Night Watch

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Wes’s call-waiting beeped and he glanced at his cell phone. “I’ve got a call coming in,” he told Bobby. “It’s Brittany. I’ll get back to you ASAP.”

  He clicked over. “Hello?”

  “Yes, hi, Wes? It’s Brittany.”

  Crap, she still sounded like someone had a gun pointed at her head.

  “You okay?” he asked. It was a stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay.

  “I’m fine,” she said though, obviously trying to make the conversation sound normal from the stalker’s perspective. “How are you?”

  “I’ve just about gone completely crazy, worrying about you, baby,” he said. “And I think I must be blessed, because I haven’t been stopped by the highway patrol, and I’m going faster than I’ve ever gone on this road. I’m still about seven minutes from your exit. I’ve tried calling 9-1-1 a couple of times, but I’m not getting through. I turned on the radio, and apparently there’s trouble, some kind of demonstration gone out of control, happening downtown. They’ve got the riot squads out and everything. But that’s okay, I’ll be at your place soon.”

  “No,” she said hotly, but then broke off.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’m not going to come charging in there like some kind of hotshot wild man. I’ve got backup. Bobby and some of the guys from Alpha Squad are meeting me just a few blocks from your apartment. This is one guy with one gun, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But Wesley—”

  “No one’s going to get hurt,” he told her. “I promise.”

  “I miss you,” she said in a very small voice.

  Was that something she’d been told to say, or the truth? Damn, hearing her say that made his chest feel tight.

  “Will you come up to L.A.?” she asked because, obviously, that was what the stalker wanted her to ask. Wasn’t that interesting? “Today? Please?”

  “We’re going to do surveillance before we come in,” he told her. “You’re not going to hear us, we’re just going to be there in about fifteen minutes. As soon as you hear anything at all, any noise of our entry, drop to the ground, okay? Or better yet… I know—in fifteen minutes exactly, tell him you have to go to the bathroom. Get inside and lock the door and stay there. Get into the tub, babe. Lie down in it, okay? I know it sounds stupid as hell, but it’ll give you some protection if he starts shooting.”

  “Do you think you can get here tonight?” she asked, for the gunman’s benefit. “By six?”

  “Good,” he said. “Let him think it’s going to be hours before I can get there. That’s smart.”

  “Be careful driving,” she said.

  “You be careful, too.”

  “I’ll see you at six, then.”

  “You’ll see me soon, Britt. Remember, in fifteen minutes, go into the bathroom. And don’t come out until I tell you to, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Goodbye, Wes.”

  The connection was cut.

  Jesus, that was a final sounding goodbye. What did she know that she wasn’t able to tell him?

  Wes drove even faster.

  FOURTEEN MINUTES.

  Wes was going to be here in fourteen minutes now.

  But, God, from the look in Crazy Man’s eyes, Brittany was going to be dead in about two.

  “He’ll be here at six o’clock,” she told him as he put the telephone back into its cradle, and then started opening the kitchen drawers, looking for—of course—the knife drawer.

  He found it and took out her turkey carving knife, setting it on the counter next to the sink.

  “Whoa,” she said. “That’s a big knife. Careful you don’t cut yourself, there.”

  “I’ve never had to cut off someone’s head before,” he told her, turning to look at her with those scary, crazy eyes.

  “Had to?” she said. “I don’t think that’s something that anyone ever really has to do.”

  “But it’s what happens next,” he informed her.

  My God, was he following some kind of sick script? This was like something out of a bad horror movie with the blood in her bedroom and… So okay, okay. Get him talking. Thirteen and a half minutes. She could do this.

  “So… I come home and find all that blood on my sheets,” she said. “What happens next?”

  “Your lover comes home and finds you,” he told her. “Dead.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said faintly. But it wasn’t anything she hadn’t expected. “How, exactly, was I killed?”

  This was, without a doubt, the weirdest conversation of her life.

  But this man, this crazy-assed sicko, was some mother’s son. Someone loved him, despite his mental illness. Somewhere inside of him was a human soul. Maybe if they talked long enough, she could connect with him.

  “You’ve been shot in the neck,” he reported, “and your head’s in the kitchen sink.”

  Oh, dear God. “That’s not very nice,” she said.

  “What you did wasn’t very nice, either,” he countered angrily. “Stealing Amber’s boyfriend and breaking Amber’s heart. She cried and cried.”

  “Was Amber in this movie?” she asked. This terrible scenario had to be out of a movie. She’d read—somewhere—that Amber had made several truly awful B pictures before hitting it big with her TV series. This had to be one of them.

  “Til Death Do Us Part,” he said. “It was great. Amber’s boyfriend runs off with this other woman, and she cries and cries, because she doesn’t know she’s got a secret admirer, who punishes them—and everyone else who ever makes her cry.”

  “What happens to Amber’s boyfriend?” Britt asked. She had to keep him talking. Eleven minutes now before Wes got here.

  “He’s shot,” Crazy told her. “Right in the heart. And Amber marries her secret admirer and they live happily ever after.”

  Oh God. Was that really what he thought was going to happen? “There was no police investigation?” she asked. “He wasn’t arrested for murder?”

