Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control

by Suzanne Brockmann

  I wanted to reach for his hand across the table, but I didn’t dare. “I wish someone would have told me. I would have come.” I realized as the words left my mouth that if he’d wanted me there, someone would have told me. “I’m sorry, I’m . . .” I cleared my throat. “But you’re over the infection now? You seem quite well.”

  He nodded, the muscles in the side of his jaw jumping. “Yes, the infection went with the leg.”

  “Thank God.” I tried to smile even though I couldn’t hide the tears in my eyes.

  “I was quite ill—bedridden until just a few weeks ago. The doctors tell me I was taken out of the Soviet camp just in time. Another week or so, and I surely would have died. I don’t remember any of it. I mean, I remember being brought to the camp of course. I remember being wounded. But the damn leg just wouldn’t heal. It just kept getting worse and worse. I don’t remember them taking me out of there at all. I just woke up one morning in Vienna.”

  “That must have seemed like such a miracle to you,” I whispered.

  “Yes, well,” he said, shifting slightly in his chair. “It was somewhat lacking, particularly when I found they’d taken my leg, but I suppose one can’t be picky about miracles.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then, “Will you be fitted for a prosthetic?” I asked. “I recently read an article about the new medical technology. They’ve come such a long way since the days of pirates with peg legs and hooks for arms, you know.”

  Hank smiled. “Count on you to cut to the bottom line. And yes,” he said. “I’ve been told I’m a good candidate, although there are no guarantees. I should like to be able to walk again. I’ve been feeling rather short these days.”

  “Once you get your strength back you should be able to swing about on crutches, don’t you think? I know that’s not the best solution,” I said, “but it’ll get you where you want to go. And to be perfectly honest, even if for some reason you have to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, you’ll always have plenty of beautiful women eager to push you around.”

  He laughed at that.

  “You’ll always be easily identified as a war hero,” I continued, “and women will fall—no, swoon—at your feet.”

  “Foot,” he interjected, but he was still laughing.

  “Look around,” I told him. “You’ve still got the eye of every woman in this room.”

  Hank stopped laughing. “Including you, Rose?”

  I couldn’t lie to him. “Including me,” I said quietly, unable to look him in the eye. “Always me. I’m the one who found you irresistible even when I thought you were a Nazi, remember?”

  “Excuse me, sir. Madam. May I take your order?”

  “No,” Hank said. “Go away.”

  “Indeed, sir.” The waiter vanished, and as I looked up, I realized that Hank had tears in his eyes.

  He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a packet of papers. He placed them carefully on the table, and I saw that they were my petition for divorce.

  “Okay,” he said. “You didn’t know about my leg. I thought you did, I thought you were repulsed by the idea of—”

  “No!” I said. “Oh, God, no!”

  “Obviously a one-legged man isn’t a problem for you,” he said. “So why? Why didn’t you come to me? God, how I needed you, and you sent me this.”

  What was he saying? That he wanted me to be there with him in Vienna? I couldn’t stop myself from reaching across the table and taking his hand. “Oh, Hank . . .”

  “I know how hard it must’ve been for you,” he said, gripping my fingers. “You believed I was dead for over a year.”

  “No,” I said.

  “At first I thought you’d found someone new. That had to be the answer. But you haven’t. Unless you’ve been extremely discreet . . . ?”

  “There’s no one,” I told him. “And I didn’t believe you were dead. I didn’t believe it for a minute.”

  “Then I don’t understand,” Hank said. “I need you to explain as simply as you can possibly manage, why you don’t want to be married to me anymore.”

  “You have an English fiancée,” I told him. “Lord Someone’s daughter. I thought . . .”

  He sat back. “You thought I didn’t want you.”

  “This was the real world,” I explained. “The after-the-war world. You’re a prince. I’m—”

  “A war hero, too,” he said. “Elizabeth Barkham was never my fiancée. That was my mother’s wishful thinking—I wasn’t even conscious when that notice went into the Times. You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, Rose. Good grief, what would I want with a fiancée when I’ve already got a wife? The only wife I’ve ever wanted. You, Rose.”

  But I’d had months and months of talking myself into believing that even if Hank did still love me, our marriage would never work. “Are you just going to come home with me, then?” I asked. “To live in New Jersey? An Austrian prince in Midland Park?”

  “How about Hong Kong?” he asked. “I’ve always wanted to take you to Hong Kong.”

  He was serious.

  “Yes, it’s going to create something of a . . . stir when the news of our marriage gets out, but I’ve been gone from Vienna for so long, it’s not home for me anymore. This is home,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Right here in the Waldorf. Or in Hong Kong. Or in Midland Park. Wherever you are.”

