Out of Time Read online

  He wasn’t alarmed right away when she didn’t answer, figuring she might be sleeping after the long night. But it seemed strange that she would have turned off the phone.

  He felt the first prickle of unease and decided to call the senator. Dalton answered and it took a minute for Greythorn to get to the phone. He started to apologize for the delay, but Scott cut him off. “I just called Natalie, and she didn’t pick up.”

  “She came down a little while ago and said she wasn’t feeling well,” the senator explained. “I assumed it was morning sickness. She said she was going back upstairs to rest and asked not to be disturbed. Do you want me to check on her?”

  Scott hesitated. He didn’t want to wake her if she wasn’t feeling well, but she’d never complained of illness before. Of course, he didn’t know squat about pregnancy. “That’s all right.” It was nothing that couldn’t wait. “Just have her call me when she wakes up.”

  When the phone rang a couple of hours later, Scott assumed it was Natalie. He was wrong.

  “She’s gone,” the senator said. He started apologizing, saying that he knew Scott had trusted him and he didn’t know how it happened, but Scott cut him off.

  His heart seemed to have stopped beating. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

  “The night nurse went to leave and her car was missing. The guards said she’d driven out a while ago. But it wasn’t her; it was Natalie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. . . .”

  Scott didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. It felt as if he’d taken another knife in the gut. It was the same feeling he’d had when he’d discovered Natalie was a spy.

  He couldn’t believe it. She’d left him. She’d waited until he was gone, and she’d run at the first opportunity.

  He’d thought she trusted him.

  Blind spot.

  He was a damned fool.

  Twenty-three

  Natalie told herself she was doing the right thing. She didn’t have any choice.

  She’d been waiting to hear from Scott so she was surprised to see her parents’ phone number when the phone buzzed at a little after seven. Her parents woke up early, but they usually waited to call until after nine.

  It wasn’t her parents. The voice on the other end of the line told her he was in her parents’ kitchen right now, and he was going to kill her family if she didn’t bring him the laptop.

  She’d told him she didn’t have it and didn’t know where it was—which was the truth. He’d replied that she better find it soon. She had twenty-four hours to get it to her parents’ house.

  “But that isn’t enough time,” she protested, looking at the clock. Getting on a plane would be too risky. “It’s at least an eighteen-hour drive from here.”

  “Then you’d better hurry up and find it. And if I were you, I’d figure out a way to ditch that SEAL boyfriend of yours and keep him out of this. I wouldn’t want him to get in the way. Do anything, call anyone and they’ll all be dead.”

  And just in case she didn’t believe him, he handed to the phone to her sister.

  “I’m making pancakes with the policeman.”

  Natalie’s blood went cold at the sound of her sister’s voice; he wasn’t bluffing. The past few days fell away as if a dream. Without Scott around to fill her head with unrealistic fantasies, the truth of her situation came back to her full force.

  She’d made a mess of her life, but she wasn’t going to make a mess of his. And she wasn’t going to let anyone die for her mistakes. Not her parents, not her sister, and sure as hell not Scott.

  She’d figure a way out of this or suffer the consequences on her own.

  It ripped her heart out to leave him like this, but it was better than the alternative. They’d never had a chance. The reluctant Russian spy and the officer in America’s most elite SEAL team were hardly a match made in heaven. This had only hastened the inevitable.

  She knew that Scott would see her leaving as a betrayal, but that was better than him getting even more wrapped up in her problems or, worse, having him get killed in the cross fire.

  He’d put himself out enough for her already. She never should have involved him in any of this.

  But apparently he’d been right about the laptop being important. Not that that was going to help her save her family when she had no idea where it was.

  Of the many problems facing her, however, the most pressing had been how to get out of Fort Knox, as Scott had called it. She wasn’t going to be able to sneak past all the security, and she needed a car.

  She’d have to borrow one.

  While getting ready, she came up with a plan. The first part was to make sure no one noticed her gone right away. She wanted as much of a head start as possible.

  She hated to deceive the senator when he’d done so much for them, but she didn’t have a choice. After coming up with the excuse that she wasn’t feeling well and pretending to retire to her room for a nap, she instead made her way to the back entrance where the considerable staff came and went out of the main house.

  In the cubbies where the women left their purses, she riffled through a few until she found a set of keys with an alarm fob. She also grabbed a pair of sunglasses.

  After pulling her hair up and securing it in a bun, she put on the glasses and walked outside to where the cars were parked. She’d chosen her plain black pants and white blouse again, which happened to be similar to what most of the female staff wore.

  She hit the disarm on the key fob and headed to the car that beeped. Her heart stopped when one of the security guards popped his head around the corner to check on the noise, but she ducked into the car with a backhand wave and started it up quickly.

  It must have worked because the guard was nowhere to be seen in her rearview mirror as she backed out.

  Ready with a lie that she was a new maid if the guard at the gate stopped her, she was relieved when the gate opened automatically as she approached and he just waved her through. Even with the big sunglasses, she made sure to block her face as much as she could when she waved back.

  Her heart was still thumping a short while later when she got onto the highway toward the famous Route 66, which would eventually take her to the interstate heading northwest. She’d gotten past the first hurdle, but she had much higher ones ahead.

  She had about twelve hundred miles to figure out what she was going to do. How was she going to bluff her way through saving her family’s lives without the computer? Could she delay them? Convince them to give her time to find it? Offer to exchange their lives for hers?

  The ring of the phone beside her made her jump. She picked it up, saw the unfamiliar number, and put it down. It wasn’t the guy calling from her parents’ house, and if it was Scott trying to reach her . . .

  She couldn’t talk to him.

  She ignored the first call.

  And the second and third. But when she pulled the car over for gas a short while later, she looked down at the phone again. Natalie’s heart sank to her stomach as she read the short text on the screen:

  Trust me.

  Those two words were like a stab to the heart all over again. She knew how much trust he’d put in her to help her, and it felt as if she were betraying him all over again by running. But how could she let him ruin his life and destroy his career for her? How could she put his life in danger for hers?

  She forced her gaze away from the phone that tempted.

  Your mess. You have to do this alone.

  But then something happened to remind her that she wasn’t alone. She felt a flutter in her stomach. And just in case she didn’t realize what it was the first time, the baby moved again.

  Their baby.

  Natalie could go this alone and try to save her family, but without the laptop they would probably all die. Or she could do what she should have done the first time. She could put her