The Last Target (14 page)

R
achel pushed aside the images that dashed through her mind. Images of Luke finishing off Jack, of him taking a fatal gunshot wound to the heart. She’d have time to mourn later. Right now, she had to get to safety. Luke could come after them any minute.

But Jack…

She wiped away a tear. Jack would want them to get to safety. He’d probably just given his life to ensure that that happened. Rachel couldn’t let that sacrifice be in vain.

The house, Rachel thought. She had to get to the house.

But then she’d be putting Jack’s parents in danger.

Where did she run? Her gaze darted across the landscape. The farmhouse to her left, the cornfields in front of her, the woods in the distance. Beside the house, there were several vehicles. But she had no vehicle of her own, nor did she have keys to Jack’s vehicle.

She didn’t know where to go, where to hide.

So she ran toward the woods, limping as she went. She pushed ahead. She’d stay at the woods edge, near the little country lane that ran beside it. At least she wouldn’t get swallowed by the foliage that way. The road could be her guide, but the trees would allow her cover.

But Jack…she couldn’t stop thinking of Jack. Of his body laying there on the ground in the barn. Had Luke killed him?
Had he died thinking that Rachel blamed him for her husband’s death? Because she didn’t. She needed to tell him that.

Keep moving, Rachel. Keep moving.

Her back ached. Aidan’s forty pounds caused her arms to strain. His death grip on her made it hard to breathe. But she had her son. He was safe. She had to make sure he stayed safe.

She reached the woods, and fear shuddered through her as she looked into the gaping blackness before her. Were there Apaka operatives hiding there? And where was Luke? Was he behind them, just steps away from catching up? She couldn’t bring herself to look back, to slow down enough to notice. She had to keep looking forward, to keep moving.

Aidan sniffled in her arms. She wanted to comfort him but couldn’t. She had to keep him alive first.

She dodged trees, sprinted through weeds that grabbed at her legs, fought off rocks that threatened to twist her ankles. She moved. Everything blurred around her.

Keep moving. Keep moving. That’s what she kept telling herself.

Jack…was Jack dead? Tears burned her eyes at the thought. He couldn’t be dead. He’d taken the shot in order to save her life. She wouldn’t have escaped without his intervention.

Oh, Jack.

Her breath came in ragged gasps now. Her legs felt like gelatin. All the old wounds from their previous escape through the woods felt raw again, rubbed open in her escape.

Her body demanded that she slow down.

But was that a shout behind her? Was it Luke coming after her?

She heard men talking but couldn’t make out their words. All she could think of was Apaka, on their trail.

What would she do? Could she really keep moving? Would
her body hold up? Maybe she should find a hiding place and hunker down until someone found her. But what if that someone were an Apaka operative?

Oh Lord, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how much farther I can make it.

Just then she saw headlights flickering down the lane in the distance. Was it help? Or was it the opposite?

She sunk down into a bush, needing to rest for a moment, to gather her thoughts.

The headlights got brighter. The sound of the engine stalled, as if the car had stopped. Her heart nearly stopped also.

“We have to stay quiet, okay?” she whispered to Aidan.

Aidan nodded.

Then she heard a voice calling her. A familiar voice.

“Rachel? Are you out there?”

She stood, relieved that help had come. Someone she knew she could really trust.

“I’m right here.”

Jack staggered from the barn and looked in both directions out the door. Where had Rachel gone? Somewhere safe, he prayed. He had to find her. He had to protect her.

He’d checked Luke’s heartbeat. He was hanging on, but barely. They needed to get an ambulance out here. Luke might be their only hope of locating Rachel if Apaka got her. He was the only one who held the answers they needed.

Luke hadn’t known that Jack carried another gun tucked into his belt. He’d taken Luke by surprise when he pulled it out and got in that shot a split second before Luke had pulled the trigger on Jack. That split second had determined if Jack would live or die.

He had no choice but to live. He had to live to ensure that Rachel was okay.

His gaze roamed his surroundings again. Maybe Rachel had gone back to the house, to the safety offered by his parents. He hoped that’s where she’d gone.

If only she’d stayed inside like he’d insisted…but he knew a mother’s instinct was strong. She’d gone after her child because, in her mind, she’d had no choice.