  He looked at her blankly. “Why would he be? No one knew that he knew them.”

  “What about his fingerprints,” she said, “all over the apartment?”

  He frowned. “That wasn’t in the movie.”

  “That’s what makes it a movie, and not real life. In real life, the police find fingerprints. You don’t really want to do this, do you?”

  He picked up his gun. “I don’t have time to waste. I don’t know how long this is going to take.”

  Ten minutes. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Brittany said quickly. It was too early, but God, it was worth a try.

  “You won’t have to in a minute,” he said, and aimed his gun at her.

  WES CALLED BOBBY FROM the park near Britt’s apartment.

  “I’m here,” he said, as he opened the trunk of his car and put on his vest. “Where are you guys?”

  “We’re right on schedule,” Bobby said. “Five minutes from you.”

  “I can’t wait,” Wes said. “I’m going up to her apartment, take a look around.”

  The sound of a gunshot rang out, loud as hell in this quiet residential neighborhood, followed by another and another.

  Wes swore, and ran for Brittany’s.

  BRITTANY SLAMMED AND LOCKED the bathroom door behind her.

  Thank you God for the quality construction of the 1890s, because the solid wood door didn’t even quiver upon impact.

  Thank you, too, for keeping Crazy away from the local firing ranges, where he might’ve actually learned to aim that gun, had he bothered to take a lesson or two.

  Of course, a person’s neck was a pretty small target. Shooting someone in the heart would be a whole heck of a lot easier to do.

  Out in the hall, Crazy threw himself at the door again. “Open up!”

  Yeah, right, just open the door and let him shoot her in the neck and… God!

  The bathroom window was painted shut. It was too small for Brittany to squeeze out of even if it could be opened, but she didn’t care. She had to break it,
so she could warn Wes.

  He was going to be here any minute, and Amber’s psycho stalker was going to try to shoot him in the heart.

  She was not—was not—going to let that happen.

  Sobbing, she grabbed the lid off the toilet tank and swung it with all her strength at the window.

  It hit with a dull sounding thud and bounced back, hitting her broken wrist.

  WES MADE HIMSELF slow down. If he just went charging in through the front door, the man with the gun would have a definite advantage.

  He needed to take just a few moments and do this right.

  He had to climb up to the second floor and look in through the windows.

  Find out where the gunman was, find out where Britt was.

  Please, God, let her still be alive.

  PAIN.

  Brittany’s world had tunneled down to pain. Pain and bitter disappointment.

  Her wrist hurt so much she was retching, but the disappointment managed to cut through.

  Plexiglas.

  Of course.

  Andy had told her that their landlord had replaced the broken bathroom window with unbreakable Plexiglas.

  She wouldn’t be able to break it, and she couldn’t get it open.

  She had no way to warn Wes.

  WES CLIMBED AS SWIFTLY as he could, wishing with all his heart that he was armed with something other than a diving knife.

  He could hear the helicopter carrying the SEALs making its approach to the field. He heard the sound of distant sirens, too. Someone had heard the gunshots and had had better luck calling 9-1-1 than he’d had.

  The blinds were mostly shut in Britt’s room. That was good. They would do a good job concealing him from view while making it possible for him to look into the room between the slats and—

  Jesus!

  He nearly lost his handholds on the side of the house, and he had to force himself to look again.

  It was a bloodbath in there. He was too late. Brittany was dead. She had to be.

  No one could bleed that much and still be alive.

  Even as part of Wes died, the rest of him clicked into combat mode. Brittany’s murderer was there, in the room, by the bathroom door.

  The bastard was going to die.

  Wes drew his knife and, grabbing hold of the edge of the roof above him, he swung himself up and out and went through the window, feetfirst.

  BROKEN WRIST OR NOT, Brittany was ready.

  She heard the crash of broken glass, and yanked the bathroom door open.

  Just as she’d expected, Crazy’s back was to her, and she slammed the toilet tank lid hard onto him. It only grazed his head, but it hit his shoulder, knocking him forward and down.

  It wasn’t enough to keep him from firing two shots.

  They were deafeningly loud, two sharp explosions propelling two deadly bullets that hit Wes square in the chest, driving him back, pushing him onto the ground.

  But like some kind of superhuman machine, he was back on his feet in less than a heartbeat, coming at Crazy with a savage look in his eyes.

  BRITTANY.

  She was standing there, alive and whole, next to the gunman, without any gaping wounds.

  Wes’s chest had to hurt like hell, but he didn’t care about that. He felt nothing but euphoria.

  He knew what Lazarus’s mother had experienced on the day her son returned from the dead.

  “Get down!” he tried to shout as he kicked the handgun from the son of a bitch’s hand, but it only came out a whisper.

  Of course, Britt didn’t move to safety. She raised what looked to be the lid of a toilet tank over her head, and knocked the gunman unconscious with one beautiful shot.

  Wes dropped to his knees, and fell forward onto his hands.

  “Get the gun,” he tried to tell Britt, but again she didn’t listen.

  She helped him lie back. God, it was hard to breathe. And the pain…

  Now he felt it.

