“It’s me, Lacey,” she’d said, as if he hadn’t just recognized her. Even now, the fact that he’d known her after all this time made her tingle. Her voice had trembled. “I need your help.”
Then he had laughed. A short burst of disbelief. It felt like a knife sliced through her chest.
“I’ve been arrested.”
“Finally.”
Tears lashed her eyes. “They’ve accused me of murder, but I didn’t do it.”
He sighed. “Is there a point to this conversation, or are you just calling me up to prove that cats can’t change their stripes?”
She flinched. “I know what you think. But I’m innocent. Again.” She swallowed, wishing she could spill out the story, wishing history wasn’t classified. Tears ran down her chapped face. Her voice dropped to a desperate whisper. “Listen, Micah. I was in a train wreck. In Missouri. I’m in the hospital and my little girl is missing. Please, please I need your help.”
Silence. She could imagine him rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger, looking like he had the night she told him she was moving to Massachusetts to attend MIT. He handled it par for Micah—passionless, like he didn’t care in the least that she was walking out of his life and slamming the door.
He’d blown out a breath, pursed his lips, and nodded. No “Please don’t go.” No outcry of frustration. Not even a wince that he might never see her again. Just a nod. Sometimes that nod, in memory, made her want to slap him hard.
Other times, memory seduced her to grab him by the lapels and kiss him, freeing the emotions that swirled in her chest. He’d looked beautiful that evening—nearly regal in his army dress uniform. To think she’d actually dreamed of that night for weeks, not caring in the least that John was off risking his neck while his best friend, Micah, took her to senior prom.
She’d hoped that seeing her in the blue chiffon gown would suddenly alert him to the fact that she wasn’t the fifteen-year-old fan that had tripped into his arms, but a grown-up lady, with a grown-up mind to match. She’d hoped it would shatter the frozen Jim Micah facade and release a man of passion, of emotion. A man who loved her more than a friend.
Just like she’d loved him. Regardless of her feelings for John Montgomery, Micah had been her friend through her darkest hours. He’d been the one to whom she’d wanted to give her heart.
Oh, the foolish, romantic fantasies of a teenager. Instead of taking her back in his arms, running his wide, strong hands through her hair, and kissing her with the same emotions she thought she’d glimpsed in his eyes, he’d nodded. Iceman. Wasn’t that his new nickname? He’d earned it.
He obviously hadn’t shaken it in twenty-some years either. “Why should I help you?” he asked.
Her breath caught, as she chose to hear hope instead of disdain. “Because you were John’s best friend. And because my little girl is John’s daughter.”
She could hear him swallow, absorbing the information across two states. “And,” she said, her voice tremulous, “deep down inside, you know I’m innocent. You know I could never kill anyone.”
Silence again, and in it Lacey’s optimism mushroomed. He believed her. He had to know that she could never—would never—kill the man to whom she pledged her life. She’d nearly died trying to save John. Even if Micah couldn’t be privy to the private files of the CIA, he knew her better than anyone. Knew that she spoke the truth. She bit her lip, tasting salt, feeling nearly buoyant.
“No, Lacey. I don’t know that. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re lying to me right now. I can’t believe you actually had the nerve to mention John.” His voice shook. “Please don’t ever call me again.”
“No—!”
The telephone droned in her ear.
She began to shake as she cradled the receiver to her chest. The night pressed against the windows, sweeping despair into the room. She stared into the darkness, seeing her wretched self in the reflection, imagining a six-year-old huddled against the elements, terrified, abandoned … dead. A moan started in the pit of Lacey’s stomach and emerged in a feral cry that frightened her. She let the receiver drop, pulled the cotton sheet up to her nose, and wept.
The agent had stomped into the room at the noise, then skulked out. Nothing but the sound of her hopes shredding, piece by piece, remained.
She must have succumbed to the grasp of exhaustion because the sound of a food cart rattling down the hall woke her like the ghost of Christmas Future. She lifted her head, dazed, and scrambled for comprehension.
