Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit Strategy\Payback\Covert Justice (3 page)

“Later. Right now, we have more important things to do.” He pulled an energy bar from his pocket, handed it to her. “Eat.”

“I don't think so.” She thrust it back. “I've already been drugged a couple of times. I'm not going to let it happen again.”

“It would be stupid for me to drug you right before we make a run for it.”

“Run? You know how far it is to the nearest town?” she asked.

“Seventy miles.”

“Exactly. Running is
not
going to be an option.”

“Leaving is. That's the plan. How we do it is going to depend on whether or not I can turn off the security system before John shows up.” He walked to the window that looked out into the church's front yard. Moonlight spilled onto the lush grass. A few shrubs lined the path that led from the church to the residential area of the compound. Someone stood beside one of them, his shadowy form nearly blending with the dark outline of the bushes.

John. Cyrus didn't have any doubt about that.

“Is he out there?” Lark asked, leaning in so that she could see out the window. He doubted she realized how close they were or how vulnerable she was making herself. If he'd wanted to take her out, he could have done it easily.

“Yes.”

“Where?” she whispered as if John might somehow hear.

“Near the shrubbery. Right at the edge of the path.”

“What's he doing out there?”

“Making sure I do what he's paying me to do. It's not going to be long before he comes in to check on my progress. Come on.” He took her hand, pulled her away from the window.

“Where? There isn't a place on the compound without security cameras. If we leave the building, he'll know it.”

“I can take out the security cameras.”

“How?”

“How about you save the questions for later?” He strode through the sanctuary and into a narrow hall. The church office was to the left, the door closed and locked. It took seconds to get in, just a little longer to log on to the computer. He typed in the password that John was a little too careless with, smiled as the security system opened up to him.

Lark stood a few feet away, watching intently as he began typing in code. “You're a man of many talents, Cyrus.”

“Not many, but the ones I have are useful in situations like this.”

“Would they be useful in opening this?” She pointed to a file cabinet.

“If it was necessary.”

“It's necessary,” Lark responded, tugging at the handle.

He ignored her. They didn't have time to play seek-and-find.

“Cyrus,” Lark said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Did you hear me? I said it was necessary.”

“Your idea of necessary and mine aren't the same. To me, necessary is shutting down the security system and getting us both out of here in one piece.”

“You've been on the compound for how long?”

“About a week.”

“So, you've seen the trucks coming and going in the middle of the night?”

“Yes.”

“And you're not curious? You don't want to know what's in them?”

He sighed, looked up from the computer screen and met her eyes. Gray eyes. That's what Essex had said. It was hard to tell from the photographs and impossible to see in the darkness. “Yeah. I'm curious, but not so curious that I'm willing to die to find out.”

“It will only take a—”

The sound of a door opening silenced her and made every nerve in Cyrus's body jump to life.

Footsteps tapped on the tile floor, John's toneless whistle filling the church.

Cyrus flicked off the computer, turned on a light, nearly tossed Lark into the chair.

“Play along,” he hissed.

She barely had time to nod before John was there, moving into the room, his dark gaze jumping from Cyrus to Lark and back again.

“What are you doing in here?” he snapped.

“Getting the information you asked me for,” he said coldly.

“The door was locked for a reason, son.”

“I'm not your son, and you said to bring her wherever I wanted, do whatever was necessary.”

“I didn't mean break into the church office.”

“Then, you should have been clearer. Fact is, this is the farthest away from people that we can get. You don't want anyone hearing her, right?”

John hesitated, something in his face going just a little soft as he looked at Lark.

“Right,” John finally said.

“Then how about you go, and leave me to do what I do best?” Cyrus offered his best predatory smile, the one that had made tougher men than John back down.

“I think I'll stay. If you're such an expert at getting information, I might learn something from you.” He dragged a chair over, sat it right in front of Lark.

“You're going to tell us what we want to know. Right, doll?” John said. “You're going to make this easy on everyone. It's what Joshua would have wanted.”

“I guess you'd know,” she replied. “You were one of his best friends.” There were freckles on her cheeks and nose, dark circles under her eyes. She was closing in on thirty, but could have passed for twenty, her dark red hair curling around an unlined face.

Delicate.

That's how she looked.

Maybe that's why John leaned forward, touched her cotton-skirt-covered knee. “You took something that belongs to Elijah. Where is it? All you have to do is tell us, and you can go back to your life.”

