by Hope White
A sudden series of thuds bounced along the hallway and the alarm panel by the front door started its incessant beeping, demanding someone feed it the correct code before it called the police.
“We’ve got about two minutes before the cops start this way.” The voice, coarse and unfamiliar, scraped into the office and grated against Meghan’s ears.
Her fingers tightened around the straps of the backpack. No one she knew was supposed to be in the building this late.
And no one she knew would worry about the police, either.
Meghan slipped to the closed office door and pressed her back tight against the wall to listen, recalling long-unused training to keep her breathing even. The church housing the school wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, and they’d suffered one other break-in, when vandals nearly destroyed the school. Her car parked under the awning by the front door should have been a clue to any aspiring burglar trying for an easy score that the building was occupied.
But maybe that was the point. If they were hoping to find someone in the building...well, that was more than she wanted to think about. And she’d be sure to give them a fight they never anticipated.
It had been a long time since she’d been involved in a physical altercation, but she’d been trained well. Meghan stiffened her stance, charged by the prospect of action. Anybody who broke into this building had no idea what they were in for.
“Her car’s out front. She’s here. Find her.” The rough masculine voice echoed from the hallway. “Get her into the van. I’ll take care of the alarm.”
Meghan’s stomach tightened, and she balled her fists, automatically preparing for combat. This wasn’t a burglary. This was a targeted plan, and she was at the center of it. She should have anticipated this. If she’d been smart, she would have headed for the door the second the horrible message popped onto the screen, but she’d been too shocked he’d appeared again after this much time had passed.
There had to be a way out of this. Even with her military training, a fight against someone who knew her and her background would be a lot more difficult than an altercation with a neighborhood punk. There was no way to know how many intruders were in the building or how heavily armed they were. No intel meant an unfair fight.
The beeping of the alarm panel gained speed, demanding a code before the whole system went off. All she had to do was hang tight and stay hidden for another five minutes. The police tended to arrive quickly once the alarm notified them. After last year’s vandalism, they didn’t play when it came to this school.
“We should have waited till it was dark.” Another voice followed, deeper than the first, twanging the edges of something familiar. Somehow, somewhere she’d heard that voice before. Meghan dug for a memory, for a face, but came up empty save the bizarre feeling she shouldn’t be afraid.
A lie if her mind had ever told her one.
“If we’d waited till dark, she’d have been gone. We have one shot at this. And unless you want to be the one facing the pain if we blow this job, you’ll grab her before she figures out we’re here.” A string of curses stampeded from the hallway. “Stupid alarm. There’s no way she’s not hearing it. You go that way. And make it quick. If I don’t have the right code, we’ve got about fifteen seconds before the stinking alarm goes off and triggers the cops.”
They had the alarm code. Meghan’s muscles tightened with readiness as she searched her windowless office for a way out. Help wasn’t coming. She was on her own.
And she was defenseless. The cell phone in her hip pocket had never gotten a signal in her small office deep inside the first floor of the steel-and-concrete building. Her gun was locked in the safe at the house. She hadn’t carried a weapon for personal defense since she left the army four years ago. All she had was herself, her training and a backpack full of books and random technology. While she’d been trained well, that wouldn’t get her far against no less than two men determined to haul her out of here. Into a van.
Such a cliché.
Dropping the bag silently beside her feet, she slid closer to the door, keeping tight to the wall, listening for footsteps, watching for shadows as an early Michigan evening cast weak light into the hallway.
The alarm stopped beeping, severing any hope of the cavalry’s arrival. A small number of people were privy to the code, and none of them sounded anything like the men stalking the building now. None of them would want to shove her into a van or be worried about police presence.
She had to get out. Fast.
Meghan walked the familiar building in her memory. From the front lobby, the building branched off into three directions. From the muffled sounds of footsteps and distant murmuring, the men hadn’t headed in her direction yet, which meant she had about one minute to figure this out and save her skin. Easing around the door, she peeked into the hallway.
The front door was out. Even though it was about a hundred feet away, it was part of the central hub in the main lobby. Whoever was hunting her would have to pass it again soon, and if she got caught dead to rights in the middle of the hallway, there was nowhere to run.
