by Janie Crouch
Yeah. He’d just keep clinging to that thought and not the thought that he couldn’t get this tiny, giant-brained woman out of his mind.
As if on cue, her brown eyes fluttered open. She smiled sleepily at him and stretched. Sawyer grimaced as the entire length of her body was pressed against his.
Then her brain caught up to her body and she stiffened. Obviously, she had just realized that she was all but lying on top of him.
“Feel better after your nap?” Sawyer asked, turning her a little so she was more firmly resting against his chest.
“I can’t believe how much better I feel. Although, um, wasn’t I back here by myself when I first went to sleep?”
“You were shivering and couldn’t get comfortable, so I got back here with you.”
“Oh.” Megan looked up at him and smiled softly. “Thank you. How long have I been out?”
“About four hours.”
“Oh, wow. You know in nap cycles, sleeping ninety to one hundred twenty minutes allows for all the sleep cycles to be completed including REM and deep slow-wave sleep. This allows your mind to return to a state of replenishment...”
Sawyer listened, smiling and shaking his head, until she finished her thoughts about naps, then kissed her. Because unlike sleep cycles and brain activity, kissing her had been on his mind for the past four hours.
Every time he kissed her he figured that it couldn’t be as good as he remembered it. And every time he was wrong. It was always this good.
Megan sighed and snuggled closer to him. Sawyer placed his Sig on the floor and reached down, grabbing Megan’s hips and pulling her closer. Her head slanted to the side and her lips opened, giving Sawyer fuller access. Her tongue dueled with his, hesitantly at first, then with more boldness. Sawyer felt Megan’s hands slide up into his hair, gripping hard. He pulled her closer.
And cursed the fact that they were in the backseat of a car, in an open area. And that just because DS-13 hadn’t found them yet didn’t mean they weren’t searching.
And that this was a park, for God’s sake. If they didn’t stop they might scar some poor little kid for life.
But despite all that, Sawyer didn’t want to stop. He definitely didn’t want to.
“Megan...” he murmured against her lips.
“I know. I know. We have to stop.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to. But it’s not safe and damn it, I don’t want our first time to be in the back of a car like a couple of teenagers.”
Megan giggled slightly at that.
Sawyer kissed her lightly again. “But I want you to understand something, Dr. Fuller. Soon. Very, very soon—” he rested his forehead against hers “—we are going to finish what we started here. And when we do, there won’t be any break-ins or parks or anything else in the way. It will be in a bed where there is no one around but you and me.”
* * *
A COUPLE OF hours later, stopped again for a meal, Megan felt much better. She was ready to get on to the safe house and finish the countermeasure. After everything DS-13 had cost her—her home, her vehicle, her possessions, her job—it was time to make them pay for a change. Finishing the countermeasure would do that.
She looked across the booth at Sawyer. She also wanted to get to the safe house so she could finish what she had started with him.
Megan barely refrained from licking her lips thinking about it. And the glances she caught Sawyer giving her every once in a while weren’t helping. As if he was considering crawling over the table to get to her.
It made Megan giddy. And she loved it. But at the same time she was well aware that this was Sawyer’s MO. He was probably always this focused on women he was attracted to. She’d do well not to read anything more into it than what it meant: a good time for however long he was here.
Hey, she’d take it. If there was one thing all the craziness of the past couple of days had taught her, it was not to waste time worrying so much over the future that you were completely blind to the present sitting right across from you smiling.
But now that her brain wasn’t so exhausted, that little nagging bit of her subconscious was back. Nothing about Sawyer. She knew it wasn’t about him. But Megan couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing something and it was starting to make her twitchy.
“What’s wrong?” Sawyer asked her.
“What?”
“You’ve got that look. Your I’m-using-my-giant-brain-to-figure-out-something-important look.”
Megan laughed a little at that. “My subconscious is tugging at me. I’ve missed something, somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.”
“About the countermeasure?”
“No, not really. At least, I don’t think so.” Megan took another bite of her food. “But it’s something important.”
“Okay. What can I do to help?”
Megan shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know that you can do anything. I’ve learned to just leave it alone—the harder I try to figure it out, the more elusive it seems to become. It’ll come to me.”
Megan just hoped it wouldn’t come to her too late to be of any use.
They finished eating and headed back out to the car. Megan was ready to get to the safe house and get started. Sawyer was tense in the car, constantly looking in the rearview mirror.
“Is somebody following us?”
“No.” Sawyer shook his head, but didn’t look over at her. “I just want to make sure. In such a remote area, it’s critical that no one be following us when we reach the safe house.”
Twice Sawyer turned off the main road in a direction opposite from where they were trying to go. He drove for just a few moments, then turned and went back the other way. Anyone following them would’ve been obvious. Megan mentioned that to Sawyer.
Sawyer shook his head. “They’re only obvious if they are the only car following us. If I was DS-13 trying to follow our car, I’d have more than one vehicle. Tag-teaming makes a tail much less noticeable.”
