Hide and Seek (24 page)

It always started with somebody handing him a tall glass of iced tea. It was no different this time. The hand, wrapped around the inviting beverage, came into view, though the person it belonged to never did.

Nick tried to force his head to turn this time, but his body didn’t obey him. He only saw the cool liquid he so desperately needed and reached for it.

Don’t drink it!
he tried to scream to himself. But no sound came over his lips.

Instead, he lifted the glass to his lips and gulped down the ice-cold tea until only ice cubes were left. For a moment he closed his eyes, enjoying the cooling effect the drink had, but it was only temporary.

He knew where he was, and yet he didn’t. The terrace of a large house. A garden beyond. Then the shore. Waves splashing against the narrow strip of sandy beach. An ocean maybe? Or a lake? A large one.

He gazed out onto it, following the ripples on its surface.

Only five sailboats were on the water despite the sunshine and the ample wind that filled their sails and propelled them forward. Why only five when the entire lake should be brimming with activity? When the houses to the left and right all had boat docks, and yachts waiting to be taken out onto the water. To be played with.

Did they know like Nick knew? Did they too sense the impending doom? Had they fled already, knowing it was too late to change the outcome?

“Please don’t do this,” Nick begged.

From behind him, a voice replied, “It’s done.”

But he couldn’t accept that. He had to do what needed to be done.

His laptop sat on the wooden table, several windows open. Green computer code scrolled in one black window so fast, it looked as if it were raining numbers and letters.

His eyes blurred, and he tried to focus them, tried to make sense of it all. But his gaze drifted to the other window, the one that showed a video feed of a large concrete building. The angle was so narrow that he couldn’t make out where the building was located. It could have been in the middle of a city or right in a desert, and Nick wouldn’t have known.

In a third window, a clock was counting backward.

Abort.
His lips formed the word automatically. He had to stop it. Save what was there to be saved.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed the white sails whizz by him. He spun his head in their direction and saw them fight against the increasing wind. But he knew if he didn’t stop the countdown, they would have to fight against something even stronger than the wind. And they would lose.

“Abort,” he whispered and lifted his hands to the keyboard, noticing all of a sudden how heavy they were, as if filled with lead. Like bricks, they landed on the keys, creating a row of gibberish among the scrolling code.

He willed his pinky to press the
escape
button to clear his typing, but his finger didn’t move, didn’t execute his brain’s order.

Do it, damn it!
Nick wanted to scream, but his tongue felt thick and sluggish.

He stared at his hands, barely able to focus on them now. They looked frozen in place, paralyzed.

His heart began to race. Again and again he tried to move his fingers but failed. Failed not only himself, but his fellow Phoenix, and his country.

Nick held his breath like he always did. But no matter how often he’d seen this vision play out, he never looked away, always hoping against all hope that this time the outcome would be different. It wasn’t.

The explosion on the screen was of massive proportions. The shockwave reached the water moments later, blasting the boats off their course and into the air, crushing them as if they were made of matchsticks. Bits of sail cloth flew like tiny birds in the churning air.

But by that time the shockwave had reached Nick, too, and he was flung in the air and catapulted toward the wall. For a split second before he hit it, he saw the house he’d been in: a mansion, though it wasn’t his.

“Nooooo!”

His own scream pulled him from the vision. Bathed in sweat, he reared up. There was darkness all around him. He was in bed. Next to him, somebody moved.

“Nick?” It was the panicked voice of a woman.

Breathing hard, he tried to concentrate, tried to remember where he was. It took him three seconds to find his bearings.

“I’m fine,” he said, already dragging his legs out of bed to sit up at the edge. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep, Michelle.”

He felt her hand on his back and instinctively jerked away.

“But, you’re—”

“I’m fine.” He jumped up. “I’ll take a shower if you don’t mind, then I’ll go.”

Before Michelle could voice a protest, he left her bedroom and closed the door behind him. Outside in the hallway, he ran a shaky hand through his damp hair and tried to calm his pounding heart.

