“When he came back, he nearly single-handedly took out each one of those killers, rounded up the survivors, and dragged them into camp. I think they’re still sitting in prison.” Conner shook his head, remorse on his face. “Iceman might have steel in his veins, but he loves kids. What a shame he’ll never have any.”
Lacey felt cut off at the heart. Micah would never have kids? “Oh.”
Dannette glared at Conner. “He’ll love you for that one.”
Conner looked sheepish. “Sorry. I thought he told you.”
Lacey shook her head. “That’s okay. I won’t mention it.” She wanted to hit something until her body hurt as much as her heart. How utterly unfair that Jim Micah, who just might be a stellar father—she nearly gasped, remembering his comment in the truck about if he’d known she was pregnant.…
What must it feel like to be searching for your best friend’s daughter, knowing you’d never have one? No wonder he was dedicated. And in big trouble because of her. If he wanted to be reinstated to his Green Beret unit, he’d have to distance himself from her—and pronto. Now wasn’t soon enough to lock him in the bathroom and flee for the hills. Maybe she wouldn’t even stop to lock him in the bathroom or say good-bye.
“I’ll be right back,” she said and pushed her plate away. She ignored Conner’s frown as she got up from the table and gripped the backpack.
See if Conner the cheery pit bull would follow her into the bathroom.
“She’s in Poplar Bluff.” The voice at the other end of the cell phone put a smile on Nero’s face.
“Great. Keep her in sight, but keep your distance. I want to see if she has what we’re looking for.”
Nero closed the telephone and stalked over to the hotel window. From here, he had a sweeping view of a mall and two pizza joints. How Missouri had changed over twenty-five years. He remembered when this town had nothing more than a Dairy Queen and a strip mall. From the way it was expanding, it wouldn’t be long before the forest was completely obliterated. Thankfully, his parents’ old homestead still stood, poised at the edge of Mark Twain National Forest.
He had suffered a momentary fear that Lacey wouldn’t know where to find Coward’s Hollow, had even debated sending her another message. But she was smart. He knew how smart. He’d watched her in Kuwait, her intelligent eyes taking in her surroundings. She missed nothing. She’d figure out how to meet him.
His insurance sat on the bed, playing with a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy. She didn’t look at him as he let the drapery fall. The scene felt oh so familiar. Childlike trust purchased with a toy and a bag of French fries. She was even somewhat cute, with her blonde hair, her blue eyes. She looked so much like her father. She might be difficult to sacrifice. But sometimes duty cost lives. Especially when they got in the way.
Lacey had certainly gotten in the way. He couldn’t wait for the past to flash through her eyes tonight when he dangled her daughter’s life before her. Seven years seemed way too long to wait for payback.
He sat down on the end of the bed and picked up the doll. “Can I play too?” he asked, then smiled.
“I caught her climbing out of the bathroom window,” Conner said by way of explanation as he hauled Lacey into the motel room by the arm. He had the makings of a shiner. “And you were right about the left hook.”
“Let me go,” Lacey hissed, then yanked out of Conner’s grip.
Micah couldn’t help but smile. He set the map down and closed the door behind them. “Hi, Lacey.”
“Don’t hi me. You had him tailing me.” My, she looked cute with her hair down, still slightly wet, her eyes blazing.
“Of course I did, Penny. I’m not stupid.”
She clenched her jaw, obviously fighting a retort. “I thought you were supposed to be sleeping.”
“Calm down. I’m on your side, if you remember.”
“Sorta.” She swung the backpack off her shoulder, flopped into an armchair. “But I don’t need your help. Not anymore.”
“That’s what you think. Coward’s Hollow is a fifty-six-acre portion of Mark Twain National Forest. It has caves, a twenty-foot waterfall, and enough forest for you to be lost in for a couple of decades. Tell me, when you were at the farm training in weapons and hand-to-hand combat, did you go to survival school too?”
She glared at him.
“Just what I thought. Listen, I’ve lived in the woods for the better part of my life. If anyone should be sneaking around trying to get a fix on your kidnapper, it’s me.”
