She took a steadying breath. “Promise me when we get to the motel, you’ll stay there with your friends.” She tried on a look that shielded her fears and gave no room for options. “Promise me, and I won’t kick you out of the truck.”
He arched one eyebrow, and a slight smile lit his lips. “No.”
“Micah, please. I know what I’m doing. I don’t want your help. I can protect Emily on my own.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You think you’re pretty tough, don’t you? Well, I’m sure you
can
handle it on your own. But you forget that we’re in this together. I can’t let anything happen to you if I want to stay out of the clink, remember?”
So maybe this wasn’t about him being the friend he’d been.
“Besides, I want to help.”
Okay, that comment thickened her throat. She shook her head. “You’ll stay at the motel. Or this is the end of the line for us.”
“You really think you’re going to kick me out of
my
truck?”
She shrugged.
He smirked. “Don’t answer that. How about this? … I promise to not promise to tag along until after we get to the motel and reassess.”
Her brain knotted. She was way too tired for this. But—she rubbed her hand over her forehead—that sounded okay. Maybe. She agreed.
He laughed, and it felt so full and refreshing and right that she couldn’t help but smile. “You’re not easy to shake,” she said.
“Penny, the feeling is completely mutual.” Then he reached for the door. “You promise to stay here while I go retrieve my supper?”
She smiled slyly.
“What if I tell you I got a chili dog for you too?”
She made a face but nodded.
As if he didn’t believe her, he hopped out and returned with the bag he’d dropped in less than ten seconds. “Are you driving?”
She put on her seat belt. “Yeah. Hand me my supper.”
“As you wish.” He dug in the bag and held out the chili dog. She took a bite, then handed it back to him and turned onto the street.
“Which way to the highway?”
“No, we’re winding through the back hills. Take County 3, up at the next light.”
Back hills. So they wouldn’t be caught. A wave of remorse rushed over her. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
He took a bite of his own chili dog, then set it down and held hers out. “Again, the feeling is completely mutual.”
His words, his voice, especially the way he helped her with her supper, felt like honey bathing her heart, warm and filling every crack with sweetness. She smiled and turned at the light. The dash light read 11:23 p.m. “How far are we from Poplar Bluff?”
“Maybe five hours. We’ve lost some time traversing the countryside.” He finished off his chili dog.
“But we’re safe. That’s important.”
“Yeah. You can bet, however, that Poplar Bluff will be flush with cops. I’m not sure whether we should go in by light of day, with traffic, or late … I’m leaning toward the light of day.”
She nodded. “I still have my wig.”
“And it’s oh so cute too.” He held out her chili dog, and she finished it.
“Can you hand me a napkin?” she asked and found one almost immediately in her hand. His attention to her needs felt so sweet. She fought to focus on the road. “Thanks.”
“Well, the chili would make a great disguise too but not so attractive.”
“Yeah, I’d look like Emily,” she managed, then grinned at him.
He leaned back, crunched up his paper bag. “Tell me about her.”
Lacey wasn’t sure how to explain to him what it felt like to wear your heart on the outside of your body, to know joy in a baby’s smile, to taste peace in the sweet embrace of a tiny arm. “She’s blonde, like John, and she has his blue eyes. She has a great fighting spirit. She loves people and is constantly into mischief. But, of course, she can wiggle out of trouble with a smile.”
“Just like John.”
“Too much probably.” Lacey smiled wryly as she accelerated to pass a hog-hauling truck. “Someday I want to teach her to ride, maybe on the farm or our own home. She loves Janie’s farm, but Janie has five kids of her own, and I need to give Emily her own life. Her own space …” Her words trailed off as she heard the futility of that dream snicker and dig its claws into her soul. If she handed over her program to … whomever … she would be on the run for the rest of her life. A traitor to her country. “It’s a nice dream.”
Micah’s gaze was on her, but she couldn’t look at him. “What happened after she was born, Lace? You mentioned that she lives with Janie.”
She tried not to flinch. “We stayed on the farm until she was about two. But that was the year my father was killed … and it seemed prudent to put her where she’d be safe and for me to keep moving.”
Micah just frowned.
