“I think it’s possible that our commander served with Sherman in ’Nam. In fact, I’ve gained Internet access to some Navy personnel files, and I’ve hit on a list of three names—two commanders and one recently promoted rear admiral. They all served in Vietnam at the same time as Sherman. And they’re all still on the active-duty list. I sent them vaguely threatening e-mail messages—you know, ‘I know who you are. I know what you did.’ But so far none of them have responded. I didn’t really expect them to—it was kind of a long shot.” He shook his head.
“Think about all the people we called last year, about Daisy and Jake’s wedding,” Nell said. “It seemed like every other man was Colonel This or Captain That. The guy you’re looking for could have been retired for years and still be addressed as ‘Commander.’”
“I know. And the list of retired Navy commanders who served in ’Nam when Sherman did is probably ten pages long.” He looked over at Nell and smiled grimly. “If I want to find this bastard—and I do—my best bet is to try to shake some information loose from our friend who’s napping in the trunk. But first I’m going to get you to a safe place.”
“Excuse me?” She was giving him her best are-you-kidding? look, brows elevated and eyes opened wide. “I thought we’d decided that help was a two-way street—that I’d let you help me, on the condition that you let me help you.”
“There’s nothing you can do to help me.”
“Want to bet? I have an idea how I can help you get that information you need from our dear friend Sheldon. Without me, it’ll be much harder. I may not be enough of an actress to win an Oscar, but I’m good enough to pull this off. We just need to stop at a convenience store and—”
“Nell, I don’t want your help.” Despite everything that Crash had told her, there was still so much that he hadn’t said—so much that hadn’t spilled out. He hadn’t told her how sitting so close to her in this car was slowly driving him crazy from wanting to touch her. He hadn’t told her about the sheer terror he’d felt when he picked up that newspaper and saw the picture of Nell’s house engulfed in flames. He wasn’t going to tell her about the way he’d stood in that hotel room and watched her as she’d slept, feeling a possessiveness he knew he had no right to feel, feeling an ache of longing and desire and need that he recognized as being something he had to push far, far away.
Separate, distance, disengage.
No, he didn’t want any help from Nell.
“Maybe you don’t want my help,” she said quietly. “Maybe you don’t even need it. But this guy in the trunk came to kill me. I’m involved in this, Billy, as much as you are. At least hear me out.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NELL WAS TOO NERVOUS to eat. She tossed her half-eaten slice of pizza back into the box and watched as Crash unzipped one of the gym bags he’d brought in from the car.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said in his deceptively soft voice, as he reached inside and pulled out a cylindrical tube that he screwed onto the barrel of his Dirty Harry-size handgun. “I’m going to ask you some questions, you’re going to answer them and no one’s going to get hurt.”
Sheldon Sarkowski’s left eye was swollen shut and his lip was puffy and still bleeding slightly. He’d still been out cold when Crash had stopped along a deserted stretch of road and pulled him from the trunk and into the back seat. Sheldon’s hands had been cuffed and his feet tied, but Crash had covered both rope and handcuffs with a blanket as he’d then carried the smaller man into the cheap motel room they’d rented for the night.
There were only two or three other cars in the entire parking lot—none of them within shouting distance of their drafty room.
And that was good—in case there was going to be shouting. And Nell suspected that there was going to be some shouting. Not that Crash would be doing it. She’d never heard him raise his voice to anything louder than mezzo piano.
Crash had managed to rouse Sheldon once inside the room. An ice bucket full of cold water in the face had done the trick. The man now sat, sputtering and belligerent, tied very securely to a chair.
The gunman clearly wasn’t in a position of power, yet he still managed to laugh derisively at both Crash and the gun. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m not saying anything. So what are you going to do, kill me?”
Crash sat down on the bed, directly across from him, his gun held loosely on his lap. “Damn, Sheldon,” he said. “Looks like you called my bluff.”
Nell spun to face him turning away from the window where she’d been furtively peeking out at the parking lot. “Don’t tell him that!”
“But he’s right,” Crash said mildly. “Killing him doesn’t do anyone any good.”
Nell took a deep breath, aware that her first line had been terribly overacted, and that she was in danger of breaking into giddy laughter. She went back to peeking out the window, praying that this would work.
“I don’t have a lot of options here,” Crash was saying. He sounded kind of like Clint Eastwood—his voice was soft, almost whispery but with an underlying intensity that screamed of danger. “I guess I could shoot you in the knee, but that’s so messy. And it’s unnecessary. Because all I really want is to be put on the commander’s payroll.”
Nell turned around again. “Hey—”
Crash held up one hand, and she obediently fell silent.
“Here’s my deal, Sheldon,” he said. “I’ve been set up. I didn’t kill Admiral Robinson, but somehow those ballistic reports were fixed to say that I did. I haven’t figured out yet how the commander managed that, but I will. And I haven’t quite figured out the commander’s connection to John Sherman, but I’ll figure that out, too. Sooner or later, I’m going to know the whole nasty story—all the sordid little details.”
