He looked up when she knelt beside him. She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Do you promise not to turn me in until Emily is absolutely safe?”
“Lacey, more than that, I promise to help you clear your name. I’m in this with you.”
She closed her eyes, willing back tears, his precious words reaching to the deepest places in her heart. “If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that you keep your promises.”
She met his eyes then, and he didn’t blink. “Yes, I do.”
She nodded, and the barest smile wheedled to the surface. “Okay, you can come with me. But I’m driving.”
Then she took out his knife, sliced through the nylon cords, and freed him.
Chapter 12
MICAH SAID NOTHING while he followed Lacey through the tunnel. His silence felt like ice on her neck. Now that he was free, she still couldn’t ignore the idea that he might have agreed to help her just so he could win her trust … and apprehend her. She tightened the hold on her knife, aware of his every step behind her as she scraped her light over the dirt walls, creaking beams, cobwebs, and rutted dirt floor.
When gray softened the inky black, she flicked off the light and slowed her pace. Micah came up silently behind her as she peered out into the pasture, down the fence line. The late-afternoon sunshine had turned the landscape to fire, lighting the fence aglow and darkening the grass. The horses had vanished, and the air was laden with the scent of decaying leaves. She edged out of the cave, then tucked herself behind the rocks. Micah crouched inside the lip. She felt his eyes on her. “It looks clear.” She glanced at Micah.
His eyes were focused, his face grim. He nodded.
She bolted, running down the fence line, zeroing in on the stand of trees, the safety of the creek.
A gunshot made her jump, putting fire into her step. Another crack. Bark chipped from the maple in front of her.
“Run!” she yelled, hoping Micah was only a foot behind her. She dived into the grove of trees, behind the maple, turned, and gulped in a breath of horror.
Micah was still only halfway down the hill.
Another shot rang out.
“C’mon!” Lacey searched for the source and saw three men in one of her farm’s four-wheelers. “Hurry!”
Micah’s eyes were fixed on hers while he ran. A bullet embedded the tree one inch behind him as he lunged into the grove.
She grabbed him up by the arm, and he gulped in a ragged breath. “We can make it!” She raced along the creek. Whoever was after them would have to negotiate the fence, either finding the nearest gate or getting off the four-wheeler and chasing on foot.
Lacey had always been a good runner. But when she glanced over her shoulder, dismay streaked through her. Micah was struggling. His face was white, his eyes wide, and he was sucking air like a drowning man.
“Go!” he shouted, and it came out a gasp.
She slowed, looking behind them. The four-wheeler had stopped at the fence, the men now straddling it.
“Go, start the truck!” Micah reached in his pocket, then tossed her the keys. “I’ll be there!”
She frowned at him, but no words escaped before she turned and sprinted up the hill to the garage. Micah’s truck was parked in the drive. She jumped in, fired up the engine.
Micah was just starting up the hill.
The shooters had cleared the trees.
Lacey threw the truck into gear and floored it into the field, straight at Micah. The truck hit a boulder and hurtled through the air. She muscled it steady and slammed the brakes when Micah reached for the door. As soon as he climbed in, she whipped a U-turn and stomped the accelerator. Weeds and grass spit out behind them while she roared up the hill. A shot pinged her door; another hit the bed of the truck.
“I don’t suppose this thing is bulletproof.”
Micah braced a hand on the roof, the other on the door, his feet spread wide on the floorboard. “Not yet!”
Another shot. The back window of the topper shattered. Micah ducked.
Lacey reached the rutted drive and punched the gas all the way to the mat. She didn’t brake when she reached the road, slowing just enough to make the curve. She slammed into Micah, barely holding the wheel. He pushed her back, holding her steady while she righted the truck. Gravel spit out behind them. A shot landed in the tailgate.
They drove for a mile in silence, taking two side roads and finally pulling into a scenic lookout over some hiking trail. Lacey held the wheel, feeling the adrenaline surge through her in tremors. Her breath emerged in gasps. But she turned to Micah and grinned.
