Darker Than Midnight

by Maggie Shayne

  “Listen, Beth, as much as I’m dying to catch up, I’m actually calling because I need a favor—a big one—from your husband. Is he there?”

  “Sounds mysterious,” Beth said. “Is everything all right?”

  “Hell, yes. I’m as self-sufficient as they come.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Beth sounded doubtful. Or at the very least, speculative. “I’ll put Josh on.”

  A moment later, Joshua Kendall’s voice came on the line. Jax didn’t waste words. “You still have connections in the cloak-and-dagger community, Kendall?”

  “Depends on who’s asking. For you—yeah, Jax, I can stir some up.”

  “Tonight?”

  “What’s going on?”

  She drew a breath, blew it out in a cloud of steam. “Can’t tell you that,” she said. “But I have an item that might have some prints on it. I need it dusted, and I need the prints run. It has to be discreet, Kendall. And it has to be tonight.”

  He drew a breath. “It can be done. Tell me, is this important enough for me to lose a night’s sleep over?”

  “Several,” she said. “And besides, I’ll owe you big-time.”

  “I’ll make a few calls. Can you bring the item over?”

  She looked around, as if in search of the answer, but she knew it without having to find it in the snow. If she left, River would be gone when she got back. He didn’t trust her a hell of a lot more than she trusted him right now. “No, I can’t leave.”

  “All right. I’ll swing by and pick it up.”

  She glanced around, spotted her mailbox mounted to a post across the street, and nodded her thanks for the idea. “I’ll leave it in the mailbox,” she told him.

  He paused, and she could almost picture him frowning at the phone. “Is there some reason you don’t want me coming to the door?”

  “Yeah. There is. So I’ll put it in the mailbox. Okay?”

  “Jax, are you—”

  “Yes, I’m perfectly okay and have been for a number of years without anyone playing hero to my damsel in distress. I hate being worried about, taken care of or looked out for. So really, Josh, don’t go there. I’m as capable as you are. Maybe more so.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I’ll call you when I have something. Actually, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

  She lifted her brows. He was connected. Even now. “Thanks, Josh.”

  “Think nothing of it, Jax. You came running when the kids were in trouble. We owe you, anyway.”

  She smiled. “I got kind of fond of the brats, to be honest.”

  “They’re here for Thanksgiving,” he said. “You should join us.”

  “I imagine my parents will want me with them—but I’ve been known to pack away two turkey dinners in a single day. What time?”

  “You find out what time your parents want you and we’ll plan around it.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “We want you here, Jax. I’ll talk to you later.” Josh hung up the phone.

  A whimpering sound drew her gaze, and Jax looked down the porch steps to see the German shepherd standing on the bottom one, looking up at her.

  “Hey, there. Just a sec.” She ducked into the house, put the phone in its charger stand and opened the fridge to find a few scraps for the dog. Then she headed back outside. She held out a slice of roast beef, part of the offerings her mother had sent home with her.

  The dog sniffed, came a little closer, sniffed some more.

  “Come on. Come on, now, you can trust me. Take it.”

  He crept closer still, and finally, snatched the meat and raced away with it.

  Jax smiled. “Well, that’s progress, I suppose,” she muttered, and went back into the house to take the knife from its hiding place. She carried it across the road to where the mailbox stood, and placed it carefully inside.

  Before she went in again, she filled the dog’s dish with food and moved his bed from underneath the porch, to the porch itself. She was going to get through to him, come hell or high water.

  * * *

  River didn’t intend to sleep, but his body didn’t give him much of a choice. He was out as soon as he laid his head on the soft pillows. And by the time he opened his eyes again, the sun was already beginning to rise, its pale light filtering in through the bedroom windows. It took him a few moments to get his bearings, to remember where he was and why. Hell, he’d intended to be out of the house before Cassandra woke up this morning. Now he would have to work fast, or find himself behind bars, or worse, right back in the state hospital. And that would end any chance he might have of learning the truth.

  He flung back the covers, sat up slowly, waiting for the rush of dizziness to hit him—but it didn’t come. His head was clearer today. Maybe the drugs were finally starting to clear from his system.

  The clothes he’d pilfered were stacked on the dresser. He dug through the pile for fresh ones, put them on as quickly as he could manage. His shoes were downstairs. Those great ones she’d found for him—given to him.

  He closed his eyes briefly, had to forcibly remind himself that he couldn’t afford to trust her, no matter how kind she seemed. She couldn’t do anything but turn him in. It was her job, the thing she’d been trained to do. He would have liked to believe otherwise, but to do that would be foolish.

  He went to the bedroom door, heard the shower running in the bathroom. Damn, she was already up. He was going to have to make this fast. Ducking back into the bedroom, he gathered up the clothes, looking for something in which to carry them, and finally settled for taking the pillowcase from one of the pillows and stuffing the clothes inside. Then he went to the door again, and through it, into the hall.

  But he stopped dead when the bathroom door opened, and she stood there, wearing nothing but a towel. Her blond hair was dark with water, straggling over her shoulders, sticking to her face. Droplets beaded on her shoulders and chest. On her face. She was tall, so the towel only came to the tops of her thighs, and he couldn’t help but look his fill at her endless legs. Strong and slender, with smooth skin that had gone as pale as the winter. She wasn’t into tanning, then.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked.

