Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Ric wasn’t sure what to say to that offer. No, thanks?

  Annie stood up, brushing off her hands. She’d done an amazing job concealing Lillian’s identity with that dirt. “As much as I never want to see this bitch again,” she said, “she’s drunk, as usual. If she went to the Harbor Tavern—the way she usually does to get tanked up before she tries to kill you?—there are probably thirty witnesses who heard her say she was coming over here. If she turns up dead—”

  “She won’t turn up,” Junior said.

  Annie didn’t so much as blink. “If she turns up missing,” she corrected herself, “Ric could be a suspect in her disappearance. That’s the last thing he needs right now.”

  But Junior was shaking his head. “No body, no case.”

  That wasn’t always the truth, but Ric suspected that arguing with Junior over legal issues wasn’t going to help.

  “I’ve got some questions I need to ask her.” Ric put some heavy end-of-argument tone into his voice. “There’s a not-so-little matter of some missing money.”

  Annie pushed past them all, heading inside the office. “I’ll get the cuffs.”

  “You change your mind”—Junior holstered his own weapon—“you let me know.”

  Ric waited for Annie to get back. He waited until she snapped the handcuffs on Lillian’s narrow wrists. Only then did he show Gordie Junior and his men out, watching as they went down the path and got into their limo. He waited, again, for the car to pull away, before shutting the door.

  He did a quick sweep of the office, the back deck, even Lillian.

  Annie was sitting on the middle of the three steps that led up to the first-floor deck, her arms around her knees.

  “We’re clear,” Ric said, shifting Lillian so he could look at the damage that had been done to her nose. It was definitely broken. She whimpered as she stirred. “Are you hurt?”

  He looked over at Annie when she didn’t answer right away.

  “Me?” Annie said, as if she’d thought he was talking to Lillian. “No. Is she all right? I hit her really hard. Twice. It was kind of awful and…kind of satisfying—in a really sick way—all at the same time.”

  Ric sat down next her. “I know what that feels like.”

  “Is she going to be all right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I need to call Jules. That’s what you should’ve done, by the way, instead of playing Buffy the Porn Star Slayer.”

  “Screw you.” Her voice shook. “I wasn’t playing anything. She was going to kill Junior, and if that meant she had to kill you, too, well, then she was going to kill you.” She stood up. “If you’re going to yell at me, just…don’t. I did the best I could.”

  “She did call me.” Ric turned to see Jules stepping into the light.

  “And me.” Martell stepped forward, too. “Although it would have been a little nicer for me, anyway, if she’d told FBI here that she’d called me, too. We had a small crap-in-the-pants incident back on the other side of your fence—mine being the pants that got crapped in, of course.”

  “Sorry ’bout that.” There were two other men with Jules, but the tall, fair-haired man was not Robin Chadwick, as Ric had first thought. He was older and far more dangerous-looking.

  The other man was—oh, good—none other than Max Bhagat, the head of the FBI’s top counterterrorist team. He nodded a greeting to Ric as he crossed to Lillian, crouching beside her as he spoke on his cell phone, requesting a discreetly marked vehicle and medical team.

  “You did a good job,” Jules told Annie. “I saw you stick that landing off the balcony. That was very impressive.”

  “You got a ten from the judge from Texas,” the taller man drawled. “And a solid nine-point-five for the swift dispatch of…” He turned to Martell. “What did you call her?”

  “Crazy McFuckedup,” the Texan and Martell said in unison.

  The Texan laughed. “It wasn’t perfect.” He smiled at Annie. “But it was close.”

  “I tried calling you,” Jules told Annie. “Sam—this is my friend Sam. And Max. My boss.”

  “Hi,” Annie said.

  “Sam was in place to grab Lillian,” Jules told Annie, “but I didn’t want him to do it without giving you warning.”

  “I left my phone upstairs,” she told him. “I was afraid it would fall out of my pocket—”

  “It’s okay, you did great,” Jules reassured her, climbing up the steps to put his arm around her. “Let’s get you inside. You’re shaking a little, but that’s normal after an adrenaline rush. You really did a good job.” He shot Ric a look, like, Are you paying attention and learning something here, asshole? as he ushered Annie inside.

