But then the judge was going to take a look at Crash sitting there, chained up like some monster because his hands and feet were considered deadly weapons. The judge was going to realize that as a former SEAL, Crash could disappear, leaving the country with ease, never to be seen again. And the judge was going to deny bail.
Nell hiked her bag higher up on her shoulder and, carrying her leather bomber jacket over one arm, went out into the hallway.
Crash’s lawyer, Captain Phil Franklin, a tall black man in a heavily decorated Navy uniform, was around somewhere, and she was determined to talk to him.
She went out of the courtroom and into the hallway, spotting the captain stepping into an elevator.
There were too many people waiting to go up or down, so Nell could only watch to see which direction the elevator was heading.
Down. Directly down four flights, all the way to the basement. There was a coffee shop down there. With any luck, she’d find the Navy lawyer there.
Nell opened the door to the stairwell. As she stepped inside, she was nearly knocked over by a man coming down from the floor above. He was taking two and three steps at once and wasn’t able to stop himself in time.
He recognized her at the same instant she recognized him. Nell knew because he froze.
And she looked up into Crash’s light blue eyes. He was alone—no guards, and his chains were gone.
She knew instantly what had happened. He’d broken free. She thrust her jacket at him. “Take this,” she said. “My car keys are in the pocket.”
He didn’t move.
“Go!” she said. “Take it and go!”
“I can’t,” he said, finally moving. He backed one step away from her, and then two. “I’m not going to let you go to jail for helping me.”
“I’ll tell them you grabbed my jacket and ran.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Right. Like they’d believe that, considering our history.”
“How will they know? I never told anyone about that night.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “I was referring to our friendship,” he said quietly. “The fact that we lived in the same house for an entire month.”
Nell felt her cheeks heat with a blush. “Of course.”
Crash shook his head. “You’ve got to stay away from me. You’ve got to walk out of this courthouse and go home and not look back. Don’t think about me, don’t talk about me to anyone. Pretend that you never knew me. Forget I ever existed.”
She closed her eyes. “Just go, all right? Get out of here, dammit, before they catch you.”
Nell didn’t hear him leave, but when she opened her eyes, he was gone.
FOUR HOURS. It had been nearly four hours, and no one was allowed to enter or exit the federal courthouse.
An alarm had sounded not more than thirty seconds after Crash had vanished in the stairwell, and within five minutes, the entire building had been locked up tight as the police searched for the fugitive.
It didn’t seem possible that he hadn’t been caught, but Crash was indisputably gone. It was as if he’d simply turned to smoke and drifted away.
Crash’s lawyer had been questioned extensively by FInCOM agents, but now Captain Phil Franklin sat alone in the coffee shop, reading a newspaper.
Nell slipped into the seat across from him. “Excuse me, sir. My name is Nell Burns, and I’m a friend of your missing client’s.”
Franklin looked at her over the top of his paper, his dark browns eyes expressionless. “A friend?”
“Yes. A friend. I know for a fact that he didn’t kill Admiral Robinson.”
Franklin put his paper down. “You know for a fact, hmm? Were you there, Miss… I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”
“Nell Burns.”
“Were you there, Miss Burns?” he asked again.
Nell shook her head. “No, but I was there last year. I was Daisy Owens’s—Daisy Robinson’s—personal assistant right up until the day she died. I lived in the same house with Jake and Daisy—and William Hawken—for four weeks. There’s no way Billy could have conspired to kill Jake. I’m sorry, sir, but the man I came to know loved Jake. He would’ve died himself before harming the admiral.”
Franklin took a sip of his coffee, studying her with his disconcertingly dark eyes. “The prosecution has witnesses who overheard Admiral Robinson and Lieutenant Hawken arguing this past January,” he finally said, “before Hawken left the country for an extensive length of time. Apparently my client…your friend, Billy, and the victim had a rather heated disagreement.”
“I just don’t see how that could have been,” she countered. “Those witnesses had to have been mistaken. In the entire time I lived with Crash—I mean, we didn’t live together,” she corrected herself quickly. “What I meant to say was that during the time that we lived under one roof…” She was blushing now, but she staunchly kept going. “I never heard Lieutenant Hawken raise his voice. Not even once.”
“The witnesses claim the two men were arguing over a woman.”
“What?” Nell snorted, her embarrassment overridden by her disbelief. “That’s impossible. The only woman in both of their lives was Daisy, and she died a few days after Christmas.” She leaned forward. “Captain, I want to take the stand—be a character witness, isn’t that what it’s called?”
“That’s what it’s called. But when the defendant does something like jump his guards, pick the locks on his chains with the equivalent of a paper clip…” Franklin shook his head. “The man ran away, Miss Burns. If they ever catch him, if we ever do go to trial, I’m not sure a character witness is going to do your Billy-boy much good. Because when a man runs, he looks pretty damn guilty in the eyes of a judge and jury.”
“He’s not running away.” There was no doubt about that in Nell’s mind. “He went to find the person who’s really responsible for Jake’s death.”
Franklin gazed at her. “Do you know where he is?”
