Lady Liberty (20 page)

She looked up at him, blinking hard to hold back tears that had come out of nowhere. “I thought that, and I’d hoped hearing it would make me feel better.” Her chin trembled, and she clamped down, stiffened it. “Why doesn’t it make me feel better?”

Empathy and understanding shone in his eyes. He cupped her jaw and dropped a chaste kiss to her forehead. “Because they’re dead and we’re alive.”

Survivor’s guilt.
Just as she’d had when her parents had
died. “Yes.” Westford understood. And he felt what she felt. Because that comforted her and it shouldn’t, and because right now, when she needed to remain self-contained to be effective and she needed comforting, she pulled away, jerked a branch, then let it go, triggering memories of those who had died. At least they had been blessed with families and friends and people who would mourn them. She didn’t have a family. Not anymore. “Westford, if we had died with the others, who would mourn you?”

“No one.” He started walking.

Her chest tight, she stared at his back and followed. “Are your parents dead, too?”

“My mother is dead.” He didn’t look at her. “My father’s in jail.”

“Jail?” That surprised her. Westford was a stickler for law and order. She had assumed he’d gotten that from his parents, but apparently not. “I’m sorry”

“It’s one of those things, Sybil,” he said, decidedly uncomfortable. “My mother used to say my father marched to a different drummer.”

Interesting choice of words. “What do you say?”

“I don’t. Tobias Westford wasn’t a man I could look up to and respect. He never bought what he could borrow and never borrowed what he could steal. I haven’t seen him in twenty years, but I keep tabs on him.”

A top-secret security clearance made that essential. “We can’t choose our relatives, and mine were no better. My mother never had a clue who I was or what motivated me.” No one in her life had understood her, and damn few had even tried, including Austin.

Westford grunted, definitely skeptical. “What motivated her?”

“Money” Sybil grimaced. “Hardly flattering, but true. She was a good woman, in her own way. We were just very different kinds of people.”

Jonathan paused beside a tall pine to get his bearings. “So you were closer to your dad, then?”

“Actually, I wasn’t. I loved them both, but Dad … well, I think I always disappointed him. No matter what I did, he expected better.”

“You gave him better.”

She pegged Jonathan with a nonplussed look. “He expected more.”

“So who would mourn you?”

“Gabby” Sybil swatted at a mosquito feasting on her cheek. “The first time I met her, I knew we’d be friends forever.” A flash of that meeting in the college dorm replayed in Sybil’s mind. “She’s a complex woman with a good heart. She would mourn.”

“Yeah, Gabby would,” he agreed. “David would mourn you, too, Sybil.”

“That’s different. He’s my mentor, and as much as I care about him, he isn’t family”

A squirrel jumped from one tall pine to another. It seemed crazy, especially for a woman her age, but it hurt in a thousand little ways to be orphaned. She hated not being anyone’s little girl anymore.

“It would have been nice if your parents could have been there for you during the divorce.”

Boy was he off the mark. “I’m glad we were all spared that.”

“Catholic?”

“No, wealthy” She kept her gaze fixed on the ground. “My family doesn’t do divorce. In divorces, you divide property and assets. That’s not acceptable.”

“Would you have done it—gotten divorced—if they had still been alive?”

“Positively. They would have made me eat dirt the rest of my life, but
nothing
could have stopped me from divorcing Austin Stone.”

Westford pursed his lips, thoughtful, and for a split
second something resembling guilt flashed in his eyes. What brought that on?

He stared off in the distance. “Maybe Gabby would mourn for me, too.”

That surprised her. “Are you and Gabby close?”

“We talk,” he said. “Well, she talks. I mostly listen.”

“That’s Gabby.” Had she been playing her matchmaker-from-hell routine with him, too? God, Sybil hoped not. The thought chilled her.

They had met while Westford was guarding Sybil and occasionally had talked on the phone. Apparently they still did. Maybe she knew why he had transferred and left Sybil. “Considering what we have to do”—she glanced down at the briefcase that bumped her thigh with every step—“I’m glad we’re alive. But we won’t be for long if we don’t pick up the pace.”

“Right.” His lip curled. He knew she needed to get away from old pains and strong emotions. Focusing on her job would give her that.

