Forced Disappearance (13 page)

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at her.

She looked away, then back again. “I thought I was pregnant.”

Incredulity and a strong sense of betrayal washed away the postcoital glow with the efficiency of a tsunami. His blood cooled. “So you decided not to tell me and take off with the kid?”

Her face twisted. “There was no kid.” She drew a deep breath. “But I didn’t know that for sure for a couple of days. And I did a lot of thinking during that time. I could see pretty clearly what would have happened if I had your baby. You would have proposed.”

“What’s wrong with that?” How could she still make him feel like a twenty-year-old nerd, clueless about what women wanted? He shook his head as he began walking again so they wouldn’t draw attention. “The inner workings of a nuclear submarine are easier to figure out than the way a woman’s mind works, you know that?”

“I didn’t want you to marry me just because I was pregnant.” She shoved her hands into her pockets. “Your mother would have demanded that I quit school and move to the family estate. I would have been installed in the east wing. The thought of living under her thumb . . .”

She rolled her shoulders. “Okay, not even that. The idea of being pressed into a mold of what your family expected your future wife to be. It scared the crap out of me, okay? That and knowing that even if I had let people trim away every bit of me that didn’t fit what they wanted, if I let them twist me into the exact shape they wanted, I would still never belong in your world. Never.”

He was fairly stiff with anger as he walked with that thought for a while. He and Gloria were going to have a talk when he got back home. He loved his family, loved his mother, but hurting Miranda wasn’t okay, and they needed to know that.

“I so wanted to fit in someplace,” she said quietly as she walked next to him.

He’d known that. His anger softened. Her father had left when she was young. Her mother remarried a minister and followed him to a mission post in Africa, leaving her stepsister to raise Miranda. But Miranda had always felt that she was the charity case her aunt’s family couldn’t really afford. She’d told him that during one of the many nights they’d lain in each other’s arms. They used to stay up all night just to talk.
Okay
, not
just
to talk.

“You wanted a family where you felt you could fit in.”

She nodded. “I did.” She stayed silent for a beat or two as they walked. “I found it in the army. I was just another recruit, the same as all the others. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t some charity case like I’d been at home and at school.”

“Going to college on a scholarship didn’t make you a charity case.”

“Yeah. But some of the mean girls rubbed it in every chance they got.”

Now that she said it, he remembered that too, not that she ever complained. But she was the one who couldn’t play tennis, or golf, the one who didn’t know the rules for polo, or the rules of high society in general.

He’d tried to give her things that would have helped her fit in, but she refused anything expensive. She didn’t wear designer clothes and carry designer purses, she didn’t even know the brands, didn’t know enough to fuss and fawn over the other girls’ possessions, which they’d taken as an affront, snickering behind her back.

In the back of his mind, he’d known that. But he’d deluded himself into thinking that it didn’t matter, since she had him, and he loved her, and that was all she needed.

Anger sparked alive again, this time directed more at himself than her. “I wanted to give you everything. I didn’t understand why you couldn’t accept it. I wanted to support you.”

“I know,” she said with a sad smile. “But I needed to create the kind of life where I could support myself.” She shook her head. “Anyway, on the way back to the dorm from the campus doctor who confirmed that there was no pregnancy, I ran into an army recruiting officer handing out pamphlets. He told me about the Army Corps of Engineers. And I thought I better make a choice while I still had choices.”

The old sense of betrayal bubbled up inside him. “I hated that you left,” he admitted.

“You probably hated me.” Her sad smile remained.

“I tried.” But it was the one thing he could never succeed at.

Chapter 12

MIRANDA PULLED AWAY
from Glenn a little, putting another inch or two between them as they walked. She wasn’t comfortable with the emotions that tried to elbow their way to the surface inside her. Probably just shadow remnants of an old love, but still.

“Joining the army was the right thing for me. I grew up. I grew strong. I needed that.” That was what she needed. Not him. He would have always been out of her reach, out of her league. She needed dependable and real.

Oh, but the new Glenn was tempting. Just as tempting as the old.

She didn’t want to like him too much. She didn’t want to get attached. She’d loved and she’d lost. More than once. She never wanted to be that vulnerable to anyone again.

“Or you could have given us a chance,” he said mildly.

“I couldn’t.” Not the young girl, full of her insecurities about not belonging anywhere. She couldn’t give them a chance then, and she couldn’t give them a chance now. For different reasons.

She didn’t have time for a relationship. And she had no use for love. You loved, and then the next thing you knew, your heart was broken into a thousand jagged pieces that sliced into you every way you moved.

Better that Glenn was mad at her. They could not revive their relationship. For one, she didn’t want a relationship. With anyone. She wanted, needed, to lose herself in her new job. She wanted to find people and save them if possible, wanted the travel, the hard work, the long hours. She didn’t want to have enough time to think.

She didn’t want safety, either. If she got hurt, she got hurt—it’d be penance. Because she’d never be formally charged, tried, and convicted for her sins.

She couldn’t go back to a normal life. And Glenn Danning, in particular, seemed like an exceedingly bad idea.

