Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit StrategyPaybackCovert Justice

by Shirlee McCoy

“Do you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t. It’s not something we discussed. I can tell you this, though, he’s got a scar on his forearm from saving my hide.”

  That fit, too. At least, the scar did. She didn’t know about the life saving part. She’d asked about the scar, and Essex had simply said that he’d been injured while serving in Iraq. “What’s his wife’s name?”

  “Janet. Kids are Essex Jr., Eleanor, Eliza and Elliot. Don’t know what the E name thing is, but I told him he needs to cut it out,” he growled. “Now, if you’re done with twenty questions, how about we get down to business?”

  “What business?”

  “Getting out of here alive.”

  Whether he was telling the truth or a lie didn’t matter. What mattered was that her arms were free, her feet were free. Soon the blood that pulsed back into her toes would calm, the throbbing pain would ebb and she’d have feeling back. That would make escape easier, and that was all she cared about. That and taking Elijah Clayton down. She might not have found evidence in his office, she might not have gotten her hands on something that could prove he was as dirty as the old hound dog he kept tied to a stake behind his house, but she knew he’d killed Joshua. Or had him killed.

  Either way, Joshua’s blood was on his hands.

  She’d known it the day she’d found Joshua, his hunting rifle in his hand, a bullet hole through his temple. She’d known Joshua. He was careful and cautious. He didn’t take chances. The accident that had taken his life wouldn’t have happened to someone like him. Couldn’t have happened. The police had bought the lie, though. Why wouldn’t they have? Even Joshua’s parents had believed it.

  Lark had been too numb to question what she was told.

  She’d let her in-laws plan the funeral, let herself be led through days of grieving. When it was over, she’d packed up a few things, left the compound because it was too filled with memories of the only man she’d ever loved.

  It had taken a couple of months for the truth to settle in, for the nagging disquiet to be replaced by the certainty that there was more to Joshua’s death than a simple accident. She’d started digging, then, researching Amos Way, its history, its former members. There weren’t many of those. The ones she’d found hadn’t been willing to talk.

  That hadn’t stopped her.

  She’d kept asking, thinking she was clever enough to stay a step ahead of Elijah. Obviously, she hadn’t been.

  She moved up the church stairs, the night dead silent, the compound still. Her in-laws were sleeping in their house, tucked safely away from whatever it was they’d run from. Life? Hardship? The world? Whatever it was, they’d been in Amos Way for nearly thirty years. They believed the lies, and they bought the status quo. They wanted what was best for the group, and they were willing to believe Lark was a thief, that she’d gone into the trailer willingly to commune with God and find the right path, rather than believe their leader wasn’t who he pretended to be.

  That hurt, but she couldn’t think about it. Not when she finally had a chance at freedom. She knew the old church, the large sanctuary, the bell tower, the door that led into the cemetery. She knew how far she needed to go to make it to the fence. Joshua had taught her how to climb it. He’d taught her a lot of things. Mostly he’d taught her to love, to have faith, to believe that God had a perfect plan for all of their lives.

  She wouldn’t forget those lessons.

  Not ever.

  And, she wouldn’t let his murderer go unpunished, wouldn’t let his death be for nothing. Someone had to bring Elijah Clayton down. The way Lark saw things, it might as well be her.

  The man opened the church door, and she stepped inside, the dry cool air filled with the musty scent of time and age. She’d loved this place, had felt more at home here than she’d ever been anywhere before, but it wasn’t home anymore, and all she wanted was to escape. Maybe the man escorting her was Essex’s friend. Maybe he wasn’t. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to trust him to save her. She’d save herself.

  He closed the door, sealed them inside the century old building. Then, he took her arm and led her through the empty sanctuary.

  *

  Lark didn’t resist as Cyrus led her through the old church.

  That surprised him.

  He’d done his research before he’d approached John, and everything he’d learned about Lark had told him she was a leader, a go-getter, a survivor. Not that there’d been much to discover. Financial records only went back as far as her college days. She’d attended Towson University on scholarship, gotten a degree in elementary education. From what he’d been able to gather, she’d met her future husband there, moved into Amos Way after they’d married. Her husband had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound nearly three years later. That’s what the police report had said.

  Essex didn’t think Lark believed it.

  That’s why he’d been worried when she hadn’t returned, why he’d contacted Cyrus and asked for help when the police couldn’t step in. This was what HEART did best—entering areas the authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t go, finding the missing, bringing them home.

  “Sit.” He pressed her into the front pew and was surprised when she didn’t fight him.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice echoing hollowly in the empty building.

  “To John and Elijah? Louis Morgan. Ex-military. Current mercenary. In other words, gun for hire.”

  “Who are you really?”

  “Cyrus Mitchell. I work for HEART.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Most people haven’t.” He didn’t have time to explain, and he wouldn’t have taken the time if he had it. HEART members weren’t in it for recognition or glory. They weren’t in it for money. Most were in it for redemption, for a chance to make sure no one else ever lived through the pain they’d experienced. Cyrus was no exception to that.