  Annie wasn’t the only one who was shaking. Ric had to sit down.

  “You okay?” Martell asked him.

  “You ever get so scared,” Ric asked, “about something that didn’t happen, but might’ve, that it gets a little hard to breathe?”

  “Maybe you should come inside, too,” Martell suggested. “This has been kind of a crazy night for you, huh?”

  Ric just shook his head.

  “Alvarado.” Max Bhagat, the legendary FBI leader, had closed and pocketed his cell phone, but now he was digging in another pocket for something else. His wallet. He opened it, took something out. “Gina says hi.”

  Gina. Max’s former girlfriend, now his wife. Whom Ric had once hit on. Mem’ries, may be beautiful and yet…

  “How is she, sir?” Ric asked. Back when he’d met Gina, she’d had some serious emotional issues in the wake of a brutal hostage situation aboard a hijacked plane. But that had been years ago. Time, hopefully, had helped along the healing process.

  “She’s great,” Max told him, handing him a photo he’d taken from his wallet.

  And yes, there was Gina, still as crazy beautiful as Ric remembered her to be. In the picture, she was holding a very little girl—a baby, really—with dark hair and dark eyes. The baby was smiling and reaching for the camera—or, more likely, the man behind the camera—as Gina kissed her plump cheek.

  “Dang, Emma’s getting big,” the Texan—Sam—said, leaning over Ric’s shoulder to look.

  “Emma,” Ric repeated, handing the photo back to Max. “She’s beautiful, too, sir.”

  “It doesn’t get any easier to breathe,” Max told him, “but you learn to live with it, because you can’t live without it.”

  Ric stared up into the eyes of this near-total stranger, this man that he’d met only briefly, years before, and suddenly everything made more sense.

  Ric stood up. “Excuse me, sir.”

  He needed to go find Annie.

  Martell followed Ric inside.

  His boy didn’t waste any time. “Excuse me,” he said, not even waiting for Jules to take a breath. He just interrupted the FBI agent, who was sitting at the conference table, still talking to Annie.

  “I need to tell you what it felt like,” Ric said, “to open that door and see you out there, on the ground, with Lillian and her gun.”

  Jules got to his feet, but Ric apparently didn’t give a shit who was listening.

  “My whole life flashed before my eyes,” he told Annie. “Because I realized what you had done. The idea of you putting yourself into that kind of danger…God damn, it makes me crazy.

  “And it’s not because you’re a woman. It’s not really even because you haven’t had any training. Your instincts are on the mark. You’re an asset to the team, I can’t deny it. You’re clearly cut out for this.

  “But I’m not sure I am,” Ric told her. “I was trying to get away from this bullshit when I left the force. We haven’t talked about that at all—not because you didn’t try when you first got here. You did. I just…I couldn’t. But I have to now. You need to know. So I have to tell you. But can I please tell you in the morning, because right now I am so fucking tired. I just want to go upstairs with you, and go to sleep—without me being mad at you and you being mad at me.

  “Can we do that?” Ric
asked her. “Please?”

  Martell didn’t hear Annie’s answer, because Jules closed the door.

  But he saw through the glass that Annie kissed Ric, which was probably a good sign that whatever she’d said, it had included the word yes.

  “You, uh, want to talk about it?”

  Jules looked over at Sam, who was driving the rental car back to the hotel. Max had gone with Yashi and Deb and the team who’d taken Lillian Lavelle into custody.

  “What, did you lose the coin toss?” Jules asked.

  Sam glanced at him. “I volunteered. We’ve been friends a long time, Cassidy. Don’t insult me.”

  “But it’s so much fun to insult you,” Jules said. Was it really only three A.M.? Would this night ever end?

  “I’m being serious here.” Sam indeed had on his serious face. “Last time we talked, you told me you could imagine things working out with you and Ben. You said—”

  “I know what I said. I was lying.” Jules cut him off. “Not to you. Not on purpose. But to myself. Kind of the way you used to lie to yourself about not being in love with Alyssa.”

