Staying Alive

by Webb, Debra

  Claire was being irrational. Her sister would not come this far to do that. No matter. She didn’t want to get her hopes up and be disappointed.

  There were times in the past six years that Claire had dreamed of this moment coming about in some way. She just hadn’t ever really believed it would happen. She wasn’t sure she believed it now.

  And she definitely hadn’t considered that, once it did come to be, the reunion might very well be the last time she ever saw her sister again.

  She crossed the room, steeled herself once more and opened the door.

  She took in the sister she hadn’t laid eyes on in six long years.

  Whitney had grown into a beautiful woman. She wasn’t that kid sister Claire remembered anymore. Gone were the eyebrow ring and the trashy attire. She looked amazing and smart and mature.

  “Hello, Christina.”

  “Hello.” Claire was sure she should say more, but her brain wouldn’t string the words together. Instead, she opened the door wider for her sister to come in. She gestured to the seating area. “We can sit.”

  Claire didn’t wait for an answer. She strode straight over to the sofa. Whitney moved a bit more hesitantly, finally choosing the chair directly across from Claire. Agent Nance closed the door, leaving them alone. It felt strange and at the same time wondrous.

  “You look good, Christina.” Whitney managed a shaky smile. “I mean, Claire.”

  For the first time since she’d made the decision, Claire regretted having changed her name. She’d done it in a moment of anger. She’d decided that if her sister wanted nothing to do with her that she might as well erase the person she used to be. Changing her last name would have been far more difficult, so she hadn’t bothered. She’d calmed down by that time. So long ago. Claire had changed a lot in that time, but not nearly as much as Whitney had if her appearance were any indicator.

  “Thanks.” Claire managed a smile she hoped didn’t look as strained as it felt. “You look great.” She moved her shoulders up and then down in surprise. “You’re all grown up.”

  Whitney reached into her purse and pulled out a small photo album. “I thought you might want to see pictures of Christie.” She looked down at the album in her hand, traced the scrolling flowers that framed the words Precious Moments. “I named her after you.”

  Claire’s heart started that insistent pounding and her eyes burned as if she’d gotten shampoo in them. “That’s very flattering.” She held out her hand and her sister placed the album there. Claire held it a moment, reluctant to open it. The notion was foolish, but she was so afraid that the wrong word or move would somehow turn back the clock to that last time they’d seen each other. The ugly words echoed even now in Claire’s head.

  She ordered her mind to stop the torment. The past was over. This was now.

  “She looks like you,” Whitney said as Claire flipped slowly through the photos.

  “She’s too gorgeous to look like me,” Claire said more to herself than to her sister. The girl did have Claire’s wild mane. But then Whitney had a little of that, too. But there was her nose…her niece had Claire’s nose for sure. The smile did look a little familiar, she admitted.

  “She’s so much like you,” Whitney pressed. “She even talks like you. It’s uncanny. I catch myself saying her name and thinking I’m talking to you.”

  Claire reached the last photo, traced the precious face there, then closed the album and handed it back to her sister. “I know you’re very proud of her.”

  Whitney nodded. She held out her left hand and showed off her ring. “I got married again.” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears but there was joy in her words. “Reggie Stewart. He’s so good to me, Chri—Claire. You just wouldn’t believe how much he loves Christie. We have this beautiful house and I get to stay home with my daughter.”

  Claire was glad. “That’s great.” All those times she’d dreamed of this moment, she hadn’t expected it to hurt this badly. Just sitting here looking at her sister, listening to her talk about her daughter and their life, was tearing Claire apart inside.

  She’d missed all of it. None of it included her. It never would.

  Whitney carefully placed the album back in her purse. She clasped her hands in her lap then and stared at them for a long moment. The red highlights in her dark hair complemented her porcelain complexion. She looked phenomenal in the royal-blue dress. She looked happy.

  “When I heard,” Whitney began, her voice shook this time, “about the situation at the school and how you’d risked your life for that child, I knew…” She pressed her hands to her face for a moment in an effort to hold back the tears glittering in her eyes. “I knew,” she cried, “that you’d saved that child just like you saved me.” A sob choked out of her with the last.

  Claire felt her own tears brim. Tissues. There had to be some around here somewhere. She got up, her movements mechanical, and went to the desk for the box there. The tissues would help. Once they’d calmed down everything would be fine. When she turned around Whitney was out of her chair and coming toward her.

  “I was wrong,” she said raggedly. “You did what you did to save my life. To save my child’s life and I didn’t see that back then.” She trembled with the force of her emotions. “I was young and selfish and stupid. I was wrong.”

  Claire offered her a tissue. Whitney didn’t seem to notice; her gaze was fixed on Claire’s.

  “Can you forgive me, Christina…Claire?”

  Claire placed the box of tissues back on the desk. This part she knew. She’d thought about this for a long time.

  She leveled her bleary gaze on her sister’s. “There’s nothing to forgive, Whitney.” It was the first time she’d spoken her sister’s name in years. “You did what you thought you had to do and so did I. Holding a grudge wouldn’t change what happened. You don’t need my forgiveness for the decision you made.”

