Dark of Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  They had only five Troubleshooters—Alyssa, Sam, Decker, Lindsey, and Tess. FBI agent Jules Cassidy—and Lopez—brought their total up to seven.

  Two other FBI agents had been working—off record—for Jules, but they were guarding Karen Michaelson, who'd provided the key information as to Dave's whereabouts. They couldn't let her go, or even bring her to the local FBI office—not without the risk that the Agency would get wind of their discovery.

  They still didn't know if Agency head Doug Brendon was directly involved, or if Stafford's access to Agency information was something he'd set up, illegally, via their computer system before he'd left.

  Whatever the case, it left the TS team completely unable to tap any law enforcement—the FBI or even local police—for additional assistance.

  They had to rely on their own limited ranks. And hope that other TS team members, such as Jones, whose plane had yet to land due to morning fog, would eventually arrive, like the cavalry to the rescue.

  “Who's staying behind with the civilians?” Lindsey asked. The civilians being the non-operatives, as in Tracy, Jo, and Sophia.

  “Oh, no.” Sophia was quiet but certain. “I'm going.”

  Alyssa opened her mouth to argue, which was when Deck stepped in.

  “Let's take a surveillance van,” he suggested. Their vans had heavy-duty armor. Anyone inside would be safe. “That way no one has to stay behind to stand guard. We've got limited manpower as it is, and we have no idea what kind of army Stafford employs.”

  Tess chimed in. “I don't think he's got an army. I think he's working with a small, tight group. Five, six … I've got seven possibles—former Agency operatives who have dropped off the map. Michaelson, by the way, previously worked out of the Agency office in Malaysia. My best guess is that he met Stafford through his connection to Hersek Khosa—the fifteen-million-dollar man.” She reeled in her tendency to distribute unnecessary information. “My point about this is that you can't be invisible, the way Stafford's been for so many years, if you've got a huge army.” Then she immediately countered herself. “But if we get there, and find out I'm wrong … ?”

  “We're also not talking about leaving just one operative behind,” Decker reminded Alyssa and Jules both. “And frankly? Even if we leave two guards back here, I'm not going to be comfortable with that. Yeah, we did it earlier with Lopez and Lindsey. But we've been here for hours now and—”

  “Excuse me.” Tracy spoke up, ready as usual to argue and even interrupt. “But I don't think you should be worrying about unlikely scenarios. Take Sophia. I'll stay here with Jo. We'll lock the doors—”

  “No.” Decker wasn't going to let that happen. “Stafford knows that we're here. It would piss me off royally if we got Dave back—only to lose Tracy or Dr. Heissman. And I do mean lose. And I don't believe it's an unlikely scenario. This is the man who blew up the Seaside Heights motel.”

  With that, Tracy turned to tell Alyssa, “I agree with Deck—we definitely should come with, in one of the vans.”

  Alyssa looked at Tess. “How do we move one of the surveillance vans without broadcasting that fact to Stafford?”

  The vans were parked down at the back entrance to the building, where one of the pirated cameras was located.

  Tess didn't look happy. “It'll take me, wow, at least forty minutes to find the footage I need to override that camera's signal.”

  The plan, as it currently stood, was to leave all of their cars in the front lot, in case one of Stafford's gang did drive-by surveillance.

  And as far as electronic surveillance via the pirated signal from the Troubleshooters security cameras, Tess had already used the magic of digital video editing to superimpose footage she'd found in their security archives of the sun rising—and the morning sunlight growing stronger as the fog dissipated—on the completely empty Troubleshooters parking lot, which included a clear shot of the building's main entrance. She'd glued that footage over a Photoshopped-to-include-daylight digital image of all of their vehicles, just sitting there. Stafford and his cohorts would see that and—hopefully—assume they were all still here, scrambling to figure out who'd taken Dave.

  Meanwhile, as the camera sent that false information, the Trouble -shooters team would gear up and exit the building—as covertly as possible. They'd also be able to get back inside—undetected—if they needed to.

  The plan was to move to the street, where they'd be met by Commander Koehl, who'd engineered the delivery of a passenger van from the base. He'd have his SUV, too.

