It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Nell turned her head, following his gaze, and realized that he was watching her in the wall mirror opposite the bed. The only light in the room was from his computer screen, but it was enough to give her breasts and her stomach and the curve of her rear end an exotic cast.

  She looked like some wild, hedonistic version of herself. A naked love slave ministering to the needs of her master. All he had to do was turn over, and he could watch as she kept caressing him, kissing her way down his chest, down to his stomach, down...

  She met the fire of his gaze in the mirror, feeling her cheeks heat with a blush. It wasn't the first time she'd believed him capable of reading her mind.

  He didn't look tired any longer.

  He turned, rolling beneath her so that he could look up at her, so that the hardness of his arousal pressed against her.

  "This is the closest I figure I'll ever actually get to heaven," he said softly.

  Nell leaned forward to kiss him and he held her close, telling her again, although not in so many words, just how much that he needed her.

  She kissed his neck, his throat, his chest, trailing her mouth across his incredible body as she reached between them to unfasten his pants.

  She turned to look, and, just as she'd imagined, found him watching her in the mirror. She smiled at him.

  And then she took him to heaven.

  Chapter 15

  "I'm not going."

  "Nell—"

  "But you don't even have a plan to..." Nell broke off, gazing at him wide-eyed from the other side of the car. "Oh, my God," she said softly. "You do have a plan to get the evidence you need against Garvin, don't you? And you weren't even going to tell me."

  It would have been easier if she'd shouted at him.

  He tried to explain. "There are some things that are better if you don't know."

  She turned to look out the window. "The things I don't know—particularly about you—could fill a book."

  "I'm sorry."

  She looked back at him. "You say that a lot."

  "I mean it a lot."

  "So this is it," she said. "You're just going to drop me off here in Coronado, at the house of somebody named Cowboy. And I'm just supposed to hide until you either come back or you don't."

  The southern-California streets were filled with lengthening shadows and heavy traffic as the sun began to set. Crash had never been to the house that his swim buddy Cowboy shared with his young wife and infant son. But he had the address and he'd checked the map back when they'd last stopped for gas. He knew exactly where he was going.

  "Silence," she said quietly. "With you, silence tends to imply an affirmative." She turned toward him then, reaching for him. "Billy, please don't shut me out now."

  He let her take his hand, lacing their fingers together. "I know you want to help me, but the best way you can help me right now is to let me make sure that you're someplace safe." He braked to a stop at a traffic light and turned to look at her. "I need to know that you're okay, so that I can do what I have to do without being distracted—without worrying whether or not you're in danger."

  "Please." Nell's husky voice broke very slightly. "Please tell me what it is that you're going to do."

  Crash lost himself for a moment in the perfect blue of Nell's eyes. The car behind him honked-the light had turned green and he hadn't even noticed. He looked back at the road as he drove, wishing he had an eternity to fall into the blue ocean of her eyes and knowing that he only had hours left. Minutes. "A guy I know, a SEAL instructor, has a cabin in the mountains, not far from here. I know he's not going to be using it—the latest class of candidates are going through Hell Week. This guy's disabled and he does almost all of his teaching in a classroom, but he's still going to be busy this week."

  "So you're going to use his cabin to wait for Garvin to contact you?"

  He glanced at her again. "Actually, I got a response from Garvin this morning. Via E-mail. He's accepted my deal."

  "My God. Isn't that the proof that you need? I mean, if he's letting himself be blackmailed..."

  Crash smiled. "Unfortunately he didn't send me back a message that said. 'Yes, I'll pay you a quarter of a million dollars to make sure that you keep silent about the fact that I not only killed Jake Robinson but also started a war in Southeast Asia.' No, I've got to go face-to-face with Garvin, try to get something he says down on tape. I need something concrete."

  "Face to...? But he's going to try to kill you! There's no way he's going to pay you all that money to be quiet when killing you guarantees your silence."

  Crash signalled to make a left turn onto the street where Cowboy lived. "I'll be ready for him. I have enough C-4 in my bag to take out the entire mountain if I have to."