“No. But I don’t think they’re going to find him until he comes back on his own. And you better believe that when he does come back, he’s going to have the admiral’s real killer in tow.”
“It is possible that he’ll try to contact you?”
Nell wished that he would. She shook her head. “No. He’s been pretty adamant about me staying out of this.”
Franklin’s eyebrows lifted. “And this is what you call staying out of it.”
She didn’t answer that.
He was silent for several long moments. “To be honest with you, Miss Burns, in the conversations I’ve had with Lieutenant Hawken, I didn’t get a real strong sense that he cared a whole lot about this hearing. He seemed very…distant and…odd, I guess would be the best word for it. When I asked, he told me he didn’t conspire to kill Admiral Robinson. But the evidence those ballistic reports provides is damning. And I can’t help but wonder if perhaps this man didn’t suffer some kind of breakdown, or—”
“No,” Nell said.
“…post-traumatic stress syndrome, or—”
“No,” she said more loudly.
“It’s just that he was positively strange.”
“That’s just his way. When things get hard to deal with, he shuts himself down. He loved Jake,” she said again, “and these past few weeks must’ve been hell for him. To lose a man he loved like a father, and then be accused of killing that man?” Nell held his gaze steadily. “Look, Captain, I’ve been thinking. Whoever did kill Jake knew about his relationship with Billy. They used him to get the assassins into Jake’s house. That’s the only reason Billy—Crash—was there that night.”
Franklin didn’t hide his skepticism. “And the ballistic reports are totally wrong…?”
“Yes,” Nell agreed. “They’re wrong. I think someone made a mistake in the lab. I think the tests should be run again. In fact, as Crash’s lawyer, you should demand that the guns be tested again.”
The captain just looked at her. Then he sighed. “You really don
’t think Hawken did this, do you?”
“I don’t just think it, I know it,” she said. “Billy did not kill Jake.”
Franklin sighed again. And then he pulled a notepad and a pen from his inside jacket pocket. He took a business card with his name and phone number on it and slid it across the table toward her. “That’s my number,” he said “You better give me yours. Address, too. And spell your last name for me while you’re at it.”
“Thank you.” Nell felt almost weak with relief as she pocketed his card and gave him all the information he needed.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “I’ll talk to the judge about the possibility of getting those weapons retested. It’s a long shot. There’s no guarantee the court will foot the bill for that kind of redundant expense.”
“I’ll pay,” she told him. “Tell the judge that I’ll pay to have the ballistic tests redone. I don’t care what it costs, I’ll take care of it.”
Captain Franklin closed his pad and slipped it back into his pocket. As he got to his feet, he held out his hand for Nell to shake.
“Thank you, Captain,” she said again.
He didn’t release her hand right away. “Miss Burns, God forbid I should ever get into the kind of trouble Lieutenant Hawken is in right now, but if I do, I sincerely hope I’d have someone who believed in me the way you believe in him.” He smiled. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s a lucky man to have a friend like you.”
“Please call the judge, Captain,” Nell said. “The sooner the better.”
NELL COULDN’T SLEEP.
It was 2:00 a.m. before she finished writing a grant proposal seeking funds for the theater, but even after she e-mailed a copy of the draft to Amie, she still was far too restless to sleep.
Crash was out there somewhere. For the first night in weeks, Nell didn’t know exactly where he was.
She prowled around the kitchen once, opening the refrigerator door but, of course, finding nothing exciting inside. She then pulled on her sneakers and leather jacket. Dunkin’ Donuts was calling. Five blocks away, there was a very exciting honey-dipped donut with her name on it.
Nell turned out the light and locked the door, ready to walk, but the air was so sharply cold, she hurried to her car instead. There had been a real cold spell like this last December, too, she remembered. It had even snowed. Crash had forced her to go sledding and…
And he hadn’t kissed her. Yeah, that had been just another of the many, many nights that he hadn’t kissed her.
She pulled out from the curb, gunning the engine, hoping her car would warm up soon so she could turn on the heat.
That lawyer, Captain Franklin, had been really impressed by her loyalty to Crash. But the truth was, she was an idiot. She was a certified fool.
There was nothing, nothing that bound the two of them together, except for her own, misguided wishful thinking.
Nearly a year ago, she’d had sex with the man. That’s all it had been. Sex. Period, the end. All the intensity and seemingly high emotions of the moment had nothing to do with his feelings for her. All the emotion of that night had been about Daisy’s death. When Crash had kissed her so fiercely, when he’d driven himself hard inside her, it wasn’t because he wanted to join himself emotionally with Nell. No, what they’d done had been purely physical. He’d been using sex as a release for his pain and anger. He’d been taking temporary comfort in surrounding himself with her warm body. She could have been any warm body, any nameless, faceless woman. Her identity truly hadn’t mattered.
The stupid thing was, Nell had been more hurt by the fact that Crash had ended their friendship than by his honest admission that the sex had been nothing more than sex.
She’d written him letters. She’d been brutally honest, too, telling him that she hoped that what had happened between them wouldn’t affect their friendship. She’d asked him to call her when he was in town.