  He jerked his eyes up to hers, realized the pillowcase was still in his hands, and licked his lips.

  “I haven’t called anyone yet, River. Well, one person, but he doesn’t count.”

  A little knot of panic formed in his chest. “Everyone counts.”

  “Not this guy.”

  He hesitated, glancing toward the stairs, then back at her.

  “God, you really don’t trust me, do you?” She pursed her lips. “Look, I’ve been in the shower for the past fifteen minutes. If I’d called anyone before I got in, they’d have been here by now, wouldn’t they?”

  He frowned hard, because her answer made sense.

  “Stay for breakfast, River. We have to talk. Come with me. I need to get dressed, and you need to be sure I’m not in there dialing up the nearest SWAT team. Come on.” She took his hand, and hers was warm, her grip strong and firm for a woman. But he’d already figured out she was no ordinary woman. She drew him with her back into the bedroom where he’d slept. She closed the door behind them, and released his hand, walked to the dresser and opened the top drawer. He watched her pull out a pair of small white panties and a bra of the same color. Opening another drawer, she tugged out a pair of jeans.

  She didn’t ask him to turn around. She pulled the panties over her feet and drew them up, underneath the towel, not the least bit shy or embarrassed. She repeated the process with the jeans. Then she put her back to him and dropped the towel, naked from the waist up. And even though he couldn’t see the front of her, his body began to react. He felt a stirring that told him things were beginning to function the way they once had.

  She pulled the bra around her, fastened it in the back and then slipped on a sweater.

&n
bsp; He told himself to yank his mind back on track, and accomplished it by reviewing her earlier words. “You said you made one call.”

  “Yeah. To a friend of mine.”

  “Cop?”

  She looked at him sharply. “He was with the ATF, back when it was still called the ATF. He’s retired now, but he still has connections.” The way she studied his face, he wondered what she was thinking. But then she went on. “I didn’t tell him about you, River. I gave him the knife, asked him to process it for prints and run any he might find.”

  His brows rose. “And you think he’ll do all that without telling anyone?”

  “He already did. Now do you want to come downstairs and have some breakfast so I can tell you what he found, or stand there being suspicious of me while having impure thoughts about my bod all day?”

  “I wasn’t—” he began, then shook his head. “I was, actually.”

  “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Hell, River, I’ve worked with men my entire adult life. I’d be worried if you didn’t look a little. It’s not like I haven’t done the same to you.”

  “You reach any verdict?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t toss you out of bed for eating crackers.”

  There was that disturbing frankness again. “You aren’t…an ordinary woman, are you?”

  “I’m just an ordinary cop,” she said.

  He nodded once, set the pillowcase full of his clothes on the bed, and followed her from the room. In the kitchen, she poured coffee from a pot that had been freshly brewed. She must have put it on before her shower, he thought. She set his cup in front of a kitchen chair, then opened the fridge while he sat down. “You think you feel up to eggs?” Then she frowned and looked over her shoulder at him. “No, probably not. We’ll go for something that packs more of a nutritional punch. Oatmeal.”

  “Either way.” He took a sip of the coffee, and wondered if it was going to make him ill.

  She measured oatmeal and water into a bowl, stuck it into the microwave and hit a button. “So my friend took the knife to a friend of his, and they lifted some prints off the handle. Then he ran them for us, all off the record. Here.” She took a manila envelope from the counter and dropped it on the table in front of him. “This is what came back.”

  He was stunned, looking from the envelope to her face, but she was already turning away, taking the bowl of oatmeal from the microwave and setting it on the table for him. She set a second bowl in, then went back to the fridge for milk, margarine. “I don’t have any syrup. Is brown sugar okay? You want cinnamon?”

  “Yeah. Fine.” He was opening the envelope, sliding the sheet from it. It was a mug shot, a photo of the orderly who’d attacked him, with the name Edward Ferdinand Martin underneath it.

  She was setting brown sugar on the table now, spoons, a plastic container of cinnamon. “Is that the orderly?”

  “Yeah. But he wasn’t using this name. Wait, I’ll show you.” He pushed away from the table and headed back upstairs to get the ID badge he’d taken from the dead orderly’s shirt. When he brought it back down, she was sitting at the table, stirring her oatmeal and scanning the printout she’d probably already memorized.

  River put the ID badge on the table, and she reached for it. “Kyle Maples. Not even very imaginative, is it?”

  “Why would he be using a false name?”

  She looked up at him, waving the paper in the air. “Man, you are rusty, aren’t you. Hang in there, pal, you get back in the saddle and it’ll all come back to you. The guy had a rap sheet. Violent shit, too. Nothing close to murder, but a couple of robberies where he beat the hell out of the victims. One instance where he broke a guy’s legs in exchange for five hundred bucks from a loan shark. He couldn’t have got a job at the state mental hospital with a record like this. I’m surprised they didn’t run his prints, anyway, find all this and fire his ass.”

  “Maybe they would have if he’d been there long enough.”