He paused and then said, still in that same quiet voice, “What I’m thinking right now is that my silence is worth something. See, I think both you and the commander know as well as I do that even if I were to prove myself innocent, even if I were acquitted for the charges that have been brought up against me, I’m never going to shake the damage that’s been done to my name and my career. In fact, I know for a fact that my career with the SEALs is over. No one’s going to want me on their team.
“And since I’m no longer gainfully employed by my Uncle Sam,” Crash continued, “I’m finding myself in a situation where I need a new source of income. I figure if the commander wants all the dirt I’ve already uncovered, and all the dirt I’m going to uncover about him to stay neatly under the rug, then he’s going to have to pay. Two hundred and fifty thousand in small, unmarked bills.”
Crash stopped talking. Nell gave him several beats of silence just to make sure he really was done. Then she spoke. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” She really was a lousy actor. First she’d sounded too outraged, too over-the-top, and now she sounded too matter-of-fact. She wanted this guy to believe that she was intensely angry with Crash, not that she was bipolar.
Anger, anger. How did people look and act when they were angry?
More specifically, how did they look and act when they were angry with Crash?
Nell had quite a bit of personal experience to draw on in that department.
Over the past year, she’d spent a good amount of time angry as hell at herself, and angry at him, as well.
Why hadn’t he at least scribbled a two-line postcard, acknowledging her existence? “Dear Nell, got your letters, no longer interested in being your friend. Crash. P.S. Thanks for the sex. It was nice.”
Nice. He’d actually used that horribly insipid word to describe what they’d done that incredible, amazing, one-hundred-million-times-better-than-nice night.
Nell had been too emotionally overwhelmed to react at the time. But she’d had plenty of time to smolder in outrage since then.
She invoked those feelings now, and shot a lethal look in Crash’s direction. “I can not believe what you just said.” Her voice had just the slightest hint of an angry q
uiver. Nice. Nice. He thought making love to her had been nice. “You’re actually planning to sell out to these scumbags?”
“I don’t see too many choices here.” Crash made himself sound wound tight with tension. “So just shut the hell up and keep watch.”
Shut the hell up? The words were so un-Crash-like, Nell took a step backwards in surprise before she caught herself.
“No, I won’t shut up,” she shot back at him. “Maybe you don’t have a choice, but—”
He stood up. “Don’t push me.” The expression on his face was positively menacing. His eyes looked washed out and nearly white—and flatly, soullessly empty.
Nell faltered, unable to remember what she was supposed to say next, frozen by the coldness of his gaze. It was as if nothing was there, as if nothing was inside him. She’d seen him look this way before—at Daisy’s wake and funeral. She remembered thinking then that he may have been able to walk and talk, but his heart was barely beating.
Had it been an act back then, too, or was he really able to shut down so completely upon command?
He turned back to Sheldon. “You give up the commander’s name, and seventy-five thousand of that money is—”
“What about Jake Robinson?” That was what she was supposed to say.
“Excuse us for a minute, Sheldon.” Crash took her arm, and pulled her roughly toward the bathroom.
He didn’t turn on the bathroom light because there was a fan attached, and he didn’t want it to drown out their whispered words. Part of the plan was for Sheldon to be able to hear what they were saying.
“I thought you wanted to stay alive,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
The tiny bathroom was barely large enough for both of them. Even though she had pulled her arm free from his grasp, they were still forced to stand uncomfortably close. She rubbed the place where his fingers had dug into her arm.
“I’m sorry about that,” Crash said almost soundlessly. “I had to make it look real. Did I hurt you?” Concern warmed his eyes, bringing him back to life.
He cared. Something surged in her chest, in her stomach, and just like that, her anger faded. Because just like that, she understood why he hadn’t returned her letters.
As much as she professed to want only to be friends, deep inside she wanted more.
She’d given that truth away on the morning she’d begged him to give their relationship a try.
He’d known that, and he’d also known that if he’d written to her, or if he’d called, his letters and phone calls would have kept alive the tiny seed of hope buried deep inside of her—the seed of hope that still fluttered to life at something so trivial as a flare of concern in his eyes.
God, she was pathetic.
She was pathetic, and he smelled so good, so familiar. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his shirt. It wouldn’t have taken much—just a step forward an inch or two.
Instead, she jammed her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and shook her head, no. “I thought you wanted to get back at the bastard who killed Jake Robinson!” she whispered loudly enough for the man in the other room to overhear.
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind,” he told her. “I decided I’d rather take the money and run. Disappear in Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong? Who said anything about going to Hong Kong?” Nell lowered her voice. “Do you think he’s buying this?”
Crash shook his head. He didn’t know. All he knew for certain was that it had been too damn long since he’d kissed this woman. She was really getting into this game they were playing. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright, making her impossibly attractive. He tried to put more space between them, but his back was already against the wall—there was nowhere else to go.
“No way am I letting you drag me to Hong Kong!” she continued. “You promised me—”
He cut her off. “I promised you nothing. What—do you think just because we got it on that suddenly you own me?”
