Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
The jet took off, and its roar soon faded to the background, making room for Harlow’s rural quiet to take over. Ally dared to lift her head and open her eyes, but nothing had changed in the barn to signify who survived the commotion outside.
There’d been gunshots. Indistinguishable words. While dead or dying men lay strewn on the nearby ground around her. Chip, he remained tied with his back to hers.
“Are we the only ones alive?” Her weak voice cut through the barn’s empty stillness. “Oh God, are we going to starve here, alone?”
That’s if my injuries didn’t get me first.
“I’ll break us out of here somehow, okay?” Chip rubbed a thumb over her hands still clasped in his. “Now, shhh , what’s that noise?”
She did as told and even held her breath so she could hear. A female cry filtered through. Sarah? Ally had seen no other women here. It had to be her. Sarah was alive? Plodding steps joined the chorus. Footsteps. As in, plural.
More than one person survived.
The sheriff was the first to re-enter the barn, the afternoon’s sun behind turning him into a glorious silhouette. He removed his hat and rubbed the back of his wrist over his brow.
Dean walked through, and she almost cried, his arm wrapped around Sarah, who half-sagged against him. Still bloodied and covered in dirt, of course. A different kind of tears welled in Ally’s eyes, and her mouth dried with an inability to speak.
As this new reality settled in, a strange calm took over. Mark was gone. Everyone she knew survived.
While Dean sat Sarah on a low wall and crouched before her, inspecting her wounds, the sheriff cuffed the only surviving henchman, who groaned on the ground beside Chip.
“I’ve already radioed the medics, so you two just hang on.” He got down and placed his hat on the ground before tinkering with her cuffs. “Pulled a bit of old wire off the front fence. I might be able to work these free.”
One of her cuffs popped open, and she pulled herself loose, her hands leaving Chip to meet with the rough barn floor while she curled forward and dry heaved—her stomach already empty from her vomiting in the woods.
She lifted her gaze to the sheriff’s smile, albeit with a crosshatch of wrinkles over his forehead that denoted concern. “It’s a normal reaction, dear.”
He hooked a hand under her arm and tried to help her stand, only her world spun, and she stumbled.
Chip, still cuffed, turned, his scrunched stare darting about her face. “That bit’s not normal, is it?”
“No.” The sheriff shook his head and helped her to the ground again. “Best you stay down for now.”
So she stayed on the ground, legs folded before her, and tried not to look at Chip, though the sight of her red-raw wrists also made her want to cry.
The sheriff huddled in front of Chip and worked on releasing his cuffs, too, a light chuckle escaping him. “Seems my experience with these things have finally paid off. Figure I can open just about any pair.”
Chip’s cuffs clunked to the floor, and he shot forward, kneeling before Ally. “Your head.”
Despite her attempts to avoid his gaze, he cupped her face and peered into her eyes—the soft concern in his forced her tummy to stiffen. She didn’t want concern. Especially not his. Not over her. Not over the breakup. Not over this. She also didn’t want to give him false hope.
Even as he took her hands, she winced at his insistence, sensing a need to unleash the talk she’d avoided in Boston. Only now, things were worse, and she didn’t know how.
So of course, she went with changing the subject, turning her attention to the sheriff standing over her. “How did you and Dean find us?”
The sheriff scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, and his lip twisted into a small grimace. “Well first, you and Sarah didn’t show at our agreed meeting point, then came a report of an undeclared jet landing.”
“Once we spotted the plane, we hid the patrol car down the road and legged it over here,” Dean called over from next to Sarah. “We held our position on the opposite side of the barn, making it hard for anyone on the plane to see us.”
“Yeah, well”—the sheriff shook his head, his attention cast to the ground—“I don’t suppose that’s the last we’ll hear of Mark or the Syndicate.”
Dean’s expression firmed, and he nodded. “We’ll need reinforcements around town.”
“Lots of folks won’t be happy about that.” The sheriff jammed his hat back on. “But I’ll see what I can muster.”
“We’ll need more than that. They have my laptop.” Chip turned to the sheriff just a little behind him, his hands still holding hers. “I buried my work in an encrypted file and deleted any obvious data outside of that, but it’s not impossible that Mark could still recover something.”
“Still wouldn’t want to be Mark Farro.” The sheriff frowned at the ground. “Possession of your laptop makes him a national security risk. I’d say he’s not about to show his face anytime soon. In fact, he’s lost a lot coming after you, Chip. His assets may well be seized.”
“For some reason, none of that makes me feel better.” Chip’s gaze dipped, like he worked through the implications of what he’d just heard. That he was more at risk than ever.
“Maybe I can help.”
The statement came from an unfamiliar voice, and everyone quickly turned to the barn’s back door. A man stood there holding Chip’s laptop satchel high in one hand. His other hand rising in an act of cautious surrender.
Dean and the sheriff drew their weapons again.
“Put down the bag,” Dean barked out the order.
“Whoa. Hold on.” The man’s voice shook and sweat beaded his dark skin, his brown gaze flicking between the two armed men as he bent his long limbs and lowered the bag. “I’m so done with guns. I’m done with deranged people. I want out of the Syndicate. I just want out.”
