Micah felt his chest knot while they drove back to their hastily set-up base camp.
Fifteen minutes later, he got out of Conner’s truck, climbed into his own. “I reserved us rooms at the Tree-Line Motel. I’ll meet you there later. I need to swing by the hospital first.” The thought of Lacey’s eyes emptying of all hope in front of him punched a burning hole in his gut.
Hospital visiting hours were obviously long over. The parking lot glistened under the glare of lights. The rain misted in their rays, evidence of the gloom beyond. Micah shoved his hands in his pockets and headed toward the doors, feeling his failures like Freon in his veins.
He walked past Lacey’s guard, preparing to do some fancy maneuvering, but the man didn’t stir. Sunken in sleep, he looked like he no longer felt Lacey was a threat.
The guard obviously didn’t know her like Micah did.
Or did he? In fact, there was so little Micah knew about this woman that the questions suddenly felt alive, burrowing through his chest. Like, why, exactly, did the NSA think she had murdered someone? Why had her daughter been traveling under a different name? Or even, why had it taken her seven years to call him?
Actually he could answer that last question. Pride. Hurt. Betrayal. Only whose betrayal? Hers or his?
He stood at the foot of her bed, watching her sleep, her head lolled to one side. His lucky penny. Her red hair was tangled, matted against the pillow, and in the darkness, she looked so peaceful. So unlike the woman he’d seen in Kazakhstan, blood dripping from her hands. Her voice rushed back to him as it had so many times, and he remembered the way she grabbed him by the shirt, eyes ferocious on his. “Help John.”
But it had been too late. John’s aorta had been severed. His life flooded on the floor, his blue eyes glassy. Micah nearly lost ten years of composure right there in the middle of the gutted warehouse.
He’d held together long enough to scoop Lacey into his arms and race through the Almaty streets toward the hospital. Long enough for her to moan, her hands curled around her body, “Oh, it’s all my fault. My fault. I killed him.”
He stared at her now, his throat thick, those words pinging in his head, and for the first time he wondered if maybe he should have stuck around long enough to decipher the meaning of those words.
Maybe there were a lot of things he should have stuck around to do. He trudged to the window, scraped a hand over his hair, and stared out into the darkness. Regrets seemed to line every conversation he had with Lacey over the years.
“Micah?” Her voice, soft, full of hope, made him wince.
He heard her shift, then a quick intake of breath as she sat up.
He turned, stared at his feet. He couldn’t look into those gray eyes. “Lacey, I … we found her trail and followed it.” He closed his eyes, feeling sick. “We lost it. I don’t know. We have a dog and he just lost it. I’m so sorry.”
She stayed silent. No moan. No mourning cry. Nothing. Then again, Lacey was a spy … or had been. She could mask the truth like a Shakespearean actor. Although her eyes were hard and still, the way she swallowed once, then twice, sparked something deep in his gut.
“You’re not … very surprised by this information.”
When she looked away from him, the feeling in his gut blazed to an inferno. Oh no, what if … “Lacey … they haven’t … found her, have they?” The idea of Lacey’s—John’s—daughter down in the hospital morgue made him reach out for the back of the chair.
She shook her head.
“She’s not dead?” he asked in a thin voice.
Lacey closed her eyes, as if the answer pained her.
He sat down, emptied. He heard only the thumping of his heart and the soft swish of rain outside the window. “Lacey, what is it?”
“Micah, I have to ask you to leave. I’m sorry, but I have to … handle this on my own.”
“What’s going on?” He heard the rush of anger in his voice, shocked that he could race from sympathy to fury so quickly. Lacey had always had the uncanny ability to light a match under his emotions. Still, he’d douse them to cinders before he let them get out of hand. He hadn’t earned the nickname Iceman because of his propensity to let himself unravel.
“She’s … I think she’s okay. For now.” Lacey was fisting the covers in her hand, her slung arm clutched tightly to her body.
He noticed her wrist, a reddened mark where the cuffs had been. “Thank you for coming to help me.” She didn’t look at him, but he heard the tremor in her voice. “I … appreciate it.”
