Chapter Twenty

Still stumbling eastward through acres of dry, scratchy weeds now that they were well past the cornfield, Shane tugged the burner phone out of his rear pocket and thumb-dialed TEAM HQ. He hoped to bypass Alex Stewart and speak with Mark Houston. Shane didn't want to have to explain to his new boss on his first mission that some guys had mysteriously known where Everlee was, had flown in, kidnapped her, and taken her away by chopper. Her being targeted didn't make sense, and Shane didn't want a confrontation with his boss until he had solid intel. She wouldn't have left voluntarily, no way. She had to have been badly hurt if she hadn't fought back. And there was no way her ex had orchestrated this high-tech abduction. Not knowing who he was up against wasn't a good bargaining position for any new hire. By then, Shane was ready to drop, so he did. Just folded up and fell on his knees at Tuesday's feet.

She crouched onto the parched, furrowed ground beside him. "Oh, my gosh, your ear's bleeding. I'm sorry I didn't notice that before."

"D-d-damn," he stuttered, realizing she could still run away, or worse, overpower him. Maybe kill him. Killing men was a black widow's specialty, wasn't it? But something else told him Tuesday wouldn't have stayed in the first place if she'd meant to kill him. Black widows didn't kill anyone until they got what they wanted, right? Wasn't that how they worked?

"Tip your head back and drink," she ordered, a bottled water already pressed against his bottom lip.

"Shane, Shane! What's happening? Can you hear me? Pick up!" some unknown woman's voice barked from the phone in his hand, her tone laced with worry and panic. Almost motherly. If your mom was in need of a cigarette and her first cup of coffee for the day.

Hmmm, coffee…

Shane chose the cool taste of water over conversation but took the bottle from Tuesday to keep her from thinking he was a complete weakling. Running the hand with his phone in it over the top of his pounding head and down the back of his stiff, sweaty neck, he refused to fall apart again.

The woman yelling at him had to be that Mother person, the one Alex had tasked to make travel arrangements. "Mother? Err, umm, Ms. Kennedy?" he asked when his tongue was finally wet enough that he could sound halfway intelligent.

"Call me Mom. Everyone else does," she clipped. "Where are you guys?"

"Arkansas. Closest mile marker is... err, was…" He pressed the cool plastic water bottle against his forehead and closed his eyes, striving to pull that precise detail out of his scrambled brain. It finally came to him like a lucky shot out of the dark, but it arrived too late for him to pass it along.

"Never mind," she snapped. "You didn't ring in on your TEAM phone. Where is it?"

"Ah…" Shane pulled the phone in his hand away from his ear and looked at it. Oh, yeah. Burner. Not TEAM. Man, his head was mixed up. Placing it back to his ear, he told Mother, "We tossed them. Didn't want anyone tracking us or Ms. Smart. Sorry, I—"

"Where'd you get the burners?"

"Umm… Everlee bought them at…" He honestly couldn't remember the name of the convenience store back in Texas. Until Tuesday whispered it into his other ear. Oh, yeah. Then he recalled the bright, flashing neon sign over the front door. Shane passed the info to Mother.

"Good. What's Everlee's number?"

"Ah…" Shane shook his head, going to disappoint Mother again.

"Never mind," she bit out. "But the next time you two decide to go dark, you'd better call me as soon as you can with your new numbers. I can only work so many miracles in a day, Shane. And for God's sake, give each other your burner phone numbers. Shit happens. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am." Jesus, he'd never gotten his ass reamed by so many women in the same day.

Clattering sounded over the connection. Had to be fingernails. At last, Mother returned with, "Okay. No problem. I've got you now. And Everlee, too, if she bought both phones at the same time, which I'm assuming she did. Just a matter of tracing the purchase, the vendor, and serial numbers."

Okay. That made sense. Kind of.

"Is Ms. Smart still in custody? How's Everlee?"

Shane bowed his head, ashamed, but going to admit another failure. "I, umm, lost Everlee, ma'am, but Tuesday's right here, and she's not exactly in custody because—"

"I said call me Mom."

Yeah, well… Shane swallowed hard. The woman on his burner phone sounded like she was grinding her teeth. But calling Sasha Kennedy mom seemed too familiar a title to use with someone he'd never met. Besides, he already had a mother. Erin was Mom. Is Mom! Sheesh!

Shane offered what little he knew. "We were in a gunfight on the interstate and—"

"What do you mean, you lost Everlee?"

"We crashed. Some guys were shooting at us. The SUV rolled. More guys came along in a helicopter. The first guys ditched their car and took Everlee. Don't know who they were. She must've got knocked unconscious like I was. Tuesday watched it go down. She and I were still trapped by our seatbelts inside the SUV. Neither of us could get to Ev in time." God, where could she be? "But yeah, Tuesday's here with me and we're—"

The shriek of sirens approaching from the west interrupted his rambling. Finally. He wasn't sure he was making sense or thinking logically anyway.

