Chapter 19

Reunion

Red dropped Penny to the ground and spun wildly, steadying the aim of his pistol in the dark toward the brassy ringing. What was it, the jingle of a dog collar? Did the operators have hounds after them? Maybe that was the reason the cat had beat such a hasty escape.

Low branches of the pine sagged near the tips, almost brushing the ground. Blocking any searching eye, he hoped. Which was why he’d selected this spot for Penny to catch an hour of sleep. But it also meant he couldn’t see much past the barrier. Protecting, but blinding.

Penny’s deep, even breathing rose again. The jolt hadn’t roused her. Three green eyes of his tritium sights glowed dimly back as he aimed the weapon. He held his breath, listening. Dried leaves rustled as a gentle wave of air washed over distant trees. Others, closer, leaned in rhythm as the chill breeze picked up. The branches of their own pine started to sway as the blast finally hit them, flashing the dim starlight beams upon the ground dotting the tree’s shadow.

“Red?” The voice was hoarse and shallow.

He swung the weapon, center green eye leveled toward the sound. A figure stood near the edge of the branches, just inside their perimeter. The boughs rocked silently behind whoever, whatever, had dared too close. His finger tensed, ready to make his name the intruder’s final words. A whiff of a flowery scent gave him pause. Familiar, but what was it? Shampoo. Lori’s was—

“Red, that you?” The voice was scratchy, like they were intentionally masking it.

He centered sights on what he thought must be the chest. “Don’t move.” What if the intruder had a weapon? He thought of lifting Penny and throwing her behind the shelter of the thick trunk. No, that would draw attention to her.

“It’s me.” A woman’s tone, but too hoarse.

“On your knees. Slow. Hands up.”

The dark figure bent low. “It’s me. Lori.”

The voice was nothing like her. “Shut up. Face down on the ground. Hands out front.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve spent all day and half the night running from a damn Chinaman and prissy-ass bitch because you couldn’t keep your pistol in your pants. Where’s Penny? Is she OK?”

Yep. That’s Lori, all right.

But…how’d she find them? A fast runner, sure, but she’d have had to escaped both operatives without a weapon. Were these real attempts on her life, or a cover to get rid of her husband? He kept his weapon raised. The dark form might indeed be Lori, but if so, who the hell was she really? A threat to Penny too? His wife’s true identity lay as dark as the tree’s shadow. No, he wouldn’t lower his guard again. “The truth. Now.”

“What’s your problem!” she coughed. “It’s me!”

“Exactly.” He cocked the hammer for emphasis. “Who are you? No damn fintel analyst, for sure. I want the whole truth.”

Penny wriggled next to his thigh, then sat upright. “Mommy?” Red gripped her shoulder, but she strained against his hand. “Mommy!” He let her slip from his grasp. She scrabbled on hands and knees to the edge of the branches. Lori’s dark form absorbed Penny’s, arms wrapping her in an embrace, then a hushed thump as the two fell onto soft earth, giggling. Penny’s laugh was muffled, as if her face was pressed to Lori’s chest.

Finally Penny asked, “Where were you?”

She was the mother of their kids. It had to count for something. He decocked the hammer with a click and holstered his weapon. At the sound, the two shadows parted. Red scooted closer. Near the limbs’ edge, his eyes adjusted enough to make out Penny sitting cross-legged. Lori’s hair was still pulled back in a ponytail, but the scrunchie had loosed and strands were dangling, tangled with leaves. Even so, she was gorgeous. He felt a pull to embrace her like Penny had, but the voice of reason had finally risen to a shout. Carter had been warning him for months: She’s not who she claims. She hasn’t been forthright. But he loved her. And you always trust your team. That had to go double for family. He started to lean toward his wife, to take her into an embrace, then froze.

He pointed at his daughter. “Answer Penny. Where’ve you been?”

“Water,” Lori rasped. “You have any?”

He grabbed Lam’s bottle, still full, beside the pile of pine needles and handed it to her. She downed half in a gulp. “You guys OK if I finish it?”

Penny stroked her hand. “It’s mine, Mom. You can have it.”

After she chugged it, her voice softened. “Around the back of the mountain,” she said, pointing toward Pikes Peak. “I came that way.”

“You went all the way around the back?” Depending upon her route, that could’ve been ten or fifteen klicks. “Why that way? How’d you find us here?”

She dropped onto her butt, stretched both legs out before her, and leaned back on her arms. “I knew you wouldn’t head down the front of the mountain, since that’s where they’d expect you’d go. NORAD still has a unit under Cheyenne Mountain, so it’s the nearest military base. It made sense you’d head to it. That’s where you’re going, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“You always talked about traveling across a ridge two-thirds of the way up the side. Better positioned to make an escape over the crest or down through the valley. Well, there’s one big-ass gully running this direction. Guess we both picked the same side. I stopped when I thought I heard snoring.”

Penny giggled. “Sorry.”

Lori cocked her head. “But I figured you’d be to Cheyenne by now. Why so slow?”

He tried not to grunt as he lowered himself to the ground, lying flat on his good side.

She jumped up and loomed over him in a second. “What’s wrong with your leg? You wrench your bad knee?”

He grimaced. “Something like that.”

“Daddy got shot!” Penny blurted out, then covered her mouth with a hand, as if realizing she’d spoken too loudly.

“You let yourself get hit?” she hissed. “What the hell?”

Nice. Love you too, dear.

Penny leaned over to pull her mother’s arm. “Don’t be mad, Mom. He got two of the bad guys. I saw him.”

Lori gasped. “You saw that?” She pulled Penny closer and glared at Red. “You shot someone in front of our daughter?”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. “I figure better than the alternative.”

