The Marked Star

by Vicki Hinze

  “Okay, half-pint.” Sam set her down on the floor. “I think we’ve got all we need to get started on this mission. Why don’t you go downstairs and practice your NASCAR driving—you need more time behind the wheel, and that’s a fact. We’ll get the help party up and running.”

  “I can help you.”

  “Great,” Sam said. “I’ll call you when we’re ready. We have some basic stuff to do first.”

  She stared at Sam. “In other words, you guys want to talk it all over now.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said without apology. “So we can develop the best strategy. That’s normal procedure for secret keepers. It’s sensible.”

  She watched him a long second, decided he was talking straight with her, then said, “Okay.” She headed to the stairs and went down.

  The sounds of screeching tires on the NASCAR video game floated up the stairs. Elle shuddered. Reckoning time had arrived. She stepped into the fray. “Um, before you get too deeply into anything, there’s something I need to share with you—some history on Lizzie’s mom that might be helpful. It could be pertinent to everything going on, considering recent events.”

  All eyes turned to her. She avoided Nick’s and took a gulp of water from the glass on the table beside her.

  “You know them?” Nick asked, a quiver in his voice. “Lizzie and her mother?”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “It’s complicated.”

  Staring at her, he sat down on the sofa then folded his arms. “Complicated? There’s nothing complicated about it. You either know them or you don’t, Elle.”

  “It is complicated,” she insisted, taking in a ragged breath. Joe looked most open. Sam had tugged his cap brim down over his eyes, and Nick looked as if the wrong word would have his jaw splintering. “First, I want to say that I didn’t not tell you,” she said, lifting a hand. “I just realized what I know, and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to share it.”

  “When did you just realize whatever it is you know?” Nick pushed.

  “When talking to Lizzie upstairs. You heard us.”

  Nick didn’t respond to that either way. “Okay. So share.”

  Testy and, for some reason, as nervous as she. “I already told you I was an engineer at AAN and I had a knack for developing systems.” She paused, and when Nick nodded, she went on. “Lizzie’s mother was a government negotiator on one of AAN’s contracts. An outside group tried to force her into giving it details on the system being developed.” Elle hesitated, choosing her words carefully. Classified information was still classified and the line she was walking was a thin one she didn’t dare cross. “It played hardball,” she said, avoiding details on the group, the system, and everything else possible. “Long story short, the group bombed the negotiator’s car at her home and she ended up unemployed, and her and her daughter were forced into witness protection.”

  That created a stir and Sam shoved his cap back on his head. “You didn’t think this was important enough to mention sooner?”

  “When?” Elle lifted her hands. “While you were talking to Lizzie?”

  “Calm down, Sam.” Nick looked at Elle. “So you realized Lizzie is this negotiator’s daughter and her mother is in trouble?”

  “Lizzie says she is, and I believe her.”

  “You thing this group is after her again?”

  “I think this group is relentless. If it found her, yes. Whether or not it did, I don’t know, but her leaving Lizzie with Nora to get her under your protection says it’s possible.”

  Nick didn’t agree or disagree. “But Lizzie doesn’t know you knew her before, correct?”

  “I didn’t know her before. I knew her mother. But I knew of Lizzie, of course.” Elle tried to be as specific as possible. “I—I can’t help but think with me sent here and her mom gone… “ Was there a connection? Unsure, Elle admitted what she was sure of. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Who was the group that strong-armed her and bombed her car?”

  Elle looked at Joe, who’d asked the question. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t.” Oh, boy. Dangerous waters here. “It’s, um, classified.”

  “But you do know?” Sam pushed anyway.

  She nodded.

  “Why do you know?” Sam stood up, clearly not trusting her and letting her know it.

  She couldn’t blame him. The name of that group was held close in tight circles.

  “Sit down, Sam.” Nick looked from him to Elle. “The group was NINA.”

