by Dees, Cindy
He lurched awake and was out of bed in a single catlike lunge. Talk about reflexes. Dang. Remind her not to startle him out of a hard sleep when she was within arm’s length of him.
He stopped in the middle of the room just long enough to see what she was doing and then he slid over to the other side of the window. It took him about two seconds to announce, “Get dressed and head into the bathroom. Lie down in the bathtub.”
“What are you going to do?”
He ignored her question and ordered, “Call 9-1-1 on your cell phone and tell them there’s a shootout in progress.”
“But there isn’t any shooting—”
Alex lifted the pistol he’d been holding down by his side. “There’s about to be.”
Where... He must have been sleeping with it under his pillow. Paranoid, much? “Who’s out there?” she asked in quick alarm.
“Go, Katie.”
She grabbed her clothes, closed the bathroom door and felt her way to the tiny bathtub in the dark. It wasn’t long enough to stretch out in, so she curled on her side in it. Extremely awkwardly and with copious mental swearing, she managed to pull on her clothes. But they were all crooked and pulling at her in weird places. She finally gave up and stood up to adjust the darned things.
A tremendous explosion of sound erupted from the living room and she instinctively dropped like a rock into the cold, hard tub. Holy mackerel! Sometimes she forgot just how loud gunshots were, particularly in a confined space. A dramatic fusillade of return fire from the parking lot finished deafening her. That was at least three weapons firing back at Alex, maybe more.
“Alex!” she shouted. “Are you okay?”
Another round of gunfire exploded from the living room. She would assume that his shooting back at whoever was outside constituted proof that he was still alive. Abruptly, the bathroom door flung splinters of wood every which way. She yanked the shower curtain shut, not that it would do a lick of good, and covered her head with her arms. Something metallic and fast moving pinged off the cast-iron bathtub, and his order to climb in here suddenly made sense.
The bathroom door burst open and she jumped violently.
“Get up, Katie. We’ve got to go.”
“Out there?” she squeaked.
“Window,” he grunted. “Hurry. I’ve set a timed charge in the front room.”
Omigosh. She leaped to her feet and jumped up on the toilet seat as he disappeared out the open window. She dived after him, and he caught her under the armpits, pulling her legs through and setting her upright.
She opened her mouth out of habit to thank him, and he held an urgent finger to his lips. Stealth. Got it. She nodded and followed him as he eased into the light woods behind the motel.
Another round of gunfire erupted from behind them, and on cue, a tremendous explosion lit the night around them. The ground shook and Katie staggered as Alex steadied her and dragged her onward.
The tree line turned out to be thin and gave way to a farm. The place was pitch-dark. Old-fashioned. Alex crept to the big, red barn and carefully slid open a huge door a few feet.
He disappeared inside after signaling for her to wait here. She fretted for about one minute and then stared in shock as he led out a giant horse. The chestnut had on a bridle but was otherwise bare of tack.
“Give me your leg,” Alex breathed.
“You want me to get on that monster?”
“Trust me. It’s better than running all night.”
She was no horsewoman! Stunned and terrified, she let him hoist her onto the broad back of the beast, who shifted under her weight and stamped a foot. Ohgod, ohgod.
“Easy, boy,” Alex murmured. He led the clopping beast over to an unpainted, wooden fence, handed the reins up to her, then climbed the fence and eased onto the horse behind her.
The animal’s back was warm and wide and alive. Scared to death, she wrapped her hands in the horse’s thick, flaxen mane and hung on for dear life. Alex’s arms came around her and he pried the reins out of her panicked fists. She felt his legs tighten around the animal’s girth behind her and the horse moved out, his hooves quiet on the grass.
At least Alex didn’t spur the beast into a mad gallop. Although, in her panic to get away from whoever was shooting at them, she almost wished he would send the horse on a mad dash to safety.
Alex breathed in her ear, “We’ll draw less attention moving quietly. And this is a draft horse. He’s designed to go all day at a slow pace, but he couldn’t run a mile without being totally winded.”
He guided the horse across the road in front of the farm and into another patch of woods. The animal found some sort of path and turned onto it of his own accord. Alex gave the animal free rein and let the horse plod along in the dark.
“Where are we going?” she finally ventured whispering.
“Away from the motel. As for what awaits us ahead, I have no idea. We’ll adapt when we get there.”
The horse walked for maybe twenty minutes at a steady but surprisingly ground-eating pace. All of a sudden, a clearing opened up in front of them. A simple, one-story building stood in the middle of it.
“That’s a one-room schoolhouse!” she exclaimed quietly. “Was that farm Amish?”
“Mennonite, I think,” Alex answered. “I saw a tractor in the barn.”
The horse strode up to a hitching post with a watering trough beside it and shoved his nose into the black water. After that, no matter what Alex tried shy of beating the beast, the horse refused to budge. Period.
Finally, Alex gave up, slid off the animal and helped her down. She watched as Alex slipped the bridle off the horse and gave it a sharp swat on the rump. The horse threw up its head, startled, and turned to trot back down the path it had come from.
“If I know horses, that guy’ll go right back to his barn and maybe even back into his stall. If we’re lucky, the farmer won’t report his stolen bridle to the police.”
