Cover of Night

by Linda Howard

  Turned out he had a hairline fracture—like Cal hadn’t already told him that—and they put him in a soft cast instead of a plaster one. He was to wear the cast until he came back in two weeks for more X-rays, but the doctor thought the fracture would be healed by then. All in all, good news. They gave him a pair of crutches; the doc ordered him to use them and give his leg as much rest as possible, and said that if he did what he was supposed to, in two weeks he’d be walking on his own two feet again.

  Neenah smiled in relief when she heard Creed’s prognosis. “I was afraid you’d done some sort of permanent damage, hobbling around the way you did,” she said as he got into her rental car. How she’d gotten a car so fast, he didn’t know. Maybe someone in the sheriff’s department had helped. She had driven up to the clinic steps to pick him up, to keep his walking to a minimum.

  “That’s the only way I know how to hobble,” he retorted, making her laugh. He loved her laugh, loved the way she tilted her head back and her eyes sparkled. The tension and strain of the past few days had left dark circles under her eyes and occasionally he’d seen grief etched in her face, but for a moment all that was gone. He’d like to keep it that way, keep the pain away from her. He knew he couldn’t, knew everyone who had been in Trail Stop would have to deal with what had happened, each in his own way. He hadn’t escaped unscathed himself, and he wasn’t thinking about his leg. Old memories had resurfaced, brought back by the violence that had touched their lives. He’d dealt with them before and he would this time, too, the memories shared by all men who had been to war. The details differed, but friends had been lost.

  The Trail Stop Massacre, as it was already being called by the bloodsucker press, was big news right now. A steady stream of reporters was flowing into town, which created an instant motel-room shortage because the Trail Stop inhabitants were already here and needed places to stay.

  Eventually everything would settle down, but now the sheriff’s department was taking statements from everyone and scrambling to find accommodations for so many people until the electricity and phone service could be restored to the community, which some people were saying could take until the bridge was rebuilt. Bridges weren’t thrown up overnight, not even small bridges. The word was they might not be back in their houses by Christmas. Creed knew better. He’d already made some phone calls to some people who knew some people, and red tape was being sliced through, the Trail Stop bridge shoved to the front of a list of projects. Creed expected the new bridge would be ready within a month.

  Things would still be a mess in Trail Stop, though. Food in refrigerators and freezers would be spoiled, rain would have blown in through broken windows and damaged floors and walls, plus there was the little matter of all the bullet holes, damaged or destroyed possessions, vehicles that had been damaged…the insurance adjusters would be busy for a while.

  At least the cops seemed to be leaning toward the scenario that there had been trouble in the bad-guy ranks, and one of them had turned on the rest. Unless Cal spoke up and said otherwise, that was the theory Creed was publicly buying.

  Privately, Creed knew otherwise. He’d been on too many missions with the cunning bastard not to recognize his handiwork. Cal had always gotten the job done. No matter what that job was, he’d been Creed’s go-to guy in tougher situations than this. He was never the biggest guy around, never the fastest or the strongest, but by God, he’d always been the toughest.

  “You’re smiling like a wolf,” Neenah observed, which might have been a caution that people could be watching.

  The comparison startled him. “Wolves smile?”

  “Not really. It’s more a baring of teeth.”

  Okay, so the comparison was an apt one.

  “I was just thinking about Cate and Cal. It’s nice to see them together.” It was only half a lie. He’d been thinking about Cal. But, damn, it was nice the way he’d seen Cate three years ago and hung in there all this time, waiting for her to notice him—and while he was waiting, quietly bonding with her kids and inserting himself into her life so completely she wouldn’t know what to do without him. That was Cal. He decided what he wanted, then he made it happen. Creed was suddenly glad Cal hadn’t wanted Neenah, or he’d have had to kill the best friend he had in the world.

  Creed directed Neenah to his house, and for the first time in his life he suddenly wondered if he’d left underwear lying on the floor. He knew he hadn’t—his military training was too deeply ingrained—but if ever he had, it would probably be when Neenah would see the house for the first time.

