Fight or Flight

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  How did they know we would be at the airport? Regan didn’t voice the question. The obvious answer was that Tyler had alerted them, but if so, why did they beat him? There was no guarantee she would even see what was happening, so it couldn’t be a tactic to fool her.

  “What else?” she asked.

  “Bruised ribs, maybe cracked.” He drew in a slow, deep breath and winced but shook his head. “Bruised. Don’t know how I managed to dodge that bullet.”

  “Tom got scared and fell,” Van joked. “So the bullet missed you guys.” Tom leaned past Tyler and smacked her lightly on the shoulder.

  “I didn’t see you getting out of the car,” he sniped.

  “I didn’t have my stick. I’m a fraidy-cat without my stick.”

  “Thanks for stopping, by the way,” Tyler said. “Ditching me was your original plan, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course.” An unexpected pang of regret went through Regan. “I’m sorry” came out before she stopped it.

  “I understand.” He peered out the window. “What have we lost?”

  “Some food,” Kelsey said. “I had water and snacks in my pack, and some first aid stuff and toiletries.”

  “Same here,” Van added. “Clothes. My old phone, but I have the prepaid.” They’d bought five of them on the way to the airport, and Regan had insisted they keep them on their bodies, along with any money and identification they had.

  “Geography and chemistry textbooks and my jock,” Tom joked. “And my laptop,” he added with a mournful sigh.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Regan said, her heart sinking at the mounting expenses. When they abandoned this car, she would have to leave money for the repairs, too.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tom said. “At least we’re all here.”

  Regan managed not to say it, but couldn’t stop the words from echoing in her head:

  For now.

  Chapter Eleven

  They left the car in a shopping center lot in Brook Park. Regan found an envelope and a pen in the glove compartment and, with her sleeves down over her hands, scribbled a note that she wrapped around the money and tucked into the steering wheel. She had Tom check the trunk for rags or something they could wipe down the car with, as they’d left fingerprints all over everything. He pulled out a bag of used kids’ clothes, and they rubbed away the evidence of their crime with a few onesies.

  As they headed for a McDonald’s at the edge of the parking lot, Regan couldn’t help lamenting to Tyler, “Through all of this I never broke the law. I changed my name legally, paid taxes—”

  “You didn’t work under the table?” he asked, limping across the cracked macadam. “How did we not find you sooner?”

  She shrugged, her heart skipping a little at his use of “we.” Who the hell did he mean? “I did work some questionable jobs. But as Kelsey’s needs grew, I needed better-paying work. And I didn’t ever use fake ID or commit credit card fraud or anything.” Until now.

  “I always expected it to be my downfall,” she said, “but they didn’t find us for all that time. And now I start out with grand theft auto.” She looked back at the scraped and dented car and prayed it didn’t belong to someone who was worse off than she was.

  “Look at it this way,” Tyler said, holding the door to the restaurant. “The blame is all on the people who are after you. You wouldn’t have committed the crime if they hadn’t pushed you to it.”

  It didn’t help, but she smiled at him for the attempt.

  “What the hell do we do now?” Kelsey asked after they’d picked up their food and gathered at a table in the corner, as far from anyone else as they could get.

  “I don’t know,” Regan admitted. She poked her plastic spork at the salad in front of her, not really hungry but knowing she’d be better off if she ate.

  “How did they find us?” Van asked next. She munched a handful of fries but had declined a burger. “Tracking device?”

  “I don’t know how they’d have tagged anyone,” Regan answered. “They left me on the ground, naked and supposedly dying. Did they get close enough to you guys the other night?”

  “Yeah, but I checked all our stuff when we were in the motel,” Kelsey said. “I didn’t find anything. They didn’t have enough access to hide it well.”

  “Someone knows something they shouldn’t,” Tyler agreed. “It wasn’t me. I know you think it was,” he said to Regan. “But I swear, I told no one we were going to the airport this morning.”

  “But you had your own cell phone,” she said. “Your employer probably has its GPS.”