  It was okay that she didn’t go after the gun, because Bobby and the other guys were there, making sure the gunman wasn’t going to hurt anyone else today.

  “Man, what a stench,” Rio Rosetti said.

  “Don’t die,” Britt ordered him as she tried to unfasten his vest. “Don’t you dare die!”

  He wasn’t going to die. He tried to tell her that, but he couldn’t suck enough air into his lungs to make any kind of recognizable sound.

  Bobby leaned over him, putting his fingers into the two holes the bullets had made in his vest. “Ouch,” he said. “That’s gotta hurt.”

  “God, Skelly,” Lucky O’Donlon complained. “Why ask for support only to go through the window before we even get here?”

  “Yeah, but look at what he saw,” Bobby pointed out. “If this had been Colleen’s apartment, and I was out there, looking in at that bed, I’d’ve gone through the window, too.”

  “Isn’t somebody going to call an ambulance?” Brittany demanded.

  SHE COULDN'T BELIEVE IT.

  Everyone was standing around, chatting, while Wes was bleeding to death.

  With one hand that wasn’t working right, Brittany couldn’t get his vest unfastened, she couldn’t even tell how badly he was wounded underneath the cumbersome thing.

  “He’s wearing a vest,” Rio, one of the newest members of the team, informed her.

  “I can see he’s wearing a vest,” Brittany said. “Can someone help me get it off of him?”

  “Bulletproof vest,” Bobby explained, and her heart started beating again.

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “But look where he got hit.” Bobby pointed to the two holes. “Possible broken rib, probable broken collarbone. Man, that’s got to hurt.”

  “I’m okay,” Wes whispered. He reached up to touch Britt’s cheek. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time I felt better.”

  “Police are here,” Rio announced.

  And indeed they were. Paramedics had arrived, too, and they swarmed around Wes, taking his blood pressure and listening to his lungs.

  A broken rib could puncture a lung, but his were okay. He’d just had the wind knocked out of him in a very major way.

  A temporary splint was put on Britt’s wrist, and the Crazy Guy was treated, too. He was carried out on a stretcher as Brittany gave a statement to the police detectives.

  It was over—but now her apartment was a crime scene. A messy, foul-smelling crime scene.

  Brittany was allowed back inside to pack a bag so she could stay at a hotel until the police photographers had finished taking pictures of her bedroom. Until she got that mess cleaned up.

  She gathered up all of Wes’s things, too, stuffing them into his duffel and awkwardly carrying it outside, both bags in her good hand.

  WES SAT ON THE STEPS leading up to Brittany’s apartment, with both his side and shoulder on fire. The paramedics had tried to take him to the hospital for X-rays, but there was no screaming rush. His collarbone was definitely broken—he knew because he’d broken it before—and there was really nothing they could do for him. It wasn’t the kind of break that got put into a cast.

  It just hurt like hell for a few weeks. And then it hurt like heck for a few weeks more.

  He needed to get the X-ray, but he wasn’t going to the hospital without Brittany.

  She came down the stairs and…

  “What happened to your wrist?” he asked.

  “He hit me and I fell on it the wrong way.”

  Goddamn it. “I should have killed him when I had the chance. I heard most of your statement to the police. Brittany, God, this is all my fault. If I hadn’t come to L.A.—”

  She wasn’t going to let him take the blame. “Then maybe he would’ve gone after Amber. Or others of her friends who wouldn’t have been able to keep him from hurting them.”

  “He hurt you badly enough.” Just the thought of him hitting her was enough to make Wes feel faint. He didn’t want to think about all that Amber’s stalker—his name, apparently,
was John Cagle—had had in mind for Brittany.

  She looked down at the splint on her wrist. “Believe me, it could have been worse.”

  “I know. Britt, I really am sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” She set something down next to him, and he realized that it was his bag. She’d packed his stuff, just as she’d told him she would in that message she’d left on his voice mail.

  What if she had been serious? Jesus, was this really it?

  “I’m sorry I had to drag you away from one crisis to a completely different crisis,” she said. “How’s Lana doing?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t stay at her place too long. Ronnie Catalanotto and Amber were going to stay with her while she tried to get some sleep.”

  “Oh,” Brittany said.

  What the hell did that oh mean?

  “Britt, do you like me?” he asked.

  She didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

  He laughed because her response was so typical Brittany, so definite with a hint of challenge to it. Of course she liked him. Why wouldn’t she like him? But laughing made his side and shoulder hurt like hell, so he swore. “Sorry.”

  “That must really hurt,” she said, now all sympathy and warm concern.

  And Wes couldn’t take it a second longer. “Will you marry me?” he asked.

  Well, okay, he’d surprised the hell out of her.

  “Please?” he added. Although it was a little late to try to win points for being polite.

  She sat down on the steps, next to him. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I am. Very.”

  “You did get my message, right?” she asked, looking at him searchingly. “About me not being pregnant?”

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t want to marry you because I think you’re pregnant. Although that would be okay with me, too, you know. It’s not about that, though. I want to marry you because, well…” Just say it. “Because I’m in love with you.”

  She made a sound that was half-exhale, half-laughter. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? He didn’t know. All he could do was try to explain the way he felt when he was with her.