They walked on, and, for the first time, she found herself wondering. How many times had Westford seen his friends and coworkers die? Men like Harrison and Cramer. And how many times had he hurt from the bone out and felt unable to mourn?

His work was high risk, so probably more often than one would think. And knowing he’d taken in all that grief and held it inside created an almost overwhelming need in her to touch him, to soothe and comfort and ease the ravages left by layers of grief and pain.

“Heads up.” He snagged her attention. “It’s slick through here.”

The ground had grown more marshy, the sand and mud softer and more slick. And the rain persisted. So did the high humidity and the damnable August heat. How could anyone stand to live here? The place had its own kind of beauty, but the weather made it hell.

“Let’s stop and rest for a few minutes. We’ve got a long day in front of us.”

“We can’t,” she said, fighting panic. Her defenses were too weak to risk a confrontation with the kissing-and-holding or not-kissing-and-holding dilemma. “Time is too precious.”

“Look, you’re so tired you’re about to fall down.”

“Let’s just keep going, okay? If I stop, I’ll sleep. If I sleep, I’ll have nightmares that we need a few more minutes later and I wasted them sleeping.”

“What is going to happen on the other end, Sybil? What’s this phantom deadline and security breach all about? And what’s in that damn case?”

It was time he knew the truth. They could die here, and if they did, he deserved to at least know why. “A key” she said. Her eyes filmed over and she blinked hard to keep the tears in her heart from falling. “Just one little key”

Westford frowned. “One little key to what?”

“An ICBM at A-267.” There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Westford knew all about intercontinental ballistic missiles and A-267, an installation that housed and operated so much sensitive information and technology the site itself had been classified top secret.

“Are you telling me someone has activated an ICBM inside A-267?”

It had sounded horrible the first time she had heard it from David, and it sounded even more horrible now with seven deaths attributed to it. The terror she felt inside shone back at her in Westford’s eyes. “Yes,” she whispered with tragic reverence.

“And the only key to disarm it is in that case?” He pointed with his index finger.

She nodded.

“Do we know who infiltrated the site?”

“Not yet.” She swallowed hard. “We’re working on it.”

“Without the key—”

“The ICBM launches.”

“We can’t shut it down?”

“Not at this time. The launch sequence has been reconfigured and the stealth system that would allow us to recapture control and deactivate has been disabled.”

“Can’t we just enable it again?”

“Not without blowing up A-267, Washington, and most of the surrounding states.”

Westford shoved his hands deep into his pockets in frustration. “The missile. Is it a Minuteman?”

Didn’t they all wish it were? “It’s a Peacekeeper, West-ford.” The deadliest of all missiles in the world. In thirty minutes, a Peacekeeper could take out a small country.

He blew out a long breath, raked his fingers through his dripping hair. “The eagle and arrows—the UN is blowing its cork.”

She nodded, revealing that the transmission he had been unable to decipher had been multilayered. “Any launch will be considered a hostile attack. Some of the members have already put us on notice. You can’t blame them. That position is essential to their own countries’ security. If the missile launches, they will retaliate.”

The color leaked from his face. He understood. No world leader would jeopardize his own country’s security and trust the United States’word that a launch couldn’t be avoided. Our allies were about to become our enemies.

“Where’s it going?”

“Before we left Geneva, to North Korea. Currently it’s China. Apparently, at random intervals, the target cycles to new destinations.”

Westford snatched at a thorny vine clinging to his pant leg, a deep furrow creasing the skin between his eyebrows. An armadillo scooted away, hid in the underbrush. “The bastards are deliberately trying to trigger World War III.”

“I’d give up my office to be able to dispute that,” Sybil said, and meant it. “But I can’t.”

The skin beneath Westford’s left eye twitched and his expression turned even grimmer. “You said we have to get back by Saturday night. Exactly how long do we have?”

She didn’t bother checking her watch. The crystal had broken during their fall. It wasn’t working. The terrorists had given them seventy-two hours. She swallowed a bitter knot of fear. “Midnight Saturday.”

Westford glanced at his watch then dragged his palm along his square jaw. The stubble scraped against his hand. She had been given seventy-two hours to save the world. Tough enough. But now they had just forty hours and they were still stuck in the swamp without transportation. “What happens if we don’t get there?”

