Dark of Night (27 page)

“Yes you did,” she said, and the vulnerable hurt in her eyes made him inwardly let out a string of the foulest language he knew—with himself as the well-deserving recipient. “It's um … Well, it's not okay, because it, you know, was pretty mean. But… it's what you think and … It's good to know what people—men—think about you.”

With all of her attitude stripped away, she looked tired and defeated, and he wanted to put it back—that light and life in her eyes.

“It's not what I think,” he said quietly.

“Usually I don't find out,” she told him, “until it's too late.”

“What I think,” he said, “is that Zanella's an asshole.”

But Tracy was shaking her head. “I really
can
tell when you're lying, okay? At least some of the time. Like now. So, let's just leave our… non-relationship, for lack of a better term, exactly where it is. With an acknowledgment that the sex would be great, and that… everything that wasn't sex would suck. Is that fair enough for you?”

Decker couldn't do it. “I disagree,” he said. “I enjoy your company very much, so …”

She was looking at him as if he were a moron. “I just pitched you a softball,” she implored him. “How hard, exactly, would it have been to say,
Yes, Tracy, sex with you
would
be great,
which would make me feel better. Cheap and shallow, yes, but better. And then we could get into your truck and do whatever we have to do so that we can meet up with Tess.”

“I like you too much,” he admitted. “And the sex
would
be great. But I'm the one who screws up everything that isn't sex, so … It's not an option—you and me—as appealing as it sometimes—” he corrected himself “—frequently seems.”

“Great.” She was disgusted. “Now you have to go and be nice.”

“I'm not nice,” he told her. “I don't know why people think I am.”

Tracy went around to the passenger side and opened the door to the truck. “Maybe it's because you keep yourself locked away from the rest of the world. Or up on a pedestal. Out of reach. People have to squint to see you, so most of them see you the way they want you to be. God knows I've been guilty of that myself.”

Decker stood in the gravel of the parking lot as she climbed in and slammed the door behind her.

And then, when he didn't move right away, she reached over and hit the horn.

Which would have made him laugh, if he wasn't so pissed off—at himself, at Tracy, at Jo Heissman, at whoever those fuckers were who wanted Nash dead.

He climbed in behind the wheel. “Look, Tracy—”

“Shh,” she said. “Don't talk. Unless it's to tell me where we're going.”

Decker sighed. “Kinko's,” he said as he put the truck into gear. “To use their computers to check my free-mail account.”

“We don't have to go to Kinko's,” Tracy told him, trying to be business-as-usual, but still obviously subdued and hurt by his verbal bludgeon. “I've got my laptop and one of those anywhere Internet jacks. If you want, I can get online right here.”

Jules knew, as soon as he heard Alyssa's voice on the phone, that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

“Are you still in the van?” she said, instead of
Hello,
when he answered the call.

“No, we've reached our destination,” he told her, purposely being vague despite the secure line. “We're waiting for contact.” He glanced at his watch. Decker should have been here by now. “What's going on? Is everyone all right?”

Tess looked over at that. She was sitting on the other motel room bed, ankles crossed, surfing through the cable stations with the sound muted.

“Everyone here is fine,” Alyssa said, and he repeated that for Tess's benefit.

“I'm putting you on speaker. Who's not there who's not fine?” Jules asked Alyssa, and sure enough, she hesitated, which told him volumes.

“The person I'm waiting for is late,” Jules reported. “Is that—”

“No.” Alyssa was absolute. “Deck's fine—at least as far as I know.”

He made a noise that was at least part protest, and she added, “We're scrambling the hell out of this call. It's secure; we can talk openly. This isn't about Decker.” She paused. “Jules, Max called and …”

What was it that was so difficult for her to tell him?

Max Bhagat was Jules's boss—and Alyssa's former boss—who worked out of the FBI's D.C. office. At one point, before Sam had gotten his shit together, Jules had been convinced that Alyssa and Max would be perfect together—romantically. He was wrong—that was before he understood that heartfelt imperfection was often better than logically perceived perfection.

“Max noticed,” Alyssa told Jules as he gritted his teeth and waited for the virtual grand piano to drop on his recently highlighted head, “what he thought was a familiar name in a bizarre triple homicide case that came across his desk.”

