Fight or Flight

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  “Awesome!” said Van. Kelsey turned her head. Her friend’s eyes were wide, her hand clutching the side of the sofa.

  “But you don’t do martial arts now,” Kelsey accused.

  Regan shook her head a little. “It’s hard to keep it up without a partner, and joining a dojo wouldn’t have been smart. It would have connected me to Chelsea.”

  “How come you didn’t go with Scott—I mean, Dad—to tell his parents?”

  Her mother’s indrawn breath shook, as did her voice when it came out. “I was afraid, and he knew it. He was going home for the long weekend and knew he couldn’t keep it from them. He was too happy. He wanted me to go, but told me to stay at school until they knew and he’d proven to me everything would be all right. It turned out,” she choked, “to be the best thing he could have done. For us.” She indicated herself and Kelsey.

  No one moved, waiting for what they knew was coming.

  Her mother’s face tightened. Her shoulders squared, and her voice came out stronger this time. “I talked to him on the phone Monday morning. He said things hadn’t gone as planned and I should pack a bag. He was coming to get me. He sounded scared but determined. I didn’t hesitate. I packed everything I could into one suitcase and waited outside my dormitory. Two hours after he was supposed to have gotten there, I had to go to the bathroom. When I came out I heard a voice, a man’s voice, in the common room around the corner. Something made me stop—I never figured out what. But he was asking one of the other girls about me. She said she’d seen me outside with my suitcase and that I must have left.

  “When I went back outside, even though it had gotten dark and there was no one around the entrance or the parking lot, I hid behind the bushes. Scott drove up in his Mustang an hour later. I ran out and started to get into the car, but he opened his door and fell out onto the pavement.” Tears began streaming freely down her face, though she continued in the same strong voice. “He was bleeding. All over. I couldn’t tell from where, but I think he had at least a shoulder wound and probably his kidney.”

  Kelsey released Tom’s hand and wrapped her arms around her freezing body. “From what?”

  “I don’t know. Gunshots, or knife wounds.” She thanked Tyler for the box of tissues he handed her. “I don’t know how he managed to get back to Blaydes. Sheer force of will, I guess. He fought off my attempts to help him and clutched my shoulders. His eyes burned with intensity.” She closed hers, as if lost in the memory. “He said I had to run. They wanted the baby and would do anything to get her—he always believed you were a girl.” She dragged in a hitching breath. “They’d tried to kill him.”

  Her mother’s eyes opened, and the anguish in them was more than Kelsey had ever experienced. She pressed the heel of her hand against her chest, against the sharp pain that had grown there over the last fifteen minutes.

  “Then what?” she whispered.

  “Then he told me he loved me. Loved both of us. And died.”

  Van gasped. “He died? In your arms?”

  Tom’s hand wrapped around Kelsey’s again. She was having difficulty breathing, as if the room had turned into a sauna.

  “What did you do?” Tom asked.

  “I did what he said. I ran.”

  “You left him there?” In a second grief flared into outrage, and Kelsey leaped to her feet. “You left his body in the parking lot?” She could barely hear over the roaring in her ears.

  Her mother didn’t look the slightest bit apologetic. “I didn’t think I had a choice. Someone had murdered your father and he believed you were in danger. And someone—maybe even the same someone—was looking for me.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “I was too scared.” She flattened a hand over her abdomen, as if remembering the baby she’d been carrying. “Even then, when I was only a few weeks pregnant, I was fiercely protective of you. I had bad memories of the police from when my parents were killed—I didn’t trust them. What if whoever killed Scott could get to me through the police? Worse, what if the police thought I’d killed Scott? So I ran.”

  “To Ohio.”

  She laughed, a bitter sound. “Oh, hell, no. I wasn’t very smart in the beginning. Scott’s parents lived in Northern California, so I went south. Got a lousy job, found a lousier place to live, gave birth to a beautiful, delicate baby girl, and decided it had all been nuts. I convinced myself Scott had been in an accident or something, and was delirious. It was too late to go back, but I fooled myself into believing we were safe.”

