Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit Strategy\Payback\Covert Justice (5 page)

Nothing more than a curve in the road separated them from the security team. It was tempting to pull over, get out, stage an ambush. He could take out the tires of the vehicles, but he couldn't take out the gunmen. Not all of them. Not before he or Lark was hurt.

Or worse.

He accelerated, taking a curve too quickly, the tires spinning in dirt and dead leaves before finding traction again. He could hear Lark's breathing, hear her frantic gasps. She didn't scream, though. Didn't ask questions. Didn't do anything but sit stiff and tense in her seat, eyes trained on the road in front of them.

He glanced in the rearview mirror, saw a black sedan rounding the curve he'd just taken. It was a straight stretch to the paved road. Nothing between him and the car behind.

Not just one car. Another sped around the curve. Probably four or five armed men in each.

They were going all out to keep Lark from escaping.

Because of what?

What did she have or know?

There were a dozen questions he wanted answers to, but he wouldn't get any of them until they were out of danger.

The headlights splashed on blacktop, and his heart jumped.

Almost there. Just a few hundred yards, and then three miles.

He sped out onto the paved road, taking the turn so quickly, he nearly lost control.

Slow it down.
That's what his colleague Jackson would have been saying.
Stay focused.

Cyrus would have been ignoring him and everyone else on the team. Not that he didn't respect the other members. He did. He was used to making split-second decisions, trusting his instincts to get him through. Right now, his instincts were saying that the cars behind them weren't the only things he needed to be concerned about.

If Lark was right, the sheriff of the closest town had connections with Amos Way. It was possible the danger behind them was chasing them into even more danger. If Cyrus was arrested on some trumped-up charge, Lark would be alone. That would be a perfect opportunity for Elijah to take her down.

He wasn't going to let that happen.

He had to get to a phone, call in the team, get some backup.

First, he had to lose their tail.

He pressed the accelerator to the floor and sped along the road, heading toward the interstate and their only hope of escape.

FIVE

L
ark clutched the door handle, her gaze on the side mirror. She could see the headlights of the oncoming car. The Mustang was fast, but she didn't know if it was fast enough to outrun a modern car. She'd never tested it out, never been tempted to drive above the speed limit, find out the Mustang's mettle. She'd bought it when she was in high school, and she'd spent a good amount of money making sure it stayed running. After she'd married Joshua, the car had been stored in the Amos Way garage. She'd retrieved it after his death, driven it to Baltimore, slept in it for a few too many nights, because she'd barely had enough money in her account to buy food and gas let alone rent a place.

She loved the old car, but she loved her life a little more. If pushing it to its limits burned the engine out, so be it. As long as they got to the highway before that happened.

“Can you go any faster?” she asked, her heart thumping painfully. Her body seemed to be vibrating with the force of it, and she had to clench her teeth together to keep them from chattering.

She'd been scared plenty of times in her life, but this was the stuff of nightmares. A pitch-black road, headlights behind them, nothing but darkness ahead. Certain death if they were caught, but not much of hope of escaping.

Her eyes were dry from staring so long without blinking, but she was afraid if she did blink the car would be on them, bullets would be flying. Cyrus might lose control of the Mustang, drive it into the ditch on the side of the road.

“Breathe,” Cyrus said so quietly she almost didn't hear.

“What?” she tried to ask, but she had no breath in her lungs, no air to push the words out.

“Slow breaths, Lark. In and out, because if you pass out and fall into me, we're both going to be in trouble.”

Breathe. Right.

The body was supposed to do that automatically. Hers seemed to have forgotten how. She took a gasping breath and then another, realized that she was clutching the door handle so tightly, her nails were cutting into the leather.

“I'm okay,” she said as much for herself as for Cyrus.

“I know you are.”

“And I was breathing.” Just not regularly.

“Okay,” he said, his eyes focused on the road, his attention fixed exactly where she wanted it to be.

“They're still behind us,” she pointed out just in case he'd missed the bright lights on the road behind them.

“Another thing I didn't need to be told,” he responded drily.

“Do you need to be told that there's a stop sign about a hundred yards straight ahead?” she asked, her gaze fixed on the sign and the intersection beyond it. No merge onto the interstate. This was supposed to be a full-out stop.

He didn't respond, didn't seem to let up on the gas.

One minute they were approaching the intersection, the next minute they were in it, tires spinning as he took the turn too quickly, righted the Mustang and just kept on going.

“Are you crazy?” she nearly shouted. “You could have gotten us killed. You could have killed someone else!”

