Long Gone

by Marliss Melton

  “Check out’s at eleven,” he intoned, handing her a room key.

  “Thank you.” She rode the elevator to the third floor, found her room, and went straight to the phone beside the king-sized bed. She hadn’t realized when she’d fled her home that her plan involved Drake Donovan, but of course it did. He was the only soul she trusted; the only person capable of helping her now.

  She dropped on the edge of the bed and pulled the phone closer.

  The last time she’d seen Drake was when he’d stuck his head into the back of the U.S. Marshal’s vehicle where she’d sat with her mother. “Only if it’s life or death,” he’d whispered, scribbling his number onto her palm, his brown eyes brimming with sorrow.

  She’d memorized his number on the spot. Weeks later, she’d bought a prepaid phone card so she could place that life-or-death call if the need arose.

  Desperation had tempted her to use it twice—once in Omaha the night her mother died and again in Portland on her twenty-sixth birthday. She’d admitted as much to Higgins who’d grilled her after Centurions had found her in both places.

  But I never even spoke, she’d insisted.

  It doesn’t matter. They’re obviously still watching him. Do you want to put him in harm’s way? Don’t call him again.

  But Higgins had to be wrong. She’d never called Drake from Myrtle Beach, yet the mob had still managed to find her.

  So maybe the Centurions weren’t monitoring Drake’s calls. God, she hoped not because she had to call him. She wouldn’t last a week on her own.

  With hands that shook, she tapped out the numbers on her calling card followed by his number. Her heart suspended its beat as she waited for his phone to ring.

  Then it rang and rang.

  Just as she was sure her call would go to voice mail, he picked up.

  “Donovan. Hello?”

  Four years of loneliness, fear, and regret strangled Skyler’s voice box. Clutching the receiver with both hands, she pushed his name through her tight throat. “Drake.”

  His mattress creaked. “Don’t hang up.” He sounded suddenly wide awake. “Please don’t hang up again, you hear me, babe?”

  “I won’t.” How quickly he’d recognized her voice!

  “Good, now tell me what’s wrong.”

  Where to start? “C-centurions came for me again. This is the third time it’s happened.”

  “What’s the program doing about it?”

  “Nothing. I ran away. They’re not keeping me safe like they’re supposed to.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In a motel room in—”

  “Wait! Don’t say it. All I need is the room number.”

  “Um…” It took her a moment to remember. “314.”

  “Got it. Don’t go anywhere, babe. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Wait, h-how will you find me?” Panic made her heart race. “When will you get here?” She was terrified of letting him go.

  “Soon, sweetheart. Believe me, I could find you anywhere.”

  His answer assured her that there was no Mrs. Drake Donovan lying in bed next to him. Thank God. Drake was going to rescue her, just like he had four years ago when she’d been faced with an arranged marriage to her father’s peer, Ashton Jameson.

  “I’ll be here,” she whispered.

  Her only answer was silence.

  Chapter Two

  Drake forced himself to hang up. God knew he didn’t want to. Skyler’s voice was manna to his hungry heart, and she so clearly needed him, too.

  But he couldn’t risk the off-chance that the mob was listening to his calls—not that he could see how. His cell phone had been issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uncle Sam had deemed it secure and untraceable. On the other hand, his affection for Owen Dulay’s daughter had been no secret to the mob four years ago. If Centurions thought Sky might contact him someday, they’d keep tabs on him for as long as it took.

  He should never have given her his phone number. But the thought of being apart from her had been more than he could bear.

  Luckily, she’d only called him a handful of times and, better still, she hadn’t even spoken. The only way he’d even guessed she was the caller was by the aching silence that echoed his greeting. One call had been from Omaha, another from Portland, and the most recent from Myrtle Beach.

  He checked his caller ID. She was still in Myrtle Beach. A special program on his cell phone pinpointed her coordinates.

  He leapt out of bead, stripping as he stalked into his bathroom in the basement of his mother’s house in Arlington, Virginia.