  Sam was silent for several long blocks. He was a former SEAL, so he was pretty smart, and it didn’t take him long to do the math. “So you’re saying you’re in love with Robin. Crazy Robin, who won’t even admit to being gay.”

  “He’s admitting it,” Jules told his friend. “In private.” Which was a step, but just not a big enough one.

  “So great,” Sam said. “Now he’s just plain crazy—an actor, too. You said no more actors. Plus he’s in the closet, which was the big problem you had with Ben, right? And oh, yeah, Robin’s a blackout drunk. Someone hold me back. I just might leave Alyssa and run off with him myself.”

  Jules shook his head. “Sarcasm always works so well in a heart-to-heart.”

  “You told me—on more than one occasion,” Sam pointed out. “And not just when you got a little emotionally sloppy after too many of those fruity drinks you like—”

  “I know what I told you.” Jules rolled his eyes. “Thank you very much.”

  But Sam spoke right over him. “—but also when you were stone sober. You said, If I ever get the stupid idea to start something with Crazy Robin, knock some sense into me, SpongeBob.”

  “I can’t stay away from him,” Jules confessed. “I can’t do it. Sam, God help me, I’ve been, I don’t know, obsessed with him—for years. I’ve tried, but Jesus, these feelings just won’t go away. Every time I see him, my heart just…leaps.” He’d never felt like this about anyone. Not Adam, not any- one. “I feel like I could die when I’m with him, but that would be okay. God, but the rest of the time it hurts, because I know he doesn’t want me the way I want him. He wants me, but he wants me to hide. And you’re right. I wouldn’t do it for Ben, but…” God help him, he was going to do it for Robin.

  He’d been rolling toward that inevitable conclusion ever since he’d knocked on Robin’s hotel-room door, just a few short nights ago.

  “I’ve tried keeping my distance,” Jules told Sam. “I tried denying it. I tried…Ben.”

  Ben, who’d been dead for the past two weeks. Ben, who’d died thinking he actually had a shot at a future with Jules, who’d never loved him back.

  Sam sighed—knowing, as usual, what Jules was thinking. “You can’t make yourself love someone,” he told Jules quietly. “You just can’t. The human heart doesn’t work that way.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted it to,” Jules told him. “I really tried. For a while—this was like a year ago—it was after I got back from Italy. I slept with him. Ben. I told myself that I wasn’t going to, but…I did.” He shook his head. “But it didn’t feel right. It felt like…cheating, so I ended it.” He laughed in despair. “Of course, now Robin thinks I was cheating on Ben when I was with him, and…Maybe I sort of was, because Ben was clearly in a different place in terms of how he thought about our relationship, and I knew that. I mean, my God, it was obvious from his e-mail. I should have e-mailed him back, right away, and at least told him that I was surprised because I considered us to be just friends.”

  But that wasn’t quite true. Because Jules really hadn’t known how he’d felt about Ben—until he’d seen Robin again. It was only then, as Jules had reexperienced the vivid Technicolor of his feelings for Robin, that he’d truly realized he was unwilling to settle for anything less.

  “If you’d e-mailed Ben right away,” Sam gently pointed out, “he wouldn’t have received it. You didn’t hurt him, Jules.”

  “Only because he died,” Jules said. “If he hadn’t died, he would’ve been hurt.” Instead, the person Jules had managed to hurt was Robin, who still wasn’t answering his cell phone. “I’ve got to go talk to Robin.”

  Sam had already figured that out. Which was why, instead of pulling up to Jules’s hotel, Sam had taken him to Robin’s.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly as he stopped at the front doors, “that you didn’t love Ben the same way he loved you. I’m just sorry that he’s never going to have a chance to try to change your mind.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Jules said as the doorman opened the car door. “Thanks for coming all this way.”

  Sam shrugged it off. “You’d’ve done the same for me, Squidward.”

  “I love you, too.” Jules got out of the car. “Give Alyssa a big wet kiss for me, and be careful out there.”

  “Always do, always am. You be careful, too.”

