Shock spread like cold water over Rebecca’s limbs. “You’re telling me that my stepbrother stole a cyberweapon from the Canadian government, and two factions of a European gang are willing to kidnap and murder to get it?”
“I’m saying that it’s possible,” Zack said. “Certainly I can’t rule out the possibility.”
She’d never seen fear in his eyes before. Not like this. But she could see a faint glimmer of it there now, and that terrified her. “That sounds like something you shouldn’t tell me.”
He didn’t answer. He looked at her for a long moment.
“Maybe,” he said, finally. “But I trust you, and my top priority right now is telling you what you need to know for everyone to get out of this alive.”
Then they started walking again. His footsteps were quicker now. His long legs strode through the trees. Questions flew through her mind so quickly, it was as if she could feel them crashing into each other. What kind of cyberweapon? What was it? What did it do?
But somehow as she looked at Zack, she felt something inside her shift. He was concerned, worried, as if he was carrying knowledge he didn’t want to carry. And somehow, seeing that look in his eyes told her everything she needed to know.
Her hand brushed his arm. “It’s okay, if you can’t tell me more than that. I understand you can’t tell me everything I want to know.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate that.” He swallowed hard. Then he took her hand in his and squeezed it tightly for a long moment before letting it fall. “So much more than you know.”
They kept walking in silence, side by side over the rocky shore by the river’s edge.
Zack pulled an old-looking silver medallion from his wallet, spun it slowly between his fingers and then slid it open sideways. He held it up in front of him, as if trying to get their bearings. It was a compass of some sort, with a small pedometer underneath. He turned left and started walking through the trees.
Her legs ached. Sweat ran down her neck. She used the utility knife to cut a thin slit of fabric off the bottom of her sweatshirt and twisted it into a headband to tie her hair back. But even still bugs swarmed her skin. Zack’s fingers brushed the back of her neck, then pinched her skin softly. The gesture was sweet, strong, comforting.
“Mosquito,” he said. “I killed it before it could get you.”
“Thank you.”
He paused. Then said, “I need you to trust me. What qualifies as ‘need to know’ has shifted a lot in the last couple of hours, and I don’t think it helps either of us for me to keep you in the dark. I’m pretty much convinced of that. But—”
“But you still can’t tell me what you can’t tell me.”
“Right.” He smiled. “Thanks. And you can’t repeat what I tell you. Not to anyone. Ever. Okay?”
She nodded. “Understood.”
“A while back, I went into a hostile Eastern European country to extract a young computer engineer, who’d contacted our government seeking asylum,” he said. “Literally nabbed her off a crowded street, in broad daylight, when she’d gone on a coffee run for her office. I had her out of the country and over the border in hours. She was in her early twenties and had grown up in a particularly unpleasant orphanage. But still, she left everything behind to come to Canada. Everything.”
Rebecca nodded slowly. Again, why was he telling her this? She could tell it was important. She didn’t know why.
“This young woman was truly brilliant. She’d developed a decryption program that was intended to revolutionize cybersafety. You know how you have passwords for everything online?”
She nodded. “Yes, and Seth keeps hacking them.”
“Well, imagine living in a country where the government asks people like Seth to create a computer program that gives them the power to systematically hack into people’s accounts,” he said. “To overwrite your password with one of their own, so that you can’t get into your account anymore, but they can. Giving them complete access to any account they want. But not just email accounts. Banking. Financial institutions. Other militaries’ secrets and weapon launch codes.”
Her heart stopped. “Oh.”
“Imagine your own government found you in an orphanage, realized how talented you were, sent you to school and trained you. But then in return expected you to create a computer program like that for them. But then a dangerous organized criminal group discovered you had it, too, and wanted it for themselves.”
Black Talon.
“Suddenly two different factions inside this one gang are both terrorizing you,” he added. “Maybe you suspect the criminals have people planted in your work or your apartment building. But then, so might your own government. Maybe a mercenary kidnaps you for a couple of days and threatens to hurt you unless you give them the program once you’re done. But your own government isn’t much better and you figure that no matter who gets ahold of this program, you’re dead. So, you contact the local Canadian embassy and beg them for asylum in return for giving them the program and keeping it out of enemy hands. Then some guy like me extracts you and gets you to Canada.”
The sound of the river disappeared in the distance.
Zack turned to face her. “Now, imagine this whole thing is so classified that even a guy like me isn’t allowed to know anything about this. Because this whole situation is above my pay grade. I only know it because I spent three hours driving through hostile territory with you, wedged in a secret compartment inside my dashboard, and you kept blurting out things that I wasn’t allowed to know. So I never told anyone. Not my colleagues. Not Jeff, my commanding officer. I just get you safely on a plane and erase everything you told me from my mind.”
