“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 signaled 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 neighborhood. 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 gray, putty-colored 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 theater. You’ll also find that the theater 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 Gray 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 humor 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 colorful 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 neighbor’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.
There was a lot he didn’t know about Blue McCoy, he realized, crouched there between a pickup truck and a little subcompact car that were parked in the drive alongside the man’s house.
He felt Nell shift beside him. “What are we waiting for?”
Good question.
He motioned for her to hang back as he approached the back door. He could tell from one quick glance that the door didn’t open into the kitchen, but rather into a smaller area—a mud room.
The door was locked, but he had the tools to get through it in about fifteen seconds. It opened and he nodded to Nell, gesturing with his head for her to follow him.
He drew his sidearm and slipped inside the house.
Crash could smell the fragrant aroma of onions sautéing. Blue was standing at the counter, with his back to him, chopping green peppers on a cutting board.
He didn’t turn around, didn’t even stop chopping as he said in his deep Southern drawl, “We missed y’all at Harvard’s wedding.”
Crash held his weapon on the other man as he spoke from the shadows. “I sent my regrets. I was out of the country.”
Blue set down his knife and turned around. His quiet gaze took Crash in from the top of his too-long hair to the tomato-juice stains on the knees of his black BDUs. He focused for about a millisecond on the barrel of Crash’s sidearm, but then dismissed it. He knew as well as Crash did that the weapon was a formality. Crash was no more prepared to use it on Blue than he was likely to use it on himself or Nell.
“Ma’am.” Blue nodded a greeting at Nell before he turned back to Crash. “Before I invite you in, Hawken, I’ve got to ask you just one question. Did you kill, or conspire to kill, Admiral Robinson?”
“No.”
“Okay.” The blond-haired SEAL nodded, turning back to stir the onions that were sizzling in a saucepan on the stove. “I was wondering when you were going to show up. Why don’t you sit at the table? Stay low, the window’s got no shade.”
Crash didn’t move.
“I’m guessing you’re here because everyone and their dim-witted second cousin is watching Cowboy’s place,” Blue continued. He laughed as he added the chopped peppers to the pot and stirred the vegetables together. “Every time that boy goes anywhere, there’s about four cars behind him. At first he thought it was funny, but now it’s kind of getting on his nerves.” He turned back to Crash. “So what can I do to help?”
“Wait a sec,” Crash said. “Rewind. You ask me one question, and that’s it? I say no, I didn’t kill Jake, and you’re satisfied?”
Blue considered that for a moment, then nodded. “That’s right. I just wanted to hear you say what I already knew. Everyone in the Spec War business with half a brain can see as clear as day that you’ve been set up.” He laughed in disgust. “Unfortunately it looks as if Alpha Squad is the only team with more than half a brain these days.”
“You understand that by helping me, you’ll be an accomplice.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong. To believe that—and I do—and do nothing to help you…now, that would be a real crime.” Blue lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Besides, I figure you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t close to catching whoever did kill the admiral. Am I right?”
Crash still didn’t move. He didn’t lower his weapon, he didn’t do much more than breathe as Blue added several cans of whole tomatoes and some spices to the saucepan.
Blue glanced at him again. “I can understand how you might be a little paranoid right about now, so I won’t take that weapon you’re holding on me personally. But I have to tell you that—”
“You may not hold it personally, but I sure as hell do.” There, in the door to the dining room, stood a pretty, dark-haired woman wearing a well-tailored pantsuit and holding an automatic pistol in her hand, aimed directly at Crash.
“Lucy will,” Blue finished.
Crash hadn’t heard her come in. He’d heard no cars approaching or pulling into the driveway. He hadn’t heard the front door open or shut.
But of course, she’d been home all along. There’d been two cars in the drive when he’d approached. He’d made the mistake of assuming that simply because Blue was cooking dinner, his wife wasn’t home.
That would teach him to make assumptions based on gender-role stereotypes in the future. Except he didn’t have a future.
Crash lifted his sidearm higher, holding it on Blue. “Please put down your weapon, Mrs. McCoy.”
The brunette’s mouth tightened. “I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t—”
Blue moved, crossing the kitchen in two very long steps, stepping directly in front of his wife’s deadly-looking pistol.
