Dynasties:The Elliots, Books 7-12

by Various Authors

  Her feelings for Bryan felt very real to her, and he seemed to care for her beyond his responsibility of keeping her safe. But what did she know? She’d gotten it wrong before.

  Whatever the results, she didn’t want to live any longer in the fictional world of Lindsay Morgan. She needed to know if little Lucy Miller from Kansas had a chance with a superspy.

  The idea seemed ridiculous, but she still hoped.

  There was nothing to read in the house, not even a deck of cards to play with. How was she supposed to occupy herself? She finally decided to go for a run. Bryan had told her to stay put, but she would be no safer inside the house than out. The people who were after her weren’t amateurs. Locked doors and windows would be no impediment if they really wanted her. At least if she was away from the house, she couldn’t be cornered.

  Besides, she’d gotten used to having a daily run with Bryan.

  She donned her stylish shorts and matching tank top, thinking what a waste it was to sweat in such chic clothes when there was not a soul out here to see her. Thinking of Scarlet and her ban on T-shirts made her smile. Scarlet had been so good to her, and Lucy had started to think of her as a friend. Too bad she couldn’t continue that friendship after Lucy and Bryan parted ways.

  Taking the phone with her, Lucy stepped outside, locked the door, pocketed the key and set out at a brisk walk, continuing up the mountain road. She wondered how close to the top her cabin was, and if there was anyone else living up this way. She sure didn’t see any signs of habitation, nor had she seen or heard a single car since she’d arrived. She’d thought the Catskills were more populated.

  The uphill grade and uneven road surface made Lucy’s run a challenge, but she pushed herself, figuring if she wore herself out, a shower and a nap might eat up the rest of the afternoon and it would be dinnertime. Finally, after about thirty minutes, she turned and headed back. The downhill trip was faster, and soon her cabin came into view.

  She heard a car engine, and her heart beat faster. Bryan! Was it possible he’d resolved things so quickly? But she realized the car engine didn’t sound like Stash’s Peugeot, nor like Bryan’s Jaguar. In fact, it sounded like a diesel car.

  Reacting on pure instinct, she plunged into the heavy woods that surrounded the cabin, finding a vantage point where she could watch the road from behind a huge fallen tree.

  She was probably being silly. It was no doubt some family on vacation, out for a drive. But soon the dark-blue Mercedes came into view, and she recognized it instantly.

  Her heart beat double time and her skin, already flushed from her run, broke out in sweat. What was he doing here? How had he found her?

  She pulled the phone from her pocket and carefully pushed the series of buttons that would put her in contact with Bryan. If Bryan was able to answer. Her imagination went into overdrive. What if Vargov had captured Bryan and tortured him into revealing Lucy’s whereabouts?

  The phone gave a series of beeps but nothing else. No ringing. No dial tone. No nothing. She tried again. Same beeps. Same nothing.

  She whispered a curse. What was wrong with the phone? She was sure she was using it correctly. The battery was fine. But no calls would go through. Not even a call to 911.

  What if Bryan was on his way back to the cabin this very minute? He would pull into the driveway, blissfully unaware that anything was wrong, and Vargov would kill him! She had to get down the mountain to the last little town they’d passed through—was it called Icy Creek?—where she could notify someone. And she had to make sure she met Bryan if he was headed this way. But to get past the cabin, she would have to go out in the open—or circle through the dense woods, way around.

  As she dithered about what to do, the cabin’s front door opened, and Vargov came out. He looked left, then right, scanning the woods. Her heart pounded. He was looking for her. He climbed into his car, and Lucy crossed her fingers. If he drove up the road looking for her, it would be her chance to get past the house. Sure enough, he headed up the mountain.

  Just as she was about to make her move, she heard something, a loud something coming toward her, breaking branches and crunching leaves. Was it Vargov? Panic zinged through her. How had he found her so quickly? Did he have heat-seeking scanners? A tracking dog?

  Then she realized it was not Vargov, and she didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

  Because it was a black bear.