  “So we put the civilians in Koehl's SUV,” Sam suggested. “With luck, it has tinted glass. It's not optimal—”

  “I don't like it.” Alyssa turned to Tess. “Forty minutes?”

  Tess stood up. “It's the sunrise that's killing us. If it were midnight, I'd be set. But the sun's going to come up, and I've got to find footage that fits. A quiet, foggy morning, where all of the vans are in position right where they're currently parked, with no movement in or out of that back door. It's going to take me—”

  “Send Lopez out for coffee,” Tracy spoke up again. She turned to the SEAL. “You can walk out the back door—let them see you go, let them watch you get into the van and drive away. The convenience store on the corner is open twenty-four hours; it's where I go when the Starbucks is closed. It'll take you three minutes to get there and back. You don't even need to get coffee—just grab the paper trays and cups and lids. Tell Ronnie, the guy who works the late shift, that you're a friend of mine and that I'll be by later to explain. Then, when you come back here, you can park on the street, out of range of the cameras. Stafford might wonder what you did with the van, but I'd bet his gang's more concerned with knowing where you are. And they'll see you come back in, carrying coffee. One man leaves, one man comes back.”

  And they'd have access to that van. Decker nodded. “It's worth the gamble that Stafford doesn't have the manpower to come out to investigate.”

  “I agree,” Jules said. He'd been quiet up to this point. “Way to rock it, Tracy.”

  Decker nodded to her, too. “Good idea.”

  Her smile was beautiful, and as she met Decker's eyes, there it was again. That spark, that warmth, that sense of faith that they were going to get Dave back, and then all would be right with the world.

  Alyssa nodded at Lopez. “Three minutes. Go.”

  Lindsey went, too, to secure the door behind him.

  “I want body armor on everyone,” Alyssa announced. “And I mean everyone. Let's do it. Someone grab gear for Lopez.”

  “Make sure your radio headset works,” Tess chimed in as they headed for the equipment locker, adding, “Double-check it, people.”

  Alyssa shouted out assignments. “Lindsey and Tess with Tracy and Jo; Deck, you've got Sophia. Get 'em into the van as quickly as possible. Lind-sey, I want you driving, Tess shotgun. Deck, catch up to Sam—I want you riding with him.”

  Decker could see, over in the corner, that Lindsey was helping Tracy put on a bulletproof vest. As if feeling his eyes on her, Tracy looked up.

  Stay in the van, he told her, speaking clearly so that she could read his lips across the noisy room.

  She pretended not to understand, giving him a big questioning face and mouthing, What?

  He shook his head at her. She knew exactly what he'd said.

  Tracy smiled at him. And her certainty, her total conviction that they were going to get Dave and bring him home, lit her from within and made her shine. But that wasn't all she brought to the table. She had a resilience, a strength that he more than admired.

  She wasn't afraid of him. And if things went south, if they didn't get Dave back, if the day didn't end as it should, Decker knew that Tracy would, without a doubt, wrestle him to the ground and make him process it, and deal with it, and yeah, even cry about it, if he had to. Just as she'd promised she would.

  And what he did next was really just a test, to see if she really couldn't understand him. It was done on pure impulse. The
words weren't even voiced. He just moved his lips very slightly.

  I love you.

  Decker wanted to turn away after he said it, because she froze, her eyes huge and almost frightened in her face. And in that moment, he was afraid, too—that maybe she would run from him, screaming. God knows he would run from himself if he could. But he wasn't a coward, so he made himself stand there and wait for her to respond.

  His gift was the sweetest smile he'd ever seen in his entire life. But it was uncertain, as if she didn't quite believe what she'd seen. And she said, again, What?

  So he said it again—the thing that was most important for her to understand: Stay in the van.

  This time she nodded. I will.

  Jules tapped Deck's arm as he went past, startling him. “We're going to need you here, fully focused, Chief,” the FBI agent said. “Is Lopez back? Because we're going to need medical supplies. I want to bring whatever we need to start IV antibiotics on Dave right away—even before an ambulance arrives.”