“Like Joshua was allowed to go back to his?”

“Joshua died in a terrible accident,” John said with a scowl. “The police investigated. They agreed.”

“What about Ethan?”

That was a name Cyrus hadn't heard before, and he forced himself to relax, to let the conversation play out. There was a lot going on that he didn't understand, and that could be dangerous.

John's scowl deepened. “He's probably living life somewhere far away from Amos Way.”

“He would never have left his wife and children.”

“He was always looser in his morals then the rest of the group. Joshua knew that. You knew that.”

“What I know,” she said quietly, “is that you're a pawn in whatever game Elijah is playing, and that you're paid plenty of money to be one. You betrayed the group. You betrayed my husband. You're the reason why he's dead. I don't know if you pulled the trigger or if one of your hired men did, but—”

“Shut up!” He lunged toward her, his fist raised, his intent obvious.

Cyrus had no choice.

He pounced, tackling John to the ground, struggling as the other man reached for his gun, tried to free it from its holster. John was strong and outweighed Cyrus by a good seventy pounds, but if he won, it was all over. No backup was coming. No help was on its way. For the first time since Cyrus had joined HEART, he was on his own. It was the way he'd wanted it. He had a feeling he was going to regret that choice.

He wrestled John into a choke hold, managed to keep him from freeing his gun. Was panting hard, trying to force him into submission when something heavy whizzed by his head, glanced off his shoulder, slammed into John's face.

There was a grunt, a crash. And then there was darkness.

THREE

L
ark stumbled across the dark room, slammed into a chair that blocked the path to the door.

She pushed the chair out of the way, raced to the door. Escape. That's all she wanted.

But Cyrus had risked his life for her, and running meant leaving him behind. Injured? She didn't think so. She'd tossed the lamp at John's head, saw it make contact a split second before the room went dark. At least, that's what she thought she'd seen. She wasn't sure. Her hands had been shaking. Her body had been shaking, all the adrenaline and fear pouring out. She might have missed her mark, seen what she wanted to see rather than what was.

She reached the door, could have run through the hall and out back, raced through the cemetery and climbed the fence, been in the woods and heading toward civilization in minutes.

But she couldn't leave Cyrus.

No matter how much her brain was screaming that she should.

She ran her hand along the wall, found the light switch and flicked it on. Turned to face the men.

Cyrus knelt beside John's prone body, his eyes dark, his expression unreadable. He looked tough and hard, his black security jacket hanging open to reveal his shoulder holster.

“Is he dead?” she managed to ask, her throat so tight she barely got the words out.

“Not even close.” He took the handcuffs from his belt, turned John onto his stomach, yanked his arms up behind his back and cuffed him.

“I hope I didn't hurt him too badly.”

“I hate to tell you this, Lark, but hurting McDermott is the least of your worries.” He removed John's gun belt. “You know how to use a firearm?”

“Yes.” Joshua had taught her to load a rifle and a handgun, and she'd become a decent marksman in the years she'd lived in Amos Way. Owning firearms, understanding how to use them, that was part of a sustainable lifestyle, part of self-reliance and living off the grid. It had been a while since she'd been out shooting, but she hadn't forgotten.

“Put this on.” He thrust the gun belt into her hands.

Obviously, he wasn't worried about her using the gun on him.

She took the belt, buckled it around her waist. John wasn't a small guy, and she wasn't a big woman. Especially not now. Three months in Amos Way reliving all the good times and that one really bad time, a week in the prison trailer avoiding drugged food, and she'd lost any extra weight she'd ever had on her.

The belt slid to her hips, and she pulled it back up.

“Come here.” Cyrus grabbed the front of the belt, dragged her close, used his knife to dig a hole through thick leather. “Try that.”

It was perfect.

Of course.

Cyrus seemed like that kind of guy. The guy who never made a mistake, who didn't hesitate, who knew exactly what needed to be done and how to do it.

He opened a desk drawer, rifled through it. Opened another one.

“What are you looking for?”

“Keys. Elijah's car is parked just outside the gate. We might be able to use it.”