  “I take it you’re not going to fill me in?” She brushed thick strands of hair from her cheek. He hadn’t turned on a light, but the darkness couldn’t hide the paleness of her skin, the narrow width of her shoulders. She looked more vulnerable than he wanted her to, more delicate than Essex’s description had led him to believe.

  “Later. Right now, we have more important things to do.” He pulled an energy bar from his pocket, handed it to her. “Eat.”

  “I don’t think so.” She thrust it back. “I’ve already been drugged a couple of times. I’m not going to let it happen again.”

  “It would be stupid for me to drug you right before we make a run for it.”

  “Run? You know how far it is to the nearest town?” she asked.

  “Seventy miles.”

  “Exactly. Running is not going to be an option.”

  “Leaving is. That’s the plan. How we do it is going to depend on whether or not I can turn off the security system before John shows up.” He walked to the window that looked out into the church’s front yard. Moonlight spilled onto the lush grass. A few shrubs lined the path that led from the church to the residential area of the compound. Someone stood beside one of them, his shadowy form nearly blending with the dark outline of the bushes.

  John. Cyrus didn’t have any doubt about that.

  “Is he out there?” Lark asked, leaning in so that she could see out the window. He doubted she realized how close they were or how vulnerable she was making herself. If he’d wanted to take her out, he could have done it easily.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?” she whispered as if John might somehow hear.

  “Near the shrubbery. Right at the edge of the path.”

  “What’s he doing out there?”

  “Making sure I do what he’s paying me to do. It’s not going to be long before he comes in to check on my progress. Come on.” He took her hand, pulled her away from the window.

  “Where? There isn’t a place on the compound without security cameras. If we leave the building, he’ll know it.”

&
nbsp; “I can take out the security cameras.”

  “How?”

  “How about you save the questions for later?” He strode through the sanctuary and into a narrow hall. The church office was to the left, the door closed and locked. It took seconds to get in, just a little longer to log on to the computer. He typed in the password that John was a little too careless with, smiled as the security system opened up to him.

  Lark stood a few feet away, watching intently as he began typing in code. “You’re a man of many talents, Cyrus.”

  “Not many, but the ones I have are useful in situations like this.”

  “Would they be useful in opening this?” She pointed to a file cabinet.

  “If it was necessary.”

  “It’s necessary,” Lark responded, tugging at the handle.

  He ignored her. They didn’t have time to play seek-and-find.

  “Cyrus,” Lark said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Did you hear me? I said it was necessary.”

  “Your idea of necessary and mine aren’t the same. To me, necessary is shutting down the security system and getting us both out of here in one piece.”

  “You’ve been on the compound for how long?”

  “About a week.”

  “So, you’ve seen the trucks coming and going in the middle of the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re not curious? You don’t want to know what’s in them?”

  He sighed, looked up from the computer screen and met her eyes. Gray eyes. That’s what Essex had said. It was hard to tell from the photographs and impossible to see in the darkness. “Yeah. I’m curious, but not so curious that I’m willing to die to find out.”

  “It will only take a—”

  The sound of a door opening silenced her and made every nerve in Cyrus’s body jump to life.

  Footsteps tapped on the tile floor, John’s toneless whistle filling the church.

  Cyrus flicked off the computer, turned on a light, nearly tossed Lark into the chair.

  “Play along,” he hissed.

  She barely had time to nod before John was there, moving into the room, his dark gaze jumping from Cyrus to Lark and back again.

  “What are you doing in here?” he snapped.

  “Getting the information you asked me for,” he said coldly.

  “The door was locked for a reason, son.”

  “I’m not your son, and you said to bring her wherever I wanted, do whatever was necessary.”

  “I didn’t mean break into the church office.”

  “Then, you should have been clearer. Fact is, this is the farthest away from people that we can get. You don’t want anyone hearing her, right?”

  John hesitated, something in his face going just a little soft as he looked at Lark.

  “Right,” John finally said.

  “Then how about you go, and leave me to do what I do best?” Cyrus offered his best predatory smile, the one that had made tougher men than John back down.

  “I think I’ll stay. If you’re such an expert at getting information, I might learn something from you.” He dragged a chair over, sat it right in front of Lark.

  “You’re going to tell us what we want to know. Right, doll?” John said. “You’re going to make this easy on everyone. It’s what Joshua would have wanted.”

  “I guess you’d know,” she replied. “You were one of his best friends.” There were freckles on her cheeks and nose, dark circles under her eyes. She was closing in on thirty, but could have passed for twenty, her dark red hair curling around an unlined face.

  Delicate.

  That’s how she looked.

  Maybe that’s why John leaned forward, touched her cotton-skirt-covered knee. “You took something that belongs to Elijah. Where is it? All you have to do is tell us, and you can go back to your life.”

  “Like Joshua was allowed to go back to his?”

  “Joshua died in a terrible accident,” John said with a scowl. “The police investigated. They agreed.”

  “What about Ethan?”

  That was a name Cyrus hadn’t heard before, and he forced himself to relax, to let the conversation play out. There was a lot going on that he didn’t understand, and that could be dangerous.

  John’s scowl deepened. “He’s probably living life somewhere far away from Amos Way.”