A car sped down the lane in the distance. Instinctively, he knew Rachel was inside. He knew Apaka had gotten to her. He had to stop them, but outrunning the car was out of the question.

He reached for his gun and aimed, but everything began to blur around him. Energy seemed to seep from him. His wound must have been worst than he thought. He leaned against the barn to hold his balance. Aiming again, he shot at the car’s tires.

He missed. The taillights became mere specks in the distance.

He squinted, trying to see the license plates. It was no use. They were getting away—with Rachel. The thought of someone hurting them crushed his soul.

Grasping his shoulder, Jack started toward the house. He finally reached the back porch, climbed the steps and rapped on the door. His mother’s worried face appeared in the window atop the door. The lines around her eyes softened some when she spotted him, and she unlocked the door, pulling him inside.

“You’ve been shot,” she murmured. “Again.”

“We’ve got to find them.” Jack pointed to the phone. “I need your keys. I’ve got to go after them.”

His father put an arm around him to help support him. “We’ve got to get someone to look at you first, son. You’re in no state to drive. We’ve already called the police and the rescue squad.”

“They’re getting away.”

“They’re already gone, son.” His mother placed a hand on his forearm. “You’ll find them. I know you will.”

Denton staggered through the back door, his hand atop a knot on his head. His lip was busted, and blood stained his shirt. “Luke. It was Luke. He knocked me out, tied me up.” He glanced around the room. “Where are Rachel and Aidan? What happened?”

“Apaka. They got them.” Jack clenched his fists in anger.

At that moment, flashing lights sliced through the curtains. The emergency medical squad arrived. Two medics stayed inside to check out Jack’s injuries, and two went to the barn for Luke. The medics kept insisting that Jack go to the hospital, but he couldn’t stop. Not right now. Instead, they did a temporary bandage on his arm.

He needed the local authorities’ help in locating the car that Rachel had gotten into. He could only get that assistance with Vice Admiral Harris’s help. He reached for his phone, but it wasn’t in his pocket. It must have dropped somewhere. Instead, he grabbed his parents’ phone and dialed the vice admiral’s number, one he knew by heart. The vice admiral answered on the first ring.

“Jack Sergeant, sir. I need your help. A car picked up Rachel and Aidan. I don’t know who was inside or where the car went. I need your help to put out an All Points Bulletin on it.”

“What happened?”

Jack explained what he could. Time was ticking away, though. He needed to be out there searching for Rachel himself.

“I’ll make a call to the Fayette County sheriff now,” Vice Admiral Harris said.

“Thank you.” Jack hung up.

He realized he’d never told Vice Admiral Harris that they were in Ohio, though.

Rachel looked over at her uncle, who sat in the seat beside her. A uniformed man silently drove them away from danger. “I’m glad you got there when you did, Uncle Arnold. You were a real life saver. Luke was working for Apaka. I still can’t believe it!”

“I know. We decided to dig a little deeper into the backgrounds of the men at Eyes. After everything that had happened there, we figured someone there was working for the other side. It was just a matter of pinpointing who. I would never have guessed it was Luke.”

“So you drove all the way out to Ohio?”

Something flickered across her uncle’s face. “I wanted to look into Luke’s eyes myself. After all, he used to work for me. It just so happened I arrived when everything went down.”

Jack’s face flashed in her mind. He’d jumped in front of the bullet to save her. A tear popped into her eye. Her uncle patted her hand.

“It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay, dear.”

She nodded, wanting to believe him.

They drove for what seemed like forever—it was probably only a few hours in reality, though. In between urgent-sounding phone calls her uncle took regarding the situation, Rachel relayed what had happened, about Jack and Luke and Simon. Finally, they stopped in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. A cabin surrounded by woods in who knows where.

“Another safe house?” When would it end? She wanted Jack near her, protecting her.

Her uncle nodded. “Yes, another safe house. Hopefully this will be the last one.”

They stepped inside the cabin, which already had guards,
barred windows, a security system and multiple locks on the door.

“I think you’ll be comfortable here,” her uncle said. “We have a room especially designed for your safety.”

Comfortable? She doubted it. It was just another prison. How long would she be at this one?

Her uncle walked to a door located on the back wall of the house, inserted a key and pushed it open. “Why don’t you check your new space out?”

