In the Dark

by Marliss Melton

“Obradovitch,” Westy guessed, on a growl.

  “Bingo. Valentino crippled him with a return shot, and Obradovitch fell to his death trying to fast-rope off the balcony.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Westy cursed.

  Hannah said nothing. She looked dazed, unresponsive.

  Luther looked to Westy for his interpretation. “What the hell’s going on, Chief?”

  Westy shook his head. “Maybe Westmoreland wanted Valentino off his back.”

  “Maybe.” But the explanation didn’t satisfy Luther. He turned to Hannah. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, wrapping her arms about her shoulders. Despite his better judgment, he put an arm around her. She accepted his comfort, melting against him without protest.

  It felt good to hold her again, Luther thought. Shading his eyes against the sun, he sought out the Winnebago in the parking lot. Thank God for Newman’s bodyguards. He didn’t want to say it out loud and shake up Hannah’s equilibrium any more than he already had, but he had the dampening suspicion that the Individual wasn’t done causing mischief.

  Sebastian tugged on the door of Leila’s dance studio, disconcerted to find it unlocked. He stepped inside, setting off the electronic bell that chimed a refrain from The Nutcracker. Leila looked up from the cash register. She was counting money.

  Counting money. With the door unlocked.

  He stood there disbelieving, aware that his usual self-control was crumbling beneath an avalanche of anger, panic, and desperation. “The door is open,” he pointed out as she paused to look at him inquiringly.

  “Yes, I was expecting you.” She had, in fact, called him this afternoon with news that she’d found Jason Miller’s letter.

  “What if it wasn’t me?” he said, stepping in and letting the door fall shut behind him. He locked it.

  Her questioning look turned to one of wariness as he stalked toward her, silent, his alarm and anger mounting, bubbling inside of him like lava.

  “What do you mean?” she asked as he rounded the counter wordlessly. “What are you doing?”

  “What,” he said, not once breaking eye contact, “if I was a very desperate man, the same who’d robbed the shop two doors down from yours the other night?” With that brief warning, he snatched the money out of her hand, stuffing it back into the register.

  Leila flinched away, looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  Perhaps he had.

  “What,” he continued, pursuing her, “if I was not content with stealing your money.” He raked a hungry gaze over her body, even more unsettled to find her wearing a form-fitting white top, a short pleated skirt, and tights. He trapped her against the wall, locking her in place with an arm on either side of her.

  “Stop it,” she said, on a fearful note.

  Her fear was like a slap in the face. “Leila,” he said, stricken by the realization that, for a moment, she was actually afraid of him.

  Frustration drained out of him. He lowered his head to her shoulder, suddenly repentant.

  She stood stiffly beneath him, not understanding.

  At last, he looked up. “Forgive me,” he said. He brushed the pad of his thumb across her elegant cheekbone. “Please,” he added more gently, “please lock your door when you count your money. Invest in an alarm system, one that notifies the authorities the minute your security is breached. I don’t know what I would do if something were to happen to you.”

  He didn’t know whether she would appreciate the advice, but it had to be a better tactic than scaring her.

  She searched his face with her dark, exotic eyes. “Do you worry about me that way?” she asked him. The answer seemed important to her.

  He gave her an incredulous look. “Of course.”

  “Because I might be carrying your baby,” she guessed.

  “No.” He captured her face between his hands. The words “I love you” burned a path to his tongue. He held them in check, afraid to send her running. “Even if there is never a baby, I would worry.” He kissed her tenderly, with all the reverence that roiled in him, wishing at the same time that he could find her ex-husband, who’d clearly never cherished her, and cripple him for life.

  Leila swayed against Sebastian, weakened by his soul-sucking kiss. What was happening? One moment she’d been counting her money, congratulating herself on inviting Sebastian over to the shop instead of to her home, where she’d found the letter. Here at the studio—where there was no bed—she’d be less tempted to rip his clothes off.

  Yet here she was, clinging to his broad shoulders, rubbing her tongue enticingly against him, her legs turning to rubber beneath her.

