Gone Duck #5 (Romantic Suspense) (3 page)

Dave snorted. “So he could have a taste of
Lacrosse’s hospitality? He’s better off dead.” He backed into a seat on the
other side of the aisle and kept the gun trained on Kofford. “Lacrosse will
just have to settle for the two I’m bringing back.”

He looked at her then, regret written all over his
face. Then, in a blink, it was gone. When the plane abruptly gathered speed, he
finally lowered the weapon, tipped it down into a drink holder, and put on his
own seatbelt.

Her mind was so focused on what might be happening
back in the hanger that she hardly noticed the thrill of take-off. But her
stomach noticed, so she grabbed a sick bag and prepared to hurl.

You always say you’re going to be sick, but you
never are
, she could hear Shawn say. And he would have been right. She
flattened the sack and slid it back in its pocket.
Who are you now? At this
minute, Macey, who are you?

The question made her smile, but the answer broke
her heart. She was just her. Not Morty, not Keefer, just her. And she was
completely alone, except for the echo of Shawn’s voice in her head.

Tears gathered behind her eyeballs and she
couldn’t stop them from coming. She sobbed silently, refusing to give her
enemies the satisfaction of knowing how badly she hurt. She prayed too,
promising God he could take anything else away from her, that she’d willingly
trade places with Dave’s sister, if he’d just make it not be true, if he’d let
Shawn get away from the Canadians.

Out of everything she’d lost, and of all the
things Lacrosse might have in store for her, none of it mattered if Shawn was
dead.

Half an hour later, her eyes and throat burned
from all the salt wrenched out of her body and consolidated into her tears. She
felt like a hollow shell ready to crumble into a pile of sand if anyone so much
as looked her way.

It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.

Another memory echoed in her head again and her
heart tripped.  

If they tell you I’m dead, don’t believe them.

Macey sat in her butter-soft leather seat, flying
better than first class for once in her life, and couldn’t appreciate it. She’d
been given an expiration date, of sorts. Whether or not Shawn had been able to
slip away from the Canadians, he was hundreds of miles behind her. So if anyone
was going to save Dorothy Jean’s butt, and her own, it would have to be her.

Since Dave wouldn’t have divulged their real
destination to Shawn, there was no way they were headed to Belgium. But
wherever their true destination, he’d made it clear that she was to be handed
over to Lacrosse, a guy who was apparently so unpleasant Dave had once asked
Shawn to kill him rather than let Lacrosse get his hands on him.

Great.

Now the monster had Dave’s half-sister, and Dave
was so motivated by what he knew would be happening to her, he was willing to
betray anyone in order to save her.

Oh, yeah. Dave had a savior complex, all right.
Only it was selective. Save his sister, spare his partner—maybe—but anyone
further down on his friends and family list were expendable.

Realistically, she should be falling to pieces
anticipating Lacrosse’s favorite methods of torture, but she’d faced the man
before and survived. She set aside the fact that she’d escaped only because
Shawn had come to her rescue—she wanted to keep the facts simple. She’d
survived him before. She could survive him again.

What she needed were more positive thoughts to
keep her from worrying about Shawn.

There were some things she knew, and some things
she hoped, but together they made a nice little pile. It was a fact, she was
lucky to have survived as long as she had, considering everything they’d been
through since Shawn had blown through the wall between their apartments. “A day
above ground is a good day” was a philosophy straight from the book of Dorothy
Jean Lyman, a woman who was also living on borrowed time and did not bitch
about it.

Another plus in her eclectic arsenal of positives
was something engrained in her psyche from all the novels she’d written. When
all else was lost,
if the hero dug deep, he’d find a way to save himself.
It was only a rule of fiction, true, but she wasn’t going to be nit-picky.

She also knew who the enemy was. A day ago, she
didn’t. Now she knew never to turn her back on Dave again. Getting Dorothy Jean
to do the same would be tricky without telling her the truth, that Dave had
been working for Lacrosse all along. Of course it was dangerous to upset the
woman, but she was going to catch on when the plane landed and they whisked her
off to the same research facility she’d broken out of. Lacrosse wouldn’t waste
any time. There would probably be an ambulance waiting…

That meant they were headed for Virginia!

Another positive—she knew where the enemy camp
was. And it was an easy guess that Shawn would have figured it out too. Unless
they could pick up a team of researchers and move them, along with their
equipment, to wherever they wanted them…

No. It would make much more sense to take Dorothy
Jean to them.

Macey wished she could just call Shawn and talk to
him, but that wasn’t possible. Shawn might not even exist anymore. He had a gun
and enough money to bribe a dozen officials, but he’d also had his hands tied
behind his back by men who may or may not have been paid to shoot him.

