Chapter 3
Damn. He thought. Jack looked down at Sydney and saw the desperate look in her eyes knew she wasn't ready to find out about Vaughn. He would stall having to tell her as long as possible. One thing Jack knew above anything else was how strong is daughter was, but even she has her breaking point and she was on the edge of it now. Telling her about Vaughn now, he feared, would push past that point. Besides he already had to tell her about Francie, that was enough bad news for one day. Just then, one of the team members walked up, catching Jacks attention.
"Sir?" the man gave Syd and quick smile.
"Sorry to interrupt, but I just receive word from Parker that his team is secured and ready on the ground. All the preparations have been made for the package's safe delivery from the airport. I thought we should ready our team and go over the plans for when we land."
"Thanks Mac. I'll be over in a minute." Jack patted the man on the back and sent him over to the rest of his men. He turned back to Sydney. She had raised an eyebrow at him.
" I take it, I'm the package to be delivered and all that code talk was about me?"
"Syd, I have to take care of a few details before we land. Try to get some rest and I promise we'll talk some more once we've gotten you to a safe place." Jack smiled and returned to his team to go over every step of getting Sydney safely off the plane without anyone seeing her.
Sydney leaned back in her seat and began to go over the bits of information her father had given, which wasn't much. She knew there had been more than what he was telling her and grew even more upset. Two years. Where the hell have been? The thought kept flashing through her mind. Two years. She kept flashing back to the last night that she could remember. The night she and Vaughn had planned to go to Santa Barbara. She remembered how excited she had been that the reservation had been made, and that they were moving forward in their relationship. She remembered how much she loved him, how easy it was for her to love him.
Sydney thought back to the memory of sitting on the couch with Francie and offering her the coffee ice cream. She remembers the fight more vividly than she cared to. Worse of all, Sydney remembers the sight of Will, covered in blood, lying in her bathtub. The thought made her heart ache. Her thoughts drifted back to Francie. The real Francie. Sydney could feel hot, burning tears form behind her eyes. She knew that Francie must be dead for there to be and imposter in her place.
Looking out again over the ocean, Sydney let the tears roll down her cheeks and fall to her chest. She didn't want to remember. It was too hard to think about Francie and Will and what could have happened to them.
Sydney wasn't sure when it was that she finally succumbed to the exhaustion and fell asleep. It wasn't a peaceful sleep. Like a slide show, pictures of her life popped in and out of her dreams. Dreams rarely make sense and the images that flashed like lightning through her mind, made Sydney twitch and jerk.
It had been nearly 18 hours since Sydney had boarded the 747 in Hong Kong. The pilot was now making his final approach to LAX. He brought the plane to about 2000 feet and pulled back on the throttle causing the plane to gradually slow to about 250 mph. The flaps were lowered to help slow the speed of the aircraft even more and give lift to the wings. The plane seemed to be floating down from the sky. The runway was in sight now and the landing gear had been lowered.
The plane hit the runway at about 110 mph. The pilot pushed the throttle forward to give the engines a reverse thrust and the plane slowed even more. The engines roared and the plane gave a little lurch. Sydney jerked awake.
As the plane was taxing off the runway, Sydney began to feel anxious. She was home and back to her life. She wasn't sure that she had a life to get back to, but there was Vaughn. The thought of seeing Vaughn again filled her with excitement. Sydney's body had memorized his embrace and it had begun to ache for it.
The plane had finally pulled to a stop and Sydney unbuckled her seatbelt. She took one last look out the window and saw that three black sedans had been parked outside their departure gate. Just then, the doors on the sedans swung opened and three men piled out of each of them. Sydney studied their faces to see if Vaughn was among them. He wasn't. Sydney's heart sank and she took a second look at each of them to make sure he wasn't there. When she looked again, Sydney realized that two of the men weren't men at all. There were two women among them, both with a similar build to Sydney's, and both with long brown hair. Hmm… Decoys. Damn, Dad's good. The thought pulled at the corners of Sydney's mouth and she smiled. Ok Sydney, here we go. Just breathe. Sydney stood up and walked over to her dad and the rest of the team. A minute later, Sydney stepped off the plane and into her new life.