Hide My Soul: A Romantic Suspense Thriller Novel (Hide Me Series Book 4) (12 page)

"How far can you go, Thisbe?" West asked and Katerina heard thick emotion in his voice.

"One hundred miles in all directions."

"What is the closest town?"

"Rachel. It is exactly 32 miles away."

"Can you take us there?"

Katerina gripped West's arm. Thirty-two miles? The closest town? Was that really smart? West shook his head in warning and squeezed her hand. "Trust me," he whispered.

"Yes I can take you there," Thisbe replied. "And yes I will. You may sit up now."

West sat up first and helped Katerina into a sitting position. He pulled her tightly into his arms and kissed her forehead. "Thank God you're real," he whispered. "Thank God I found you."

Katerina closed her eyes and felt their heartbeats merge into one. A miracle. That's what it was. A pure miracle that she had two men to thank for.

Her eyes shot open. "Thisbe, is Dyl - Storm okay?"

"He is okay for now. He is herding monkeys. It would be comical if not for the fire."

"What about you?" West asked, sitting forward in his seat and staring at the light on the dashboard. "Are you OK? Is the fire still spreading?"

"The fire is still spreading. I am fine. My mainframe is well-protected."

West relaxed slightly and Katerina nestled into his chest. They were nowhere near out of danger, she knew that, but it still felt good to be held by her husband. She watched out the window as the car accelerated faster. They seemed to be going much faster than anyone would normally drive. She peeked around the head rest at the speedometer. One hundred and forty-six miles an hour. Katerina gulped and felt for her seatbelt. West noticed her fear and put his on also. But the car sped along perfectly straight down the empty highway, not giving them any reason to fear other than the speed and the fact that no one was driving it.

They rode along in silence for many minutes, West's hands roaming up and down Katerina's arms and pulling gently at her hair, like he couldn't believe she was real. Katerina recognized the feeling and shared it.

Abruptly, the vehicle began to slow. Katerina looked around. They couldn't have gone thirty-two miles already, could they have?

Thisbe's voice spoke from the console. This time, it sounded robotic to Katerina and the change scared her badly. "My mainframe will be breached in eight minutes, four seconds. I must bring the vehicle back if no one is to know you have gone. Please exit immediately."

Thisbe maneuvered the car to the breakdown lane and West fumbled at the handle, finally opening the door and spilling them out onto the blacktop.

"Thank you," Katerina called, but the car was already accelerating again. It turned around and sped back the way it had come from, even faster now that it was completely empty.

West hugged Katerina to him, practically carrying her as he picked his way over the Nevada desert scrub.

Neither of them was sweating anymore, and he was afraid heat exhaustion would set in soon. If it did, they were dead. The sun had risen hours ago and it was beating down mercilessly on them. They had ditched the uniforms when Thisbe had dropped them off, but Katerina had the brilliant idea to keep the hats, and they both had theirs pulled low over their faces.

West's phone battery was dead. It had died an instantaneous and much mourned death the instant he had turned the phone on.

They had been walking for hours and Katerina was asleep on her feet. The lonely road lay a half mile to their right. West hadn't wanted to stay on it, afraid that any vehicles rushing down it would be military - men with guns ready to take them back to their certain doom. But not one vehicle had passed on it. West tried to make sense of it. Was it really that isolated out here? Why hadn't they at least seen fire trucks rushing to the base?

West swayed on his feet and gritted his teeth, fighting for control. Katerina mumbled and he pushed himself upright, gripping her harder. They had to be close. Had to be.

He lifted his face, feeling the sun burning his cheeks and saw something that made his spirit soar over the dessert like an eagle. A building. A plain, white building that looked like the grandest hotel, with smaller buildings behind it. It was still over a mile away but he knew they could make it. Nothing would stop them.

"Katerina, we're almost there," he told her, hearing his own jubilance.

"What?" she muttered, trying to help him, trying to place her feet solidly on the ground.

