It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Jake clutched Crash's shirt, his brown eyes glazed with pain. "You need... to listen. Just sent you... file... incriminating evidence... last year's snafu in Southeast Asia...six months ago... You were... there. Remember?"

  "Yes," Crash said. "I remember." A civil war had started in a tiny island nation when two rival drug lords had pitted their armies against each other. "Two of our marines were killed—Jake, please, we can talk about this on the way to the hospital."

  But Jake wouldn't let him go. "The military action... was instigated by an American... a U.S. Navy commander."

  "What? Who?"

  The door burst open and Jake's security team swarmed inside the room.

  "I need an ambulance now!" the security chief bellowed after just one look at the admiral.

  "Don't know... who," Jake gasped. "Some... kind of... cover-up. Kid, I'm counting... on you..."

  "Jake, don't die!" Crash was pushed back, out of the way, as a team of paramedics surrounded the admiral.

  Please, God, let him make it.

  "For God's sake, what happened?"

  Crash turned to find Commander Tom Foster, Jake's security chief, standing behind him. He took a deep breath and let it out in a rush of air. When he spoke, his voice was calm again. "I don't know."

  "How the hell could you not know what happened?"

  He didn't let himself react, didn't let himself get angry. The man was understandably shaken and upset. Crash could relate. Now that the shooting was over, his own hands were shaking and he was dizzy. He hunkered down, sliding his back against the wall of Jake's private office as he lowered his rear end all the way to the floor.

  He realized then that his arm was bleeding pretty profusely, and had been since the battle had started. He'd lost quite a bit of blood. He set down his weapon and applied pressure with his other hand. For the first time since he was hit, he noticed the searing pain. He looked up. "I didn't see who fired the first shots," he said evenly.

  He turned to watch as the paramedics carried Jake from the room. Please, let him make it.

  The security chief swore. "Who would want to kill Admiral Robinson?"

  Crash shook his head. He didn't know that either. But he sure as hell was going to find out.

  Dex Lancaster kissed her good-night.

  Nell knew from his eyes, and from the gentle heat of his lips, that he was hoping that she would ask him to come inside.

  It wasn't that outrageous a hope. They'd had dinner seven or eight times now, and she honestly liked him.

  He lowered his head to kiss her again, but she turned her head and his mouth only brushed her cheek.

  She liked him, but she wasn't ready for this.

  She forced a smile as she unlocked her door. "Thanks again for dinner."

  He nodded, resignation and amusement in his blue eyes.

  "I'll call you." He started down the steps, his long overcoat fanning out behind him like an elegant cape, but then he stopped, turning back to look up at her. "You know, I'm not in any real big hurry either, so take as long as you need. I've decided that I'm not going to let you scare me off." With a quick salute, he was gone.

  Nell smiled ruefully as she locked her door behind her, turning on the light in the entry way of her house. The single women in her exercise class would have been lining up for a chance to invite a man like Dexter Lancaster into their homes.

  What was wrong with her, anyway?

  She had just about everything she'd ever wanted. A house of her own. A great job. A handsome, intelligent, warmhearted man who wanted to spend time with her.

  Thanks to the money Daisy Owen had bequeathed her, she'd bought her own house, free and clear—a draughty old Victorian monster with prehistoric plumbing and ancient wiring that still ran on a fuse box. Nell was fixing the place up, little by little.

  And she'd found a new job that she really loved, working part-time for the legendary screen actress, Amie Cardoza.. Amie had had most of her successes on film in the seventies and eighties, but as she approached and then passed middle age, the better roles had disappeared, and she'd turned to the stage. She'd started an equity theatre in the heart of Washington D.C., her hometown. She'd really needed a personal assistant—the theatre company was still struggling and Amie was becoming politically active as well.