  He brought my hand to his lips and kissed me, and about twenty-five cameras flashed. Oh dear! I pulled my hand away, but Hank didn’t even blink. I realized with some shock that the sidewalk outside was crowded with those reporters and photographers.

  Hank didn’t give them as much as a glance. “Tell me you don’t love me, and I’ll sign these papers right now,” he said. “Otherwise I’m ripping them up.”

  He didn’t have to rip them, I did it for him.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to come to me so I can kiss you,” he said. “But you better do it quick, because I’m about to knock this table over to get to you.”

  “But . . .” I looked at the window. Didn’t they realize how terribly rude they were being, staring in at us like that?

  Hank started to move the table, and I quickly stood up.

  As soon as I came close, he pulled me down, right onto his lap and kissed me. Oh, what a kiss that was.

  And oh, how those cameras flashed!

  One of the more bold reporters knocked on the window. “Who’s the lady, Prince?” he shouted through the glass.

  Hank wouldn’t let me up. He turned his chair with me still in his lap, so that we faced the window. I laughed and blushed and he kissed me again, and again the cameras flashed.

  Then Hank’s voice rang out, loud enough for them to hear him in the street. “May I present the daring double agent who helped me penetrate the Nazi war offices in Berlin during the last years of the war, Mrs. Ingerose Rainer von Hopf—my wife, whom I love with all my heart.”

  The cameras flashed again and again and again, and just like that the crowd of reporters dispersed. I could almost hear the newsroom phones ringing. With one sentence, Hank had irrevocably changed both of our lives.

  He kissed me a few more times, and then helped me off his lap. “How about taking me home to meet my sons?”

  He knew about Alex and Karl! I was surprised for a second, but then I realized—of course he would know. This was a man who had been gathering intelligence for most of his adult life.

  “They’ll be asleep when we get home,” I told him as I wheeled him out of the dining room. “But of course we can wake them.” I smiled down at him, my dear, wonderful Hank. “Or we could sneak into their room, you could take a peek, and then we could let them sleep . . .”

  His smile made my heart sing.

  And so I took my prince home, and together we lived happily ever after for thirty wonderful years.

  Alyssa closed Rose’s book as the seaplane prepared to touch down in the harbor. Jules glanced at her an
d opened his mouth as if to speak, but she shook her head. She didn’t want to talk right now. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, she would start to cry.

  A short boat trip to a shorter taxi ride, and then they were at the temporary FBI headquarters.

  The elevators were out, and as they climbed the stairs, Jules finally spoke. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Alyssa said as she pushed through the door to the fourth floor. She turned back to glare at him. “I want to live happily ever after. Where’s my goddamn happy ending, huh? That’s what I want to know.”

  She left Jules standing there, gaping at her as if she’d gone mad.

  It was entirely possible she had.

  There was blood on his runway.

  There were bodies, too. Several still sprawled on the concrete, but four were neatly lined up in the shade of the Quonset hut, covered with tarps.

  Jones landed on his first pass, searching for Molly among the missionaries and villagers who were moving the bodies.

  She wasn’t there.

  At least not among the living.

  He leapt from the plane, running past Otto Zdanowicz, who lay clutching his bloody chest, eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. Running for those tarps.

  Please God . . .

  “She’s not here.” It was Angie, one of the missionaries, but Jones wasn’t satisfied until he lifted those tarps and stared down at the unfamiliar faces.

  “Where is she? What happened?” And then he saw it.

  The metal attaché case, open and empty. Lying several feet from Zdanowicz. Oh, God.

  “They came to the village,” Angie told him. “Threatened to kill Billy. Molly said she knew where the money was.”

  Angie had sent Tunggul running to get the other men, to get their guns, and she’d raced up the trail to the airfield.

  She’d seen it all. By the time Tunggul and the others joined her, General Badaruddin’s men had come, and the battle was over. There were far too many of the soldiers. It would have been madness for the villagers even to consider attacking.

  And so Badaruddin’s men had left, taking Zdanowicz’s helicopter and Molly and Billy—both of whom had been wounded—as well.

  According to Angie, Molly had been shot and pistol whipped. And right now she was the prisoner of General Badaruddin—a man who’d learned torture techniques from the Thai.

  Sickened, Jones turned and headed toward his plane.

  “What are you doing?” Angie called after him.

  “I’m getting Molly out of there.” He checked his arsenal of weapons, slipped on the flack jacket he’d taken in trade for a twenty pack of toilet paper about four years ago, and climbed into the Cessna.