Nell took a step back and bumped into the side of the tub. Crash caught her even as she reached for him, and for one brief moment, she was in his arms again. But he forced himself to release her, forced himself to step back.
What was wrong with him? True, bringing up the issue of sex would make their arguing more realistic, but it was definitely dangerous ground. And the words he’d spoken couldn’t have been farther from the truth. They’d got it on, indeed, but then she’d let him go. Even the letters she’d written to him had been carefully worded. There was no question—she didn’t have any expectations or demands.
Some of the sparkle had left her eyes as she looked up at him. “Oh, was that what you’d call what we did?” she said in a rough stage whisper loud enough for Sheldon to hear. “Getting it on? I think it’s got to last longer than two-and-a-half minutes to be called anything other than ‘getting off.’ As in you getting off and me faking it so that you won’t feel bad.”
She was making it up. Crash knew that everything she was saying was based on some fictional joining. But still, he couldn’t help but wonder.
The night they’d spent together had been over pretty quickly. He hadn’t even managed to carry her all the way to the bed. But the way she had seemed to shatter in his arms—that couldn’t have been faked, could it?
Something, some of his doubt, must have flickered in his eyes because Nell reached out to touch the side of his face. “How could you forget how incredibly perfect it was?” she asked almost inaudibly.
She lightly touched his lips with one finger, her eyes filled with heat from her memories of that night. But then her gaze met his and she pulled her hand away as if she had been burned. “Sorry. I know I shouldn’t have…sorry.”
“Just do what I say and keep your mouth shut,” Crash harshly ordered her for Sheldon’s benefit. “Don’t make me wish I’d let Sarkowski shoot you.”
He abruptly turned and went out of the room, afraid if he didn’t leave he’d end up doing something incredibly stupid, like kiss her. Or admit that he hadn’t forgotten. He’d tried to forget, God knows he had. But his memories of the night they’d spent together were ones he knew he’d take to his grave.
She stayed in the bathroom as he sat down again across from Sheldon.
“Women are always trouble,” the gunman told him.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Crash replied tersely.
Nell slunk out of the bathroom then, her body language much like a dog with its tail between its legs. Despite everything she’d said to the contrary, she was good at acting. Unless her kicked-puppy look was the result of him rejecting her again. It was on a much smaller scale this time, but his lack of response to her nearly silent words was a rejection of sorts.
Nell reached the other side of the room and, just as they’d planned, she bolted for the door, throwing it open and running out into the darkness of the night.
Sheldon snorted. “Yeah, right, man, you can really handle her.”
Crash checked to see that the gunman was still securely tied to the chair and then he went after Nell, slamming the door behind him. He didn’t have far to go—she was waiting for him right outside the door.
“You should gag me,” she whispered quietly. “Because if this was real, you better believe that I would scream. And if you just covered my mouth with your hand, I’d have to bite you.”
“I don’t have anything to gag you with.” Of course, if this was real, if he were desperate, he’d use one of his socks. He didn’t think she’d go for that, though.
Nell pulled the tail of her shirt out from her jeans. “Tear off a piece of this.”
Crash took out his knife to cut through the seam. And then, as the fabric tore with a rending sound, Nell met his eyes.
He knew she was thinking the exact same thing that he was—that this was actually kind of kinky. With the undercurrent of sexual tension that seemed to follow them around, the idea of him tearing her shirt to gag her, with the intention of dragging her b
ack into the motel room and tying her up…
She gave him a smile that was half embarrassed and half filled with excited energy as he put his knife away. Damned if she wasn’t getting into this.
“You got the juice?” he asked. She’d poured some of it into a plastic baggie back in the car.
“I put it under the bed that’s farthest from the door. Remember, when you knock me onto the ground, let me crawl under the bed to get it. Give me a minute to stick it under my shirt.”
“How?” Crash asked. “I’m going to tie your hands behind your back. I thought you were going to have it on you now.”
“Are you kidding? And have it open too early?” His news slowed her down, but it didn’t stop her. “Well, you’re just going to have to do it. When you grab me to pull me out from under the bed, stick it up under my shirt.”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. If this actually works, I’m going to be amazed.”
Nell smiled at him. “Prepare to be amazed,” she said. “Come on. Let’s make this look real.” She took off, running out into the parking lot.
Crash sighed, and went after her. He caught her in less than four steps and grabbed her around the waist, swinging her up and into his arms. She was harder to hold on to than he’d thought, though—she was fighting him.
“Nell, take it easy! I don’t want to hurt you,” he hissed.
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth, and he knew without a single doubt that she was going to scream. Talk about taking role-playing a little too seriously. He wadded up the fabric from her shirt and put it in her mouth, trying really hard to be careful. She bit his fingers and he swore.
He all but kicked the motel room door open and did kick it closed behind them, swearing again as one of her legs came dangerously close to making him sing soprano for a week. He flung her onto the bed, flipping her onto her stomach, and holding her hands behind her back.
He had to sit on her as he tied her wrists together, resting nearly his full weight upon her after she tried to kick him again. Dammit, she was actually trying to kick him in the balls.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 141