  Dex had introduced Nell to Amie, and Nell had liked the famous actress instantly. She was outspoken and funny and passionate-much like Daisy in many ways. With the life of her theatre hanging by a thread, Amie couldn't afford to pay as much as Daisy had, but Nell didn't mind. She'd used the remainder of the money from Daisy to make investments that were already making her a profit. With that, and her house fully paid for, Nell was more than happy to be able to work for someone she admired and respected at a little bit less than the going rate.

  She'd only been with Amie for the past four months, but her days had settled into a comfortable routine. On Monday mornings, she'd work at the actress's home, dealing with her day-to-day household affairs. On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, they'd meet at the theatre. Thursdays and Fridays depended on what additional projects Amie had going. And there was always something additional going.

  Dex often dropped in. He was a member of an organization called Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, and he did pro bono work for the theatre. Although he was older than the men Nell had dated in the past, she liked him. And when he'd asked her out to dinner several months ago, she couldn't think of a single reason why she shouldn't go.

  It had been almost a year since her last romantic entanglement. Or rather, her last non-romantic entanglement. She'd tangled, so to speak, with Crash Hawken, a man she should have accepted as a friend. Instead, she'd pushed for more, and she'd lost that friendship.

  Crash had never called her. He'd never even dropped her a postcard in response to the letters she'd written. When she'd spoken to Jake and asked, he'd told her the SEAL had been spending a great deal of time out of the country. Jake had also told her very clearly that if she were waiting for Crash to come back, she shouldn't hold her breath.

  Well, she wasn't holding her breath. But sometimes, when her guard was down, she still dreamed about the man.

  And even now, the nearly year-old memory of his kisses was stronger and more powerful than the two-minute-old memory of Dex's lips.

  Nell briefly closed her eyes, willing that particular memory away. She refused to waste her time consciously letting her thoughts stray in that direction. It was bad enough when she did it unconsciously.

  She hung her coat in the front closet and went into the kitchen to fix herself a cup of tea.

  The next time Dex asked her out to dinner, she'd invite him in. She had been wrong. It was time. It was definitely time to exorcise some old ghosts.

  The phone rang, and she glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was eleven. It had to be Amie with something urgent she'd forgotten about-something that needed to be done first thing in the morning.

  "Hello?"

  'Thank God you're home!" It was Amie. "Turn on the TV right now!"

  Nell reached for the power button on the little black-and-white set that sat on her kitchen counter. "What channel? Is there something on the news about the theatre?"

  "Cable channel four. It's not the theatre. Nell, my God, it's something about that man you used to work for—that Admiral Robinson?"

  "There's...a commercial playing on channel four."

  "They showed one of those previews," Amie imitated a TV announcer's voice. "'Coming up at eleven.' They said something about an assassination!"

  "What?" The commercial ended. "Wait, wait, it's on!"

  The credits rolled endlessly and finally a news anchor gazed seriously into the camera. "Tonight's top story—Navy spokesmen have released confirmation that a gun battle raged three nights ago at the home of U.S. Navy Admiral Jacob Robinson, injuring the admiral and killing several others. Early reports indicate that four or five people are dead. All are believed to be members of the admiral's secu
rity team. Let's go to Holly Mathers, downtown."

  Nell couldn't breathe. A gun battle. At the farm?

  The picture changed to a chilled-looking young woman, standing outside a brightly lit building. "Thanks, Chuck. I'm here outside of the Northside Hospital. A number of additional statements have just been released, the first and most tragic of which is that Jake Robinson has not survived. I repeat, the fifty-one-year-old U.S. Navy admiral was declared dead from gunshot wounds to the chest, here at Northside, just one hour ago."

  "Oh, my God." Nell reached blindly behind her for a chair, but couldn't find one, and sank down onto the kitchen floor instead. Jake was dead. How could Jake be dead?

  "Navy spokesmen have stated that the suspected assassin is in custody, also here at Northside Hospital," the reporter continued, "where it's speculated that he was being treated for minor wounds. They have not yet released the name of this man, nor the names of the men—apparently a team of Navy SEALs—who gave their lives attempting to protect Robinson."