She glanced left. The fire exit was half the length of the building away, opening to the back school yard and a small wooded area on the other side. If Meghan could hit the door running, she might make it to the highway on the other side of the trees before they caught her, though the blaring door alarm wouldn’t allow her much of a head start.
There was a lot of open ground to cover in the hallway, then between the building and the woods. Once she was out, the door would lock behind her. She had her keys, but unlocking the door to get back into the building would cost her valuable seconds if she burst outside into the face of a waiting kidnapper. Worst-case scenario, the exit would bring her out on the opposite side of the building from the front parking lot and, if they caught her, they’d have to drag her all the way around in full sight of anyone driving by on the busy road in front of the school.
The fire exit wasn’t perfect, but it was all she had.
Closing her eyes tight, Meghan tried to listen over the pounding in her ears. The only sounds were the thumps of doors opening and closing on the far side of the building. She exhaled and hit the hallway at a dead run, bursting through the door to the earsplitting shriek of the fire alarm.
She stumbled on her flip-flops, kicked them off and kept running over soft grass, freshly sprouted after the long winter.
A shout echoed behind her. If she could make the woods and get through to the highway, surely they’d leave her alone in such a public venue.
They had to.
Dry mulch from the nearby playground dug into her feet as she pressed faster, bruising skin accustomed to winter shoes.
Footsteps closed in behind her, and then a force caught her lower back, driving her knees into the ground, her upper body pitching forward, dirt and grass pressing into her mouth. She spit and fought the weight pinning her legs as it shifted away.
Hands grasped her arms and hauled her to her feet, turning her to face her pursuer. She hardened her gaze, determined to memorize her captor’s face. Struggling to free a fist and throw a punch, Meghan caught a good look at him and went limp, her fight dying.
Green eyes.
Familiar eyes.
The eyes of a dead man.
* * *
Tate Walker’s grip loosened, then tightened again. He scanned their target’s face, skimming familiar short dark hair and deep brown eyes that no one who saw them could ever forget. He nearly choked on nothing more than air.
Meghan McGuire was their mark? What would a hacker who was threatening national security want with her?
She jerked once, hard, breaking the connection and twisting her arm as she tried to pull away from his grasp. “You’re not real.” Her voice was raw, and although the words were low, they carried the force of a
shout. “Let me go.”
He couldn’t. If he released her and she ran or, worse, stood there and vented the anger burning in her eyes, his cover would blow sky-high and they’d both be dead in the next ten seconds. Glancing over his shoulder, he figured he had about that long to explain before Isaac rushed out of the building, if the other man wasn’t watching already. “I’m under cover. Follow along.”
Her nostrils flared and she pulled again, struggling against him. Meghan had always had fight. It had made her a partner other operatives in their small specialized military unit had envied. More than once she’d been offered other teams, other assignments, but she’d always stuck close to their partnership, loyal until the day she walked away without even offering him a goodbye.
Right now, her fight was about something more than self-preservation. She had the wild-eyed, caged-animal fight of someone who thought she was losing her senses. “This isn’t real. You’re dead. Ethan told me you died. There was a funeral. Everything.” She twisted her body, trying to free herself, but her eyes stayed on his. “You’re—”
The fire door crashed open behind him, and Isaac’s shout echoed off the trees. “You got her?”
Time was up. Tate winced and fired one last plea at Meghan. “Trust me.” That was a lot to ask of any woman. Especially one who’d believed he was dead for four years.
But she had to trust him. His heart hammered. He’d had his cover compromised one other time, and it had left him close to death in a pool of his own blood under a hot Pennsylvania sun. The moment had changed everything about his life. His chest ached empty even now, his breathlessness a testament to the physical price he’d paid at the hands of a traitor.
He wouldn’t land himself there again.
After shooting a warning into Meghan’s angry and confused expression, he whipped around, keeping his grip tight and her close, tucked slightly behind him. “Yeah. I got her when she busted out the fire door. Go get the van and bring it around to the back lot.” He pointed toward the corner of the parking lot barely visible on the other side of the low brick building, praying Isaac wouldn’t decide to take issue with Tate giving orders. “It’ll keep us from dragging her out into the open by the road. Too many chances for somebody to see us if we try to take her out the front. She’s a fighter.”
