An Aria for Nick (Christian Romantic Suspense) (Song of Suspense)

by Bridgeman, Hallee

  Jen came into the kitchen right after the last call and sat in a chair next to Nick, holding her hand out. He typed with one hand while he handed her the phone with the other, not even looking at her.

  "Krait, this is Dove." Pause. "I don't care if you told me you didn't want me on this case yesterday. I located Nighthawk. He's closer than we realized." She listened to Charlie while she took a stack of papers near Nick's elbow and started reading them. "I don't think he's going to go anywhere anytime soon. Someone shot him. Whoever sniped him hit him. That was his blood in the car."

  Aria could hear the man's voice as he started yelling. Jen cut him off. "No, I don't mean he's dead. I mean he's laid up. The girl's brother's a doctor. He must have gone back to her for help after ditching the car." She tapped her toes while she listened to the man bellow. "Just come to me. I don't know if he's going to trust me or not. I'll meet you at five-thirty at the restaurant of the hotel where I'm at." She rattled off the address, then ended the call by shutting phone before tossing it back to Nick.

  "I wish I didn't know. It makes me want to hate things," she said, then she took the stack of papers and left the room.

  About three minutes later, John Suarez picked up his work along with two cups of coffee and followed her, making his brothers both raise their eyebrows and share a knowing look.

  ¯¯¯¯

  ARIA finished late that afternoon. She left her brothers at the table and went to find Nick, who'd been gone for about an hour. She found him in the living room, standing at the window that faced the backyard. She stood next to him and took his hand, wanting to wrap her arms around him, but worried she would hurt him.

  "Adam just left," she said.

  Nick looked at his watch. "Good."

  "Who's Krait?" she asked him softly after a few minutes of quiet.

  "Charlie Zimmerman, my boss." He let go of her hand and started to pace, but sat down instead. She could see the strain of the day on his face. "No, he's more than that. He and Jen are about the only friends I have. Charlie was like the dad that I wanted when I was growing up." Nick slowly walked to the couch and painfully sat down.

  She sat down at his feet and put her head on his knee. "Is he involved in this?"

  "Yes. There's no other explanation."

  "Do you know why?"

  "No, but I'll find out before the night's over." He put his hand on her hair and began to run the strands through his fingers.

  "Do you think this plan will work?" she asked him.

  Nick shrugged, and she could feel him wince at the movement. "I have a plan that relies on too many people playing their parts to perfection. The timing is going to matter. It probably won't work, but there wasn't anything else I could do. Five days ago, Simmons said in a few weeks it wouldn't matter anymore. I need to take care of this before it's too late."

  ¯¯¯¯

  Chapter 33

  TAXIS arrived throughout the afternoon and carried her brothers and Jen away. At five, Aria helped Carol load her truck with the binders they had compiled, then helped Nick get settled into the front seat. No one spoke on the drive to the meeting place, each of them dealing with his or her own worries and fears. They moved through the evening traffic to the outskirts of town and stopped at an abandoned railroad yard. There were several empty warehouses lining the yard. They pulled in and parked in front of one of them.

  Carol carried the cot she'd brought from her house into the warehouse and set it up in the warehouse's office. Nick slowly walked into the building and looked around him. "This is perfect, Carol. How did you know about it?" he asked her as she brought in an armload of linen.

  "There was a murder here about three or four months ago. I had to come check out the crime scene," she said as she handed Aria the linen and went back outside.

  Aria went into the office and made up the cot, and when she was done, Nick stretched his long body out on it with a sigh. "Are you hurting?" she asked him, finding a questionable looking chair in the corner of the room.

  "I was fine until we hit the yard. The potholes and railroad tracks I could have done without," he offered dryly. He shifted and reached behind him, pulling Carol's little .38 pistol out from behind his back and laying it next to him.

  She dusted the chair off and carried it over to the cot then sat down. "As soon as this is all over with, you can lay in a bed and not move for as long as you want to. I know I plan to," she said.