He was watching her with wide eyes, his face pale. “Are you having fun or something? Where did you learn to drive like that?” He smiled then, and it looked so much like admiration, she felt nearly buoyant.
“You taught me, remember? You took me out in your dad’s pickup—”
“No, I didn’t teach you how to keep your head with bullets flying at you.” He looked back at his shattered window. “They’re serious.”
She touched his arm. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”
His mouth tugged up in a half smile. “Yeah. But the bad news is, I think they saw me.”
She nodded. “With me. Which means you’re in serious trouble, doesn’t it?”
He looked away, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his neck. “Where are we going?”
Her chest tightened. “I’m so sorry, Micah. I didn’t want—”
His fingers touched her lips. “You can’t say you didn’t try.” Sadness tinged his eyes. “I made my choice the second I hopped in the truck and floored it to Missouri.”
She tingled where he’d touched her but backed away, afraid of the feelings that rushed over her. Oh, Micah, please don’t make me enjoy your friendship and believe in you. My heart can’t take it. “Because deep down you wanted to trust me?” Apparently, her mouth wasn’t listening to her deepest fears. She might as well pluck out her heart and hold it there for him to take a good whack at.
Only he didn’t. Instead, he nodded. “And now, Lucky Penny, we have to figure out a way to clear both our names.”
She felt her throat thicken. Lucky Penny. How she longed to return to that moment when she could have chosen differently, when she had Micah right there in her arms in the creek and then pushed him away. She gritted her teeth to force back betraying tears and dredged up a smile. “We have to get to Coward’s Hollow by midnight tomorrow night.”
“Where’s that?”
She smiled. “I was hoping you’d know.”
He took a deep breath, coughed, and took another breath. No, he didn’t look well at all. His skin was a little gray, and his chest rose and fell with exertion. Without thinking, she ran her finger along the scar on his chin.
He stilled, circled his fingers around her wrist. His beautiful eyes caught hers and held her gaze. “I know someone who might.” He reached for his cell phone. She watched him as he dialed. Sweat beaded his forehead, and the scar on his jaw that he’d gotten during the Persian Gulf War stood out in stark white. He still had this devastating he-man, built-like-a-tank aura, but she couldn’t deny the feeling that inside the muscled exterior, the man had been wounded.
Her mouth dried. He hadn’t been wounded in battle, had he? All her nightmares rose with a howl. She always feared he’d die with a bullet in his chest in some refuse country, and she’d never know. The tears in her throat threatened to push out, and she blinked them back as he began to talk.
“Conner. It’s me.” He wore a grim expression, and she got a firsthand look at the trouble she’d caused him.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to keep him safe. But maybe not hard enough. What if he had died as he stumbled down that hill? Her chest hurt, and she looked away from him.
“No, I’m still in Kentucky.” He listened. “Thanks, I’m well aware of that.… Listen, I need your help. I need you to find out where Coward’s Hollow is.”
Micah tugged the wig off her head. Her hair h
ad been piled into pantyhose, and this he wriggled off. Her hair fell in tangles, freed. As she watched his eyes, he brushed her sweaty hair back from her face.
“Are you sure? …” He glanced at his watch. “All right … yeah, we’ll make it. … Also, I need—you’re kidding?” He looked at Lacey and frowned. “You’re sure?”
When he swallowed, she felt something akin to panic rise in her throat. No, they couldn’t have found Emily’s body. She started to tremble and reached out for the dashboard.
Micah watched her, concern rising in his eyes. “Right. Okay … well, listen, I need you to charge up the ELTs. We’ll stop by the hotel.”
Seeing the sympathy in his eyes, Lacey closed hers, felt her world closing in. Please, no!
He touched her arm. “Yeah, thanks.” He clicked the phone shut.
