Free Ransomed Dreams by Sally John

her safety zone here.”
    “Safety zone? The world is her playground. She’s traveled carefree as a bird since she was a kid. She made her first missions trip to the Caribbean at fourteen!”
    “That was B.C.E., as she refers to it. Before the Caracas Episode. The minute we entered the city, she got that deer-in-headlights expression. It hasn’t gone away yet. She’s white as a sheet and stumbling over her own feet.”
    Calissa paced her private office—not all that large, but at least it was bigger than the nurses’ station and no eagle eye watched her hemorrhage anxiety all over the place.
    “Okay,” she said. “Okay. But you’re familiar to her. She once told me she felt safe with you. Of course, that was in Houston before she came to her senses and told you to get lost.” She halted. “You are with her, right?”
    “She’s in the ladies’ room.”
    “Is there only one exit?”
    “Calissa, I’ve got things under control.”
    “Except for that niggling doubt. Don’t you have handcuffs? a rope? something to tie her to yourself?”
    He chuckled. “You hired a friend with connections, not a bounty hunter.”
    “I’ll pay you more. Name the price.”
    “I’m changing the subject. How is your dad?”
    She stepped in front of her sixth-floor window and looked down on a crowded, wet Michigan Avenue enveloped in mist. It vied with the ICU for the Most Dismal Scene in Chi-town award. “No change. He seems to be in an inexplicable holding pattern.”
    “How are you?”
    “I’m about ready to eliminate hairstylist costs. No need to color roots if they’re all yanked out, is there?” She paused. “I’m in a holding pattern too. I can’t move forward without Sheridan. We both need her here. Isn’t she out of the bathroom yet?”
    “Maybe you ought to hop a plane and meet us in L.A. Do this yourself.”
    Calissa tugged a fistful of short hair. “Sorry. Call me from there?”
    “Yeah. If we make it. I mean, maybe she had a wig in her handbag, a change of clothes. Different sunglasses. Just a scarf might fool me. I should have been watching for a tall, nervous woman running toward the car rentals.”
    “Shut up.”
    He laughed, and the line went dead.
    Calissa closed her phone and draped herself over the couch that didn’t quite accommodate her long frame. It was a love seat of worn leather that she’d purchased ages ago when her father gave her the office space and officially promoted her to assistant.
    An assistant. One of his assistants.
    The esteemed congressman from the state of Illinois had many assistants in Chicago and D.C.
    But only one of them was his daughter, who had access to the attic in his house and who uncovered a history of deceit and who shouted it at his seventy-four-year-old face until it was time to call 911.
    And Sheridan thought she was out of her safety zone.

Chapter 15
    Mazatlán airport
    Sheridan held her palms under the faucet, catching the trickle of cold water. She splashed it onto her face and moaned quietly. In days past, being sick in a crowded public restroom might have upset her, but at the moment she really didn’t care. Self-consciousness was the least of her problems.
    The dike had broken. Back in Topala, she’d been able to hold things in place. Peace and safety leaked out through the holes punctured by Luke and her sister, but she had ignored the seepage. She focused on bolstering Eliot, packing clothes, writing lists for Mercedes, and pretending Luke did not tug a heartstring. She had made a successful exit, emotions intact, dike intact.
    But then, with each passing mile in the car, the pressure built. As they neared Mazatlán and the traffic and crowds grew to hordes, the wall gave way. In one gushing flood, all sense of security left her.
    The old fear invaded. For some moments she thought she was back in Caracas, in a car speeding crazily away from bloodstained sidewalks and shattered windows. Even her arm ached, and every breath pierced her ribs.
    Luke