Meghan pulled again, growling low. Whether she was helping to sell his story or truly trying to escape, he couldn’t take the chance and ease up. If she ran while Isaac was present, the man would shoot her before she made cover in the wood line. Isaac wasn’t a man with a whole lot of patience. Short, stocky and prematurely balding, he covered his perceived inadequacies in front of his small band of ruffians with a lot of bravado and a notoriously hot temper.
Isaac’s volatile personality was of the dozen reasons Tate didn’t look forward to the consequences of what he was about to do. On a normal day, a man like Isaac wouldn’t even make him blink. But when Tate had to keep cover and couldn’t defend himself? Things could get ugly. Fast.
Isaac hesitated, assessing the situation. He scratched the back of his head, clearly unwilling to let his prey out of his sight.
Come on. Go. Tate’s muscles tightened. He hadn’t been a member of Isaac’s ring long enough to gain the man’s full trust, and he was severely testing a fragile thread right now.
The pause felt like an eternity, but Isaac turned and tried the door.
Locked.
He tossed a disgusted smirk in Tate’s direction and took off at a slow jog around the corner of the building.
Tate nearly sagged in relief. Turning fully toward Meghan, he kept a firm hold on her wrist. After reaching under his T-shirt at his waist, he pulled his clipped holster free, holding the pistol out to her grip-first. “Take this.” He’d count it a blessing if she didn’t shoot him with his own weapon.
She stared at him in wide-eyed shock, an expression he’d never seen in all the years they’d worked side by side. Seeing him living and breathing had to make her question everything she thought she knew about reality.
He laid the holstered pistol on her palm. “Stay with me, McGuire. Just get through the next few hours and I’ll give you answers.” The ones the government hadn’t classified, anyway.
She swallowed hard, the lines around her mouth deepening. At least she was losing the panicked-deer look; her expression morphed into the concentrated stare of a warrior. This was the Meghan McGuire he knew. He’d smile if the situation weren’t so desperate. And if she wasn’t so uncharacteristically silent.
She was listening. And she hadn’t started running. Yet.
Tate fought the crazy urge to pull her into a hug before he let her go. “You have keys to the building?”
“I do.”
“Take my gun. Go inside through the fire door. Isaac will assume you’re locked out and you ran for the woods. Get in your car and get out of here. Go as far as you can. Don’t go near your apartment because there’s two more guys waiting there for you. Get out of town and don’t call the police. We can’t blow this operation wide-open yet.” This mission was too important. If their target figured out they were onto him, he’d pack his toys and vanish by nightfall. Tate was too close to shutting the door on an op they’d been running for more than two years, an op that had left several broken lives and untimely deaths behind it.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and slipped it into hers. “Don’t answer it, no matter what. I don’t care what number comes across. I don’t care what text messages you see. Do not answer. But don’t lose it and don’t turn it off. I’ll find you.”
“Stop talking to me as though I’ve never done this before.” The words were coated with sass thick enough to choke them both.
Ah. There was the blowback he’d expected. He grinned in spite of himself. “Then stop looking at me as though you’ve never done this before.”
She drew her eyebrows together, pulling her keys from her pocket and stepping around him, prepared to make a run for the building. “You have so much talking to do, you’re going to be hoarse by the time you’re done.”
Tate grabbed her elbow and glanced over his shoulder. “I promise I’ll find you and explain later. Right now I need you to...” He was fully, painfully aware what he was about to ask of the woman he’d trained himself. “Hit me. Pretend you hate me.”
If the silent anger she fired at him was any indication, this might be the worst punch he ever took.
Meghan pulled in a deep breath, her posture easing into the one that knew this business was life or death.
The part of her that knew Tate was a dead man if they couldn’t sell her escape.
Copyright © 2016 by Jodie Bailey
ISBN-13: 9781488008672
Witness Pursuit
Copyright © 2016 by Pat White
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