Silence felt full and throbbing, embedded with pain. She couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to guess at his conversation. She forced her mouth shut, willing back the scream inside. No wonder she hadn’t received a voice message with the call.
Was Emily dead? The thought scraped up a moan deep in her chest. It ripped its way through her until she was hunched over, her arms curled around her stomach.
“Lacey, are you okay?”
She shook her head, unable to find words to hurdle the pain. What if, at the end of the day, Emily was killed?
Like Frank Hillman’s daughter.
“Penny, what’s the matter?” Micah’s voice, so gentle, felt like salt in her open wounds.
She reached for the door handle. She had to get out of here. She couldn’t breathe.
The ground swayed beneath her feet as she stumbled out of the truck. She started to run, the air sweeping the vestiges of sweat from her face. She hurtled the guardrail and angled down toward the woods, through the tangles of shrubbery, tripping over the roots of elm and hickory. Her breath caught in her throat; tears glazed her eyes. She stopped short in the embrace of a huge tree and slid down into the hollow of the roots, her hands over her face, shaking.
Emily. How would she live without her smell, her embracing smile? The one thing that kept Lacey tethered to hope. Oh, John, I’m sorry. She covered her head with her arms and wept.
“Lace.” Micah’s sturdy, warm presence edged in on her ululating grief. He knelt before her, then put his hands on her knees. “What’s going on?”
She raised her gaze to him.
He touched her cheek, his eyes radiating fear. “You’re scaring me.”
She swallowed. “Emily … did they … find …?” She closed her eyes.
“No.”
She opened her eyes stared at him, feeling another hot rush of tears. What was wrong with her? She prided herself on keeping her emotions on ice, for facing danger with unflinching stoicism. And the mere thought of losing Emily had shredded her.
Micah held her jaw, thumbed away a tear. “Did you think I heard bad news about Emily?”
She licked her lips and looked away from him.
“Oh, Lace. No.” He shook his head. “I asked Conner to check into something … I, uh …” He blew out a breath.
“What?” she asked, her suspicions revving.
“Okay, here’s how it is. I really want to believe you, and I thought I could help, so I asked Conner to find out who Ishmael Shavik was.”
“Is.”
“Yeah, well, he’s dead. Was listed on the casualty list from the wreck,” he said. “But he was listed on Interpol as an assassin.”
She didn’t respond.
“But you knew that.”
“Of course. I told you.”
“You did, didn’t you?” His eyes searched hers, reaching out with questions, with fear. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you anymore.”
“I think that goes both ways. Like … what’s hurting you? You’re … wounded or something. I saw how you were breathing when we were running from the cave. What happened to you, Micah?” She wondered if her worst fears showed in her eyes.
“I think we need to get going.” He held out his hand.
She didn’t take it. “Tell me what happened to you.”
He seemed to consider this, his jaw tightening. “I’ll tell you in the truck. Let’s just go before our options are eliminated.”
Right. Options. They still had them. Because Emily, as far as she knew, was alive. And she had to hang on to that belief if she hoped to get out of this nightmare, sanity intact. Adrenaline had found her soft spot and sent her into hysteria.
She took his hand and he helped her up. They hiked up to the truck without speaking and had only a short tussle for the driver’s seat. He won.
Lacey sat in the passenger seat, waiting to understand the man she’d thought she knew better than herself. Or wanted to.
“I had cancer.” It still hurt to say it aloud. Like it might be a weakness instead of an invasion. Micah had spent the first months feeling angry at himself for letting it happen. As if some-how he might have prevented the malignant cells from growing inside his stomach, spreading to his lung, to his liver. But as chemotherapy and radiation took hold, turned him inside out, writhed him with agony, he let himself be a victim. Let himself feel both pity and pain. At least, in the privacy of his home.
No one but his parents and his brother, Joey, knew the emotional hits he took. And saying it to Lacey now felt like taking a scalpel to his chest all over again. He even winced.
Her mouth cracked open. Then, “I’m sorry.” And she sounded wounded for him.