  He broke away, giving her a thoughtful look. “Let’s dance,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yes, I’ve wanted to dance with you again, since the night we met. Let’s dance here.” He gestured toward the studio with its large polished floor.

  He was a fabulous dancer, she recalled, fluid and flawless. She was just as eager to relive the magic as he. “All right,” she agreed.

  He pulled her into the studio with him, not bothering to turn on the lights. The open space was illumined only by the setting sun, shining through the front door and finding its way through the front room to the studio. Amber sunlight fingered the polished floor.

  “Music,” Leila said, turning toward the small room that housed her collection of CDs and sound equipment. Quickening with anticipation, she selected a CD of Brazilian samba music and wondered if Sebastian knew the steps. If not, she’d teach him.

  As the first exotic drumbeats came over the sound system, she approached him.

  Sebastian held his hands out. She took them, waiting to see what he would do. With a drumbeat setting the tempo, he began to move. His steps were easy and elegant, but they weren’t right for a samba.

  “Like this,” she told him, showing him how to move one step at a time, rolling on the balls of the feet. “Mirror my movements,” she said. He did, stepping back as she moved forward. Within minutes, he had mastered the dance.

  “You have a gift,” she said without exaggeration.

  “It is only that you instruct well,” he countered, his syntax more Spanish than English.

  Something within her eased, making her limbs less tense, freer to give outward expression to the quick, joyful music. He was doing it again, she realized, making her like him in a way that went beyond mere physical attraction.

  They moved across the shadowed floor, stepping in and out of the patch of sunlight by the door. As with the last time she’d been alone with him, she was caught up in the pleasure of his company.

  Suddenly the music changed, shifting from a quick samba to a sultry rumba. Without hesitation, Sebastian pulled her into his arms, so that her breasts were pressed to his chest, her hips flush with his. They moved with sensuous leisure, their thighs brushing with each step. The dance reminded Leila of the night they’d met and how their dancing had been a prelude to lovemaking.

  Sebastian seemed to be thinking along the same lines. When her back came up lightly against the rails in one corner of the room, she realized he’d maneuvered her there for a reason. She lacked the resolve to chastise him. Instead, she met his kiss eagerly, relishing his lean hardness as he pressed himself against her.

  For a long, long while, he was content to kiss her, drawing little moans of pleasure from her, rousing her passion. He brushed her nipples into aching peaks. He smoothed his hands over her backside, molding her against him.

  Without warning, he sank to his knees. Leila’s heart fluttered as he ducked beneath her skirt, kissing her thighs through her leotards. His tongue was hot and seeking. As it laved the most sensitive part of her, Leila clung to the bars on either side of her, shocked by his scandalous behavior but too overcome by pleasure to make him stop.

  He tugged the waistband of her leotards over her hips. His tongue speared her again, this time with no barrier in the way.

  Leila’s knees gave out. She clung to the bars
, sinking lower, delirious with need and want commingled.

  He stood at last, working quickly to free himself from the confines of his uniform. That feat accomplished, he lifted her off her feet.

  Leila locked her legs around him, urging him with frantic words. He kissed her breasts through her blouse as he claimed her with one stroke.

  Inflamed by his singlemindedness, Leila shuddered around him, climaxing embarrassingly early. “Oh, I love you!” she cried, filling her starved lungs as her orgasm subsided. Immediately she realized what she’d said, and she froze, looking at him.

  Sebastian’s eyes blazed with triumph. He seized her hips, pulling her down on him as he drove inside her, groaning against her throat as he followed her into bliss.

  Leila came rudely to her senses. She should not have said that! Raw fear caused her to wriggle free of Sebastian’s embrace. She fled, leotard trailing from one ankle as she ran for the bathroom in the front of the building and shut the door.

  “Leila!”

  She locked it before he had a chance to pursue her. His reactions were slowed by the need to refasten his trousers. The doorknob jiggled, but the lock held.

