Calculated Risk. Janie Crouch
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She glanced over at the car. Nobody was near it, but she needed to get the twins out of here. This had the Organization written all over it.
The older woman gave out a weary sigh. “Harold just walked down to use the ATM and couldn’t get it to work. It said our account was temporarily on hold. I don’t want to go to some strange hotel in my pajamas with no money.”
A younger woman turned to them from a few yards away. “Did you guys say your bank account is on hold? Mine told me the same thing a few minutes ago when I went to grab some cash.”
Harold let out another frustrated sigh. “Unbelievable. At First National Trust?”
The woman shook her head. “No, Bank United. Everybody’s system must be down.”
Or somebody was making sure that everybody in the building ended up where they were subtly being directed.
The Organization was casting a net. They didn’t know what their fish looked like, so they were going to dredge everything, then sort it out.
Bree pulled her hat farther down on her head. Everything happening on the street right now—all the people gathered here—was being recorded, she was sure of it.
After all, hadn’t the Organization started teaching her how to use her computer skills for surveillance when she was only ten years old? They’d taught her how to target, how to track, how to incapacitate an enemy virtually. Then used her natural abilities to further develop methods of spying and tracking.
Until her mother had realized the prestigious computer school that was supposed to be providing a young Bethany a leg up in coding and systems was actually using her abilities to further their own nefarious purposes. And had no plan to ever let her leave.
Bree spoke to Harold and the others for just a few more moments before easing herself away and walking nonchalantly back to her car and slipping inside. She started the car and pulled away slowly despite every instinct that screamed to drive as fast as she could. That would do nothing but draw attention to her. Attention she desperately could not afford.
As she passed Harold and his wife, she noticed that a man wearing a Central Gas jacket was now talking to the older couple, clipboard in hand. When Harold pointed in her direction, she dipped lower in her seat, gritting her teeth, forcing herself to hold her speed consistent.
She could feel computerized eyes on her everywhere. Every phone in this vicinity was recording—whether the owners knew it or not—and sending information back to the Organization.
If Bree made one wrong move, did anything that drew unwanted attention to herself, they would be on her in a heartbeat.
She could feel the phantom pain of her leg being broken by the Organization. Hear her own screams. Her mother’s sobs.
She couldn’t let them take her again. So she forced herself to remain calm, to keep her car steady and slow, even though her eyes were almost glued to the rearview mirror expecting vehicles to be chasing her any moment.
But none came.
The gas man would be asking who she was. Hopefully the couple would remember Bree said 4A. The real person from 4A was the one in the building who looked most similar to Bree. Caucasian female. Brown hair. Average height and weight. Mid-to late-twenties.
Side by side it would be obvious Bree and 4A’s occupant weren’t the same person, but in general description they were similar enough to buy Bree some time as they searched for the wrong person.
She was going to need every extra minute she could get. She had no doubt her accounts, like everyone else’s, had been frozen. They would be unfrozen as soon as she stepped foot in a bank and showed ID. But then the Organization would have a record of her, photographs.
They would figure out she was alive, and the hunt would truly begin.
So she was trapped with just the cash she had on her. Alone, that would’ve lasted her six months or more. More than enough time to get established somewhere and get a new job.
As if on cue one baby began crying in the back. It wasn’t long before the other was joining its sibling.
Bree definitely wasn’t alone anymore.
Tanner Dempsey didn’t spend a lot of his time in the baby aisle of Risk Peak’s lone drugstore. His sister had made him an uncle three times over in the last decade, but when he was shopping for his niece and nephews, it was in the toy department.
He didn’t spend a lot of time at the drugstore at all. He was only here now at 7:00 p.m., after working a twelve-hour shift, because if he showed up at his mother’s house tomorrow without shaving, he’d never hear the end of it from his siblings.
Since Tanner tended to have a five o’clock shadow about two hours after he shaved, Gary, the manager here, kept a couple packages of the special razor refill brand Tanner liked. Gary stuffed them in the back aisle so no one else would buy them.
Tanner meant to just grab the pack and run, but his attention was caught by a young mother—one crying baby in her arms, another in a car seat carrier on the ground—moving in odd, jerky movements in the baby aisle.
Tanner immediately knew the woman wasn’t from around here. He’d lived in Risk Peak, Colorado, his entire life, except for the four years he’d gone to college about an hour east in Denver. Risk Peak definitely wasn’t so large that he wouldn’t know an attractive brunette in her twenties who’d recently had twins.
And man, that one kid had a set of lungs on him. The fact that the mother was moving so awkwardly wasn’t helping calm the baby.
Tiredness pushed aside, Tanner stayed at the end of the aisle out of the woman’s sight, picking up a random package and pretending to read the back of it in case she looked at him. His subterfuge probably wasn’t even necessary. She was so busy with her odd movements and the crying baby, she definitely wasn’t looking his way.
It didn’t take him long to figure out what was going on. The woman was taking individual packets of formula out of a larger box and stuffing them wherever she could manage. In her own pockets, in the diaper bag and even inside the onesie of the crying child.
No wonder the kid was bawling.
Tanner had seen a lot in his thirty-three years, but a mother stealing formula by stuffing it in the baby’s clothes? That was a first. Now he’d seen it all.
Then she opened a package of diapers and started stuffing those in with the second baby in the carrier, hidden under the blanket.
Correction. Now he’d seen it all.
She was watching the other end of the aisle, toward the front of the store, to make sure no one caught her. But evidently she thought the back of the store was empty, which it normally would be.
He watched her for a few more moments to make sure he understood what was going on. When she dropped the half-empty pack of diapers and was struggling to pick them up, Tanner decided he had seen enough.
“Let me get those for you.” He moved quickly toward her, ignoring her startled little shriek, and grabbed the half-open package of diapers from the floor and offered them to her.
And was met by the most brilliant green eyes he’d ever seen.
It took him a second to recover enough to even take in the rest of her features. Long brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail, pert nose covered in freckles that also covered her cheeks and full sensual lips.
Kissable lips.
This was definitely a woman he would know if she lived here, whether she’d just had twins or not. Not that anyone in Risk Peak would allow a young mother to become so desperate that she had to shoplift formula and diapers.
She