Ingrid Weaver - Seven Days To Forever

“It looks burned.”

“Yes, it heated up when it went through the atmosphere. That was before NASA developed the space shuttle. Astronauts were shot into space inside a little capsule like this that was fitted on the tip of a rocket.”

“Wow,” the boys said, tipping their heads one way and then the other to study the capsule.

“That was more than forty years ago.”

“Wow! That’s older than my mom!”

“It’s older than my mom.”

“Is not.”

“Is, too.”

Abbie put her hands on their shoulders and gently guided them along with the rest of the class. “It’s older than me, too, Jeremy.”

The boys looked up at her, their mouths rounded. “Hey. Really?”

Abbie suppressed a grimace at their expressions of disbelief. She wasn’t old, she reminded herself. Turning thirty didn’t mean that she was over the hill. She was just coming into her physical and sexual prime. A woman’s vitality peaked in her thirties, isn’t that what people said? She had plenty of good years to look forward to.

But if she had intended to keep a positive attitude about her youth, visiting a museum on her birthday wasn’t that great an idea.

“Miss Locke?”

She smiled at a plump redheaded girl. “Yes, Beverly?”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Me, too,” another child said.

Abbie turned to the parent volunteers who had accompanied the class and efficiently divided everyone into rest room squads. It was time to call it a day, anyway. They had been on the go since the morning, and the bus was due to pick them up in half an hour. Well-accustomed to the vagaries of seven-year-olds, she knew enough to allow plenty of extra time to organize their departure.

The unfortunate reminders of her advancing age aside, it had still been a good day. She was lucky to have a job she enjoyed as much as this one. She loved children and longed for the chance to have one or two of her own someday. Yes, her ambition was embarrassingly old-fashioned: a home in the suburbs filled with the warmth of a loving family…and of course, a nice, stable husband to share it all with. Was that really too much to ask?

Perhaps it was, since she’d always assumed she would have been married by the time she was thirty. That’s probably what was causing her to be so conscious of this milestone of a birthday. But chances were that she wasn’t going to find Mr. Right by the end of today…unless he jumped out of the cake at her surprise party.

For a moment Abbie imagined the scene in her parents’ house. Her family always threw her a birthday party. She always pretended to be surprised. There was something wonderfully comforting about the whole thing, a sweet ritual that arose from her family’s love. Her mother would fix her favorite potato salad, plates of fried chicken and egg sandwiches with no crusts. Her father would make the same joke he always did about how Abbie couldn’t possibly be more than two because her mother hadn’t aged a year since her birth. They would hug and laugh and make toasts to the future while she opened her gifts.

She would bet a hundred, no, a million bucks that the gifts wouldn’t include a cake with a man inside.

Abbie chuckled at the whimsical thought and scooped up a pair of discarded jackets from the rest room counter, then guided the children to the lobby where they waited for the stragglers. Of course, more jackets came off and backpacks hit the floor as they waited.

“Miss Locke, I lost my hat.”

“What did it look like, Ricky?”

“It was blue.”

Well, that narrowed it down. Abbie spotted a ball cap on the floor and pointed. “Is that it?”

“Yeah! Thanks, Miss Locke.”

She held out the jackets. “Whose are these?”

Two children raced up to take them, then dropped more of their belongings as they contorted themselves to put the jackets on.

Once the whole group was assembled, Abbie did a head count. As soon as she was assured that everyone was present and accounted for, she hurried them toward the door before anyone could wander off or decide they needed another rest room trip. Ricky’s hat fell off as soon as he started moving. Abbie picked it up as she passed by, along with three stray backpacks, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw the yellow school bus already waiting outside.

“What the hell just happened?” the major demanded. His voice was low, his words clipped, always a bad sign. “O’Toole, report.”

Flynn stared at the empty spot on the floor, then looked at the departing group of children. “She took the backpack.”

“Who?”

“That teacher.”

“I told you not to underestimate her,” Sarah said.

Flynn folded his museum guide, stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans and followed the woman to the door. He deliberately kept his strides slow and easy, in case anyone was watching for a tail. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “She would have been my last choice.”

“It was neatly done,” Sarah said. “The children swarmed the target zone while she lifted the ransom. We never saw it coming.”

Flynn emerged into the crisp sunshine of the autumn afternoon. The woman was making no effort to disappear. In fact, she couldn’t have chosen a more obvious mode of transportation. “You can’t miss seeing her come now,” he said. “Bright-yellow mini school bus with a whole bunch of screaming kids. That’s going to stand out in traffic.”

“I need a visual confirmation that she has the money,” Major Redinger said.

“The bus is blocking my view,” Rafe said. “Flynn, can you see the bag?”

Flynn ambled toward the sidewalk. The woman formed the kids into a line, then stood by the open door of the bus and counted heads as they climbed inside. She handed what appeared to be a hat to one boy as he passed her and held out a sweater to another kid, all the while balancing three backpacks against her chest with one arm.