Sybil kept her voice steady. “The missile launches, and whoever it’s targeting then, and their allies, strike back.”

Jonathan absorbed that with a sharp breath. “Well, then. We’d better tend to your feet and get moving.”

“My feet are fine.”

“Don’t waste time fighting me on this. You’re going to lose.”

She frowned at him and sat down on a tree stump. “You’ve got an attitude, Westford.”

“Terrible character flaw. I’ll work on it.”

She lifted her hand to his face. “Don’t.”

He smiled, turned and soaked his shirt in the creek, and then washed and inspected her feet. “Damn, Sybil. They’re raw” He grimaced. “Why didn’t you tell me they were this bad?”

“I didn’t know it.” She settled for a half-truth. “I can’t see through muddy socks, either.”

Not at all amused, he crouched down, then wrapped his shirt around her left foot as a makeshift bandage. “Give me your slip.”

“I’d rather not.”

He held out his hand. “I know, but we’re not moving until you do.”

“Why?”

“Infection. There are things out here you don’t want in your system.”

Facing him in bare feet wasn’t bad enough? Now she had to put her slip in his hands?

Crouched, he braced his arms on his knees. “The only other option we’ve got is my pants. You choose.”

Damn him and his logic. She stood up, reached under her skirt, and then pulled down the scrap of silk and lace and passed it to him.

He didn’t look at her, just focused on the task, then put his socks on over the bandages. She thought she might just love him for that small mercy.

“That’s the best we can do for now.” He stood up, turned, and then cut through the dense brush.

Sybil rushed to catch up, forced herself to thank him.

He ignored her. “If you can, stay in my footsteps. Two sets double the odds of us attracting enemy attention and make us easier to track.”

God, but she hated the sound of that. She rolled the waistband of her skirt, shortening the length to mid-thigh. That gave her more freedom to stretch her stride, but matching his steps would still require work. Batting at the million mosquitoes swarming her did, too.

He glanced back, raised an eyebrow, and mumbled something about his transmitter. He’d tinkered with it at dawn, and, intermittently since then, he had been receiving weird, nonsensical messages that she couldn’t decipher. He’d only transmitted once: a coded message about swamp buses, kids skipping school, and seniors at a rest stop.

“Why haven’t you transmitted more messages from us?” she asked.

“Because I can’t control who receives them.”

Home Base
and
the terrorists. Considering his caution
wise, she crossed a ledge with a deep dropoff on both sides, carefully monitoring his steps. He cupped his hand to his ear. Must be getting another update. “Is it Conlee?”

“No, Sayelle. Like the others. Bleed-over and coded.”

That Conlee had pulled Sayelle into this still set her teeth on edge. “What’s he saying?”

“Still feeding in. Give me a second.”

Something flew close, swooped low—a bird? Sybil ducked, misstepped, and landed on a sharp stone. Pain shot through her foot, her leg. Her knee gave way and she lost her balance, fell down a steep incline.

Every roll through the thorny brush clinging to the walls of the dropoff brought fresh pain to old bruises and sharp stabs that promised to leave new ones. She grabbed for a bush, curled her fingers around its leaves, but her forward momentum proved stronger than her grip. She clutched at another bush. Her arm jerked, nearly tearing loose from its socket, yet again she couldn’t sustain her hold. Head over heels, she slid and tumbled farther and farther down. A large rock stabbed into her side. Searing pain streaked through her armpit, her shoulder, up her neck, across her chest, down her right side, and suddenly there was nothing underneath her. She free-fell, and fell, and finally dropped into something that splashed. The abrupt halt knocked the wind out of her.

Stunned, she struggled to grab a breath, to stay conscious, to see if the briefcase remained intact and where she had landed. Gritty brown muck, dank and thick, surrounded her. In it, nothing grew. Sludge. Slushy sludge …
Oh, God.
“Jonathan!”

The man-made ledge was a solid twenty feet above her. He stood on a huge, protruding rock, staring down at her, and the horror on his face confirmed her worst fears. She hadn’t fallen into water.

She’d fallen into quicksand.