After Midnight

by Diana Palmer

  “Sorry to show up like this, Nikki, but you and Clay changed your telephone number,” he explained, when they were seated in the living room.

  “We had to,” she said. “Too many people had it.” She studied his face with quiet affection. He was older, but still devastatingly handsome. Mosby, with his blond hair and blue eyes and perfectly chiseled patrician face. If it hadn’t been for Kane, and the feelings he’d ignited in her, she might still be mourning Mosby.

  “Haralson called me earlier,” he told her. He leaned forward with his arms crossed over his knees. His eyes narrowed. “Nikki, he’s got some photographs of you and Kane Lombard.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said tightly. “But I’ve dealt with Haralson. He won’t print them.”

  “Yes, he will,” he said finally, watching her react. “Oh, not now, probably—but closer to the election, yes, he will. He’s gone over the edge, Nikki. He wants to hit everybody. If he publishes those photographs, he can hurt a lot of people.”

  She looked at him with anguish in her face. “I didn’t know I was being followed. I was so careful…”

  “You have no idea what sort of people he conspires with,” he told her quietly. “Nikki, they have cameras so tiny they can be fed under doors, through windows. They have cameras and sound equipment that can pick up actions and conversations from great distances. Haralson has connections at the FBI and even the CIA.”

  “He’s angry at Clay because I wanted Clay to fire him. He’s angry at me, too. He’ll cut us both down…”

  “I’m not going to let him cut down anybody,” he replied. “He thinks he’s got me on a meathook. In fact, I know someone who can settle his hash for good.”

  “Why didn’t you do something before?” she asked.

  “Because he had something on me. Or thought he did.” He searched her eyes sadly. “You never knew why I couldn’t consummate our marriage.”

  “I found out,” she said, averting her eyes. “You let me find out.”

  “I let you find me in bed with a man,” he replied. “But I’m not gay.”

  She turned back toward him, her eyes wide as saucers.

  “Ask Clay,” he said wearily. “Tell him I said it was all right to tell you. I’ve come to the conclusion that he was right all along. If I’d admitted the problem in the beginning and had something done, who knows how it might have turned out. As it is, I’m going to have to do something, as distasteful as it seems to me. I can’t go on like this, risking blackmail and pretending to be something I’m not just to spare myself embarrassment.” He opened the attache case while a puzzled Nikki stared at him. He tossed a packet of papers onto the coffee table. “Think of it as counterblack-mail,” he said. “Give those to Clay, with my blessing.”

  “What are they?” she asked, picking up the sealed envelope.

  “Things you don’t need to know, little one. Tell Clay that I’ve already set these wheels in motion. The material in there—” he pointed to the envelope “—is just for his information. He won’t need to do a thing. Not one single thing. He thought he had an ally, you see.” Mosby smiled slowly. “But it was my ally.”

  He got up and moved closer to Nikki. His fingers lightly stroked down her cheek and his regrets were all in his eyes. “I was trying to save my political neck when I let your father force you into marrying me,” he said quietly. “I panicked. Because I did, we both suffered. We couldn’t have a normal marriage and I thought too much of you to make a travesty of it, so I pretended to be something I wasn’t.”

  Her eyes searched his. “I wouldn’t have cared what was wrong,” she said huskily. “I loved you!”

  He drew in a long, hard breath. “I know.” He smiled sadly. “That’s the cross I have to carry with me. I’m glad you found somebody, Nikki. I hope he can make you happy.”

  “He could have,” she said miserably. “I love him very much. But Haralson has killed it all. He made me lie to Kane, and now Kane will hate me.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.” His fingers loosened and fell away from her face. “You deserve a little happiness.”

  “What about you, Mosby?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll go overseas and have some discreet surgery,” he said mysteriously. “After that…I’ll see.” He laughed curtly. “I’d rather not, but I seem to have very few choices left. There’s always a Haralson around.”

  “Everybody has skeletons, didn’t you know?” she asked.

  “Most people are lucky enough not to have them disinterred, though.” He smiled. “Don’t look so morose, Nikki. Dreams still come true.”