He raised an eyebrow, as if he could hear her thoughts.

“You do know that this gaping gorge between us is not really real, right?” said Glenn.

Ha!
She was a murderer. He was a scion of industry.

His relationships were news in Maryland. And someday they’d be news on the national level, when he followed his senator grandfather’s footsteps into politics. That was the family plan, the family path.

She couldn’t be part of that, couldn’t chance that the media would dig up her past. Someone like Glenn couldn’t afford to associate with a murderer.

She wasn’t a fan of politics or politicians, in general, but Glenn was a good guy. Maybe he could change things. If he could get into those circles, maybe he could make a difference for people. She wasn’t going to ruin that for him.

“I’m not who you think I am.” Even if suddenly she wished she could be. “I’ve done things.”

“You were in a war.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me. I’m quite capable of cognition.” He was beginning to sound a tad irate.

She shook her head. She couldn’t bear him knowing what she’d done. Judgment from anybody else would have been fine. In fact, she craved judgment. She’d done something terrible. She wanted her punishment. If she paid the price, then maybe some of the terrible dark weight would lift from her chest.

But she didn’t want Glenn to think badly of her. The thought of him judging her and turning away hurt.

They walked in silence for a good while, going south. When they passed a souvenir shop, they stopped and looked at a map to figure out where they were, how far they had to go.

Glenn folded the map after a few minutes and returned it to the shelf. They had no money to buy it, but they both had pretty good spatial memory. “All right, so the airport is not exactly on the south edge of the city.”

“But it’s not far,” she said as they left the shop.

According to the map, the airport was halfway between Santa Elena and the Brazilian border. Roughly half a dozen miles. Definitely doable.

When a cop car rolled down the street, they stepped into a bakery.

God, the bread smelled good.

They looked around, keeping their heads down in case photos of them had been on the local news, then walked outside as soon as the cops were gone. They had to repeat that evasive maneuver three times before they reached the edge of the city.

She didn’t bring up the past again, and neither did he. Better this way.

She cast a longing glance at the bicycles lined up in front of what looked like a local dive.

Glenn followed her gaze. “It’d be nice if we could borrow two of them.”

“Not worth it,” she said. “If two bikes disappear, the owners will call the cops.” She scanned the forest that lined both sides of Route 10. “If we walk in the woods, we can stay out of sight until we reach the airport, but we’ll be dirty and muddy so we’ll stick out once we get there.”

Glenn thought for a couple of moments. “If we walk down the side of the road, we’ll be in full view of any law enforcement that drives by.” He thought some more, then a slow smile spread on his face as he looked at her. “But the cops aren’t looking for a couple with a baby. Let’s switch.” He handed her the baby carrier and took her sisal bag.

Okay. This could work.
She shrugged into the baby carrier so it was hanging in the front, as intended. But, even from far away, it’d be pretty obvious that the carrier was empty. She raised an eyebrow at Glenn.

“Let’s make a baby,” he said with a grin and lunged into action, even as she had to catch her breath a little.

He used the canteens to create the bulk of the dummy, then his extra shirt to cover them up, the sleeves hanging out the bottom holes to look like legs, her old T-shirt balled up to create the head. Focused on the project, he was totally oblivious to how what he’d just said sounded.

She shook off the strange longing his words had brought to life inside her, and helped, considered the final product. “Not bad.”

They weren’t going to fool anyone who looked closely, but a police car driving by at fifty miles an hour would probably think that they had a baby with them. They wore different clothes than those that would be in their descriptions. Glenn had dark glasses.

They started out walking at a good pace, but had only walked a few hundred feet when a rusty pickup truck pulled over in front of them.

“
Aeropuerto
?” the driver, an older, local man, asked through the rolled-down window.

“Sí.”

He gestured toward the back.

“Muchas gracias, señor,” Glenn thanked him with a grin and they got in.

They sat on planks screwed to the metal frame, no tailgate, their feet just hanging over the edge. She put a hand protectively over her “baby,” but the old guy wasn’t driving fast, barely puffing along. Still, they were on their way. If they could get into the airport and sneak on a plane, they’d be halfway to safety.

Glenn kept an eye on the cars passing them. “How heavy do you think airport security is?”

“Nowhere near US levels. And this is a minor airport in the middle of nowhere. On the average day, I think we could sneak through without much trouble. But they’ll be keeping an eye out for us.”

He looked her over. “The baby helps, but we’re still recognizable close up.”

“Our best bet is to join a tourist group and get in with them.”

They talked about that, and explored some other options on the drive there.

Once they reached the airport, the old man let them off at the turnoff to the main building, and they thanked him for his help. They walked the rest of the way to the parking lot and waited for the next tour bus to come in.

They didn’t have to wait long. Two buses arrived at the same time, one carrying senior citizens, the other the same group of botanists they’d run into in the forest.

Neither group had kids.

She adjusted the carrier. “The baby’s going to stick out.” And even if it didn’t, a single closer look at it would give them away. Anybody who came close enough would see that she just had a bunch of things stuffed in there.