  She tipped her head to one side. “He was new?”

  “I’d never seen him before that day.”

  Nodding slowly, she took a bite of her oatmeal. “We can check that out today.”

  He just sat there, still staring at her. “What do you mean, we?”

  She set her spoon down, drew a breath. “Look, you told me this guy tried to kill you. His prints are on that knife, he’s got a record and he was working under an assumed name. It’s pretty clear to me you’re telling the truth. You killed him in self-defense—”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t, it just—he went down hard, hit his head.”

  “Hey, I’m not complaining. Bastard needed killing. Still, it was self-defense. And if someone’s trying to kill you in the hospital, you freaking leave. It’s common sense.”

  For a moment he just sat there, staring at her. She believed him. She’d said it, and she meant it. An enormous weight seemed to lift from his shoulders, and that was odd, because up until that moment, he hadn’t thought he gave a damn if anyone believed him. Ever.

  “Did you know this guy? Did he have any reason in the world to want you dead?”

  River shook his head slowly. “I never saw him before that day. Never heard of him—not by either name.” He shrugged. “Maybe I busted him—”

  “Doubtful. You were NYPD. His records are all out of Michigan. So, he had no motive. We have to consider the possibility that he was working for someone else. Especially since he’s hurt people for money in the past.”

  River blinked slowly as he digested her words. “Someone hired him. Someone who wants me dead.”

  “Yeah, it looks that way.” She nodded at his bowl. “Your oatmeal is getting cold, River.”

  He looked at it, then back at her. “I…what are you saying, Cassandra?”

  She leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms at her waist and stared at him. “I have every reason to believe that turning you in right now would put your life in jeopardy. I can’t, in good conscience, do that. I can’t.”

  “It could cost you your job.”

  “I’m planning to give notice in Syracuse, anyway.”

  “What about this job? The one here in Blackberry?”

  She sighed. “If we get to the truth soon enough, no one ever has to know.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “What I can’t do is hand you over knowing it’s liable to get you dead. How am I supposed to live with something like that?”

  “You don’t even know me. Why the hell should you care?”

  She pursed her lips, lowered her head. “It’s not a question of caring. It’s a question of doing what’s right. Look at you. You don’t look to me like you need to be locked up in a rubber room and drugged into oblivion.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what I do when I have those blackouts. For all I know, I could be dangerous. I could be dangerous to you.”

  “Oh, please. I could kick your ass blindfolded.”

  He looked up fast and saw the twinkle in her eyes. He couldn’t resist it, even smiled a little in response. “You probably could at the moment.”

  “At the moment, hell. I’m talking on your best day, pal.”

  He liked her. He knew it right then. She had so much life in her it was rubbing off on him, though he’d thought his was pretty much drained and gone.

  “Listen,” she stated. “You hurting me is the least of my worries. Men don’t hurt me. It doesn’t happen. It’s not even in the realm of possibility. So don’t make it an issue.”

  He tipped his head to one side and thought he’d glimpsed something in her that he hadn’t seen before. She had shadows, secrets inside her. A darkness that wasn’t readily apparent.

  “I would like you to let me get some help on this. I think Frankie would back me up. I think she’d agree that keeping you here, in my custody, in secret until we get some answers, is the best idea.”

  He shook his head slowly
. “Frankie Parker is a by-the-book cop. She’s had to be. It was tough enough for her to be an older female in the position of police chief. If she were a rule bender she never would have lasted a week in the job.”

  “She’s got nothing to lose. She’s retiring.”

  “With a spotless record. And some of her officers haven’t got the best opinion of me.”

  “Really? Which ones?”

  He made a face. “I blacked out at the station, while they were questioning me. When I came back, Frankie’s nephew was kicking me in the rib cage hard enough to break a couple. Bastard always had it in for me.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” He didn’t get it.

  “Yeah. I was hoping I’d find an excuse to put a hurting on that putrid little weasel.”

  He blinked, both at the venom in her tone and the sudden, rigid set of her jaw. She looked as if she meant it. “Let it be. Your job’s on the line.”

  “It figures, he’d hate you on sight,” she said. “You were an NYPD cop, a decorated one. He’s the type to be threatened by that. Hell, he’s threatened by me. I think he wanted Frankie’s job for himself.”

  “All the more reason to keep the local cops in the dark.”

  “Okay, then,” she said. “There’s one other person I’d like to let in.”

  “Your friend the retired ATF agent?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No. No, he’s got a nice little life going. I don’t want to risk screwing it up. No, I was talking about my father.”

  “Your father.”

  She nodded slowly. “Just take the pitch before you decide whether to swing, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And eat your oatmeal, for heaven’s sake…”

  He nodded, and ate a few bites of the oatmeal. It surprised him when he realized he actually felt hungry, and he ate a few more.

  “My father is a doctor. Was a doctor.”

  “Was?”

  “A surgeon,” she added, not elaborating on her use of the past tense. “He’s good, River. Sharp. I’d like to have him take a look at you, see what he thinks about getting this crap out of your system.”

  He sighed, lowering his head. “I’m fine. I’m feeling better every day.”