“Sure looks like you are to me.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, and he nodded solemnly, his blue eyes never leaving her face.
“I’m glad to hear it, ma’am, but just in case you decide you’re not—” he pulled a wallet out of his pocket, took a business card from it “—take this. I can help. If you decide you need it.”
She took the card. Plain white with black letters and a small blue heart in one corner. “‘Daniel Boone Anderson. Hostage Rescue and Extraction Team,’” she read out loud.
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“I’m not a hostage.” She tried to give the card back, but he shoved his hands in his pockets, still eyeing her solemnly.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t need rescuing,” he responded.
“I—”
“Take care of yourself and that baby.” He nodded, one quick tilt of his head, and walked off, long legs eating up the ground so quickly he was out of the corridor and around the corner before she could blink.
She shoved the card in her coat pocket.
She wouldn’t use it. Couldn’t.
She’d promised Amber that she wouldn’t tell anyone the truth about Lucy. She’d promised that no matter what happened, she’d keep it to herself. At the time, she’d expected Amber to be around, to help her navigate the world of subterfuge she’d agreed to. The fact that she wasn’t didn’t change the promise. Scout had an obligation to her friend. Even if she didn’t, she had an obligation to herself and to Lucy. She couldn’t cower in a store corridor, praying for rescue. She had to take action, do what needed to be done. Face her fear or call for help. One way or another, she needed to get moving.
“Mama! Go!” Lucy cried, impatient, it seemed, with staying in one spot.
“Okay, sweetie. I hear you.” She put her shoulders back and her chin up, marched back to the break room as if she owned the place. Walked through the room as if she had every right to be there. Out the door and into the cold November evening. She’d parked close to the store entrance, and she had to walk around the side of the building to get there. Her heart tripped and jumped, the leaves rustling in the trees that lined the parking lot. A shadow moved in her periphery, and she took off, Lucy bouncing on her hip, giggling wildly as they rounded the side of the building.
* * *
The baby was giggling, but the woman looked scared out of her mind. Not that it was any of Daniel Boone Anderson’s business. He should have gone back to hunting for the ingredients for pumpkin bread instead of leaving the store and waiting by the employee entrance. The problem was, he hadn’t been too into the holidays during the past few years, and the entire store was decked out with tinsel and Christmas trees and wrapping paper. Every aisle had some reminder of the holiday he least liked to celebrate. The best Christmas had been the one right after Kendal’s birth. Two months before Lana had walked out and taken their daughter with her.
Not Lana. He could almost hear his deceased wife’s voice. The Prophetess Sari. It has been ordained and it will be so.
That had been her mantra when she’d finally contacted him. Six months after he’d returned from Iraq and found their empty apartment—and the note.
But he tried really hard not to think about that.
Four years was a long time to be missing a piece of your heart.
Which was probably why he spent so much time sticking his nose into other people’s business and dealing with other people’s problems.
He followed the woman around the side of the building, hanging back as she walked to an old station wagon. Nothing fancy, but she didn’t seem like the fancy kind. Her jeans were a little too long, their scuffed cuffs dragging along the pavement as she buckled her daughter into a car seat. A long braid hung to the middle of her back. That had been what he’d noticed first—that long fall of golden-blond hair. Then he’d noticed the dark-haired little girl with her dimples and curls. Probably a couple of years younger than Kendal.
She’d turned five a couple of weeks ago.
He imagined her hair had grown long. It was probably straight as a stick, too.
But that was another direction he couldn’t let himself go.
All the begging, all the searching, all the resources that were available, and he still hadn’t been able to find Kendal. She’d been lost to someone in the cult. Probably someone who’d left it. Knowing Lana, she’d handed their daughter off without a second thought as to the child’s welfare.
Boone never stopped thinking about it.
Even in his sleep, he dreamed about his daughter.
He clenched his fist, leaned his shoulder against a brick pillar that supported a narrow portico. Christmas shoppers moved past, hurrying into the store for whatever deal they thought Friday shopping would bring.
He noticed them, tracking their movements in the part of his brain that had been honed by years working long hours deep in enemy territory, but his focus was on the woman and her child. She opened the driver’s door, tossed her purse into the vehicle, glanced around as if she was looking for someone.
Maybe whoever she was running from.
He was sure she was running. He’d seen it in her eyes when she’d lifted her daughter from the grocery cart and run toward the restroom—fear, desperation, all the things he saw in the gazes of the people he was hired to rescue.
The station wagon’s headlights went on, and the woman backed out of the space. He’d have been wise to let her go and let the whole matter drop, but he’d never been all that wise when it came to things like this.
As a matter of fact, he often got himself in way deeper than he should be. Mostly because the one thing he wanted to accomplish, he hadn’t been able to. He couldn’t help himself, but he could help others.
Maybe he really did have an overinflated hero syndrome. That was what his coworker Stella said. She also said it was going to get him killed one day. She might be right about that, too, but he’d rather die trying to help someone than live knowing he hadn’t.
He waited, watching as the woman drove to the edge of the parking lot. That should have been it—her driving out, Boone walking back into the store and retrieving the cart full of stuff that he’d left in aisle one.
Lights flashed near the edge of the parking lot. A hundred yards away, another set of headlights went on. A third followed, this one even closer to the exit the woman had used.
His heart jumped, adrenaline pumping through him, thoughts flooding in so quickly, he barely had time to process them before he was sprinting across the parking lot. Jumping into his SUV. All three cars were already exiting, and he had to wait for an elderly woman to make her way across the parking lot in front of him.
He made it to the exit as the last car turned east, its taillights disappearing from view. He followed, turning onto a narrow two-lane road that meandered through hilly farmland. A quiet road, nearly empty. Which wasn’t good. His car would