She closed her eyes and let the pieces of what Zack was telling her fall into place.
“She told me to call her Maria Snow,” he said. “I think Maria might’ve been her real first name. But the Snow part was clearly fake. She was beautiful and brilliant, and reminded me of you in a lot of ways. I can’t imagine she’d come to Canada only to throw her lot in with Black Talon criminals and I have no idea why she’d ever contact Seth and tell him about the decryption program. But there’s only two ways Seth could’ve heard the name Maria Snow. Either someone in the Canadian military leaked that information to whoever in Black Talon impersonated her, or Seth was actually contacted by the real Maria Snow, who for some reason decided to blow the deal she made with the people who rescued her.”
He looked down at the compass and suddenly she realized it wasn’t pointing north. It was pointing somewhere else entirely, and the pedometer at the bottom seemed to be counting down. Wherever he was taking them, it was now less than fourteen thousand steps away.
“I’m telling you this so you get what’s at stake,” he added. “I’m telling you this so you understand why I’m about to take the action I’m about to take and so that you’re clear what our situation is. I need you to trust me.” He flipped the compass upside down and flicked the bottom open. Inside was a tiny key. “And to do that, I need to trust you.”
* * *
After another hour, they’d hit a rural highway and started to pass by the occasional business or farmhouse. Occasionally a vehicle would slow and ask if they needed a ride. But Zack just slung his arm casually around Rebecca’s shoulders, kept his head down and avoided eye contact. Rebecca did the same.
Eventually he spotted a dilapidated gas station and convenience store at the side of the highway. Paint was peeling on the white shutters. Torn and faded posters were slapped along the side. There were only two cars filling up and nobody else in sight but a scruffy-looking teenager with a backpack bigger than he was, smoking on a bench next to a crude hitchhiking sign.
“I need to try to make a phone call,” Zack said. “I’m taking you to the Shields’ island house. Think of it like an unofficial safe house. I don’t want to show up unannounced, if I can help it, even though to be honest I’m not sure they’re even in the country. While I’m on the phone, how about you try to fill up the water bottle?”
She nodded, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and then headed around the side of the building. He pulled his hoodie over his head and walked to the pay phone beside the convenience store. He lifted the receiver and was relieved to get a dial tone.
“Hey, hey. You heading south?” the teenager with the backpack shouted at Zack. He sauntered across the parking lot. “Give me a ride? Eh? A ride? A ride?”
Zack shook his head. “Sorry.”
“How ’bout some money, then? Get me something to eat?”
The young man was now standing so close, Zack could smell what he’d been smoking. Zack reached into his bag, pulled out a granola bar and fixed him with a look that made it clear that was all he was going to get. The hitchhiker turned up his nose and walked off.
Zack turned back to the phone and dialed. It rang. He waited three rings, depressed the plunger and got his coins back. Then he tried again. Three more rings. Then he hung up.
Come on, Mark. Be there. Get the signal.
A very long time ago, when Mark was a young man coming up in the world and Zack was his former bodyguard, Mark had started taking overseas charity trips into danger zones. They’d set up three sets of three rings as a private code that meant, I’m in danger. I need help. Whatever I say when I answer could be under duress.
As the head of an international-development charity, Mark had used the private code to call Zack just a handful of times over the past twenty years, usually to get his advice on exiting a tricky situation quickly and safely. No matter where Mark and his wife, Katie, had been in the world, Zack usually knew something—a church that was safe, a route that tended to be not that heavily monitored or a family they could trust.
Zack had never once used the signal to call Mark.
The phone rang three times, for the third and final time.
Okay, now to place the call for real. A car pulled into the parking lot. He waited, holding the phone in his hand while the couple entered the convenience store. The sound of a voice on television slipped through the open door.
“...obviously, it’s disappointing. As a parent you do the best you can. I was just thankful to hear that horrid gossip-mongering blog about my family has finally been shut down. The last thing our country needs right now is a salacious distraction from the good work the men and women in uniform are doing...”
Zack glanced at the screen. General Arthur Miles was front and center on the twenty-four-hour news station, in full uniform. The door clattered shut, muffling the General’s voice.
But still Zack could read the subtitles. The interviewer was asking him about the charges against Seth.
“You need to understand that I was never close to my stepdaughter, Rebecca,” the General was saying. “Her mother, my second wife, was a prescription drug addict who died due to her addiction. There’s every indication that her daughter, Rebecca, is now an addict herself, and that my son, Seth, is currently under Rebecca’s influence. It’s very upsetting. But he’s always been weak.”
