Chapter 7
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Rubin stared down at his phone. “What do you mean, the vote has been pushed back?” His tone revealed his irritation.
“You heard me,” Mason said, his voice quiet, fatigue evident in every syllable. “What we don’t know is whether that’s part of the plan or not.”
“Of course we don’t,” Rubin replied, his tone bitter. “Shit. I was hoping to be done with this cat-and-mouse game. She was really hoping to finally get out of this nightmare and get home.”
“Of course she was, and that’s what we want for all of you. Unfortunately you’re on the run, and you need to stay that way.”
“For how long?”
“I’ll say at least two more days, maybe longer. But you know damn well I can’t promise you that and how it’s out of my control. I’m just giving you the heads-up. And now I’ve got to go.” And, with that, he disconnected.
Rubin turned around to face Trent and Hayden and explained what Mason just told him. Their eyebrows shot up.
“How is that even a thing? These are major votes.”
“Exactly. Which is why everything must be aligned perfectly. It’s a lot of moving pieces, making sure that everybody gets to have their fair share of time to assess what it is they’ll do,” Rubin said, repeating what Mason had told him, adding an eye roll.
Hayden pointed out, “And, in the meantime, it’ll be balls to the wall because that gives them extra time to find us.” There was no doubt in his mind that’s exactly what was happening.
Trent asked, “Are we okay to stay here right now?”
Rubin shrugged. “Mason was pretty cagey about it.”
“What’s new? He’s always that way. So, what’s the verdict?” Trent asked.
“We stay for tonight and hit the road early in the morning.”
Trent pondered that and then nodded. “Yeah, I would agree with that.” He turned and looked at Hayden.
Hayden frowned. “Stay, yes, but with somebody on watch. I don’t think we can take any chances when they’re so fast to find our locations.”
“Understood.”
They quickly set a schedule for keeping a watch. Rubin announced, “I’ll take first watch. You guys get some rest, and I’ll wake you for the next shift.”
“You can rest,” Trent suggested. “I can take the first watch.”
“That’s okay. I’m still too wired after that call.”
The other guys nodded and headed off to their respective bedrooms.
Rubin got up and made some coffee, then sat back down with a big map, checking the road conditions from remote Kazakhstan areas to Germany via Ukraine, then looking for a way to make their escape to Switzerland, which had been the original plan.
Still was. However, the hold up on her travel docs and the added delay on the congressional vote had forced him and his team underground.
Rubin didn’t understand how the bad guys were always on their tail.
She had been scanned. Twice now. She had no luggage, purse, phone, even another change of clothes to scan either.
Their car had been scanned, inside and out.
They had even tossed Rick’s phone, just in case.
Rubin and his guys had discussed it, passing it by Mason too.
The consensus was, they should be good, not on the kidnappers’ radar.
Yet Rubin knew better because here he was, on watch, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
He did fear that the bad guys had better tech than he had, which didn’t make sense.
Yet, as Mason had suggested, maybe the bad guys were hooked up enough that they had Rubin and his crew under satellite surveillance, even using facial recognition as well.
Rubin didn’t want to hear that because it meant these bad guys were well funded and well connected.
That just made Rubin more restless, wondering how they could balance the odds more in their favor.
Mason’s reply had been Trust your gut. Trust those sterling instincts of yours. Don’t question those small warning voices in your head.
Now Rubin just had to remember to do it—without any hesitation.
He so hated it when the unexplained popped up, but it was common in the work they did.
He was still sitting here when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
He jerked back, startled, almost bolting to his feet.
It was Tricia. “Hey, you startled me.” All the while, he was cursing himself for that.
He shouldn’t have let anybody come up behind him like that.
She smiled as she sat down. “You were lost in the map. … I didn’t want to disturb you but figured it was probably the only way I could talk to you. Where is everybody?”
He shrugged and sat down again. “The guys are having a nap, and we’re splitting watches.”
“So, you’re taking the first watch?”
“Yeah.” He had to snort at being on watch when this gal slipped right up to him and surprised him. “How are you feeling?” He glanced at her, studying the fatigue on her face, but he noted a little more brightness to her eyes and a little less pain pulling her facial lines down.
“I’m feeling a little bit better,” she replied, and then she yawned.
He nodded. “You should be back in bed.”
“Maybe …” She rolled her eyes. “When I woke up, I had this weird sense of disquiet, as if I were all alone.”
“Never,” he declared. “You won’t be alone until you’re back home again.” He saw the relief on her face, and she nodded.
“Thank you for that.”
He sat back and smiled. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“Yes, I do,” she countered. “It’s been a pretty rough time, and I’m just tired enough that I’ve been forgetting basic manners.”
He smiled at her. “I get that, but there’s no need. It’s okay.”
“Good.” She glanced at what he was drinking. “Is that coffee?”
“It is. Why?”
“You shouldn’t have any if you’re going back to bed.”
“I’m staying up for several more hours,” he shared but noticed her glancing at the little kitchen area. “Tea is over there, if you want some.”
Her face lit up.
“Just sit down. I’ll make you some. I don’t want you putting any extra miles on those feet.”
“And here I was hoping they were doing much better,” she muttered. “They’re sore but … walkable.”
“Walkable is good, but any wear and tear will still slow the healing.”
“They’re doing much better. I know they were a bloody mess earlier, but really they do feel a lot better than they did before.”
“I want to see them do better still.” She nodded and didn’t say a whole lot. When he returned with a cup of tea, he set it down in front of her. “Do you think you’ll go back to sleep again?”