Rachel nodded. Holding Aidan’s hand, she stepped forward. The room was larger than she’d expected, with no windows. A couch sat at the center of the space. Rachel was surprised to see the back of two heads there. There were other people staying at the safe house?

Rachel paused, something oddly familiar about them. Her heart played an odd beat and she rubbed her eyes a moment. She had to be seeing things. She stepped closer.

“Mom? Dad?”

“R
achel? Aidan?” her mom whispered.

Rachel flew across the room and into her mother’s arms. Her dad joined them, wrapping his arms around them both.

Rachel pulled back and held them both at arm’s length. Time had taken a small toll on them. Both looked grayer, thinner, paler. But they were alive. “I can’t believe it’s you. That you’re here. That you’re alive.”

Her dad pulled her into another hug. “Oh, Rachel. I never thought I’d see you again.”

“I didn’t think I’d see you either. I thought…I thought…” All at once, she remembered the day she got the news of her parents’ accident. The police officer at her door, their bodies burned beyond recognition, their double funeral.

Her mother’s face twisted into a frown. “I know.”

Rachel stepped back and shook her head, trying desperately to comprehend everything that was happening. “I don’t understand.”

Her mother’s frown deepened. Her mom and dad looked at each other, grimaces across their features. Before they could say anything else, a shadow filled the doorway.

“You’ll have plenty of time to catch up,” Uncle Arnold said. His once comforting face now looked menacing with his wrinkled forehead and a smile slightly curling one side of his mouth.

Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on? I don’t understand. You knew, Uncle Arnold? This whole time you knew they were alive and you didn’t tell me?”

He smiled, but the action didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m sorry, Rachel. There were just other more important things at stake.”

Weren’t those the exact words that Luke had used earlier?

Rachel grabbed Aidan and backed up, away from her uncle. “You work for Apaka?”

His smile slipped some. “You could say that.”

“How could you work for them? They’re trying to kill me. They kill innocent people every day. And you…you work for the Department of Defense. I thought you loved your country.” Rachel looked back at her parents, begging for a sign of understanding. What was going on? Why were her parents still alive? Nothing made sense.

Uncle Arnold glanced at his watch. “I actually have some things I need to tend to back in Washington. I’ll be back in the morning. 6:00 a.m.” His gaze cut to her parents. “You’ll have until then to decide whether you’re going to give me the information I want. If not…” He looked at Rachel and smiled. The message was loud and clear: If not, she would die.

He stepped from the room and a lock clicked in place. They were all stuck in this tiny, windowless room. Rachel looked at her parents, confusion and fear colliding inside. “What’s going on?”

Vice Admiral Harris had been involved this entire time? He was the true inside man. Simon had just been a cover-up. Luke had just been a henchman.

How could Jack not have seen it?

The better question was, how was he going to discover where Rachel was? He’d bet anything that Vice Admiral Harris had her and Aidan. But where would he take them?

“What do you want to do? Your call. I’m behind you, whatever you decide,” Denton said.

“I can’t call the Department of Defense. No one will take my word over the vice admiral’s.” Even to Jack, the story seemed far-fetched.

He glanced at his watch, his shoulder still throbbing. He knew that every second counted. He needed a plan and he needed it now. First, he needed to call his contact with the FBI. Where had he left his phone? Had it fallen out in the barn?

“What’s wrong?”

“My phone. I can’t find it. It must have fallen out somewhere.”

“Last time I saw it, Aidan was playing with it.”

The boy loved to play games with the various apps he had on the device. What if Aidan had taken his phone, slipped it into his back pocket maybe? Would Rachel realize that the phone was there? Would she call for help?

Better yet…Jack had just installed a new app that would trace his phone’s location. If he could figure out where his phone was, he could figure out where Rachel and Aidan were.

Rachel squeezed her mom’s hand as they sat beside each other on the ratty couch. Aidan nearly bounced out of her lap, he had so much pent-up energy. She prayed for patience before turning back to her parents.

“So, the car accident was just a cover-up?”

“Arnold was behind it all.” Her mom wiped away a tear and hugged Aidan to her again. “He even placed some old cadavers in the vehicle so no one would suspect anything.”