“Oh, crap,” Jules said.
Familiar name
and
bizarre triple homicide
were two phrases he'd hoped never to hear in the same sentence.

“Sam wants me to make sure you understand that this isn't your fault,” Alyssa said.

“Just tell me what's going on,” Jules demanded, trying to quell the sick feeling in his stomach that came from knowing that his best friends were neither alarmists nor melodramatic. Whatever this was about, it was going to be bad.

“All three of the murders took place yesterday and last night,” she informed him, crisp and businesslike as she conveyed the facts. “One in Annapolis, Maryland; one in Cincinnati, Ohio; and one in some little two-stoplight town called Biskin's River, Georgia. MO is identical— double-pop to the head. Ballistic tests haven't come back, but I've already checked the miles and airline flight times, and it's within the realm of possibility that the perp is the same person. It would've required some work to make all the flights, but… It's definitely do-able. Biskin's River's about a two-hour drive outside of Atlanta.”

Tess had sat up on the edge of the bed as she listened, her pretty face somber, her eyes filled with questions as she gazed at Jules.

“Who are the victims?” Jules asked as he saw a reflection of his own guarded wariness and brace-for-it anxiety in Tess's eyes. “Will you please just tell me? Come on, do it like a Band-Aid—rip it off.”

“The victims were all named John Wilson,” Alyssa said.

What? John Who?

“Oh, my God,” Tess breathed, and as Jules looked at her, he saw horror in her eyes. “Dr. John Wilson …”

And Jules remembered. Tess had helped him build an entire intricately detailed life for one extremely fictional John Wilson, the physician who'd “signed” Jim Nash's death certificate.

“I don't know how or why Max remembered Dr. Wilson's name,” Alyssa continued, “but he did, and …”

“What the
fuck?”
Jules said. He'd purposely made their make-believe Dr. Wilson an older man, on the cusp of retirement, gotten him a passport and sent him “safely” overseas with his equally fictional wife.

“The three John Wilsons who were killed weren't doctors,” Alyssa told him. “They were just civilians.”

Jesus God, he was going to be sick, but he could tell from her voice that she hadn't told him the worst of it, though what could be worse than knowing that, two months ago, by choosing two common-enough American names—John and Wilson—entirely on a whim because he and Robin had recently rewatched Tom Hanks in
Cast Away,
Jules had condemned three innocent men to death.

“Jules,” Alyssa said, all of the precise former-military-officer gone from her voice. Her words were thick with compassion. “One of the John Wilsons … He was only seven years old.”

Jules closed his eyes. “Oh, dear God,” he whispered.

“Alyssa, please, don't tell Jimmy,” Tess implored. “Not until I get back. I need to be there—”

“Yeah,” Alyssa said, regret heavy in her tone. “I'm afraid that horse has already left the barn. He walked in—rolled in, actually—on a conversation I was having with Sam and … Tess, I'm sorry, but we had to put him into lockdown.”

“Oh, no,” Tess said.

“Jules, you and Tess need to get out of there, ASAP.”

“What kind of monsters would do something like this?” Jules asked. “Who
are
these people?” He stood up on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. “God damn it, how many John Wilsons are there in this country? We need to issue some kind of warning, give them protection—”

“That's pretty standard in a case like this,” Alyssa said. “Murders linked by a common name? Max told me they've already been in touch with all of the John Wilsons who file taxes—”

“Children don't file taxes,” Jules pointed out.

“There'll be a press release issued. They'll get the story on the news.”

“That's not good enough,” Jules said. “We have to—”

“No.” She was definite. “It's important that we let the FBI handle this. You need to stay far away from it. Don't even call Max—you're supposed to be on vacation. Communicate with him through me. This is another message that we've been sent—let's not react without thinking this through.”

“Thinking this through?”
Jules couldn't keep himself from shouting. “My God, Alyssa—I'm going to be thinking this through for the entire rest of my
life!”

“You're upset,” she said. “I know that. You have every right to be. I'm upset, too. I know what you're thinking and feeling and it's awful and it's
not
your fault, but I know you think it is, and I'm so,
so
sorry, but right now you and Tess
must
get back into the van. Quietly. Quickly. Just take your things and go.”