She concentrated on the road. “I always felt as if Ishmael Shavik—or maybe Frank Hillman—was on my tail. Little things told me, like a shadow behind me at the grocery store or knowing something had been moved while I was away. I received mysterious telephone calls. Like he was trying to remind me that he was going to repay me for having the audacity to live.”
She felt tears prick her eyes. “When Dad was run off the road by an unknown driver, I knew that Hillman was sending me another message—he wanted revenge. I was already working on Ex-6 by then, and it drove me. I couldn’t help but think that if our messages had been secure, John would be alive today. So I left Emily at Janie’s house and hit the road, working on Ex-6 as I traveled. Three times a year I came into the NSA, tested my program with their hardware, then left. They wanted to put me in protective custody, but I couldn’t bear the thought of … of …”
Of not ever seeing you again. Of dropping off the planet so completely that you’d never find me.
“So you’ve been on the run for five years?”
She nodded, feeling her despair leak out. “I suppose with Shavik dead, I can stop running, but somehow I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Besides, when I hand over Ex-6, well, I’ll be a marked woman, won’t I?” She sighed. “Sometimes I just wish I could rewind time.”
“What would you do differently?”
She didn’t answer. A thousand what-ifs swirled in her head, but she couldn’t voice them. Instead she shrugged. Dredging up a breezy voice she asked, “Do you still ride?”
He waited a moment before he answered. “Yeah. Deuce-and-a-halves, Black Hawks, and C-130 transports.”
She laughed. “I can’t believe you’ve been in Special Ops all this time.” She shook her head. “I used to be so afraid you’d get killed overseas.”
“I’ll never forget when you came to Iraq after me. So many times I went back to that moment, to seeing you in that crazy gypsy outfit, greasepaint on your face. It made me think that someone cared.”
She could feel his gaze on her, and suddenly the mission that she’d so neatly tucked into the don’t-touch section of her brain leaped out and filled her throat. Oh yes, she cared. So much so that when she’d heard he’d been captured, she’d done the stupidest thing in history. She’d pulled strings, jumped the nearest airplane, and headed overseas thinking she could not only save him, but that he’d be glad to see her.
Sadly, he’d only gotten angry. John, on the other hand, had admired her so much that he proposed.
“John and I couldn’t just let you die,” she said simply, not giving in to the tug to explain her motives.
The sound of the wheels against the pavement filled the sudden silence, as if he too remembered their brief adventure—the way he’d held her, nearly trembling with shock—or relief—their wild flight on horseback, his anger at John. In the end, however, he’d had his chance to declare his feelings, to stop her from marrying John. Regardless of her feelings for Micah, John had been the one to offer her a future. Still, while she’d thrown herself into a life with John, her friendship with Micah and his job as a Green Beret had left the fragments of worry in her heart.
“I remember one night in Kuwait City,” Lacey said. “I sat out on the balcony, staring at the sky—the stars sparkled against this incredibly black sky. And all I could think of was you, lying under the same patch of sky. I wondered how you were, hoping you were alive and well.”
“You were married to John then.”
“Yeah. I guess about two years. We had talked about having a family, but John informed me that he didn’t want children, at least not until our current assignment was up.” She remembered the one time she’d thought she’d might be pregnant … the white-hued panic on John’s face had resonated nothing but dread. She swallowed against the image. “When I finally got pregnant, I didn’t relish telling him about the baby. That’s probably why I kept it a secret. Since I tried to dress conservatively most of the time like the locals—I even wore a veil—it wasn’t hard to hide. He was so busy; we never spent much time together. I counted it a miracle that I even got pregnant. He never noticed or maybe decided not to say anything.”
“I’m sorry you felt that way. If it had been my child, I would have—” He cut off his words and looked away.
Lacey felt regret pulsing between them, the untended remains of what they’d started so many years before. She tightened her hands on the steering wheel, eyes glued to the road, but tears burned. If Emily had been Micah’s child, maybe she wouldn’t have been afraid to tell him. Wouldn’t have felt like she was somehow destroying his life.
“Sorry,” Micah said. “John was a good man and my friend. I didn’t mean to say anything—”
“No, that’s okay. I know.” Lacey glanced at him, glad she’d corralled her emotions back in the paddock without incident. “He was a good man. Just … an idealist. Thought he could change the world.”
