Springfield, Illinois

Safe House

Abigail decided that she hated being protected. She hated being in the apartment, hated not having the freedom to so much as use the toilet without reporting to someone. She imagined this must be what prison was like. And she was so incredibly bored!

There was nothing to do but think about Morty and grow more and more infuriated at him for doing this to her. Who did he think he was, using her device in this way? What had she done to that poor accountant? Why him? And why her? Why send that man after her, of all people? What was he trying to prove?

Was he really that angry at her for leaving him?

He’d been shocked that he couldn’t convince her that selling the device to the highest bidder was the best thing. They’d talked for hours after she confronted him, told him she’d seen his emails. She argued for safety, against this exact thing . . .

“Someone could use it to brainwash people, Morty! To take away a person’s ability to think for themselves. They could use it to take a healthy person’s sanity from them, use it to control people in ways we haven’t even imagined yet, but I’m sure some insane person out there has. I can’t allow that to happen!”

“Why do we have to concern ourselves with what someone else might do? It’s our device to sell, after that, to hell with it. We could live happily off the money these people are offering me.”

“For what reason? We live happily off all that money while the world goes to shit around us? Can you really do that, Morty?”

“Yes!”

“Then you’re clearly not the man I thought you were.”

He didn’t seem that broken up when she packed her stuff, when she called a taxi and walked out of his house without speaking another word. Was that just a cover? Had he done all this because he wanted to show her he really didn’t give a shit?

She didn’t understand. Morty was a good man. He had compassion for his students, excitement for his chosen field. Why would he suddenly turn on everything he believed in like this?

Was money really that much of a motivator?

She could have told him that money wasn’t really that great a thing. It hadn’t saved her mother from the car accident that killed her, didn’t save her father from the cancer that ravaged his body before taking him. It didn’t save her grandparents, and it didn’t do more than turn her great-grandfather’s hobby into a working business.

Not many people knew, but the Rains family had made their fortune in oil several generations ago. Rain Drop Farms started out as a joke, a lovely place to live and play at being a gentleman farmer. But it became a passion that took root in all the men in the family. Abigail, too, she supposed. She struggled to keep the place afloat, careful to keep farm money and personal money separate as her father had always taught her. But she was guilty of providing an infusion of funds to the farm from time to time. It wasn’t going to be under her watch that the farm went under while she was sitting on a trust fund worth ten times what Morty was hoping to get for the device. Keeping the damn ledger balanced . . . she wasn’t a math major. She could balance a scientific equation, but she couldn’t make column A say the same thing as column B.

So, yeah, money wasn’t really that important to her. She wouldn’t sell her soul for it quite like Morty was willing to do. To give up all his morals and watch her walk away . . . it must have been a really strong motivator.

She needed to talk to him. She knew he’d done this, knew that he was responsible for what was happening all around her. She needed to prove it.

She couldn’t sit here in this room for the rest of her life.

“Hey!” she called, opening the door to the bedroom. “I need some fresh air. I’m feeling suffocated in here!”

“Orders are to keep you inside,” the dark-haired man left to watch over her announced.

“I know. But I really . . .” She swayed a little. “All this canned air . . . I can’t breathe!”

The guy didn’t even set down his magazine.

“Come on,” she said, injecting a little whine into her voice. “I’ve been locked up in here since we arrived yesterday. Would it really hurt to just let me take a little walk to that park down the block?”

“Yes. What if the hitman is out there?”

“Then just around the lobby?” She groaned. “Come on! I’m feeling claustrophobic!”

He finally set down his magazine and sat up, regarding her with open curiosity. “Did you really find Kinkaid naked in some shed?”

“A barn.”

“Yeah? The hitman got the better of him?”

“It happens.”

He cracked a smile, a nice dimple coming out on one chin. “Did he give you details?”

“Maybe. What’s it worth to you?”

The guy groaned. “I really can’t let you out of here.”

“I just want to stretch my legs, nothing more.”

He studied her a moment longer. “Yeah? If I take you down to the lobby, will you tell me how that guy got Kinkaid?”

“Sure.”

He hesitated only a second longer. Then he stood and grabbed a gun she hadn’t seen before on the couch beside him, checked the clip, and shoved it into a holster under his arm. Then he pulled on a light jacket.

“Grab that coat.”

Abigail did as she was told for the first time since being brought here, suiting up for a walk in the park in twenty-degree weather. He led the way, checking the hallway and then the elevator before letting her step foot in either. They were truly cautious, these Mastiff people. In the lobby, she took the lead, dashing off the elevator before he could stop her. She was out the door and halfway down the block when he grabbed her arm.

“You can’t just rush off like that. You have to let me check things out first.”

“He’s not out here. He’s probably long gone if you ask me.”

“But you don’t know that for sure. So quit running off.”

Abigail nodded, and then let out the loudest scream she’d ever let loose in her life. And she kept screaming even as he yanked her arm, pulling her toward him on the narrow sidewalk.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded.

Even as he said it, a cop approached from his squad car that had been sitting at the corner. Abigail spotted it as she came through the door and thought she’d have time to reach it, but this was better.

“What’s going on here?” the cop asked.

“He’s trying to kidnap me!” Abigail announced.

The dimpled operative stared at her, anger flashing in his eyes as he realized what she’d done. He let go of her and she took off, running faster than she imagined she could with her thigh stiffening more and more each day that passed. But when you’re motivated, anything’s possible.