  Tyler looked grim. “Yeah, you’re right. I left it in the truck, so we should be okay now.” He sighed and admitted, “But it does look like someone on my employer’s team is dirty.”

  Regan wasn’t sure she believed him, but it was a reasonable explanation and he had just gotten beaten to a pulp.

  “So what have we got?” Kelsey asked.

  “No transportation, no shelter, no one to communicate with,” Tom listed.

  “No schoolbooks,” Kelsey teased.

  “No jock!” Van added, giggling.

  Regan shook her head. “I can’t believe you all still act like this is an adventure. Tyler was almost killed back there.”

  The kids sobered immediately.

  “Now do you see why I want to send you back? I—” She shut up when a ringing cell phone interrupted her. They all stared at each other for a moment, then Tom pulled his prepaid phone from his jeans pocket—the one he hadn’t used yet, the one no one but the five of them had a number for. It rang again, shaking slightly in his hand. He raised his eyebrows at Regan for instruction.

  She reached over and took it. The display listed a number with a California area code. Tyler’s employer was in California. Sick to her stomach, she thumbed the answer button and lifted the phone to her ear.

  “Hello.”

  “Ah, so the young man is still with you, Regan Miller. Or should I say, Chelsea Conrad?”

  Regan said nothing. The voice was mechanically altered so she couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but somehow the smug satisfaction came through. She didn’t bother pelting the person with questions, knowing they wouldn’t be answered. Nor would she give him—she just assumed it was a him—any cause to believe he’d gotten to her. To any of them.

  Whoever it was got the message and lost the purr with his next words. “We need to see you. You and your daughter. You can let the others go on their way, but we’ll know where they are. If you and Miss Kelsey do not do exactly as we say, we will obtain her friends and yours and show you we do indeed mean business.”

  Still Regan said nothing, though pointless words of hatred poured through her head. Words mixed with despair, because how had he gotten Tom’s number? He couldn’t have zoned in on the store where they bought them, not this fast. The only way was through Tyler.

  “Are you prepared to write this down?” the caller asked.

  Regan swallowed against the burn in her throat. “I don’t have anything to write with.”

  “Then you’d better remember it, hadn’t you? There’s a flight leaving Cleveland for Los Angeles in two hours. Be on it. You will be met at the airport and escorted to my compound. If you cooperate, no harm will come to any of you, including your daughter.

  “You’ve given me a merry chase for nineteen years. That’s an impressive record. But it ends now.” A beep signaled he’d disconnected.

  “Who was it? What did they say?”

  Regan didn’t answer the kids. White hot rage burned inside her, but it wasn’t directed at the idiot who had told her to get on a plane. She was such a fool. Ready to believe Tyler—to believe he cared about her and Kelsey, that his employer wasn’t the person who’d killed Scott and tried to kidnap her baby. Since the hospital, she’d been anticipating his betrayal, second-guessing his motives, bracing herself for the inevitable. And of course, just as with Alan, it came when she let down her guard.

  “I need to
talk to you,” she said to Tyler, who immediately rose and followed her to the back hall where the restrooms were. She tried the ladies’ room, but it was occupied. She pushed into the men’s room and locked the door behind them.

  “Regan—”

  She slugged him. Not in the face, where his strong jaw would have broken her hand, but in the ribs where he was already hurt. She had to use her left hand for the proper angle and the burning pain in her shoulder weakened the punch, but Tyler wasn’t expecting her to hit him and he twisted away, falling to one knee with a gasp, his arms cradling his ribs. All the terror and helplessness of the last couple of days overwhelmed rationality, and Regan slammed her knee up into his chin, knocking him backward onto his ass.

  “You gave us up, you son of a bitch!” She somehow managed to keep her voice low, despite her need to scream her betrayal. She yanked him up by his shirt and cuffed his ear with the heel of her right hand. He grunted and fell sideways but didn’t try to fight back. She didn’t care. “My daughter! She’s going to die because of you! If she doesn’t, her boyfriend will!” She didn’t even know what she was saying. All she knew was that she’d trusted him against her judgment and he’d handed them over to the enemy.

