The waxed metal felt smooth and almost alien beneath her fingertips. “Yours?”
“Nah.” There was faint derision in his voice. “Standard issue federal field office sedan I borrowed from the scene. I prefer classics for personal use.”
“I remember,” she said faintly, feeling an unexpected jolt when the small piece of their online charade clicked with reality.
“You?”
“I used to like hot rods.” She swallowed back a bubble of nausea. “I mostly walk these days. I get a little carsick now.” Make that viciously, violently carsick from a combination of vertigo and posttraumatic stress.
She heard the beep and click of power locks disengaging, and reached for the door handle, telling herself she could do this. She took a deep breath and opened the door, just as footsteps sounded behind her and a man’s voice said, “I need you to step away from the car, Jones. The boss is looking for you.”
Ty cursed, and metal rasped on leather as he drew down on what could only be a fellow officer. “Stay where you are, Ledbetter.” Gabby heard the pitch of his voice change when he turned toward her. “Get in the car.”
“But, Ty, what if—”
“Get in the car. Now.”
The measured urgency of his tone, the almost dead calm, had her body obeying even before her mind caught up with the situation.
She dropped into the car and shut the door, but he must’ve had the driver’s door open, because she could clearly hear the other man say, “Don’t make this tougher than it needs to be, Ty. You’re off the grid, and that doesn’t look good. You and I both know you didn’t have a damn thing to do with Patriot’s disappearance, but the boss can’t take any chances. Even worse, the locals sent out a BOLO for you before we could. Seems like a woman went missing after she met up with you. Her apartment’s trashed and there was signs of a struggle.” The other agent’s voice changed as he shifted position and called, “Miss Solaro? Are you okay?”
“She’s fine,” Ty said before she could answer. “And I need you to stand down and walk away. If you don’t, I’m going to have to do something neither of us will enjoy.”
“Come on, Ty, let’s be—”
A sharp crack of gunfire cut him off. Moments later Ty was in the car and they were peeling away from the scene.
Gabby didn’t ask. All she could do was clamp her arms across her midsection and double over as fear pressed in around her and tears and nausea competed to overwhelm her. “Pull over when you can,” she said miserably. “I’m going to be sick.”
Chapter 5
Dear Ty:
It’s no real secret, and you shouldn’t feel strange asking. My parents kicked me out when I was sixteen. Sure, they called it “going away to school in Boston,” but we all knew I wasn’t supposed to come back when I graduated. I snuck out of the house one too many times, raced one too many street rods, got hauled to the MDPD one too many times. It was for the best, really. Getting kicked out was a serious wakeup call, and I don’t know where I would’ve ended up if it hadn’t happened. One of these days I should call and tell them I’m grateful, and that I ended up okay after all.
[Sent by CyberGabby; May 30, 5:15:52 a.m.]
1:32 a.m., August 3 4 Hours and 6 Minutes until Dawn Ty muttered, “Come on, come on,” as he drove, sending the car hurtling through the city, dodging wrecked and abandoned vehicles, using the sidewalks when the roads were blocked. He knew they’d have to ditch the vehicle soon, before they wound up helicopter bait, but he wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and the wounded agent, Ledbetter, before he stopped again.
Firing on Ledbetter had made things a hundred times worse than they’d been before, but he hadn’t had any other choice.
He couldn’t afford to be brought in. Not now. Not before dawn.
“You didn’t actually shoot him, right?”
He glanced over at Gabby, who’d gone very pale in the aftermath of a quick, vicious bout of nausea. She clutched the door handle with a white-knuckled grip, and shuddered when he cornered too fast.
He fought back an uncharacteristic urge to soothe. “I got close enough to send him for cover,” he said gruffly. Then, knowing there was no real value in adding another lie to the tally, he exhaled and said, “I winged him. That was the only way to be sure Liam would believe I wasn’t talking to the feds.” He paused. “Hang on. Wicked turn coming up.”