That made sense to Megan. Still, she didn’t see how anybody could follow them, and not be obvious, the way Sawyer drove.
Eventually, after at least thirty minutes out of their way and back, Sawyer felt secure no one was following them. Megan could see him relax, which made her feel better.
He reached over and plucked her hand out of her lap and brought it to his lips, kissing the back of her palm. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be fanatic. I just don’t want to take a chance with your safety.”
Megan smiled. “I understand and appreciate it. Of course, I have no idea where we are.”
“Don’t worry, I have the address encrypted on my phone. I got a message earlier this morning with the info from Omega.”
Something in how Sawyer said the words jarred loose what her subconscious had been trying to get at: I got a message earlier.
“Sawyer, stop the car,” Megan told him. “I remember. What I couldn’t figure out before, I remember.”
To his credit, Sawyer didn’t hesitate or brush her off. He immediately pulled the car over at a nearby gas station, but parked far away from the building and pumps.
“What?” Sawyer asked her. “Is it something bad?”
“It was something Ted Cory said this morning. Everything happened so fast when he grabbed me that I didn’t really put it together it until now.”
“What did he say?”
“When you talked to him on the phone while we were in the hotel this morning, you told him I wasn’t coming in until the afternoon, right?”
“Yeah. I tried to buy us some extra time.”
“But then you reported in to Omega that we were going in this morning to retrieve the needed items, right? Omega and you and I were the only ones who knew we would be there early this morning, right?”
Sawyer nodded. “Yes, but I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
Megan turned and faced Sawyer fully. “The very first thing Ted Cory said to me as I was trying to get out the door at Cyberdyne was, ‘
I got a message that you would be here this morning.’”
Sawyer leaned his head back against the seat, obviously processing what Megan was telling him. “You’re sure he said ‘I got a message’ not ‘I thought you’d probably be here’ or something like that?”
“I’m positive. I can recall the entire conversation word for word if you want.” Megan tapped her finger against her temple. It was the truth. She could recall probably the past one hundred conversations she’d had almost word for word. It had just taken her subconscious a little time to put together that Ted Cory’s words were important in an unusual way.
“No need. I believe you.” Sawyer ran a hand over his eyes.
“Does this mean what I think it means?”
Sawyer clenched his jaw visibly. “It means everything is blown to hell, that’s what it means.”
Chapter Sixteen
Damn it, Sawyer wanted to punch something. He had thought there might be someone involved from Omega, but hadn’t wanted to believe it. Now the truth was too obvious to ignore.
Somebody had contacted Ted Cory and warned him that Megan would be coming in this morning, despite what Sawyer had told Cory. That was why he had been there so early. It was probably why Trish Wilborne—if she was the Cyberdyne traitor—was there so early, also. It made sense.
It also meant nothing involving Omega was trustworthy anymore. Including the safe house.
Or the car they were driving. Or the phone Sawyer had.
Sawyer immediately opened the car door.
“Where are we going?” Megan asked.
“Hang on just a second,” he told her.
Sawyer stayed seated, but set his phone on the ground outside the car, then shut the door again.
“To answer your earlier question, yes, it does mean what you think it means. Someone inside Omega is working against us, too.”
“And you put your phone outside because you think they’re using it to track us.”
Sawyer grimaced. “If it’s someone using Omega’s resources, they’re almost definitely using it to track us. I put it outside because a smartphone can also be used as a transmitting device with the right technology.”
“Should you destroy it?” Megan was starting to get that pinched look again. Sawyer hated that, but couldn’t blame her.
“I might. But not until we come up with a plan.” Sawyer hit the steering wheel with the bottom of his fist. “No wonder they weren’t tailing us. They didn’t need to. They knew where we were going.”
“Do you think they planned to wait until we got to the safe house, then ambush us?”
Sawyer ran tense fingers through his hair. “Definitely, if not worse.”
“What are we going to do?”
That was the million-dollar question. Sawyer still needed to get Megan to a safe location so she could finish the countermeasure. But with the resources Omega had, staying hidden from the mole would be difficult, if not impossible.
Omega would be able to trace any car he and Megan tried to rent. If Sawyer stole one, Omega would be able to access traffic and security cameras from all around. They also had local law enforcement on their side.
When Omega wanted to hunt someone down, especially when they knew the general location and description of that someone, it was damn near impossible to get away.
The first thing Sawyer knew he needed to do was get some reinforcements on his side. He needed to call Juliet and let her know what was going on. The only way he could do that safely would be on a pay phone.
“Okay, I’m going to open the car door and get my phone and leave it in the car as we get out. Don’t say anything until we are both outside of the car and the phone is inside,” he told Megan.
“They can hear us even with it powered down?”
“It’s my Omega phone. A mole there could’ve had access and modified it to transmit.”
“Kind of like some new technology that’s being used by people who think their spouses might be having an affair.”
Sawyer nodded. “In essence.”
Megan shook her head. “Do you have a plan?”
