Hart's Last Stand

by Cheryl Biggs

  The minute the Vette was out of sight DeBraggo pulled his car up to the bungalow and ran to the window. If she was all right he didn’t want to disturb her, but if she wasn’t…

  He saw her lying on the living room floor. His heart loped. The SOB had killed her.

  The thought no sooner flashed through DeBraggo’s mind than Suzanne stirred.

  DeBraggo nearly sagged to the ground with relief, then spun around. She was okay, but where the hell had Branson gone? Sal’s info said the man wasn’t on duty today.

  He ran to his car.

  Hart drove as if the hounds of hell were on his tail and only speed would keep them at bay. Anger hammered at his every thought, called him a fool and fed his fears.

  It was becoming too hard to believe she was guilty, to even give more than a moment’s credence to the dark suspicions and doubts.

  He’d seen innocence in her eyes, heard it in her voice, felt it while in her arms. Wouldn’t he have been able to tell, while making love to her, if it had all been nothing but a lie?

  Or was she that good an actress?

  He took a curve in the road without slowing. The car’s tires squealed and gobbled up the white line and half of the opposing lane before returning to its own.

  Hart glanced in the rearview mirror.

  Headlights shone on the road behind him.

  If it was the feds, they could eat his dust. He pressed down harder on the accelerator.

  Another curve. The headlights behind him disappeared. Hart watched and waited for them to show up in his rearview mirror again, but the road behind him remained dark.

  He pulled the Vette into the garage of his apartment. Even if she was innocent—his heart screamed that she was—there was no future for them together. No happily ever after. She had her life in L.A. now. He had his with the army.

  Realizing where his thoughts had gone, Hart nearly scoffed aloud, disgusted with himself. What in blazes was he thinking? That they’d be together forever? That Suzanne loved him? That he loved her?

  He felt the familiar aloneness of his life suddenly envelop him, like a suffocating mantle, momentarily robbing him of even the will to live. He would remember this night, the hours spent in her arms making love to her, for the rest of his life. It would haunt him when he ached to hold her again, yearned to taste her kisses and feel her body pressed to his.

  But all he would have, instead, was the loneliness of longing.

  Shaking off his dark thoughts, Hart decided to take a quick shower and get to the base. If Roubechard or Lewis hadn’t managed to get a copy of Rick’s autopsy report yet, then Hart would call the senator back.

  Don’t call me unless it’s a matter of life or death. The senator’s words echoed through his mind.

  Well, as far as he was concerned, this was a matter of life or death—his.

  Chapter 12

  Suzanne felt the bright rays of the morning sun streaming in through the patio doors kiss her skin. She stirred and reached out for Hart.

  Her hands found nothing but emptiness.

  She opened her eyes, expecting to see him lying just out of her reach, and found she was alone.

  Her body tingled at the memory of their lovemaking, then began to ache with the need of his touch. She ran a hand over the empty space of rug beside her and remembered him lying there, holding her, kissing her, loving her.

  “Hart?” The sound of her voice hung on the still air of the small house.

  He didn’t answer.

  He’d left. She felt a sense of desertion. He’d left without even saying goodbye. She sat up and looked around, making certain he was actually gone from the bungalow and not just from her side.

  Silence filled the air.

  She drew her knees up, hugged them to her and remembered the way his hands had moved over her body, caresses that were so gentle, so tantalizing, so teasing, they’d drawn a passion from her deeper than anything she’d ever felt. His lips seemed still imprinted on her own.

  It wasn’t until after she’d showered and dressed that she glanced at the phone and noticed its message light blinking. She smiled. He’d called. She pressed the playback button.

  Molly—not Hart’s—voice filled the silence.

  “Suz, it’s me, Molly. I need to talk to you, but I can’t right now. I’ll try to call you again later, but for God’s sake, whatever you do in the meantime, keep your nose out of things.”

  The line went dead.

