Blind Run

by Patricia Lewin

  She stared at him without moving.

  “Come on,”—he nodded toward the log—“sit.”

  She did finally, keeping her distance, as if getting too close would hurt. And maybe it would.

  Meanwhile, he searched for the words to explain, though he knew of no easy way to tell her he’d been lying to her since they’d met. He picked up a twig from the dirt, snapped it in two and tossed it down. “When we were together, I didn’t tell you the truth about what I did for the Agency.”

  She went very still. “Go on.”

  God, how he hated this. “I didn’t work in DI.” The DI, or Directorate of Intelligence, was the analytical arm of the CIA. “And I wasn’t an analyst.” He paused, bracing for her reaction. “I was an operation officer for SCTC, the Strategic Counter-Terrorism Center.”

  “Operations?”

  He kept going, afraid if he stopped he wouldn’t get it all out. “Not many people know about SCTC, even within the Agency.” He shifted on the log, leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees. “It’s a highly classified division, fashioned after the old Counter-Terrorism Center but with more anonymity and clout. But like its predecessor, the SCTC draws its people from all the other directorates. Intelligence, operations, science and technology.” He checked his stream of words, searching her face for a reaction, and realized he hadn’t answered her single-word question.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I was in Operations.” The clandestine intelligence-gathering division of the Agency most people thought comprised the whole of the CIA. But Sydney knew it was only a part of a much larger organization.

  “My team specialized in finding and bringing in fugitives,” he said. “And sometimes we conducted rescue missions, but mostly we pursued international renegades, the kind of people who operate outside the mainstream: terrorists, revolutionaries, whoever the-powers-that-be determined was a threat.”

  Again he stopped, waiting, hoping she’d say something, anything. But she didn’t oblige him. They may as well have been talking about the weather for all the reaction he got. Except her hands, which she’d wadded into tight fists.

  He kept talking because he didn’t know what else to do. “Officially, my team was called the Strategic Rescue and Retrieval Unit.” They’d been so damn cocky, and he’d been the worst of all. “We referred to ourselves as Hunters.”

  This time when he finished speaking, he let his words settle between them. Now it was up to her to go or stay, trust him or not. At least now, she knew the kind of man she’d married.

  “So, everything you told me about the Agency, about your job there . . .” Her voice broke, then hardened. “Was a lie.”

  He wished he could deny it. “Yes.”

  She turned away, her body a study of rigid lines. He reached out to touch her but changed his mind, thinking she might shatter at the contact.

  When she spoke again, he heard the first stirring of anger in her voice. “How long?”

  “From the beginning.” He’d joined the Agency after Desert Storm, two years before they’d met. “I was recruited into SCTC straight out of training.”

  She looked back at him, understanding flickering in her eyes, the recognition of a hundred untruths, a thousand incidents which he’d explained with lies.

  “I couldn’t tell you— No, that’s not true.”

  “By all means, Ethan, don’t lie to me now.”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “I was discouraged from telling you, but the final decision was mine.” And he could have walked away, resigned, or asked for a transfer to one of the other divisions. But he hadn’t wanted to quit. He’d loved the work, reveled in his own skill. “I thought it was better that you didn’t know.”

  “Better for whom?” she snapped. “And who gave you the right to make that decision for me?” She met his gaze with accusing eyes, then pushed to her feet. “You always were so sure you knew what was best for everyone else.”

  He followed her. “I was protecting you, Sydney, both you and Nicky.” And he’d failed miserably. Would she have been better off knowing the truth? Would Nicky still be alive? They were questions he’d asked himself a million times in the desert.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better? My God, Ethan, you lied to me for six years.”

  They fell into silence again, facing each other from a distance that had nothing to do with the space between them. Finally, she sighed and looked away, the anger draining from her features, revealing a deep exhaustion.

  “What about now?” she asked. “Are you still in Operations?”

  “I left the Agency three years ago.”

  She made the connection instantly. “When Nicky died.”

  He hesitated. They were skidding close to the one truth he couldn’t reveal without destroying her. “Yes.”

  “So you walked out on the Agency as well as me.”

  He flattened the impulse to tell her the rest. “I’m not proud of leaving you.”

  She seemed to have no answer for that, and time strung out between them, brittle and seemingly endless. She was the first to drop her gaze, and only then could he breathe. It took a few minutes, but she regained control, her anger focusing her thoughts like nothing else could.

  “So, why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I want you to understand the kind of people we’re dealing with.” And because he needed her to understand he was her best shot at protection. “Ramirez was,” careful, Decker, “one of us.”

  “A Hunter?”

  Again he ignored her sarcasm. “Officially he was part of my unit, but in reality he reported directly to the SCTC director, a man by the name of Avery Cox. Or he used to. I don’t know who pays Ramirez now. I doubt it’s the Agency, but their fingerprints are all over this. The shooter on your balcony, Danny and Callie . . . Anna.”

  “You think the Agency is involved?”

  “If not the Agency, then some of its people.”

  “But isn’t there someone you can call?” A bit of fear had crept back into her voice. “Some way to find out?”

