Midnight Promises Read Free

With the help of one she accessed the airport’s security system and initiated a bomb alert. A siren sounded immediately.
    Then she hacked into the airport loudspeaker system, overrode the regular announcements and used an app she’d designed to disguise her voice. It turned her natural soprano into a male basso profundo that sounded like God Himself.
    “Attention, attention, we have just received a bomb alert. We ask all passengers and personnel to please make for the exits in an orderly fashion. You may use the stairs and the escalators but not the elevators. Attention, attention—”
    She put the announcement on a loop.
    As if on cue, sounds of screams came from the concourse outside the toilets, the flooring shivering with the vibrations of thousands of feet running.
    The laptop screen went out of focus for an instant and Felicity grabbed the stability bar for the handicapped, grateful that she’d chosen this stall. She held it, white-knuckled, until her head cleared. Almost afraid, she glanced down at her side and saw that the blanket she’d wrapped around herself was soaked with blood. Soon she was going to faint and then she’d really be prey. Her attacker wouldn’t find her outside and would come back inside and check the place thoroughly. If he found her unconscious on the floor of the bathroom stall, she was done for.
    One last thing to do.
    Like all large airports, the Portland airport had an ambulance service on duty 24/7 in case of an airplane crash. Though the letters danced on the screen, she found the emergency service and directed the ambulances to come around to the front of the street level.
    Someone would have ordered them out anyway, eventually, but she needed an ambulance
now
.
    Hitching her laptop backpack higher up on her shoulders, she planted a bloody hand against the pristine white walls of the stall, realizing that she was leaving DNA and fingerprints. She should go into the outer room, grab some towels, soak them with water and soap, and wipe it down.
    But really, she’d need bleach. And she didn’t have the strength anyway. Pressing the last dry part of the baby blanket against her side, she put on the baseball cap, tucking her hair in to hide the color, and walked out into utter chaos.
    Good. Chaos was good.
    Her disguised voice kept booming over the loudspeakers, a deep top note over the screams and cries of the passengers. “Attention, attention—”
    She put herself in the middle of a stream of people scrambling down the stairs and made it down almost without her feet touching the ground.
    People were pushing and shouting to get out through the revolving door exits, creating bottlenecks so that the exits looked like one huge writhing organism made up of arms and legs instead of terrified travelers desperately trying to get out.
    She felt a thump at her back and her adrenaline spiked, cutting off her breath. It wasn’t her attacker, though, it was a woman in a knot of people rushing for the exits. Felicity was caught in the middle and carried forward, her feet barely touching the floor. A strident alarm signal started up, like an air-raid siren. She hadn’t done that, it must have been an automated system. But it served to increase the frenzy of the passengers in the terminal. Only half had made it outside, the others were mostly clustered at the chokepoints of the exits.
    The knot of people propelling her forward dissipated like a clump of dirt hitting water as they made it out through the revolving doors, and she dropped to her hands and knees, head down between her arms, observing running feet rushing by. Sneakers, pumps, tiny kids’ shoes, polished men’s shoes, high heels…they all streamed by while she held herself up on trembling arms. A few drops of blood stained the concrete pavement. She’d bled right through the blanket.
    The screams, the alarm, the voice booming
attention
,
attention
—they all melded into a background blur then faded. She blacked out for a second