  Skyler’s words replayed in his head as he showered.

  How could Centurions have found her in the first place, let alone three times? WITSEC had a flawless record. No one in their protection had ever been targeted—until now. Obviously, something was amiss with the program. Once he joined her down in Myrtle Beach, he’d assess the situation and decide what to do.

  As he toweled off, he pondered the fastest way to reach her. Driving to Myrtle Beach would take about nine hours. A commercial flight, with all the hassles of airport security checks, would consume at least five. Skyler needed him now.

  Damn it, he would have to ask his father for help. If Connor Donovan weren’t his boss in the FBI’s Undercover Division, Drake would have nothing to do with the man since he’d walked out on his wife after twenty-seven years of marriage. But Connor had a pilot’s license and he owned his own small plane.

  Swallowing his pride, Drake dialed his father’s number and set his cell phone on his dresser in speaker mode so he could finish dressing.

  Connor answered on the second ring. “What happened?”

  Clearly there had to be a calamity for Drake to call his father—sad, but so true.

  “I need a favor.” He strapped his gun holster to his calf and reached for his jeans.

  “What kind of favor?”

  “I need you to fly me to Myrtle Beach tonight, right now. It’s a matter of life and death,” he added, stepping into his Levis.

  “Whose death?”

  “Mine.” Considering his life wouldn’t be worth living if anything happened to Sky, that wasn’t an exaggeration.

  His father breathed heavily on the other end.

  “Yes or no? I don’t have much time.”

  “Fine. I’ll meet you at the airport in half an hour.”

  “Make that twenty minutes—please,” Drake tacked on. In truth, he was taken aback by his father’s cooperation.

  Connor hung up on him.

  Stowing his phone in his rear pocket, Drake turned toward his closet to pack a bag. Having no idea what he was up against, he tossed a hodgepodge of clothing into his black duffel, stuffing in a dozen spare clips for his nine millimeter, just in case.

  He fetched his shaving kit from the bathroom. In the process of zipping it shut, his gaze fell on the box of condoms he'd purchased months ago for the purpose of expunging Skyler Dulay from his heart and mind. Only he’d never used it.

  If the fates were kind, maybe he would never have to.

  Drake had to give the old man credit. He’d filed a flight plan, fueled up, and completed a preflight check by the time Drake joined him in the cockpit of his Beechcraft Bonanza.

  “Let’s go,” he said, urging his father to take off right away.

  Luckily, the weather was crisp and clear with a full moon and a light tail wind blowing out of the north. It gave the two-seater added speed as they climbed into the night sky and banked south.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

  The question came one hour into the flight. Drake had hoped the audio on the headset he was wearing wasn’t working. Instead his father had waited until they were three thousand miles up in the air to interrogate him. Typical. Keeping his gaze fixed on the thin veil of moonlit clouds, Drake answered “Nope.”

  “Does this have anything to do with your current assignment?”

  Drake spent
his weekdays down in Freeport, Bahamas, posing as a yacht salesman in an FBI-coordinated effort to curb drug smuggling out of the Caribbean and into the United States. “Nope,” he said again.

  “Did you tell your mother anything?”

  Drake whipped his head around. “I left her a note.” He fought to keep his resentment from bubbling up, but it boiled over suddenly. “That’s more consideration than you ever showed her—especially the last time you walked out.”

  Connor sighed. “You have no idea what happened with me and your mother,” he said tiredly.

  “I don’t need to know,” Drake snarled.

  “Son, if this is company business, you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “Don’t call me son. I stopped feeling like your son the day I took over your household responsibilities.”

  Connor shot him a scowl. “Stick to the subject.”

  “I am. Trust me, Dad, the less you know about this the better.”

  “So...plausible deniability,” Connor concluded, using a term coined by the CIA during the Kennedy administration. “You think I’d lose my job if I knew,” he guessed.

  “Exactly.”

  Gnawing his lip in frustration, Connor went back to fiddling with his instruments.