  “He would never have left his wife and children.”

  “He was always looser in his morals then the rest of the group. Joshua knew that. You knew that.”

  “What I know,” she said quietly, “is that you’re a pawn in whatever game Elijah is playing, and that you’re paid plenty of money to be one. You betrayed the group. You betrayed my husband. You’re the reason why he’s dead. I don’t know if you pulled the trigger or if one of your hired men did, but—”

  “Shut up!” He lunged toward her, his fist raised, his intent obvious.

  Cyrus had no choice.

  He pounced, tackling John to the ground, struggling as the other man reached for his gun, tried to free it from its holster. John was strong and outweighed Cyrus by a good seventy pounds, but if he won, it was all over. No backup was coming. No help was on its way. For the first time since Cyrus had joined HEART, he was on his own. It was the way he’d wanted it. He had a feeling he was going to regret that choice.

  He wrestled John into a choke hold, managed to keep him from freeing his gun. Was panting hard, trying to force him into submission when something heavy whizzed by his head, glanced off his shoulder, slammed into John’s face.

  There was a grunt, a crash. And then there was darkness.

  THREE

  Lark stumbled across the dark room, slammed into a chair that blocked the path to the door.

  She pushed the chair out of the way, raced to the door. Escape. That’s all she wanted.

  But Cyrus had risked his life for her, and running meant leaving him behind. Injured? She didn’t think so. She’d tossed the lamp at John’s head, saw it make contact a split second before the room went dark. At least, that’s what she thought she’d seen. She wasn’t sure. Her hands had been shaking. Her body had been shaking, all the adrenaline and fear pouring out. She might have missed her mark, seen what she wanted to see rather than what was.

  She reached the door, could have run through the hall and out back, raced through the cemetery and climbed the fence, been in the woods and heading toward civilization in minutes.

  But she couldn’t leave Cyrus.

  No matter how much her brain was screaming that she should.

  She ran her hand along the wall, found the light switch and flicked it on. Turned to face the men.

  Cyrus knelt beside John’s prone body, his eyes dark, his expression unreadable. He looked tough and hard, his black security jacket hanging open to reveal his shoulder holster.

  “Is he dead?” she managed to ask, her throat so tight she barely got the words out.

  “Not even close.” He took the handcuffs from his belt, turned John onto his stomach, yanked his arms up behind his back and cuffed him.

  “I hope I didn’t hurt him too badly.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Lark, but hurting McDermott is the least of your worries.” He removed John’s gun belt. “You know how to use a firearm?”

  “Yes.” Joshua had taught her to load a rifle and a handgun, and she’d become a decent marksman in the years she’d lived in Amos Way. Owning firearms, understanding how to use them, that was part of a sustainable lifestyle, part of self-reliance and living off the grid. It had been a while since she’d been out shooting, but she hadn’t forgotten.

  “Put this on.” He thrust the gun belt into her hands.

  Obviously, he wasn’t worried about her using the gun on him.

  She took the belt, buckled it around her waist. John wasn’t a small guy, and she wasn’t a big woman. Especially not now. Three months in Amos Way reliving all the good times and that one really bad time, a week in the prison trailer avoid
ing drugged food, and she’d lost any extra weight she’d ever had on her.

  The belt slid to her hips, and she pulled it back up.

  “Come here.” Cyrus grabbed the front of the belt, dragged her close, used his knife to dig a hole through thick leather. “Try that.”

  It was perfect.

  Of course.

  Cyrus seemed like that kind of guy. The guy who never made a mistake, who didn’t hesitate, who knew exactly what needed to be done and how to do it.

  He opened a desk drawer, rifled through it. Opened another one.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Keys. Elijah’s car is parked just outside the gate. We might be able to use it.”

  “Only if we can get out of the gate without being shot,” she responded. Elijah was the only member of the group allowed to have a car. The other vehicles were kept in a large garage built two decades ago. Her in-laws kept an old Cadillac there. Her car was there, too, the old Ford Mustang parked close to the garage doors, the key handed over to her father-in-law when she entered the compound. No way did she plan to go back to her in-laws’ place to look for it. She wasn’t going back for her notebook either. Maybe she should. She’d written notes in it, kept track of every delivery to the compound and every shipment that left it. That had to be the key to understanding Joshua’s death, and until she understood it, she couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move on.

  “No keys anyway,” Cyrus said, closing the last drawer. “No phone. There’s no external internet connection on the computer. It’s networked with the ones in the security barracks, but there’s no access to the outside world.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I snuck in here a few nights ago to check.”

  “There’s a phone in Elijah’s house.”

  “We’re not going to risk going there.”

  John moaned, turned onto his back, his eyes open but unfocused.

  “We could take him with us,” she suggested. “He could probably get us a ride out of here.”

  “Get us killed you mean. We’ve got two guns and two people. The security team is ten times as strong. And I can tell you from bunking with them for a few nights, they couldn’t care less about their fearless leader.” He logged on to the computer, typed a password in. “If Elijah gives orders to take us down, they’re not going to care if John goes down with us.”