  He made it to the front door and started to unlock it, then noticed where Cal had knocked out a window. He laughed, reached inside, and unlocked the door, then maneuvered his crutches to the side so she could precede him inside.

  He liked his place. It was rustic, small enough for him, but not too small, since there were two bedrooms. The kitchen was modern, not that he used it a lot, the furniture sized to fit him and comfortable enough to sleep on. The decorating was plain Jane, if you could call it decorating. The furniture was put where he wanted it, and the bed was made up. That was the extent of his domestic abilities, or inclinations.

  She didn’t have a place to live, he realized. Her house had taken a lot of hits, plus she couldn’t even get to it right now. The sheriff’s department had brought in a helicopter to airlift the stranded inhabitants to town, because that was deemed the fastest, easiest way.

  “It looks like you,” she said with her serene smile. “No nonsense. I like it.”

  He touched her cheek with one finger, lightly stroking her smooth skin. “You could stay here with me,” he offered, going straight to the heart of what he wanted.

  “Would you want me to have sex with you?”

  He almost fell, the crutches suddenly becoming unmanageable, but he found he was incapable of lying to this woman, incapable of looking into those blue eyes and uttering anything except the absolute truth. “Hell, yes, but I want to do that regardless of where you live.”

  “You know I was a nun?”

  How could she be so calm when his heart was suddenly beating so fast he thought he’d pass out. “I heard. Are you a virgin?”

  She smiled, a tiny curve of her mouth. “No, I’m not. Does it matter?”

  “It matters in that I’m relieved as hell. I’m fifty years old; I can’t take that kind of stress.”

  “Don’t you want to know why I’m not a nun anymore?”

  He bit the bullet and hazarded a guess. “Because you liked sex too much to give it up?”

  She burst out laughing. She seemed to think that was so hilarious, in fact, that she ended up sitting on his couch laughing so hard she cried. He began to get the idea she hadn’t liked sex that much. He bet he could change her mind. He was slower now, and he knew a hell of a lot, and when it came to sex that was a good thing.

  “I became a nun because I was too afraid of life, too afraid to live,” she finally said. “I left the convent because those were the wrong reasons for being there.”

  He eased down beside her and put his crutches aside. With one arm around her he tilted her face up. “Do you remember where we left off right before the bridge exploded and your house got shot up?”

  “Vaguely,” she said, the twinkle in her eye telling him she was teasing.

  “Do you want to pick up there, or do you want to go to bed and make love?”

  Her cheeks turned pink and she regarded him with absolute seriousness. “Bed.”

  Thank you, Jesus. “Okay, but first there are two things I want to get clear.”

  She nodded, her clear blue gaze locked with his.

  “I’ve had the serious hots for you for years, I love you, and I want to marry you.”

  Her mouth fell open. She turned white, then pink again, he hoped with pleasure. She said, “That’s three things.”

  He thought about it for a split second then shrugged before scooping her onto his lap to kiss her. “Actually, I think it’s just separate
parts of one big thing.”

  “You know, I think you’re right.” She wiggled against him, and ended up sitting astride his lap with her arms looped around his neck while they kissed each other crazy. After a while she was half naked and his pants were unzipped, and she was all but panting as she lay against his sweaty chest. Her hand was inside his pants and she was stroking up and down and his spine was so rigid he thought he could do a good imitation of a plank. Bed was the last thing on his mind.

  “This had better be good,” she said fiercely.

  “It will be,” he promised as he eased her into position.

  “If I’ve gone all this time without having sex and if this turns into another dud, I—”

  “Honey,” he said clearly, getting out his last lucid thought for the next twenty minutes, “Marines don’t fire duds.”

  “Cate!” Sheila flew out of the house, sobbing in relief even though Cate had called her mother immediately on reaching a phone two days ago. She had been anxious to speak to her mother before the news hit the wire services, and she’d wanted to talk to her boys. They’d been in bed asleep, but Cate had insisted Sheila wake them so she could hear their sleepy protests that faded when they realized Mommy was on the phone.

  With all the police questions Cal had been obliged to answer, they hadn’t been allowed to leave until just that morning. Until the electricity was on and the bridge rebuilt, they couldn’t go home, and Cate’s parents had invited them to stay with them in Seattle until that was possible.