  Kelsey couldn’t remember a time when her mother had felt safe. “What happened to change that?”

  “They found me and tried to kidnap you when you were only a few weeks old. Two men came in. I fought one, but my karate was competition-oriented and his training wasn’t. He pinned me to the floor while the other guy got you from your nursery. They left me there, carrying you out with your diaper bag slung over one shoulder, like you belonged to them.”

  “But you got me back!”

  “I did.” Her smile was a fraction of what it had been when she mentioned her wins, but it bore the same mark of pride. “I had bought a gun, when we first moved down there. I pulled it from the towel drawer where I had hidden it and shot one of them. I got you away and left, and never took anything for granted again. Any time I got too tired or too overwhelmed, or felt silly for my paranoia, I remembered what it had been like to see them carrying you out the door.”

  Tyler, who had remained still and silent until now, asked, “Where did you go?”

  Regan’s eyes narrowed on him, and Kelsey could see her brain working.

  “Wondering how I evaded you?”

  He shook his head. “I never knew you existed until right before I moved in next to you.”

  “Why don’t you tell us about that?” Regan circled the love seat and sat on its arm, facing Tyler on his chair arm. They reminded Kelsey of the old adversaries in black-and-white movies, the couple who were at odds but loved with a fiery passion in the end. She looked back and forth between them, her mind flashing over romantic scenarios.

  What the hell are you doing? Her musings came to a screaming halt. They were on the run, and Tyler could be the enemy. But she knew what was going on—subconsciously she was trying to escape from the agony of grief over the father who’d died to save her. The father she’d never known. It was unfair to blame her mother for that, and she gulped back the fury trying to spill over. She wanted to stop all the talking, make everyone go away and let her process what she’d just learned, but there was no time.

  “Finish your story,” Tyler told Regan. “Mine takes up where yours leaves off.”

  Kelsey thought her mom would argue, but she only folded her arms and continued. “I went to Illinois first, where I became Regan Miller. Then to Michigan, down to Texas, up to Maine, and finally, when Kelsey needed stability for school, to Ohio. Nothing had happened in nearly five years, and I took a chance I obviously shouldn’t have taken.”

  Tyler shook his head. “For someone without a clue how to disappear—a teenage mother with an infant, no less—you did an admirable job.”

  “So? Your turn.”

  Tyler took a deep breath. “My employer had been searching for you since the day your—Scott died. He finally tracked you down about two years ago and sent me to check on you. I reported that Kelsey was healthy and happy and you seemed to be a typical single mother, and I thought that would be the end of it. But he assigned me to watch you, which I did.”

  “Who is ‘he’?”

  Kelsey knew the question was pointless, and no doubt her mother did too, but she watched Tyler carefully when he answered.

  He gave nothing away. “All I can say is that he’s on your side. But I’m not authorized to say who he is.”

  “You make it sound like special ops or national security,” Regan accused.

  “In a way, it is.”

  Stunned silence filled the room. Kelsey found her voice first, rough as i
t was. “What part? My father’s death, my mother’s disappearance or my existence?”

  Tyler turned to her. “All of it.”

  “Whoa,” Van said, behind her.

  Kelsey’s mind spun. She’d thought none of it would be a surprise, thought she’d figured out what her mother hadn’t told her. But in a few short minutes, her world had flipped and thrown her on her ass.

  “So you’ve been spying on us all this time?” Regan asked, her lips tight and her eyes burning with anger.

  Tyler nodded. “Sending very dull reports every month. Nothing ever happened.”

  “Must have been a boring two years,” Kelsey said.

  “No.” Tyler answered her but kept his gaze on her mother, who couldn’t look away, either. “Far from it.”

  Regan shook herself a little. “What’s different? What happened this weekend? I don’t remember you going away before.”