“Appreciate it?” His voice rose and he fought to stifle it. “I haul my body across two states and spend part of the day and night tromping about the forest and you appreciate it? What do you think I am, the cavalry? The local national guard? Honey, you’re going to have to do better than that.” He pounced to his feet, a thousand questions screaming in his brain.
The wide-eyed look she gave him froze him on the spot. As if she were … afraid of him. As if she thought he might mean something else by his words.
Micah had no idea what had happened to her since that ugly night in the dingy warehouse, but he had a feeling it wasn’t good. He sat again on the chair, his body shaking. “I’m sorry. I … just meant that you can’t kick me out of your life again that easily.”
“I thought you’d be relieved,” she said in a whisper-thin voice. “I thought … well, that you wanted me to erase your name from my mind.”
Oh yeah, he had said that. Now he felt like a class-A, prizewinning jerk. “Maybe I just want to help.”
She stared at him, and he noticed the faint glistening of tears film her eyes. She licked her lips and opened her mouth, but no words emerged. When she closed it, she swallowed and looked away. “You’ve done more than I could ever expect. Get away from me, Micah. I’ll only cause you trouble.”
Now what was that supposed to mean? But it was his own words that startled him. His voice softened, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he said, “I’m a big boy, Lacey. And I’m not afraid of a little trouble.”
But he was in trouble. Big, big trouble. And looking at her, a single tear streaming down her cheek, he knew that he was a liar.
He was very, very afraid.
Chapter 6
“LACEY’S UP TO something. I know it.” Micah paced the motel room, worry knotting his thoughts. “I saw it in her eyes.”
“Sit down. You’re making me dizzy. I can’t think with you prowling.” Conner lay on one of the two double beds, a pillow crunched behind his neck, legs crossed at the ankles. Micah had caught him in his room, surfing CNN and FOX News. “She just told you to leave?”
Micah stopped, glanced at his reflection in the mirror, and shuddered. He looked like he’d done a two-day tango with the Tasmanian Devil, whiskers bedraggling his face, his hair in spikes from where he’d raked it one too many times. No wonder she’d asked him to leave. Only … he couldn’t dodge the niggle that she’d been lying about Emily’s being safe. Throwing him off the case for his own good. The haunted look in her eyes called out to him and followed him like a moan to the motel.
“Something happened today while we were out searching. I returned with this horrific news that her daughter had been out there and we didn’t find her, but Lacey was completely calm. As if she already knew that our trail had gone cold.” Micah turned away from the ghastly person in the mirror and leaned his hip against the dresser, crossing his arms over his chest. “I think someone has her daughter.”
“Like social services?”
“No, like … someone snatched her. I think Emily is still in danger and Lacey is going to do something about it. Something that is going to get her into more trouble than she’s in now.”
Conner took a sip of his Mountain Dew. How the guy could drink that stuff at midnight baffled Micah. In a convoluted way, however, it helped Conner unwind, slowing his perpetual autobahn pace. “What is it with you and this woman, Micah? She’s got some kind of power over you like I’ve never seen. Wasn’
t she the one who came after you in Iraq? I don’t recall you two being big pals after that op.”
Time rushed Micah back to post—Persian Gulf War Iraq, to Operation Ground Truth and the three weeks he and Conner and another Green Beret had spent as POWs of Caucasian rebels. Lacey and John had hunted them down and saved their lives.
The memory of Lacey could still sweep the breath from his chest. She’d snuck into camp, dressed like a gypsy, and surprised them all with her savvy thinking and guts. But instead of telling her the truth—that he loved her—he’d let his fears overpower him, and he’d all but shoved her onto the first transport back to the States. Of course, she’d been oh-so-thrilled by his chivalry. While he’d locked the right words safely in his chest, he’d watched her choose John and a life of espionage. Micah had spent the last thirteen years fighting the many sides of regret birthed in that moment.
Micah shook his head, agreeing to Conner’s words. “I haven’t talked to her since John was killed.”