  “Not in my life, they don’t,” she said.

  He searched her sad eyes one last time and left the house as quickly as he’d entered it.

  Nikki studied the envelope in her hand with a curious frown. What in the world could Mosby have in there that would save Clay from Haralson?

  Jurkins entered the office for the second time in as many days. He was more nervous this time, though, especially when he saw the dark-haired man sitting across from Mr. Lombard.

  He stopped just inside the closed door and stared from one man to the other.

  “This is Cortez,” Kane introduced. “Will Jurkins,” he indicated the other man.

  They shook hands. Cortez noticed that Jurkins’s palms were sweaty and hot. The man was almost shaking with nerves.

  He sat down heavily in the chair adjacent to Cortez’s. “Yes, sir, what did you want?” he asked Kane.

  Kane leaned back in his chair and crossed one long leg over the other. “I want to know how you managed to pay off your daughter’s medical bill at the local clinic.”

  Jurkins’s caught breath was eloquent. He shivered.

  “Several thousand dollars in a lump sum,” Kane continued. “You paid cash.”

  Jurkins started to try to bluff it out, but these men weren’t going to fall for any bluff. He was unprepared, caught red-handed. Well, there was one thing he could try. He slumped and put his head in his hands. He let out a heavy, hard breath. “I knew it would come out,” he said huskily. “But I couldn’t turn him down. I was afraid they’d stop treating my baby if I didn’t have the money. It’s just me, we haven’t got anybody else. I couldn’t lose her.”

  He lifted tired eyes to Kane’s. “She’s all I got in the world. It didn’t sound so bad, when he explained it to me. All he wanted me to do was say that one company wasn’t working out and hire another one to take its place. That’s all. He never said I was to do something illegal, Mr. Lombard. He just said I was to tell you the other company didn’t do its job right. He said I was to do that, and to hire Burke’s to replace it. That’s all.”

  “You didn’t ask him why?” Kane asked coldly.

  “My little girl’s got leukemia!” Jurkins said miserably. “I had to get her bills caught up so they wouldn’t let her die!”

  Kane felt the man’s pain, but Cortez showed no such reaction. He leaned toward the man. His dark eyes were steady, intimidating. “Your little girl goes to St. Jude’s,” he said quietly. “The only expense you have is at the clinic and it isn’t several thousand dollars worth. Your daughter does have leukemia. She is also in remission, and has been for six months. However, Mr. Jurkins,” he added very quietly, “you are a heroin addict. And the clinic you frequent is the province of one of the most notorious drug lords in the Carolinas. You took the money from Haralson to support a habit—not to secure your daughter’s health.”

  Jurkins had jumped up, but Cortez had him in one lightning-fast motion, whipped around and shoved back down into the chair. Cortez stood over him, powerful and immovable, and Jurkins decided to cut his losses while he could.

  “All right, I did it. But I couldn’t help it,” Jurkins groaned. “I couldn’t, I couldn’t…!”

  “Would you telephone the local police, please,” Cortez asked Kane. “I think we’d better have the assistant D.A. over here, too, and the Department of Health and Environmental Control field representative.”

&n
bsp; Kane shook his head as he studied the broken man before him. “Jurkins, didn’t you have enough grief already?” he asked sadly.

  “I had…too much,” the man whispered, his head down. “Too much grief, too much pain, too much fear…and too little money and hope. It got to me so bad. At first it was just enough to make me sleep, when she was in the hospital, to make me forget how bad it was. But then, it took more and more…” He looked up at Kane. “It was just to hire another company to haul off your trash,” he said, as if he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “What’s so bad about that?”

  Kane and Cortez exchanged glances. It was just too much trouble to try to explain it to him. He didn’t understand at all.

  After Jurkins was taken away Kane drank coffee with Cortez, trying to find the right way to thank him.

  “It’s my job,” Cortez said with a lazy smile. “Sometimes, though, I don’t enjoy doing it. Jurkins’s little girl is the one who’ll suffer the most.”