  "C-4?"

  "Explosives."

  "Oh, God."

  There was a break in the oncoming traffic and Crash made the left turn into the residential neighbourhood. He swore sharply as he saw the cars idling further down the street. "Nell, kiss me, then laugh, make it big, like we're on our way to a party. No worries."

  She didn't hesitate. She slipped her arms around his neck, turning his head, forcing him to watch the road with only one eye as she kissed him full on the mouth. She tasted like coffee with sugar, like slow, delicious early-morning lovemaking, like paradise on earth. When she finally pulled back, she threw back her head and laughed—just as he'd asked. "Who's watching us?" she asked, nuzzling his neck again.

  He had to clear his throat before he could speak. That was such a good performance, she'd nearly fooled him. "I'm not sure exactly, but there's at least one car that's got to be FInCOM, one I know is NIS, and one other a little further down the road, a little harder to pick out, that I'd bet my life savings belongs to whoever's working for Garvin."

  She kissed him again, even longer this time. "Where did they come from? Are they following us?"

  "No." He glanced in the rearview mirror. None of the cars had moved. "They're all doing surveillance outside of Cowboy's house—waiting for me to show up." He swore again. "They found the one man I know I can still trust. I should've known they'd figure that out."

  "Is there some other way you can contact your friend? By phone or at work?"

  Crash shook his head. "If they're watching Cowboy's house this closely, they've surely put a tap on his phone. And they'll follow him to work. Besides, my goal was to bring you into his house, not just talk to him. But there's no way that's going to happen now."

  "So what happens now?"

  "We go to Plan B."

  "Funny, I didn't know about Plan A until minutes ago, and now we're already onto Plan B. What's Plan B?"

  He checked the rearview mirror again before he glanced at her. "I'll let you know when I figure it out."

  As Nell got an apple from the car and went back across the clearing toward the cabin, she could feel Crash's eyes on her.

  She knew what he was thinking. He was wondering what on earth he was going to do with her.

  It didn't matter how many times she protested. It didn't matter how brilliantly she argued with him. He was convinced that he needed to find some kind of haven for her, while he went one-on-one with a man they both knew had killed before to keep his secrets safe.

  She sat down next to him on the cabin's front steps. "What's that?" He'd taken several blocks of grey, putty-coloured modeling clay and several spools of wire from one of his gym bags. The clay was soft, so he was easily able to tear it into smaller chunks.

  He looked up at her. "It's C-4."

  She nearly choked on her apple. "That's an explosive? Don't you need to be really careful with it?"

  He gave her one of his rare smiles. "No. It's stable. I could hit it with a hammer if I wanted to. It's no big deal."

  She tossed what was left of her apple into the woods. "I remember watching western movies where the bank robbers all sweated bullets when they got out the nitroglycerine."

  "We've progressed a long way since those days."


  "That depends on your definition of progress." Nell looked around. "It's nice here. So peaceful and quiet. So naturally, you've decided to blow it up."

  Crash put down the chunk of C-4 he was working with and kissed her. Of all the things she'd expected him to say or do, a kiss wasn't one of them. It wasn't just a quick kiss, either. It was a very well-planned kiss, as if he'd been thinking about doing it for a good long while.

  It was more than just an I-want-your-body kiss. It was filled with a flood of emotions, most too complicated to name, and the rest too risky to acknowledge. He couldn't quite meet her eyes when he pulled away. Instead, he held her close for several long moments, lightly running his fingers through her hair.

  "I've been thinking," he finally said.

  Nell held her breath, praying that he'd finally come to the realization that what tied them together was uncontrollable and inevitable. He loved her. She knew he loved her. He wouldn't have been able to kiss her that way if he didn't.