Nighttime had surrendered to the sun, and it trumpeted into the room like pure oxygen, reviving and full of joy. Lacey felt hollow and raw in the face of such brilliance. She went to scrub her face and her arm caught.
Handcuffs. Oh yeah. She closed her eyes, longing for the oblivion of unconsciousness, even as her brain wrapped around ideas for escape. Micah may have deserted her, but she was going to go down kicking. And they’d have to catch her first. She examined the cuffs.
She hadn’t forgotten all of her training.
A knock at the door. She turned away, her back to the food service. The last thing she needed was prying eyes on her pain. Besides, anything she put in her stomach would return in an ugly rush.
The door clicked open. “I’m not hungry,” she said in a voice she hoped barked, “get out.”
“That’s good, because I don’t have any food.”
Even as she turned, disbelief washed over her, dislodged her heart, and swept it clear away.
Jim Micah stood in the doorway, appearing big and bold and fierce, the cutting edge of handsome in a leather jacket, a gray shirt, and black jeans that doubled his stun power. Even from six feet away, she could feel a seductive power in his presence, one that made her feel at once both weak and uncannily safe. The materialization of her every dream.
Except for the fact that he looked about as happy to see her as he might his executioner. His gray green eyes drilled through her, and the grim set of his mouth held no welcome.
She dredged up a smile. “Hi.”
“You’d better not be lying to me or so help me, Lacey, I’ll find a way to convict you and see that you hang myself.”
Nope, not thrilled to see her. But he’d shown up, hadn’t he?
Lacey couldn’t help but smile.
Micah still didn’t believe her. He resolved that to himself as he stared at her, feeling his heart rip from its moorings just a little. She looked … awful. Her penny red hair in stringy ringlets, her face red-streaked from the coarse pillow. Her left arm had been slung tight to her thin body. The other was shackled to the bed. It twisted his gut to see it, even if she deserved it.
Believing that part still took his breath away. He ground his feelings to a nub and gave her a hard look, hoping to match his voice to it. “I mean it, Lacey. If you’re lying—” he shook his head—“what am I talking about? I know you are.”
“You don’t believe that.” Her gunmetal gray eyes held the texture of hope, and he knew he’d just made a serious mistake. Either that or the fatigue of hopping in his car and flooring it eight-plus hours from Tennessee to Missouri had left him with his defenses on idle.
“I do,” he managed.
“Then why are you here?” Her smile could still knock him to his knees, and she wielded it now with painful accuracy.
“Because … well …” Okay, yes, I want to believe that you have been telling me the truth. “If you’re on the level, then I owe John.”
Her voice dropped, devastatingly soft. “Deep inside, you know I could never lie to you.”
He stalked to the window, where he looked out at the parking lot. The sun glinted against pools of rainwater. “I don’t have time for your games. If you want my help, you have about five minutes to convince me before your bodyguard returns from the little boys’ room.”
He heard her sigh, as if giving up on their past, and for a moment, he longed to let her run her litany by him again, just once, to see if there was something in it he could
grab on to. Some shred of unturned evidence that might help him unravel the truth. He ached to believe something other than what he’d seen with his own eyes.
“I was pregnant with John’s baby in Kazakhstan,” Lacey said. “I didn’t tell anyone, and I begged the CIA to keep it hushed.”
“Obviously.” Micah turned, clenched his jaw against rising emotions. Pregnant. With John Montgomery’s child. A child who should have been his. “And just how did this mythical child survive your wounds?” He looked pointedly at her stomach, from where he’d extracted a six-inch knife. As clear as if it were yesterday, he remembered her groans, smelled the blood caking his hands and fatigues, and tasted the fear lacing the back of his throat as he raced her to the nearest international hospital. He again tried to deny what he’d seen, but the image of John’s corpse sprawled on the warehouse floor saturated his mind.
“She was born three months premature. If it weren’t for you …” She looked away, and he saw her fight a tremor in her jaw.
