Dark of Night (5 page)

“One and eight tenths,” Jules corrected her.

Both of them turned to look at him with nearly identical concern as he made himself comfortable in the easy chair across from them.

Alyssa put voice to their question. “Is Robin having trouble with another stalker?”

Jules shook his head. “No. I mean, yeah, there're always the fans who go too far, so we've learned to be careful, but this is—”

“A freaking fortress,” Sam finished for him.

“Yes, it is,” Jules agreed.

“What's going on?” Alyssa asked.

Jules cleared his throat. Crossed his legs. “Before I tell you this,” he
said, “I want to state that it's both an advantage and a disadvantage that you guys are my best friends.”

Sam looked at Alyssa and covered Ash's little ears. “Why can't he ever ask us for a favor without having to make a fucking speech?” Despite the covered ears, he only mouthed the F-bomb.

“I have no idea.” Alyssa settled back on the couch, getting comfortable. “But part of being a good friend is letting your friends talk, so …”

Sam turned to Jules, clearly not willing to climb aboard Alyssa's train of serene acceptance. “Yes,” he said. “Whatever you're gonna ask us to do? We'll do it.”

“But see, that's my point,” Jules said. “I don't want any of us to feel as if I'm taking advantage of our friendship—”

“Help me out here, Ash,” Sam told his son as he turned the baby to face Jules. “Tell your Uncle Squidward that we're happy to assist.” He spoke in a squeaky baby-voice that was just too funny. “We're happy to assist.”

Laughing, Jules shook his head as he looked at his friends. Alyssa had been an officer in the Navy before she joined the FBI. She'd worked for the Bureau for years—as Jules's partner. She'd left at about the same time she'd married Sam, who'd served as an officer in legendary U.S. Navy SEAL Team Sixteen. Sam had managed to get himself into some trouble, and rather than take a desk job, he'd retired from the military. At which point the pair of them went to work for former SEAL Tom Paoletti's civilian personal security firm, Troubleshooters Incorporated.

Alyssa was Tom's XO, or second-in-command, which made her Sam's boss, go figure.

Jules persisted. “When I say
any of us?
I'm including me. And I kind of feel as if I'm—”

“If you're asking us to camp out here to help keep the crazies away from Robin,” Sam interrupted, “it's not exactly going to be a hardship.”

“I already picked out our suite,” Alyssa added.

Sam looked at her. “The one with the blue drapes?”

She nodded. “With the extra room that could be the nursery. You see that bathroom? I think it's bigger than our kitchen.”

“Nice shower.” He nodded.
“Very
nice shower. Although the suite on the third floor—”

“That one's ours. And this isn't about Robin,” Jules said again, interrupting them. “He's renting this house, yes. And he'll be staying here, with
me, part of this month, and possibly even longer, if the situation doesn't rectify itself and will you please let me tell you what this is about before you say
yes?”

“I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed,” Sam pointed out.

“What situation?” Alyssa asked, silencing her husband with an amusedly pointed look.

“I'm just saying,” Sam said with a shrug.

And with that, alleluia, they were now sitting there quietly, waiting for Jules to explain, finally giving him a chance to talk.

“I've got an operative in hiding, who needs a safe house to rehab and regroup.” He chose his words carefully, because until they signed on he couldn't tell them too much. “He worked in the black ops sector of a government agency and believes that he's been marked for what he calls
deletion—
which is exactly what it sounds like. I've kept him separate from any of the official protection programs, because we haven't identified the person or persons who've tried to kill him. But we do believe that whoever they are, they have access to top secret, high-clearance-level information.”

“Shit,” Sam covered Ash's ears to say. He glanced at Alyssa before asking Jules, “You're absolutely certain that your operative isn't, um, how do I put this? The problem?”

“He's not, and I am,” Jules said. “Certain.”

“Black ops create … certain pressures for operatives,” Sam pointed out. “Some agents go rogue.”

“Oh, he's rogue, all right,” Jules said. “But not the way you mean. I trust this man. Completely.”

“Enough to risk your career,” Alyssa said. It wasn't quite a question, but it wasn't quite not, either.

So Jules answered as if it were. “Yes.”

“What career?” Sam scoffed.