“Only if we can get out of the gate without being shot,” she responded. Elijah was the only member of the group allowed to have a car. The other vehicles were kept in a large garage built two decades ago. Her in-laws kept an old Cadillac there. Her car was there, too, the old Ford Mustang parked close to the garage doors, the key handed over to her father-in-law when she entered the compound. No way did she plan to go back to her in-laws' place to look for it. She wasn't going back for her notebook either. Maybe she should. She'd written notes in it, kept track of every delivery to the compound and every shipment that left it. That had to be the key to understanding Joshua's death, and until she understood it, she couldn't move forward, couldn't move on.

“No keys anyway,” Cyrus said, closing the last drawer. “No phone. There's no external internet connection on the computer. It's networked with the ones in the security barracks, but there's no access to the outside world.”

“Are you sure?”

“I snuck in here a few nights ago to check.”

“There's a phone in Elijah's house.”

“We're not going to risk going there.”

John moaned, turned onto his back, his eyes open but unfocused.

“We could take him with us,” she suggested. “He could probably get us a ride out of here.”

“Get us killed you mean. We've got two guns and two people. The security team is ten times as strong. And I can tell you from bunking with them for a few nights, they couldn't care less about their fearless leader.” He logged on to the computer, typed a password in. “If Elijah gives orders to take us down, they're not going to care if John goes down with us.”

She hadn't thought about that, but he was right. Elijah led the pack. John followed his orders. “We could break into one of the storage units. All the hunting rifles and ammunition are kept there.” Along with whatever had recently been delivered. She wouldn't mind getting a peek at that while they were there.

“Too risky.”

“Without risk there can be no great reward.”

“You sound like Essex,” he muttered, his fingers flying over the keys. She didn't know what he was doing, but a code seemed to be forming on the computer screen.

“Thank you.”

“Did I say that was a compliment?”

“Doesn't matter if you did or not. I like Essex. He's a great guy.” She took the knife from the sheath that hung from John's gun belt, used it to pry open the file cabinet.

There wasn't much in it. Just alphabetized birth and wedding certificates.

She closed the drawer, glanced around the room.

“You're not going to find what you want here,” Cyrus said.

“What do you know about what I want?”

“You want to shut Clayton down.”

“True.”

“You want to prove he had your husband killed. Or that he pulled the trigger.”

“Also true.”

“You should have gone to the police. Asked for professional help.”

“I did. They needed evidence that a crime was committed. Something more than just my gut instincts.”

“You came back to find it?”

“I came back because my in-laws asked me to visit.” Looking for evidence had been a side product of that.

“Right.” He continued to type rapidly, his attention seeming to be completely focused on what he was doing.

“It's true. They sent a couple of letters at the end of the school year, asked if I had any photographs of Joshua that they could have.”

“I thought this place frowned on cameras and photographs and all those modern type things.”

“It does, but Elijah made an exception because my mother-in-law, Maria, was grieving so much. I made some copies of our wedding photos and brought them with me.”

“You're more naive than Essex thinks if you believe your in-laws wanted you back here for photographs.”

“I had my own reasons for coming back.” And she
had
believed her in-laws. At first. Later, when there'd been excuse after excuse for keeping her at the compound, when she hadn't been allowed access to computers, cars, the outside world, she'd realized she was a prisoner. She hadn't tried to escape. She'd been too focused on her goal to worry, too sure she'd be able to find the evidence she needed to be very concerned.

That was its own kind of naïveté.

Or maybe stupidity.

Fortunately, it hadn't gotten her killed.

Yet.

“You do realize that we're trapped in a compound with a dozen armed men who aren't going to want to let us escape, right?” she asked, stepping to the door and looking out into the hall. The church was still silent, the hallway and the sanctuary beyond it dark. That didn't mean they were safe. In Amos Way, nothing was ever what it was supposed to be. Even her in-laws weren't what they'd claimed. They'd told her she was a daughter to them, that they loved her as much as they'd loved their own children. She doubted they'd have let one of their kids rot in a trailer for five days.

“I am very aware of our situation,” he responded calmly.

“Then, maybe you could hurry?”

“If I hurry and type in the wrong thing, we're sunk.”

“We're sunk anyway,” she muttered.

“Essex didn't tell me you were a pessimist.”

“I'm a realist.” And realistically, she couldn't see any way out of the mess she'd gotten herself into.

Faith. That's what Joshua would have said. Faith and God could move mountains.

She'd tried to hold on to that after he'd died. Mostly she had. There were days when she struggled, when she wondered why God's plan included pain and heartache. On days like that, she had to remind herself of the good times and the blessings.