  Drake, in turn, studied the stars burning light years apart in the vast expanse before them. They made him think of star-crossed lovers, fated never to be together.

  Screw fate. He was flying to Skyler now, and nothing in the universe could stop him.

  An hour and a half later, the two-seater came to a standstill at Myrtle Beach International Airport.

  As the single piston engine wound down, Drake set aside his headset and unbuckled his seat belt. He was now within minutes of Skyler’s last known location. Dawn silvered the sky above the trees dripping with Spanish moss. It had been three hours since she’d contacted him. He hoped she’d been asleep all this time.

  “Thanks for the ride,” he grated. He unlatched the door and was stepping out onto the wing when a large hand clamped down on his shoulder.

  As fast and strong as Drake was, he hadn’t inherited his father’s stature. He had no choice but to halt and look back at him. “What?”

  “That’s it? You’re going to go off on your own? I thought you were smarter than that.”

  Considering the trouble Drake might be walking into, he knew he could use his father’s help, but not when Connor offered it like that. Besides, the options running through his mind weren’t exactly by-the-book. He didn’t want to get his father in trouble if he chose to go vigilante.

  “I guess I’m not,” he countered. Yanking free of Connor’s hold, he slammed the hatch behind him and leapt to the spongy ground with his duffle bag.

  Jogging toward the bright lights of the General Aviation Terminal, he placed a call on his cell phone to Hertz Car Rental. His alias, Tom Keane the yacht salesman, would have a vehicle waiting by the time he reached the lot.

  He figured his father would fly off in disgust shortly. After all, leaving was what Connor did best.

  Chapter Three

  Skyler dozed in fitful spurts, waking periodically with her heart in her throat.

  Had she dreamed someone was knocking on her motel door or was it real?

  Groggy with sleep, she rolled out of bed and stumbled past her lit bathroom. Wiping a grain of sleepy dust from one eye, she went up on tiptoe to peer through the door’s peephole.

  The familiar sight of Drake wearing a hoodie made her heart leap with joy. He had dressed like that when pretending to be a teenager at the homeless shelter her father had used to launder his money. It was there that they’d met—her as a volunteer, him as a runaway in search of a new beginning. The hood was pulled up over his head, leaving his face in shadow, but she’d have recognized him anywhere.

  With a dry mouth and fingers that could scarcely unlatch the safety chain, Skyler hauled the door open. Drake! Her cry of anticipation curtailed abruptly as the light from her bathroom hit his face. No, not Drake. She was letting in a total stranger.

  She tried to back up, to slam the door on him, only the stranger was stronger. Forcing it open, he shoved his way inside and pinned her against the closet with his sturdy frame. A moist cloth came out of nowhere, covering her mouth and nose and stifling her screams.

  Caustic fumes scalded Skyler’s airways. She caught her breath and fought her captor’s cruel grip, but he was stronger. In her panic, she saw two more strangers slip into the room, including the man who’d taken her picture yesterday. Ordering his accomplice to fetch her belongings, he watched with a smirk as her attacker subdued her.

  Desperate for air, Skyler’s lungs convulsed. Cloying vapor seared her throat, and darkness pooled at the edges of her eyes.

  How did these men even find me here?

  Anguish speared her as she felt her consciousness slipping. She’d come so close to seeing Drake again.

  **

  Drake pushed the elevator button for the third floor. Then he jabbed the close-door button until the elevator finally lurched upward. The adrenaline juggernauting through his system rocked him on his feet. Anxiety twisted his intestines.

  He had dreamt of the moment when he and Sky would be reunited; every one of those dreams had been impossibly sweet—not like this. Foreboding robbed him of any pleasant anticipation.

  For Centurions to have found her three times, WITSEC had to have unintentionally leaked her location. If WITSEC couldn’t keep her safe then who could?

  I can.