Rachel shook her head. “Why would he do that? I still don’t understand.”

Her parents looked at each other again, sharing that
concerned expression that hadn’t left their faces since she’d arrived in this cabin.

Her dad cleared his throat. “Arnold put us in charge of a joint government-authorized project with the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense. It was all top secret, on a need-to-know basis.”

“What was it?” Rachel considered herself need-to-know right now.

Her mom took over the story. “We developed a super bug that would destroy crops in other countries. In one day, this insect could wipe fields clean, leaving countries that were in opposition to the United States with nothing to eat. It would destroy their economy, make them more likely to bow to the demands of countries like the U.S.”

“At first we thought the U.S. would only use this bug as a bargaining chip for countries that were in the middle of terrible humanitarian crises,” her dad said. “We thought the government would use it to benefit the hurting and the helpless. But we learned that certain people planned on using it to have the upper hand with countries for other reasons, reasons that were less than noble.”

Her mom nodded sadly. “And besides that, there was always the risk that the bug wouldn’t die in twenty-four hours, that it would evolve and really spread to be a world crisis. You just can’t rely on guesses when it comes to things of this nature. It could destroy life as we know it.”

“And imagine what it would do if the wrong people got their hands on it?” Her father leaned back into the couch, as if the idea still made him weary. “If someone set that bug loose in the United States, it would destroy all of our crops within a week’s period. We’d be left with nothing to eat. It would be a terrorist’s dream.”

Her mom’s eyes lit with fire and she sliced her hands through the air. “That’s when we decided that we couldn’t
do it. We couldn’t release the information to the government that we had spent months and months and millions of dollars to develop. We burned all of the information and made sure that no one would ever put the pieces together again.”

“Your uncle didn’t like that, I can assure you. We got into so many fights about it.” Her dad leaned forward now, his elbows on his knees. His eyes looked sad, tired.

Rachel searched through her memories for anything that would hint that all of this was going on. “I do seem to recall that you all weren’t speaking very much in the months before the accident. I guess that was why.”

Her mother nodded. “It was. We didn’t know that your uncle was working for Apaka. He wanted to sell that information to them for a large price—just as he’d been selling other government secrets to them for a very, very long time.”

“That’s how he could afford all of his houses.” The truth permeated Rachel’s thoughts.

“The price tag he would have gotten for this super bug would have been out of this world.” Her dad shook his head. “There’s not a price tag you can put on a human life, though.”

Rachel sucked in a deep breath, trying to comprehend everything. “I don’t understand—why does he hate the United States so much?” She looked at her father for an answer, since the two had been college roommates.

“His own father was killed in battle. His mother used to hate war. I think he grew up listening to her talk about the evils of the United States and it just kind of became ingrained in him. But he learned to cover up his distain. He figured out that the best way to get revenge on the country was to get on the inside. He could do the most damage that way. And that’s what he’s been doing.”

Rachel let go of her mother’s hand and rubbed her hands against her legs. She needed to fill her parents in on
everything that happened leading up to this moment. “There’s been a list. My name was on it. Everyone else is dead.”

Her mother’s face took on a burdened look, her eyes closing and her eyebrows pinching together. “Everyone on that list was connected to us. Most of them were people who helped us formulate the bug. We never told them the truth about what we were creating, but we always had covers using our jobs at the Department of Agriculture. They had no idea. Your uncle was trying to convince us to recreate the bug. He said if we didn’t, he’d kill the people on the list.”

Her mother dabbed tears from her eyes. “We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t want to see innocent people die, but we kept thinking about the greater good. Millions would die if he got his hands on that information.”

Her dad squeezed her hand. “And then he put your name on the list. I don’t think he really wanted to kill you. I think in some twisted way he does care about you. But he’s threatening to kill you if we don’t give him the information.”

Her mom looked up, strain in her eyes. “He won’t kill us, because without us, he’ll never get the information he wants. That’s why he keeps threatening us, trying to find the last straw that will break our backs.”

“And come tomorrow morning, he might discover that he’s finally found our one weakness.” Her dad shook his head, his voice cracking. “I just never thought he’d sink low enough to actually harm you or Aidan. Now I fear he’s desperate enough that he will. I just can’t bear the thought of that.”