She forced back her tears and held onto the hope
that Dave had only been trying to appease Kofford when he’d said the Canadians
would kill Shawn. Maybe he’d honestly intended to have Shawn released, but
couldn’t let Kofford know, for fear the guy would send off a text to tattle on
him. Once it was too late for Kofford to find Shawn and drag him onto the
plane, Dave had stopped pointing his gun on the bigger man, so that had to mean
something. She just didn’t know what.

But she couldn’t count on Shawn getting away. And
the cold truth was, she’d be better off if she could stop thinking about Hot Neighbor
and start focusing on a plan.

In the war of McDaniels vs. Lacrosse, she’d lost a
man. It didn’t mean that he was dead, just removed from the board. And at the
moment, what she really needed, was an army.

*            *            *

It took her twenty minutes to come up with a plan.
It was pretty
out there
, but she wasn’t going to waste time coming up
with a new one. She guessed it would take another three or four hours to reach
Virginia since the jet would fly much faster than a 747, but since there was
always a chance they would land somewhere else, and sooner, she couldn’t afford
to wait.

First, Dorothy Jean
.

Dorothy Jean Lyman was tough. How many times had
she already proven it? How much adrenaline had pumped through those old veins
and not killed her? Maybe the doctors were wrong. Maybe another ace in the hole
was the fact that Dorothy Jean could handle a little excitement when the enemy
believed otherwise.

Shawn had moved the woman in the middle of the
night, and she was no worse for wear. She’d escaped the Boob Center and evaded
a bunch of librarians to be locked inside the Rexburg Library late at night.
She’d been right by Shawn’s side when he’d broken into a cabin, stolen a truck,
and been pulled over at the roadblock at the Washington State Line. She’d
hidden at IHOP and survived to find herself under house arrest, basically, at
the Davenport. And as her memories came back to her, even heartbreaking ones,
she’d held up just fine.

And finally, they’d gotten in and out of Calgary
by the skin of their teeth, and Dorothy Jean had been just as nervous as the
rest of them. She was no dummy. She knew they might have ended up behind bars,
if only for the bogus passports—even carrying them was probably a Federal
offense—and all the woman needed was a nap afterward.

But was the old bird tough enough to handle
hearing that Shawn had been left behind and her beloved David, who had just
returned from the dead, was now on the wrong side?

Macey looked at Dave, dozing in his seat at the
front of the opposite aisle, facing her. She hoped he never got another good
night’s rest knowing there was a slim chance Shawn might be out there looking
for him. She leaned to her left and watched Kofford unlock his phone for the
hundredth time since they’d taken off. Too bad she hadn’t been able to get away
from him in the beginning. If she’d run fast enough, she might have never known
Dave was in the van.

But what got her moving this time was the image of
Lacrosse’s disturbing smile when he was told that Dave had accomplished his
goal. Dorothy Jean and Macey, at least, were about to be served up on a
platter.

She couldn’t wait to wipe that look off his face.

She released her seatbelt and stepped into the
aisle, then stretched. Dave’s eyes popped open, but he said nothing, just
watched her like he had every right to watch her. She narrowed her eyes at him
until he looked away.

She used the restroom in the narrow hallway, and
when she emerged, she turned to the left, toward the private cabin, instead of
heading back to her seat.

Dave was behind her immediately. “Where do you
think you’re going?”

“To check on Dorothy Jean.” When she took another
step, he shadowed her.

She couldn’t let him follow.

“Sometimes she is…incontinent…and needs help
getting cleaned up. But if you want to…” She shrugged. “I mean, you looked
after her for five months, right? She’s comfortable having your assistance…”

“Five and a half,” he said. “But I’m sure she’d
rather have a woman help her. Just…be careful what you say about Shawn,” he
whispered. “If you have to tell her we left him behind, say he’s going to meet
up with us, to throw off Lacrosse. Anything more might upset her. And we can’t
risk that.”

She sighed. “I don’t know. She’s a pretty clever
woman. And she knows when she’s being lied to.”

His eyes flared and something foreign looked back
at her. It was gone just as fast, not a trace of it left in his eyes. “Then
you’d better be a good actress. Lacrosse won’t be pleased if we show up with a
dead woman. And pleasing that man is about to become your number one goal in
life.”

He looked away like he was suddenly sick to his
stomach. They hit a patch of turbulence and he headed back to his seat,
grasping chairs and bumping back and forth as he went.

Macey watched him go, replaying that look on his
face—the one she hadn’t recognized. But now she knew it had been terror. Dave
was terrified of facing Lacrosse again, and in spite of it, he’d left Shawn
behind, knowing his boss would be pissed.