"A building. Look."

Katerina lifted her eyes and he felt the exact moment that she realized they wouldn't die out here in the dessert. New strength flowed through her limbs and she stood fully upright, her pace quickening.

"We made it," she sighed.

The building seemed to take an eternity to reach, but they finally drew close. A sign announced that they had arrived at Little A'Le'Inn, Earthlings Welcome. Katerina gaped at it but didn't remark on it. West thought she was probably saving her energy.

Four cars graced the parking lot but no people were in sight. West looked around for a phone, desperation lining his thoughts. How could he make this work? Give them the most amount of time with the least amount of danger? If they holed up here, and the guys from Operation Arma showed up with vehicles and guns, he and Katerina would be caught for sure. No warning, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. But what choice did they have? None.

He pulled Katerina around to the Inn's front door and pushed his way inside, hoping he didn't look too scruffy. A wooden bench sat just inside the door. Perfect. He maneuvered Katerina over to it and sat her down, whispering he'd be right back. He pulled his cap low to hide his features and loped up to the counter, where a tiny sign proclaimed he should ding the bell. He did, just once, as quietly as possible.

A slight man with heavy glasses appeared almost immediately. "Yes Sir, what can I help you with?"

West pasted a smile on his face and held out his hand, praying the man would take it. The man's hand reached out automatically. As soon as West felt the slide of the man's skin on his fingers he gripped. "Relax. Don't say a word. Look at the floor. I need a room for one night but I won't be paying and I can't show up on any register. Mark the room as unavailable but empty. Forget my face. Forget I was ever here. Do whatever you have to do quickly."

West made a vow to himself that if he got out of this he would send the Little A'Le'Inn twice what the room was worth. No, four times! But right now he just needed the room and for this guy to not remember he existed.

The man's gaze slid into the slightly unfocused stare West was beginning to know so well. He bent under the counter and retrieved a key, handing it to West. "Trailer 5. Round the back and to the left."

West let go of his hand and grabbed the key, then turned to gather Katerina and leave before anyone else saw them.

Katerina looked surprised and about to say something. West held a finger to his lips and pulled her out of her chair, then through the front door.

"That was quick. I didn't even see you give him any money," Katerina said as they hurried through the dirt to the back of the building.

West spotted the trailer and made a beeline for it, pulling Katerina with him, hoping she wouldn't insist on asking more questions. She still didn't know about what he could do and he wanted to keep it that way. At least for now. Any time he stopped to think about it too long the implications threatened to knock him to his knees. What were the limits of his power? Did Katerina give special abilities to anyone besides him? He wasn't the only person she'd healed. Those kinds of thoughts ran races inside his head until he was half mad. He didn't want to give her those thoughts too if he didn't have to.

West climbed the three rickety steps to the trailer and shoved his key in the lock, secreting them inside. He breathed a sigh of relief as the door shut behind them. That had been easier than it had any right to be. Katerina dropped to a bed and shut her eyes. West headed for the phone, his muscles still tensed for fight or flight.

He dialed Blaise's number but it went right to voice-mail. He cursed under his breath and hung up.

"What?" Katerina asked without opening her eyes, the tone in her voice implying she was near her breaking point.

"Blaise isn't answering. He's probably on an airplane on his way out here. That could take hours."

"Brody," Katerina said.

West tried his brother's number, but that phone also went to voicemail. "Nope," he said heavily.

"So we wait," Katerina muttered.

West stood and paced the room. "I can't help but feel like that's a bad idea. We need somebody to know where we are and what's happened to us. Somebody who cares. Somebody who has the power to do something about it."

"Pearson," he breathed, the sudden thought of his lawyer warming him. Pearson had helped them escape Dylan Phillips back when the man had been a lunatic police chief who had it out for them. But even as he thought about it, he knew this situation was a hundred times worse than that one. Would Pearson be able to handle it?

On the bed, Katerina whispered, "Craig."