“That guy’s from the plane.” Chip’s forehead wrinkled and his eyes held a hardened stare. “He was the one hacking into my computer.”
“No, man. You got it twisted.” The guy lifted his shoulders in a stiff shrug, the move shifting his loose t-shirt above his baggy jeans. “I’m just some tech guy, like you. Mark took over Encode, and my life has been hell ever since. Arrest me if you want, but I snuck out of that plane to get away from the guy. And I brought your laptop, didn’t I?”
He pointed at the satchel, and Dean and the sheriff yelled at him to keep his hands up. He did so with a quick, panicked motion, and Dean shuffled forward, collecting Ally’s discarded cuffs, his gun aimed until he had the new arrival restrained.
“Can we please make up a story about my arrest?” The guy’s voice took on a quick sort of rambling, and Dean marched him toward Mark’s other surviving employee. “Tell everyone I got caught trying to defend him. I’ll do the time, okay? Just make it sound like I was on his side, so he’ll leave me alone.”
Dean pressed on the guy’s shoulder, forcing him to sit, the other Syndicate man scrunching his face at the geek in a look of disgust.
Ally felt for the guy. She could see a lot of Chip in him—this man only a few steps in deeper with the Syndicate—just another pawn with his skills held hostage. Meanwhile, the sheriff strolled over to the satchel, slow to open the front flap before pulling out Chip’s laptop. “This yours?”
Chip nodded, the laptop cover decked out with a distinctive sticker of a cityscape Ally had also seen before.
His attention returned to her, his pupils dilated and his unwavering focus seeking the answers she still didn’t want to provide. “We’re still not okay, are we?”
His question referred to Boston. To her leaving. The small lines between his brows a sign of his pain over her exit, no matter how quiet the execution.
She shook her head, stirring her dizziness. She wasn’t okay either. “Nothing’s changed.”
He pulled her hands closer and kissed her knuckles, the tender gesture filling her heart with even more excruciating guilt. “Ally—”
She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to recall her ordeal in Boston. His dad. That woman at the gala. How out of place she’d felt. If she didn’t keep remembering, she’d cave. She’d take Chip back.
“There’s a reason you hesitated on telling me about the Encode grant.” She opened her eyes to find even more strain on his face, all of which begged her to change her mind.
But he pressed his hand to her cheek and wiped her tears away with his thumb, still caring for her through this difficult moment. “I didn’t want to lose you, even then.”
She gave him a small nod, thankful for his honesty. “And your dad.”
His brow hardened. “Who cares what he—”
“I care.” Despite her unsteadiness and the sickness churning her belly, her voice still held a firm insistence. “I don’t want to be the thorn in your family’s side.”
“You’re not.” He tugged at her hands, color raising on his cheeks and dulling the whites of his eyes. Frustrated. Grief stricken.
She tilted her head to one side and implored him to once again be honest with himself, the tension easing on his face as he eventually nodded down at the ground between them.
Sadness sweeping over, she bit into her lower lip, wanting to believe that today’s traumatic events could change things, instead of being just another reason she, Chip, and Harlow couldn’t be one.
“Chip, you shouldn’t have to defend me against him.” She dropped her attention to his crumpled white shirt, the button-up one he’d likely worn to his presentation at Encode, only to find himself embroiled in the Syndicate’s vendetta against his sister and hometown. “I don’t want to have to justify who I am anymore. We don’t fit together, Chip, and being with you forced me to accept that. To accept who I am, even if others won’t. So if I’m lucky enough to survive today, I won’t use my precious second chance trying to fit in where I’m not wanted.”
Water pooled along the edges of his eyes, like he acknowledged the change in her and knew he couldn’t ask her to compromise who she was to be with him. Still, he spoke again, “Ally, you are wanted.”
“I know.” She gave him a tight smile, the whomp of an approaching helicopter cutting through her disorientation. She’d be leaving him soon. Her reasons this time, clear and final. “I know you never meant to make me feel like anything less than the woman you loved—and believe me—I do feel loved, Chip. I love you too. I love you enough to spare us the next years pretending we can make things work in ways your parents couldn’t.”
Heavy tears trickled down her face, and she finally reached for him, hooking her hand desperately around his wrist and pulling him in. “For the first time in my life, I know that love isn’t always about throwing myself all in. I’m giving you up because it’s the right thing to do. I need you to make that decision, too, Chip. Remember your earlier promise?”
As though he recognized her reference to his negations with Mark over her life, Chip pressed his lips into a thin line, a defined stillness dominating him. “You want me to let you go.”
He spoke in a statement more than a question, but his dejected tone revealed a desire to bear down on his reluctance—even as he pulled her in so their foreheads touched—he shook his head in denial of what he had to do.
The light around her dimmed, and she turned to a group of five medics rushing through the barn’s front doors, their fast approach raising a sense of frantic panic. She and Chip—her childhood friend, now the love of her life— would be wrenched apart.
“Chip.” Her voice cracked along with her heart, an unmissable fissure opening with a need to hear she wasn’t alone in her decision. “Say you’ll let me go too.”