  He pictured them running away together to a place like Thailand, where his sister, a CIA case officer, was assigned. Imagine making love to Skyler whenever he pleased and watching her graceful interactions with the locals! On one hand, it sounded like paradise. On the other, could he bring himself to walk out on his obligations to his mother the way his father had?

  The doors parted with a chime on the third floor. This is it.

  With a deep breath, he marched out onto the landing and turned left toward 314. At the end of the hallway, two men were pushing through the emergency stairwell exit, and one of them was carrying a woman.

  The unsettling sight broke Drake’s stride.

  The woman’s hair was auburn hair, not gold like Skyler’s, but she could have colored it. He couldn’t see enough of her face before they stepped out of sight to make a positive ID, but he swore that her scent—a blend of gardenia and honeysuckle—still hung in the air. Given the way her head had lolled on the man’s shoulder, she had to be passed out, cold.

  They’d gotten to her first!

  The realization had him pausing to retrieve his nine millimeter from under his pant leg. Then he pursued the pair, slipping stealthily through the fire door in their wake. Several levels below him he could hear footfalls and low-pitched voices. There were three of them, he realized, not just two.

  Silencing his footfalls as much as possible, he flew down the steps in hot pursuit. But they were already on the ground floor, now, exiting the building.

  As a loud click signaled their departure, Drake leapt recklessly down the remaining stairs. He couldn’t let them get away. Christ, how would he ever forgive himself?

  Barreling through the exit on the ground floor, he found himself in a parking lot gilded by a gray dawn. Less than thirty feet away, the man who’d been carrying Skyler had just unloaded her into the back of the van and was about to climb in himself.

  “Hey!” Drake yelled.

  The man swiveled to look at him, and Drake raised his weapon, stalking the van with determination. “FBI! Put your hands in the air and step away from the vehicle.”

  The man assessed the immediate area, saw no one else and, with a shout at the driver, dove into the cargo area and slammed the door shut. The engine roared and the van peeled away.

  Oh, hell no. Aiming his weapon at the left rear tire, Drake fired. But in the gloom and with the van in motion, he missed. “Fuck!” His rental vehicle was parked near the front of the hotel
. His odds of catching up with the van were slim, at best.

  But then a second pistol barked, and the van wobbled, but it didn’t stop. At a hampered pace, it continued to make its getaway.

  Drake sprinted toward his rental, wondering who had helped him. He jumped into it, revved the engine and zipped out of his parking space, having parked tail-end-in.

  As he scanned the horizon for the van’s taillights, he spied a lone figure, back-dropped by a brightening sky and standing near the lot’s exit.

  His father. What the hell? Connor must have followed him and fired on the van after Drake missed his shot.

  Too grateful to be angry, he slowed just enough to let his father in then took off before the passenger door was even shut.

  “You want to tell me who we’re after?” Connor demanded irritably.

  Not really. But now that his father was involved, Drake couldn’t bring himself to reject his help. He just hoped he didn’t end up costing both of them their careers.

  “Centurion scum,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the dark shape of the van bumping up the four-lane highway several hundred yards ahead of them. A couple of cars and three stoplights kept them much farther back than Drake would have liked. “We can’t lose them. They’ve got Skyler.” His voice shook on the last sentence.

  Out the corner of his eye, Drake assessed his father’s rigid figure.

  “Skyler Dulay?” Connor asked in an inscrutable voice. “Last I heard she was in WITSEC.”

  “She was. She called me earlier this morning, scared out of her mind that she was being followed. She said it’d happened before and that WITSEC couldn’t protect her anymore. That’s obviously the case.” It was his training that allowed Drake to speak as though his heart wasn’t sitting frozen in his chest, ready to shatter if the worst were to happen to her.

  Connor scraped a hand over his bristly jaw. “I wonder what happened,” he muttered.

  “That makes two of us, but I’m not going to let Skyler disappear in the meantime. Look,” he added well aware that he was overstepping his jurisdiction by meddling in WITSEC’s affairs, “I appreciate you helping me out back there, but it would probably be best for you if I let you out right here.”