  Suzanne stared at the machine, her heart racing almost as fast as the tape she heard rewinding. Keep her nose out of things? That sounded like a warning. Molly had sounded frightened. As if she were making the call while afraid someone was listening or coming after her.

  The thought scared Suzanne half to death. She picked up the phone and hurriedly dialed her cousin’s home number. The phone rang, one, two, three, four, five times. “Answer,” Suzanne ordered, tapping her fingers impatiently on the wall.

  But Molly didn’t answer. Neither did her machine.

  Suzanne slammed the receiver down, then as quickly snapped it up again and dialed the number for Molly’s office.

  A man answered. “I’m sorry, but Miss Shipwell has been transferred and is unavailable for calls at the present time.”

  “What do you mean, unavailable?” Suzanne demanded, unnerved. “And transferred where?”

  “I’m sorry, but I am not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  Before she could ask any more questions, he hung up.

  Her fear turned to panic. Had Molly found out something she wasn’t supposed to? Suzanne stared at nothing as her mind spun with unanswered questions and possibilities she didn’t want to consider.

  She had to talk to Hart. The thought came to her like a lightning bolt cutting through the sky, swift and sure. He’d held her in his arms, kissed her, made love to her. It didn’t matter that he’d left without saying anything. He’d probably had duty or a mission or something and just hadn’t wanted to wake her.

  He’d made love to her—he wasn’t the one she had to fear—and if anything had happened to Molly… She couldn’t even finish the thought for the anguish it gave her.

  “There’s not a blemish on the man’s record,” Lewis said, “unless you call having a wealthy older sister in a Florida retirement home a blemish.”

  “A wealthy sister,” Hart echoed. “Where’d she get her money?” He heard the shuffling of paper as Major Lewis flipped through Chief Carger’s personnel file.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s family money.”

  “Then why doesn’t the chief have any of it?” Hart asked.

  Lewis sighed. “Captain, have you given any thought to the possibility that maybe you’re climbing the wrong tree here?”

  Hart’s hand tightened involuntarily around the phone receiver. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. Carger tried to warn Suzanne Cassidy away from me.” He remembered the sensation of a knife piercing his gut when she’d said that, and felt it again now just remembering. He’d always liked the chief. Chalk up another betrayal. “And I don’t think it was because he was jealous.”

  “Maybe his fatherly instincts kicked in,” Lewis suggested.

  “Yeah, and maybe my halo’s on a little crooked,” Hart snapped, momentarily losing the grip he had on his temper.

  Suzanne’s cell phone rang. She tried to dig it out of her purse as she took a corner at thirty-five miles per hour and almost slammed into another car. Shaking, she pulled to the curb and stopped.

  “Hello?” she said, flipping open the phone.

  “Suz, it’s Molly.”

  “Thank God,” Suzanne said, sagging in her seat with relief.

  “Listen, I don’t have much time,” Molly said. “I’m on a pay phone several blocks from my new office. They transferred me.”

  “I know. I called. But where are you? And why? Was it my fault?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Suz. Don’t worry about it. I’ll get my old job back. If I don’t, there are pro
bably a few hundred better ones out there. Anyway, listen, what matters right now is that someone knows I was in the corps’s classified files and doesn’t like it.”

  Every nerve in Suzanne’s body stood on end as apprehension rushed through her.

  “I checked those records you wanted me to look at.”

  “And?” Suzanne said faintly, feeling almost too weak to talk.

  “Well, I didn’t find anything derogatory on Lane Banner, Zack Morrow or Rand Towler.”

  Suzanne’s nerves frayed further at the names Molly had left out.

  “Chief Carger is clean as a whistle—he’s never even gotten so much as a parking ticket. Brenner Trent was at Fort Monmouth, like you said, but he didn’t pass the Military Intelligence training course. He got booted out.”

  Trent didn’t matter. He was dead.

  “And Hart Branson?” Suzanne asked, feeling anticipation and dread squeeze her heart.

