She dialed Hillman’s number.
“Hello?”
With a halting voice, she identified herself. Then quietly she apologized for suspecting him of murder. She had acted just like Micah, believing something without proof, wanting to place blame to assuage her grief. “I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
“No, it’s me who should apologize. If I’d had the courage to tell the CIA what had happened, maybe you wouldn’t have been blamed for your husband’s death. Maybe Roland Berg wouldn’t have had the opportunity to terrorize another family.” His voice, with the slightest Southern accent, broke.
“You can’t live with what-ifs, Mr. Hillman,” Lacey said. “But you can live with hope. I’ve found that Jesus offers us second chances. More than that, He offers us new life. And … peace.”
His silence told her that he still wrestled with remorse, the same emotion that had held her prisoner for so long.
“Jesus opens prison doors. He heals and restores. I’ll be praying for you, Mr. Hillman.”
“I’m glad you’re okay, Lacey,” he said.
The dial tone droned in her ear. Lacey took a deep breath, feeling sorrow line her throat. She understood the urge to cling to grief, to regret, despite the fact that it gnawed away at a person’s soul. She set the phone in the cradle.
“Everything okay?” Micah stood in her doorway. Emily was in his arms, hers around his neck.
Lacey smiled. “One day at a time, right?”
He nodded, a slow smile on his face. “I love you, you know.”
She padded over to him, put her arms around them both. He felt powerful, so very capable of helping her heal, despite the scars from his cancer. He put an arm around her and pulled her tight.
“I know,” she whispered.
“Emily and I have a question.”
“Yes?” Lacey ran her fingers down her daughter’s chubby cheek. They’d put Emily into counseling, and over the past month, her nightmares had lessened. Lacey believed that in time they’d vanish completely. Especially in the embrace of Micah’s love.
Emily gave a saucy, six-year-old grin. “Can … Daddy take me riding?”
Daddy?
Lacey glanced at Micah, saw his widened eyes, the fear and hope on his beautiful, rugged face. “What did you call me?” he asked, a soft catch in his voice.
Emily giggled. “I never had a daddy.”
Lacey fought the urge to argue that point, but the delight, the raw hope on her little girl’s face obliterated words. What was it about children that enabled them to wear their heart on the outside of their bodies without fear? Lacey touched her daughter’s shoulder, aching to protect her.
It wasn’t necessary.
“I’ll be your daddy,” Micah said, his eyes glistening.
Lacey felt her own fill.
“Can we go, Mommy, please?” Emily clasped her little hands together and, all dramatics, leaned down as if begging.
“Lunch is almost ready,” Lacey said and quickly swiped away her tears.
“It’ll be quick.” Micah bounced Emily up to sit on his shoulders. “I promise.” The look of joy on his face made her want to give him the moon and stars.
“Not too quick.” Lacey held up a warning finger.
Micah laughed. “Okay, not too quick.” He grabbed Emily’s ankles as he turned away. “Have you ever been on a horse before?”
Leaning against the doorjamb, Lacey watched them go, her heart feeling like it might burst.
“No,” Emily said. “Don’t let me fall, okay?”
Micah’s voice faded out. “I won’t, honey. Daddy won’t let you fall. I promise.”
Lacey smiled.
Jim Micah always kept his promises.
A Note from the Author
SECOND CHANCES. A fresh start. New beginnings. These words fragranced my mind as our family began a new life in America this past year. We built our first house, started attending new schools and a new church. Suddenly we had a clean slate, free from the expectations and boundaries that had defined our lives as missionaries.
It was during these first steps that I came across Isaiah 61. It’s the same passage Jesus Christ quotes in Luke 4:18-19. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Isaiah 61 continues with: “To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”
These verses intrigued me. Probably because leaving Russia felt in many ways like walking out of a dungeon. Yes, we’d loved ministry there. Yes, I’d chosen that life. But Russia can be a dark, oppressive place, where you have to search for light and hope. More than that, I felt boxed in by expectations, unable to envision a different future. As we settled into our new community, I felt able to take a free, full breath for the first time in years. Slowly the fear and tension began to slough off me, and I saw a change taking place in my heart and my countenance.