  "At sundown we're heading back into town. There's a SEAL I know, the executive officer of Alpha Squad. His name's McCoy. He was at the hearing, and he signaled me, you know, with hand signals—asked if I was all right. He wasn't like the guys from Team Twelve, ready to help strap me in for the lethal injection without even hearing my side of the story." Crash took a deep breath. "So I'm going to tell Blue McCoy my side of the story and ask him to take care of you. I know that he might feel obligated to turn me in, but I won't give him that opportunity. And I also know if I ask him, he'll make damn sure that you stay safe."

  Nell fought her disappointment, keeping her face pressed against his shoulder, breathing in his warm, familiar scent. Those weren't the words she'd wanted to hear. In fact, they were words she hadn't wanted to hear. "Can't we stay here until the morning? Spend one more night together?"

  His arms tightened around her. "God, I wish we could." He spoke so quietly, she almost didn't hear him. "But I've already sent Garvin an encoded message, giving him these coordinates. He's up at his home in Carmel right now. By the time he breaks the code—and I know he won't be able to do that in less than six hours—by the time he gets down here, even if he takes a private plane, it'll be dawn."

  She straightened up. "Don't you think he's going to take those coordinates and send an army of Sheldon Sarkowskis here to kill you?"

  "My message was very clear. If he doesn't make an in-person appearance, I'll evade whoever he does send. I'll disappear—until I conjure myself up some night in one of the dark corners of his bedroom. And then—I told him—I'll show him how a covert-assassination op is done right.

  No one will ever know it was me—except for him. I'll make sure he knows."

  Nell shivered. "But you're only bluffing, right? I mean, you wouldn't really just kill him...would you?"

  He released her and went back to his work with the C-4 explosives. Silence. A silent affirmative. Dear God, what was he planning to do?

  "I know you believe Garvin killed Jake, but Billy, God! What if you're wrong? You'd be killing an innocent man!"

  "I'm not wrong. Garvin's credit-card records show him paying for a plane ticket to Hong Kong three days before the fighting started between Sherman and Kim. There's no record of him leaving Hong Kong during that time, but there wouldn't be. He would've paid cash and made sure that any side trips he took wouldn't show up on his passport."

  "That's all circumstantial evidence."

  He gave her a long look. "Maybe. But when you put them together with a few more facts I dug up, such as that the Hong Kong trip was a week before his wedding to Senator McBride's daughter... He didn't try to claim the trip as a business expense on his tax return, and I find it hard to believe he took a three-day vacation in the middle of the week, five days before his wedding to the daughter of the man who would secure him the Vice Presidential nomination in two years' time."

  "Yeah, okay, that looks bad, but it's not proof—"

  "I've also found out that Dexter Lancaster has been Mark Garvin's tennis partner for fifteen years."

  Nell sat back. "What?"

  Crash nodded. "I figure Garvin was being blackmailed by John Sherman for a while—probably since he won the senate seat last November. Certainly by the time he attended Jake and Daisy's wedding. My bet is that six months later, after everything hit the fan, Garvin remembered that his pal Dex couldn't take his eyes off you and—"

  "Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you think Dexter is somehow involved in Jake's murder?" Nell felt dizzy.

  "No." He shook his head. "Actually, I don't. Not knowingly, anyway. But I think if you ask Lancaster, he'll admit that Garvin was the one who urged him to call you. You'll probably also find out that it was Garvin's idea to steer you in the direction of working for Amie and the theatre. You'll also find that the theatre recently received a private donation to help defray the cost of a personal assistant for its director—Amie. If you want, I'll get my laptop and show you the records that state the name of the donor. Guess who? Mark Garvin."

  "But...why?" She didn't understand.

  "My thinking is that Garvin was well-connected enough to know that an investigation had been started. He probably knew about the deposition Kim's wife gave, found out Jake would be handling the file. The fact that he was responsible for starting a war wouldn't have gone over real well when the time came to run for Vice President. And that's not even taking into consideration whatever despicable thing he did back in 1972—whatever Sherman was blackmailing him about. He had a lot to lose."

