Memories Can't Wait

By Jeanne Thorne

Chapter 2: Old Habits Die Hard

The drive across town was sheer torture. Bethany Jones swore under her breath as every traffic light seemed to turn against her. It was all she could do not to throw the car into gear and peel off onto the sidewalk, pedestrians be damned. But then this was not the Jag with its modified V-8, custom suspension, and special-issue tires. She had stashed that when she moved to this corner of Illinois -- too conspicuous. Instead she was trapped in the conservative second-hand Volvo she had bought to blend into this picturesque little patch of nowhere, moving forward block by block through the town square, fighting a panic that thrashed in her chest like a wounded bird.

A car horn beeped to her left and Bethany startled. From the next car Alice Cruikshank, who worked in the realty office across the street from the flower shop and sold Mary Kay on the side, gave her a jaunty wave. Bethany smiled weakly and sketched a wave back. All around her were the familiar faces of newsstand vendors, elementary schoolteachers, local handymen, customers and acquaintances. The faces of the people who populated the life she had painstakingly built here, now all of them strangers again as her past finally caught up to her.

Arno Blevins and Justine Ducharme. Alive. Here. Bethany could not imagine a greater nightmare. Once upon a time, in another life that seemed forever abandoned, she had fought them with everything she had, enduring unnameable tortures at their hands until the luckiest of breaks had allowed her to escape and thwart their monstrous scheme to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people. She had thought them both dead and buried, and so she left the Game herself, broken inside and done with all the lies and the death and the sheer loneliness that came with her profession. Assuming a new name and a new appearance, she ceased to be Bethany Jones, professional spy, and became Beth Layton, proprietress and solid citizen. Here in the tiny hamlet of Cooper's Landing, there were no assassins to take down, no would-be world conquerors to fight, just her books and her flower shop... and Maddy.

The thought of Maddy caused a fresh wave of anxiety to sweep over her. If Blevins and Ducharme had truly found Bethany, then Maddy was in incalculable danger. They would use the girl as leverage against her for sure, but worse, it would only be a matter of time before they discovered Maddy's true identity -- something even Maddy didn't know.

And then God help them all.

Bethany glanced at the passenger seat, where the black briefcase she had taken from its hiding place in the office of the shop lay, and as the light turned green, urged the Volvo forward. She prayed it was not too late...

* * *

Madeleine Weld blinked back tears as she watched the three men systematically wreck the apartment, moving from room to room, leaving no piece of furniture unripped, no fixture standing. All of the beautiful things she and Beth had bought over the years to make the loft apartment truly a home, all ruined and broken. Occasionally she struggled against her bonds to no avail, and her pleas for the intruders to stop were reduced to barely audible mewing.

Maddy lay on her side on the couch, or what was left of it, wearing her pink leotard and tights and tightly bound with layers of expertly applied duct tape. Tape strapped her legs together at her ankles and above and below her knees. Still more was wrapped about her wrists, crossed behind her back, and constricting layers about her chest and arms held her virtually motionless. Two strips of tape over her mouth held a sponge inside, cutting off almost all sound. Her long brown hair had come loose from its ponytail during the struggle with her assailants, such as it was, and she had to keep moving her head to keep it from spilling across her face.

The leader of the trio, a mountain of a man with a dark buzz-cut and a chiseled, cruel face, turned to look down at her. Unlike his clean-shaven subordinates, however, his dark eyes bespoke a cold intelligence that frightened her even more than the leering gazes of the others.

"Sorry you had to get caught up in all of this," he said quietly. "We only want your friend and something she has in her possession. Unfortunately you're going to have to come with us, and I can guarantee you it's not going to be pleasant."

Maddy glared up at him as defiantly as her stark terror would allow. "Mmmmpphh!" was all she could manage.

The shorter of the two men still searching the apartment glanced over his shoulder with a crooked grin. "Oh, I dunno, Sarge. I think we can entertain 'er all right."

His partner leaned over the back of the couch, feral eyes traveling over Maddy's helpless form. "Or she can entertain us. I always had a thing for ballerinas--" Maddy squealed into her gag as he reached down to run a hand over her left breast, only to find his wrist caught in "Sarge's" iron grip.