  “No. I never did. But I got called in to receive sensitive information they didn’t want to relay electronically.” He shifted and looked down at the floor. “They learned someone else knew where you were.”

  Kelsey didn’t understand. Why would someone send him to watch them, if he wasn’t supposed to protect them? But if he was supposed to protect them, leaving his post left them vulnerable.

  “Would those be the same people who killed Alan and tried to kill me, and went after Kelsey?” Her mother’s voice had hardened.

  Tyler’s jaw flexed, and he was clenching his teeth when he admitted, “Yes.”

  “Who conveniently showed up while you were gone?”

  “Yes.” He hunched his shoulders. “They sent someone to watch out for you, but he…well, he’s been fired.”

  “And what was your purpose in being a few dozen yards away from us at all times?” her mother asked, the question coming fast and hard, like a cop interrogation.

  “My purpose—is irrelevant. I failed.”

  “What are your orders now?”

  “I don’t have any. I’m here on my own.”

  Chapter Nine

  Regan didn’t believe him. No one spent two years on a tedious undercover assignment without being completely dedicated to his job and loyal to his employer. That kind of man didn’t go rogue when things changed. He dug in deeper, held tighter to the beliefs that drove him.

  But she knew by the set of his jaw and the knot of his folded arms that he wasn’t going to say any more. She hadn’t heard nearly enough, but she didn’t know how to make him tell her the rest. She didn’t have that kind of training.

  She wondered if he still worked for the government. But why would they have any interest in her or Kelsey? She couldn’t think of anyone who would, except the people who’d killed Scott and tried to kidnap his daughter. She’d always believed it was his parents, or at least someone connected to them. But Tyler said his employer wanted them safe, which didn’t fit.

  Her attention shifted to Kelsey and the more immediate worry of her daughter’s reaction to the story of her father’s death. She’d sat back down on the sofa. Tom cradled her against him, stroking her hair while she cried.

  The pain in Regan’s chest rivaled that of a heart attack. She was supposed to be comforting Kelsey. Not this stranger who’d only been a part of her daughter’s life for two months. Someone who had never suffered a parent being killed in an unspeakably violent way. Regan knew what it was like, knew what Kelsey was probably feeling. Wanting to spare her those emotions was one reason she’d never talked much about it.

  A knock on the door was followed by a man calling, “Room service.” Regan and Tyler confirmed it, didn’t let the server into the room, and checked the cart before wheeling it in. The kids fell on the food immediately, Kelsey’s tears forgotten, at least for now.

  Regan went to the kitchenette. The open plan of the suite made it impossible to hide, but she could at least distance herself a little. She fussed with the coffeepot so she could turn her back. Every parent faced the transition of their child’s focus from parent to new love. The smart ones prepared themselves for it, and Regan had. Dammit, she had worked hard to counter her own programming.

  But this situation had thrust her back into old habits, old needs. She had wanted to rip Kelsey out of Tom’s arms and send him on his way.

  She wanted history to not repeat itself.

  “Can I help?” Tyler came up beside her and reached for the packet of coffee she couldn’t open. His voice was low, understanding.

  Regan blinked hard against the tears. “I’ve got it, thank you.” She bit the top of the packet and tore it. The rich aroma of ground coffee calmed her, and her movements smoothed with the routine of preparing the coffeemaker.

  “She’s not abandoning you.” Tyler retrieved mugs from the small sink and rinsed them. “And he’s certainly not trying to take her away from you.”

  “I know,” she snapped. “Stop trying to therapeut me.”

  “Therapeut?” He laughed. “What the hell is that?”

  Regan couldn’t help smiling. “You’re not analyzing me, you’re trying to fix me. Offering amateur therapy. I don’t need it.” She tuned in behind them but couldn’t hear anything, not even Kelsey crying. She looked over her shoulder, but the room was empty.

  Abandoning pretense, she slumped against the counter and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Did you see her face when I said I left him there?”

  “No. I wasn’t looking at her.”