  “I didn’t,” he managed to say before she swung her joined hands at the side of his head. He ducked, and she let out a roar of outrage.

  “Mom!” The door rattled behind her. “Mom, stop! Let me in!”

  “Eighteen years I’ve been on the edge, afraid, determined. But I’ve kept her safe. Now you’ve ruined both our lives!” She stumbled back when Tyler nudged her in the bad shoulder, off balance because she wasn’t fighting smart. She was driven by something deeper than anger, more painful than protectiveness.

  The door banged in the frame harder and harder, all the kids’ voices now audible through it. Tyler lurched to his feet, but Regan pushed off the wall and launched herself at him. Her right shoulder hit his midsection as the door flew open and hit the wall. Tyler flailed and caught the paper towel holder, ripping it off the wall on his way down. His elbow went into the urinal. Regan cracked her head on the side of the toilet, but she had the advantage and she wasn’t giving it up.

  “They won’t get my daughter!” She punched him in the side, the chest, and the face, panting with exertion. Someone grabbed at her but she evaded them and put her hands around Tyler’s throat. His hand wrapped around her wrist but didn’t pull, even as she squeezed. Instead he stared directly into her eyes, only inches away.

  “I didn’t, Regan.” His voice rasped on her name as she started to cut off his air. “I swear, I didn’t. I lo—”

  “Don’t!” She released him and jerked back, helped off him and to her feet by three sets of hands. “Don’t you even say that, you son of a bitch!”

  “Mom! For God’s sake, stop it!” Kelsey turned her and shook her, hard. “They’re out there calling the police. We’ve got to go. Come on.”

  Regan didn’t know what brought her to her senses. Her daughter’s calm, underlain by fear and shock? Or the words about to come out of Tyler’s mouth—words she hadn’t heard from anyone but her daughter since the moment Scott died? Whatever it was acted like a bucket of icy water cast over her. She stared at Tyler, already beaten before she’d pummeled him and now much worse, horrified at the person she’d become.

  Tom slipped under Tyler’s shoulder and supported him out the restroom door and the exit immediately outside it. Van followed, but Kelsey waited for her mother. Regan avoided her eyes. She was ashamed, but facts were facts. The caller had not only known who Tom was, and that he was with them, but had chosen to call his phone. Sending her a message, she was sure. Trying to intimidate her into turning herself in. Into giving up her daughter.

  It was never going to happen.

  ***

  “Hold still.”

  Kelsey dabbed antiseptic on Tyler’s cheek. She couldn’t tell which of his injuries had been inflicted by her mother and which the gang who’d jumped him in the parking garage, but he was banged up good. While her mother told them what the caller said, Kelsey had cleaned Tyler’s whole face and used butterfly bandages to close the big cut at his hairline. This split over his cheekbone was probably from her mother. It looked fresher.

  She glanced over to where her mother sat, alone in the corner of the new motel they’d checked into. It had been an hour since the phone call. They’d gone to the grocery store in the strip mall and called a taxi, which took them to this hellhole where Van had gone inside to check them in, paying cash.

  “That was some tackle,” Tom said, trying to get a response from Regan.

  But her mother still didn’t respond to anything anyone said. Her eyes looked dead, which frightened Kelsey more than anything else had.

  Tom turned to her, worried. Kelsey shrugged. She didn’t know what to do, either.

  “The bleeding on this one stopped,” she told Tyler. “I don’t think it needs a bandage. Anywhere else?”

  He held up his elbow. Kelsey wrinkled her nose. “It smells like urinal cakes.”

  Tyler grimaced. “That would be because I stuck it in the urinal. How do you know what urinal cakes smell like?”

  She glanced at her mother again, but she doubted she cared. “I’ve used the guys’ bathroom at the frat house.”

  “Gross.”

  “Big time. But I was too lazy to go downstairs to the women’s room.” She checked the scrape on his elbow and shook her head. “I’m not touching it. You need a shower.”