  "Garvin was probably covering his bases by keeping track of you," he continued. "He probably suspected that you and I had something going and figured that keeping track of you could possibly be the only way he'd even remotely keep track of me."

  "He must've been disappointed."

  "He figured—correctly—that I would be his biggest threat if he had to take Jake out. One thing I'm still not sure of, though, is if he knew that I worked for Jake as part of the Grey Group. And if he did know, how did he find out?"

  "I haven't said anything to anyone, Billy. I swear it. I wouldn't do that."

  "I know you wouldn't."

  He was quiet for a moment, but then he looked up at her again. "So all that—along with his message agreeing to meet me—makes Garvin look extremely guilty. I still haven't figured out what leverage he used to make Captain Lovett and the Possum sell out. But that's something I may never know."

  "You'll definitely never know if you kill Garvin," Nell said hotly. "You'll never get his confession, either. And you may never find the proof you need to clear your name."

  He glanced up at her. "Even if I'm cleared of all charges, my good name's gone. It'll always be connected to betrayal, no matter what I do. There's always going to be this cloud of doubt hovering over me. How much did Hawken really know? Why did he let those killers into the admiral's house?" He laughed, but there was no humour in it. "Truth is, I am at least partly responsible for Jake's death."

  Nell couldn't believe what she was hearing.

  "But this is all moot," he continued. "Garvin is going to show up here at dawn. He's not going to risk having me hunt him down—particularly since I led him to believe I'd enjoy it. And on top of that," he added, "he knows that I don't have a whole hell of a lot to lose."

  He was serious. He honestly didn't believe that despite everything he'd been through, he had more to lose than most men even started with.

  "If I agree to go to this SEAL'S house," she said slowly, "What's-his-name's house—McCoy's—then you've got to promise me that you'll be careful."

  "I'll be careful," he told her. "But..."

  She looked at him in disbelief. "How can you dangle a 'but' off a promise to be careful?"

  He wasn't even remotely amused. In fact, when he looked up at her again, his eyes seemed distant, his expression detached. "Whatever happens with Garvin—whoever's left standing when the smoke clears—it will mean only one thing to you. If he's the one who's still standing, then you've
got to run and hide because you'll be next on his list. But I'm telling you right now that I'm going to do everything humanly possible to make sure that's not going to happen. By this time tomorrow, you're not going to have to worry about Garvin anymore."

  Nell stood up, wiping the seat of her pants with her hands. "Good. Then let's make a date to have dinner tomorrow night when you come back from—"

  "I won't be coming back," he said quietly.

  She stared at him. "But you said-"

  "There's no tomorrow night, Nell. Whatever happens with Garvin," he said again, "it won't change the fact that we have no future. I have no future. Even if I live, I won't come back."

  Nell was aghast. Won't, he'd said, not can't. Even if he lived, he wouldn't come back. He didn't want to come back for her. "Oh," she said, suddenly feeling very small.

  He cursed. "You only wanted one more night, remember? It was sex, Nell. It was great sex, but it wasn't anything more than that. Don't you dare turn it into something that it's not."

  She couldn't breathe. "I'm sorry," she somehow managed to say even though there wasn't any air left in her lungs. "I just..." She shook her head.

  "I thought I'd made my feelings clear," he said tightly.

  "You did," she whispered. He had. He'd been up-front and direct about the impossibility of a relationship right from the very beginning. "I guess I just let my imagination run away with me for a while."

  He didn't look up from the work he was doing, building bombs that would allegedly protect him from a man who would go to great lengths to see him dead.

  "You still have to promise that you'll be careful," she told him before she turned away.

  The colourful lights of a Christmas tree shimmered through the side window of Blue McCoy's house. It was a nice house, quietly unassuming, rather like the man himself.

  Crash had driven around the block four times but had seen no sign of surveillance vehicles. He'd finally parked on a different side street, cutting through a neighbour's yard to approach Blue's house from the back.

  Blue was at home—he could see him passing back and forth in front of the kitchen window. Cooking dinner. Crash hadn't known that Blue could cook.