Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (35 page)

Harlan pulled me into the doctor’s lounge and closed the door. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded. “Are you okay?”

“My dad,” I asked immediately. “Is he alive?”

“He’s out of surgery... but they don’t know if he’ll wake up.”

I slumped.
Jesus.

“What the hell happened at the museum?” asked Harlan. “How did you get away from O’Harra?”

I shook my head. “Kian’s not the enemy. He saved us!”

Harlan leaned close. “Emily, I have to take you in. I’m on orders direct from the Vice—”—he corrected himself—“from the
President.
I don’t know what O’Harra told you but he’s involved with the Brothers of Freedom. They already have him in custody: he can’t hurt you anymore.”

“
Hurt
me? He didn’t—” I took a deep breath and tried to sound calm and rational. “Harlan, this is
not what you think. Kerrigan
is behind everything.”

He blinked at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I grabbed his upper arms and looked right into his eyes. “Kerrigan is behind the Brothers of Freedom,” I said. “The attack in the park, the one at the museum... it’s
all him
. To scare everybody and to steal the Presidency.”

Harlan stared at me and then started to shake his head. “Emily, you’ve been through a lot.”

I could feel the tears in my eyes and tried to blink them away because crying wouldn’t help my case. “Goddammit, Harlan,
listen to me. Please!”

“Emily, let me have someone take you back to the White House. You can calm down, say your piece, we can look into... all of this.”

I closed my eyes for a moment in frustration and turned away from him. How the hell could I convince him? I had no evidence and no way to get it.

I opened my eyes and, for a second, I was looking out of the little window of the doctor’s lounge, onto the hallway. That’s when I saw him: a Rexortech security guy, strolling through the lobby.

I spun to face Harlan. “Rexortech have guys here?”

Harlan nodded. “They handle security for the hospital anyway, but they sent extra guys to help lock the place down.” The Rexortech guy was standing in front of the glass security door that led from the lobby into the hospital. As I watched, he swiped a pass card, the door slid open for him and he strolled through.

I grabbed Harlan’s arm and dragged him out of the lounge and across the lobby. “Rexortech is Kerrigan’s old company,” I told him. “The people he has at the White House, the people he sent here, they’re in on it!”

Harlan just stared at me. On the other side of the sliding door I could see the Rexortech guy walking away down the hallway.

“
Please,
Harlan!” I begged. “I know how this sounds! But I swear to you, this is real. You’ve known me for years, have I
ever
seemed crazy, or delusional?”

He looked at me for a long time. “No….”

“Then
please,
don’t let that guy go near my dad!”

He hesitated, shook his head... then sighed and nodded. We walked over to the sliding door and Harlan swiped his pass card. Too late, I saw the white Rexortech camera above it.
Shit!
I looked away, but not in time. Somewhere, a computer would be flashing up an alert to Kerrigan’s people. How long did I have now—minutes?

I led the way down the hallway. I didn’t need to ask which room because I could see the Rexortech guy entering a door. I started to jog, my legs aching with exhaustion, but the hallway seemed to go on forever. The Secret Service agents standing outside my dad’s room came alive and put their hands on their guns when they saw me running towards them... but then they saw who it was and just gawped. Harlan waved them aside as we barreled through the door.

The Rexortech guy was standing beside my dad’s bed... but however hard I tried, I couldn’t focus on him. I just stood there staring at my dad, my heart shrinking down to a tight, hard ball.

He’d always looked so strong but, in that bed with the bandages on his chest and all the machines around him, he looked like a fallen giant. His skin was horribly pale and his breath was a weak rasp.

I finally looked up and saw the Rexortech guy staring at me in horror. He’d recognized me. He snatched his hand away from my dad, holding it down below the level of the bed so we couldn’t see it. But I’d seen something in his hand. “What is that?” I demanded. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m
meant
to be in here,” he said. “I have to walk the whole floor, check every room. Just doing my job.”

“He has something in his hand,” I told Harlan. “I saw it!”

The man frowned at me. “What the
fuck?”
He was so confident, so convincing. He made me sound like a crazy person.

Next to me, I could see Harlan wavering, uncertain. This guy was going to talk his way out of there, then come back later when my dad was alone and defenseless.... “Harlan, I swear,” I said. “I saw it.”

The Rexortech guy shook his head angrily and started for the door, one hand down by his side where we couldn’t see it.

“Harlan,
please,”
I begged.

Harlan took a long look at me... and suddenly drew his gun and pointed it at the Rexortech guy. “Stop,” he said. “Show me your hands.”

The guy stopped, glowering at us. He slowly raised one hand... and we saw the syringe he’d been concealing.

Then, while we were distracted, he pulled his gun with his other hand. He did it with military speed. He would have gotten the drop on anyone else.

But not Harlan. He never hesitated, just raised his gun and fired two shots, hitting the guy in the chest with both and sending him slamming back against the wall. He slumped to the floor, dead.

The door opened and the room was suddenly full of Secret Service agents, guns drawn. “What the
fuck?”
asked one of them, seeing the body.

I pulled Harlan to one side. “You believe me
now?”
I asked.