  Okay, it would probably run if it saw her. Still, she zipped up the nearest tree like a monkey, grateful for her rural upbringing. Her family had owned a small peach orchard, so she’d climbed her share of trees.

  Wait a minute. Didn’t bears climb trees?

  It came closer. She was twenty feet up, well out of its reach, but it seemed to be very interested in her. It reared up on its hind legs and leaned up against the tree trunk, sniffing madly.

  Oh, God, what if it started climbing? She considered screaming, but that would bring Vargov straight to her. Did she prefer to be shot, or eaten?

  Just then there was another noise. The bear turned, wary of a threat. This time it was Vargov. He was quieter than a big man should be, hardly even crunching leaves, but she could hear his breathing. He’d probably parked the car up the road some place where it wouldn’t be spotted so when she returned, she would assume all was well. Then, returning to the cabin on foot, Vargov had heard the bear and thought it was her.

  Vargov and the bear saw each other at about the same time. The big man cursed and raised his gun, shooting at the hapless bear. He missed. The startled bear lumbered off at a gallop.

  “Christ,” Vargov muttered, still breathing hard and rubbing his neck. He was sweaty and pasty. “I’m too old for this.”

  He looked around, but he didn’t look up. Lucy clung to her tree branch, the rough bark scraping her skin, the mosquitoes chomping on her, and prayed.

  He holstered his gun and headed back toward the cabin.

  Lucy waited until he’d gone inside, then clambered down. The business with the bear had wasted precious time. She’d lost her chance to get past the cabin. She would have to circle far around through the woods. But there was no other choice. She plunged into the thick undergrowth, getting slapped by twigs and branches, trying to be quiet in case Vargov had some listening device.

  When she judged she was a good distance from the cabin, she headed downhill roughly parallel to the road, wondering how far she would have to hike before she reached Icy Creek.

  Then she heard another car engine.

  This time, to her horror, she recognized the distinctive rumble of Stash’s Peugeot. She was still too far from the road to get there in time to head Bryan off. She broke into a run, heedless of the branches whipping at her face, hair and clothes. For a moment she thought she might beat him…but she was too slow. She broke cover just as the Peugeot turned into the cabin’s driveway. The engine switched off and the driver’s door opened.

  “Bryan!” she called out. He froze, turned. “It’s a trap!” She motioned frantically for him to get back in the car.

  Her warning came too late. Shots rang out from the house. Bryan dived behind the car.

  Lucy knew she should make for the safety of the woods. But all she could think about was being with Bryan again, facing the danger together. She made a headlong dash across the road toward the cabin. More shots came from the house, churning up the asphalt road inches from her feet. She expected one to rip through her flesh any moment. But by some miracle she made it to the car in one piece.

  Bryan dragged her down beside him, then behind him, placing his body between her and the shooter. “Lucy, are you crazy? You almost got killed.”

  “Yell…at me…later.” She sucked in great gulps of air, feeling like she might pass out. “What do we do now?”

  “Who’s in the house?”

  “Mr. Vargov.”

  “That’s impossible. Vargov is in France.”

  “Don’t you think I know my own boss?” she said impatiently. “It�
�s definitely him. I took off into the woods, and a bear chased me, and then Vargov showed up and he shot at the bear—”

  “Lucy, slow down. You’re not making a lot of sense.”

  “Maybe we can outrun him,” she said suddenly. “He’s thirty pounds overweight and blind in one eye, so he has lousy depth perception.”

  “Maybe so, but he almost got—Did you say Vargov is blind in one eye? And overweight?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you know that?” She’d assumed he knew everything.

  “Siberia is blind in one eye. And overweight. It’s why he’s not in the field anymore. Christ, Lucy, they’re the same person.”

  Lucy let the implications sink in. No wonder Bryan had been having such a hard time with this case. His boss had been providing him with misinformation.

  Bryan swore again and pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket. Almost instantly he realized it wouldn’t work.

  “Mine doesn’t work, either,” Lucy said. “I wanted to call you and warn you, but I couldn’t.”