“Yet you’re acting like that time we were in Bosnia and that little girl got hurt. Desperate. If I remember correctly, you went berserk.”
“She was dying in my arms. I had to get her help.”
“You were crying, man. As if your chest had exploded.” Conner took another sip. “You really freaked us out. I thought you were going to get yourself—and the rest of us—killed.”
“Thanks, Conner. I so appreciate your dredging up that memory for me.” Micah sat down on his bed and stared at his car keys lying on the nightstand. “The fact is, Lacey and I have a history that goes way past the mission in Iraq. She was my best friend in high school. The first girl I ever kissed, the first girl I prayed out loud with.”
“Whoa. You prayed out loud with her?” Conner wore a teasing grin.
“Yeah, well, I’ve come a long way. Back then, it felt like I was tearing open my chest for her to get a good peek. And she didn’t even flinch.”
“Sounds like she still has a hold on you.”
Micah picked up the car keys and twirled them around his finger. “It’s just memory, nothing more. To cut to the chase, I wanted to tell her I loved her—that I wanted to marry her—but I blew it.” He nearly cringed at how it hurt to say that aloud.
The silence from Conner’s side of the room made him glance over at his friend. Conner had his can of soda halfway to his mouth, eyes wide. “She’s the girl who got away?”
Micah gave a wry shrug. “She might not say that. She never knew how I felt. She married my best friend without me making a peep.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, well, in the end, I was the lucky one,” Micah responded. “She murdered the guy.”
“What?” Conner put down his soda, then scooted over to the side of his bed, arms on his knees. “Back up. She killed her husband? Who was your best friend? And you’re out here hunting for her daughter? I think I need a few more dots connected.”
Micah got up, tossed his keys onto the bureau, and walked over to the sink. He ran the water and wet a washcloth. Conner said nothing as Micah scrubbed his face. The white washcloth came away dirty. Micah tossed it, wadded, into the sink and braced his arms on the counter, staring at Conner in the mirror. “Okay, here’s how it is, but you have to promise to never breathe a word. I’m only telling you because you had clearance, okay?”
Conner nodded.
“Remember when we were in Kazakhstan, working with the Khanate tribe? It must have been your first year in the Green Berets.”
“I remember. We were tracking Iraqi and Afghani transmissions to Pakistan.”
“Right. Well, we got a call to back up one of our operatives in Almaty. Rumor was he was compromised and needed extraction. I led the team in and got there three steps too late. The bottom line is, the subject was my buddy John, and I found Lacey holding the knife. No one else was around.”
Conner made a face. “You know better than I do that there had to be more to it.”
Micah toweled off his face, turned, and stalked back to the bed. “I thought so too. But the look of guilt on Lacey’s face and her own words indicted her for the crime. Besides, I was on assignment. When I returned eighteen months later, Lacey had dropped out of sight, and the CIA wouldn’t let me near the file. The best information I got was that John had been on a mission of some sort, and Lacey had somehow been a part of a double cross. I hit roadblocks everywhere I went until one night I got a call.”
“A call?”
“Yeah. On my cell phone. The voice on the other end—which had been distorted—told me that Lacey was trouble and if I had half a brain, I would keep away from her.”
“And that didn’t make you more suspicious?”
Micah grabbed a pillow and shoved it under his neck. “I was shipping out for another tour, and I had other things on my mind. And life took a nosedive after that, as you know.”
“Right.” Conner was one of the few Micah had allowed into his hospital room, into his secrets. The man nodded and folded his arms across his chest. “So there could probably be more to this story than ‘what you see is what you get.’”
“Probably. But the bottom line is, Lacey killed John. And that’s something I can’t forget.”
“How about forgive?”
Conner’s question felt like a saber plunged to the hilt, right in the center of Micah’s throat. He didn’t answer.
“I don’t think it’s just memories tethering you to this woman, Iceman. You still have feelings for her. I’d even label it regret.”