Zack felt his jaw drop. General Miles was throwing Rebecca under the bus? Why? Because he honestly knew so little about his late wife’s daughter? Or because it was easier to save face by telling lies than by admitting his son was his own man who’d chosen to become a thief and a criminal?
In all the times he’d heard General Miles’s speech-making, whether on television or before a rapt military crowd, he’d never once heard the General say something that Zack had known for a fact was untrue. Not until now. Something about watching the General talk about Rebecca that way, with such candor and ease, shook Zack to the core. An honorable man should not be able to tell unfounded untruths so easily. Doing so effortlessly took practice.
General Miles turned to face the camera, his crisp white hair and clipped white mustache standing out on his suntanned face.
Zack felt his fists clench at his side.
“Rebecca, if you can hear me, turn yourself in. Return what you stole. Get the help you need.”
The screen changed. The television screen flashed a bright red bulletin with rolling text: “Canadian homegrown terrorist plot. Suspects wanted. General Arthur Miles ‘gutted’ and offers reward for information.”
Then three faces flashed side by side on the screen, along with the text: “Seth Miles. Rebecca Miles. Sergeant Zachary Keats. Wanted for murder, treason and suspected terrorist activities.”
The phone fell from Zack’s hands. He stepped back, gasping for breath, as if he’d just been shot in the chest.
Zack was a wanted man. A fugitive.
He’d been branded a traitor.
“Hey, hey. Pretty girl. Why aren’t you smiling? Give me a smile.” The hitchhiker was harassing someone else now. Then Zack saw Rebecca, walking down the side of the building by the garbage cans. Her head was down. Her arms were crossed. The scruffy young man walked so close behind her that he was almost stepping on her feet. “Come on, girl. Just give me some money. You’ve got money right? Just give me twenty. Twenty. You got twenty? Ten? You got ten?”
Rebecca spun toward him. “Back off and leave me alone.”
“Hey. You heard her.” Zack strode toward them, feeling the hood fall from his head. “Leave her alone.”
“This is none of your business.” The young man scowled. “This is between her and me. And we’re cool. Right, girl? You and me. We’re just talking.”
Then his eyes narrowed.
“Hey, I know you. I know both of you.” He looked from Rebecca to Zack. “You’re those thieves on the news who stole some stuff, right? Money? Drugs? Something? You give me a cut of whatever it was right now or I’m calling for the cops and getting that reward.”
Zack nearly rolled his eyes. Some delusional drug-addled hitchhiker was the last thing they needed right now.
Zack nodded to Rebecca. “You good to go?”
“Yeah,” she said, “I got the bottle filled. Let’s get out of here.”
She started toward him.
“Hey, not so fast.” A knife flashed in the hitchhiker’s hand. He grabbed Rebecca by the hair. The knife hovered toward her throat. “Give me a cut of whatever it was you guys stole or she’s getting it in the neck.”
Zack tensed his muscles to charge. But before he’d even taken a step, he watched as Rebecca deflected the blade, spun on her heel and knocked the hitchhiker to the ground in one quick, seamless move. Then she kicked the knife out of the dazed man’s hands, sending it flying in behind the garbage cans. Zack nearly whistled.
And that’s why her trophy read “Technically Flawless.”
She glanced at Zack. “We’re running now, right?”
“Yup.” Zack grabbed Rebecca’s hand. They ran for the tree line.
“Hey! Stop them! Somebody! Call 911! They’re criminals, right?” they could hear the hitchhiker screaming behind them.
Zack’s hand tightened in hers. They sprinted through the underbrush. His ears strained, listening for footsteps. Nobody followed. Finally their footsteps slowed. He looked back. Silence.
“Thank You, God,” he prayed. Then he slid his arms around Rebecca’s waist and hugged her tightly. “That was amazing. You are amazing.”
He half expected her to pull away. But instead she stayed there. His hands on her back. Her arms around his body. Their hearts pounding together. His lips brushed the top of her head.
“I hate seeing you in danger, even though I know you can handle yourself.” He pulled her closer. “I really, really hate it.”
“I don’t exactly like it when you’re in danger, either.” She raised her face toward his.
His mouth hovered just a breath away from hers and it took all the self-control in his body to not kiss her. His heart muscles ached with the knowledge that she was the bravest, strongest, most beautiful person he’d ever seen in his life. He’d never met anyone better. He suspected that he never would. He knew he didn’t want to.
