by Jodie Bailey
But there was no time to draw.
Two men burst through the door. One leveled a pistol on Trey and the other held a small Skorpion machine gun.
Macey screamed but bit it off halfway. Trey could feel her standing tall behind him as though she refused to cower before men who were determined to terrorize her.
Good for her. He needed her to be strong right now. The only reason these two thugs hadn’t fired and taken him down was likely that they were wary of hitting Macey, who they still believed had the intelligence they wanted. She was safe from death and, as long as he was near her, so was he. But if they were separated or if those thugs took Macey away...
Then he was as good as dead, and she would suffer torture that nauseated him even in his imagination.
“Step away from her. She’s ours.” The pistol-toting thug circled to Trey’s left, cutting off the escape route to the back door while the second gunman maintained his position near the front door.
It was possible Macey and Trey could slip around the corner and through the kitchen to the garage, but they’d get no farther. It would take too long for the garage door to lift for them to duck under it. Thug Two would be out the front door waiting for them before they could escape.
They were trapped.
But he wasn’t handing over Macey. They’d have to go through him to get to her.
If only he hadn’t told Rich to stand down...
Wait. If he could get these two talking, could stall them long enough, then eventually Rich and Dana would figure out something was wrong and head this way. Hopefully with weapons at the ready.
“Move now.” The guy’s drawl was familiar. Trey hadn’t gotten a good look at the two who’d come after Macey on that first night, but the voice was one he’d never forget.
“You failed to get her the first two times, so now you’re trying again?” Trey moved his hand from his side, praying his shirt covered the pistol at his hip. If they didn’t know he had it, he could maintain the element of surprise. “I’m sure whoever your boss is isn’t happy that you came back empty-handed the last time.” Trey pretended to think. He was goading them, but that was good. Angry men were rarely men who were thinking, and if he could keep them off balance, he could eventually outsmart them. “Oh wait. You didn’t leave empty-handed. You left with a worthless picture. Of your boss, I’m guessing?”
The man by the door eased closer. His face drawn tight.
His buddy with the pistol twisted his lip. His nose twitched slightly, almost as though he was losing his composure. “I’m not telling you again to move.”
This was the tightrope Trey now walked. Keep them angry enough to make a misstep but not angry enough to fire at will.
“You hand her over and we leave you alive. Or better yet, she hands over what she has and we leave you both alive. We all walk away from this in one piece.” The man raised his pistol and leveled it, though his hand and voice both shook slightly with barely sheathed anger. “Otherwise, you die, we take her, and we make her talk.”
“Do you think I’m dumb enough to fall for that? If I move, you shoot me, then you take her.”
The man jerked the pistol higher.
Macey jumped and bumped into Trey’s back. “What if I come with you? Myself? And I take you to the intel? What will that buy me? My freedom? His life?”
The pistol lowered an inch. “You have what we want?”
“I do.”
Trey’s heart sank to his knees, making them so heavy they nearly dropped him to the floor. Had she been lying to him all along?
He’d been fooled again. He’d let a woman turn his head, let himself believe that he...that he loved her. That maybe she also loved him. Despite the danger, he ached to turn and unleash his hurt, his anger, his betrayal. He wanted to—
“Will you promise not to hurt him?” Macey’s voice was strong, with an accent not her own.
Could it be she’d changed that much? That she’d been so deep into her con of him that she’d changed everything about herself?
The man with the pistol stepped closer, until he was just out of Trey’s reach. “We won’t hurt him if you come with me.”
They’d kill him no matter what they promised her. She had to know that.
Macey rested her hand between his shoulder blades and let it slide toward his right side. She knew his pistol was there. She wouldn’t disarm him, would she?
“If we surrender and I return with you, will you promise not to hurt this man?” There was that odd cadence, that out-of-place accent again. It tweaked at a memory this time.
The thug’s head cocked to one side. He’d already answered her once.
What was Macey doing?
Trey froze. Those words. That tone. There was something familiar about them both. Something that lifted his spirit. That spoke to his heart. That reminded him of—
Of that movie. The one she’d made him watch over and over. That princess movie she could quote word for word. She was quoting it now, the scene where Buttercup agreed to surrender in exchange for Westley’s freedom. It was a signal the bad guys wouldn’t pick up.
She wasn’t turning on him. She was working to save them. The line before the one she was quoting popped out of his mouth. “Death first.”
He heard Macey’s exhalation and knew she understood.
He was telling her to move forward with her plan.
He just prayed she was a good enough shot to immobilize both men before they figured out what she was doing. And he prayed he was right, and that she wasn’t about to betray him straight into death.
As her fingers slid to his holster and closed around the pistol, Trey knew this was it. They were either about to survive or they were about to die. Together.
FOURTEEN
He’d heard her. He knew what she was doing. Macey nearly sagged in relief, something she’d once thought only happened in movies.
When he’d tensed at her initial declaration, she’d nearly abandoned the plan, knowing it had to feel like a knife digging into his back.