“Everything’s fine,” he said to her, gently pushing the barrel down toward the floor. “You can put that away. Hawken’s a friend of mine.”
“Everything’s not fine! There’s a man in our kitchen holding a gun on you!”
“He’ll put it away.”
“I can’t do that,” Crash said tightly.
“It looks like he can’t put his weapon away right now,” Blue told his wife. “I’m not sure I’d be able to do it myself if I were in his shoes.” He turned back to Crash. “Can you do me a favor and at least lower it?”
Crash nodded, his eyes never leaving Lucy’s handgun.
As Lucy reholstered her weapon, he lowered his.
“Good.” Blue kissed his wife gently on the lips before he went back to the stove. “Lucy, meet Crash Hawken. You’ve heard me talk of him plenty of times.”
Lucy’s brown eyes widened as she turned to look at Crash again. “You’re Lieutenant Hawken?”
“Crash, this is Lucy, my wife,” Blue continued. “She’s a detective with the Coronado police.”
Crash swore softly.
“And you must be Nell Burns,” Blue greeted Nell with a smile. “On the news, they’re saying you were abducted. But it looks to me like you’re here of your own free will.”
Nell nodded. “Billy and I both thought that I’d be safer with him—after the second attempt was made on my life.”
Blue lifted his eyebrows as he looked at Crash. “Billy, huh?”
“Look, we’re just going to turn around and walk out of here,” Crash said. Blue McCoy’s wife was a police detective. His current streak of dismal luck was absolutely unending.
Blue turned to his wife. “Yankee, you better plug your ears, because I’m about to ask a suspected felon to join us for dinner.”
“Actually, I’m long overdue for a soak in the tub,” Lucy said. “And your friend looks like he’s got someplace he needs to be in a hurry.” She nodded to Nell and Crash.
“Nice meeting you, Lieutenant. Or was it Captain? I’m sorry, I’ve never been very good with names. I’ve already forgotten yours.”
As Crash watched, she disappeared into the darkness of the other room. He could hear the sound of her footsteps going up a flight of stairs.
He could sense Nell standing right beside him, her anxiety nearly palpable. He ached to reach out and slip his arm around her shoulder, to pull her in close for an embrace. But doing that would undermine everything he’d worked so hard to do this afternoon—telling her how he wouldn’t come back, making it sound as if he had a choice when the real truth was he honestly didn’t think he’d live to see another sunset.
And touching her would also undermine all that he’d done today to separate from the tornado of emotions that threatened to throw him into uncharted territory.
“Tell me what you need me to do,” Blue said simply.
Crash glanced in the direction in which Lucy had disappeared.
“She’s not calling the SWAT Team, I promise. She knows we’re friends.”
“Are we?”
Blue turned back to stir his tomato sauce. “I thought so.”
Crash looked at Nell, and forced himself to detach even more completely than he had earlier that afternoon, after he’d allowed himself one more kiss. One last kiss. This was one of the most difficult decisions of his life, but he knew it had to be done. “I need a place for Nell to stay that’s safe,” he said, as ready as he’d ever be to put the one person he cared more about than anyone on the planet into another man’s hands.
The blond-haired SEAL nodded as he turned back to meet his gaze. “I’ll see to that.”
Nell’s throat felt tight. Just like that, Crash was handing her over. Just like that, he was going to walk out of the house, into the darkness. And just like that, she was never going to see him again.
“Are you set for supplies?” Blue asked. “Ammunition?”
“I could use an extra brick of C-4, if you’ve got any lying around.”
Blue didn’t blink. “You know we’re not allowed to bring that stuff home.”
“I know the rules. I also know that when a team is called out on an op in the middle of the night, there’s not always time to go back to the base to pick up supplies.”
Blue nodded. “I can spare half a block. But unless you’re intending to take out more than a single house, that ought to be enough.”
Nell couldn’t believe what she had just heard. A half a block of C-4 could “take out” an entire house? Crash had already used at least three entire blocks, strategically planting the bombs he had made around the edges of the clearing surrounding the cabin. If a half a block could destroy all that, then surely he’d already used enough to blow up the entire mountainside.
She’d realized with icy-cold shock that she’d figured out Plan B.
Crash was prepared to blow himself up if necessary, in order to take down Commander Mark Garvin.