“Why did he call us thieves?” she asked.
“Because that’s what the media’s calling us. You, me and Seth. They’re saying all three of us are traitors, killers and thieves.” He let go and stepped back. “That means I have to report back to base and turn myself in.”
She reached for his hands and looped her fingers through his. “I’m going with you.”
“No, you’re not.” He pulled his hands away and slid them in his pockets. “It’s not safe. It’s almost nine hours to Ottawa from here. Anything could happen on the road.”
“I’ll be safer with you than I will be without you.”
“No, it’ll be safer for both of us if I get you to the safe house and I travel alone. You rattle my brain, Rebecca. You rattle my thinking when I need to focus on the situation at hand. We’ll both be safer if I travel solo. I’ll get you to Mark and Katie’s house, borrow a vehicle from them and make my way to base. Then I’ll tell someone I trust your location, that you’re surrendering and where to find you. Trust me. It’s safer this way. For both of us.”
He leaned forward to brush his lips over the top of her head.
He meant the gesture to be comforting. But before he could kiss her, she stepped back.
“Well, then,” she said, “I’d guess we’d better get going.”
He pulled his compass out of his pocket. They were less than half an hour away now.
“There’s something else you should know,” he said as they walked, “which I’m really sorry to tell you, because I can’t imagine how horrible this must be to hear. General Miles, your stepfather, was just on the television in the convenience store. He said the blog Seth created about him has been shut down. Not that he acknowledged Seth as its creator. He also accused you of manipulating Seth and of being, and I’m quoting here, a drug addict like your mother.”
The lack of shock on her face told him more about her life as a member of the General’s family than he’d ever wanted to know.
“My mother got hooked on prescription drugs because she couldn’t handle not being able to trust him.” Rebecca’s gaze focused on the trees ahead. “I know in your eyes, in everyone’s eyes, he’s a well-respected man and a military hero. But to me, he was just the cold stranger who took over my life. I honestly don’t know why my mother married him or what was going on in their marriage, let alone his marriage to Seth’s mother. Just that she felt when she married him that she had to be the perfect military housewife and sit around the house, knitting blankets and sewing curtains, waiting for him to come home. She was so miserable. She couldn’t handle it. The anxiety. The stress. The secrets. Having no life at all besides waiting for her husband to come home.” Her voice dropped. “I always promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those women. I told myself that wouldn’t be me.”
Just because that was her life as a military spouse doesn’t mean it has to be yours. Life as a military spouse could be whatever you want it to be. I’ve met military spouses who are firefighters and chefs and artists and teachers and very happy parents and homemakers. Both my parents served. As did both my uncle and aunt, in different branches.
But while he could hear the words in his head, he didn’t speak them. What good would it do? To try to talk Rebecca into a life she didn’t want.
A life he wasn’t sure he was ready for her to want.
They kept going, keeping off the roads and pausing at every whisper of wind in the trees. Eventually they reached a long, narrow lake. They stood and looked out to where a small island rose from the water. A house stood in the middle, made of beautiful arching wood and sweeping glass windows. A small powerboat was docked out front.
“You think you can swim that?” Zack asked. “It’s about a twenty-minute swim. If not, I’ll go get the powerboat and come back for you.”
Rebecca eyed the distance for a long moment. Then she slipped off her shoes and rolled her blue jeans up all the way to her knees, showing off strong, shapely legs. Her muscles were definitely more toned than when he’d known her last.
“Yeah, I can,” she said. “No problem.”
They swam, side by side. Their bodies cut through the crisp water in the late-morning sunshine. He watched her as they swam. Just little sideways glances. He’d never seen anyone more beautiful, and with every stroke, he regretted pulling away from her the way that he had. He hated to have to leave her again. Some of the other people he knew in the unit had husbands or wives. A few had children. One or two even had grandchildren.
Would it be possible to have a relationship with a woman like her without it ruining his focus when he was out on a mission? Maybe his heart muscle was strong enough to handle it now. But then, even if it were possible, how could he ever do that to her? Rebecca had just lost everything she owned. How could he ever ask her to spend her life waiting for him while he traveled around the world, never knowing where he was or when he was getting back? How could he ask her to choose the same life that had so hurt her mother?
Finally, he felt the water get shallow underneath him. His feet touched the sand. He stretched out his hand, reached for Rebecca’s and pulled her to him. They stumbled to shore. “Come on, let’s get in the door and dried off.”
The metallic sound of hunting rifle’s bolt slamming shut made the words freeze in his mouth.
“Stop right there,” a woman’s voice said. “Or trust me, I’ll shoot.”