Micah smiled. “And now you’re doing it for him.”
She frowned.
“Ex-6. You’re saving America’s secrets.”
Hardly. She was about to barter them for her daughter’s life. She closed her lips and stared at the road. If John’s sacrifice and her mistakes could at all be atoned for, it was through Ex-6. But after tomorrow, there would be no redemption left. She shrugged, hoping to deflect his words.
“Lacey, you’re not seriously considering giving the program away, are you? You do have some sort of backup master plan, right?”
She clenched her jaw.
“You
are
serious.”
“Completely. What would you do if the person you loved was about to be killed? Emily is more than that to me. She’s the air I breathe. She’s my heart and my only reason for living. She’s everything to me. And I’m not going to sit by and let her slip through my grip if I can do something about it.”
Micah just stared, wide-eyed.
“Yeah, well, I guess you wouldn’t know anything about feeling that kind of love, would you, Iceman?” She could hardly believe she’d said that. As the words left her she wanted to clamp her hand over her deceitful mouth. But they hung there, ugly and raw and pungent with hurt.
She half expected him to cold-shoulder her the entire way to Poplar Bluff. That would have been better, easier to handle than his soft words that followed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t know how to love. Not that I didn’t have a great example with my parents, but maybe I was just …” His voice caught, and his flash of anger yanked her gaze. “What was I supposed to do, Lacey? You were dating my best friend.”
His dark eyes held hers and suddenly every hurt, every grief, every tendril of love for him she had stomped down inside her heart rushed to the surface. Years of longing and fighting the memory of what could have been filled her.
“What, Lacey?” he asked again, this time even softer, with an edge of desperation.
She considered her words, unsure exactly—He suddenly lunged forward. “Lacey!”
Bright lights filled the cab. She jerked the wheel. The tires screeched as they swerved away from the oncoming lights. The pickup hurtled toward the black mesh of forest with a gut-rending squeal.
MICAH GRABBED THE wheel just as the truck hurtled into the ditch. Lacey slammed on the brakes. The pickup bounced in the grass, skimmed a tree. Lacey banged against the steering wheel. A blinding pain spiked up her arm to her shoulder. She cried out as the vehicle jolted to a stop.
Micah had hit the windshield. Glass webbing the front panel, a trickle of blood, and an ugly bump evidenced a skull-jarring smack. He still had one hand on the wheel, but his eyes were closed and he was breathing hard.
“Are you okay?” she asked on a fine wisp of voice.
He took a deep breath. “Yeah. But I’m driving.” He opened his eyes. She expected fury. Instead, concern radiated out in waves. “You scared me.”
“I scared myself. Sorry.”
His gaze was so intense it raised the little hairs on her neck. He swallowed, searched her face. Then he curled his hand around her neck and kissed her.
She froze, scrambling to keep up. But his very muscled arm was around her shoulders, his hand touched her cheek, and his lips—strong, salty and so very, very familiar—were on hers, moving almost hungrily.
As if she
had
scared him. She closed her eyes. And without a thought kissed him back.
Micah, oh, Micah.
She wound her arms around his waist. She felt his heart thumping wildly and didn’t know if it was because of her or the accident. But she didn’t care. Micah, back in her arms. She pulled him closer, drank in his kiss, forgetting the space of time and hurt.
Forgetting everything but the way she loved him. When she’d walked down the aisle with John, she’d stomped her love for Micah into a hard ball and shoved it into the back of her heart. She had loved John, and she kept that thought forefront and center until finally her feelings for Micah had whimpered defeat and crawled away into hiding. Hidden—and perhaps small—but not entirely forgotten. Like one never forgets their first love, she could no sooner forget him than stop breathing.
He touched his forehead to hers. He was shaking, just a little, and that fact rattled her. “Lacey,” he said, his voice roughened, “you scare me so much sometimes I think my heart can’t take it.”
Then he kissed her again. Not at all hungry this time, but soft, achingly sweet. Perfect.
Micah.
When he pulled away, she saw in his eyes the same feelings she’d seen in the creek, at prom on the dance floor, and especially at Lover’s Bluff. Even in Iraq, behind all that anger.