  Wave upon wave of shock ripped through Elle’s body. Her knees folded and she sank down onto the sofa cushion beside Nick. He knew about NINA. He’d been out of the military for a long while now, but… oh, no. Were they NINA?

  No , no way. He and PSC would never be a part of NINA. They were part of the force opposing NINA. She tested that theory, and all the puzzle pieces fell into place. She met and held Nick’s gaze and nodded.

  “How did you come to know all this about Lizzie and her mother—not who they were but what happened to them?” He frowned. “Did Lizzie tell you that, too?”

  Confirmation. They’d all listened in on the morning conversation. “No. She didn’t have to tell me. I knew because I was there when it happened.”

  “There?”

  “At AAN.”

  “I’m missing a step here,” Sam said, growing short-tempered.

  “Tell him, Elle,” Nick said.

  She forced herself to look at Sam. “I was there because it was my design, Sam. I developed it and I hold the patents on the system NINA was after.” Elle swallowed a threatening sob. “Lizzie and her mom were nearly killed because of it. Because…of me.”

  Nick leaned forward on the sofa. “And you’ve carried that guilt with you every day since the attack at their home happened.”

  Joe nodded. “Which is why you left engineering and went into music.”

  She nodded.

  “You should have told me right away, Elle.” Nick stood, paced a short path before the sofa. “NINA is after you for that design. If it finds you, now it also finds Lizzie.”

  “I didn’t know. It’s not like I knew her on sight, I didn’t. It wasn’t until she was telling me her story about her mom that I put the pieces together.” She turned on Nick. “Do you really think I would intentionally put that child’s life in jeopardy?”

  Joe leaned back. “Okay, so all this happens and you walk and get into music. Did you know where Lizzie and her mother were located?”

  “No. And I couldn’t look for them without alerting NINA.”

  “Makes sense.” Joe pursed his lips. “So you changed your name, dropped Howell and went by Bostwick for additional distance?”

  Nick, stone silent until then, spoke up. “She’s never gone by Howell.”

  Joe looked to Nick to explain but he offered nothing more.

  “My parents didn’t give me their name,” Elle admitted. Shame and humiliation, the old wondering what was wrong with her, why they were ashamed of her and the thousand other flaws in her that might have spurred them to make that decision, reared its ugly head. No parent kept even their name from their child, robbed her of her identity and place in her family, to protect her. “I’ve always been Elle Bostwick.” Elle steeled herself, then admitted the rest. “Very few people know that I’m my parents’ daughter. Maybe six, but no more. Even people at AAN think I’m a distant cousin.”

  “What?” Joe frowned.

  “They thought they were protecting her,” Nick said. “It was stupid and selfish but it is what it is. Let it go.”

  Joe sat back down and spoke not another word.

  Elle could have kissed Nick. Admitting all this was hard enough, but admitting her own parents shunned her cut too deep for any defense.

  “Something’s up,” Sam said. “No game noise down there.”

  Joe moved to the monitors. “Nothing going on down there.”

  “You see her?�
�

  “No, I don’t.”

  “She’s too quiet. It ain’t natural.” Sam hauled himself to his feet. “I’m gonna go check on her.”

  Elle shifted to the edge of the sofa and rubbed at her face, more from nervousness than need. “Thank you, Nick.”

  “No problem.” He cocked his head. “They’re not judging you, you know.”

  “Aren’t they? Aren’t you?” She smiled but there was no warmth in it. “Surely you’re wondering what about me is so awful that my own parents want to deny to the world I exist.”

  “Me? Remember who you’re talking to, Elle.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not like it was for me for you. Your dad loves you so much he forfeited his place in your life to keep you safe. Not to get rid of you.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “I would rather have taken the risks and belonged.”

  Sam thundered up the stairs. “Grab your weapons.”

  “What’s going on?” Nick jumped to his feet.

  “Lizzie’s not downstairs playing.”

  “But she didn’t come up here,” Elle started. “Maybe she went to the bath—“

  “No!” Fear, stark and raw, deepened every fine line in Sam’s face. “The door to the outside is open. Lizzie’s gone!”