  Deck knew that they couldn't have an ambulance waiting. Calling one in advance could well tip Stafford off.

  “Oh, and someone grab Tracy's laptop,” Jules added, “in case Stafford decides that now's the time he wants to contact us.”

  Dave inched his way across the cold concrete of the basement floor, exploring the limited area that he could reach, picking out names for the baby.

  Be quiet…. Be quiet. …

  He liked Marianne. Marianne Malkoff It sounded like the name of a woman who could become President someday. Of course, he had no idea if the baby truly was a girl. She could be a boy. In which case Marianne wouldn't work as well.

  Be quiet. …

  He didn't want to do that Dave Junior thing. He knew kids, growing up, who were saddled with their fathers’ names, and it had never seemed quite fair. More than half the time they went running to their mother, only to find out that she was calling their dad instead.

  Of course, if their dad were dead? Then it could work.

  Dave heard footsteps overhead, and he rolled back to the center of the floor where they'd left him. He closed his eyes, willing himself unconscious.

  But it was not to be.

  A bucket of water in his face—a refreshing change from having it jammed down his throat—made him gasp and cough.

  When he let the water drip from his hair and face, and he opened his eyes, there were still only four of them. And he wished that they hadn't taken his cell phone out of his pocket, so that he could call Decker and say, You know how I'm always bitching about all you SEALs and former SEALs? Well, I apologize. Because you and Sam and Tom and Cosmo could absolutely make yourselves useful. You could kick down the door of this crappily built house in a heartbeat, and get me the hell out of here.

  He'd seen and heard only four men, holding him here. The same four men. Which didn't mean there weren't more outside.

  Although, he'd spent quite some time listening to the sound of footfalls overhead, to the water running through the pipes, to the toilet flushes—and he would've bet the bank that these four were it.

  And the one in charge—the older, paunchy man—was losing the confidence of the others. Dave had made note, right away, of the fact that the guy with the glasses was positively spooked.

  It was just a matter of time before he made some excuse—gotta pick up a pizza or run to the drugstore—and vanished into the night.

  Or day. It was hard to tell down here exactly what time it was.

  But regardless of the movement of the earth and the position of the sun and the stars in the sky, whenever the whole gang joined Dave here in the basement, it was time for only one thing.

  A little game called No Way, No How. His opponents, sadly, still believed it was called Everyone Has a Limit—Let's Find Dave's. They'd yet to comprehend that his was death.

  It always started the same way. With a little friendly conversation. With an invitation to sit like a person in a chair.

  Well, not quite like a person, since his hands were cuffed behind his back, and it was getting harder and harder—as he became more and more ill—to do much of anything besides lie on the floor.

  So as Paunchy watched, Glasses, ugly guy, and the sadistic dreamboat manhandled him up, wrenching his elbows so that his cuffed hands went behind the back of the chair, so that his arms held him there, in place. Humiliating and painful, but effective.

  “How are you doing, Dave? Are you ready to talk to us?”

  “I'm doing just great, thanks, but my throat's a little sore so I should probably save my voice. How are you?”

  “We're doing much better now that we have Sophia.”

  Words to make his blood pressure rise. But he knew if they had her, they would show, not tell. “Sophia. Sophia. I don't think I know a Sophia. But I do know a lot of Navy SEALs, and they are going to track you down and kill you. In the middle of the night. You know, you can go high-tech, you can go guards—” He aimed his words at the guy with glasses, because he knew the threat was freaking him out.

  “Shall we bring Sophia down here?”

  “—but it doesn't matter, because they're like phantoms. They'll get into your bedroom and you won't even wake up. Well, not until your throat's slit and you're—”

  This was where he usually got slapped, hard enough to rattle his fever-riddled brain, and sure enough, he wasn't disappointed.

  But he kept going, “—bleeding out.”

  “Just fucking kill him!” Glasses was losing it.

  “You're going to give us what we want to know, sooner or later, Dave. So just tell me, where's James Nash?”

  Silence also worked, since Dave's goal was to run Glasses off, not get another knife in the gut. Because the stab wound he already had was plenty bad enough, thanks.