“I’m going to call someone in Omega I know I can trust, my sister, Juliet. She’ll have access to information we need.”
They both were silent as they got out of the car and Sawyer put the phone inside. Then they walked over to a pay phone on the side of the gas station. Sawyer dialed Juliet’s number. When she picked up, he didn’t let her get many words out. “Hey, sis. Our stepmom just called and told me there’s a huge sale down at the local coffeehouse.”
There was a short pause. “Really? That’s awesome.”
“Yeah, she said you might want to bring your computer so you can research which coffee to buy.”
“Alrighty, then. I’ll go check it out and call you back.”
They both hung up. Megan was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“Do I even want to know?” she asked him. “Please tell me that was some kind of code.”
Sawyer smiled. “We don’t have a stepmom. Our parents are still happily married and live in Virginia. Stepmom is kind of a family code for ‘get someplace where you can talk privately.’”
It wasn’t long before Juliet was calling him back. “What’s up, Sawyer? This better be worth me going outside in this weather. It’s cold.”
“Are you somewhere that you can talk without anyone from Omega overhearing?”
“Yeah. I’m totally out of the building.”
“We’ve got a big problem, Juliet. Megan figured out that someone at Omega is working against us.”
“Damn it, I knew it!”
That wasn’t the response Sawyer was expecting from his sister at all.
“You did? Why the hell didn’t you tell me, then?”
Juliet backtracked. “Well, I didn’t know for sure. But I was looking up the info on the safe house you’re going to—Evan wanted to know where you’d be exactly.”
Sawyer didn’t mind Evan Karcz knowing the safe-house location. Evan wasn’t actual family, but he was close enough. Although, if Sawyer had to guess, Evan had only asked about the safe house in order to get Juliet to talk to him, not just because he wanted to be aware of Sawyer’s location.
“Evan’s questions made you think there was someone working against us?”
“No. I went into the system to get him the address. Found it no problem.”
Sawyer rubbed his face with this hand. “Juliet, I don’t get what you’re talking about.”
“I was prepared to filter through addresses because you had mentioned being given a second address. But there was only one in the system.”
“Okay. But that still doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“Sawyer, there was no record anywhere of a first address. The second—the more remote location—was the only one attached to your case. If you hadn’t mentioned you’d been given a second, different safe-house location, I wouldn’t have looked twice at the file.”
“Is it possible it was a clerical error?”
“No. Once I went back and found your call-in record from last night, I was able to trace the original safe house assigned to you. Someone deliberately went in and deleted all record of that assignment, so it looked like the second safe house was the one originally assigned.”
Sawyer was silent. He didn’t want to let his imagination get the better of him, but the only reasons he could think of for someone to make it look as if the second house had been originally assigned was for some definite nefarious purposes. “That’s bad.”
“It’s very bad, Sawyer. It looks like someone is preemptively covering their tracks. The only reason I can think that someone would do that—”
“Is if they were going to take Megan and me out of the picture entirely, then make it look like an accident or attack from DS-13 or something.” Sawyer finished Juliet’s idea for her. He heard a slight gasp from Megan and turned to look at her. Her eyes were giant as she looked at him.
“You can’t
go to that safe house, Sawyer.”
“I know, sis, but neither can we run if someone’s got Omega’s resources to use when looking for us. We won’t get far.”
“I assume you don’t have your phone within earshot. Remember, it can be used not only to track you, but for remote listening.”
“No, it’s sitting inside the car. I didn’t want to destroy it, hoping we’ll be able to use their own system against them. Feed them false info while they’re listening in.”
“Okay, but don’t say anything around it you don’t want overheard. Even if it’s off,” Juliet continued.
“Okay, got it.” Sawyer told her.
“Do you want me to take the information I have to Burgamy, or even higher up?”
“No, we don’t know who the traitor is. I don’t want to take a chance on notifying the wrong person.” Sawyer looked down at Megan, who was standing next to Sawyer so she could hear as much as possible. Sawyer hated the thought that someone in law enforcement had lied and put her in jeopardy again. He grabbed her hands, which were clenched tightly in front of her, gently running his finger over her knuckles.
“Sawyer.” Juliet spoke and got his attention again. “I think I’m coming up with a plan.”
If there was one thing his sister was known for, it was strategic planning.
“Megan needs time and a quiet place to work, right?”
“Yes, and the sooner the better.”
“Evan is out in that area. You call in to Omega and let them know you can’t get to the safe house right away for some reason. I’ll have Evan check out the safe house, see if there’s anything interesting to be found. Meanwhile I’ll keep poking around here.”
“And then what?”
“Well, if we find what I think we might find, it’s going to prove that DS-13, and whoever is helping them at Omega, have decided if they can’t keep you in-pocket then dead is an acceptable alternative.”
If possible, Megan turned even paler at Juliet’s words. “What exactly are we going to do about that, Jules?” Sawyer asked his sister.
“Give them what they want.”
* * *