  He had considered it, calling Cox, but decided it was too risky. “Not until I have a better idea who’s involved. For now, you have to trust me, Sydney. There—”

  She raised a hand to cut him off. “Don’t start that. You’ve just admitted you lied to me for six years. I don’t have to do anything, especially trust you.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. “Okay, I guess I deserve that. But you do have to make a decision, and we’re about out of time. Are you coming with me to find Timothy Mulligan?”

  She frowned, glanced away, then looked back at him. “I want to call Charles, he’s my—”

  “No.” Ethan’s response was automatic and abrupt.

  Anger flashed in her eyes again.”What do you mean, ‘no’? He can help us.”

  “He can only hurt us. Even if the Agency’s not involved, every police officer in the state is looking for me. They think I’m a cop killer. That means they’re pulling out all the stops. They’ll be everywhere, setting up roadblocks and tapping phones, yours, this”—he about choked on the name—“Charles, and anyone else the authorities think you might contact.”

  She didn’t budge, except to lift her chin. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  “Well, I’m not.” His temper snapped, and he moved back to put some distance between them. When he spoke again, it took an effort to keep his tone neutral. “You make a call, and I mean to anybody, and they’ve got us. Then the chances of my making it to a jail cell in one piece are zero to none.”

  That, at least, seemed to get her attention. “You’re exaggerating. If I tell them—”

  “You’ll never get the chance. Two of their own are dead. Someone has got to pay, and at the moment, I’m their prime target.”

  She stared at him for long moments, and he could almost see the battle waging within her. But he had his own battles to fight, and his patience was gone.

  “Go or stay, Sydney. The
choice is yours. But if you stay, you play by my rules.”

  “Is this a game, then?”

  “The deadliest. Your life is the prize, and those kids . . .” He glanced back at the lodge. “They’re nothing but pawns.”

  “You bastard.” Her fist clenched, and for a moment, he thought she’d hit him. He’d almost welcome it.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And I play to win.”

  He watched her work through it: her anger and the desire to tell him to go to hell, her fear for Danny and Callie, and her acceptance of an intolerable situation. He buried his guilt over manipulating her once more. After all, he’d just given her a chance to survive.

  “It looks like I don’t have any choice,” she said finally. “We’ll do it your way.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE NEXT THIRTEEN HOURS passed in a blur.

  Ethan had rented a black late-model Ford Explorer and stocked it with camping gear: sleeping bags and a tent, a cooler filled with bottled water and sandwich meat, and a variety of gadgets to make the outdoors more hospitable. She supposed anyone inspecting the vehicle would think the contents perfect for a family camping trip.

  Or, for a group of fugitives.

  They started out a little after eight and drove straight through from Dallas to Illinois, stopping only for gas, an occasional bathroom break, and at a drugstore to pick up a few things for Callie.

  She’d started coughing, and Sydney was worried she might be coming down with something. Although Danny claimed his sister got carsick, and Callie insisted she was fine, Sydney wasn’t buying it. She remembered their earlier conversation and worried that the girl was sicker than she appeared. So at Sydney’s insistence, they stopped and picked up cough syrup and children’s aspirin. After taking both, Callie drifted off to sleep.

  Danny, on the other hand, remained stubbornly awake, refusing to lie down and give into the exhaustion tugging at him. Occasionally Sydney would turn to see him dozing with his head against the window. Then, as if sensing her, he’d open his eyes, straighten in his seat, and pick up his Game Boy. So she stopped checking on him.

  Like Danny, she remained awake, her thoughts refusing to shut down as the car streamed along the nearly deserted highway. Within the vehicle’s warm interior, they seemed in a world of their own, protected and isolated from the darkness beyond the glass. The steady hum of the engine and the soft green light of the dashboard lulled her with a sense of normalcy and the feeling that nothing of the past twenty-four hours could touch her here.

  Once, when Nicky had been four, the three of them had taken a road trip to San Antonio. Ethan had wanted to show Nicky the Alamo. They’d left on a Friday evening and driven for five hours, Nicky asleep in the backseat. She remembered her feeling of contentment. There had been a rightness to their being together, a sense of belonging to her husband and son.

  She could almost imagine the same thing now.

  If she threw her thoughts out of focus just a bit, she could pretend they were a family—the four of them. The boy fighting sleep with his head against the window, the little girl stretched out on the seat beside him, and the man, father and lover, protector and provider.

  A set of headlights pierced her fantasy, lighting the car’s interior and Ethan’s face. Sydney blinked and turned away, embarrassed and angry at her self-indulgent daydreaming. The approaching car passed and the darkness ebbed in, but her view of the man behind the wheel remained intact.

  A man who was no longer her husband, whose hard features bore little resemblance to the man who’d once given her a son. A man she’d pretended was someone else for too many years.

  Their trip to San Antonio had been their only family vacation. She’d blamed herself and her busy practice, but she saw now that it hadn’t been her fault. More times than she could count she’d arranged for them to get away together. It had been Ethan who’d never had the time, who’d spent more days and nights away than at home. Ethan who’d always had some business to take care of that no one else could handle.