Micah closed his eyes. Lacey’s image filled his mind, the adventure behind her laughter, the intelligence in her eyes. “Deep down inside, you know I’m innocent. You know I could never kill anyone.”
Did he still have feelings for Lacey? If he let himself sink into memory, he could smile at the picture of her in her band uniform, tooting her little clarinet. Or enjoy her sweet little grunts as she’d tried to arm-wrestle him, both hands around his fist. Or find a place of peace inside the times they’d spent riding on her family’s farm. Lacey had been innocent, with just enough tomboy to make her exhilarating, just enough princess to make her untouchable. He’d lost his heart a thousand times over the night he’d taken her to her senior prom.
But that Lacey had vanished the day she said “I do” to another man. And especially the moment in Kazakhstan when she’d stared at Micah, white faced, and whispered, “It’s all my fault.” No, the Lacey he knew was a double-crossing, lying traitor. The Lacey in his dreams was only a haunting apparition. As for regret, he should be thanking God for intervening and keeping him out of her Medusa clutches all these years.
“No. I don’t have feelings for her. She’s history. I just want to help her find her daughter. For John.”
Conner nodded, but his eyes held suspicion.
“Really. She’s nothing to me.” But Micah couldn’t ignore the sharp pain in the center of his chest when he said it.
“Well, then, Mr. She’s Nothing. Try and get some sleep. She’ll be there in the morning. She’s not going anywhere with her dislocated shoulder. Besides she’s under guard and handcuffed to the bed—”
Micah winced. “Oh no.” He wanted to bang his head against the wall hard to jostle his brains into action. “The handcuffs. They were off when I was talking to her. I remember seeing the red rash on her wrist.”
Conner made a face. “Uh-oh.”
“She is up to something.” Micah rushed over to his jacket and snatched it up. “Stay by the telephone.”
“Hello? I want to sleep. In my truck.”
“Keep your cell on, then. Because I have a feeling this night isn’t going to end pretty.”
“Just don’t get into any troub—”
Micah closed the door behind him.
Lacey listened from just inside her door. No rattle of carts, no buzzing from the nearby nurses’ station. Nothing but her thundering pulse. She took a breath and steeled herself for the possibility of a very alert Rambo-type outside the door, h
ating the fact that she was only armed with a now-deformed fork.
Then again, she’d given a significant warning with just a spoon to an overly friendly waiter one night after he’d followed her to her hotel room. She still wasn’t sure he hadn’t been one of Shavik’s zealots. She clenched the fork and cracked the door open.
Someone was smiling over her because Mr. Menace was asleep, slouched over in his chair. The NSA had put their confidence in flimsy handcuffs, which she’d picked open easily, and the belief that she trusted the system.
Yeah, right. She’d been down that road. And she wasn’t going to stick around watching the NSA play with her daughter’s life.
She had no doubt that whoever had Emily meant business. The prize they were after told her that if she didn’t take them seriously, she’d be crying over her daughter’s grave next to John’s in Arlington.
She stole down the hall, stopped briefly before she got to the nurses’ station, waited until she saw it empty, then let herself into a linen supply room. She ditched the sling and pulled a pair of scrubs on, including the little shoe guards. She’d have to find decent footwear between here and Kentucky.
Striding out of the closet, holding a sheet and towels, she beelined for the far exit.
“Ma’am, can you help me?”
She froze, grimaced, turned.
An elderly man, his frail body gripping a portable IV stand, stood in the middle of the hall, his eyes blinking in confusion. “Can you tell me where I am?”
Her heart tugged. “Um … you’re in the hospital, sir.” She gazed past him, toward her room and the agent stationed in the hall, who had stirred at the sound of voices.
“Do you know my daughter? Where is she?”
She advanced toward him. “No. But you need to get back in bed, sir.”
“No!”
She winced, then stepped closer, one eye on her guard. “Okay, listen. I’ll call your daughter. But you need to return to your room.” Before you get me killed. “Please?”
He stared at her, and something like fear edged his eyes. “Where am I? Do you know my daughter?”
Flee the Night Page 7