Mother kept talking. Shane heard her, but the world went wonky, and he lost track of the burner phone—not his TEAM phone—the burner phone in his hand. One moment it was there, the next he was looking at empty fingers. He was mostly upright, still kneeling, and Tuesday's soft, cool hands were on his face. She smoothed his hair out of his bleary eyes. The tenderness in her forest green eyes was so damned unexpected for the serial killer she was supposed to be. Shane blinked to focus his vision and get his brain to work better. Man, he felt like shit.

"Lie back," Tuesday told him firmly. "Your pupils are dilated. You're in shock. Let me help you."

Again? He shook off her advice, unwilling to yield—not like he had much of a position of power. "I'm not in shock. Can't be. Hafta find my partner. We can't rest until we get Agent Yeager back."

Because once I stop moving again, well, after I get back up on my feet and get going, and if I stop moving again, I'm done for. Hell, I might be done for now. Did that even make sense? He had no idea, but it sounded good when he thought it.

Tuesday leaned into him and used her weight to push him off-balance and down to his side onto the fragrant earth. Not like it took much effort to get him there. He went easily, just relaxed into an embarrassing lump, with her, apparently. Tuesday's sweaty face was now aligned with his, both of them on their sides, facing each other in the middle of nowhere.

He swallowed hard. This was not how junior agents measured up. They manned up, damn it. Which wasn't happening, since he couldn't even stand up.

With one hand she ran her fingers through his hair and over his head. "Don't worry, Shane," she whispered, as she took hold of his hand. "I'll stay with you as long as you need me. I've got more water if you want. When you feel better, I'll help find Agent Yeager. We'll get her back. I promise. You'll see."

"Scout's honor?" he choked. God, he sounded like an idiot. Should he believe her? Would that in any way be the wise thing to do? He no longer knew. Just couldn't go any farther, and the scrawny weeds around them were now closing in like a noose around his neck.

Jesus, he wasn't making sense, not even to himself. Shane sucked in as deep a breath as he could, fighting the threatening shadows between each menacing weed and new stalk of corn. Tuesday nodded like the good little liar she was. But what else did black widows do? Yet the thing in his gut that had told him to trust her earlier, murmured the same advice now. Too beat up to think clearly, he blinked once, just once…

Then he was waking up with a killer headache and a shadow leaning over him. The soft, sweet breath of Tuesday was in his face. Still. She had a bunch of crushed, dirty antiseptic wipes in one hand and her other hand was pressed over his left ear. In short, the diabolical murderess responsible for three, possibly four deaths, the FBI's most wanted black widow, the accused killer who could've run and left him to bleed out, had instead stuck with him without cuffs or coercion and was right then doctoring him. Without being asked.

Yet there she was, sitting beside him in the dirt, calmly blocking the sun as if she did that kind of thing every day, giving him shade and a much-needed rest and, oh yeah, first-aid. Were black widows ever this kind and thoughtful? Was she or was she not a cold-blooded killer?

"I talked with your friend while you were asleep," Tuesday said quietly, peering at him from beneath lush, dark golden lashes, so thick they looked like tiny, feathery fans. "Her name's Sasha by the way, and I explained everything that's happened since we met in Dallas. Here." Tucking the used wipes into her pocket, Tuesday reached beside her, picked up the burner phone, and handed it to Shane. "Call her back if you don't believe me. I'm not going anywhere. Just cleaning up the nick on the tip of your ear and the dried blood trail down your neck. I couldn't bandage your ear, but" —lifting her hand away from the side of his head, she leaned in for a closer look and all that long hair came with her— "it stopped bleeding. I think you'll live."

Shane clapped Tuesday's hand with the phone still in it onto his chest as her hair turned into a silky curtain. "No, I…" He gulped, putting his neck on the line, but finally sure she wasn't dangerous. "I don't need to check with Sasha. I believe you."

"It's about time," she replied with a tiny sarcastic huff.

She pulled away but her fingers stayed wrapped around his cell, and Shane's fingers stayed around her hand. He didn't mind that she helped him, and he didn't let her go. Her fingers were cool. Considering the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, she was calm and quite collected. He hoped Everlee, wherever she was, was as solid as Tuesday was now. Which was an odd thought, considering who Tuesday was accused of being. Her calm? Was that the tell of a psychotic killer? He blinked at the quandary he found himself still trapped in, trusting a client who was supposed to be everything but trustworthy. Were pigs going to fly next?