"Belay that shit. Right now. She's a kid, and we've got work to do." Sarge fixed his underling with a deadly glare. "Am I clear, soldier?"

The henchman pulled his arm back and replied through gritted teeth. "Crystal, Sergeant."

"Then keep looking, and stay sharp. I want you both on your game when Jones gets here."

The shorter thug shook his head skeptically. "Never seen you like this, Sarge, all tippy-toed on a mission. She's a woman."

Sarge turned to Shorty with his harsh gaze. "Soldier, you keep that attitude and I promise you that woman'll yank your balls off and feed 'em to you before you can blink. Or were you sleeping during the briefing?"

Shorty just sighed and turned back to his work, prying loose the tiles around the fireplace while the taller goon swept the inside of the laundry chute with probing fingers. Maddy watched them, head spinning. This makes no sense at all. They're talking about Beth. Sweet, gentle Beth. It didn't compute at all. In the five years since Beth Layton had rescued her from the foster home and become her guardian, the older woman had never so much as raised her voice to another soul, and here were these... men... speaking about her like she's Wonder Woman or something. This is some kind of horrible mistake. They've got the wrong person. Beth will walk through that door and they'll pounce on her and then...

Maddy cut the thought off as fresh tears welled in her eyes and tiny muffled sobs pushed against her gag.

* * *

The sounds of Maddy's grief and fear registered loud and clear through the receiver in Bethany's left ear, and she fought down another pang in her chest. No! she chastised herself. Stop getting weepy! This is neither the time nor the place!

The time was late afternoon, the sun dipping toward the horizon and and bathing the alley between Bethany's building and the next in shadow. The place was the third-story ledge outside one of the living-room windows, where Bethany perched precariously, gently pressing a tiny contact microphone against the edge of the glass. It had been a rough climb up the drainpipe, especially when one was years out of practice and had to be silent. Bethany was glad at least that none of her neighbors was feeling inquisitive today -- she'd have hated to explain her present situation to a cop.

Having shed her dowdy blouse and trousers, Bethany had tied her copper hair back and was dressed in the workout clothes she usually wore at the Cooper's Landing Gym: black calf-length bicycle pants, midriff-baring Lycra tank top, Nike cross-trainers, racquetball gloves. Not exactly the best outfit for this kind of work, but it allowed maximum freedom of movement. Slung about her hips was a black military web belt equipped with the contents of her briefcase, tools of her former trade. She had given the gear only a cursory examination and had no idea if half the stuff even worked after five years of neglect. The gun she had left in the car -- she could not risk a shootout with Maddy in the crossfire.

At least the contact mic still functioned,and it had told her what she needed to know. Maddy in the living room, bound and gagged. Three intruders, two in the living room, one in the hallway. All three military or mercs -- no doubt the "paramilitary types" Jack had told her about during his surprise appearance at her shop. Jack... For an instant she considered contacting her old controller, then banished the thought. She had left the Organization because they were, in their own way, as sinister as Blevins and Ducharme, and she could not risk handing Maddy over to them either. Whatever happened, whichever way this played out, Bethany was on her own.

She felt another wave of fear rising and quickly tamped it down. Fear was the enemy, as her old sensei used to say. Fear makes one think too much, makes one hesitate, interrupts one's flow. Replacing the mic and earpiece in their pouch, Bethany took a deep breath and let it out slowly, searching for her center, the quiet core of herself amidst all the chatter of her self-doubt and panic. I must not fight the storm inside myself but glide on its currents until I reach the eye. She closed her eyes, reaching down... down...

There. Suddenly she felt it, like a dive into cool water that washed over and through her. She felt the knots in her limbs loosening, felt the white-noise of her mind receding. Zenzen. Nothingness. Flow -- allow the moment to provide...

Bethany's eyes snapped open and she opened another pouch, allowing three marble-sized balls to drop into her gloved palm. With her other hand she gripped the edge of the window frame and pushed off the ledge, swinging her legs around with a hard arc and bringing her feet about to shatter the window, flying into the room with a deafening crash.

