Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I do have something you want,” Garvin interrupted. Sweat was rolling down his face. “I have something you want bad. I have that girl. Nell Burns.”

  Crash didn’t move, but something, something must have flickered in his eyes. Some uncertainty. Some doubt.

  “Am I bluffing? That’s what you’re thinking right now, isn’t it?” Garvin somehow managed to smile. “That’s a very good question.”

  “You don’t have her.”

  “Don’t I? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I didn’t send Mr. Sarkowski into your SEAL friend’s house. Maybe he didn’t put a bullet into your friend’s brain. Maybe he doesn’t have the girl with him right now. And maybe he’s not waiting for 7:00 a.m. to come—knowing that if I don’t show up by then, he’ll get to do whatever he wants with your girlfriend. Poor thing.”

  Crash didn’t move. Garvin was bluffing. He had to be bluffing. There was no way Sarkowski could have gotten past Blue. No way.

  “The real beauty of it is that the ballistics reports will show that the bullet that killed her came from your gun,” Garvin continued. “So unless you disarm that bomb you’re wearing—”

  “No.” Crash turned to look at him. “You don’t know it, but by telling me you’ve got Nell you lost the game. I just won. Check and mate, scumbag.” He kept his voice low, his face expressionless, his eyes empty, soulless. “Because if you have Nell, I truly have nothing left to lose. If you have Nell, I’d just as soon die as long as it means that I’d kill you, too.”

  Everything he was saying had been true. Just hours ago, it had been true. He could say it with a chilling believability because he knew exactly what it felt like to be ready to die.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” he told Garvin. “If I disarm this bomb, you’ll kill me, and then you’ll kill Nell, too, anyway. Hell, if Sarkowski really does have her, she’s probably already dead. So you see, Senator, you’ve just severed the last of my ties to this world. I have no reason at all not to start my search for inner peace in the afterlife right now.” He smiled tightly. “And I know I’ll go to heaven, because my last act on this earth will be ridding the world of you.”

  Garvin bought it. He swallowed it whole. Every last word. “All right. Jesus. I was bluffing. I don’t have the girl. Christ, you’re a crazy bastard.”

  Crash shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said in the same quiet voice. “In fact, I think you already told Sarkowski to kill her.” He moved his thumb on the trigger.

  “I didn’t—I swear!” Garvin was nearly wetting himself with panic.

  Crash reached into his jacket and took out his cell phone. “If you want to live, here’s what you’ve got to do.” With his spare thumb he dialed Admiral Stonegate’s direct number. It would be after 9:00 a.m. in D.C. right now. The admiral would be in.

  “Stonegate,” the admiral rasped.

  “Sir, this is Lt. William Hawken. Please record this conversation.” Crash held the phone out to Garvin. “Tell him everything. Start with the money you got illegally in ’Nam, and the house you bought with it. Tell him about your meeting with Kim and how you killed Jake Robinson to keep it covered up. Tell him everything, or I’ll be more than happy to escort you straight to hell.”

  Garvin took the phone and began to talk, his voice so low that Crash had to step closer to hear him.

  He’d made over one hundred thousand dollars selling confiscated weapons back to the Viet Cong. It was a onetime thing, a temporary, momentary lapse in judgment. John Sherman had orchestrated the deal. He’d merely had to look the other way to earn more money than he’d ever dreamed of having.

  But then just last year, after he’d won the senate seat, he’d been contacted by John Sherman and blackmailed. Over the next few months, he’d paid nearly five times the money he’d made illegally, with no end in sight. He’d finally gone to Hong Kong in an attempt to rid himself of Sherman once and for all. He’d worn his old naval uniform when he’d met with Kim and led the man to believe he was acting on behalf of the United States. He’d had no idea that the battle between the two rival gangs would get so out of control. He’d only wanted Sherman dead. He’d had no idea thousands of innocent people would die, as well.