  “Vargov must have put a scrambler device in the cabin. It’s why he lured us here—so we couldn’t call for help.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  Bryan silently reviewed their options. “We hold out until dark. We might stand a chance of making a break for it if Vargov can’t see us.”

  But Vargov had no intention of allowing them to wait him out. Another flurry of shots rang out from the house. Bryan returned fire, breaking all of the upstairs windows. He practically sat on Lucy to keep her down and out of the line of fire.

  When the shooting stopped, it was eerily quiet. Even the birds had stopped chirping, and the breeze had died to nothing.

  “Maybe you got him,” Lucy whispered.

  “Doubtful.” Bryan’s voice had a strange, strangled sound to it. The hand he’d placed on her shoulder to keep her low to the ground lost its grip, and his gun rattled to the pavement.

  “Bryan?”

  He slumped against her, bleeding from a wound to the shoulder, dangerously close to his chest.

  “Bryan!” In her panic, she forgot about the man shooting at them. Her only thought was that she would have to get Bryan some medical attention or he would die—and that meant getting him into the car and driving down the mountain.

  He was conscious, though barely. “What—what are you doing?” he asked when she tried to hook her hands under his arms and lift him.

  “You have to get into the car.”

  “Lucy, get down!” That was when she realized she’d been standing almost upright, and no one had shot at her.

  Maybe Bryan had hit Vargov after all. Maybe he was reloading, or out of bullets altogether. She didn’t have time to speculate. Bryan was bleeding at an alarming rate. The front of his shirt was soaked in red.

  “You have to help me, Bry,” she said. “You’re too heavy. I can’t lift you into the car myself.”

  Somehow, he managed to summon the strength to rise, casting a wary glance toward the house. But there was no more shooting. Lucy retrieved his gun, just in case, and together they hobbled to the Peugeot’s passenger door. Lucy opened it, and Bryan fell inside.

  The keys were in the ignition, thank God. She ran around, jumped behind the wheel, cranked up the car, backed out of the drive and screeched off. It was only when the cabin was half a mile behind them that Lucy dared to breathe a sign of relief. “We did it,” she said, feeling only a mild sense of elation. One hurdle crossed, lots more to go. “Bryan?”

  He was slumped in his seat, unconscious.

  Twelve

  The moment Lucy had reached Icy Creek, she tried her phone again, and it worked perfectly. She dialed 911, and in an astonishingly short time, tons of people came to her rescue. Two off-duty paramedics were summoned to administer emergency care to Bryan while arrangements were made to airlift him to the closest trauma center, Saint Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie.

  Someone had given her a map to Poughkeepsie, and Lucy had made it there in one piece only by the grace of God, because her mind wasn’t on her driving. When she arrived, she could learn nothing about Bryan’s condition other than that he’d still been alive when he’d arrived, and he’d gone almost immediately into surgery.

  During the drive, which had seemed to take hours, Lucy had made a decision. Bryan was close to death, and she did not want him to die alone, with his family blissfully unaware of his condition. So she’d called first Daniel Elliott, then Amanda, then Scarlet. Bryan might not approve; explanations would have to be made, explanations Bryan would have just as soon skipped. But he would just have to be mad at her.

  When his mother and father arrived, at virtually the same time, he was still in surgery.

  “We couldn’t wait,” the young E.R. intern told them as they stood together, gripping each other’s hands. It was the first time Lucy had seen Bryan’s parents touch, or even acknowledge each other. “We’ll let you know as soon as he comes out of surgery.”

  After the doctor walked away, Amanda’s face crumpled. “I never thought we’d be facing this again,” she said to Daniel.

  Again? Lucy thought. Then she remembered about Bryan’s childhood illness. He’d had high-risk surgery to correct his heart defect. His parents had probably spent more time than anyone should in hospital waiting rooms.

  They both turned to her. “Lindsay, can you tell us more about what happened?”

  “We were in a cabin in the Catskills,” she said, choosing her words carefully. She didn’t want to lie, not anymore. But she revealed only as much as she had to. “There was an intruder. He shot Bryan.”

  “How did you escape?” Amanda asked. “Did the intruder get away? Did you call the police?”