"Anyway," she continued evenly, "the police are at the scene of our accident. I told Sasha, but I forgot to tell you before that, when the helicopter that took Everlee away first touched down, its blades sliced off a semi-circle of the nearby crop. You know, the tips that'll have tassels on them later in summer. It came in really low and scary, and I think that field was last year's crop. Anyway, its blades clipped the tops of the corn and shot them all over the place. I'm not sure the driver really knew how to fly. But I've been thinking, between your shot-up, wrecked SUV, and the damage to the corn, won't the police chalk everything they find back there up to a gang war or something like that? Maybe the Mafia? Do they even have gangs in the middle of Arkansas?"

Shane kept blinking. Now that he'd had time to breathe and really think, not once had Tuesday acted the part of a black widow. Sure, she'd been defiant at first, but since then, she'd been nothing but compliant. And helpful. And here she was, almost holding his hand, but not really. He was the one holding onto her and… and he was only doing that as an act of friendship, which she hadn't turned into anything more. She had yet to rub up against him, offer sly, sexual innuendos, or do anything a flirty, sexual predator would. Shane had met plenty of them in taverns and bars outside bases where he'd been stationed. Tuesday wasn't anything like those greedy, grasping women. Not once had she teased or used her very nice assets to seduce him. If anything, she'd been angry she'd been apprehended before she could identify the man stalking her. Also sadder for the children she'd allegedly murdered than more worried about herself.

"Maybe," Shane replied from his still prone position. He needed to get his ass in gear, but right then, he needed to be able to sit up and get his brain to focus. There was no sense getting up only to fall back down.

"Well, whatever they're doing back there, I don't think any police officers are coming after us. I mean, I haven't heard anything for a while, no shouting or sirens, and I don't think they brought dogs with them, or I would've heard barking. Maybe they still will, I don't know. Are K-9s allowed to bark?" Tuesday shrugged her shoulders like she didn't care, her gaze on the ocean of weeds around them. Funny how those weeds weren't threatening now.

But Christ. He hadn't once considered the police might bring dogs to track them. Or had he? Shane honestly didn't know or remember. But how cock-eyed had the pilot landed if the chopper came down low enough to slice corn stalks that were barely three feet high? Who was behind Everlee's capture? Idiots? Again, Shane considered her ex for the crime, but Butch couldn't even tie his shoes. He flat out didn't have the brain power to orchestrate an elaborate abduction like this.

Tuesday eased her hand out from under Shane's, leaving the burner phone on his chest. He lay there breathing, angry that he was the weakest link. Hell, even this alleged murderer was stronger than him, and she was a woman. Might sound sexist, but talk about making good first impressions, this wasn't how it was done.

Since he and Tuesday were still out of sight, he took a long minute to analyze his physical condition and his staying power. Besides a good strong headache behind his eyes and a wounded ear, which didn't count, he wasn't feeling too bad. Of course, he was still on his back, which was a weak statement all by itself. But standing up and walking might make him a liar if he fell down again.

"Anyway," Tuesday breathed, "Sasha knows where Agent Yeager is."

"She does? Where?" That brought Shane upright in a hurry. The ground beneath him waved like a beach towel in the wind. He planted both hands in the dirt behind him to stay upright and balanced.

"Sasha wouldn't say. She said for you to call her back and she'll tell you."

Shane hit redial and gathered his wits.

"Shane?" that same motherly voice led with instead of hello. "Are you okay? Do I need to send an assist, honey? How bad are you hurt and what do you need? Talk to me."

Ah, so she did have a softer side. Good to know.

"No, ma'am, I'm good. Just took a quick, err, umm, combat nap, you know how it goes." He had no idea if Mother knew what combat naps were or if she'd ever served, but that was all his brain came up with. "Tuesday said you know where Ev is?"

"I do. It doesn't make sense, but she's only two clicks directly east of your location. Her GPS signal's holding steady, but be prepared to be disappointed. You might only find her burner phone when you get there."

"Understood. Yes, ma'am." Shane wanted to ask Sasha why everyone called her Mother or Mom. She didn't sound old enough to have kids his age, but he held back. Something about her tone was intimidating.

"You sure you don't need help? I can send someone. Just say the word."

Shane appreciated the shift in her personality. A little kindness really did go a long way. "Yes, ma'am, I know you can, and I appreciate the offer, but no. I'm good." To prove he meant what he said, Shane climbed to his feet using the tried and true three-point method of sticking his free hand firmly to the ground until he stove-piped both legs and got himself back on his feet. Once upright, he was dizzy but good. Well, good enough.

"Ms. Smart doesn't sound like a deranged killer, does she, Shane?" Sasha asked quietly.

"No, ma'am, she doesn't," he told The TEAM's technical wizard.