“I think so. … I want the tea more for comfort than anything.” She shrugged. “Sometimes life can hit you on the wrong side, and you just need to”—she sighed—“resettle, but it never seems to work out. It’s been such a mad dash that I haven’t really had that chance.”
“Right. And we’ll be off again in the morning. Yet, if someone’s too eagerly on our heels, we’ll leave in the middle of the night,” he admitted, staring at her, “depending on the circumstances.”
She studied his facial expression and didn’t hold back. “You’re not happy here, are you?”
“I voted to rest here and to take off in the morning.” Then he shrugged.
She was thinking about it, mulling it over. She should be fully aware of her situation because they weren’t getting out of it anytime soon.
“You might as well know that I was informed tonight that the congressional vote has been pushed back a couple days.”
Her eyes widened as soon as his words settled in. “Is that so they have time to get to me or time to save me?” she asked, with just a hint of bitterness in her tone.
“We can’t be sure that you are still part of the vote equation at all, not with the limited intel we have to date,” he told her. Then he quickly added, “Not to make you feel as if you don’t count, but that’s what we’ve got to work with so far.”
“I would rather not count at all, than to count like this,” she muttered, as she waved her hand around the small room. “Surely you guys have better things to do with your time than this, as well.”
“Right now, our job is to keep you safe and to get you home in one piece. We’re planning a route to get back to Switzerland.”
“Switzerland would be good,” she agreed, with a nod, “not to mention neutral. I always think of it as safe, you know? A place where we can go and not have to constantly hide. I wonder how I got that impression.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Have you ever been there?”
“Not really, aside from some finishing school one year and this one semester in London,” she shared. “I never really got to travel around a whole lot during that time.”
“You must have traveled with the senator. He’s always on the move, or that’s what his history suggests.”
“I traveled some with my father. Then I was shipped off to boarding school. He wasn’t one for my antics, and my security was more of a concern than my dreams.”
Rubin frowned. “What antics?”
“I wanted to backpack across Europe, but that was not allowed,” she declared, with an eye roll.
“Sounds to me as if you’ve had some issues with your father’s career.”
“You could say that. Anytime it triggered dissent in my own world, it was hard to handle. To be honest, I wasn’t always the easiest,” she conceded, with a grin in his direction.
“Of course not,” he noted. “You grew up trying to find out who you were, and that’s not easy when your father is a public figure.”
“Not only a public figure,” she clarified, “but a public political figure. So, for every person on your side of politics, plenty of others aren’t. So, you’ll never find a happy medium or have everybody happy to find out who you are. Often it’s the opposite.”
“I get that,” he said. “We’re in the same boat in that we work for the government, yet the administration of the government changes quite often.
” He shrugged. “So, that puts us on the wrong side with people a lot of the time, but we still have to follow the rules. Although I have this new situation, still government, but we have more leeway to do our jobs. Less red tape. More funding. Yet we’re still up against the bad guys who don’t have to follow any rules at all. ”
“When you’re constantly up against opponents free to cheat, steal, lie, and anything else they can come up with, how are you supposed to defeat them?
” she asked, staring at him. “It seems, as one of the good guys, you’re at an immediate disadvantage because so many of the bad guys are just operating without morals or ethics. ”
“Oh, I get that,” he agreed, “and it’s frustrating, but we do the best we can and believe that the righteous will prevail, while preparing ourselves the best we can to hopefully ensure that good outcomes are coming our way.
If we can’t do that, we need to question why we’re doing what we’re doing,” he pointed out.
“I haven’t had to do that because my belief in what we’re doing is absolute. ”
He studied her face. “I get that people can go through a crisis of faith, and that happens a lot for many individuals on a regular basis. But, so far, I have been blessed, and it’s not something that I have to worry about.”
She just nodded.
He waited, studying her face, noting that something bothered her still. “Any questions?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I just wonder what my life would have been like if my father wasn’t a political figure.”
“It would have been different for sure,” Rubin stated. “Yet that doesn’t mean it would have been any easier, nicer, or friendlier. It just would have been … different.”
She smiled. “That’s a very polite way to put it.” She chuckled, tucking back unruly strands of her hair. “No fault, no foul, just different.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “Besides, I’m not sure you can do anything to change it, short of finding a time machine and turning it back. Somehow I think the ramifications for that would be a whole lot worse.”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged, “but can you imagine how much fun it would be?”
He burst out laughing, and they talked for the next hour. He kept trying to nudge her to bed, but she would shrug and say, “I’m not tired. I’ll just stay for a little bit longer.”
Finally her little bit longer ended when she just slumped into her chair and yawned a couple times. She looked exhausted.
“Looks to me as if you are way past the point of a little bit longer. You look awful.”
She nodded. “I guess I feel awful right about now. I hadn’t expected to get so tired so quickly, but I’m definitely there.”
“Good, now get your butt back to bed.”
She smiled, slowly stood up, then yawned again. “I’ll see you in the morning.” With that, she headed to her bedroom.
Halfway there he noticed her stumbling ever-so-slightly. He got up to give her a hand. “Do you need an escort?” he asked, gripping her arm.
“Nope, I’ve got it,” she muttered. “At least I think so.”
But fearing she would fall with no one to catch her, he refused to let her go on her own and helped her down the hall. She asked to stop at the washroom, so he left her at the door, then got her settled in her bed.
When she finally crashed onto the mattress, she looked completely wiped out.
Checking his watch, he smiled. He had another three hours to go, and that meant he had time to pore over the damn map and to figure out a couple places where they could hide, just in case anybody was still tracking them.
Somehow Rubin and his team needed the element of surprise, particularly when it seemed as if their pursuers were getting ahead of them.