Oh, boy, this was a bad idea. He should have known it from the way his heart had leaped from its grave and pounced on his cell phone callback button, connecting him to the switchboard at Baptist Hospital in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. He should have done the smart thing—sat down and waited for his heart, along with his common sense, to come crawling back. Instead he let it lead the way out to his pickup and across the state line. Evidently, she still had the power to make him think with his emotions, not his brain.
“C’mon, Lacey, I was there. I saw your injuries. I saw you. You didn’t look any more pregnant than I do.”
She gave him a look that could take out ten men. “I hid it. From you. From John. From the company. I have to live with my mistakes, but I’m not going to fabricate a daughter just to get you to help me.”
Micah took two steps closer and clamped his hand over her mouth. “Shh. I don’t need the cavalry interrupting us.”
She shook herself free and shot a look at the door. “Something you want to tell me?”
“No.” The last thing he needed, besides having the NSA arrive and mar his return to active duty through a suspicious liaison, was Lacey Montgomery’s sympathy. “Let’s skip ahead. Assuming that you’re not lying—” he held up a warning finger at her flush of color—“tell me when you last saw her.”
She swallowed hard, corralling the look of curiosity in her eyes. “Okay. On the train. We were taking the Eagle to Chicago, and it derailed last night. I have no idea where I am, because no one will give me any information. I don’t know if she’s dead, wandering around the forest, or safe in the hospital somewhere.” Her voice fell at the end. “Please, Micah. You’re my only hope.”
He closed his eyes and turned away. He didn’t need to hear that. Lord, give me wisdom here. Don’t let me be duped by my longings or her wiles. “What’s her name?”
“Emily.”
“My mother’s name.” He winced at the way his tone betrayed him.
Lacey stayed silent.
He turned and met her gaze. In it, he saw the woman she’d been. His Lucky Penny—the clarinet player, the homecoming queen, his prom date, the MIT graduate, and master spy. Please, her eyes cried. “How old is she?”
“Six. Blonde curly hair, John’s blue eyes. She’s probably still in her jammies.”
He broke her gaze. “I’ll see what I can turn up.” He made to leave, but she grabbed his shirt with her hand, stretching out her slung arm. A flash of pain across her face made him flinch. He hadn’t wanted her to see that her pain could needle him right in the heart.
“Thank you, Micah. I’ll make it up to you.”
“You can pay me back by forgetting my name,” he said harshly, then strode out before she could see him totter over the fine precipice of control.
Chapter 4
“LACEY, THIS CAN be easy or difficult. It’s up to you.”
How she wished those words might be coming from the doctor, the one who’d x-rayed her arm thirty minutes ago. Her shoulder still ached from the way they’d twisted it, hoping to get a good angle. She might have picked easy, given the choice.
But, no. The question came from NSA Deputy Director Roland Berg, a fifty-three-year-old relic who she had always assumed was on her side despite her wild ideas.
Agent Michael Brower stood behind him, and his demeanor hadn’t stepped down from the lynch-mob posture. If anything, the gray hues under his eyes only gave him the appearance of a street thug.
Maybe they were serious about this murder charge. She moved her wrist inside the cuff. It rasped against the metal of her bed rail. “You know we’re on the same side here, Director.”
“At the moment, Lacey, you’re going to have to convince me. Did you know you had an NSA agent shadowing you?”
She stared at the men without blinking as Roland turned a chair around and straddled it. He looked tired himself in a rumpled suit, as if he’d slept hard on the plane.
“Of course not,” she said. “And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have sliced open his chest.” Berg narrowed his eyes at her. She didn’t look at Agent Brower. “Think about it. If I was trying to kill Agent Mitchell, I wouldn’t have used my own knife to do it.”
“That’s the unclear part. Your behavior over the years has been iffy at best, but we tolerated this cloak-and-dagger routine because of your paranoia—”
“Paranoia? My father was run off the road in broad daylight, my brother attacked on our farm in Kentucky, and my arm broken in Seattle during a mugging. He would have broken more if I hadn’t scared him.” Lacey’s mind traced the shadows that followed her, the feeling of her fine hairs rising many times when she was being tracked. “Shavik has been after me since Kazakhstan.”