  Nick started to say something, but Carol came back into the office. "You know, I don't see a sign of anyone. Are you sure that everyone is in place?"

  Nick nodded. "Jen and John know what they're doing. They would have directed everyone else." He closed his eyes. "What time is it?"

  Aria looked at her watch. "Just after five-thirty."

  "We have about thirty minutes," he said, and Aria felt her stomach tighten with nerves. "I need to see Adam."

  ¯¯¯¯

  NICK got a grip on the pain just as he heard the sound of gravel being shifted by car tires. He took a deep breath and sat back up, ignoring the sweat that broke out on his body from the effort. He stood and fought his legs when they tried to shake, then put the gun back in its holster and walked out of the office into the warehouse.

  Plenty of light still streamed in through the broken windows. If everyone played their part, this would all be over before they lost the light. He glanced up toward the rafters, hoping there was enough light for Adam to do his job. Aria and Carol were in a room in the back of the building, hopefully helping Henry entertain their guests.

  Nick heard a car door slam and walked to the center of the large room as the door opened. A figure entered the building, silhouetted by the sun shining behind him, but Nick knew who it was.

  "I was willing to overlook it the first time, son, but I don't think that I'm going to be able to do it the second time," Charlie said as he stepped into the warehouse. "You can't just decide to run things the way you want to see them run and expect your superiors to sit back and let it happen."

  "I'm sorry I didn't cooperate with the sniper, Charlie. Perhaps if you had spelled it out for me, I would have known what was expected of me," Nick quipped. He stood where he was and crossed his arms over his chest. Anger was boiling through him, and while he wanted to let it vent, he needed to control it for now.

  "Look here, Nick. What makes you think that I had anything to do with that?" Charlie asked. Simmons and Nancy entered the building and flanked him.

  "I often judge men by the company they keep," Nick sneered.

  Charlie ran his hands through his hair, and while he attempted to look innocent, his eyes flashed with impatience. "You don't know what you've gotten into the middle of here, son."

  "I think I've come pretty close to figuring it out."

  "I never would have sent you there if I'd known you knew her. I thought you were going to help me take care of that little problem, then we could have gone on with our business without you being any the wiser."

  "You planned to eliminate her from the beginning?"

  "Sure, but I had to make it look like we investigated her first. She sent the original message to another agency, so she just couldn't show up dead. I figured you'd take her as a dumb blonde, knowing your attitude about women, and would blow her off as a joke."

  Nick felt the betrayal slice through him as if it were a knife. He was close to losing control, and struggled to get it back. "Why are you doing this?" Nick asked as calmly as possible. "I thought you had integrity. I thought you believed in what we do."

  "This whole country has gone down the drain and you know it," Charlie said, stepping closer to him. "War, Nick. You love it, I know. But some soldiers are just a few years from retirement and have known nothing but war. They come back broken and abandoned."

  He raised his fist in the air. "My boy." He slammed his hand into his chest. "My only son went off to fight for freedom and democracy, and came back a shell of a man, facing criminal charges for following orders. He took his own li
fe." Tears streamed down his face. "How do you tell a mother that her only son couldn't live with the things he'd done, with the way his country treated him?"

  "What was the plan?" Nick asked. "Nothing you do is going to bring your son back."

  "No. But this country needs to be purged. We need a fresh start. Create a summit. Use your ranking and expertise and the respect you've earned from people all over the nation, and create an environment where all of the people in charge of our nation's defense are together in one place." He quickly raised both hands in the air. "Then, BOOM! A nuclear bomb, hidden under the tight, tight security, will take them all out and we'll be forced to begin anew."

  "Oh. You're insane." Nick could see it in his eyes, and wondered why he hadn't been able to see it before.

  Charlie turned to Simmons. "You see why I didn't bring him in on this in the first place? He thinks we're fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. There is no more glory in that." Simmons chuckled, and Charlie looked back at Nick. "You're the best agent I've ever worked with Nick. It isn't too late to bring you in. You can be part of my administration."

