Flee the Night by Susan May Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

on the telephone right now, ordering out pizza and hightailing it to the nearest Marriott, wishing he’d never answered his cell phone.
    Somehow, however, she didn’t think so. Micah may believe her a traitor, but he was a man of his word. He kept his promises. At whatever cost.
    “Think about your daughter. We’re the only ones who know about her. You’d hate for her to get picked up and placed in the foster-care system.” Berg shook his head, and suddenly Lacey knew why he was in his position. He may not be a field agent, but he delivered ultimatums like a one-two punch right to the kisser.
    He pursed his lips as if he might actually care and pulled back for his final jab. “She might be lost forever or adopted out—she is still at that sweet, tender age when a loving family might want her.” He smiled, jackal-like. “And you, well, you really don’t know if we haven’t already done that, do you?”
    Lacey fought a betraying expression. No. If they had Emily, they would have told her. It would have been Berg’s first line of offense.
    Still, she could use this threat. Perhaps it was time to remember just how this game was played.
    Until she figured out what Ishmael had been doing on that train and what had happened to Ex-6, and until she proved her innocence again and Emily was in her arms, she’d be the woman they thought she was. Broken. Afraid. Guilty.
    Cooperative.
    “Okay, yes. I’ll give you the copy. But promise me that you will take care of Emily. You’ll return her to Janie’s ranch.” She didn’t have to fabricate the desperation that laced her voice.
    “Of course.” Berg frowned.
    And, yes, that was a smile on Agent Brower’s face. Made him look like a wolf—all teeth and lots of bite.
    Lacey enacted a sigh. “You’ll find a copy in Chicago in a safe-deposit box at First National Bank.” She motioned for a pencil.
    Berg took her scribbled information, stood, and patted her blanketed legs. “Good girl, Lacey. You get better now. See how easy that was?”
    Easy? Easy was her dreams—living on the farm, mothering Emily, teaching her to ride. Easy was falling for the memory of Jim Micah in her arms, dancing under a canopy of brilliance strewn across the Kentucky sky. Easy had nothing to do with sewing together the tattered remains of her shattered life, always looking over her shoulder. Or trying to prove to a man who hated her that she wasn’t a woman with murder in her past.
    No, there was nothing easy about tomorrow. There was only one way she was going to get better. Get free. Get Em.
    And run.

    Micah paced the parking lot of the Baptist Hospital, staring at the late-afternoon sky and clenching his cell phone. What he wanted to do was hurl it across the parking lot or maybe do about a thousand laps at the high school track down the road.
    Lord, I thought You were on my side.
    One telephone call and he’d come running back to her like a lovesick puppy. So much for ripping her out of his heart. She had tentacles that reached through time and space and knew how to make a man gasp. Especially when she looked at him with those slightly needy, oh-Micah-you’re-the-only-one-who-can-help-me eyes.
    But he was starting to return to his senses, and the first glaring reality facing him was the fact that by hanging around Lacey Montgomery he was jeopardizing his military future. Again.
    “Hello?”
    Micah drew a stiff breath lest he bark into the telephone and permanently damage Conner Young’s ear. Conner was probably at the helm of his pickup, listening with an earphone, or hiking along the Blue Ridge Mountains on one of his mysterious walkabouts. Conner had definitely gone on some sort of life expedition over the past year since he left the commandos, as if searching for something just out of his reach. Most days, Micah knew how he felt.
    “Conner, where are you?”
    “Where were you this morning? There I was, sitting at the Southern Restaurant all by my lonesome. I had to finish the