He hadn’t called.
And he hadn’t written.
And if this mess hadn’t happened, Nell knew that she never would have so much as seen Crash Hawken again.
As she approached, she saw that the orange-lettered Dunkin’ Donuts signs was dark. The all-night shop was inexplicably closed, and Nell said all of the absolutely worst bad words that she knew. She even said some of them twice. And then she kept driving. Somewhere in the District of Columbia there was a donut shop that was open right now, and dammit, she was going to find it.
Nell took a right turn, suddenly aware that she was driving the still-familiar route from the city to the Robinson farm.
She knew for a fact that there were no donut shops between here and there, but she kept going, pulled in that direction.
The interstate was empty except for a few truckers.
She kept the radio off during the twenty-minute drive, waiting for the hum of the tires to lull her into a state of fatigue.
It didn’t happen. When she pulled off at the exit for the farm, she was as wide-awake as ever.
It was more than six months since she’d come out here to pick up a painting of Daisy’s that Jake had wanted her to have for the new house. It had been summer then, but now the trees were bare, their branches reaching up toward the sky like skinny arms with clawed hands, tormented by the cold wind.
God, she hated winter. Why on earth had she bought a house here in D.C., rather than down in Florida? What had she been thinking?
She hadn’t really been thinking that sooner or later Crash would come back and knock on her door. She hadn’t actually believed that he’d just appear in her bedroom one night, although for a while, she’d gotten a lot of mileage out of that fantasy.
No, he’d made it more than clear that he didn’t want her. And she wasn’t the type to face that kind of rejection more than once.
But despite the fact that he clearly felt otherwise, she was still his friend. She had been his friend before that one night they’d slept together. And she could be a grown-up about the whole thing, and still be his friend.
But not if he didn’t want to be hers.
Slowing to a stop as she finally approached the gates of the farm, her eyes filled with tears.
The Robinsons’ farm had always buzzed with life. Even in the dead of night, there had been an intensity about the place—the lights were always on, there was a sense of someone being home.
But now the place was deserted. The dark windows of the house looked mournfully empty. Sagging yellow police tape flapped pathetically in the wind.
And there already was a For Sale sign on the gate.
Her first reaction was outrage. Jake had been dead less than two weeks, and already someone was selling off his beloved farm.
But then reality crept in.
The farm meant nothing to Jake now. Whichever of his distant relatives who’d inherited the place obviously realized that holding on to the property wouldn’t do anyone any good. It wouldn’t bring Jake back from wherever he’d gone—that was for sure.
Wherever he’d gone…
Wherever he was, she hoped he’d found Daisy again.
When Nell closed her eyes, she could picture Jake dancing with Daisy. The image was so clear, so real. In her mind’s eye, they were both alive, vibrant and laughing.
It was bitterly ironic. Even as ghosts Jake and Daisy were more alive than either Nell or Crash.
The two who had survived were the ones who wouldn’t let themselves live. They were quite a pair—one who willingly deadened himself by stepping back from his emotions, and one who was too afraid to live life to its fullest.
Except Nell wasn’t afraid anymore.
She’d stopped being afraid on the night she’d found out Jake had died, but Crash was still alive. He was still alive, and dammit, she was going to be his friend, whether he liked it or not.
He was still alive, and she was going to fight for him. She was going to do whatever she had to in order to tell the entire world that he was an innocent man, that he’d been falsely ac
cused.
In fact, she was going to go home and first thing in the morning, she was going to call every single reporter and news contact that she had in her media file. She was going to hold a press conference.
And she was going to make damn sure those ballistic tests were redone.
Hell, she was even feeling brave enough to ski down Mount Washington with a banner proclaiming Crash’s innocence if that would help.
Nell turned her car around and headed for home.
IT WAS 4:00 A.M., but there was a traffic jam on Nell’s street.
There was a traffic jam totally blocking the road, caused by four different fire trucks and three TV-news vans.
And they were blocking the road because Nell’s house was on fire.
Her house was on fire.
She didn’t bother to park. She just turned off the engine right there in the middle of the road and got out of her car.
She could feel the heat of the blaze from where she was standing. She could see flames licking out every single window.
“You better move that car!” one of the firemen shouted to her.
“I can’t,” she said dazedly. “My garage is on fire.”
“Are you the owner?”
She nodded. She was the owner—but what she owned was going to be little more than a charred pile of ashes before this was over.
“Hey, Ted, we found the lady who lives here!”
Another, shorter man approached. His hat identified him as the fire chief. “Is there anyone else inside?” he asked.
Nell shook her head, staring at the flames. “No.”
“Thank God.” He raised his voice. “There’s no one inside. Everyone get out of there, pronto!”
“How could this have happened?”
“It’s probably an electrical fire,” the chief told her. “It probably started small, but an old place like this’ll go up like a tinderbox, especially this time of year. We’ll have a better idea of how it started after it’s out and we can go in and look around. Whatever the case, you’re lucky you weren’t home, or we’d probably be pulling your body out of there right now.”
She was lucky.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 138