"You need to know that while you were out, she told me you were hurt and she wasn't leaving you behind. That she'd stay with you as long as you needed her. Don't you think that's an odd thing for a cold-blooded murderer to say and do?"

Shane nodded, aware that Tuesday could probably hear everything Sasha said. "Wait a sec, I'm putting you on speaker. And no, she's not what I expected. Listen, would it be asking too much for you to digitally backtrack Ms. Smart's whereabouts for the last year or so? She's recently been in the Arctic photographing effects of climate change. Before that, she was in Africa, the Serengeti. Also, check into Robert Freiburg. Tuesday works for him or with him and—"

"With him," Tuesday whispered. "We're partners."

"With him," Shane clarified, "and I don't know how good you are with the Cloud, but—"

"Just tell me what you need, and if there's anything to find, I'll find it," Sasha said with a definite twist of arrogance in her tone.

Okay then. Shane put his neck on the line for the woman at his side. "Tuesday's a freelance photographer, and I believe her. She didn't kill her husband, and she didn't kill Mr. Bremmer or his kids. She didn't even know them. The first she heard of her alleged crimes was when she saw a news broadcast at DFW. But her equipment, cameras, and computer were lost when her home exploded, so she can't prove anything. Could you possibly—?"

"Yes, I can download her files. Just need her user ID and password."

Shane held the phone out to Tuesday. "Mother needs your—"

"I heard. Sasha, my user ID's TooSmart , all one word, capital T, capital S. Password's MomandDad , all one word, M and D are caps."

"Got it," Sasha replied, and Shane was pretty sure those clattering background noises were her fingernails on a keyboard. But he'd also heard the quaver in Tuesday's reply. That more than anything else made his mind up for him. She'd loved her parents. She was innocent and she was being framed. That was the God's honest truth, because what kind of woman used mom and dad for a password? An innocent woman, that was who.

"Also, while she and I locate Everlee, could you track down any airport security footage of Tuesday's departures and arrivals?"

"You're thinking she's got a stalker? Where was her last arrival?"

He turned to Tuesday and said, "Dallas/Fort Worth?"

She nodded. "Yup. DFW. Three days ago. I flew in from Anchorage on Alaska Airlines. Do you want my flight number? My itineraries?"

"Don't need them," Sasha replied, "or any other flight information. Understood? I can find those details easy. No trouble at all. I'm on it."

"Are you sure you don't need—?"

"I said I'm on it, Shane," Sasha snapped. "Now go do your job. Get Everlee."

"Yes, ma'am. Two clicks east? What'll be there when I, err, I mean when we get there?"

Tuesday shot him a small smile of gratitude.

"A Piper airplane and a helicopter last time I checked my satellite feeds. It's a deserted private airfield with a barn close by, a single hangar, and several smaller outbuildings. It's off the interstate, though, behind the ridge of granite outcroppings running east alongside the field you're in now. I'll help you get to Everlee once you're closer. Can you accurately determine where you need to go?"

Tuesday pointed down the rows of corn.

"Still East?" he asked her, the pad of his index finger on the phone's microphone.

She nodded at the same time Mother said, "Exactly. Keep the ridge to your right and your phone handy. I'll check back in twenty to see how you're doing, understood?"

"Copy that. You're the best."

"Damned right I am. You do understand that it's not how many times a man falls off a horse that counts, don't you? It's how many times he gets back in the saddle and keeps trying."

God, she reminded him of his Mom. "I do know that, yes, ma'am, and thank you for reminding me. Sounds like you're a horsewoman."

"Not exactly, but I recently discovered I like to ride, and Maverick's got some gentle mares I like, and he's taught me a few things, and…" Her voice trailed away. She seemed to have run out of things to say.

Shane filled the silence between them with a heartfelt, "Thanks, Mom."

"No thanks necessary." She cleared her throat. "Helping my TEAM is what I do. I'm only a call away. Talk to you soon."

"Copy that." He ended the connection. Shane was beginning to like Sasha Kennedy. Turning to Tuesday, he asked, "Are you sure you're ready for whatever comes next?"

She gave him a tired smile. "Doesn't matter if I'm ready or not. It's coming at us either way. Let's go get Agent Yeager back. And thanks for treating me like a person instead of a killer."

"Like I told Sasha, I believe you, Tuesday, and I trust you." Please don't make a liar out of me. He nodded sideways in the direction they'd be walking. "And I'd be honored to help you clear your name."

That earned him another smile.

"Come on, then. We need to be a helluva lot closer to Everlee's location before Mom calls back."

"You call Sasha mom?"

"Yeah, I guess I did," he admitted. And from now on, I always will.

"Why? You didn't call her that before."

Shane had to chuckle. "I have no idea. It just feels right."