Maddy yelped into her gag as Beth hit the hardwood floor in a crouch, flinging one arm out in a wide arc and springing toward her in a blur of motion. Three sharp pops and suddenly the room was filling with smoke. Sarge and Shorty barely had time to react before Beth hit the back of the couch with her shoulder, wrapping her arms around Maddy's bound form as the couch fell over backward, shielding them from the thud-thud of bullets from the men's silenced guns. Then the two men were coughing and pounding toward them, with the third goon's footsteps resounding from the hall.

"Smoke-bombs, Sarge!" cried Shorty in a choked voice. "Can't see--!"

"Shut up, soldier!" Sarge snapped. "Don't let her get a fix on your voice!"

Maddy's eyes were stinging from the smoke as she felt Beth's body leave hers to vault over the far end of the couch. Half a second later, she heard three sharp thunks and a sickening crack of splintering bone, followed by a shrill scream from Shorty. Another blow and the thug was abruptly silent, followed by the unmistakeable sound of a heavy body hitting the floor. If Maddy had been counting she would have registered one opponent down in less than four seconds.

Holding her breath, Bethany whirled, leaping lightly over the short goon's fallen body, her eyes closed but hearing and touch acute and searching for signs of the others. She heard the one from the hallway tramping into the room with all the subtlety of a rogue elephant three yards to her right, more or less. She quickly estimated his weight at about two hundred pounds, which would make him about six feet tall. He lunged forward blindly and Bethany ducked, feeling the sleeve of his jacket just barely graze her hair as she drove an elbow hard into his kidney. The goon groaned but reflexively lashed back at her. Bethany dove for the floor, dodging his blow but feeling something sharp tear into her forearm, a shard from the fireplace tile. She stifled a cry of pain and shut out the warm welling of blood along the gash. Falling into a lopsided roll she spun, executing a blind leg sweep that caught the henchman's ankles and sent him crashing to the floor. Bringing her other leg up and down quickly she drove a heel into his solar plexus. Dammit! she cursed inwardly and readjusted her aim, bringing her heel down on what she hoped was the man's throat. She was rewarded by a deeply satisfying strangling sound.

Suddenly she heard a muffled squeal from the other side of the room. Unlike the others the third goon, the one called "Sarge," was no fool. As soon as his first henchman had gone down, rather than attempt to attack Bethany he had gone straight for Maddy. She could hear the girl struggling as Sarge attempted to grab her from behind the overturned couch. Bethany began to grope around the writhing form of the gargling thug she had just felled, brushing aside tiles and window-glass until her gloved hand closed over something hard and familiar. No choice. Have to risk it. She brought the gun up and let out a breath to shout, "Kick, Maddy! Kick him!"

A hard thud and an involuntary male cry of pain were all Bethany needed to locate "Sarge" and she opened fire, pumping round after round into the smoke, the silenced automatic's thwip-thwip puncturing the air.

Sarge's body hit the floor like a felled tree.

Tossing the gun aside, Bethany made her way blindly across the room, lungs aching from the smoke that was starting to clear. Through watering eyes she could see Sarge, fallen but breathing, unconscious. Tranquilizer rounds. They wanted me alive...

She vaulted the couch, pulling a small knife from her belt and flicking it open as she crouched over the bound-and-gagged girl blinking at her with terrified eyes, whimpering behind the tape covering her mouth.

"Easy now, Maddy," Bethany whispered, laying a hand gently on the girl's cheek. "I'm going to cut you loose and then we have to run. Quickly. No time to take anything. We have to get out of here now, before these guys wake up. Do you understand?"

Trembling, Maddy hesitated and then slowly nodded.

In the distance rose the sound of sirens, the Cooper's Landing Volunteer Fire Department no doubt responding to a call about billowing smoke from a shattered third-floor window. As Bethany went to work carefully slicing through the tape that bound her beloved, her mind was again racing.

Yes, we have to run.

But where?

Chapter Three

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