I began to dig through Isaiah 61, to study the meanings of the words, and salvation took on new shades. I’ve been a Christian for over two decades, but seeing from a new viewpoint the depth of the transformation Christ has performed in my life through the years overwhelmed me. You see, I’d been a girl longing to change my world. In doing so, however, I found myself in my own sort of “prison.”
Christ, however, is about changing me, through my world, as well as His Word. And in bringing me home, He’s opened a new chapter of understanding who He is. God cares not only for the lost masses, but for the needs of Susan May Warren and her family.
In many ways, I am walking free for the first time. It makes me long to become that “planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”
Lacey is a woman who wanted to change her world. Because of that, she chose a man who embodied adventure. She found out that life wasn’t the world she had dreamed of, despite the fact that God had used it to mold her into the woman she would someday be. Sadly, Lacey felt she’d walked so far away from God, there was no return. More than that, she felt imprisoned by her choices.
We often create prisons for ourselves through high expectations, idealism, even the belief that God can’t—or shouldn’t—redeem our poor choices.
The good news is that Christ came to set us free. He’s the author of fresh starts, and He changes us from the inside out—our situation, our attitudes, even our appearance. Complete transformation.
The more I think about it, the more it takes my breath away.
They cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away their chains. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love (Psalm 107:13-15).
Thank you for reading Flee the Night. I look forward to sharing other Team Hope adventures with you. Most of all, I pray that you would find a fresh start today with the Savior who’s come to set you free.
In His grace,
About the Author
Susan May Warren recently returned home after serving for eight years with her husband and four children as missionaries in Khabarovsk, Far East Russia. Now writing full-time as her husband runs a lodge on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, she and her family enjoy hiking and canoeing and being involved in their local church.
Susan holds a BA in mass communications from the University of Minnesota and is a multipublished author of novellas and novels with Tyndale, including Happily Ever After, the American Christian Romance Writers’ 2003 Book of the Year and a 2003 Christy Award finalist. Other books in the series include Tying the Knot and The Perfect Match. Flee the Night is her first book in her new romantic adventure search and rescue series with Tyndale.
Susan invites you to visit her Web site at www.susanmaywarren.com. She also welcomes letters by e-mail at [email protected].
Escape to Morning
TODAY, MORE THAN any other, reporter Will Masterson prayed his lies saved lives. Starting with his partner, Homeland Security Agent Simon Rouss, aka Haviz Tarkan. Please, God, be on my side today. Will raced down the two-lane rutted forest service road, cursing his stupidity as well as a few new souvenir bruises. He smelled rain in the air as the wind shivered the trees with a late-season breeze. His nose felt thick and caked with clots.
He should have known that his sympathetic commentaries in the Moose Bend Journal toward the recent immigrants flooding over the Canadian border would have drawn blood with the locals. Blood that would hopefully protect Homeland Security Agent Simon Rouss while he embedded deeper into the terrorist cell in the hills.
Because Will knew that the men who’d hijacked him and hauled him into the forest to beat the tar out of him over his recent op-ed piece weren’t actually disgruntled rednecks, but rather international terrorists.
The lie that had just saved Will Masterson’s hide—the lie perpetuated by the boys toting .30-06s and wearing work boots—was the only thing keeping Simon from being brutally murdered.
Which would only be the first in a hundred—maybe a thousand—murders by the Hayata terrorist cell hiding in the northern Minnesota woods.
If only Will hadn’t been ambushed by the double-edged sword sitting in his PO box. A letter from Bonnie. He’d opened it, and the words knifed him through the chest.
Bonnie Strong and Paul Moore invite you to a celebration of life and love in our Lord Jesus Christ.
