Flee the Night
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Flee the Night
Copyright © 2005 by Susan May Warren. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of woman © 2004 by Mitsuru Yamaguchi/Photonica. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of man copyright © 2004 by Creasource/Picturequest. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of forest © 2004 by Digital Vision. All rights reserved.
Edited by Lorie Popp
Designed by Cathy Bergstrom
Scripture quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible,
New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible,
New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Warren, Susan, date
Flee the night / Susan May Warren.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4143-0086-3 (sc)
ISBN-10: 1-4143-0086-7 (sc)
I. Title.
PS3623.A865F58 2005
813
6—dc22
2004023139
Printed in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 07
8 7 6 5 4 3
FOR YOUR GLORY, LORD.
Contents
God again gifted me with the blessing of co-laborers to see this project come to fruition. My deepest gratitude goes to the following people.
Doug Satterly, a generous soldier whom I met on the plane to Kalispell. Thank you for letting me quiz you for two-plus hours, for your candidness and your advice. Your insights into the men of the Special Forces helped me craft Micah and Conner. May God keep you safe.
Olaf Growald, rescuer extraordinaire, in so many ways. Thank you for looking at these SAR scenes and helping me get them right. Any mistakes I made were mine alone. Thank you for always being “on His shift.”
David Lund, for your thorough descriptions of Internet security and for making them understandable to a non-techie. Again, any mistakes I made were mine alone.
Tracey Bateman, for your stellar critiques and insights into Missouri. Beyond that, thank you for being iron on iron. For the times you don’t take me seriously … and the times you do. I’m proud to know you and Rusty.
Anne Goldsmith, for knowing how to help me craft a story—you say, “Fix this” in the nicest way! And for liking Jim Micah and the entire Team Hope cast. You help make dreams come true.
Lorie Popp, for smoothing out this story into a seamless, polished piece. You have the touch! Thank you especially for helping me rename my 1980s calculator.
Andrew Warren, for poking holes in my plots, then helping me restitch them. You’re my Jim Micah, and I’m so glad I waited for you.
David Warren, for the day you sat in my office and astounded me with your spiritual insights into Isaiah 61. The metaphor of the dungeon belongs to you. Thank you also for making me lunch. I might starve without you.
Then 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.
PSALM 107:13-14,
NIV
THE PAST COULDN’T have picked a worse time to find her.
Trapped in seat 15A on an Amtrak Texas Eagle chugging through the Ozarks at four on a Sunday morning, Lacey … Galloway … Montgomery—what was her current last name?—tightened her leg lock around the computer bag at her feet. She dug her fingers through the cotton knit of her daughter’s sweater as she watched the newest passenger to their car find his seat. Lanky, with olive skin and dark eyes framed in wire-rimmed glasses, it had to be Syrian assassin Ishmael Shavik who sat down, fidgeted with his leather jacket, then impaled her with a dark glance.
She couldn’t stifle the shiver that rattled clear to her toes. Why hadn’t she listened to divine wisdom fifteen-some years ago and stayed at home instead of running after adventure? Lacey forced breath through her constricting chest. She hadn’t hoped to outrun her mistakes forever, but why today with Emily watching?
Lacey pried her fingers out of Emily’s sweater and laced her hands together in her lap, cringing at her weakness. She’d been taught not to give away emotions, liabilities, secrets. But she’d die before she’d let them harm a hair on Em’s head.
If only she’d possessed such an impulse seven years ago.
Tightening her jaw, she stared out the window. The Amtrak hustled north in the murky dawn, the Missouri oak, red buckeye, and hickory trees flanking the tracks—gray, silent sentries to her ill fate.
Oh, please, not here. Not now.
She and Emily were so close to finding peace. Now that the Ex-6 program had met National Security Agency (NSA) approval, the nightmare seemed to be over. After this little time-out and escape with her daughter to Chicago, Lacey would fine-tune the encryption/decryption program, then hand it over with a sigh of relief and the sense that she’d finally found a way to atone for her mistakes. Never again would the field agents be without a way to secure their communications. No more ambushes due to intercepted messages. No more corrupted information.
Lives—and national secrets—safe.