“No. Not if you hope to have any sort of career beyond this moment. Traitors don’t get their M-16s back.”
He frowned at Conner. “Thanks a lot.”
Conner held his hands up. “That was Andee’s doing, not mine.” He glanced at Lacey. “I made other mistakes.”
“Lock the door and chain it, Conner.” Micah motioned to Lacey. “C’mere. I want to show you my plan.”
Lacey rose and moved toward him. She smelled fresh but emanated such fury he braced himself. She leaned over the map. “What’s this, a topo map?”
“Yeah, and as you can see there are only two service roads into the area. Which means your kidnapper, if he isn’t on a four-wheeler, will have to take one of those two roads in to meet you. Did he say where in Coward’s Hollow?” He hated asking. … The potential for her to lie wavered before him.
When she answered no, he felt a wash of relief. Again proving that she wasn’t the liar he’d called her a billion times over. “So he’ll have to call you with coordinates.”
“At least for the drop,” she said.
“When the call comes in, we’ll connect the dots. Conner will surveil one road, Sarah and Andee the other. Dannette and you will be on standby with her bloodhound in case things go south. I’ll head in and make the drop, get Emily, and we’re home free.” He pointed to Conner, who picked up Lacey’s backpack.
She turned. “Hey!”
“Where is it?” Conner started to open her bag.
Lacey crossed the room in two strides and swiped it out of his hands.
“Conner is going to make a copy of the program,” Micah said. “Where is it?”
“No.” She gripped the backpack tightly. “I can’t let you do this.”
“Yes.” Micah touched her arm. “We’ll make a copy, and then Conner will corrupt the one we hand over.”
“He’ll know. I’m sure he’ll test it. Then he’ll shoot Emily and you.” Lacey’s fear shone in her eyes. She reached into her waistband, held out her cell phone. Her hands shook as she dropped the bag and fiddled with the telephone. A moment later, a shriek and a keening cry filled the room, “Mommy!” Lacey held the phone up and played it again.
Micah watched her fight a bevy of emotions as she stared at him. He tightened his jaw, but that wail had gouged a hole in him too. No wonder Lacey was scared.
“I can’t risk losing her.” Lacey still trembled as she put the telephone back in her waistband. Her voice fell to a ragged whisper. “Or you.”
Micah wasn’t about to lose her either. Not again. If Conner hadn’t been standing there, he just might have taken the two steps to her and crushed her inside his embrace. “Okay, then, you corrupt the program. Make it undetectable.”
He could nearly see her brain whirring. She frowned and asked Conner, “What kind of computer do you have?”
“It has dual four-gig Iridium processors, hyper-threading technology, one gigahertz FSB, two gigs RAM, scuzzy hard drives, eight USB ports, four FireWire ports, and a HD plasma display.”
“That should do.” She turned to Micah, not noticing Conner’s deflated expression. He lived for his computer acronyms. “But I’m bringing the program in. I don’t care if you’re part wood elf. Emily is my daughter.”
Ouch, that hurt. “Yeah, I know.”
She stared at him, and he saw a strange, unidentified emotion run through her eyes. “We’ll talk about it when I get back,” she said.
“Only if you promise not to bushwhac
k Conner—no, better yet I’ll go with you.” He began rolling up the map.
“I promise I won’t bushwhack him.”
“Or jump him and leave him hog-tied in the back of his pickup. Or steal my car or try and sneak out of the bathroom.” Or break my heart again into a thousand pieces.
She cracked a small grin. “Okay.”
He nodded to Conner, who opened the door. “Kindly step out to my office, milady,” Conner offered.
Lacey glanced at Micah, a frown on her pretty face.
“Just you wait, Penny. You’re going to be green at his sweet setup.”
She followed Conner outside, and Micah stood at the motel-room door, watching as they descended the stairs and crossed to his pickup.
Conner opened the camper end of his truck and they piled in. Micah suppressed the urge to run over and padlock the door. But she’d promised.