  "Who's involved, Charlie?" He needed him to talk, to confess as much as possible.

  Charlie shrugged. "You spend enough time abroad, you make friends, even if they are the enemy. We have counterparts who are now driving taxis in Moscow, or working in fast food in Hong Kong. They want to see the destruction of the great red, white, and blue beast as much as I do."

  Though it didn't show, Nick felt a wave of weakness wash over him. He needed to sit soon, or he was going to fall down. "Your son is gone, Charlie."

  "You don't understand," Charlie began, but Nick cut him off.

  "I don't need to understand, Charlie. Plain and simple, this doesn't happen this way."

  "It took us two years to get to this point, Nick," Charlie said, stepping closer to him and waving a finger at him, "and you and your little self-righteous girlfriend aren't going to do a single thing to stop us."

  "You wanna bet?" Nick asked. Charlie pulled out a gun, and Nancy and Simmons followed his lead. Nick suddenly had three guns trained on him by three people he knew wouldn't hesitate to kill him, but he didn't even flinch. "You think you can kill me and it's over? Free pass to kill hundreds of leaders of this country along with thousands of civilians?"

  "All we have to do is kill you and your little girlfriend, and our tracks will be covered. No one else knows about it," Nancy said.

  "Her family knows."

  "That's easily taken care of. Even if we didn't get to all of them, there isn't enough time for them to be taken seriously. In two more weeks, the project will be complete," Simmons said.

  Nick felt his vision start to gray and knew he had to end this. He looked up and nodded, then looked back at Charlie, who was watching him closely. Nancy and Simmons both looked up, but didn't see anything, then the door at the end of the warehouse opened. "Are you going to kill everyone who knows about this, Charlie?"

  He could hear footsteps echoing through the empty warehouse. "How about Sidney Franklin, Ambassador to Great Britain?"

  Charlie's eyes bugged out of his head as he turned to see who was coming his way. "Or Senator Lawrence Macon, who's daughter was, as you called it, stupid enough to get herself kidnapped and shipped to Bangkok? Oh, here's a good one for you. Mitchell Lewis, Ambassador to Iraq. Wait, how about Michael Daugherty, Ambassador to Russia?"

  Charlie shook his head to deny what he was seeing and stepped backward as the men came forward, surrounded by bodyguards and Secret Service agents. "Are you going to kill every one of these men, their staff, and their families?"

  "You … you don't understand, Nick," Charlie whispered. "You have to understand what we need to do."

  "Sorry, Charlie. You have to understand what I need to do," Nick corrected. Charlie started to lower his gun, then Nick watched as the realization of his situation fully dawned on him. Charlie stared into Nick's eyes as he slowly began to raise the muzzle of his pistol again, this time in the direction of his own ear. Nick heard himself scream a denial as he lunged, tackling his boss, the man he had once called friend. The shot from Charlie's handgun echoed around the warehouse.

  ¯¯¯¯

  IT had been nearly an hour since it all began, and the warehouse was still in chaos. Jerry Simmons and Nancy Warren were detained by none other than Special Agent Kate Royce.

  Hecate had been assigned to cover point during this excursion, but as soon as she realized her orders came from the wrong side, she had no problem arresting the perpetrators. When the FBI arrived to arrest everyone involved and to take the statements of the ambassadors and the senator, she gave a full report to the Special Agent in charge.

  Henry examined the unconscious Charlie Zimmerman. Thanks to Nick, he had not been able to take his own life, but the fall onto the concrete floor had earned him a concussion. Henry treated him until the paramedics arrived, and three Homeland Security Agents escorted him to the hospital.

  The paramedics tried to persuade Nick to go with them as well, but he wouldn't leave. Henry wasn't able to sway him either, and had to be talked out of trying to force Nick onto the ambulance. He settled for helping him to the cot in the office where Nick refused to lie down, choosing to sit on the cot instead.