  Fighting back the growing sobs, Whitney shook her head and reached for Claire’s hands. “No. I was wrong. I shut you out of my life when I wouldn’t have had a life if you hadn’t stepped in and protected me the way you did. I made a mistake.”

  Claire’s knees were a little wobbly. She had wanted to hear those words for so long and now that she had she was scared to death that somehow she’d misunderstood. That she would finally believe the ugly past was over and then find out it wasn’t.

  “You killed that sorry son of a bitch and he deserved to die.” The passion behind those words startled Claire. “You gave up everything to make me happy and I was too stupid to appreciate any of it. Let me make that right, Claire. Let’s not let the past stand between us anymore. I love you. You’re my sister. I want you back in my life.”

  But it was too late.

  Claire held the words inside her. How could fate be so cruel? She finally had her sister back and now she had to go away…she had to die in order to stay alive. Was it really worth it?

  Having her sister back was worth the world…even if for only a moment.

  Whatever happened an hour from now, they had this minute. Claire threw her arms around her sister and held her close. “I’ve missed you.”

  For a long time they stood there just like that, holding each other and crying. Then they wiped their eyes and talked and laughed about silly, insignificant things. And it was like it used to be…before the ugliness.

  All too soon there was another knock on the door. Krueger didn’t wait for an invitation.

  “Ladies, I’m sorry to cut your visit short, but we can’t put this off any longer.”

  Fear gripped Claire. “He hasn’t taken another child, has he?”

  “No. There’s been no movement, but we have to initiate preventive protocol now.”

  This was it.

  He didn’t have to spell it out.

  When she walked out this door she wouldn’t be coming back. She wouldn’t see her sister again.

  Claire turned back to Whitney. “I’m sorry we don’t have more time.” She too
k her sister’s hands. “Darlene, my friend you met at school, has something for you.” The urge to cry all over again almost stole her newly gained composure.

  Whitney’s face turned worried. “Where are you going?” She glanced at Krueger. “What’s happening now?”

  Claire squeezed her hands. “There’s something I have to do. Don’t worry about me.”

  “We’ll talk again later?”

  The hope in her sister’s eyes was almost Claire’s undoing. She hugged Whitney again. “I have lots to tell you.” She drew back and looked in her eyes. “I love you. Please know that I have never not loved you, even for a second.”

  “Ms. Stewart, Agent Nance will escort you to another suite. You’ll be provided with full-time security while you’re in Seattle.”

  Claire let her sister go. “Don’t worry,” she assured her when Whitney still looked hesitant.

  Agent Nance escorted Whitney from the suite and closed the door.

  “Give me a second.” Claire grabbed some tissues from the desk and took care of her damp cheeks and runny nose. When she’d composed herself as best she could she turned back to Krueger. “What’s going on?”

  “I have a plan.”

  The anticipation in his eyes was contagious.

  “I hope this is good.”

  He threaded his fingers into her hair and pulled her close but he didn’t kiss her as she would have liked him to. “It’s good.”

  But would it be good enough to fool a terrorist like Nusair?

  Claire took a deep breath. “So let’s do it.”

  A big, shiny black commercial-sized van waited in the parking lot outside the Plaza.

  “All you have to do,” Krueger reminded, “is get in the van and we’ll get you to safety.”

  She nodded. “You’ll make sure my sister is protected?”

  “I’ll be with your sister.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “You’re sure this is the best way to do this? Nothing can go wrong?”

  “This is the best way. Nothing will go wrong. Your location was leaked to the press and we’ve got to get you moved before Nusair can get someone in here to attempt a hit.”

  It seemed impossible that the reunion with her sister had taken place barely a half hour ago and now she had to go. It just wasn’t fair.

  “Okay.”

  “Wait.”

  Confused, she looked up at him. He’d been rushing her to get a move on and now he told her to wait?

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her hard on the lips with God and all of his agents watching. He kissed her thoroughly. Kissed her the way a man should kiss a woman. In her entire thirty years she had never been kissed like this. She could kiss him like this forever.

  “Go,” he murmured against her lips before pulling completely away, “Talkington and Holman will be right there with you.”

  Why couldn’t she have met him any other time? Any other place? Under different circumstances?

  Still a little dazed, Claire left the hotel lobby, an agent on either side of her. Outside there were another dozen or so agents forming a long line between the entrance and the area of the parking lot where the van waited. Off to the right, being held behind barricades by the Seattle Police, were dozens of television reporters, cameras rolling. Claire had the spotlight. The whole country would be watching. And all she wanted was her life back. But that wasn’t going to happen. The next few moments would ensure that fate.

  When they reached the van, Agent Holman skirted the hood and climbed into the driver’s seat. The windows were tinted so dark she could scarcely make out his image. Agent Talkington opened the rear passenger’s door and Claire climbed in. Talkington climbed in next to her.

  Ten seconds later the engine cranked and the van exploded.

  Debris flew for hundreds of yards. People around the hotel screamed and ran for cover. The agents who had been lined up outside the hotel rushed around and attempted to control the panic. Two of them converged on the flaming vehicle and tried to look inside but there would be no way to attempt a rescue.