And finally, too, a safe home for Emily.
Please.
She didn’t know to whom she might be addressing her plea. God in heaven hadn’t looked her way for over a decade—not that she blamed Him. She was wretchedly on her own.
Around her, innocents slept—families, singles, the petite bourgeoisie voyaging to Chicago or beyond. Wealthy romantics above her were in compartments, perhaps for nostalgia or novelty. Lacey didn’t have a romantic bone left in her body, despite the aroma of a dining car, the charisma of faux leather seats, or even the hypnotic locomotive pulse. She didn’t have the energy or time for it, even if the errant inclination to be held in a man’s arms haunted her in the lonely hours of the predawn. Then again, it wasn’t just any man’s embrace that haunted her.
Lacey rubbed her forehead and considered her options. It hadn’t been so long ago that she’d memorized the exits and the players of every room she entered, but hope had smudged her reflexes. Ishmael sat two seats away, smack-dab in the middle of the car, blocking a desperate sprint down the aisle. The forest hurtled by at breakneck speed, discouraging a flying dismount.
Lacey stuck her hand in her pocket to rifle for her switchblade and brushed against Emily’s worn Beanie bear and only confidant that she named Boppy. Lacey had sent the child the Beanie Baby from Seattle—she still remembered the neon lights striping her hotel room, mocking her as she wrote a note to her toddler daughter, secreted in Aunt Janie’s care.
Life wasn’t fair.
She found the knife and tucked it under her thigh as she stole another glance at her killer. It sent a decade-old threat through her head:
You can’t run from me.
She blew out a breath and fought her climbing pulse as she clung to her training. Surprise. Focus. Determination. These things would help her flee, keep her alive.
What about Em? She longed to run her fingers across her daughter’s face, over the smattering of freckles on her high cheekbones, then through the short curly blonde hair that, like John’s, simply refused to obey a brush or a comb. Emily smelled of the fabric softener her aunt Janie used in the laundry and of soap from her pre-departure bath. Curled into the fetal position, the six-year-old leaned her head against the dark pane, drooling on the pillow tucked under her shoulder. Her breathing seemed shallow, uneven, as if she were caught in the throes of a nightmare. But it was only the consequences of a desperate and fatal mistake—one for which Lacey could never, ever forgive herself.
Forgiveness wouldn’t help her now, anyway. Not when her murderer stared at her like a slit-eyed wolf.
The air felt weighted with the slumber of passengers—some stirring, others in full collapse. The quiet pressed Lacey into her seat, made her heartbeat thunder in her ears. Fatigue played with her fear, pitting it against hope. Perhaps the man who had boarded this train wasn’t the same one who had threatened to slit her throat from ear to ear. Frank Hillman’s long arm of revenge.
Lacey
had
been careful. So careful she’d lost herself years ago in the torrent of aliases and the blur of constant movement. She often wondered if she would ever, even if the nightmare ended, find her way home.
Who was she kidding? She couldn’t go home when her mistakes branded her like an ugly, festering
T
for
traitor
on her forehead. But if she somehow escaped the stigma of being an accused murderer, she might return to the family farm, a place that still held secrets and hopes. She’d start over with Emily and build a new life. A peaceful life. An absolved life.
Yeah, right. If she kept supposing, she might as well dream that she hadn’t derailed her life seven years ago on a similar Sunday morning in an armpit country south of Russia … hadn’t ignored the urgings of God or whatever impulse had made her pause briefly in the hotel as John loaded his Ruger pistol.
“I want you to stay here,” he’d said. “And trust no one.” John Montgomery always had the bluest eyes, even in memory. Ocean blue, with flecks of pure sunshine that melted her into a senseless puddle. She’d fallen for those magnetic eyes first and his idealism second.
“No,” she’d said, shaking free of the hesitation, propelled by that same naive zeal that made the couple famous in the company. John and Lacey Montgomery, dynamic duo, spies of the spectacular new era when industrial espionage reigned in the vacuum of cold-war intrigues. “I’m coming with you.”
He hadn’t argued; she often blamed him for that omission. It seemed easier somehow.
Why didn’t you stop me?