  “Nothing. Well, no, that’s not true. I don’t mean ‘nothing’ like there’s nothing there, but ‘nothing’ like I couldn’t pull up anything other than a simple personnel file on him, and that was pretty skimpy. Everything else is classified, like double-0-seven, James Bond kind of classified, as in ‘need to know only.”’

  Suzanne felt her world tilt further out of her control.

  Rick had once told her about a man he’d met who was classified “need to know only.” He’d been a government assassin. Her pulses raced.

  “I did come across something interesting about Rick, though,” Molly went on, jarring Suzanne from her dark thoughts and fearful suspicions.

  “About Rick?” she echoed, stupefied.

  “Why didn’t you mention he’d attended Monmouth, too? I mean, I could have saved myself a lot of time going through records, Suz, if you’d just told me that in the first place.”

  “Rick didn’t go to Monmouth,” Suzanne said.

  Molly’s laugh was tinged with sarcasm. “Yeah? Well, I beg to differ. Evidently your husband didn’t tell you everything, Suz, because his record at State says he definitely did do Military Intelligence training. Uh…”

  Suzanne heard the shuffling of paper.

  “Here it is,” Molly said. “I wrote some of this stuff down. He went to Monmouth three summers ago. Shortly after you two got married.”

  Memories swept through Suzanne. They had been married only two weeks when Rick came home one night and said he had to leave the next morning for a six-week training mission. She’d been disappointed and desperately lonely while he’d been gone and had written to him every day, even though he couldn’t receive mail.

  She’d given him all her letters upon his return, and he’d laughed.

  “Not only that,” Molly went on, pulling Suzanne from her memories, “but he completed several top-secret assignments before his death, and most of them weren’t with the Cobra Corps.”

  Could it have been the times he’d said he was taking special-training classes? She tried to think of other times he’d been away from home but not on a mission. Once he’d gone to Washington, but that had been to attend his cousin’s wedding. Suzanne hadn’t been able to leave work.

  Fear rippled through Suzanne like water rippling through rocks strewn across a mountain brook, cold and penetrating. Why had Rick lied to her? How could he have been involved in top-secret assignments without his commanding officers at the corps knowing? Without Hart knowing? Without his own wife knowing?

  But maybe Hart had known. Maybe everyone had known but her.

  “Molly, I have to go,” she said quickly, panic threatening to engulf her. Was Hart MI, too? She remembered the chief telling her that Hart “disappeared” sometimes.

  His clearance is Cosmic.

  “Thanks for your help, Molly. I’ll call you later. At home.”

  I was the only one who saw Rick die because we’d split into pairs to attack the enemy from different sides, and Rick was my partner.

  How much of what Hart had said could she believe?

  “No,” Molly said hurriedly, “don’t call me. I think my phone’s bugged. I’ll call you.”

  “Oh, God,” Suzanne said, and slapped the cell phone closed.

  Run, the voice of fear inside her urged. Run, now!

  She fought to ignore it. She had to. If she ran from the truth now, she’d never be able to stop. Anyway, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide where federal agents intent on getting to her couldn’t find her. Hart was her only chance, the only one she could confront with her suspicions and fears, the only one she could demand answers from about her own husband, his past and what Hart knew that he hadn’t told her.

  If he isn’t the guilty one, that same voice of fear whispered tauntingly.

  She called the base, but an aide, not Roubechard, refused to tell her where Hart was, stating only that he wasn’t in his office. “Would you like to leave a message?” he asked.

  She struggled against the panic that tempted her to scream at him. “Tell him to call Suzanne.” She gave the aide her cell-phone number and hung up, then dialed the number for Hart’s apartment. His answering machine clicked on after the fourth ring.

  Her panic heightened, even though she didn’t know what she was panicking about.

  Her hands trembled.

  “Hart, I need to talk to you. I found out—”

  The machine cut the connection.

  “Blast it all.” She redialed the number.

  The machine cut the connection again, this time before she could say a word.

  Uneasiness niggled at the back of her neck. She put the cell phone down, pulled her car back onto the road and drove directly to his apartment, ignoring the speed limit and thanking the Three Hills police and Arizona state troopers for being busy elsewhere.