Craig Masterson! Why hadn't West thought of the FBI agent before? They'd done the agent a huge favor recently, and the man had certainly seemed to know his stuff. Fear worked little wormholes of worry into the plan though. The man was a government agent. Just like Raven. What if he knew about Operation Arma and, instead of helping them, decided to deliver them right back into the serpent's mouth?

West sat heavily on the bed, rubbing his eyes against the exhaustion that threatened to floor him. He knew he had to trust someone. What had happened to them was huge - way too big for them to claw their way out of by themselves. Without some major help they would be recaptured, or just killed, the moment they showed themselves.

Now that there was no immediate danger shoving a gun in his face, and he had Katerina safe beside him, thoughts about the hopeless nature of their circumstances crowded into his brain. How could they fight the U.S. Government and win? How could they escape something like this, that threatened to be a scandal to rival Watergate or Iran-contra? West's tired mind tried to insist it had to be true. The American people wouldn't stand for a government that kidnapped their own citizens and held them in secret, underground facilities, using military forces to do it, would they?

West felt his eyelids drooping and knew he needed to make a decision. His mind cast a tired net over everything he knew about Craig. The man had dealt with scandal before, and fearlessly worked to put the bad guys in jail, one of them a U.S. Senator. Plus he was married to Emma, one of the most trustworthy people he'd ever known in his life.

Decision made, West stood up and grabbed the phone again. He stared blankly at the wall, realizing he didn't know Craig's number. He had it in his cell phone, but that was dead.

"555-4389," Katerina whispered from the bed, her voice heavy and thick, like she was about to drift off.

He turned to her. "Is that ...?"

"Craig's cell number, yes. I memorized it when we were working with him last month. You know, just in case."

West blessed her memory and bent to give her a kiss. Katerina clutched at him like she was drowning and he was the life guard. But only for a moment. She knew how dire their situation was as well as he did.

West dialed the number and waited, his teeth on edge.
Answer, answer.

"Masterson."

When the rough voice cut through the static of the line, West almost couldn't react.
Were they saved?
He managed to force some words out. "Craig, hi it's West. Me and Katerina are in trouble man. Deep trouble. We need your help."

Craig didn't answer for several long seconds and West held his breath. A thousand scenarios flashed through his mind in an instant, each worse than the last. The man already knew what was going on with them and he wanted nothing to do with it. Or he already knew and he was part of it. Or he didn't want to know. Or he would find out and turn them in.

But when Craig spoke again, West was able to relax, almost slumping against the tiny table the phone sat on.

"Sorry about that. I had to step into my office for privacy. What's the trouble?"

West watched out the window, terror gripping him mercilessly as evening deepened into night and still Craig hadn't shown up. Katerina snored lightly behind him but he hadn't let himself sleep, not yet. Someone had to be awake, watchful. Not that they had any chance of running if the wrong people showed up.

A nondescript white sedan pulled into the parking lot just beyond the building where they had checked in. West narrowed his eyes and pressed his face to the glass. He'd seen only three vehicles enter and two leave today, and none had been Craig. Craig had promised he'd be there as soon as possible. West had done the math and figured the earliest Craig could have arrived would have been four hours, but that time had passed five hours ago.

His fingers itched to pick up the phone and call someone, anyone, but Craig had admonished him not to do that. Craig said the government had the ability to monitor every phone call placed in the entire country for certain trigger words, and if the computer heard the trigger words spoken, the call could be listened in on by CIA or other spying agencies the government employed. "What if they are already listening in on this call?" West had said and Craig's response had not encouraged him. "Then we're screwed."

West watched as the car reversed again, disappointment spreading through him, but then the car pulled past the main building and headed towards his trailer. West stared openly, but reached behind him and jiggled Katerina's foot. "Babe, wake up."

It had to be Craig, but just in case ....

The car stopped and the driver side door opened. Craig Masterson got out and West released the breath that he had been holding. Craig walked up the steps and knocked on their door.