  He knew when word came down that Jake Robinson was looking into the matter that he had to stop the investigation at the source. He was in over his head, but it was too late to stop. He set Crash Hawken up for the fall, had the ballistics report falsified—and it would have worked, too, if Hawken hadn’t been so damned hard to kill.

  On and on he talked, giving details—times, dates, names. The three men who’d been part of the alleged SEAL Team assigned to protect Jake had been compatriots of Sheldon Sarkowski’s. Captain Lovett and the Possum hadn’t been part of the conspiracy to kill the admiral. They’d been told that Admiral Robinson had been acting oddly since the death of his wife. They were told they were being sent in to make certain he didn’t harm himself or become a threat to national security. They’d been told that the three strangers on the team were psyche experts—men in white coats—who were going to restrain the admiral and bring him to a special hospital. Lovett had been ordered not to tell Crash the “real” reason they were going out to the farm. The entire affair had been a serpent’s nest of lies.

  Finally, Garvin handed the phone back to Crash. “The admiral wants to speak with you,” he said. But then he dropped the phone, and the batteries came out. By the time he got them back in, the line had been disconnected.

  It didn’t matter. Crash pocketed the phone. “Tell your shooters to come forward and surrender their weapons.”

  Garvin turned toward the woods and repeated Crash’s order.

  Nothing moved.

  The silence was eerie and the hair on the back of Crash’s neck suddenly stood on end. There had been at least six men out there, he knew there had been. But now they were all gone. The rising sun was starting to thin out the shadows, but the early morning was misty, making it even harder to see.

  The strangest thing was, Crash hadn’t heard anyone leave. Yet he’d heard them all approach. It didn’t seem possible, or likely, that they’d been able to leave without his being aware of it.

  “Tell them again,” Crash ordered.

  “Come forward and surrender your weapons!”

  Still no movement.

  But then a man stood up, stepping from the cover of the bushes. It was as if he’d been conjured out of thin air. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next he was.

  It was Blue McCoy, his face streaked with black-and-green greasepaint. “We’ve taken care of the opposition and already confiscated their weapons,” he told Crash.

  We?

  Crash turned, and not one or two but five men appeared silently from the woods. SEALs. He recognized them first as SEALs by the way they moved. But then he realized they were the men of Alpha Squad. He recognized Harvard beneath his camouflage paint. And the captain—Joe Cat. Lucky, Bobby and Wes—they were all there. All except Cowboy, who no doubt was still being trailed by FInCOM and NIS.

  They moved to stand behind him in a silent show of force. And with the streaks of black and green and brown on their faces, they put on one hell of a show.

  And then, damned if Nell didn’t step out of the bushes, too. She was actually carrying an M-16 that was nearly as big as she was. She had greasepaint on her face as well, but as she moved closer, he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

  “Don’t be mad at me.” Nell wanted to touch him. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, but she was holding this huge piece of hardware, and he was still covered in C-4. “Please, will you disarm that bomb now?”

  Crash looked at Garvin. “Looks like you were bluffing about Nell.” He held up the trigger and released his thumb. Nothing exploded. Nothing happened at all. “I was bluffing, too.”

  He looked at Nell. “I was only bluffing,” he repeated, as if he wanted to make absolutely certain that she knew that.

  He took off his jacket, and peele
d off his combat vest and the heavy weight of all that C-4.

  Garvin stared at Crash. And then he started to laugh. “You son of a bitch.”

  Captain Catalanotto stepped forward, motioning to Garvin. “Let’s get this piece of garbage into custody.”

  But Garvin stepped back, away from him. “You still don’t win,” he told Crash. “I disconnected that call to Stonegate before I started to talk. It’s your word against mine. You have no proof of any wrongdoing on my part.” He looked at the captain and the rest of Alpha Squad. “You’ll go to jail—all of you. He’s the one you should be arresting. He’s the one wanted for murder and treason.”

  Crash reached down into one of the pockets of his combat vest and pulled out a hand-size tape recorder—one of those little things people used to record letters and take dictation. “Sorry to disappoint you, Senator, but I’ve got every word you said on tape. This game is over. You lose.”