They screamed around a corner almost on two wheels as he went one street over in an effort to avoid Faneuil Hall, which glowed orange with the efforts of the looters.
The back end of the vehicle cut loose in the second half of the turn. Ty swore and wrestled the car back under control, skin prickling with adrenaline at the close call.
He was driving with no headlights in an effort to avoid detection until the last possible moment. Unfortunately, that also meant he could barely see the damn road in the moonlight.
Gabby murmured something that sounded like a prayer. He half expected her to order him to pull over at the next police station and let her out. Hell, he wouldn’t have blamed her. He might’ve even done it, and taken his chances with Liam. But instead she said, “The agent said something about Patriot. Was that the vice president’s code name?”
“It is his code name.” Ty refused to even consider the possibility that Grant might already be dead.
“Did you give it to him?”
“How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess, based on some of the stuff you wrote me about your boss.” She paused. “Why Patriot?”
“Because that’s exactly what he is. He’s…” He trailed off, looking for the words, wanting her to understand how important Grant Davis was, not just to him, but to the presidency. The country. Distilling it down, he said, “I met him for the first time right before the hostage rescue op in the Middle East. Him and Liam both. The two men couldn’t have been more different—Liam was a smart rich man’s son who knew exactly where he was going in politics and how he was going to get there, while Grant was middle-class America all the way. He’d started at the bottom of the enlisted ranks and scratched his way up from there. He didn’t have the same book smarts as Liam, but he had street smarts, and he did what needed doing, exactly when it mattered most. Commander Bradley put him in charge of tactics, and he put together a hell of a plan. Would’ve worked, too, if it hadn’t been for Liam getting an itchy trigger finger.”
He paused, remembering, and wanting her to understand. “After it went wrong, we got the hostages out, and we knew the insurgents had wired the building to blow. When Commander Bradley took a head count and we realized Liam wasn’t with us, Grant didn’t even hesitate. He went back in.” He glanced over and found her focused on him rather than the pitch of the vehicle as he swung around a corner. He continued, “It was like something out of the movies. The building was going up all around them, flames everywhere, shrapnel flying, smoke and dust so thick you could barely see through it…then Grant comes out, carrying Liam on his back.” He paused. “That’s what makes him a hero.”
“And a patriot?”
“Everything he’s done since then makes him a patriot,” Ty insisted. “He’s worked his ass off to protect the environment, improve working conditions, build outreach networks and improve education, first as a senator, and now in the White House. Some people might see the vice presidency as a figurehead position full of photo ops, but Grant is living proof that the position can be as much as the occupant chooses to make it.”
Realizing he’d started to sound like one of Grant’s campaign speeches, Ty winced and fell silent.
After a moment, Gabby said “He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“Would’ve been luckier if I’d been on my toes at the Hancock Building.” The failure still rankled. If he’d been a fraction quicker in his response, a heartbeat faster to figure out what was going on, he might’ve been able to grab Liam before things spiraled so far out of control.
He hadn’t been fast enough, th
ough, and the failure cut deep, as did the fear that he wouldn’t be fast enough this time, either. Worse, he was beginning to realize his priorities had shifted when he wasn’t looking. Now he wasn’t just concerned about finding Grant and defusing the bomb. Somewhere along the line, Gabby had become part of the equation, too. He had to keep her safe, had to help her do the things she couldn’t on her own. He’d taken her out of her element, and now she was depending on him, which was exactly the sort of situation he’d tried to avoid with every woman who’d passed through his life since Mandy.
Don’t depend on me, he wanted to say. I’m only going to let you down in the end.
“You’re staring at me,” she said suddenly, turning her pale, luminous eyes toward him. “I can feel it. What’s wrong?”
Nothing, he thought. Except I’m beginning to wish I really was just a normal single guy who e-mailed you out of the blue through Webmatch.