“There was no one coming.”

“There could have been!”

“Do you think I would have risked your life and the life of another driver? I don't do things unless I'm as sure of the outcome as anyone ever could be.”

“How would I know what you would or wouldn't do? I don't know you, remember?” She glanced in the mirror. No lights. Not one car was on the road behind them. “They're gone,” she said, almost afraid to say it out loud for fear that the lights would appear again.

“I noticed.” If he was happy about it, she couldn't tell. His expression was hard, his jaw set. If she'd seen him in an alley somewhere, she'd have run the other direction. But there she was, letting him drive her Mustang while she sat in the passenger seat and hoped he was one of the good guys.

“You're not surprised?”

“No.”

“Can you elaborate?”

He nodded, his hands relaxed on the steering wheel, his gaze still focused on the road. “You said that Elijah's brother is the sheriff of River Fork.”

“Half brother.”

“River Fork is the closest town. Elijah knows that. He's probably already called his brother to let him know we're on the way.”

“So we'll go to Smithville. It's a dot on the map, but it's only twenty miles farther. There's a gas station, a phone, a—”

“We're almost out of gas. I'm sure Elijah knows that, too.”

“I had half a tank when I gave my father-in-law the keys.” She leaned across the seat, looked at the fuel gauge. From her angle, it looked like they were already on empty. “Someone syphoned the gas or drove the car around without permission.”

Cyrus shrugged. “The reason is irrelevant, because it doesn't change anything. We're going to need gas. Thanks to Elijah's rules about not having money at Amos Way, neither of us can pay for it.”

“Don't you get paid to be part of the security team?” She'd been told the security team got paid well. Why else would so many young men stay in a place with such strict rules?

“The money is deposited into my bank account, but I don't have access to it unless I'm out of the compound. My wallet, cell phone and electronics were collected when I entered Amos Way. Just like yours were.”

“So, you're driving without a license?”

He laughed, the sound rough and a little harsh. “I think that's the least of our worries.”

He was right, but it was a lot easier to worry about that then about the nearly empty fuel tank, their moneyless state, Elijah's half brother waiting for them to show up in River Fork.

If he
was
waiting.

She'd spoken to Sheriff Radley Johnson several times in the weeks following Joshua's death. He'd been kind, empathetic, seemingly determined to uncover the truth. In the end, he'd said that there hadn't been evidence of homicide and no obvious motive for someone in the compound to want to harm Joshua.

She'd tried to convince him that Joshua was too careful to have made such a rookie mistake, but he'd been unable to reopen the case without evidence to prove that the death was more than an accident. Unable or unwilling? That's what she'd wondered when she'd decided to return to Amos Way.

She was wondering it even more now that they were heading straight for the sheriff's jurisdiction.

If Elijah had called ahead, asked his brother to stop them, that would explain why the security team had given up the chase.

She squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying to stop the pulsing pain that was building behind her eyes. It had been months since she'd had a full-out debilitating migraine. Usually, the first hint of one and she took the medicine she'd been prescribed.

But Elijah didn't believe in medicine. He didn't allow pain relievers, instead he encouraged his followers to pray for healing, expected that they would avoid doctors. There were a few rare occasions when a member of the community was granted permission to seek medical treatment, a few times when an accident required a trip the emergency room.

Elijah hadn't made any exceptions for Lark. He'd confiscated her medicine before she entered the compound, refused to allow her to see a doctor when she'd had a fever a couple of weeks ago.

Not surprising, since she didn't think he'd intended her to ever leave Amos Way.

Pain shot through her eye, and she tried to will it away. She had to focus, but her thoughts were like mist on a lake. There. Gone. No way to hold on to them. No way to form a coherent plan that would get her out of the mess she'd gotten herself into.

She wiped a sweaty palm on her skirt. The road stretched out into the distance, shimmering black in the headlights. No one in front. No one behind. This was a quiet stretch of road, and she knew it well enough to know there weren't houses lining it. No enclaves of civilization dotted the area. Just trees and mountain views.

“So, what are you thinking?” she asked, because the pain in her head made her want to close her eyes, let him handle everything. But that wasn't who she was. It wasn't how she dealt with life. “That we're going to drive until we run out of gas and then hitchhike to town? Beg a phone from someone there?”

“We're both carrying firearms, and you're wearing—” he gestured to her skirt “—that. People are going to notice us if we hitchhike. If the wrong person notices, the sheriff is going to be called.”