  Leila stared at her reflection, pale beneath the halogen light. What had she done? Her heart beat so erratically she could see the pulse point fluttering on her slender neck.

  “Leila,” Sebastian repeated, his mouth by the crack in the door. “What’s wrong, querida? Talk to me.”

  She twisted the water on, needing to drown out his endearments, needing more time to determine how she was going to survive loving a SEAL. She didn’t want to do this—no. It required strength that was beyond her capabilities. She couldn’t love a man who waltzed into danger on a regular basis.

  The thought made her queasy. She bent over, splashing water on her flushed cheeks. Feeling moisture between her thighs, she seized a handful of paper towels and wiped herself. At some point—she didn’t know when—tears started streaming from her eyes.

  “Leila,” Sebastian crooned outside the door, “it’s a simple matter for me to unlock the door. I am respecting your need for privacy, but I’m concerned.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied, half wishing he would unlock it. She felt strangely light-headed, like she just might faint. He must have heard the tears in her voice, must have guessed she was lying, for the lock released with a click, and there he was, looking at her.

  “You are not fine,” he determined. He stepped inside and took her in his arms. “Come. You need to sit down.”

  He urged her into one of the chairs in the waiting area right outside the studio doors. Leila sank weakly onto the cushion. Sebastian snapped on the lamp beside it and crouched down, his gaze searching. “Is it such a terrible thing to love me?” he asked perceptively.

  “Yes,” she said, wiping a stubborn tear from her cheek.

  “Why?”

  She drew a shuddering breath. “Because I can’t be with a man who will leave me.”

  “I will never leave you,” he said with burning sincerity.

  “Of course you will,” she replied, gesturing with frustration. “Every time your pager beeps, you’ll be running off in the middle of the night. I’m not like Helen, Sebastian. I’m not strong enough to stand the thought of you in danger.”

  Understanding cleared his furrowed brow. His expression softened, then reflected humor as he chuckled out loud. “Ah, querida, all this anxiety is for nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?” she demanded, angry that he should laugh at her.

  “I’m retiring from the Navy in sixty days. The paperwork is done. My future is yours, if you still want me,” he added with appealing modesty.

  “You’re retiring?” she repeated, stunned. “But you said that the Navy was your life, that you couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

  “That was when I met you. You have caused my dreams to change,” he said simply.

  Those words summoned a fresh flood of tears.

  “Now I want a different life,” Sebastian continued. “I want to finish my car so that you don’t shudder every time you look at it. I want to make a home for our baby.”

  Stunned disbelief gave way to melting gratitude. Leila regarded him in amazement. In one simple sentence, he had banished all her fears.

  “Better now?” he inquired.

  There were challenges still to be faced, of course. Raising a baby, if there was one, to be healthy and happy was no small task. They would have to compromise on issues of faith. Deciding where to live—his place or hers? Both too small.

  But with Sebastian at her side, those challenges were adventures to be anticipated. No hurdle was too high when they climbed it together.

  “Much better,” she confessed, loving him so much her heart felt near to bursting.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Oceana Naval Air Base Trial Services Building

  1 October ~ 11:02 EST

  Hannah had to admit that Commander Lovitt cut a fine figure in his dress-white uniform. The short, silver strands of his hair reflected the sunlight streaming through the courtroom’s four tall windows. The colorful ribbons pinned to his uniform vied for space over his left front pocket. He answered the prosecutor’s questions with remarkable credibility and not a second’s hesitation.

  Captain Bart Garret had coached him well.

  Hannah sat in the second row immediately behind Jaguar’s family—his pretty blond wife and his teenaged daughter. Wedged between Luther and Westy, her legroom was almost nonexistent. SEALs sat shoulder to shoulder on the defendant’s side of the courtroom, making seating tight.

  Representation on the prosecution side, on the other hand, was limited to mainly senior Navy personnel—Lovitt’s colleagues—newspaper journalists, and the prosecuting attorney’s unremarkable wife, who apparently followed her husband to work.

