Escape to Morning by Susan May Warren Read Free Book Online Page A

mouth.
    The woman crouched. Opened her arms. Smiled.
    The ground rippled, cracked. Dannette watched in horror as it opened a gully between herself and the woman. Still, the woman stayed in her crouched position, unaffected by the storm that now whipped her green house-dress and apron around her waist, her hair over her face. “Dannette?” she said, cocking her head.
    â€œMommy!” Was that her voice?
    Dannette startled awake. The woman vanished, and the final scenes of the detective show slashed into her mind. Her heart pounded, and she summoned deep breaths.
    Just a dream .
    Dannette looked at Missy. In the wan, eerie light, she saw the dog’s head raised, her eyes tender as she stared at her mistress. “C’mere,” Dannette said softly and heard emotion in her plea.
    Missy trotted over and hesitated before she jumped on the bed and joined Dannette.
    Dannette turned off the television and scooted down. She rubbed her hand through Missy’s fur and tousled her ear, comforted by Missy’s warmth, her sweet eyes on her.
    â€œI dunno,” she repeated, then closed her eyes and tried to push the memories back to the dark corners where they belonged.

    Fadima sat between the two men, squashed in the front of the pickup, like a prisoner. She hadn’t been this close to a man ever, even her brother, and it felt invasive, even through her spring jacket. Their odor—a mixture of sweat, cigarette smoke, and greasy food—rose and filled the cab, curdling the airplane food that sat like a boulder in her stomach. She clutched her backpack on her lap and tried to remember her father’s words.
    â€œYou are the bride of Bakym.”
    Bride . That word meant so many things in her culture. How ironic that for the first time it would also mean freedom. She had been prepared for the tradition of arranged marriage and the fact that her father had pledged her years ago to the local Hayata leader, Bakym. She’d even managed to resign herself to the knowledge that Bakym saw her only as an alliance, a means of securing for himself a higher position in the larger Hayata organization. Hayata meant life, but only since her mother had been killed had Fadima realized that her father had plans to give her and her brother real life outside the Hayataring of power. Plans that, should Hayata discover them, would lead straight to their executions.
    Bride. Thankfully, any such ceremony wouldn’t take place until her father joined them, which of course, would hopefully never happen. Until then she would assume her alternate purpose as a courier.
    Hayata dealt in surreptitious money and weapons transportation as well as identity theft, money laundering, and other forms of fraud. Although started by a group of disenfranchised Cossacks searching for unity, their leadership had refocused in the last few years as suppliers, the brokers of information, weaponry, and supplies. She would spend the next two months polishing her English and learning how to pass herself off as a tourist—or better, as an American teenager. Then Hayata would put her to work, sending her to Detroit and perhaps the South, where she’d travel the coast in an RV with her supposed father and act as a decoy for their illegal activities.
    Illegal activities that included the loss of American lives.
    Unless she escaped and completed her real mission. Amina . She had held the flimsiest of hopes that one of these two men might be the contact who would not only stop Hayata’s plans but remove her from their clutches so she could start a new life. Her disappointment sharpened with each mile. Night blacked out the landscape, save for the beam of headlights furrowing out the highway. Jet lag washed over her in waves, but she refused to sleep, to let her head bob onto either man’s shoulder. “How much longer?” she asked in her native tongue.
    â€œEnglish,” the driver snapped. He had pale skin, light brown hair,