“What's the plan?”

“There's a gas station a half mile outside of River Fork. We'll go there. See if we can talk the attendant into lending us a phone. I'll probably have you do that.” He shot a look in her direction, the gaze quick but assessing. “You're less intimidating than I am.”

She wasn't intimidating at all, and she knew it. She was shorter than some of the fifth graders she taught, smaller boned than most women she knew. She'd never let that stop her from standing up for herself or demanding what she was due. She didn't have the energy to tell him that. Plus the pain in her head was shooting sparks of light in front of her left eye. She swallowed bile, tried to concentrate on the conversation. “You want me to call Essex? Ask him to come get us?”

“No way. He has a wife and a couple of kids. I don't want to drag him into this mess. I'll give you my boss's number. Chance can have a team here by dawn.”

“A team from HEART.” She repeated the name he'd given her, tried to pull information about it from her pounding head.

“HEART is a business, but we're like family. I put in a call, and I'll have help. Simple as that. We just have to get to the gas station and get access to a phone before we run out of gas or Elijah's men catch up to us.”

“You think they're still following?” She shifted, looked out the back window.

“No, but I thought finding you and making sure you were okay was going to be easy. I was wrong about that. Another error in judgment could get us both killed. Like I've already said, I'm not planning to die.”

There was nothing to say to that.

Even if there had been, she wasn't going to expend the effort to say it. She felt sick, the migraine taking hold, wringing every thought from her head. Not a good situation to be in, but she'd been in worse. She touched the raw spot on her wrist where she'd cut herself with the nail. She'd made it through the darkest hours of her captivity. She'd make it through this.

Once she did, once they were safe, she'd turn her attention back to the original goal. She'd known all along that Elijah wasn't the kind of person to be messed with. He had power and money. She wanted to know where the second came from. Not just from the odd jobs and sale of goods produced by the Amos Way community. Not from the bank accounts of the men and women who'd signed their life savings over to the community. The money came from somewhere else, and there was a lot of it. Once she found out the source, she could pull the plug and close down Amos Way for good.

She felt a twinge of regret at the thought. Her in-laws loved the place. They'd spent half their lives there, but that didn't mean it was a good place or even a decent one. As much as she hated to take their home from them, she'd do it if it meant stopping Elijah.

She wouldn't let him murder anyone else. She wouldn't let him get away with the crimes he'd already committed.

She owed Joshua that. She hadn't been able to save him, hadn't been able to convince him to leave Amos Way before it was too late, but she could do this for him. She would do it.

Or she'd die trying.

And the way she felt right then, death was a distinct possibility.

* * *

Lark's silence worried him, and Cyrus didn't need more worries to add to the list he already had.

They were in the weeds, and he needed to find a way to get out of them. He had a plan A, but nothing else. If his plan didn't work, they were sunk.

He scowled, glancing in the rearview mirror. A semi was moving up behind them. No sign of Elijah's men, though. Nothing that would make him think they'd been followed.

Which worried him, too.

If he'd had his cell phone, he'd have already called Chance Miller, told him he needed help. Hopefully whoever was manning the gas station would be amiable to the idea of lending a phone. If not, Cyrus would have to find another way to contact the team.

Lark leaned her head against the side window, her movements jerky and disjointed. She hadn't closed her eyes, but she looked like she needed to, her face a pale oval, her eyes glassy.

“We've got another half hour ahead of us,” he said. “Why don't you try to get some sleep?”

She didn't respond.

“Lark?” He touched her arm, and she shifted away, rubbing the spot where his hand had been.

“I'm okay.”

“You don't look it.”

“I am. At least, I'm okay enough to do whatever we have to do,” she mumbled, the words sluggish and slow as if every one of them took effort.

“What we have to do is survive, and that's not going to happen if you don't trust me enough to tell me what's going on.”

“What is going on,” she responded, enunciating every word, “is that my head is going to explode from a migraine. I don't have medicine with me, so there's nothing I can do but ride it out.”

Not good for her or for them.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

“Stop talking?” she suggested.

“Okay.”

“You spoke again,” she groaned, throwing her arm over her eyes. “And every word is like a thousand knives being shoved into my eye.”

He didn't know much about migraines, but he knew plenty about headaches. The improvised explosive device that had nearly taken his life had led to months of debilitating headaches. He wasn't plagued with them anymore, but he'd never forget how they felt.

She groaned again, shifting so that her head was buried in her elbow, her hair falling across her arm.