  And with that, Sam was gone.

  A hotel security guard was standing just inside the lobby. He nodded as Jules flashed the key card Robin had given him.

  He checked the bar first, but it was dark—long past last call.

  Which didn’t mean that Robin had stopped drinking. His suite was outfitted with a full bar—not just a mini one like most hotel rooms.

  The elevator was empty, as was the hall on Robin’s floor. But there was loud music playing somewhere, and as Jules approached, he realized it was coming from Robin’s room.

  He almost didn’t go in—he was that afraid of what he was going to find.

  But he heard laughter—there was clearly a group of people partying in there—so he knocked. Loudly.

  The door was opened by, yes, a scantily clad young woman. She was wearing only bright yellow underwear. It wasn’t Dolphina, but instead a blonde whom Jules had never seen before. “We’re being too loud,” she apologized. “I know. Sorry. We’re trying to keep it down.”

  “Actually,” Jules said. “I’m a friend of Robin’s.”

  “Oh, he’s…not exactly here,” the woman said.

  “What does that mean?” Jules asked, moving his foot so that if she tried to close the door on him, it would literally be on him.

  “Well, he’s here, but not really capable of conversation.” She made an oops face. “He passed out about an hour ago.”

  Enough was enough. Jules pushed his way inside. “Where is he?”

  “On the balcony.”

  On the balcony. Because it was so safe to be on a twelfth-floor open-air balcony when one was falling-down and passed-out drunk.

  There were two other women and two men—none of whom Jules had ever seen before—lounging in Robin’s suite, wearing bathing suits as if they’d come here straight from the hotel pool.

  Jules realized that the woman who’d answered the door was actually wearing a yellow bikini. “Tell your friends it’s time to go,” he told her as he headed for the balcony.

  “Not that one,” she said. “The one in the master bedroom.”

  The women all stood up, gathering their beach towels, but the men weren’t as willing to follow orders. “Robin Chadwick invited us here,” one of them said. “Who the hell are you to tell us to leave?”

  Jules stopped. No one moved. Five pairs of eyes were watching him with a mixture of curiosity and resentment.

  This was one of those moments that he’d been dreading. Who the hell are you? He was going to have to lie about his relations
hip with Robin.

  As far as the actual lie went, there were so many choices.

  I’m his cousin—that was a classic.

  I’m his brother—although they probably wouldn’t buy that one, due to height differences.

  I’m his head of security.

  I’m his personal manager.

  I’m his bodyguard.

  I’m his real-estate agent, his yacht designer, his personal shopper, his investment broker.

  Anything but I’m his lover.

  “I’m one of his producers,” Jules finally said, because that was his cover on this assignment. “I’m also a good friend. I make sure people don’t take advantage of him. Close the door on your way out.”

  He went through the French doors, into the bedroom. The slider to the balcony was open, and the curtains were blowing in the cool breeze off the Gulf.

  And there was Robin, also in his bathing suit, lying facedown in his own vomit. He stirred and moaned as Jules bent down to lift his head, to make sure he hadn’t hit it when he’d fallen.

  There didn’t seem to be any bruises, which of course didn’t mean a thing.

  “Is he all right?” The woman in yellow stood in the doorway.

  “You tell me,” Jules answered. “Did he take anything—any drugs I should know about?”

  She shook her head no, but then bit her lip. “Well, just…the Viagra. He was having a little trouble, you know…Sometimes when guys get that drunk, they need—”

  “Yeah.” Jules cut her off. He got it.

  He took off his jacket and tie, tossing them onto a chair and rolling up his sleeves. He was going to have to drag Robin into the bathroom to clean him up, but it would definitely be better to wipe his face off before he tried to move him. He turned on the bathroom light and looked into the room. It was spacious, and there was a separate shower stall—a large one—which was good. It would be easier to get Robin in there, rather than over the side of the tub.

  Jules grabbed a towel and took it with him back across the bedroom to the balcony.

  “I left my phone number,” the woman in the yellow bikini told him. Was she still here? “It’s on the table, by the sofa? In case Robin wants to, like, finish what we started.”