With her next breath, her heart lightened. If Dave
was willing to see Shawn dead, he would have handed his body over to Lacrosse,
hoping to appease him. So he
had
to have intended to let him go!

Shawn is still alive!

But there was no way he could follow soon enough
to save them. She was just going to have to handle that herself.

Time to dig down deep.

But instead of asking herself what Morty would do,
or what Keefer would do, she stopped using them as a crutch and asked, what
would clever Macey McDaniels do? She was writing this story, not Mortimer
Coffee. And she was the main character, not Keefer Boone. And Atticus/Shawn had
to be written out of the scene.

She knocked quietly on Dorothy Jean’s door and
pushed it open. The woman was sitting up in one of two chairs at the foot of
the bed, watching a movie with headphones on. The bed lay behind her,
untouched. When she saw Macey, she pulled off the headphones and motioned for
her to shut the door behind her. Then she patted the seat next to her.

Macey sat. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

Dorothy Jean leaned toward her. “I’ve been peeking
out the door. Shawn’s not with us, is he?”

“No. He’s not.”

“Is he dead?” Dorothy Jean’s eyes were wet, but
fierce.

Macey shook her head quickly. “I’m pretty sure
Dave arranged to have him let go, but when we took off, he was still being
detained.” She explained what happened in the hangar as gently as she could,
but it seemed like Dorothy Jean had most of it figured out long before Macey
did.

Dorothy Jean slowly shook her head from side to
side. “Shawn was right not to trust him. Dave was far too cheerful for the shit
storm we were standing in.”

Macey took a deep breath and prepared to tell
Dorothy Jean the hard part.

“What is it, honey? Spit it out. I can take it.”

Macey smiled. “I believe you can handle just about
anything.”

“Must be bad news.”

“Maybe. I’m not so sure.” She told her what David
said about adrenaline possibly killing her.

“Horse pee.” Dorothy Jean snorted. “I would’ve
been dead by now.”

“That’s what
I
thought. Either they’re
wrong about the adrenaline’s effect on the microchip, or it just doesn’t affect
you the way it does the rest. Maybe you’ve got a tougher chip in your head.
There’s no way to know. But whatever it is, it means they believe something we
know isn’t true. They think you’re fragile. I think we can take advantage of
that.”

Dorothy Jean grinned. “What do I do?”

*            *            *

Macey flung the cabin door open and looked
frantically for Dave. He was standing just outside the cockpit with a drink in
his hand. When he saw the look on her face, he set the glass down quickly and
hurried to her.

“What is it?”

“Where is that tranquilizer you were talking
about? She’s breathing funny. I guess she’s been peeking out the door. She
knows Shawn’s not aboard. I told her he’s alive, but she won’t believe me.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you go in there
alone!” He ran back to his seat, pulled a black zipper bag from beside it, then
hurried back.

She backed up and let him pass her. “She was
already upset! I thought I could calm her down, but I couldn’t.”

Kofford was on his feet but unsure what to do. She
turned and followed Dave, filling the door for a moment so Kofford would think
there wasn’t room for him anyway. While Dave pulled open his pack and split his
attention between Dorothy Jean’s distressed face and the syringe he was trying
to fill, Macey stepped inside and let the door close slowly behind her.

Dorothy Jean’s eyes widened and she whipped her
head back and forth. “I can’t stand needles. Too many needles! I won’t have
it.”

“Hold her down,” Dave said softly. By the look on
his face, he really was worried about the woman, but was he sorry she was
frightened? Or worried Lacrosse would make him pay if he failed?

Macey shook her head. “I don’t think I can. She’s
wiry. But I can give her the shot if you can hold her still.”

He closed his eyes for a second. “Fine. Here.” He
handed over the full syringe.

“Are you sure this will be enough?”

He gave a brisk nod. “It’s the dose they told me.
It will knock her out quickly.”

“How long will it last?”

“Only an hour or two. We’ve got plenty. We can
dose her again before we land.”

“I won’t have it,” Dorothy Jean wailed.

“It needs to go in her butt. That’s the safest.”
He gently wrapped his arms around the woman just beneath her arms, and pulled
her up out of her chair. He held her still. “Do it.”

Instinct probably kept him from dropping Dorothy
Jean when Macey jabbed the needle into his shoulder. She had plenty of time to
push the plunger and grab the gun from behind his back before he could lower
the woman into her chair.

“Babe!” That look of terror returned, but it
slowly slid away with the effects of the shot.

She pointed the gun at his chest and backed up so
he couldn’t knock it sideways. “Please don’t
babe
me, babe. I was never
your babe.”