Breach Of Trust. Jodie Bailey
he used as a signature followed the message, leaving no room for doubt. More than a decade of silence, enough time to stop looking over her shoulder...and still he’d returned. Here. On her last day as technology director at a tiny private school on the outskirts of Flint, Michigan.
If she’d left yesterday, her official last day... If she’d denied principal Yvonne Craft’s request to run through the system one more time... If she’d left at seven, the way she’d planned... Any of those things, and she’d be at the farmhouse, painting window casings with Phoebe instead of sitting here, her life crumbling right as she was about to step into her dreams coming true. Right as she was about to start a whole new season.
At thirty-one, she’d had plenty of those already. But when it came to this one? Aside from the day she’d joined the army, this had been the first she’d really been excited about. Working with her friend Phoebe Snyder’s charitable foundation, Meghan was putting the finishing touches on a foster home for the most desperate of lost children.
And she wasn’t going to let the past steal it. Not without a fight. Rolling her neck to the side to stretch out the tension, she reached for her backpack and an external drive. She could download an image of the system and—
A sudden series of thuds bounced along the hallway and the alarm panel by the front door started its incessant beeping, demanding someone feed it the correct code before it called the police.
“We’ve got about two minutes before the cops start this way.” The voice, coarse and unfamiliar, scraped into the office and grated against Meghan’s ears.
Her fingers tightened around the straps of the backpack. No one she knew was supposed to be in the building this late.
And no one she knew would worry about the police, either.
Meghan slipped to the closed office door and pressed her back tight against the wall to listen, recalling long-unused training to keep her breathing even. The church housing the school wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, and they’d suffered one other break-in, when vandals nearly destroyed the school. Her car parked under the awning by the front door should have been a clue to any aspiring burglar trying for an easy score that the building was occupied.
But maybe that was the point. If they were hoping to find someone in the building...well, that was more than she wanted to think about. And she’d be sure to give them a fight they never anticipated.
It had been a long time since she’d been involved in a physical altercation, but she’d been trained well. Meghan stiffened her stance, charged by the prospect of action. Anybody who broke into this building had no idea what they were in for.
“Her car’s out front. She’s here. Find her.” The rough masculine voice echoed from the hallway. “Get her into the van. I’ll take care of the alarm.”
Meghan’s stomach tightened, and she balled her fists, automatically preparing for combat. This wasn’t a burglary. This was a targeted plan, and she was at the center of it. She should have anticipated this. If she’d been smart, she would have headed for the door the second the horrible message popped onto the screen, but she’d been too shocked he’d appeared again after this much time had passed.
There had to be a way out of this. Even with her military training, a fight against someone who knew her and her background would be a lot more difficult than an altercation with a neighborhood punk. There was no way to know how many intruders were in the building or how heavily armed they were. No intel meant an unfair fight.
The beeping of the alarm panel gained speed, demanding a code before the whole system went off. All she had to do was hang tight and stay hidden for another five minutes. The police tended to arrive quickly once the alarm notified them. After last year’s vandalism, they didn’t play when it came to this school.
“We should have waited till it was dark.” Another voice followed, deeper than the first, twanging the edges of something familiar. Somehow, somewhere she’d heard that voice before. Meghan dug for a memory, for a face, but came up empty save the bizarre feeling she shouldn’t be afraid.
A lie if her mind had ever told her one.
“If we’d waited till dark, she’d have been gone. We have one shot at this. And unless you want to be the one facing the pain if we blow this job, you’ll grab her before she figures out we’re here.” A string of curses stampeded from the hallway. “Stupid alarm. There’s no way she’s not hearing it. You go that way. And make it quick. If I don’t have the right code, we’ve got about fifteen seconds before the stinking alarm goes off and triggers the cops.”
They had the alarm code. Meghan’s muscles tightened with readiness as she searched her windowless office for a way out. Help wasn’t coming. She was on her own.
And she was defenseless. The cell phone in her hip pocket had never gotten a signal in her small office deep inside the first floor of the steel-and-concrete building. Her gun was locked in the safe at the house. She hadn’t carried a weapon for personal defense since she left the army four years ago. All she had was herself, her training and a backpack full of books and random technology. While she’d been trained well, that wouldn’t get her far against no less than two men determined to haul her out of here. Into a van.
Such a cliché.
Dropping the bag silently beside her feet, she slid closer to the door, keeping tight to the wall, listening for footsteps, watching for shadows as an early Michigan evening cast weak light into the hallway.
The alarm stopped beeping, severing any hope of the cavalry’s arrival. A small number of people were privy to the code, and none of them sounded anything like the men stalking the building now. None of them would want to shove her into a van or be worried about police presence.
She had to get out. Fast.
Meghan walked the familiar building in her memory. From the front lobby, the building branched off into three directions. From the muffled sounds of footsteps and distant murmuring, the men hadn’t headed in her direction yet, which meant she had about one minute to figure this out and save her skin. Easing around the door, she peeked into the hallway.
The front door was out. Even though it was about a hundred feet away, it was part of the central hub in the main lobby. Whoever was hunting her would have to pass it again soon, and if she got caught dead to rights in the middle of the hallway, there was nowhere to run.
She glanced left. The fire exit was half the length of the building away, opening to the back school yard and a small wooded area on the other side. If Meghan could hit the door running, she might make it to the highway on the other side of the trees before they caught her, though the blaring door alarm wouldn’t allow her much of a head start.
There was a lot of open ground to cover in the hallway, then between the building and the woods. Once she was out, the door would lock behind her. She had her keys, but unlocking the door to get back into the building would cost her valuable seconds if she burst outside into the face of a waiting kidnapper. Worst-case scenario, the exit would bring her out on the opposite side of the building from the front parking lot and, if they caught her, they’d have to drag her all the way around in full sight of anyone driving by on the busy road in front of the school.
The fire exit wasn’t perfect, but it was all she had.
Closing her eyes tight, Meghan tried to listen over the pounding in her ears. The only sounds were the thumps of doors opening and closing on the far side of the building. She exhaled and hit the hallway at a dead run, bursting through the door to the earsplitting shriek of the fire alarm.
She stumbled on her flip-flops, kicked them off and kept running over soft grass, freshly sprouted after the long winter.
A shout echoed behind her. If she could make the woods and get through to the highway, surely they’d leave her alone in such a public venue.
They had to.
Dry mulch from the nearby playground dug into her feet as she pressed faster, bruising skin accustomed to winter shoes.
Footsteps