He should have dropped the invitation to his floorboard and crushed it under his foot. Instead, he’d let the memories, the grief, the failure rush over him and blind him to the three hillbillies lying in wait like a nest of South Dakotan rattlers. A year of undercover work, of slinking around this hick town, praying for a way to destroy the Hayata cell, and it all had to come to a head the same day his mistakes rose from the past to haunt him.
Sorry, Lew.
“Tell Bonnie and the girls I love them.” Lew’s dying words, hovering in the back of Will’s mind, could still turn his throat raw. If Simon bought it, Will would be sending yet another letter home to the wife and loved ones.
Soldiers had no business getting married.
Will’s breath felt like a razor inside his lungs. A branch clipped him, and blood pooled inside his mouth. Ruts and stone bit into his cowboy boots as he ran, and sweat lined his spine. Overhead, the sky mirrored his despair in the pallor of gray, the clouds heavy with tears. How long had he been unconscious after they’d thrown him off the four-wheeler?
Better question—how much did they guess about his alliance with Simon? Obviously, the good ol’ boys who snatched him as he’d sat in his truck, waiting for his contact and regretting Bonnie’s choices, knew Will’s habits. Simon’s habits. They’d found them, despite the fact that he and Simon had picked the backwoods gravel pit for its remoteness. But please—please—let them believe Will’s lies…which would mean maybe Simon’s cover hadn’t been blown.
Maybe there wouldn’t be another unnamed star embedded in the wall of honor at Langley.
Thunder rolled overhead just as Will burst from the road onto the gravel pit. Yes, thank you, the thugs/terrorists/angry readers hadn’t damaged his wheels. Probably, however, they thought his 1984 Chevy wasn’t worth their time.
What they didn’t know was that reporter Will Masterson didn’t just spend his time penning controversial editorials and writing the crime beat for the local weekly. Under the hood of this baby, he had a 350 Hemi with a high-lift cam and a four-barrel Edelbrock Thunder carb.
They didn’t call him Wild for nothing. Okay, yes, he’d earned that nickname for different reasons, during a different life. But sometimes the moniker still meant something. Like now, as he hopped in and slammed all three hundred and fifty horses to the floor, spitting gravel behind him as he raced to the Howlin’ Wolf.
Plan B.
Please, Simon, be there. Or, if Simon had been forced to make a fast exit, let him have taped his latest intel under Will’s favorite table.
After a year of undercover work, they had one chance, one click in time to get it right. One opportunity to avenge the thousands of victims who had died at the hands of terrorists around the globe. Victims like Lew.
Please, Simon, be there.
The late-afternoon drizzle seemed a fitting backdrop to the painful truth that Dannette might have to voice to the crowd of soggy search-and-rescue personnel combing Eagle Mountain.
Fern Humphrey—dementia patient, age eighty-six, grandmother of seven, great-grandmother of fourteen, and recent escapee from the High Pines Rest Center—would return to her family in a body bag.
Please, Lord, don’t let her die alone.
Dannette crouched beside Missy—her half-shepherd, half-retriever mix—and ran a hand behind the dog’s floppy ear. Missy’s respirations came one on top of another, her stacked breathing a natural alert for the smell of something near or already dead. Although trained in search and rescue, Missy and Dannette had recovered more than their share of casualties, and Dannette read the diminishing potential for success in her animal’s demeanor.
Twilight threaded gray fingers around the trees, through the brambled forest and around shaggy pines and spindly poplars. A crisp, postwinter breeze, dredged up from the still-soaked earth, whistled against Dannette’s Gore-tex jacket hood. She felt chapped, hungry, and worn birch-bark thin. With night encroaching, hope had dwindled with the sunshine to a meager shadow.
She drew out a water bottle, set down a collapsible bowl, and filled it. Missy rose and lapped greedily.