  “No, she won’t,” Kane promised tersely. “I’ll make sure of that. He’ll get treatment and I’ll try to have the charges against him reduced. I’ll get him a damned good lawyer.”

  Cortez smiled quizzically. “He nearly closed you down.”

  “So he did. But a miss is as good as a mile.”

  Cortez finished his coffee and got to his feet. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”

  “It hasn’t yet. But maybe it will.” He shook hands with the other man and scowled curiously. “Listen, how did you get onto Jurkins?”

  “Through Haralson. He’s been watched for several months,” came the surprising reply. “He was supplying the clinic where Jurkins got his stuff—part of his money-making operation.”

  “I saw him with Clayton Seymour one day. I did wonder how a senate aide was able to afford a BMW,” Kane had to admit.

  “Through selling drugs,” Cortez replied. “I let Haralson think I was here on vacation. I didn’t know he was after you, but I was hoping for a link to that clinic. And there it was.”

  “Luckily for me,” Kane said.

  “Indeed. Fingering the clinic was only one part. I had to have corroboration from a witness who would testify. Until now, I couldn’t get one. Haralson played right into my hands. I traced the dump site back here and found your man Jurkins at the end of it. He tied up all my loose ends at once.”

  “What happens now?”

  Cortez lifted an eyebrow. “I have Haralson arrested for drug trafficking and merge back into the woodwork in Washington.” He lowered his voice. “I’m not supposed to be working in this area.”

  “You’re government,” Kane pointed out.

  “I was FBI. At another time I was CIA. But now I’m not so visible, or in quite the same sort of work. A friend of mine died of an overdose earlier in the year,” he added surprisingly. “Haralson was involved. I had a score to settle, and the timing was right.”

  “If you’re no longer in law enforcement, what sort of work do you do?” Kane asked, curious.

  Cortez chuckled, but he didn’t answer the question. He held out his hand. “Good luck with the media. I hope they give you the same coverage now that they gave you when you were supposed to be a bad guy.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kane asked cynically. “They’ll apologize on the classified page. But my family will attack them on the front page.” He grinned wistfully. “There are times, mind you, when I don’t mind having a father who publishes a tabloid.”

  “I can understand why.”

  “Who are you?” Kane asked with an amused smile.

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  Cortez reached in his pocket and handed him a small battery. “I’m the Energizer Bunny.” He grinned and walked out, leaving Kane no wiser than before.

  Derrie was sitting in the outer office of Sam Hewett’s headquarters when Nikki walked in the door.

  “A spy, a spy!” Derrie exclaimed dramatically, pointing a finger at the newcomer.

  “Oh, shut up,” Nikki said pleasantly. “As one campaign manager to another, let bygones be bygones. The voters will pick the best man.”

  “Thank you,” Sam Hewett said with a grin as he joined Derrie and Nikki, with the other campaign workers chuckling before they went eagerly back to work.

  “You haven’t won yet, Mr. Hewett,” Nikki said, smiling as she shook hands with him. “But you’re a nice man to fight. You’re a clean hitter. No low blows.”

  “I wish I could say the same for your brother,” Sam replied quietly. “But I haven’t forgotten the way he attacked Norman’s brother Kane.”

  “I can tell you truthfully that you’ve seen the last of the sneak attacks,” she said, noticing that Curt Morgan was paying a lot of covert attention to the conversation.

  “I do hope so.”

  “Can you spare Derrie for lunch?” Nikki asked. “I really need to talk to her.”

  “Certainly. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks.”

  The two women left. Curt was frowning, but he made no attempt to follow them.

  “Curt is up to something,” Nikki said.

  “Oh, I know that,” Derrie replied. “He’s Senator Torrance’s man. But he isn’t spying on us to hurt Clay. In fact,” she added with a grin, “I’m pretty sure that he’s found a way to help.”

  “I know he has. Mosby came to see me. He left me some documents for Clay.”

  Derrie stopped walking. “Did you give them to Clay?”

  “Yes, about ten minutes ago. He looked at them and gave a whoop and took off out the door.”