It made him yearn for her more, as if he wasn’t already longing to erase seven years of accusations, tunnel for the truth, and start all over again. If he hoped to start all over again, he’d have to go back in time to the night of her senior prom when he’d let fear manhandle him and sacrifice his heart. But yesterdays couldn’t be recaptured. Not now, after the cancer had ravaged his future.
“I’m clean, at least I was at my last checkup. They took out a lung and part of my stomach and liver. But I beat it. I hope.”
She touched his arm, and he flinched. “But you’re going to be okay?”
Was he? Physically, perhaps. But emotionally, he still felt annihilated. Not by what had happened but by what he could never have. A child. The aggressive cancer treatment had stolen from him a legacy. The next generation. Someone in his likeness to love and cherish and be the kind of father his had been to him. There were times, especially in the past six months of living near Joe and his family, that this pain sliced so deep, he sometimes felt like curling into a ball and howling. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“I wish I’d known. I’d have figured out a way to see you.”
He glanced at her, and the sorrow on her expression and in her radiant eyes made him believe her. “I probably would have liked that, even if I didn’t tell you.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, you might have cuffed me with your IV and screamed for security.”
His smile dimmed. “Probably. And I would have been wrong.” He touched her cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
She shrugged, but his apology glistened in his eyes. “So, did you find out where Coward’s Hollow is?”
“Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri.”
She nodded, put her feet up on the dash, and leaned her head back. “We have a long drive ahead. Do you want to stop somewhere?”
He put both hands on the wheel, then looked at his speedometer. “No. We’ll head to the hotel where my team is waiting. You’re going to have Emily back in your arms by tomorrow night.”
“If the NSA doesn’t track me down first.”
He said nothing. He still wasn’t completely sure that giving themselves over to the greater powers wouldn’t be in their favor, but after the shootout at the OK Corral, he wasn’t sure that power was the NSA. Maybe he should call Senator Ramey after all. Or maybe …
“Lacey, in the glove compartment, you’ll find my Bible. Can you grab it?”
She gave him a one-eyed frown, then took he
r feet off the dash and unearthed it. “You going to read as you drive?”
“No, you are. Open it to Psalm 107.”
He saw her purse her lips as she turned to the psalm. “Okay. What verse?”
“Just read the whole thing. To yourself.”
She gave him a look. “Listen, if you didn’t get the message at breakfast, God and I aren’t really on speaking terms.”
“Yeah, I picked that up. And I want to know why.”
She shook her head. “If you can’t forgive me, how do you expect God to? I can’t even forgive myself.”
“But John’s death was an accident, Lace. God knows that.”
“Yeah, and He also knows about all the millions of compromises I’ve made, not counting the bad decisions based on greed or fame or whatever other sin He’s warned against.” Her voice sounded strained. “I’ve discovered that it’s not the big sins that dig at your soul, but the thousands of tiny, seemingly inconsequential ones that slowly gnaw away at any sense of hope.” She looked at him. “I am not going into detail, but you of all people should believe me when I say I’m not a saint.”
“Neither am I.”
“You’re different.”
He gave her a hard look. “No, I’m not. Do you seriously believe that in my line of work I haven’t made a few compromises? struggled with times when I’ve killed? fought my own fury for control?”
She clenched her jaw, and he could almost see her imagination run behind those pretty eyes. He didn’t want to paint too dark a picture for her, but it seemed that she had some squeaky-clean, holier-than-thou vision of him and he wanted to dispel it here and now.
“Believe me, I’m no saint. I’m just … saved. And trying.” Right now he was trying, with all his man-sized effort, to keep his hands on the steering wheel instead of driving into the ditch and pulling her into his arms.
Only that would defeat his prayer to cut her out of his heart. It wasn’t lost on him that God was doing just about everything opposite to Micah’s prayers. And instead of bringing her to justice, Micah was on the lam right beside her.
So much for being God’s man.
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