The vision, unlike all his other premonitions, came only during sleep and was becoming more frequent, as if to show him that the event he was seeing was coming closer. Yet he was no closer to averting it than he’d been three years ago when he’d first had this premonition after the murder of the founder of the top secret Phoenix program.

He was running out of time.

12

Michelle stared at the closed bedroom door Nick had just disappeared through. She leaned over to her bedside table and switched on the lamp. Soft light illuminated the otherwise dark room. She glanced at the alarm clock. It was just after five in the morning.

Her heart still raced. She’d been sound asleep when Nick’s scream had woken her. It had sounded as if he’d been in mortal danger and for an instant she’d wondered if somebody had broken into her apartment. But it was clear now that Nick had had a nightmare.

But why? What grown man had nightmares? It was the stuff kids dealt with, when they dreamed about monsters. Or maybe people who’d gone through some recent trauma. But Nick struck her as thoroughly balanced. But what if he wasn’t? Had she made an error in judgment? What was wrong with the stranger she’d invited into her bed?

Heart beating in her throat, Michelle jumped out of bed and slipped on a T-shirt and a pair of yoga pants. When she entered the hallway, she heard the shower running. She flipped the light switch in the hallway. Careful not to make a sound, she looked around and quickly found what she was looking for.

Nick had dumped his backpack underneath the side table. Darting a look back to the closed bathroom door, Michelle crouched down and opened the zipper. She peered inside. One compartment held his laptop. She didn’t pull it out, but instead looked through the rest.

There wasn’t much: a set of keys, a cell phone with a charger, and a power cable for the laptop. She was about to close the bag again, when she felt a bulge. She opened the zipper as wide as she could, but there was nothing to see. However, there was clearly something there. She let her fingers do the searching, until she finally found a hidden zipper.

Glancing back at the bathroom door to assure herself that Nick was still in there, she took a deep breath and unzipped the hidden compartment. Holding her breath, she reached her hand inside.

Her fingers connected with something cold. She ran them along the metal item and felt its outline. Her heart stopped as her hand wrapped around the handle of a weapon. Slowly, carefully, she pulled it out. A handgun. She wasn’t an expert, but she could tell it was a pistol with a magazine.

Her hand shook. The trembling spread to her entire body.

Fuck! What was Nick doing with a gun?

Fear suddenly gripping her, she shoved it back into the compartment and zipped it up again, then closed the backpack and placed it back where she’d found it.

Looking around, she tried to think what to do. Was Nick dangerous? Was he a criminal? Who the hell was he? Her eyes darted around and she looked back into her bedroom. There, over the back of a chair hung Nick’s pants. He hadn’t taken them into the bathroom with him.

She dashed into the bedroom and took the pants off the chair, searching the pockets. She pulled out his wallet. Casting a nervous look over her shoulder, she opened his wallet and examined the contents. Cash. A drivers license. She pulled it out, read it. The name was Nicholas Young, the address was in Washington D.C. It had been issued two years earlier. Hadn’t he said that he’d only just moved to Washington? How could he have a drivers license that was already two years old?

She looked through the remaining compartments of the wallet and felt something rigid. She dug her fingers into it and pulled out the item: a credit card. Her breath caught in her throat. Last night, he’d paid cash, claiming that his credit card had been stolen and he hadn’t received a replacement card yet. Why would he say that, when clearly he had one? Was it an old one that had expired? She looked at the expiration date. No, it was still valid. Then her eyes darted to the left of it, where his name was embossed.

She slapped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. The name didn’t match his drivers license. Marcus Tremont it said there.

Shit!

Shaking now, she shoved the wallet back into his pants pocket and ran into the living room. She pulled her computer from her bag and switched it on. While it booted up, she drummed her fingers on her thighs, continuously darting nervous looks back to the hallway. But the water in the shower kept running.

The moment her computer was on, she unlocked the screen with her password and pulled up a browser. She first searched for Nicholas Young. There were too many hits. The name was too common. Even an actor and a baseball star were among the search result. She would need time to go through them all.