He nodded. His whole demeanor had changed. I might have always thought of Harlan as an old, faithful Labrador but now he’d gone into full-on attack mode... and he was
furious
that he hadn’t seen this danger until now.

“I need you to trust no one,” I told him. “Not a goddamn soul. You don’t let
anyone
near my dad. Can you do that?”

He straightened up. “Yes ma’am.”

Another agent stepped forward. “Miss Matthews, we need to take you back to the White House.”

I backed away from them and out through the door.

“Miss Matthews, it’s for your own safety!”

I caught Harlan’s eye over the agent’s shoulder. The full horror of it was hitting him, now: the White House under Kerrigan’s control and full of Rexortech’s people. He understood, now: it wasn’t safe for me there, anymore.

Run,
he mouthed.

I ran. Down the hallway, back towards the sliding door. I could hear footsteps behind me but they’d hesitated for a vital few seconds and I’d gotten a head start. I slapped the door release button for the sliding door and sprinted through the lobby, then out of the main doors and around the side of the building.

Too late, I saw the black SUV speeding towards me. I swerved but it pulled up right in front of me, cutting me off. The rear door swung open and I saw Powell, a grin of satisfaction on his face. As I desperately tried to backpedal, he lunged forward and grabbed me, dragging me inside. A cloth bag was rammed over my head and everything went black.

Kian

“Sir?” An agent passed Miller a phone. “Harlan for you, from the hospital.
She was there!”

I’d been sitting slumped in my plastic chair, hands still cuffed behind my back, but now I sat bolt upright, straining my ears. I could only hear Miller’s end of the conversation but it told me all I needed to know: Emily had been to the hospital and there’d been another attempt on the President’s life. I shook my head, mad at myself: I should have realized Kerrigan would try to finish the President off. But what the hell had she been thinking, putting herself at risk like that?

Then I saw Miller’s face go white. Twisting, sickening fear hit me right in the guts. With every second that he stood there silently listening, it climbed higher. I’d never felt so utterly powerless.

When he hung up, he just stared at me, his expression unreadable.
“What?”
I yelled.

“Emily’s been taken,” he said. “Right outside the hospital. The Brothers of Freedom have her.”

The fear deepened and darkened. I had to get out of there and after her...
now.
I felt the familiar anger start to take over, comforting as a favorite blanket. Emily needed me and this asshole was in the way. “Let me help,” I said desperately.

He didn’t answer. He pulled a chair across the room, its legs shrieking on the linoleum, and straddled it backwards. Then he just looked at me. For the first time in hours, I felt the tiniest shred of hope.

He was starting to doubt the official story. I could see it in his eyes. For years, this guy had obeyed every single order he’d been given. But you don’t get hired by the Secret Service unless you’re smart and he was starting to see the holes in what Kerrigan was saying.

“I swear to God,” I told him, “everything I told you is true. I’m on your side. Get me out of these cuffs and
let me help!”

“Harlan shot a guy at the hospital, a guy in a Rexortech uniform. Rexortech are saying they have no record of him working for them: they say he must have stolen a uniform and a pass card.”

“Kerrigan’s not stupid. That guy probably
doesn’t
work for Rexortech, to give them deniability if he gets caught. But they’ll have given him the uniform and the pass card, just like they supplied the weapons to the Brothers of Freedom.”

“She ran from the Secret Service,” Miller said, almost to himself. “That’s what I can’t figure out. Why would she do that?”

“Because she knew they’d take her right back here!” Over Miller’s shoulder, I saw one of the Rexortech guys in the hallway. I jerked my head. “Surrounded by
them.”

Miller turned and looked at the guy but his expression was still unreadable. I was getting more and more frustrated—I didn’t have time for this!

“She said some stuff to Harlan,” said Miller, lowering his voice. “Told the same story about the Vice President.”

“Yes!” I yelled, the anger rising. “
Because it’s true!”

Miller crossed his arms. He was wavering between believing me and not believing me and now I’d pushed him back the other way. “Or because you’ve brainwashed her into believing it. Is that what this is? You work your way into her bed and then fill her head with conspiracy theories?”

I saw a little flicker of anger in his eyes when he said
bed.
That’s the first time I realized he was a little bit in love with her, probably had been for years. What man wouldn’t be—it was
Emily,
for God’s sake. Of course, he’d never done anything about it, which must have made it all the worse when he’d realized I was sleeping with her. And now he thought I’d
used
her. Oh, great. Yet another reason for him to hate me.

I was about to lose it.
She’s going to die while I sit here trying to convince him!
I didn’t care how it would look, how much it would damn me. I was going to haul myself to my feet, and headbutt the fucker. Every muscle in my body went hard, the adrenaline pounding through me.

I leaned forward. Miller leaned forward, too, and that’s when it hit me. I realized he
wanted
me to get mad. He wanted me to be behind all this. If I raged and yelled and stayed his enemy, his world could stay safe and neat and understandable. I had to stay calm, had to reason with him but there was no way in hell I could—

And then I felt her hand, cool and delicate, right between my shoulder blades, a safety valve that let all the rage hiss safely out of me. I smelled her clean, warm skin as she leaned into me and told me I could do it.