  The game was over. And Nell had won. She knew she’d won from the look in Crash’s eyes as he turned to smile at her.

  But then, as if in slow motion, Garvin drew a gun from the pocket of his jacket.

  And, in slow motion, Nell saw the early-morning sun glinting off the metal barrel as he aimed the weapon directly at Crash.

  She heard herself shout as, in the space of one single heartbeat, Garvin fired the gun.

  The force of the bullet hit Crash square in the chest and he was flung back, his head flopping like a rag doll’s as he was pushed down and back, into the dirt.

  Crash was dead. He had to be dead. Even if he was still alive, there was no way they could get him to a hospital in time. The nearest medical center was miles away. It would take them hours to get there and he’d surely bleed to death on the way.

  She ran toward him and was the first at his side as the SEALs disarmed Garvin and wrestled him to the ground.

  Crash was struggling to breathe, fighting to suck in air, but she didn’t find the massive outpouring of blood that she’d expected. She took his hand, holding it tightly. “Please don’t die,” she told him. “Please, Billy, don’t you die….”

  Harvard—the big African-American SEAL—knelt in the dirt, on the other side of Crash’s body. He tore open Crash’s shirt and she closed her eyes, afraid of what she would see.

  “Status?” another man asked. It was the squad’s captain.

  “He got the wind knocked out of him,” Harvard’s rich voice said. “Could be he’s got a broken rib, but other than that, as soon as he catches his breath, he should be fine.”

  He should be…?

  Nell opened her eyes. “Fine? He’s got a bullet in his chest!”

  “What he’s got is a bullet in his body armor—his bulletproof vest.” Harvard smiled at her. “Just be careful not to hug little Billy too hard, all right?”

  Crash was wearing a bulletproof vest. She could see the bullet embedded in it, flattened. He had been bluffing with the C-4. She hadn’t quite believed it—until now. He’d had no real intention of blowing himself up along with Garvin. If he had, he wouldn’t have bothered wearing a bulletproof vest.

  He was alive—and he wanted to be.

  Nell couldn’t stop herself. She burst into tears.

  Crash struggled to sit up. “Hey.” His voice was whispery and weak. He reached for her, and she slipped into his arms. “Aren’t you always telling me that you never cry—that you’re not the type to always cry?”

  She lifted her head to look at him. “This must be just another fluke.”

  He laughed, then winced. “Ouch.”

  “Will it hurt if I kiss you?”

  “Yeah,” Crash said quietly, aware that Alpha Squad had taken Garvin away, that he and Nell were alone in the clearing. He touched her cheek, marveling at the picture she made with that war paint on her face. Nell, his unadventurous Nell, who’d rather stay home and sit by the fire with a book than risk getting her feet cold, was cammied up and ready for battle. She’d done that for him, he realized. “It’s always going to hurt a little bit when you kiss me. I’m always going to be scared to death of losing you.”

  “You can’t lose me,” she said fiercely. “So don’t even try. I’ve got you, and I’m not going to let go.”

  Crash kissed her. “And if I ever leave you, it won’t be because I want to.”

  Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she kissed him again.

  “I don’t know where I’m going from here,” he pulled back to tell her bluntly. “Even if the Navy wants me back, I’m not sure the SEAL Teams will want anything to do with me. I know the Gray Group won’t touch me after this. Too many people know my face now. And I also know I can’t handle some backroom Navy desk job, so…”

  “You don’t have to decide any of that right now,” she told him, smoothing his hair back from his face. “Give yourself some time. You haven’t even let yourself properly mourn Jake.”

  “I feel like I…” He stopped himself, amazed at what he’d almost revealed, without even thinking. But now that he was thinking, he knew he had to say it. He wanted to say it. “I feel like I can’t ask you to marry me without making sure you realize that right now my entire life is kind of in upheaval.”

  “Kind of in upheaval? That’s kind of an understatement, don’t you…”

  Crash knew the moment when she realized exactly what he had said.