Then she’d figured out how to tell him.
And he’d heard.
She’d never loved him more than she did in that moment. Because she did love him, and she was going to do whatever it took to save him.
Macey’s fingers closed around the unfamiliar grip of Trey’s pistol as he angled his right side toward her. She slipped the weapon from its holster, took one step back from Trey as though she was about to step around him and prayed to the God she was beginning to believe in. With a deep breath, she steadied herself. “Now!”
Trey dropped to one knee and Macey fired.
The man closest to them cried out and dropped his pistol, gripping his shoulder.
Before Macey could register what was happening, Trey lunged for the loose pistol and came up on one knee, firing a round at the man near the front door.
Rather than fire back, Thug Two turned and bolted into the night. A shout from the front yard followed his escape.
Macey froze, the weapon gripped in her hands and her arms outstretched. Had she really just fired a gun? At a human being? Had she taken a life?
The shaking started as Dana ran into the house with her pistol drawn. She holstered the weapon and slid to her knees next to the man Macey had shot. “Trey, get Macey.”
In the next instant, he was beside her, his hand resting near her wrist. “It’s okay, Mace. You can lower the weapon. I’ll take it. You did good.”
Macey allowed Trey to ease the gun from her fingers and reholster it. He pulled her to him.
She sank against him as a quaking came from deep inside her. She was cold. She was hot. She was coming apart. Armed men. In her house. And she’d shot one.
Trey pulled her head to his shoulder and spoke past her ear. “You have him?”
“Yeah. Rich tackled the o
ne running out of the house. We figured something was wrong when you guys didn’t show. Rich spotted these guys through the window and called for backup. They’ll haul our friends here away shortly.”
Trey nodded, then turned his full attention to Macey. “You’re safe. You did good.”
“I shot a man.” She whispered the words harshly into his shoulder. “Did I kill him?” With everything in her, she hoped not. In all that had happened, taking another life would destroy her.
“He won’t use his shoulder for a while, but he’ll live to stand trial.”
She nodded, then took a deep breath and pulled herself together. She couldn’t fall apart. No matter what Trey said, she wasn’t safe. If they were going to hide, then Trey couldn’t stop to pick her up and carry her when her limbs turned to water. “Can you get me out of here? To where...” She glanced at the man on the floor, who could still hear her. “To somewhere else?”
“I’ve got this.” Dana’s voice broke in between them.
Trey laid his hands on Macey’s shoulders and searched her face. “Are you sure?”
“Where’s Kito?” Please don’t let her have shot her dog. She ripped away from Trey and glanced around the room. “Kito!”
“He’s fine.” Trey pressed a kiss to her forehead, then gently turned her toward her bedroom.
Kito peeked around the door, then trotted up the short hallway and leaned against Macey’s leg. She dropped to her knees and pressed her forehead to his, closing her eyes. Why couldn’t she go back a week to when Kito only had to comfort her when she was sad about her best friend’s death? When Trey was her friend and not a military investigator? Before killers and lies and secrets invaded her life in a way that surely didn’t happen in the real world?
Normal was a craving she couldn’t fight.
“Macey?” Trey squatted beside her and laid a hand on her back. “We need to go.”
They were the four heaviest words she’d ever heard. When she walked out that front door, there was no guarantee she’d ever come back.
But she pulled herself together one more time, grasped Kito’s leash and allowed Trey to help her up from her knees. She had to. There wasn’t a choice if she wanted to live.
Somehow she made it to the truck, got Kito settled and her seat belt buckled, and held it together as Trey pulled out of the neighborhood and headed for I-95, watching the rearview as much as he watched out the windshield. He probably hoped she wouldn’t notice but she did.
She noticed too many things. The kick of the pistol in her hand. The smell of gunpowder. The look on that man’s face when the bullet found its mark.
“You okay?” Trey’s voice was low in the darkened truck, and his hand found hers where it rested on the seat. He wrapped his fingers around hers.
Something else she remembered... The sound of Trey’s voice when she’d told those men she had what they wanted, when she’d taken the risk that she could save them both.
She sniffed. “You thought I betrayed you. That I’d been lying to you the whole time.”
“For a minute, yes.” His fingers tightened on hers. “You were pretty convincing.”
Macey nodded and turned her head to stare at the darkness outside her window. He didn’t try to deny it or talk around it. Somehow, his honesty took away some of the sting. It felt like he respected her enough to tell her the truth, even when it was hard to hear. A small part of her heart that had backed away when she’d found out who he truly was edged in his direction.
“You have to understand where I come from.”
“I do.” His ex-wife’s abandonment was too much like her mother’s behavior. Self-centered and selfish. They’d both been deeply wounded and scarred by those who were supposed to care the most. “And I don’t blame you.” She pulled her hand from his and balled her fist on her thigh. Even though he’d earned back her trust, she wasn’t sure what to think, what was real with him and what wasn’t. He’d held her hand, pulled her close, kissed her on the forehead... But was that real? Was he still playing a game? Was it how he’d comfort any woman?
