke right where he stood. Carter wasn’t too sure how he felt about the possibility or how he’d react to the event.

  Jackson whirled on his heel and turned whatever fury he had left on his second-in-command, who had until now stood inconspicuously watching his superior bluster and blather in high-definition color.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What in the hell were you doing while all this was going down? You trained her, you’ve worked with her, you knew better than any of us what she was capable of.” He waggled his finger at Carter’s scabbed-over split lip. “Hell, she gave you a sample of it yesterday. You should have taken every precaution to prevent something like this from happening. Why wasn’t she in waist chains and leg shackles?”

  Carter raised his hand against Jackson’s blame game. “Don’t even think about laying this on me. For one, I wasn’t aware we had those particular restraints available, but more importantly, Piper is a skilled special ops agent trained in all of the martial arts. Admit it, Jack, she took us all by surprise. I never expected her to bolt like that. Did you?”

  Drawing himself to his full six-foot-four, further defining the stature variance between the two men, Carter added, “Now if there’s nothing else, I’ve got a desperate agent loose in Miami that I’d like to track down before she gets into any more trouble.”

  “You might have had an easier time doing that if you hadn’t removed her GPT chip.” Jackson opened a smooth-grained wood humidor and selected a fat, hand-rolled double Corona that Carter suspected to be the finest contraband Havana had to offer. The cabin was soon filled with the sharp pungency of cigar smoke. It seemed the more he puffed, the less irritated he became, much like a colicky baby soothed with a favorite pacifier.

  “So what are you waiting for?” Jackson finally said. “Go find her.”

  Carter didn’t need to be told twice. He snapped to attention and turned to take his leave.

  “One more thing,” Pritchard added before Carter had a chance to take more than half a dozen steps down the gangway. “I’m giving you till Monday to bring her in. We’ve wasted enough time and money on that woman. There are more cost-effective ways of tracking her down.”

  Carter bit his tongue as he crammed his fists deep into the pockets of his Dockers. He couldn’t afford to piss Jackson off at this point. He needed his job and every available resource connected with his position.

  “What�
��s the matter, Riggs? Not so ready to defend her anymore?” Jackson sneered with the smoldering stogie sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

  “No,” said Carter, fighting an incredible urge to shove the cigar right down the old man’s throat. “Not anymore. That’s why it’s so important that I find her. I want the pleasure of dealing with her myself.”

  This time he didn’t wait to hear if Jackson had anything more to add, and quite frankly, he didn’t care. He had to get Piper out from under Jackson’s radar as quickly as possible, because he was all too aware of what Jack meant by “cost-effective ways.” He’d hire unconscionable bounty hunters who knew they’d be paid the same whether they brought in their quarry dead or alive.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Carter knew the area he grew up in so well he could have maneuvered through the streets blindfolded. Buildings and landmarks had changed over the years, but major streets and intersections didn’t. After taking a very long, roundabout taxi ride to be certain he wasn’t being followed, he had the cabbie drop him off about two miles from his mother’s house. He walked the rest of the way, finally arriving in the suburban Miami neighborhood long after dark.

  Hannah lived in the same house where she’d single-handedly raised her son with a firm and loving hand, instilling in him a strong responsibility to family and country. In retrospect, he realized he’d had a pretty normal childhood, filled with the usual trouble and harmless pranks active boys got into, which was always followed by his mother’s customary firm-handed discipline. Hannah had taken most of his youthful exuberance in stride, giving him plenty of hell when he deserved nothing less and giving him abundant love and understanding when he deserved nothing but a sound whipping.

  When he arrived at the rear of the house, he smiled as a flood of fond memories filled his head. The back porch light was on, just as it always had been whenever he’d been out after dark. He’d traveled all over the world, but this was where his roots were still firmly planted. Dorothy Gale was absolutely right—there really was no place like home. His smile grew wider because there was an added bonus waiting for him on this particular visit. Piper was there.