“Jesus, I underestimated them,” Jules said.

“We all did,” Alyssa agreed. “You're not alone in that.”

“Yeah, but I'm in charge,” he countered. “I'm responsible for—”

“Right now, you're responsible for getting yourself and Tess to safety,” she cut him off, that Navy-Lieutenant edge back in her voice. “Jules, I need you to recognize that you're probably not thinking clearly here. I need you to step down and let me make the decisions right now. Just temporarily, until we regroup.”

Jules laughed. “You think I'm not thinking clearly? I'm thinking a little too clearly—”

“And I'm telling you, sir, that I know that you're not—that you can't be,” she interrupted him again. “I need you to trust me.”

It was the
sir
that got to him. Alyssa never
sired
him unless she was dead serious.

“I trust you,” he said on an exhale.

“Then put me in charge.”

“You're in charge.”

“Good,” she said. “Now follow my orders, and get yourself and Tess into the van, because you
are
in danger. This message was directed at
you,
Jules. Whoever they are, they know you were on the scene when Jim Nash died — ”

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Robin—”

“I've already called him in,” Alyssa told him. “I was having trouble reaching you, so I anticipated—”

“It's fine,” Jules said. “Just tell me he's safe.”

“He's safe. Ric and Annie are with him. They've arranged for helicopter transport—the goal is to get all of you back here as quickly as possible. They're going to call in with a rendezvous point. You're going to head back in with Robin and Tess, while Ric and Annie bring the van—”

“Robin starts filming tomorrow,” Jules said, and as the words left his lips he realized how inane they were.

“No, he's not going to do that.” Alyssa was patient with him. “It's not safe. I'm making the code red call, Jules. This is no longer your choice, it's mine. We're using the back-in-rehab cover.”

“Oh, crap, no,” Jules said. They'd created a Plan B, before embarking on this dangerous mission, that would allow them to pull Robin—a recovering alcoholic—off the movie set and get him to safety, by pretending that he needed to go back into rehab. The story was going to be all over the TV entertainment “news,” as well as the Internet—it was probably already posted on TMZ.com.

“Robin was completely on board,” Alyssa told him. “He's worried about you and Tess. He wants you to get in the van and get out of there. So do it. Get into the van.”

Tess was already gathering their things—packing up the book that she'd brought and tying her sweatshirt around her waist by its sleeves.

“Jules,” Alyssa said again. “This is
all
you have to do right now, okay? One step at a time. Just get in the van and get Tess and yourself to safety.”

“What about Decker?” Jules asked.

“I'll keep trying to contact him,” Alyssa said. “He'll work out a way to get in touch with Dave and Sophia.”

Jules exhaled, hard. “Jesus, Lys,” he said. “Seven years old … Haley's almost seven.” Haley Starrett, Sam's daughter from his first disastrous marriage, was funny and sweet and smart, and God, someone had delivered a double-pop to a seven-year-old's head.

“I know,” Alyssa said quietly. “Get back here, Jules. The people who did this are running scared. Which means they've probably already made a mistake. We're going to find them, we're going to track them down, and when we do?” Her voice turned hard as steel. “We're going to put them down like the rabid dogs that they are.”

The flight to LAX was full, which was frustrating because it meant that they probably wouldn't talk.

Not that Dave was ready to say anything—in fact, Sophia could tell he was relieved that they'd had absolutely zero privacy since she'd slammed her way out of the interrogation room at the morgue.

She closed her eyes as the plane took off, as gravity punched her back in her seat—she hated flying, she always had, but today her stomach roiled and she had to grit her teeth against the nausea.

But then Dave reached over and took her hand, lacing their fingers together, giving her a squeeze of reassurance. She knew she must've felt like
ice to him, because he surrounded her hand with both of his, trying to warm her.

She kept her eyes closed against the sudden rush of tears.

She wanted, so badly, to go home.

No, what she wanted was to go back in time to Sunday morning. She wanted to put her fingers into her ears so that she wouldn't hear Dave tell her that Maureen had called. She wanted to
not
go to Boston,
not
see her father,
not
get that crazy phone call from Dave while she stood in the hospital lobby …