“We’re close enough,” he said abruptly, aiming the car toward for the mouth of a deserted parking garage. “We’ll ditch the car inside before Ledbetter puts the word out and they retask a chopper to find us.”
She nodded, but her porcelain skin went a shade paler, and he saw her swallow hard. “Whatever you think’s best. I’m out of my element here.”
The question was, why did she hide herself away? She wasn’t shy and retiring, either online or in person, and she seemed to be able to get around just fine with a cane or a guide. So why was she hiding out in the North End and surfing the net for companionship?
Ty almost asked, almost referred back to the things she’d told him on all those late nights, when the dreams had woken him, he’d gone looking for someone to talk to and found her awake as well. But he didn’t ask, because he knew that he damn well couldn’t go back and undo the lies he’d told her, and he couldn’t go forward, either. They couldn’t go forward, no matter how strong the attraction. There was no future in it, and another lie wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
So instead of asking, he parked the car just inside the main entrance of the covered garage, turned it off and pocketed the keys. “Come on. We’ll be on foot from here.”
“Can’t say I’m sad to hear that.” Gabby climbed out and stood, pressing a hand to her stomach. “At this point, though I’m not sure if I’m still nauseated or if my body thinks it’s time for breakfast.”
At the reminder, Ty glanced at his watch. They had four hours until dawn, give or take, and three more campaign stops that he could remember.
“We’ll have to make it fast, but I’ve got some rations in here.” He popped the trunk and dug through the ready kit he’d dumped in the car out of habit. The rucksack was packed both for emergencies and for Eclipse deployments, which could come at any time, funneled to them via DanaWhitley, the supersmart Pentagon staffer who formed their only link to the U.S. Government.
At the thought of Dana, Ty paused as the glimmer of an idea came to him.
It might even work.
First things first, though. He pawed through his ready kit and pulled out a half-dozen chocolate protein bars, the candy bars that were both his guilty pleasure and a damned good source of quick energy, and a six-pack of bottled water. He tucked the provisions in a smaller knapsack and added a med kit containing first-aid supplies along with some odds and ends. “Here.” He passed Gabby a candy bar and bottle of water and took a bottle for himself. “It’s either a midnight snack or a really early breakfast.”
He collected his spare ammo clips from a lightweight lockbox, loaded them into a utility belt and strapped the belt around his hips. Then he slung the knapsack over his shoulder and slammed the trunk.
He was weighted down now, and less mobile than ideal, but he had to take what he thought they might need, because they wouldn’t be coming back for the vehicle.
Hell, for all he knew, Ledbetter had planted a bug on the thing the moment he found it.
“I can carry something,” Gabby offered around a mouthful of chocolate.
“I’ve got it,” Ty said. “But I could use your help. I need you to stand watch while I make a call. You’ll hear a car or helicopter a lot sooner than I’d see it.”
She nodded and held out a hand for him to lead her into position. When he turned away, though, she caught his arm. “Who are you calling?”
“A friend.” She knew that his three former teammates had already been the targets of Liam's wrath, but she didn't know that the four of them still worked together, risking their lives on a regular basis. The existence of Eclipse was on a need-to-know basis, and he didn’t figure she needed to know.
Like Mandy didn’t need to know? a sly voice asked from deep inside him, where the guilt lived. He ignored the question, knowing he’d hear it again as soon as he slept.
“Just signal if you hear anything, okay?” He left her near the doorway, trusting her to guard his back, and plugged his cell charger into the car’s power port. When he got enough juice to brighten the computerized display, he typed in a quick text message to Dana. She was in Washington, true, and couldn’t help him much from there, but if Shane, Chase or Ethan managed to get through to a working phone, they’d call her first. It was his best shot at getting a message through.
The cell signal was seriously weak, though. Either the parking garage was blocking it, or the cells themselves had finally gone down due to lack of power.
Ty cursed when the message failed three times in a row. He was on his fourth try when Gabby called, “You’d better hurry. Something’s coming. A helicopter, I think.”