  Shit. Regan dropped her hands. “Tyler, that’s got to stop.”

  “What does?” But he had his intense, unblinking gaze on her face again. Like he was trying to send her a message without words.

  “That.” She pointed at his eyes. “I. Don’t. Trust. You.” She poked his chest with each word. “Trying to make out like you care about me isn’t going to change it.”

  “You’ve trusted me to get you this far.”

  She couldn’t dispute that. “And I’m grateful for the help you’ve given us. But you’re still not being honest with me.”

  His hand balled into a fist and he thumped it on the cabinet above them. “I can’t help that. I’m under orders not to tell you who I work for.” He stood like a man straining against bonds, his jaw flexing as if he were chewing back whatever he wanted tell her.

  “You said you’re not under their orders now,” she reminded him.

  “They haven’t ordered me to stay with you.”

  “Tell me who they are, Tyler.”

  “I can’t,” he practically growled, not looking directly at her. “He—they—are afraid of what you’ll do if you find out. They worked hard to find you, to protect you, and don’t want to lose you again.”

  Regan slowly shook her head. “That’s why they don’t want you to tell me. But you have your own reasons.”

  His entire face tightened, as if he knew what she was going to say and it pierced him.

  She said it anyway. “You won’t tell me because if you did, I’d know why I can’t trust you.”

  He flinched, the barest of movements, and her heart sank. She wanted to trust him—even admitted, in weak moments, that she did. And now he’d indicated that she shouldn’t.

  “Ms. Miller?”

  Regan raised her head. Van stood at the counter dividing the sitting and kitchenette areas. “What is it, hon?”

  “I need to call my parents. It’s Sunday, and if I don’t call, they’ll freak out.”

  Lord, Regan had lost track of what day of the week it was. “How many classes do you have tomorrow?” She wasn’t sure they could get the kids back in time for tomorrow’s classes.

  “Three. But it’s okay if I miss them. They’re not my major, they’re just distribution requirements, and I mean, this is more important. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for my mother to lose it and call the cops and put a nationwide APB on me. You know, in case the bad guys have access to that stuff. Then, knowing her, she’d go to the media and—”

  “I get it, Van.”

&n
bsp; The girl grinned. “Sorry. I haven’t had time to babble this weekend. It was building up.”

  Regan smiled back at her but felt little humor. “Call them. But please, don’t tell them what’s going on.” She couldn’t believe she’d just told a kid to lie to her parents.

  Van shot her an “I’m not an idiot” look and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Regan watched her wander across the sitting area and start chatting animatedly. She wanted to hover over her and make sure she didn’t give anything away. The Leighs would probably call the police and make everything more complicated. Like Van said, an APB would reveal their location to whoever was after them. But teenagers were excellent at keeping things from their parents, and after a moment of listening, Regan knew it would be okay. At least, from that perspective. Now she was looking at it from Van’s and Tom’s parents’ side of things, and how she’d feel if she knew her child was missing school and in danger. The tension vise tightened around her head. She had to get them back.

  Tyler’s hand came up to rest on the back of her neck. His fingers dug into her right shoulder a little, eliciting a moan.

  “You want a rubdown?” He shifted her toward him to get a better grip. “You’re all knotted up.”

  “No kidding.” Regan let him do it because as soon as his long fingers touched her, the tension loosened. The knots he’d mentioned seemed to melt, and as the muscles relaxed, all her other aches eased, too.

  Van kept her conversation short. “All done! They’re happy. And don’t worry about tomorrow. The school won’t even notice I’m not there for days.”

  “Thanks, that makes me feel better.”

  Van flashed her grin again at Regan’s sarcasm, accompanied by a knowing wink as she disappeared into the bedroom.

  “What next?” Tyler asked. His left hand gently rubbed her tender shoulder while his right ran up and down her neck.

  “What do you think?” She wouldn’t follow his advice, but knowing what he planned might give her insight into his intentions or—well, she had to admit, she didn’t know what to do at this point.