“Got it!” Cyrus pushed away from the desk, grabbed her hand and dragged her out into the hall.

He moved so fast, they were out the back door and in the old cemetery before she could think about the danger. Moonlight shone on crumbling headstones, casting long shadows across overgrown grass and weeds. The fence was a few hundred yards ahead. She'd climbed it before, in the first heady months of marriage when she and Joshua had been giddy with happiness, when they'd thought they'd live in Amos Way for a few years, teach school there, repay Joshua's college debt to the compound and then move on with their lives.

They'd had it all planned out. Once upon a time.

She tripped over gnarled weeds, nearly landed face-first in the fence. She grabbed the chain link, started scrambling up it without any prodding from Cyrus. They were on limited time. Eventually someone would realize the cameras were down, sound the alarm and the compound would spring to life, all Elijah's security force rushing to find the reason why.

She reached the top of the fence, realized she didn't have a jacket or coat to throw over the barbed wire.

“Here.” Cyrus tossed his coat over the jagged barbs.

She scrambled over the top, the barbs poking through the coat, the alarm finally sounding, screaming its warning through the still night.

* * *

Cyrus should have found a way to take out the alarm, but he hadn't wanted to take the time to do it. Lark had been right about the number of armed men and their chances of surviving. They needed to move quickly, stay a step ahead of the men who would be tracking them. On his own, he could have done it easily. He wasn't so sure about managing it with Lark. She was moving well, up and over the fence without a problem, but adrenaline would wear off eventually. When it did, she'd be done.

He needed to get them away from the threat before then.

That wasn't going to be easy. No car. No phone. No means of communication with civilization. The closest highway was a few miles away, the rural road that led to it too obvious a means of escape. There'd be security guards there in minutes, blocking any chance of using that route.

He clambered over the fence, grabbed his coat as he climbed down the other side.

Lark was just ahead of him, moving at a fast jog, heading straight for the road.

“Wrong way.” He snagged the back of her sweater, headed in the opposite direction, towing her along with him.

“We need to get to the road,” she protested. “We might be able to get a ride from someone.”

“How many cars use that road, Lark?”

“Not many.”

“None. Unless they're heading here,” he corrected. He needed her completely committed to his plan, absolutely determined to do things his way.

“You never know,” she replied. “Sometimes people get lost. Sometimes they turn onto the road and make it all the way to the compound before they realize they're heading the wrong way.”

“And sometimes it snows in April, but not often enough to count on. The woods are a better choice.”

“The road is the quicker, straighter route out.”

She was persistent, he'd give her that, but he was calling the shots from now until they made it to safety. “If we want to die. I don't.”

She was silent after that, stumbling along beside him as he ran toward edge of the woods that spread out from the border of the compound. He'd studied maps before he'd arrived. He knew how deep the woods were, how secluded Amos Way was. Built on land that had once housed a logging business, the compound was surrounded by thousands of acres of deep forest. To the north, fifty miles of wilderness fed into federal land. To the east, more woods and an abandoned ski lodge. From there, they could access the highway. They just had to make it across twenty miles of forest.

The siren shut off abruptly, and Lark grabbed his arm, her fingers cold through his shirt. She was shaking, and he dropped his coat around her shoulders, knowing it wasn't the cold that was getting to her.

“It's okay,” he tried to reassure her, but she had to know it wasn't okay. They were in trouble, and if he'd had a cell phone, he'd have called the team, brought in the cavalry.

He didn't have a cell phone, didn't have any hope of backup.

He had nothing but himself, enough years and experience to get them through, and the kind of tired worn-out faith that probably should have been buried years ago.

He'd held on to it, though. It was the one thing he had left from the time he'd had with his parents. They'd believed with everything they were that God had a plan, that He'd lead them in the right direction. That direction had led them to the Congo and mission work that had gotten them killed and his sister kidnapped. Cyrus had been twelve, left with the pastor of their church because his parents had thought he was too young to travel to the Congo.

When they'd died, he'd been angry, but he didn't blame God. They'd put themselves in a dangerous situation for the sake of people they didn't know.

He couldn't fault
them
for it either.

He knew what it was like to willingly go in where others wouldn't, to risk everything for a stranger. Like his parents, he'd committed his life to saving others. Only he wasn't saving souls. He was saving lives. And, he wasn't pulling a family into it, wasn't going to leave anyone behind if he was killed.