  “This all ends, Dave, right here, right now. All you have to do is tell me where he is.”

  “Is that supposed to be a philosophical question? Because everyone knows that James Nash is dead. I don't believe in hell, and even if I'm wrong, he was a good man, so I'm sure he wouldn't go there, so … I'm going to go with … he's in an urn on his girlfriend's fireplace mantel.”

  That got him a punch from Sadistic McDreamy, right where his bandage was—assuming his bandage had stayed on through the last round of waterboarding. It was impossible to check with his hands cuffed they way they were, even when he was left alone down here.

  This time the pain from the blow didn't just make his eyes water, it made the world dance and spark and sputter and fade and …

  Sophia was there—right at the edge of his vision.

  “Shh. Be quiet,” she said, smiling in that way that she had that always telegraphed her secret plan to get him naked, ASAP. He didn't have the heart to tell her that her plan was never much of a secret due to that smile. She held out her hand. “Come on.”

  “I can't,” he said. “I'm a little tied up at the moment. Bah-dump bump.”

  “No,” she said. “Come on. Come on, Dave. But, shh! Be quiet.”

  He reached for her hand, but she shimmered and vanished, and he realized he was back on the floor, alone in the basement. He was soaking wet and shivering from the cold—they must've waterboarded him again, but he remembered none of it.

  Which kind of defeated the purpose. He was supposed to fear it, and talk to keep them from doing it again.

  Dawn was leaking in a strip of window that was too small for him to squeeze through, even without his hands and feet bound, without him being tethered to a workbench that was built into the wall and extremely solid. And he knew it was the sunlight that had caught his eye and made him imagine Sophia.

  And yet her voice whispered in his ear. Come on. Come on, Dave. …

  And he realized they'd cuffed his hands in front of him to lay him back on that bench, and they'd failed to switch the cuffs around after they were done—no doubt assuming he was too weak, too ill, too broken to be much of a threat.

  They'd still tethered him, tying a rope from
his feet to that workbench they used, along with copious amounts of water, to persuade him to talk.

  With his hands in front he could untie that rope, but his feet were locked together with plastic bands that he'd need a knife to cut through.

  He couldn't get his eyes to focus quite right, and his hands were numb, his fingers thick and useless. Still, he was alive. He was breathing. And he wanted, more than anything on earth, to see Sophia again.

  He wanted to meet little Marianne.

  So he grit his teeth and he set to work.

  Sophia's phone rang in the parking lot.

  She'd set it on silent, but it was in her pocket so she felt it vibrate. She pulled it out and—

  Decker nearly tripped over her. “Don't stop moving—”

  “I'm getting a call from Dave's cell phone,” she told him.

  He pulled her back over to the building, where Sam was locking the place up. He held a finger to his lips and gave Sam the hand signal for go. Sam understood exactly what was happening and gave the international signal for call me as he nodded and hurried to the vehicles, even as Sophia pushed talk.

  “Dave?” she asked, knowing it wasn't him, it couldn't be, as she pushed the speaker button so that Decker could hear, too.

  But they'd tried, with the e-mail they'd sent, to make Sophia sound like she was in completely over her head, and out of her league.

  “No,” said a male voice. “And I'm not with Dave, so your friends shouldn't bother tracing this call. And even if they do? I'm on the move and I'm keeping this short. They won't find me, and Dave will die. One phone call from me, and he's dead, do you understand?”

  And okay, she was in completely over her head. Her hands were shaking as she looked at Decker, who was the embodiment of steadiness and calm. He nodded encouragement and mouthed the words proof of life.

  “Yes,” she said, and she didn't have to force the wobble in her voice. “I understand. But I need to talk to him. To make sure he's all right.”

  “He's not all right,” the man said. “And he'll be less all right if you continue with this bullshit attempt to negotiate. We have him, you want him. You'll do what we say and you'll do it now or he's dead. You stall or argue, he's dead. You tell anyone about this phone call, he's dead. You say anything to me but Yes, I understand, he's dead. Do you understand?”