  “Good for him. I hope he nails Haralson to the wall.”

  “What’s going on?” Nikki asked pointedly.

  “I’m not quite sure,” Derrie said, “except that Mr. Haralson has made a lot of people very angry. Fred Lombard went racing out of here early this morning, grinning from ear to ear. Whatever it is, I think most people know except us.”

  “Mushrooms. We’re mushrooms.”

  “Why?” Derrie asked curiously.

  “Because they keep us in the dark and feed us….”

  “…don’t say it!”

  Nikki chuckled. She linked her arm through Derrie’s. “Let’s have lunch. Then I want to ask you to supper tomorrow night.”

  “I won’t come and eat with Clayton and Bett,” Derrie said firmly.

  “My dear, Bett is on her way to becoming yesterday’s news.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will, sooner than you think. How about Chez Louie?”

  “That’s fine,” Derrie said. She stared at Nikki, but the other woman wasn’t saying another word.

  Bett glared at Clayton from across the desk. “What do you mean, I’m fired?”

  “Just what I said,” he told her. “I fired Haralson. Now I’m firing you.”

  She smiled coolly. “You can’t fire me, dear man. What Haralson knows, I know. If you try to remove me, I’ll tell everybody about Nikki and Kane. I’ll tell everybody about Mosby, too.”

  Clayton moved around the desk and sat down, propping his legs across it. “Do go ahead,” he invited. “I’m sure it will make great reading.”

  “Well, I will,” she said, shaken. “I mean, it will damage you. It will certainly damage Nikki. And it will probably destroy Mosby’s entire career. He might even commit suicide.”

  He shook his head. “Mosby’s far too fastidious. He wouldn’t want to get blood over a suit he paid several hundred dollars for.”

  “Several thousand,” she stated.

  “I never said he was cheap.”

  She hesitated. She wasn’t used to having anyone call her bluff. “Clay, you’re overwrought. Let’s go out to eat and just relax for a while.”

  “I don’t need to relax. And Derrie’s coming over for supper. It will be just like old times.”

  “You promised to marry me,” Bett said coldly.

  “Did I? When?”

  “In bed!”


  “No. You said you were going to marry me,” he corrected. “I didn’t agree that I would.”

  “You’ll be sorry if you go through with this,” she said very quietly.

  “I’ll be sorrier if I don’t.” He picked up the telephone. “Don’t let me keep you, Bett. I’m sure some of the groups you lobby for would love to discuss strategy with you.”

  Her hands clenched by her sides. “I had to force myself to sleep with you,” she said with a cold smile. “I hated every minute of it!”

  He smiled. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry you had to sacrifice yourself in such a distasteful way.”

  She turned, picked up her purse and jacket and walked out without looking back. Clayton watched her, but only for a minute. His mind was on Nikki.

  The telephone rang over and over, but there was no answer at the house. He hung up, and his face was troubled. That photograph he’d given Kane was going to be in print and on the stands by early afternoon. He didn’t want Nikki to see it before he’d warned her what was coming. The shock might harm her or the child.

  The child. He smiled. It was early; probably too early to tell if Kane was right and she really was pregnant. But he thought what a wonderful mother Nikki would make. If she loved Lombard, he supposed he could force himself to be civil to the man. He wouldn’t admit for all the world that he saw something in Kane Lombard to admire.

  As for Bett, that was a lucky escape. No doubt she’d go running to Haralson and that set of photos he had would be offered to the highest bidder. But timing was everything, and with any luck, Lombard’s tabloid would hit the stands this afternoon with enough impact to knock Haralson’s eyes out. Clayton hoped with all his heart that he’d done the right thing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The front page of the Lombard tabloid was shocking. It showed two people making feverish love against a tree; but only from the waist up. The headline above it was even more shocking. It read, “Romeo And Juliet For The Modern Age; Adversaries Become Lovers.”

  The young woman staring at it on the shelf had gone a pasty shade of white. Her companion was tugging at her arm, even as one of the women in line belatedly recognized the face on the cover and equated it with the white face leaving the drugstore.