  Angie came running toward him. “There’s nowhere to land a plane on Badaruddin’s island!”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to improvise.” With a roar, he taxied to the end of the strip and took off into the brilliant blue of the afternoon.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Nineteen

  Ken sat next to Savannah on the floor of Badaruddin’s “guest quarters” and held her hand.

  “Tell me again what’s going to happen,” she said.

  He couldn’t blame her for being nervous. He was a little nervous himself. All those assholes out there had weapons capable of killing instantaneously. All they’d need was one person to see them and to fire his weapon and . . .

  “We’ll leave through the hole in the back,” he told her, “as soon as we have contact with the SEAL team. We’ll split into smaller groups—it’ll be easier to move covertly that way.”

  “But I get to stay with you,” she said. “Right?”

  “Right. You get to stay with me.” Ken looked down at their hands. She was playing with his fingers. “You know, I was thinking, Van, you know, kind of about that. About you staying with me and . . .”

  He laughed, suddenly uncertain as to her reaction to what he was about to say. There were times when, inside his own head, it sounded completely crazy, but there were other times when he was absolutely convinced it was the only thing to do. He decided to start with a slightly less crazy variation on the theme. “I think you should move out to San Diego.”

  Her smile was slightly hesitant but completely pleased. “You really want me to?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Fuck it. He was just going to say all of it. “I think you should marry me.”

  She made a sound that was sort of like a laugh, but not quite. He couldn’t tell if it was a good sound or a bad sound. So he kept talking.

  “I know I’m not what your parents want for you,” he said. “I’m no prince—I’ll never pass for one. I’m legitimate—my father was married to my mother, so I guess that might win me about a half a point. Right now, as a lawyer, you probably earn four times as much as me. But that’s going to change as soon as I retire from the Navy. I’ve got people who want to pay me a million dollars for my tracking device—except that’s not going to happen for a while. A good long while.”

  “You’re a SEAL, you’re gone a lot of the time. That’s not going to be much fun.”

  He looked at her.

  “Just thought I’d add that to the con list,” she said, “since you brought it up before.”

  “You’re making a list—pro and con—for whether or not you should marry me?”

  “I’m not making the list,” she pointed out. “You are. But as far as I’m concerned, the pro side of the list completely cancels out the cons.”

  Hope warmed him from the inside out. Not that he particularly needed warming in this heat, but it still felt nice. She was going to say yes. She was going to spend her life with him, the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.

  “What’s on the pro side?” he asked. “I’m great in bed, cute as hell, got a frog tattoo on my—”

  “You love me,” she said softly. “That’s all.”

  “Wait a minute, you don’t think I’m great in bed . . . ?”

  Savannah laughed as she rolled her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Ken said, inwardly kicking himself. “This was one of those times when I shouldn’t make a joke. I know that. I don’t always say what I’m supposed to say. You should probably add that to the con list, because it’s a serious offense. Things just kind of come out, and I hear myself say ’em, and I know what I should’ve said just then was that I’ll love you and cherish you forever. That I have no freaking clue how to be a good husband or God, a good father, and that scares me to death, but I’ll figure it out, I know I will. I’ll try harder not to say too many stupid things, and I’ll work my ass off to make your life with me as wonderful as you’ll make my life, just by being in it.”

  He knew he’d won when he saw the tears in her eyes. “I’m a control freak,” she said. “I’m going to drive you crazy.”

  “Probably,” Ken agreed.

  She laughed. “You don’t care?”

  “You love me,” he said. “That’s all I need to know.”

  “You always say the right thing,” Savannah told him, her eyes so filled with love that he almost wept. “Sometimes it takes you awhile to get to it, but you always get there, and what you say is always worth waiting for. And the rest of the time you make me laugh, so . . .”

  Ken kissed her. It was that or start to cry. The woman had just told him she loved him exactly the way he was. Who would’ve thought that would ever happen?

  She kissed him back the way she always kissed him—as if she were starving and he was a five-course meal. God, she made him so hot, he had his hand up her shirt before he remembered they weren’t exactly alone.

  He put his mouth to her ear. “How about you pretend you’ve got something in your eye, and I’ll go with you into the bathroom? We can see how many times I can make you come inside of ten minutes.”

  “Kenny!” Savannah pulled away from him, laughing and blushing, but he could see from her eyes that she was actually considering it. She looked a
t the bathroom door, looked at him.

  Ho, now! She wanted to go for it. It was probably not the most professional thing in the world for him to do, but hey, he wasn’t here in his official capacity. He was on leave, on vacation. And they could wait for evening to fall just as well in the bathroom, getting it on, as they could out here . . .

  “Come on,” he whispered, grinning at her. She was going to say yes.