  Cate was engulfed in her mother’s arms, tightly hugged, kissed, then hugged again. Her father came out of the house and hugged her, too, very tightly, and was followed closely by two jumping, shouting, very dirty little boys who couldn’t decide if they wanted to shriek “Mommy!” or “Mr. Hawwis!” so they did both.

  Cal swiftly shook hands with Cate’s father, then went down on one knee and the boys all but swarmed him. After three years of it, she was accustomed to being abandoned in favor of the handyman, who, after all, had taught them how to cuss. How could a mother compete with that? She found herself grinning like an idiot at the sight of him with two sets of little arms wrapped tightly around his neck while they both vied to tell him all the news of their visit with Mimi. He looked as if he were being choked, they had such tight and enthusiastic grips on him.

  “I see I was right,” said Sheila, looking down at him with satisfaction.

  “Right about what?” he managed to gasp out.

  “That there was something going on between you and Cate.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you were. I’ve been after her for three years.”

  “Well, good job. Are you getting married?”

  “Mom!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Cal, without a hint of a blush.

  “When?”

  “Mom!”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “In that case,” said Sheila, “I’ll let you stay here with her. But no hanky-panky with my daughter under my roof.”

  Her dad looked as if he would choke with laughter. Cal was close to being choked by the twins. Cate thought she might choke on indignation. “I wouldn’t think of it, ma’am,” Cal assured her mother.

  “Liar,” Sheila said briskly.

  Cal winked at his future mother-in-law. “Yes, ma’am,” he said very definitely, and she grinned.

  A couple of weeks later, the man who used to be Kennon Goss, who used to be Ryan Ferris, walked casually through a cemetery outside Chicago. He seemed to walk without purpose, pausing to read names, then meandering on.

  He passed by a new grave. There was a temporary marker up, and the name on it was Yuell Faulkner, with the dates of his birth and death listed. The man didn’t stop, didn’t appear to pay the grave any attention. He went by it to study the old tombstone of a child who had died in 1903, and from there to a veteran’s grave decorated with two small American flags.

  One of life’s ironies, the man thought. Faulkner had already been dead that night, by a few hours. Good old Hugh Toxtel hadn’t had to die; his involuntary sacrifice hadn’t been necessary, after all. The others, either, but he didn’t care about Teague and his cousin Troy. He did wonder about Billy Copeland and that young guy, Blake, though; he hadn’t killed them, so who had?

  Thinking back on that night, sometimes he thought he remembered a hint of a breeze, as if something or someone had moved close to him. Other times his common sense told him that there had been a breeze—a real breeze, caused by the movement of air. That didn’t explain why several times since then he’d bolted upright in bed, startled out of a sound sleep by this weird sensation that his dreams had conjured up, of being watched.

  He was glad to his bones to be out of Idaho, but he couldn’t stay in Chicago. It was time to move on. Maybe someplace warm. Maybe Miami. He’d heard on the news there had been a series of vicious murders down there. The killer was evidently collecting eyeballs.

  What were the odds?

  About the Author

  LINDA HOWARD is the award-winning author of many New York Times bestsellers, including Killing Time, To Die For, Kiss Me While I Sleep, Cry No More, Dying to Please, Open Season, Mr. Perfect, All the Queen’s Men, Now You See Her, Kill and Tell, and Son of the Morning. She lives in Alabama with her husband and two golden retrievers.

  By Linda Howard

  A LADY OF THE WEST

  ANGEL CREEK

  THE TOUCH OF FIRE

  HEART OF FIRE

  DREAM MAN

  AFTER THE NIGHT

  SHADES OF TWILIGHT

  SON OF THE MORNING

  KILL AND TELL

  NOW YOU SEE HER

  ALL THE QUEEN’S MEN

  MR. PERFECT

  OPEN SEASON

  DYING TO PLEASE

  CRY NO MORE

  KISS ME WHILE I SLEEP

  TO DIE FOR

  KILLING TIME

  Cover of Night is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Linda Howington

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-345-49371-2

  v3.0