  “I honestly don’t know how or why I was spared,” Lucy said, tears pressing hot and insistent behind her eyes. “All I remember is that I got Bryan into the car and got out of there. I contacted the authorities, but I don’t know what happened to the man with the gun.”

  She hoped Vargov was alive. She wanted to testify and put him in jail for the rest of his life.

  “I don’t understand,” Daniel said, giving Lucy a hard look. “First someone tried to kidnap you, then you had some kind of home invasion. Are you involved with criminals?”

  “Not intentionally. I’m a material witness in a criminal case.”

  “But how does that involve Bryan?” Daniel wanted to know.

  Amanda laid a quieting hand on her ex-husband’s arm. “I should think that would be obvious, Daniel. Our Bryan is a spy.”

  Lucy gave a little gasp of surprise, but other than that she didn’t confirm or deny.

  “A what?”

  “I should have put it together earlier,” Amanda said. “The frequent absences, the injuries, the security measures at his apartment. And that phone of his—that’s not an ordinary cell phone.”

  Daniel stared at Amanda in amazement. “You’re telling me our son is a spy? How could you know that?”

  “A mother knows these things,” she said mysteriously.

  Scarlet arrived with John, and then other Elliotts began trickling in. Some of them Lucy had met, some she hadn’t. But apparently, when one of their own was threatened, they banded together, because she heard none of the bickering that had characterized previous family gatherings. There were lots of hugs and tears. Even the mysterious “Aunty Fin” showed up.

  Lucy sat in a corner, feeling like the outsider she was, as Daniel and Amanda filled in family members as they arrived.

  When two men in suits showed up, the mere sight of them filled Lucy with dread. They came straight for her, as she’d known they would.

  “Ms. Miller?” one of them said.

  Lucy rose and walked with them into a hallway, where the Elliotts couldn’t hear the conversation.

  They gave their names, claiming they were with the CIA.

  “Listen, whoever you are, I don’t care if you were sent by the president himself. I know you want me to go with you. I know you want
me to tell you what happened. But frankly, I don’t trust anyone right now. In the last forty-eight hours I’ve been almost kidnapped, shot at, and very nearly eaten by a bear. A United States agent tried to kill me—and he shot the man I love, who is in surgery right now fighting for his life. I’m not leaving here unless you remove me bodily from this hospital. I will report to the closest FBI field office tomorrow morning and give you and anyone who’ll listen a full report. But not tonight. Is that clear?”

  The two men looked at each other as they inched away from her. “Yes, ma’am.” And, amazingly, they left. She wouldn’t have believed that little Lucy Miller from Kansas, dressed in shorts and a tank top, could intimidate two federal agents, but apparently she had.

  She returned to the waiting room to resume her vigil. Scarlet sidled up to her, giving her torn, filthy outfit, her messy hair and her scratched and scraped skin a disapproving look. “If fashion is a religion,” she said solemnly, “you’ve broken virtually every commandment.”

  Bryan’s first conscious feeling was one of panic. Shots fired. Pinned down. Pain, blood—then nothing. Lucy! Oh, God, what had happened to Lucy? Was she dead or alive?

  “Lucy,” he mumbled.

  Gradually sensation returned. Someone was holding his hand, but he couldn’t quite summon the strength to open his eyes.

  Next he became aware of sounds and smells. Alcohol. Betadine. Sterile sheets and beeping machines.

  Suddenly he was ten years old again, coming out of surgery to repair his heart.

  “Bryan? Are you awake?”

  It was his mother squeezing his hand. Except he wasn’t ten years old anymore. “Lucy,” he said again. “Is Lucy okay?” He pried his eyes open to see both of his parents. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice sounding wispy and weak.

  “Lindsay called us. How do you feel?”

  Like his head was full of cotton and his chest full of knives. But he remembered how his mother felt every little pain right along with him, so he didn’t tell her the truth. “I’m good,” he said. And he was alive, at least, which was something. Then it sank in, what his mother had just said. “Lindsay” had called them. Lucy had at least made it off the mountain. “Is Lindsay okay?”