West let Craig in and turned around to see Katerina groggily sitting up. "Hi," Craig said gruffly, then pulled a rag out of his pocket, handing it to West. "Everything you've touched, and I mean everything. Wipe down the walls and the windows if there's a chance you touched them. Wipe off all of your fingerprints. We are out of here in three minutes."

West's words of thanks died on his lips. So they were still running.

Exactly two minutes and thirty seconds later, the three of them were in the car and Craig reversed it out of the parking lot, heading away from the Little A'Le'Inn. West thought he'd never been so glad to see something disappear behind him in his life.

"Where are we going?" Katerina asked from the backseat.

"Dallas," Craig said, his voice hard and a little forbidding.

West stared at him. "Dallas? Why Dallas?" A sudden foreboding told him he probably wasn't going to like the answer.

Craig took a deep breath and glanced at West, then back at the road. "Look, we need to have a very serious conversation. I've been pulling every string I know, every favor owed to me, and picking the brain of every friend I have. You two are mixed up in some seriously bad business. This Operation Arma doesn't exist. Every level of government I've approached insists there is no subterranean base under Area 51."

West began to stammer his protest and Craig held up a hand. "I believe you. I'm just telling you what I've been going through the last few hours. I've only found one person who was willing to talk about it, and she says it doesn't exist, but that anyone who escaped from there might as well be dead. She told me that the government will do everything in their power to silence you. You won't even be taken back there. You'll just be shot in the head and left in a ditch."

West winced. "I've been thinking about that. And our best solution has to be to go to the press."

"You can try," Craig said. "But I'd be willing to bet you'd be dead within an hour of talking to your first reporter."

"No!" West yelled and slammed a fist into his door. "I refuse to believe that! This is the United States of America! We're not supposed to do that to our own citizens."

Craig didn't say anything, just drove on.

West licked his lips. He knew Craig was speaking the truth, but he didn't want to believe it. He tried another tactic. "We could run. Go to the press in another country."

Craig nodded like he expected that. "One of two things will happen if you do that. The US government will fabricate a murder or treason charge and present it to the foreign government for extradition. You'll be back here before you know it." West tried to protest again and Craig spoke louder. "OR! Or, your family will start to disappear. Everyone you know and love will suffer the fate that the government had reserved for you, until you come home in a panic, and then they'll finish you off and be done with it."

West shrank against the passenger seat, his exhaustion and discontent weighing him down. "So what do we do then?"

"Did you notice that it took me longer than it should have to get to you?" Craig asked.

West nodded, peeking at Katerina in the back seat to see how she was taking this. Her eyes followed both men avidly.

"I stopped at the field office in Las Vegas to put a few ideas into effect. On the flight over, I did as much research as I could and came to a decision of what would be best for you two. I had my friend, the one who was willing to talk about it, look into the situation there. Apparently the entire facility has been gutted. Everything is destroyed, and the fire is still raging on, taking out the base above now. There are pipelines feeding the gas into the underground system and all of them are ablaze, causing huge sinkholes and fire to spurt up out of the ground from anywhere with no warning."

West heard a small noise from the backseat and reached back to take Katerina's hand. Who knew who she was mourning over: Dylan, the monkeys, the computer. Any of them were a safe bet with a heart as tender as Katerina's.

"That's why no one has come after you. The entire place is in absolute chaos. From what you told me, there's a good chance that they think you are dead, burned to nothing but ash somewhere below the ground."

Craig stopped talking, letting the fact sink in. "The way I see it, now that you are dead, your only hope is to stay dead."

"And just how are we going to do that?" West asked, his entire life disintegrating in a flash.

"My friend? The one who told me all of this – she can set you up with citizen identities in another country. In fact, she already has. She hasn't told me which country, and I haven't told her who you are. No one knows the full story, which should make you safe."

Craig was silent for a long time.

"It's the best we can do."