Surely not. But still, she was falling fast for him. The larger question was how he felt about her. And how she’d ever feel free to be in a relationship. “After what we’ve both been through, after all of the lies and the hurt, how do we ever trust anyone again?”
In the dim glow from the dashboard lights, Trey winced. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and negotiated the on-ramp to the highway. “That’s why it’s called trust. Otherwise, it would be certainty or knowing, I guess.”
Made sense, but it didn’t help.
Trey watched the road. “Here’s the truth, and you’re not going to like it even though it’s probably something you already know.”
His words were heavy. Macey reached to the floorboard behind her and rubbed Kito’s head where he’d curled up between the front and back seats.
“Every human being alive will fail you. They’ll hurt you. It’s inevitable. Even if they don’t want to, it’s going to happen. You know that well. And, Macey, you’ve hurt people, too.”
This was personal. Macey wanted to argue that she had never deliberately lied to anyone or set them up to go to prison for horrific crimes, but she couldn’t seem to get her emotions worked up. She was too tired. Exhausted beyond reason.
“It doesn’t have to be big hurts, Mace. Even smaller wrongs can leave lasting impressions.”
She pressed her fist harder against her thigh. He was right. She didn’t want him to be, but he was. “So there’s nowhere safe. Nowhere to truly put your faith.” She’d always known it. But now, even as she spoke, she knew what he was going to say next. Something deep inside her was ready to hear it. Craved to hear it. “You’re going to say God.”
He chuckled softly. “Sounds to me like you already know.”
“Maybe. But I don’t know how to trust what I can’t see. I don’t know how to trust a God that does things His way. Like, my mother still chooses herself over anyone else. You still wrecked. Your ex-wife still left you.”
“True, but God has used those things in my life. When you trust Him, He’ll use yours, too. The bad doesn’t go to waste. Because of Gia, I have a deeper understanding of what people who have been betrayed like you’ve been betrayed feel. I’ve been able to walk beside friends who have been hurt. And because of that wreck... Well, God moved me into this job, where I’ve stopped things from happening in this country that you’d never imagine. I’ve brought bad guys to justice.” He tapped the steering wheel with his thumb. “I’m here with you right now.”
“You’re here because you were trying to prove I was selling secrets to our enemies. Because you thought I was a criminal.” The truth stung all over again.
Yellow lines disappeared under the front of the truck for several miles before Trey spoke. “I doubt Olivia expected you would be in danger from the men she betrayed, but she did make you look guilty to anyone with eyes to see.” He held up a hand to stop her from speaking, then dropped it back to the steering wheel. “You were going to be investigated because of her setup. It was inevitable. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. Someone who might not have recognized your innocence in time to save you.” His words were low, but she felt the weight of them.
If Trey hadn’t truly gotten to know her... If it had been someone else looking for evidence... Then they might have pronounced her guilty. This wasn’t about Trey and her feelings for him. This was about the right person being set into place to recognize her innocence and to rescue her from a life of imprisonment and ostracism.
“God did that.” Her whispered words barely penetrated the air in the truck, but somehow Trey heard them.
His hand slipped from the steering wheel and found hers again, lifting her fist from her leg and uncurling her fingers until he had her safely in his grasp. “He did. The situation isn’t humanly
perfect. Our situations on earth will never be humanly perfect, because we live in a world that’s a mess. But God can take a messed-up thing and make it perfect. He did it for you in this situation.” Trey held on to her hand tighter, as though he could squeeze his words up her arm and into her soul. “He wants to do that for your whole life.” He laughed softly. “I sound like a preacher, but it’s true. I don’t know a better way to say it, but He wants to fix what’s wrong inside you and make you right with Him.”
“Like you are.”
“Like I am. My life’s not perfect, but it’s so much better with God. Even when it all falls apart, I can trust He’s got something in the works to make it worthwhile in the end. Something He can use for good down the line. It’s something you can trust, even when you can’t see.”
Macey clung to Trey’s hand, trying to grasp what he was saying. It was right there. Right in front of her. But somehow, in this dark truck, fleeing for her very life, she couldn’t seem to grab it and hold on.
* * *
Pink and orange light tinged the edges of the mountains. Trey turned off the road and pulled onto the dirt lane that wound up the side of a mountain to Arch Thompson’s house. The family home of Captain Harrison’s “battle buddy,” it was a huge plot of land that sprawled most of the way down into the valley. A tree-filled oasis, it was the perfect tucked-away hiding place for a woman on the run.
And for the man who was falling for her.
Trey lifted his foot from the accelerator and coasted to a stop on the winding drive. He glanced at Macey, who’d fallen asleep a couple of hours earlier, her head against the headrest and one hand between the seats on Kito’s neck.
There was no denying it. Something was happening between them, something big. He was drawn to the way she outshouted him during hockey games. The way she stood up against the fiercest adversity he’d ever seen another human being face. The way she treated the dog who hadn’t started out as hers, but who had become another piece of her heart.