  Navy SEALs. Nell went hot and then cold. Please dear God, don't let Crash be dead, too.

  She wasn't aware she had spoken aloud until Amie's voice asked. "Crash? Who's Crash?"

  Nell was still holding the phone, the line open. "Amie, I'm sorry, I have to go. This is...terrible. I've got to go and..."

  What? What could she do?

  "I'm so sorry, sweetie. I know how much you liked Jake. Do you want me to come out there?"

  "No, Amie, I have to..." Call someone. She had to call someone and find out if Crash was one of the men who had died today at the farm.

  "I won't expect to see you for the next few days. Take as much time as you need, all right?"

  Nell didn't answer. She couldn't. She just pressed the power button on the cordless phone.

  She tried to think. Tried to remember the names of Jake's high-powered friends—people she'd called both to tell about the change in wedding plans, and then about Daisy's death. There were several other admirals that Jake knew quite well. And what was the name of that FInCOM security commander? Tom something. He'd come out to the farm a few times to double-check the security fence....

  On the television, the reporter was talking with the anchor, discussing Jake's career in Vietnam, his long-term relationship with popular artist Daisy Owen, their marriage and her relatively recent death.

  The reporter touched her earpiece. "I'm sorry," she said, interrupting the anchor in midsentence. "We've just received word that the alleged assassin, the man believed to be responsible for Admiral Jake Robinson's murder and the murders of at least five members of his security team, is being brought out of the hospital, being transferred to FInCOM Headquarters to await arraignment."

  The camera jiggled sickeningly as the cameraman rushed to get into position. The hospital doors opened, and a crowd of police and other uniformed men came out.

  Nell got to her knees, still holding the telephone as she moved closer to the TV set, wanting a glimpse of the face of the man who had killed her friend.

  That man was in the centre of the crowd, his long, dark hair parted in the middle and hanging slackly down to his shoulders. The picture was still wobbling, though, and Nell could see little more than the pale blur of his face.

  "Admiral Stonegate!" the reporter called to one of the men in the crowd. "Admiral Stonegate, sir! Can you identify this man for our viewers?"

  The camera zoomed in on the murder suspect, and the cordless phone dropped out of Nell's hands and clattered on the kitchen floor.

  It was Crash. The man being led to the police cars was Crash Hawken.

  His hair was long and stringy-parted in the middle and hanging around his face in a style that was far from flattering. But Nell would have known that face anywhere. Those cheekbones, that elegant nose, the too-grim mouth. His pale grey eyes were nearly vacant, though. He seemed unaware of the explosion of questions and cameras focusing on him.

  The relief that flooded through Nell was so sharp and overpowering, she nearly doubled over.

  Crash was alive.

  Thank God he was alive.

  "I've been authorized to release the following statement. The man in our custody is former Navy Lieutenant William R. Hawken," a raspy male voice said.

  On the screen, Crash was pushed into the back seat of a car. The camera focused for a moment on his hands, cuffed at the wrist behind his back, before once again settling, through the rain-streaked window of the car, on his seemingly soulless eyes.

  "The charges include conspiracy, treason, and first-degree murder," the male voice continued. As the car pulled away, the camera moved to focus on the reporter, who was one of a crowd surrounding a short, white-haired navy admiral. "With the evidence we have, it's an open-and-shut case. There's no question in my mind of Hawken's guilt. I was a close friend of Jake Robinson's and I intend, personally, to push for the death penalty in this case."

  The death penalty.

  Nell stared at the TV as the words being spoken finally broke through her relief that Crash was alive.

  Crash was being arrested. His hands had been cuffed. He'd been charged with conspiracy, the man had said. And treason. And murder.

  It didn't make sense. How could anyone who claimed to be a friend of Jake's possibly believe that Crash could have killed him? Anyone who knew them both would have to know how ridiculous that was. Crash could no more have killed Jake than she could have gone to the window, opened it, and flown twice around the outside of her house before coming back inside. It was ridiculous. Impossible. Totally absurd.