  He sighed. “I’m not sure I have time.”

  Kelsey gathered up the trash and chucked it in the tiny trashcan, then stalked over to her mother. “Mom. Come on. You have to tell us what’s going on.”

  “I don’t.”

  Kelsey stopped short. She hadn’t expected her to respond. Now when Regan raised her head to glare at Tyler, she looked alive again, and full of the anger that had made her almost kill him. Kelsey had no doubt she would have done it if they hadn’t stopped her.

  Yet another thing to frighten her. She liked it better when they were just being attacked by the bad guys.

  “Who was on the phone?” Kelsey demanded.

  Regan stood and circled the bed to stand in front of Tyler. “You’re the one who has answers.”

  Tyler didn’t flinch away from her, or try to get away. If it didn’t make her feel guilty, Kelsey would have been impressed with the way he looked up at her mother.

  “I gave my number to my boss,” he admitted. “All our numbers are consecutive. So whoever the mole is must have passed the information on.”

  “He knew it was Tom’s phone specifically,” Regan pointed out.

  “Then he was guessing,” Tyler shot back.

  “That would be convenient. You can’t prove it.”

  “You’re right.” Everything in the room stopped. “I can’t operate under my old orders anymore.”

  “You said you weren’t, anyway. That you didn’t have orders.”

  “I didn’t have new ones. I was informed it was imperative not to let you know who I worked for.”

  “And that is?”

  Even several feet away, Kelsey could see the shadow crossing his eyes. Her mother didn’t move.

  “Benjamin and Jeanne Harrison.”

  Three beats passed before Kelsey processed what he said. Her father’s name was Harrison. Those were the names in all the articles they’d read yesterday.

  He worked for her grandparents.

  But her mother thought her grandparents were the ones after her.

  She backed up without thinking, adrenaline speeding through her system on the tail of fear of what was about to happen. She bumped into Tom, whose arms came around her and held her gently.

  “I knew it!”

  Kelsey thought her mother would start beating on Tyler again but instead she whirled away and limped around the room like she was searching for something.

  “Good thing we lost my stick,” Van whispered from slightly behind Ke
lsey. “Should we get out of here? She’s scary.”

  She was scary. But Kelsey wasn’t going to let her commit murder. She broke away from Tom and caught her mother before she grabbed the heavy lamp on the bedside table.

  “Let him talk, Mom. You can brain him later.” She held her mother’s shoulders, which heaved under her hands. Regan stared past her, not seeing her or even Tyler on the other side of the room. Kelsey swallowed hard, uncertain what to say to get through to her. “Mom. You can’t kill him,” she said softly. “I need you.”

  That did it. Regan set the lamp down and buried her face in her hands. Kelsey put her arms around her, wondering if she was going to cry. She’d never seen her cry before this weekend.

  But she didn’t. She straightened and glared at Tyler again, but the awful burning was gone.

  “Speak.”

  “I’ve worked security for the Harrisons for ten years. They’re good people,” he started, but apparently decided now wasn’t the time to go there. “Two years ago someone they’d hired found you. They sent me to watch over you and report in regularly. You know that part. And I did it, for two years, without having any clue why.”

  “I don’t get it,” Regan said. “How could you not want to know why?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to. I was STT in the Air Force. I’m used to operations where I know nothing outside the parameters of my job.”

  “What’s STT?” Kelsey asked.

  “Special Tactics Team,” Van piped up. She shrugged when everyone turned to stare at her. “It’s spec ops.”

  “How do you know?” Tom asked.

  “I read a lot.” She grinned. “There’s a website.”

  “Of course.” Tom snorted.

  “Anyway.” Regan motioned at Tyler to continue.

  “Anyway, I sent electronic reports and talked to them by phone.”

  “What kind of things did they want to know?” Regan asked.

  “Your job, who you dated, your friends. Where Kelsey went to school, who her friends were, what the score of her soccer game was and how she was doing in classes. Basically, everything a grandparent wants to know, plus the kind of safety things an Air Force colonel and major would ask.”