  "Everybody knows you're tough and stubborn, Nick, but I thought you were supposed to be smart. Who are you trying to impress right now?" Henry asked.

  "Stuff it, Henry," Aria explained.

  Aria sat next to Nick, clinging tightly to his hand. She hadn't let go of his fingers since she heard the shot. She'd been in the back watching a monitor streaming one of the three video recording feeds Adam had set up. From the angle of the camera, she couldn't tell if Charlie had shot himself or Nick. When she heard the shot ring out, neither Jen, who had snuck into the back room after being ordered by Charlie to keep watch outside, nor Carol had been strong enough or fast enough to keep her in the room.

  A Special Agent of the FBI sat in the office with them, questioning both of them over and over again, until Aria wanted to rip her hair out and scream at her to quit asking the same questions. Adam pulled the video feed up on his tablet, and with the evidence compiled in the notebooks, and the confession that had been caught on camera, the federal agents decided they finally had enough information for the night, asking Jen and Nick to be in Washington by Monday.

  Adam and Henry helped Nick to Carol's vehicle, then stayed behind with the agents to pack up the equipment. Aria and Jen got in the back, Nick leaned the passenger seat back, and Carol drove. The four of them stayed quiet during the long drive back to Carol's house.

  When they arrived, Nick wouldn't get into the bed he had occupied downstairs, but instead sat on the couch in the living room. Over the course of an hour, Aria convinced him to lie down and finally exhaustion overtook him. Aria called her parents as soon as she saw that Nick was snoring, and spent an hour on the phone with them, dividing her time between laughing and crying. As soon as she hung up the phone, Adam and Henry arrived, and they all ate a light meal that Carol prepared, then the household went to bed, each one exhausted from the ordeal they had been through.

  Fully clothed, Aria carefully settled in on the couch beside Nick and slept deeply next to him. When she woke up the next morning and saw he was gone, she didn't even have to look in the garage to know he was completely gone. Jen Thorne, too, had disappeared without so much as a note.

  Though Carol and her brothers knew Aria was heartbroken inside, she kept a good face on the outside. Tears and hysterics would do nothing to change Nick or the situation. She knew that. So she tried to convince herself to let him go while she tried to convince everyone around her that it didn't matter.

  During the weeks of interviews and depositions while she traveled between Richmond, Washington D. C., and her parents' home in West Virginia, she never saw Nick, and wondered if that was intentional. If so, he must have gone to great lengths to ensure they were never scheduled to appear to testif
y at the same time. She would have loved to see him again, if for no other reason than to force him to say good-bye to her to her face.

  Within three months, despite Charlie Zimmerman refusing to speak, Nancy Warren, Jerry Simmons, Peter Harrington, and Julie Wilson had confessed all they knew and given up the names of their coconspirators in other countries who had been involved in the plot. Aria watched it all unfold on the television in her old room at her parents' house. They were being taken from the courthouse to federal prison as she packed her bags to fly back to Portland and pick her life back up where she'd left it.

  NWT, Inc., had offered her job back with back pay and a bonus, and the idea of the challenge of work was more than she could turn down. It had been too long since she'd worked a puzzle, or sat in on a meeting in a room filled with brilliant minds, and she looked forward to resuming normalcy. If she was going to recover from losing Nick for a second time in her life, it was important that she reestablish what was normal to her.

  ¯¯¯¯

  NICK woke up with a start, his body tangled in clean sheets. He visually cleared the room for threats and quickly ascertained his surroundings, scanning every corner and using all of his senses to get a handle on his racing thoughts. Within seconds, he'd gotten his bearings and forced his pulse back down to normal. Once again, he had awakened in his cousin Marcus Williams' apartment in New York City, thousands of miles away from where he had started nineteen hours earlier.

  He checked the time and realized he had managed to get five straight hours of sleep. His skin tingled and his mind felt cleared of cobwebs. This last trip back to America had obviously worn him completely out.