“Hey,” Jules told him. “ S-squared, SpongeBob. I happen to love Boston.”

“I can't help but notice, Toto,” Sam said, “that we're not in Boston anymore.”

Jules sighed, exasperated. “I'm on vacation. May I please continue?”

“There's more?”

“Yeah,” Jules said a tad sharply. “The important part. The part where—”

“We might find ourselves investigating corruption deep inside a government agency?” Alyssa interrupted this time. “That's basic math, Jules. I think we've already figured that out. At least I have.” She looked at her husband.

“Durrr,” he said.

“This could be extremely dangerous,” Jules had to tell them.

“Eek,” Sam deadpanned.

“You said
rehab”
Alyssa asked. “Your man's been injured?”

He nodded. “Gunshot wound to the chest. He's gonna need a month of hard work to get back to speed. Maybe a little less because he's … who he is.”

Alyssa glanced at Sam before asking Jules, “I assume you're going to take the utmost precautions when you move him in here.”

“That's one of the things I was hoping you could help me with,” he told them. “My plan was to bring him in when Robin arrives tomorrow.”

“We do this right,” Sam said, with a glance at Alyssa, “and no one will know your man is here. It'll look to the world like we're taking a high-end vacation with our fruity and very rich friends.”

“Without Ashton?” she asked.

“I say we bring him,” Sam said. “The alternative is to see if Mary Lou can take him, but… After seeing this place, I'm convinced he'd be safer here with us.” He looked at Jules. “You okay with that?”

“Of course.”

Alyssa asked, “How actively is your operative being hunted?”

“We're pretty sure they think he's dead,” Jules told them. “Whoever
they
are.”

“Define
pretty sure”
Sam said.

“His own friends think he's dead,” Jules said. “I can count the number of people who know that he's not, on the fingers of one hand.”

“So the goal,” Alyssa clarified, “is both to keep your man alive and to find out who wanted to ‘delete’ him.”

Sam laughed. “You know, some people actually go to Disneyland when they take a vacation?”

“Are you in?” Jules asked.

“Absolutely,” they said in unison, then looked at each other and added, “Owe me a … Coke,” also at the same time, down to the pause before
Coke
and the smile that followed it.

Euphemism, anyone?

“One condition,” Sam said, reluctantly pulling his attention away from his wife's loaded smile. “If we meet him and don't get the same warm fuzzies you obviously feel for him, we walk away and keep our mouths shut.”

“Deal,” Jules said.

“Who is he?” Alyssa asked. “Do we know him? Oh, my God, Jules—”

“Gunshot wound to the chest?” Sam spoke over her, putting it together at the same moment. “Son of a bitch! Is it… ?”

“James Nash,” Jules told them. It no longer surprised him that out of the two of them, it was Sam whose eyes instantly filled with tears.

“Ah, Jesus,” he said. “Does Tess know?” He answered his own question. “Of course she knows. And Decker. … Holy. …” He held Ash out for Jules. “Will you … Please … I gotta …”

Jules took the baby and carried him down the stairs. “Come on, Ash-ton, let's find the playroom, see what kind of toys come with this joint,” he said, drowning out Sam's voice as he embraced Jules's good news with a resounding “Holy,
holy
fuck!”

“I don't think you should go. Not for him,” Dave told Sophia, as calmly and evenly as he always sounded. “I think you should go for you.”

Her Aunt Maureen had tracked Sophia down a few years ago. She hadn't even realized she
had
an aunt before that startling call—and she wasn't at all sure she wanted one at this late date. But the brusque, stern-voiced woman now phoned every few months, trying to guilt, shame, or bully Sophia into visiting her dying father.

Of course, Paul Miles had been dying for quite a few years now.

“You honestly think I'll find
closure?”
Sophia asked Dave as she stepped into her panties and put on her bra, her movements jerky with her frustration and anger.

“No,” he said, reaching for her, catching her arm and tugging her back to the bed, where he was still stretched out, still naked and extremely male, and yet still solidly Dave. Her champion, her hero, her lover—and her best friend. “I doubt you'll ever find closure. I just think—”

“I have nothing to say to him,” she interrupted. It was what she always said to Maureen—and to Dave, too—whenever her aunt called.