  She was probably panicking for nothing. He’d most likely just taken the day off. Or maybe he was out on a training exercise. His regular aide hadn’t been there. Maybe the one who had been was more of a name-and-serial-number type. Tell no one anything.

  What if he’d “disappeared”?

  Longing, fear and the prospect of a thousand empty days without him ahead of her sent a chill racing up her spine.

  She decided to call the base again. Maybe Roubechard would answer this time.

  “Captain Branson’s office.”

  “Private Roubechard?”

  “Yes.”

  Suzanne thanked whatever lucky stars had answered her prayers. “This is Suzanne Cassidy. Is the captain in?”

  “Yes, ma’am, just arrived. Can you hold a moment, please?”

  Hart answered on the first ring. “Suzanne, what is it?” he demanded. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Yes,” she said, suddenly wondering again if he was the one behind what was wrong. She tried to push the suspicion from her mind. “We have to talk.”

  He heard the catch in her voice, the thread of fear and uncertainty. Or was it nervousness? His caution returned. “I was just about to drive over to my place. I left some papers there that I need.”

  “I’m not far from your apartment,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  A few minutes later, Suzanne pulled her car up in front of the sprawling adobe apartment complex. It had been built sometime in the thirties as a residential hotel and playground for Hollywood’s rich and famous who’d wanted a little desert sun and a lot of privacy and luxury.

  The garage door to Hart’s unit was closed, so she couldn’t tell if his car was there or not.

  She walked past the carefully manicured gardens and heart-shaped swimming pool, the surface of its water glistening brightly beneath the late-morning sun.

  She remembered a long ago afternoon. Hart had invited her and Rick, the Trents and several others over. They laughed and talked, swam and barbecued beside the pool. She shrugged away the memory.

  His front door was set within a small, Spanish-style, arched portico that afforded it plenty of shade from the sun. Only a few feet from the stoop, she paused, startled to see the
door ajar.

  A dozen reasons it would be open zipped through her mind, including that he was inside and had left the door open for her. But neither that, nor any of the other reasons she thought of were acceptable. Hart Branson was a man who kept his office locked. He wasn’t the type to leave the front door of his home standing open for all the world to enter—for any reason.

  She took a cautious step forward. “Hart?” A million dark thoughts rushed through her mind. She lay a hand on the old brass doorknob and leaned past the door, trying to see inside. The blinds were closed and the room was murky with shadows, except for the rectangle of sunlight that streamed onto the beige carpet through the open door. “Hart?” she called again.

  Silence was her only answer.

  She suddenly noticed a lamp lying on the floor, its shade half-crushed. Nearby several books had been swept from a bookcase to the floor. Fear seized her in its claws, sending a shower of goose bumps over her flesh and leaving her trembling with visions of possibilities she didn’t want to imagine, but did.

  He could be hurt. Maybe he’d fallen and hit his head. Maybe someone… The thought propelled her into the apartment. She peered into the kitchen, then hurried toward the bedroom. “Hart?”

  She sensed movement behind her and started to turn.

  Something hard slammed against the side of her head. Stars and brightness instantly filled her mind, and weakness seized her legs. Then darkness swept over her, and she fell to the floor.

  The five-car pileup on the highway leading out of town, and to Hart’s apartment, had delayed him by almost an hour.

  He looked for her car in the visitors’ area when he pulled in, but didn’t see it.

  Most likely she’d gotten tired of waiting for him and thought he’d stood her up. Maybe she’d driven out to the base. He walked to his apartment and as he approached noticed that the blinds on his front window were closed. He always left them partially open.

  Most likely he’d forgotten. He slipped his key into the doorknob and found it wasn’t locked. That was something he hadn’t forgotten. He instantly tensed and wished the small gun lying in the drawer of his nightstand was in his hand, instead. Hart pushed the door open with his foot, but remained on the stoop, listening.