  As Lovitt’s lies began to mount, Hannah stirred, her backside sore from sitting on the hard bench for two hours while the prosecution strengthened its case. Its first witness had been a young SEAL, PO3 Rodriguez, who testified that he’d escorted Jaguar on board the USS Nor’easter on the morning of August the nineteenth. Jaguar had grown increasingly disoriented. He’d seized Rodriguez’s gun and shot the commander in the forearm. Then he’d shot Rodriguez in the chest, narrowly missing his heart. Rodriguez had been released from the hospital only days ago.

  Commander Lovitt had taken Rodriguez’s place on the witness stand and was telling a similar tale. At one point, his gaze collided with Hannah’s. He’d looked quickly away, stuttering as he seemed to lose his train of thought.

  “Plagued in what way?” Garret was asking. With his hawkish features and long, long legs, he reminded Hannah of a stork.

  “Plagued with paranoia,” Lovitt elaborated. “We’ve all heard of veterans who go off the deep end. The farther we went out to sea the more Lieutenant Renault lost touch with reality. I assured him that I was turning the boat around. PO3 Rodriguez was getting very nervous and fingering his weapon. That was when the lieutenant jumped him. I tried to pull him off, and the weapon discharged. It cracked the glass in the pilothouse. Lieutenant Renault snatched the weapon out of Rodriguez’s hand and shot me. Right here in the forearm.”

  “Commander, kindly show the courtroom the wound you sustained when Lieutenant Renualt fired upon you.”

  Lovitt uncuffed his sleeve and rolled it back to reveal a healing scar.

  Garret thanked him, sending a disdainful look at the defendant’s table, where Jaguar sat ramrod straight with his chin held high. To Hannah he looked anything but crazed.

  “You may continue, Commander,” the lawyer exhorted.

  “Well, I lost consciousness briefly. When I came to, the pilothouse was empty except for Rodriguez who was lying in a puddle of blood. I was sure he was dead. I could hear gunfire up above me and coming from the back of the boat. I could also hear a helicopter circling. I thought, thank God, the MPs are here. They’ll subdue Renault before he kills anyone else.

&
nbsp; “But it wasn’t the MPs,” Lovitt added, shaking his head gravely. “Renault had summoned his platoon members, somehow. I don’t know what kind of story he told them, but they’d fast-roped from the helo and were firing on the duty personnel.”

  “How many sailors were aboard the PC that day, Commander?”

  “Just three. It was a Sunday.”

  “Did the sailors provoke the SEALs to shoot at them?”

  “Of course not. They never had a chance, poor bastards. The SEALs would have mowed them down. But it was Renault who took my weapon, a .45-caliber pistol, and picked them off from behind.”

  “You saw this happen?”

  “Yes. First I radioed for assistance. Then I left the pilothouse in search of another weapon. That was when I caught sight of him on the deck above me. He fired on two of the sailors who were taking cover below. He shot their legs out from under them,” he added, his voice cracking in horror. “They were writhing in agony, incapable of defending themselves, when he hauled them to the deck rail and pitched them overboard to drown. God, it was terrible!”

  From the corner of her eye, Hannah saw Luther tip his head to one side and then the other, betraying tension in his neck. Lovitt had missed his calling for the silver screen.

  “When you saw the accused throw the men overboard, what was your response, Commander?”

  “I made my way to the machine gun mounted on the forecastle. It was the only weapon left to me.”

  “Then you weren’t using it to fire on the circling helo?”

  “Good God, no. The Osprey is a multimillion-dollar helicopter. I wouldn’t dream of shooting at it.”

  “Tell us how it came to be destroyed, Commander.”

  “Lieutenant Renault came after me. I threatened to shoot the Osprey if he jumped me, but he did anyway. My fingers flexed on the trigger, and the chain gun spewed a half-dozen rounds. Some of them struck the tail rotor and the pilot lost control. The bird dropped into the ocean.”

  “What did the accused do then?”

  “He put me in a choke hold. He was trying to kill me,” Commander Lovitt added with convincing drama. “There is no doubt in my mind.”