To that end, Alex hung the bridle on the end of the hitching post, where it didn’t look at all out of place. “We’re on foot from here.”
Except before they could take a dozen steps, they heard something rattling toward them. Katie dived for cover behind the trees on the far side of the clearing and waited pensively for what would emerge from the dirt road beyond the schoolhouse.
A black, boxy carriage rocked into sight, pulled by a lean, dark horse, shambling along casually. A woman climbed down from the carriage and tied the horse to the hitching post before disappearing inside the building. In a few seconds, a soft, yellow glow illuminated one of the windows.
“How early do Mennonite kids start school, anyway?” she whispered to Alex.
“They’re early risers as a group. C’mon.”
“Are we going to steal a buggy now?” she asked in jest.
He nodded and indicated that she should climb up into the black conveyance. Stunned, she clambered between the narrow wheels awkwardly. The thing rocked and squeaked a little as she settled onto the seat. Alex threaded the reins inside the carriage, and as she held the ends, he leaped in considerably more gracefully than she had.
With a quiet slap of the reins on the horse’s rump, he guided the beast back into the night. Whether or not the teacher inside the school heard them or ran out to give chase, Katie had no idea. The grassy meadow and sandy dirt of the carriage path muffled sound tremendously well. If they were lucky, they’d gotten away cleanly.
The genius of Alex’s theft became apparent as the path gave way to a paved road. “Pull the curtains down and tie them in place,” he told her.
The entire interior of the carriage was shrouded in black fabric in a few seconds. Even the front window was covered, with only a narrow slit at eye height for Alex to see through to steer.
And when they approached a parked police car blocking the next intersection, the cop nodded respectfully and waved them past without stopping the buggy.
“Sonofagun,” Katie murmured.
“The Mennonites are peacef
ul people. Good citizens. In return, they ask that their religious customs be honored. Meidung is one of them. It’s a German term referring to social avoidance. Some Mennonites don’t like to interact with outsiders. A shrouded buggy is indicative of occupants practicing meidung.”
“Which means what for us?”
“Local authorities won’t screw with us. We should be able to pass any cops undisturbed.”
“Nice. So we’re making our big getaway in a horse-drawn carriage, huh?” She leaned back against the black leather cushions. The vehicle was actually kind of cozy in a coffinlike way. Which was somehow entirely appropriate to this fiasco.
Alex murmured, “We should be able to trade this rig for a motorized vehicle in the next town. Some Mennonites do drive cars. And this is a good horse and a brand-new carriage.”
Perplexed, she watched him drive with quiet confidence. “When did you learn how to ride horses and steer carriages? Was this part of your CIA training?”
He commented dryly, “I’m a man of many talents.”
“I’ll say.” Silence fell inside the carriage. She reflected on their flight for a few minutes, but then curiosity got the best of her. She couldn’t resist asking, “Who was that back at the motel?”
“Cold Intent. That was my fault. I broke into the CIA’s mainframe last night and stayed online too long. They must have traced me. Or maybe they think it was you in that room.”
“Why does this Cold Intent bunch want to kill me—or us—so badly?” she demanded.
“I wish I knew,” he answered grimly.
Hey. A sign of human emotion out of him. He wasn’t a robot, after all! She was worried about him. He’d just been through a gigantic shootout, and for all she knew, he’d killed a few guys back at the motel. Heck, he’d blown up a whole motel room without a backward glance. Shouldn’t he show at least a little reaction after the fact? Instead, he’d dropped into that cold, emotionless fugue state she was rapidly coming to hate.
It dawned on her abruptly that, as soon as he knew why Cold Intent was after her, he would probably leave her. Forever.
So...what? She should wish for him never to solve the mystery and for her life to be in mortal danger permanently? Ugh. This sucked. Be safe, lose the love of her life. Stay in danger, keep the guy, but probably die. And maybe break through his emotional walls someday. Maybe. What kind of choice was that?
Was she willing to settle for whatever scraps of affection he deigned to toss her way? Did she realistically stand any chance at all of getting through to him, or was she deluding herself? Maybe she should just cut her losses and run.
“What do you know about this Cold Intent operation, Alex? Did you learn anything last night?” When he hesitated, she added, “I think I have a right to know why somebody’s so set on killing me, don’t you?”
He exhaled hard. “I found out that they’re out to discredit my father.”
“By killing me?” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, I’m stumped by that one, too.”
She stared at his tense profile. What the heck?
They bumped along on country roads for several hours. The sun rose, and other vehicles, both motorized and horse-drawn, began to share the road with them. A small town came into sight through the slit in the window covering, and Alex found some sort of farmer’s market and feed store.
He duly bartered the horse and carriage for an ancient, black land yacht of a car, all of whose chrome trim had been painted a flat, ugly black. But it ran. And the bearded owner threw in a tank of gas and a paper bag full of the most delicious pastry-wrapped sausages that Katie had ever tasted.