  At the door to the Lodge, Nick held up a hand, blocking Elle, but looked past her to Sam and Joe. “Locked and loaded?”

  Both nodded, their weapons drawn.

  Pulling out his own from its holster at the back of his waist, Nick looked at Elle. “Stay close to me and be as quiet as you can. Don’t call out to her. Don’t talk, and don’t make any unnecessary noise.”

  Elle bobbed her head, signaling she understood, her eyes wide with fear.

  Fear, he felt down deep in the pit of his stomach. “Any word, use A protocol. Let’s move.”

  They went outside. In a series of silent hand signals, he motioned Sam to go left, toward the wood, then Joe to the right, around the house to the backside. He nodded toward the lake and bridge they’d crossed when coming in, and he and Elle moved in that direction.

  On the far side of the helicopter pad, the grass gave way to natural ground, sandy and uneven. Elle slipped on a stump root.

  Nick caught her elbow and kept her from falling. “You okay?” he silently mouthed.

  She nodded that she was fine.

  They moved on, winding down toward the water, the little rock-strewn creek. Water moved downstream at a lazy clip. Beyond a thicket of squat fat bushes, she snagged Nick’s shirt and tugged. He looked back at her, and Elle pointed.

  Lizzie sat alone on the bank of the creek among downed branches, digging her bare toes in the sandy dirt. “What’s she staring at?” Nick whispered to Elle. He sent up a series of bird calls.

  “I don’t know,” Elle whispered back, scanning the broader area but seeing no one. “The bird calls—A protocol?”

  Nick nodded, but didn’t look at her. He too scanned a grid. Slowly, methodically, meticulously. Nothing stirred, no unusual sounds echoed over the water to him. And no strange scents assaulted his nose.

  They crept toward Lizzie in stealth-mode, moving gingerly tree to tree, bush to bush, hunkering low to obscure them as much as possible. In the thicket, he paused and again opened his senses. The only sound was of the summer breeze. The water on the rocks. Lizzie humming, staring at something he couldn’t see. Nick stopped suddenly. “What’s she looking at?”

  “I don’t know.” Elle whispered. “It’s in her hands, I think.”

  A bird call sounded to his left. Moments later, another came from his right. Sam and Joe were in position. He looked to Elle and motioned that they were moving in.

  “Lizzie?” Nick said, drawing near. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing out here?” Elle asked. “You were supposed to be downstairs, not outside.”

  Lizzie cupped her hand into a fist. “I saw the lady through the door. She tapped on the glass and waved for me to come.”

  “The lady?” Worry streaked up Nick’s back. “What lady?”

  “The one from the wreck.” Lizzie dusted the sand off her skirt. “The man was already here.”

  “Here?” Nick’s worry meter shot off the charts. “At the creek?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What man are you talking about?”

  Lizzie sighed. “The one from the wreck.”

  “I didn’t see a man at the wreck.”

  Elle frowned at Nick. “He was driving. You hit your head, remember. He was passed out and the woman came to the car then got behind the wheel of their car and took off.”

  “Where’d they go, Lizzie?” He scanned nonstop, but saw nothing.

  “They had a boat down there—at the dock.” She pointed toward the gazebo.

  Why hadn’t that shown up on the monitors in the house? Anything like that should have shown up. “Sam!”

  He ran up, paused and looked at Lizzie. “You okay, half-pint?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Don’t take off like this on me again.”

  “I didn’t take off.”

  “I didn’t know where you were. You scared me, Lizzie.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sam, check the boat dock and the monitors there. Something’s wrong with them.”

  “On it.” He took off in a trot.

  “What did the lady want, Lizzie?” Nick asked.

  “She asked if we were all okay. I told her yeah, and the man was kind of mad. He didn’t say anything. Then the lady gave me this and said she thinks it belongs to Elle.” Lizzie held out her hand and in her upturned palm lay Elle’s ring.