Right?
Chapter 16
AS LACEY TYPED at Conner’s computer keyboard, she feared how badly she wanted Micah’s plan to work. She stood up, loaded the program onto a CD-ROM, and extracted it from the drive.
“Finished?” Conner sat on the bed, waiting. To his credit, he’d actually closed his eyes and feigned a snooze, as if he weren’t keeping an eagle eye on her every move. She didn’t buy it for a second.
She nodded. “I think I’ll go back to the hotel, try and get a nap.”
“Okay.” He rose, obviously intending to accompany her.
“Alone.”
He smirked. “Right. I wasn’t going to …” He looked away and—wasn’t that sorta sweet?—blushed. “I’ll just sit outside your door.”
She rolled her eyes and snatched her backpack. The sunshine made her blink, and she felt another ripple of exhaustion. If she went to sleep she might snooze through the next decade. More likely, instead of sleeping, she’d stare at the ceiling, her daughter’s face filling every nook and cranny until she went insane with worry.
She took the stairs two a time. Conner wasn’t more than three steps behind. She tried to ignore him as she opened the door. Dannette sat on her bed, reading an SAR magazine. Her dog Sherlock lounged next to her, relishing the absentminded attention of Dannette running her hand behind his floppy ears.
“Do you have a pair of tennis shoes I could borrow?” Lacey asked.
Dannette looked up, obviously startled. Then, “Uh … yeah.” She gestured with her magazine. “By the bathroom.”
Lacey strode over to pick them up. “Thanks.”
“Help yourself to anything in the suitcase.” Dannette gave another hint of a smile.
Lacey nodded. “Thanks.”
Conner was outside, leaning against the rail, his designated perch. Surprise washed his face when Lacey returned.
She said nothing as she turned down the corridor, then descended the stairs and ducked around the back of the motel.
“Where are you going?”
She didn’t slow. “To work out. I need something to refresh my brain.” She opened the door to the motel’s exercise room.
Her heart did a double flip and took off in a sprint. Micah was at the weight machine, looking buff and powerful in a T-shirt and sweat shorts. No wasted skin on his body. His teeth gritted, his face glistened with sweat as he sat, feet planted, and worked his beach muscles. As if they needed any assistance.
She dragged her attention off him and stood there, debating the wisdom of sticking around. Then again, she certainly wasn’t going to fall into Micah’s arms. She’d been kicked in the teeth once before, thank you. She had to keep her distance if she had any hope of escaping with her heart semi-intact. Besides, Conner was here.
She sat, pulled off her boots, and tied on Dannette’s shoes. She heard the weights on the machine grind, then fall into position.
Silence.
When she looked up, Micah was staring at her, an odd look on his face. Half smile, half intrigue. “Howdy.”
“Hi.” She stood up, stretching, painfully aware that both men were watching her as if they’d never seen a woman work out before. “Sorry to bother you. I just need to run a bit.”
“No bother. Help yourself.”
She heard him suck in a breath, then exhale as he lifted another round of reps.
Conner studied both of them. “Okay, I’m not staying. Aside from the fact that it smells like a year’s worth of sweaty socks in here, I think you’ll be safe, Lacey.”
She looked at him, eyebrows up. Safe felt relative with Micah in the room, and frankly, she wasn’t all that anxious for Conner to leave, but the door closed behind him before she could respond.
“How far do you run?”
Lacey turned. A trail of sweat tracked down Micah’s temple. His black hair stood up in spikes, and whiskers layered his chin. He looked way, way too capable, painfully disarming. Safe, oh sure. She fought the memory of his arms around her and beelined for the treadmill. “Five miles.” She set the speed and began at a warm-up pace.
Micah watched her a moment, then changed positions on the machine and began to work his biceps.
Lacey upped her speed, falling into a comfortable pace. Sweat beaded on her temple, and it felt somehow cleansing. “Conner seems nice. So do the rest of your friends. They were really kind to me at breakfast. Did you threaten them or something?”