“So you say.”
“You can’t seriously believe that his being on the train was a coincidence.”
“We haven’t found Ishmael Shavik or anyone matching his description.” Agent Brower seemed to relish delivering this bit of gut-wrenching news.
Lacey gave him a hard stare. “I didn’t dream it. I saw him.”
Roland stood up, walked over to the door, opened it, and left.
Lacey watched him go with a sinking heart. A short interrogation meant he was only warming up. She swallowed and turned her attention back to Agent Brower. He shifted his weight, his eyes boring into hers. “I had nothing to do with any murder.”
“Shut up.”
She looked out the window. The sky was turning gray again, low clouds obscuring the sun. Leaves skittered across the window view, flung into oblivion by the breeze. She knew how that might feel.
Her daughter was out there. Shivering in the cold rain. Or worse, wounded. Afraid, for sure. The thought grabbed Lacey around the throat and threatened to cut off her breath. Don’t. Fall. Apart. Now.
Micah, please find her.
The memory of Micah, his dark eyes tinged with just the finest edging of sympathy had kept her from dissolving into a pile of despair. She felt brittle. And on the fine edge of shattering into a million pieces. Never in her worst nightmares did they include her daughter lost, herself in custody and accused of murder. She had to get out of the hospital, retrieve Ex-6, and clear her name.
Funny how time repeated itself. She stared back at Agent Brower, pretty sure that she had seen him before. At least she’d seen his type. Narrow-minded. Angry.
Oh yeah, that was Micah.
Only Micah had driven across two states for her, hadn’t he? Hope stirred her heart. She shot another glance at heaven. Strange how God answered sometimes. Then again, He’d been silent for so long, she shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions.
For now, despite Micah’s—and God’s—apparent intervention, she should still assume she was on her own.
Situation normal. She felt the acrid edge of despair fill her throat and fought it. Now wasn’t the time to let fatigue blur her common sense.
The door opened. Director Berg returned with a newspaper. He tossed it onto her bed, the front top headlin
e screaming: Sixteen Dead in Train Derailment.
“Ouch,” Lacey said and gave the paper a nudge with her knee.
“Tell me that you didn’t plan the entire thing. That you’re not planning to steal Ex-6 and sell it to the highest bidder,” Berg said.
Lacey was hardly able to digest his words.
“Here’s the deal,” Berg continued as if he hadn’t just accused her of industrial treason, the very crime she was trying to prevent. “You hand over the Ex-6 program now, we’ll finish it, and we’ll make sure you’re sentenced to minimum security instead of lost in the labyrinth of DOJ maximum security dungeons.”
Lacey looked at his hazel eyes, at any traces of duplicity found there, and scrambled to make sense of his request. Where was her laptop? Surely it survived the crash. Where was the Ex-6 program? The thought of it in Shavik’s hands sent a chill into her belly.
“I know you were nearly finished. Did you fix the glitches that still remained—like encrypting the transmission signal?” Berg’s question sliced through the scenarios of terrorism waging through her brain.
“The fact that I’m even answering this question should give you some pause as to my traitorous plans,” Lacey said, unflinching. “Yes. I just need to test it with the hardware a final time; then it will be ready for production.”
Director Berg nodded like all this wasn’t completely over his head. But developing the Department of Defense’s most advanced on-field encryption/decryption system pushed even Lacey’s PhD in mathematics to the limit. “Then faking its destruction now would be advantageous to your selling it into enemy hands.”
“Hardly. I’ve never hidden my agenda from you, Berg. I want nothing more than to put this program in the hands of our field agents and retire quietly with my daughter in some safe place, with a nice white-picket fence and a pack of Dobermans. Selling Ex-6 would betray everything John and I fought for and everything he died for. How dare you accuse me of treason after everything I’ve given to you and my country.” She started to shake.
Was that a smirk on Brower’s face? How she longed for two minutes alone with the creep, even if she had only one good arm.
Flee the Night Page 4