  Ask you to marry me…

  She started to cry again.

  “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “I know about the upheaval. So you can. Ask me. I mean, if you want.”

  “You’re crying again,” he pointed out.

  “This doesn’t count,” she told him. “Tears of happiness don’t count.”

  Crash laughed. “Ouch!”

  “Oh, God, I’ve got to stop making you laugh.”

  He caught her chin, holding her so that she had to look into his eyes. “No,” he said. “Don’t. Not ever, okay?”

  “So…you love me because I make you laugh…”

  Crash lost himself in the beautiful blue of her eyes. “No.” He whispered the words he knew she wanted to hear, the words he could finally say aloud. “I love you…and you make me laugh.” He kissed her, losing himself in the softness of her lips. “You know I’d die for you.”

  She fingered the edge of his bulletproof vest. “I know you’d live for me, too. That’s much harder to do.”

  “So, do you want to—” his lips were dry and he moistened them “—marry me?” He realized how offhanded that sounded and quickly reworded it. “Please, will you marry me?”

  Nell made a noise that sounded very much like an affirmative as she reached for him. He held her tightly, aware that she was crying. Again.

  He tasted salt as he kissed her. “Was that a yes?”

  “Yes.” This time she was absolutely clear.

  Crash kissed her again as the shadows finally shifted, as the sun finally cleared the mountain, bathing them in warmth.

  And he knew that the next leg of his journey—and he hoped it was going to be a long, long stretch—was going to be made in the light.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “WHERE ARE WE?” Crash asked.

  The driver didn’t answer. He simply opened the door and stood back so that Crash could climb out.

  He snapped to attention, and Crash realized that there was an admiral standing by the front door of the building. An admiral. They’d sent an admiral to escort him to his debriefing…?

  Crash was glad Nell had made him wear his dress uniform. The row of medals across his chest nearly rivaled those the admiral was wearing.

  The admiral stepped forward, holding out his hand to shake. “Glad to finally meet you, Lieutenant Hawken. I’m Mac Forrest. I don’t know why we haven’t met before this.”

  Crash shook the older man’s hand. Admiral Forrest was lean and wiry, with a thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes that looked far too young for a face with as many wrinkles as his had.

  “Is this where the debriefi
ng is being held?” Crash looked up at the elegant architecture of the stately old building as the admiral led him inside. He took off his hat as he looked around. The lobby was large and pristine, with a white-marble-tiled floor. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”

  Forrest led the way down a hall. “Actually, Lieutenant, not many people have been here before. This is a FInCOM safe house.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Mac Forrest stopped in front of a closed door. “Hold on to your hat, son. I’ve got an early Christmas present for you.” He nodded at the door. “Go on in,” he said as he turned and started down the hall. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Crash watched him walk away, then looked at the door. It was a plain, oak door with an old-fashioned glass doorknob, like a giant glittering diamond. He reached out and turned it, and the door swung open.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see on the other side of that door, but he sure hadn’t expected to see a bedroom.

  It was decorated warmly, with rich, dark-colored curtains surrounding big windows that made the most of the weak December sunshine.

  In the center of the room was a hospital bed, surrounded by monitors and medical equipment.

  And in the center of the bed was Jake Robinson.

  He looked pale and fragile, and he was still hooked up to quite a few of those monitors, with an IV drip in his arm, but he was very, very, very much alive.

  Crash couldn’t speak. Tears welled in his eyes. Jake was alive!

  “Let me start by saying that I wanted to tell you,” Jake said. “But it was a week before I was out of intensive care, and nearly another week before I was even aware that you didn’t know I was still alive. And then you were gone and there was no way to let you know.”

  Crash closed the door behind him, fighting the emotion that threatened to choke him, to make him break down and cry like a baby. Detach. Separate. Distance…

  What the hell was he doing?

  This was joy he was feeling. This was incredible relief, heart-stopping happiness. Yes, he wanted to cry, but they would be good tears.