*
THEY MADE WILMINGTON by noon, ditched the car, which would look out of place if they strayed too much farther from Amish country, and caught a train from there bound for New York. As Philadelphia and then New Jersey sped by outside, Katie finally breathed a sigh of relief. They’d escaped yet again. She had no idea how many of his lucky nine lives Alex had left, but she was starting to feel like she’d burned through a few of hers recently.
“Are we safe?” she murmured as Alex leaned back in his seat and seemed to relax.
“There’s no such thing as safe in this world. The sooner you accept that, the better a chance you have of surviving it.”
She stared at him. “Do you really mean that?”
“Safety is an illusion. Bad guys are all around us all the time. Be they petty criminals who want your purse or terrorists who want your life, they’re everywhere. I’ve seen the shadow world, that other place the dark ones live in, and it’s closer to this world than you know.”
“You sound like an advertisement for a horror movie.”
He shrugged. “My world is the real one. It’s where life and death live.” He gestured to the suburban sprawl speeding by outside the train. “This happy, shiny world of strip malls and middle-class America is the movie. It’s carefully crafted by the media, big business and the government.”
“Well, that’s...cynical.”
He lifted an eyebrow as if to say, When have I ever been anything else?
“So my whole life to date has been what? A lie? A dream?”
He shrugged. “You’ve asked me more than once to strip away your innocence. That’s what I’m doing now. If you want to run in my world, you have to grow up and let go of childish ideas, Katie.”
In other words, agree with him that the world was a deadly place populated with unseen threats, or walk away from him and never look back. She looked up at him, and he was staring at her expectantly.
“I need to think about this,” she mumbled, staggered. She didn’t know whether to be overjoyed that he was opening a tiny window for her to stay with him or horrified that he wanted her to step into the shadows with him and his madness.
“Think fast, Katie. My world will come calling soon. And then your time will be up.”
Or more likely, he would reconsider his offer and withdraw it. She subsided against the worn seat cushions, terrified like she’d never been terrified before. She was less worried about him when he doubted himself and his view of the world. But when he was like this, so sure that his perceptions were absolute fact, she had to believe he was slipping into some sort of delusional insanity. It probably had a fancy Latin name—that he would know, of course. Did she love him enough to abandon reality and live in his delusion with him?
God, how had he messed with her head enough for her to even consider that?
His paranoia was getting the best of him. She was losing him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE TRAIN STOPPED somewhere in northern New Jersey, and Alex startled Katie by murmuring, “Let’s go.”
“We’re not going into New York City?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Way too much surveillance and security there. We’re more anonymous here.”
Alarmed, she slid out of her seat and followed him off the train. In short order, he’d obtained a crappy motel room for them using a fake ID and its matching credit card. And then he announced, “I need to find a computer. Do you want to stay here or come with me?”
“You seriously have to ask?” she retorted.
He smiled a little, sardonically. “I’m not going to disappear until I figure this out. I don’t want it pursuing me into my new life.”
His new life. The exclusion of her from that future hurt bad enough to steal her breath away. What had happened to him? He’d acknowledged that he’d been drugged into chemically induced paranoia and that she hadn’t betrayed him like he originally thought. Why was he still thinking in terms of leaving her behind?
“You know I would never force myself upon you, right, Alex?”
“I beg your pardon?” He stared at her blankly.
“And you do know that no matter how much I hate you, I still love you, right?”
“How am I supposed to respond to that?”
His coldness in response to her bald honesty was a blade straight to her heart. Although her heart f
elt so shredded by now that one more cut shouldn’t matter. And yet, it did.
Along with pain, she felt sorrow. Sorrow for the lost little boy, sorrow for the lonely, isolated man. Sorrow for what they could’ve had but which he’d thrown away.
He’d completely withdrawn from her emotionally. He was firmly entrenched in being the icy, analytical spy in his fantasy high-threat scenario.
Oh, sure, she accepted that they were in a certain amount of actual danger. After all, the wound in her shoulder was entirely real. But she was equally convinced it was all a big misunderstanding. If Alex would just hand over that flash drive and the evidence of chemical weapons in Cuba, the CIA would be happy and leave them alone.
She’d planned to tell him that she loved him enough to place his happiness before hers and that she would seriously consider his implied offer to go with him. But he was obviously in no mood to hear anything she had to say right now. Instead, she sighed. “Now what?” she asked in resignation.
“I’m going to the library. Are you coming?”
“Sure. Why not?” Maybe she could check out a book on abnormal psychology and gain some tiny insight into Alex and his thoroughly screwed-up head.
The anonymous, slightly decaying urban landscape around her was oddly comforting. She was rapidly picking up Alex’s aversion to being noticeable. The local library was a dingy beige building, mostly deserted inside. Alex sat down at a carrel with a computer in it, and she pulled up a chair beside him to watch him work his magic.
“What are you going to do?” she asked curiously.
“I’m going back in for more information on Cold Intent.”
“Are you crazy?” she exclaimed under her breath.
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“We could talk to Uncle Charlie.”
“He told you to stay away from it. He knows what the operation is all about, and somehow the two of us pose a threat to it.”
“Is there any way you can figure out who gave the order to have you—” she dropped her voice to a whisper “—drugged?”
“I gave the MPs in Gitmo André’s phone number. It came through that chain of command.”