“On my way.” Ty yanked the cord free and pocketed it along with the phone. He hoped like hell it found a cell and sent his message before the battery used up the meager charge he’d been able to put in it.
Fingers crossed on that one.
He shouldered the knapsack and jogged to the parking garage entrance. He paused and listened, and could just make out the noise of an incoming chopper over the sounds of fighting a few streets over. “The looters are on the move.”
“I know. I can hear them.” Gabby’s expression tightened. “Tell me we’re going the other way.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said, and took her hand.
They both knew that wasn’t the answer she’d been looking for. More important, they both knew he hadn’t promised to keep her safe. He’d told her more than once that he never made a promise he couldn’t keep, and he knew from experience that it wasn’t always possible to keep another person safe, no matter how much he might want to.
Sometimes bad things just happened.
* * *
Gabby tried to move and breathe as quietly as she possibly could as Ty led her past North Station, which was just opposite the Garden. The noises coming from a few streets over made it seem like a war zone, with shouts and screams, the clanking sounds of heavy machinery and the occasional chatter of gunfire.
“This way,” Ty murmured, tugging her down what felt and sounded like a narrow alley between two tall buildings. Picturing it, and picturing what would happen if the authorities blocked one end and the looters blocked the other, Gabby shivered and moved closer to his reassuringly solid bulk. He squeezed her fingers. “Almost there.”
Moments later they hung a left and the echoes fell away on Gabby’s right, telling her that they were back on a main road. The air smelled of stale grease and spices from vendors’ carts, along with the tang of spoilage where food had gone to waste in the power outage. More, the heavy dampness in the air warned her that it was nighttime but beginning to edge toward dawn.
“Here.” Ty stopped. “This is where Grant gave his speech. They built the speaker’s platform here and ran power from the learning center.”
“What’s wrong?” Gabby asked, picking up on a new thread of tension in his body, in his voice.
“The learning center’s closed.”
“Of course it is. It’s like one in the morning in the middle of a blackout.” She paused. “We could break in. It’s not a
s if we don’t already have the cops after us.” And how many years had it been since she’d said something like that? Twelve years, she knew. Twelve years since she’d traded the streets for darkness, since she’d given up adventure for safety, and she was just now coming to realize how much she’d missed the adrenaline rush.
It couldn’t last beyond tonight, she knew. Even if she and Ty came out alive past the dawn, it would still be over. He would return to his world and she to hers. But for now, she thought on a strange, misplaced burst of excitement, for tonight, she got to live again.
There shouldn’t have been joy amidst the danger, but for Gabby, there was a moment of sight. Of beauty. Of wishing for things she couldn’t have, ever again.
Things like her vision. An adventure.
A man like Tyler Jones.
“It’s not a question of breaking in,” he said. “The learning center isn’t here anymore. It’s shut down. The place is a coffee shop now.”
“You’re sure we’re in the right spot?”
“Positive.” He tugged her forward. “Here’s Liam’s message, loud and clear, scrawled on the coffee shop door with a black marker. It says ‘C-4’ followed by the number sign and ‘50’. Then ‘propane x 2.’He’s telling me how much of what explosive he’s used.”
Hearing Ty’s voice go hollow, Gabby asked, “What sort of a blast radius are we talking about?”
He was silent for a moment before he said, “A device like that could take out anywhere from a single building to a city block, depending on its placement, shielding and a couple of other variables. And what do you know about blast radii?”
“I listen to the TV while I work on the computer. I’m blind, not cloistered.” When she realized that had come out more sharply than she’d intended, she blew out a breath. “Sorry. I guess I’m not as calm about all this as I thought I was.”
He squeezed her hand. “You’re doing great.” He stood there another long moment, then turned away as the rotor sounds swung nearer. “Come on, we’ve got what we came for. Our next stop is only a few blocks away, maybe a mile tops. I’d take the car, but that chopper’s too damn close already. Do you think you can make it on foot?”
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