  Nell pushed herself up off the kitchen floor and went into the little room she'd made into her home office. She turned on the light and her computer. Somewhere, in some forgotten file deep in the bowels of her hard disk, she must still have the names and phone numbers of the people she'd invited to Jake and Daisy's wedding. Someone would be able to help her prove that Crash was innocent.

  She wiped her face and went to work.

  Crash had to shuffle when he walked. Even for the short trip from his cell to the visiting room, he had to be handcuffed and chained like a common criminal. His hands and feet were considered to be deadly weapons because of his martial-arts skills. He couldn't raise his hands to push his hair out of his face without a guard pointing a rifle in his direction.

  He couldn't imagine who had come to see him—who, that is, had the pull and the clout and the sheer determination to request and be granted a chance to talk one-on-one to a man charged with conspiracy, treason and murder.

  It sure wasn't any of the members of his SEAL Team. His former SEAL Team. He'd been stripped of his commission and rank upon his arrival here at the federal prison. He'd been stripped of everything but his name, and he was almost certain that they would've have taken that as well, if they could have.

  But no, there was no one in his former SEAL Team who would want to sit down and talk to him right now. They all thought he'd killed Captain Lovett and the Possum—Chief Steven Pierson—in the gun battle at Jake Robinson's house.

  And why shouldn't they believe that? The ballistics report showed that Crash's bullets had been found in both of the SEALs' bodies-despite the fact Crash had been standing right next to the Possum when the man was hit.

  It was quite possible that the only reason Crash was still alive today was because the chief had fallen in front of him when he'd gone down, also taking the bullets that had been meant for Crash.

  No, Crash's mysterious visitor wasn't a member of SEAL Team Twelve. But it was possible he was a member of SEAL Team Ten's elite Alpha Squad. Crash had worked with Alpha Squad this past summer, helping to train an experimental joint FInCOM/SEAL counterterrorist team.

  Crash had worked with Alpha Squad on the same operation in Southeast Asia that Jake had believed was the cause of this entire hellish tragedy. It had been that very op that Jake had been investigating right before his death—and had detailed in the encoded file he had sent Crash. Crash couldn't deny that that particular oper
ation had gone about as wrong as it possibly could. Jake had believed that the snafu had not been accidental, and that the mistakes made were now being covered up.

  And Jake never could abide a cover-up.

  But was a cover-up of a botched op enough reason to kill an admiral?

  Crash had had little else to think about day and night during the past week.

  But right now, he had a visitor and he turned his thoughts toward wondering who was sitting on the other side of the wired glass window in the visitors' room.

  It might be his swim buddy, Cowboy Jones—the man with whom he'd gone through the punishingly harsh SEAL training. Cowboy wouldn't condemn him. At least not before talking to him. And then there was Blue McCoy. Last summer Crash had come to know and trust Alpha Squad's taciturn executive officer.

  He liked to think that Blue would want to hear Crash's version of the story first, too.

  Still, it was odd to imagine that someone he had met only six months earlier would take the time to question him about what had happened, when his own teammates, men he'd worked with for years, had clearly already judged and found him guilty as charged.

  Crash waited while one of the guards unlocked the door. It swung open and...

  It wasn't Cowboy and it definitely wasn't Blue McCoy.

  Out of all the people in all the world, Nell Burns was the last person Crash had expected to see sitting in that chair on the other side of that protective glass.

  Yet there she was, her hands tightly clasped on the table in front of her.

  She looked almost exactly the same as she had the last time he'd seen her—the morning she'd walked out of his room after they'd spent the night together. It had been nearly a year, but he could still remember that night as if it had been yesterday.

  Her hair was cut in the same chin-length style. Only her clothes were different—a severely tailored business suit with shoulder pads in the jacket, and a stiff white shirt that did its best to hide the soft curves of her breasts.

  But she didn't have to wear sexy, revealing clothes. It didn't matter what she wore—boxy suit or burlap sack. The image of her perfect body was forever branded in his memory.