“Affirmative,” Flynn said. “The green backpack she’s holding appears to be the one Vilyas dropped. Aren’t the electronics we installed in the pack working, Major?”

“The mike’s muffled.”

“She’s holding the pack to her chest,” Flynn said.

“Clever woman,” Sarah said. “Anything on the homing signal, major?”

“That’s coming through no problem.”

As the last child climbed on the bus, the woman’s shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. She started after them, pausing on the first step to glance over her shoulder at the museum. And despite the noise from the squirming kids that Flynn could hear all the way over here, she was smiling.

Flynn took an involuntary step backward. If he had seen her smile before, he wouldn’t have needed to wonder why she had drawn his attention. Despite the freckles, despite the wholesome demeanor, there was something…alluring about her smile. It was a private little tilt of the corners of her lips, not meant for display. It was the smile of a woman who knew what she wanted, and for a crazy moment it made him wish he could give it to her.

What the hell was he thinking? She had just walked off with twenty million dollars in cash. What more could she possibly want?

She turned away. The doors of the bus closed. Flynn snapped his attention back to the conversation that was coming through his earpiece.

“…the mike’s working now. All I can hear are children’s voices.”

“…chase vehicles in position.”

Flynn pivoted and headed for his motorcycle. He’d chosen to use it because of the advantage it would give him in the Washington traffic, but considering the nature of the getaway car—no, bus—there was little chance of losing track of the ransom.

“This doesn’t add up,” he said, unlocking his helmet from the back of the seat. “She can’t be with the LLA. They wouldn’t use a bus full of kids to transport the ransom. It’s too obvious and it’s not maneuverable enough.”

“But it would provide excellent cover,” Sarah said. “They know we wouldn’t dare make a strike with all those children in the way.”

“Come on, people. Can’t you see it was an accident?” Flynn persisted. “She picked up that pack because she thought it belonged to one of the kids.”

“That’s a possibility, but—”

“She’s not one of the LLA,” he said.

“That’s immaterial.” At Major Redinger’s voice, the radio chatter stopped. “Until we know for sure whether this was a legitimate ransom pickup or just bad luck, our only option is to split up. Team A follows the ransom, Team B remains in position to continue monitoring the museum.”

Flynn kicked his bike to life, slid down his visor and slipped into the line of traffic that inched along behind the school bus. He noticed Sarah’s van waiting at the next cross street and heard the distant chug of a helicopter overhead. Much farther overhead, a satellite was beaming down second-by-second updates from the Global Positioning System that had been stitched into the pack.

Redinger was right. They had to cover all the possibilities. Considering what was at stake, they couldn’t afford to make any assumptions.

Why was Flynn so sure that the woman was innocent? Simply because she didn’t look like a terrorist meant nothing. Trouble came in all shapes and sizes. He’d seen old women in patched coats and kerchiefs lob hand grenades. He’d seen children act as spotters for assassins with high-powered rifles. He knew better than to trust anyone except the members of his team.

Besides, even if he was right and the pickup had been accidental, it was too late to put the ransom back in place. Boarding the bus now and retrieving the money would attract too much negative attention, to say the least. And the LLA had ordered Ambassador Vilyas not to alert the authorities about the kidnapping. No one, especially not Delta Force, was supposed to have been at the ransom drop, so how would they have known of the bungled pickup? The LLA could be following the ransom as easily as Flynn was, and they would be sure to spot any attempt at interference.

Oh, hell. For the sake of the mission, he should hope he was wrong about the woman. It would be far easier if she really was a clever terrorist in disguise who had just pulled off a brilliant plan.

Then again, since when had Flynn liked things easy?

Flynn dropped back, allowing more traffic between his bike and the bus as he followed it. Terse, one-line reports came over the radio link as Sarah Fox and her friends in Intelligence scrambled to keep up with the situation. Information began to build. The licence plates of the school bus were registered to a local bus company. According to their log, this bus was booked by Cherry Hill School for a field trip. Contact name at the school was a Miss Abigail Locke.

Abigail? It was an old-fashioned name, perfectly suitable for a wholesome-looking schoolteacher. He wondered if her friends called her Abbie.

As if following the script that Intelligence had written, the bus pulled into the parking lot of Cherry Hill School. Flynn coasted past, did a U-turn and let the bike idle in the shade of the trees at the corner of the schoolyard.

The teacher—Abigail—got off the bus first but she was unable to stem the flow as the kids burst out after her. She did manage to hand out a few jackets and two of the backpacks before the children met up with their waiting parents, but the kids were eager to be gone. The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes.

A strange woman’s voice came over the radio. It was soft and tinged with humor, and somehow Flynn knew it had to be hers.

“…good thing their heads are permanently attached.”