Damn!

She typed in Marcus Tremont instead. There was only one Marcus Tremont. She clicked on the Facebook link. The profile picture was blank and there were no posts in his timeline, none she could see without being his friend anyway.

Who was Nick? And why was he here?

The answer hit her in the face like a closing door. Smith! Her
Deep-Throat-like
handler had to be behind it. Had he sensed that she was getting desperate to make a run for it? Did he already realize that she was preparing for her escape and wanted to make sure she didn’t get away before she’d delivered what he wanted?

Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier? He must have had tabs on her all along, having her watched every moment just in case she didn’t comply with his demands. How stupid had she been! Nick running into her at the coffee shop and then, later, when she’d nearly stepped in the path of the taxi couldn’t be a coincidence. Smith had set it up. And for all she knew, he’d even orchestrated it so that the taxi would almost hit her so Nick could save her and thus gain her confidence.

And she’d fallen for that cheap trick. Hadn’t she seen this kind of thing happening countless times in movies and TV shows? She should have recognized it for what it was: a ploy. A trick for Nick to get close so he could watch her, maybe even gain her trust so she would tell him what she was planning.

She wanted to curse, to scream, but she couldn’t. She had to play along now, not let him know that she knew, that she’d discovered his deception and was onto him. She had to remain calm and behave as if nothing had happened.

The door of the bathroom opening nearly made her jump out of her skin.

Way to go,
Michelle, she chastised herself silently.
That’ll look normal.

Nick didn’t come into the living room, but headed straight for the bedroom. She heard him get dressed. She used the little time it bought her to take deep breaths and calm herself. When she heard his footsteps again, she quickly slammed the lid of her laptop shut and stood up.

“Michelle.” His voice was hesitant.

Slowly, she turned, facing him. She tried a smile but failed.

“Sorry, I, uh… didn’t mean to frighten you earlier.” He ran a hand through his damp hair, looking utterly crushed. “The nightmares, they’ve become less frequent.”

“Nightmares?” she echoed.

“Yeah. I was in Iraq. It was hell.” He dropped his gaze to his feet.

“Iraq? You were in the war?” Did that explain at least his nightmares? It could. And oddly enough it could also explain other things. If he was ex-military, then it made even more sense that Smith had hired him to keep tabs on her.

“Yeah. One tour, but it was enough.” He paused. “Listen, I’d better go. I’ve got work to do. I’ll call you tonight?”

She nodded quickly, eager for him to leave her apartment. When he walked up to her instead, she tensed. He froze a foot away from her, clearly having noticed her apprehension.

“I’m sorry again, I know it must have scared you.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek.

“It’s okay.” Michelle forced a smile.

“Talk later, okay?”

Nick turned and walked to the door, grabbing his backpack on the way out. Only when the door snapped shut behind him was she able to breathe again.

“Oh God,” she murmured to herself. “I’ve slept with the enemy.”

13

Nick pulled his laptop from its compartment and placed it on his desk, before he tossed the backpack in the corner, angry at himself.

He was used to lying to cover his ass, but by God, he’d hated lying to Michelle, telling her he was an Iraq vet suffering from post traumatic stress. What a cheap shot that had been. There were lots of real Iraq vets out there dealing with PTSD and worse. And there he was, using them to cover up his real issues.

He’d never served in the military, though he’d served his country as a CIA agent for many years. He’d sacrificed his life to keep the people of this country safe, and how had they repaid him? By chasing him down like a dog. It was time to fight back.

But first things first.

Nick navigated to the folder where he’d saved the information from Michelle’s flash drive and looked at the files. One was a picture file. He clicked it open. It was a portrait of Michelle. He recognized immediately what it was for, the lack of a smile and the way her head was turned, giving away its purpose. It was a passport picture. Only, why would she have a digital version of it? Passport pictures were normally submitted in printed form when applying through the post office.