  “Your amethyst, I take it?” Nick asked her.

  Elle squealed her delight. “Yes!” She laughed that grating tinkling laugh. “Thank you, Lizzie.”

  “The lady gave it to me for you. I didn’t do anything.”

  Nick’s gaze collided with Joe’s. NINA. “Let’s go. We need to get you inside. Joe, scout and see what you can find.”

  He turned and disappeared into the woods, which is where Nick would have made egress had he had to choose.

  Nick scooped up Lizzie. “Listen to me, both of you,” he told Lizzie and Elle. “We need to get you inside where you’re safe. Move quickly.”

  He took off toward the Lodge in a near run, Lizzie bouncing on his hip, Elle at his side. On the porch, he set Lizzie down. “Stay here.”

  He disappeared inside, checked the monitors, the windows and ran a perimeter check, then retrieved Lizzie and Elle and took them down to the basement. “You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to show you. It’s a secret keeper’s secret, and I’m trusting you. Got it?” Lizzie nodded.

  At the wall, he pushed a sequence of stones. The stones split open, revealing a door. “This is a bunker. You’ll be safe here. No matter what, do not come out until I come back to get you.”

  “All right.” Elle swallowed hard, touched his sleeve. “Be careful, Nick.”

  “I will.” He motioned them inside. “You’ll find what you need in there. Just remember, stay put until we know everything is okay.”

  They stepped into the bunker, and he pushed the stone sequence.

  The door slid shut.

  Nearly two hours later, the guys had checked every inch of the property, briefed Tim, Omega One, and Joe then joined Nick in the gathering room.

  Hot and sweaty, Joe had stripped down to a t-shirt and jeans. His face was still flushed. He downed a glass of water and refilled it at the kitchen tap. “They took a boat down a quarter mile. Found it docked there. I figure they borrowed it from the owners. On shore, I found four-wheeler tracks and followed the trail to a public park. Four wheeler was left behind there. I took some samples from it, but if we pick up anything, I’ll be shocked. It reeked. Doused in bleach. Lots of fresh tire tracks in the park, so no way of telling which vehicle was theirs. Bottom line, they’re long gone.”

  “How did they get past our security here?” Nick as
ked. “Did you see any signs of damage?”

  “None,” Joe said, unwrapping a fresh piece of gum. “Who are these people? NINA or CIA?”

  “We’re nearly positive the woman’s Olivia so they could be either,” Nick said. “We didn’t even know there was a man—well, Lizzie and Elle did, but Elle thought he must be insignificant because we never mentioned him and we were all about the woman. He could be either.”

  Joe swallowed a few more gulps of water. “Don’t beat yourself up about the security breach or the man, Nick. There’s no time for it.”

  Valid point, and Nick had been beating himself up about both.

  “Where’s Sam?”

  “Pulling some diagnostics on the system to see what failed.”

  “If anything.”

  “Something failed, Joe. The woman knocked on the door downstairs, for pity’s sake.” Nick still couldn’t believe it. The computer station in the gathering room stood empty.

  “Sam working in the lab?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’d best get up there and see what he’s found.”

  Nick followed Joe up the stairs to the third-level lab and spotted Sam at the computer. When he heard them entering, he turned to face them. “It’s a loop,” he said. “They spliced in a long loop on us. That’s why we didn’t pick them up.”

  Nick frowned. “That explains the monitors, but the alarm should have triggered. It didn’t.”

  “They created a backdoor into the system and disarmed it. Left tracks, too.”

  That had to be deliberate. They wanted Nick to know they’d been there. As a warning? Or flaunting in his face he’d been outwitted? “Did you trace them?”

  “Yeah, I did.” Sam rocked back in his high-back seat. “Worthless. Takes me on a false trail.”

  “To where?”

  “Across three continents then to a dead-end.”

  “What dead-end?” How could Sam be sure of that already?

  “It’s to Omega One.”

  One had been compromised? Nick’s jaw went lax. “These hackers know what they’re doing.”