Fifty feet away, she heard the echo of Kelly’s call to her dog, Kirby. The younger SAR shepherd, out on his first real trial, probably hadn’t yet picked up the scent cone or Kelly would be radioing Dannette for advice.
The overpowering smell of death scared most dogs. Then again, it didn’t exactly warm Dannette’s insides with a happy feeling.
Dannette rose and let Missy finish her water. Maybe Missy was wrong. She wasn’t Super Dog, although Dannette had to admit that following Missy’s instincts often led them to crannies and hideouts unthinkable even to the most keen SAR personnel. And Missy was an air-scent dog, which meant she followed the smells left by the scraping of skin on rocks, trees, and bushes. Sadly, Missy’s abilities decreased as the day worsened.
If only it hadn’t taken the nursing-home staff an hour after Fern turned up missing at morning breakfast to call the sheriff’s office and two more hours and the urging of the mayor—Fern’s desperate son—to finally call Kelly, their nearly certified K-9 handler. Not only had a late-morning shower diffused the scent cone left by Mrs. Humphrey, but the variable winds and temperatures had scattered the scent and confused Missy. They’d walked the perimeter in a hasty search for two more hours before Missy caught the scent and alerted to Mrs. Humphrey’s trail.
As usual, Dannette found that the dementia patient didn’t stick to the deer trails or clearings. Mrs. Humphrey had pushed through honeysuckle and raspberry bushes, climbed over downed birch, crossed a stream, and ascended a hill that should have put her in traction. Even dementia patients who struggled to move in ordinary circumstances proved they still had gumption when some errant impulse revved up their synapses. But Mrs. Humphrey had lived a stout life, ran a farm until her husband’s death a few years ago, and would probably be still milking her Jersey if her mind hadn’t decided to betray her. The woman could easily be a mile from here or sitting atop Eagle Mountain.
Or injured.
Or, if Dannette read her dog correctly, dead.
Missy sat on her haunches and licked her lips. Water dripped off her jowls.
Dannette emptied the bowl and shoved it back into her backpack. “Okay, ready?”
Missy tilted her head.
“I
know, sweetheart. But if it makes you feel any better, I’m glad you’re here. You handle death so much better than Sherlock. He’d have his hackles up and be cowering under that white pine.” She stepped away from Missy, changed her tone. “Find.”
They’d been working on a free search all afternoon, after Missy’s first alert. With Kelly and Kirby twenty-five feet to the west, Dannette let Missy run twenty-five feet or more ahead, quartering the wind for scent debris. Dannette checked her GPS with her map, pinpointed her position, and radioed the incident commander.
“10-4, Search 1,” replied Sheriff Fadden. Dannette pictured the guy as she’d left him, wearing his black, lined Windbreaker, his stomach rebelling against the snaps, using a blow horn to direct traffic. Just what Fern Humphrey’s loved ones needed while they watched the chaos.
And to add to their pain, Dannette had seen two news reporters from the local rags already lurking, smelling blood.
The leeches.
“Just heard from Search 2,” Fadden continued. “Kirby alerted to scent and Kelly is tracking north, toward Eagle Cliff.” He had a flattened Midwestern accent, although nothing else about him could be labeled flat. Including his ego. One month of working with or around him with the local SAR crew told her that she’d have better luck trying to reason with a bull moose. Dannette held no doubts that if Fadden could get away with it, he’d drop-kick her and her SAR dog into the next state.
But he needed her, and they both knew it. On hand to help Kelly and her K-9 Kirby pass their SAR K-9 certification, Dannette and Missy were the only K-9 unit within two states with the teaching hours and credits to certify the team. Said certification would qualify the sheriff’s department for a healthy government grant for rural SAR, an end goal that Fadden never failed to keep in the forefront of Dannette’s purpose in Moose Bend. Sadly, in his mind, that goal didn’t warrant tapping his force for live-victim-search training or scooping from the currently dwindling county SAR fund for K-9 training scents and devices.
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