As Miranda rounded one of the buses with Glenn, she shrugged off the baby carrier. “We need to get rid of our weapons too. Don’t want to set off the metal detectors.”

She shoved her gun and knife into the carrier. She waited for Glenn to do the same, then rolled the whole package under a bus when nobody was looking. Then they caught up to the tour group, as if hurrying to their flight.

“Excuse me.” She pushed ahead, and people let her pass.

She was roughly in the middle of the group, Glenn still in the back. Better if they weren’t right next to each other. They passed through the entrance—guards on both sides, looking at people, but the soldiers weren’t checking papers at this stage. Miranda twisted backwards when she got in line with them, keeping her head down as if looking for her cell phone in her back pocket.

Two more steps and she was past the guards.

Okay. Don’t stick out. Don’t draw attention.

She stayed with the botanists until they began lining up for check-in at the counter. She had no papers. She couldn’t check in, so she headed for the bathrooms. Glenn waited until she reached the door, then he strolled to the men’s room.

“Four guards just in this area alone,” he said under his breath once he caught up with her. He pretended to look at a tour company ad on the wall.

“I noticed.” She bent to tie her boot without looking at him.

He didn’t look at her either. “We need to find a way to the tarmac and hide on the plane.”

She considered the possibilities as she straightened. If they could lift a pair of ground crew uniforms, they could get to the plane. Then maybe they could hide in a bathroom and not come out until the plane was in the air, stash the uniforms in the bathroom. Or . . . get into the luggage compartment. There had to be a way they could make this work.

She turned completely away from Glenn, then stepped inside the restroom, washed her hands, patted her hair down. She was out in two minutes, Glenn still reading the ad.

“I’ll go and figure out when our flight is leaving. You go to the bathroom next,” she whispered as she passed him. It was better for them not to be seen together.

She meandered over to the board and looked at the departing flights, barely a handful. A local airline was going to Caracas in two hours. She walked over to the airport map on the wall. The drawing showed a single runway. Okay, so finding the plane shouldn’t be too difficult.

She went and sat in an out-of-the-way corner, inspecting every inch of the airport while trying to appear bored, staring around at nothing in particular. A door on the far wall to her left led to a restricted area.
Staff Only
, according to a bilingual, red-lettered sign.

That looked promising. Except for the armed soldier who stood guard.

She scanned him, his rifle, his build. She could probably take him, but she couldn’t start a fight. They needed to reach the plane undetected. She turned back to the main area, hoping to spot an unsecured door.

Glenn returned from the bathroom and scanned the display at a small eatery tucked under the stairs that led to offices on the second level.

Miranda walked up next to him, looked through bags of packaged food as she said under her breath, “We should have gone to the service entrance instead of arrivals and departures. We can’t go through check-in. The only door I can see that has potential is guarded. We have to find a way through it.”

He nodded imperceptibly.

And then they went their separate ways. She returned to her bench, picked up a Spanish language newspaper somebody had discarded, and pretended to read it. At least she could use it to cover most of her face.

They needed a strategy. She settled in to analyze the situation.

Threat:
Armed guard.

Opportunity:
The door they had to get through didn’t have a keycard. The airport as a whole didn’t appear too high tech, in fact, which could work to their advantage.

Strategy:
Move close enough to the door so if the guard was called away for a second or got otherwise distracted, they could slip through quickly.

To that end, she relocated to the very last bench, only fifteen feet or so from her target.

The guard looked decidedly bored, casting longing glances toward the coffee counter, and toward two of his buddies who were on duty outside, smoking and chatting in front of the wall of windows that looked to the parking lot.

Glenn understood her move, and strode up to the payphone on the wall on the guard’s other side, pretending to be using it. Now they were both in position. If the guard went for that coffee, they’d be through the door before anyone could blink.

But the guard seemed to be resisting the siren call of caffeine rather admirably. He only stepped aside a foot as the door behind him opened and a cleaning lady came through, pushing her cart, heading for the bathrooms on the other end of the waiting area.

Possible plan B?

Even as she thought that, she caught Glenn eyeing the cart that held a gray plastic garbage can that could actually hide a small person. He raised an eyebrow at Miranda.

Let’s see.
For about half a minute she thought it might just work. But she shook her head as she ran through that scenario.

She could disable the woman in the bathroom, hide in the container; then, disguised as the woman, Glenn could push her through into the restricted area. Except Glenn was a full foot taller than the cleaning lady and only half as wide, missing melon-size boobs among other things. The soldier wouldn’t mistake him for the cleaning lady in a million years, not even if Glenn had a Hollywood makeup expert to help.

She exchanged a disappointed look with him, then drew a deep breath. Back to plan A.

As the woman disappeared behind the door of the ladies’ room, a family of six scrambled over and stormed the benches next to Miranda. Four kids under the age of ten. They were speaking some German-sounding language with English-like words thrown in. Maybe Dutch.

Their littlest girl, about two, ran around, checking everything out. She had the look of a kid who’d been cooped up in a car way too long. She stopped in front of the guard and flashed him an impish look, held out her stuffed horsie, and said something.