Micah laughed, and the sound of it radiated warmth right to her bones. “No. They’re just a great group. Dannette, Andee, and Sarah were all roommates at one time or another. Conner and Sarah are cousins, and the three of us were climbing buddies. Over the years we just added more. The fact that we all love Jesus seems to bind us together.”
Lacey nodded, feeling like an outsider. She used to understand how it felt to share fellowship like Micah had with his friends. The memory threatened to turn her inside out. She pumped up her speed, deciding to push herself.
“You do this a lot?” Micah stood and grabbed a towel, rubbed it over his face.
“Run?” Her breath came out in bursts.
“Yeah.”
“Every day if I can. It clears my head.” Okay, so maybe this was too fast. She clicked the speed down.
He smiled. “Me too. I remember you used to ride to clear your head.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to take a horse on the road. Doesn’t fit into the hotel room.”
His smile dimmed, and he had a pained look in his eyes.
“It hasn’t been easy, has it?”
She shook her head, fearing the sudden threat of tears. She upped her pace and fought the surge of emotions. “I made my choices. I can’t look back.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said softly.
She focused on the whir of the machine and slap of her feet.
He sighed. “I thought about you, you know. When you were in Kuwait. I was in Bosnia most of that time, and just like you, sometimes at night I’d stare at the stars and think of you. Somehow knowing you were out there, doing your part to change the world … it felt comforting.”
“You give me too much credit. I didn’t do anything like you did.” Conner’s story whooshed back to her—along with the image of Micah carrying a bloodied little girl to a hospital. “I wish I’d been about saving lives.”
“You were. It might have felt about money, but technology is the new arena of warfare and you were on the right side. The Ex-6 program could save hundreds of thousands of American lives, not to mention soldiers who count on secrecy.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, remembering his brush with betrayed information. The images that came to mind made her wince.
“Yeah, well, we knew we had a job to do. But it’s never easy to lose a friend or a man under your command.” He walked over to the mat, sat down, and laced his hands behind his head. “You keep going. You don’t look back. If you second-guess every move, you become paralyzed. Sometimes it’s simply taking one breath after another. You look to that breath, then the next, and you live on the hope that maybe your mission means something in the grea
t scheme of things.”
She suddenly burned to ask him. One breath after another—was that how he survived after her wedding? Because now that she thought about it, that was how she’d kept living the lies, long after the glitter of spy life had worn off. She’d focused on smiling, on believing that someday she and John might have a real life, a real family. Only now, her regrets had her by the throat, and she couldn’t seem to even breathe, let alone live.
Sweat dripped off her chin as she topped three miles. She shook out her hands. “What will you do if you can’t go back to your Green Beret team?”
Micah’s eyes widened, and for a second she thought she saw something spark in them. “I don’t know …” He stood, walked over to her. “Do you ever think about going home?”
Only every waking moment. She kept running, but he turned down the speed. She braced her arms on the handles before she stumbled. “Why did you ask me that?”
“You need to come home to Ashleyville. With me.”
She stared at him. “Micah, have you lost your marbles? I’m going to be a fugitive!”
“No, you won’t. You’ll give the kidnapper the corrupted program and report it to the NSA. Then you’ll be free.” He didn’t say it, but she saw the hope in his eyes. Free to be with me. She felt suddenly weak and stepped off the treadmill, trembling.
It rattled her how badly she wanted the life she saw in Micah’s eyes. He must have sensed it because he reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Think about it.”
Oh, how she wanted to come home to this man, to wake up each morning in his arms, to see him throw Emily in the air and love her like a father loved a daughter. He’d love her little girl; she knew it. She could envision Emily with her skinny arms wrapped around Micah’s neck, could hear her call him Daddy. She turned away before her eyes filled.
Micah came up behind her. She stiffened. “We can start over. You can bury those demons. Find your spiritual footing again. Square what you know in your heart about God’s faithfulness with the doubts you have in your brain. You’ve given in too long to Satan’s lies, Penny. God loves you and wants you to come home.”
Flee the Night Page 19