Penny’s voice, muffled by Lori’s sweater, still sounded almost gleeful. “I dug out the frag.”

Lori covered Penny’s ears and curled her lip at him. “Our daughter should not know what a frag is.”

He shrugged. “May come in handy with you as a mother.”

Penny wriggled free of her mother’s grasp. Red caught her gaze and lifted an eyebrow, as if to say Don’t you dare mention that you shot the Jamaican.

“That is…absolute shit!” Lori yelled, slicing her hand in the air like a blade. “You are leaving the Det. Erasing any memory of this part of your life. I’m tired of the danger bleeding through and affecting our family. This is exactly why I never told you how you’d been discharged from the Det years ago.”

Red gritted his teeth. He’d been an operator in the Det when he’d first met Lori. The two had married and not long thereafter, along came Penny. Then Red had been captured on an op inside Iran. It had taken a few days, but the Det managed to extract him. But torture and beatings had pulverized his face until it resembled a cantaloupe. He’d endured a broken shin, several broken fingers, burned nipples, and countless other injuries. Waking in a secluded wing of Sentara Norfolk Hospital, he held no recollection of the Det whatsoever.

Reasons for his loss of memory were hypothetical, but the Det in-processed all new operators and agents through a protocol. That protocol utilized a combination of sedatives and hypnosis to bookmark memories of the Det. When reassigned out of the Det, operators were out-processed and run through a similar protocol that pushed those bookmarked memories back into subconscious. Their minds filled in the rest. It didn’t work perfectly, but it was another layer of security to minimize leaks and maintain the organization’s low profile. And it had proven marginally successful.

But Red had never been out-processed.

The medical team theorized the torture and beatings had triggered his mind’s suppression defense mechanism, somehow also silencing memories of the Det, an out-processing of sorts. They had given him a medical discharge, explaining his injuries as a result of an accident in a warehouse by a shelving system collapsing upon him. For six years Lori had never hinted that he’d been anything more than a supply officer in the Air Force.

Until memories started breaking through. He joined the Det again, and now was the commander of the whole top-secret fusion cell, a nonorganization.

What kind of wife keeps her husband’s past buried for six years? Red thought. Whose team was she on? And she was accusing him of being the reason for the shooting on Pikes Peak? None of this crap was because of his doing.

Grimacing, he rose to a knee. “Well, they ain’t after me, princess!” he yelled, not caring how loud. “You’re the one who’s bleeding through. That Chinese guy was after you.” He jabbed a finger into her shoulder. “Yeah, sure, I’m an operator. A damn good one. And I saved your ass up there, for the third time! Don’t go pinning this on me. The Det’s tight. It holds its water. You’re the Jonah here. ’Cept you’re too tied up in lies to throw yourself overboard. You’re taking the entire boat down with you, kids included.”

She swung at him, but he caught her wrist before the slap landed. She pushed Penny away and lunged at his chest. Red fell back, still clutching her wrist. Pain seared his ass as the wounded cheek struck the ground. She straddled him on her knees as her other arm flew free and fast, slapping his face and punching his ribs, too quickly for him to snatch it.

“You hit like a sissy,” he taunted between her strikes. Her free hand swung harder, and she drove a knee into his kidney, halfway knocking wind from him. She pounded his shoulder and chest, but her blows began to weaken. Good thing her off hand was the only one loose. A few more strikes, and she fell upon him, heaving quietly, stifling sobs. She pressed her head next to his and pulled him into an embrace, coughing back tears. After a few seconds, he loosed his grip and rubbed her back, fingernails snagging on the knots in her sweater.

Lori rubbed her nose across her sleeve. Suddenly, she jerked upright and turned to Penny, as if remembering her daughter’s presence.

Penny’s voice was low and timid. “Don’t be mad, Mom. He didn’t mean to get shot.”

Lori snorted, then held arms out to her. “It’s not that. Mom just needs sleep. Daddy and I were only…playing.”

Usually rough play meant Lori’s clothes were off and the bedroom door was locked, Red thought. Somehow this wasn’t nearly as satisfying.

Dawn had to be less than an hour away, since in a dim golden glow he could make out the smile on Penny’s face as she leaned on her mother again.

Red tried to roll. “My ass is on fire.”

Lori hopped off. “Shit. I mean, sorry. You need me to dress it? I’ve got—”

“No! It’s just fine,” he snapped, surprised at the new, sincere tone in her voice. “I’m a slow mover, but still faster than Penny. If you can carry her a while, we’ll make good time. Could be there by noon, latest. And silence those keys in your pocket. I heard them rubbing together.”

She frowned. “We shouldn’t move during the day.”

Right. Standard escape and evasion. Move when least likely to be observed. “But there’s time to consider—or the lack of it, in this case. Every hour we aren’t captured near Pikes Peak, the enemy’s field of search will widen. Once they figured we haven’t headed for the city, their next logical assumption would be Cheyenne Mountain, just as you reasoned.” If they didn’t move fast enough, it would be easy for their pursuers to set an ambush along the way. That was what Red would do, at least, if he were working for the other side.

“Plus, we had a Jamaican operator spot us in the dark. He had to have night optics to do it. Any additional risk of moving during daylight is negated by getting out of the woods faster. The sooner we’re inside the air base’s fence, the better for all of us.”

“Is he the one that shot you?” Lori asked.

Red exchanged a knowing glance with Penny. “No. I’ll tell you about it later. After a couple glasses of cabernet.” He rolled over and pulled his good leg beneath him, then stood like performing a one-legged burpee. The limb jiggled with fatigue. “Just wish I knew who we were up against,” he added as he limped to the edge of the shadow cast by the branches, raising both forearms to shield his face from the needles’ scratch.

A heavy breath from Lori behind him, almost a sigh. “I may have an idea.”