  Heat from the flames made Claire dizzy, but she was unhurt. She only wished she’d opted not to wear this sweater.

  Having scrambled out of the van and retreated behind the blast shield according to plan, she and Agents Talkington and Holman hovered, trying to make themselves as small as possible. The small blast shield, much smaller than the one used at the mall, had been set up only about three yards from the van’s driver’s side. A grouping of trees and shrubs provided cover behind the shield. The reporters and television cameras were on the other side of the van some two hundred feet away. The agents on the ground would keep anyone from coming near the location of the blast.

  Thank God the whole thing, so far, had worked as planned. The idea of climbing into a vehicle destined for an explosion was definitely not something she wanted to do again anytime soon.

  Talkington was saying something but Claire couldn’t hear him. Then she remembered the earplugs. She pulled them out and dropped them into her pocket.

  “What?”

  “Get ready.”

  Claire heard the squeal of tires before the vehicles came into view. SWAT. A large black panel truck and two black vans similar to the one that had exploded barreled into the parking lot. A fire truck arrived right behind them. Once the flames were doused, the SWAT vehicles moved in closer.

  Local channel news helicopters were already coming. She could hear the whop-whop of their propellers.

  “Move!” Talkington urged. “We have to move before the copters are overhead!”

  The blast shield was military green to blend in with the landscape behind them. Their location in the parking lot had been carefully selected down to the last blade of grass for this staged performance.

  Claire and the two agents slipped into the side doors of another waiting van that had been parked so near the shrubs and trees that branches literally poked into the vehicle’s interior.

  Once they were settled in the rear cargo area, Claire took her first deep breath.

  “You’re sure,” she asked as an afterthought, “that it won’t blow up again like in the movies?”

  Holman shook his head. “We drained the fuel tank. There was barely enough gas to start the engine.”

  That sounded reasonable.

  “Now we wait,” Talkington reminded. “The driver of this vehicle is one of our agents. He’ll take us to the location of the next phase of the operation as soon as things are under control here. If he tries to leave any sooner it would look suspicious.”

  The next phase of the operation.

  That was where things got tricky.

  Claire’s entire future depended upon how Nusair responded to this setup. The press would be leaked information indicating that Abdul Nusair had made good on his threats to avenge his son’s death.

  The world would believe that Claire was dead.

  Including her sister and her friends.

  That was the only part she felt bad about in all this. The people who cared about her would grieve her death. She hated to trick them this way, but it was her only option. If she didn’t go this route she was dead anyway.

  Nusair would not stop until he knew for an absolute certainty that she was dead.

  In fact, she and Krueger were counting on exactly that.

  Chapter 13

  The county morgue.

  That was the location of the next phase of the operation.

  The FBI had taken control of all but a small section of the facility’s ongoing operations. One of the refrigerated storage rooms, a cadaver room, was the primary part of the strategy.

  Three bodies, all disfigured to some degree and with features like hair color, height and weight that resembled Claire and the two agents who’d supposedly died in the blast with her, had been borrowed and tagged for the show to come. More than a dozen FBI agents were posing as morgue personnel for the next few hours.

  The plan was to lure Nusair here
and then take him down. Seemed simple enough, but it was an unprecented operation, according to Krueger.

  At first the idea that Nusair would attempt to view her body firsthand, to ensure she was indeed dead, had made her skeptical, but the more she thought about it the more she decided Krueger might have a point. Nusair would want proof that she was really dead. He would want to see with his own eyes.

  The news reports would not be enough. He was not a man who left loose ends or anything to chance.

  Krueger had taken over one of the medical examiner’s offices across the hall from the refrigerated storeroom. Surveillance had been put in place that allowed him to watch the corridor outside and the storage room from a monitor installed in the borrowed office. In addition, agents were posted in the parking lot and around the building to watch for Nusair’s arrival. Agents Talkington and Holman monitored the main corridor leading to this wing of the facility from yet another office farther down the hall. If anyone came near the storage room where the bodies were kept, they would know about it in real time.

  The agents, some wearing white lab coats, were heavily armed. Watching the preparations, one would have thought the men and women were preparing to go to war, not just stop one demented man and his small band of followers.

  But this was, in fact, a war. And Nusair was slick. Far too slippery to take any chances.

  Claire looked around the office. Medical journals lined the bookshelves on one wall. Next to the locked door was a credenza-style cabinet that now held the monitor allowing Krueger to observe the video feed from the corridor as well as the storage room. Additional stacks of medical journals had been moved to the floor in the corner temporarily.

  A large wooden desk claimed a significant portion of the available floor space. Another credenza stood against the wall behind the desk. This credenza served as a holding place for what looked like hundreds of loose files. It looked as if the medical examiner was seriously behind in his paperwork.

  In contrast, the desk was neat and clear with nothing more than a lamp and a name plate on its polished surface. Claire had claimed the generously sized leather executive chair behind the desk in hopes of staying out of Krueger’s way. He hadn’t been happy about her insistence on staying involved, but she wasn’t about to be hidden away while this thing went down.