  Strange that she should remember all his excuses now. Odder still that she’d closed her eyes to it during the years of their marriage. If there was blame to accept, it was that she’d let him lie to her and accepted everything at face value—when she should have known better. He wasn’t the type of man to be satisfied as an analyst, or stay in the background while others fought on the front lines.

  Ethan had always been a patriot. In Sydney’s world, he’d been something of a novelty. It had been more chic in her circles to slam the country and its government than to support it. On the other hand, Ethan had grown up in a military family. He’d spent seven years in the service, three of them in Special Forces. His father was career Army and his brother had died in Desert Storm. The instinct to serve was born, bred, and trained into him.

  How could she fault him for that? Or remain angry when he’d lied in the name of that which came as naturally to him as the beat of his heart: the need to protect. And how could she keep her own defenses in place when he still had the power to weaken her with nothing more than a touch or a smile?

  IT WAS MIDMORNING when they pulled into River Ridge State Park, south of Champaign, Illinois. Both children came fully awake as Ethan parked in front of a low building near the entrance. Danny scooted forward to see through the front windshield, and Callie stared wide-eyed and curious out the side window.

  “Why are we stopping?” Danny asked.

  Ethan shut off the engine. “We’re getting a cabin.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Sydney said.

  “No one will look for us here, and we need to rest before we decide on our next step.”

  “I want to keep going,” Danny said.

  “Be my guest.” Ethan gestured toward the north end of the park. “Champaign is about fifty miles that way.”

  Danny opened his mouth to protest, but Sydney placed a hand on his arm. “He’s right, Danny. We’re all tired.”

  The boy crossed his arms and shoved back into his seat.

  Ethan tossed him a quick frown, then climbed out of the car and entered the building. He returned a few minutes later carrying maps, a parking permit for the dashboard, and a key on a large wooden ring.

  “We picked the right time of year,” he said. “The place is almost empty, and we got an isolated site back in the woods.” He glanced at Danny, who remained sullen, staring out the window.

  When they pulled into a clearing a few minutes later, Sydney wished again that things were different. The setting reminded her of something out of a child’s picture-book. A modest log cabin sat among towering pines that covered the ground with soft needles. A porch stretched across the front, and a tire swing hung from a nearby oak.

  No one spoke as the four of them got out of the vehicle, and Sydney suspected the place had charmed even Ethan. It was the ideal vacation spot for the ideal family. Too bad neither fit their situation.

  “It’s like a fairy tale,” Callie said.

  Sydney smiled, pleased that the girl’s thoughts had mirrored her own. “Which one? Hopefully not ‘Hansel and Gretel’ or ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ “

  Callie giggled. “No. I think maybe ’snow White’ would be better.”

  “Then I guess we’d better watch out for the evil stepmother.” Sydney squeezed Callie’s hand.

  Danny rolled his eyes and wandered off to the tire swing, his backpack slung across one shoulder.

  “How are you feeling?” Sydney asked, placing a hand on Callie’s forehead. “You feel cooler.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Sydney smiled, relieved.

  “Let’s get inside.” Ethan started for the cabin. “I need a couple hours’ sleep, then I’ll head in to Champaign and talk to Mulligan.”

  “Alone?” Sydney asked, following.

  “It’s the best way.” Ethan unlocked the door but turned to her before entering. “We can’t all just show up on the man’s doorstep.”

  “I agree,” she said. �
�But I don’t think you’re the one who should approach him.”

  “What about me?” Danny asked. Startled, Sydney turned to see the boy standing behind her. “I’m going,” he said.

  “Not this time,” Ethan answered, without even looking at him. “You’ll be safe here while—”

  “I’m going,” Danny repeated. “And you can’t stop me.”

  Ethan turned and leveled a hard stare at the boy. “Don’t count on it, kid.”

  Danny climbed the short steps and faced Ethan with an angry glare. “He’s—”

  Sydney stepped between them. “Stop it, Ethan. You’re not helping the situation.” Then she turned to Danny. “For once I agree with him. We can’t just show up on Dr. Mulligan’s doorstep.”

  Danny shifted his anger to her. “He’ll want to see me.”

  “Maybe, but we have to do this right.”

  “You can’t keep me here. I want—”

  “The four of us haven’t come all this way for nothing,” she said, cutting him off. “We’re here because we believe Dr. Mulligan may be your and Callie’s father.”

  “He is my father.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.” She hated to deflate his hopes, but he had to face the possibility that this was a wild-goose chase. “Not until we talk to him.”

  Danny clamped his mouth shut, his jaw working.

  “Even if Timothy Mulligan is your father, he won’t recognize you,” she continued more gently. “You don’t remember living anywhere but the Haven, which means you were a baby when they took you from your parents. So if you just show up, claiming to be this man’s son, he’ll think it’s some kind of bad joke.”

  Danny’s frown deepened, but she could tell she was getting through to him. He wasn’t stupid.

  “You’ve waited this long,” she said. “Just give it a few more hours. If Dr. Mulligan turns out to be your father, we’ll know it soon.” And hopefully, he’ll want you back. She couldn’t say that, however, not to this boy who desperately wanted to find his family.

  Although still obviously unhappy, Danny didn’t have an immediate reply, so she shifted her attention to Ethan. “But I think I should be the one to talk to Mulligan.”