It was funny—the turmoil caused by Maureen's phone calls had always made Sophia run straight to Dave. They'd talked about her father frequently over the past few years, and about whether or not Sophia should go to Boston to see him before he died.

But never while Dave was naked and sprawled on her bed.

“Maybe you don't have anything to say,” he told her now. “Or maybe you just think that you don't. Maybe going to Boston to see him will—”

“I was eleven years old,” Sophia said flatly.

He blinked, then blanched. “What?”

“Eleven years, one month,” she said. “It was four weeks to the day after my birthday.”

“You told me you were a teenager. I thought—”

“I lied,” Sophia informed him, but then had to turn away from the maelstrom of emotion in Dave's usually bemused hazel eyes. “Because I didn't want you to look at me the way you're looking at me right now.”

“Let's go to Boston,” he said quietly. “So I can kill him.”

Sophia shook her head. “That's not funny.”

“I'm not kidding.” Now his eyes were hard, almost flat. She'd spent most of her life around dangerous men, and she'd seen that look before, but rarely-to-never in Dave's eyes.

“Don't,” she said. “If I'd wanted a caveman, I never would've given up on Decker.” And okay, she'd not only spoken too sharply, she'd spoken too thoughtlessly. She immediately apologized. “Sorry.
Sorry.”

Too late.

But her harsh words had done the trick. Dave was back. Kind, warm, smart and funny, slightly goofy Dave. Who, as usual, pushed his own hurt feelings aside in order to focus on her. In order to take care of her. To make sure she knew that she mattered to him—more than anything else in the world. To make sure she knew she was safe and loved.

“Your parents never came back?” he asked. “Not even to … to … pick up their things?” She shook her head, but he still couldn't believe it, saying, “So from the time that you were
eleven … ?”

“I was on my own,” Sophia verified for him. “Yes.”

Maureen had insisted that her darling brother had left his only child in Katmandu, believing her to be in her mother's care, and that Sophia's crazy mother, Cleopatra Farrell—she'd legally changed her name from
Cynthia—had left, believing Sophia to be safe with Paul. It was a simple mistake. An unfortunate accident.

But a month after her eleventh birthday, Sophia had woken up to find herself alone in an unfamiliar country, with no money, no passport, and only enough food to last a scant few days.

She was too young to know that she could go to the embassy. It never occurred to her that the consulate might be able to help. There was only their angry landlord shouting about the money her parents owed, and pushing her out into the street when she couldn't pay him. She'd cried
—What will I do?—
and he'd slapped her and told her to be a man, to do what other boys her age were doing: get a job, become an apprentice to a craftsman.

She could tell that Dave was imagining a nightmare of a different kind for a little blond girl alone on the streets, so she quickly reassured him. “I dressed like a boy. All my clothes were hand-me-downs, and … About two months earlier, I had a bad case of lice, and my mother …” She tried to make it a joke. “Thanks to her work ethic, which was
if you don't have to, don't,
she didn't try to, you know. Comb out the nits. She just shaved my head. My hair was still short so …”

Left to fend for herself, even at eleven, she'd instinctively known she'd be better off not advertising the fact that she was a girl.

“Everyone thought I was a boy, so I played along,” she told him.

“Miles Farrell,” Dave said. It was the name by which he'd first known her, back in her previous life—back when her husband, Dimitri, was still alive. “Your father's and mother's last names.”

Sophia nodded. She knew from his eyes that
he
knew she'd called herself that because part of her had naively hoped one or the other of her parents would come back. She'd hoped that they would search for her and find her.

“I'm so sorry,” Dave said, his hand as warm and gentle as his eyes as he smoothed back her hair.

“I survived,” she reminded him.

But he shook his head. “ Eleven-year-olds shouldn't have to survive something like that.”

“I like to think I'm lucky,” Sophia told him, leaning against him, grateful for his solid presence as he continued to stroke her hair. “My mother didn't move to the hard-core drugs until
after
I was born.”

Dave laughed. “ Whoo-hoo. I wonder if Hallmark makes
that
card.
Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for not mainlining heroin until I was nine.”
His hand paused. “And
there's
a question I'd like to ask your father. What the hell was he thinking to leave you with a woman who could well have sold you to a local warlord to get her next fix?”