“Give yourself a break, Suzanne,” Claire said. “Of course you’re off balance. You almost had your head blown off Saturday. That would make anyone a little uncertain, even Suzanne La Cool.”
“What?” Allegra straightened as if an electric prod had stung her. “What’s this about Suzanne’s head being blown off? What are you talking about?”
“Oh.” Allegra could hear the gears grinding in Claire’s head. She clearly wished she hadn’t spoken, but now she had. “Well, at the Foundation, Saturday…um, Suzanne was taken hostage by one of the robbers.”
“Together with a number of other women,” Suzanne intervened hastily, as if that made it somehow better.
“Yeah, but the creep didn’t have that huge black bazillion-round submachine gun against their head,” Claire objected heatedly. “Just yours.”
“And Douglas didn’t say a thing, the rat.” Allegra was going to strangle Douglas when she got home. If she’d had any inkling Suzanne’s life had been threatened, that she’d undergone such a traumatic event—well, more traumatic for Suzanne than for anyone else—she’d have called yesterday, to find out how she was.
“He didn’t want you to worry.” Claire placed a hand over hers. “I guess all three of our guys went to that same school. It’s like they want to protect you from—life, I guess.”
“Well, enough about me,” Suzanne said briskly, sounding like her old self. It had been so weird hearing her sound a little lost and uncertain. It was so totally unlike her. “I’ve paid up, so now it’s your turn, Allegra, and it better be good. We want to know everything.”
“Oh yeah.” Claire turned on a dime. “Time to put out.”
Claire had been very forthcoming about the hot weekend she’d had with Bud, when she lost her virginity to a man she thought was a lumberjack, but who was, instead, a homicide detective. But Claire had been new to sex and was overwhelmed with the power of it. Allegra wasn’t new to sex—though she was very definitely new to the type of sex she’d had with Douglas. Still, it felt too…fragile, yet, to tell the details. She could tell the heart of it, though.
“Well…” Allegra could feel the waves of rapt attention coming off her two best friends. “You know how when you first meet a man and you’re on your best behavior and you want it all to be perfect and somehow it never is? No matter how hard you work at it? Well, I didn’t work at anything with Douglas. Our first kiss was under the podium at the Foundation while I was cowering in fear at the sound of gunshots. He’s the first man I’ve been with since…since.” Her voice cracked and Suzanne’s fingers touched her face, smoothing back a lock of hair.
“We know, sweetie.” Her voice was soft with acceptance and understanding. Another thing she loved about Suzanne, and about Claire, too. They always understood.
“Anyway,” Allegra continued, when the tightness in her throat eased up, “I think what’s so incredible is that at all times I’ve been completely myself with him. I feel total freedom. I never once worry about the effect I’m having on him or how I look or…or anything.”
She twisted the linen tablecloth, searching for the words to tell her friends the deepest secrets of her heart.
“I thought my life was over, when I woke up blind,” she said finally, quietly. “I honestly thought I might just as well be dead. I couldn’t imagine falling in love, ever again. More to the point, I couldn’t imagine anyone falling in love with me. Who would want me? I can’t do anything for myself, I’m no fun at all.” Allegra toyed, briefly, with the idea of telling her two best friends about the nightmares, waking and sleeping, but that felt too raw, too scary. “So you can imagine my surprise when this big strong man, who can do anything or have anything he wants, apparently wanted—wants—me. Not only does he want me, but he wants the unvarnished, damaged me. He doesn’t seem to find me lacking in any way.” She wiped away a tear. “It still feels like a miracle and I’m waiting for him to tell me that I’m too much trouble, but so far…” Knock on wood. “So far, he seems to be sticking. It’s only been two days—less than two days, and I don’t know what the future holds, but even this little bit of time has helped me find myself again. I can let myself be me with him. I thought I’d never be happy again, but Douglas has given me happiness back. It’s such a big, scary risk for me, opening my heart to him, but I feel safe with my heart in his hands.” She turned to her left. “You know, Suzanne? Like you feel with John?”
There was utter silence.
“Yes, I know.” Suzanne honked into her handkerchief again. Allegra wondered if she had any mascara left.
To her right, Claire sniffled. “That’s wonderful,” she said in a watery voice, then she exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! Look at the time! I have to get back to the hospital before the afternoon rounds. If I’m not there, Bud’s capable of pulling all his tubes out and staggering away. Or punching out the doctors’ lights. Suzanne, can you settle my bill and I’ll pay you back later? Allegra, I’m so happy for you… Oh, God, I’ve got to run!”
With a flurry of kisses, Claire left.
Suzanne settled the bill, refusing Allegra’s credit card. “Put it back, sweetie. And I won’t accept Claire’s money, either. Think of it as my little celebration lunch, to announce my pregnancy. Come on, now, the sky’s darkening. I want to get you home and then drive back before John sends out the Marines—or the SEALs—to find me.”
Allegra stood shivering outside the door of The Garden, waiting for Suzanne to bring the car around. A tiny snowflake fell on her cheek and she lifted her face to the cold air, breathing deeply, feeling peace settle in her heart.
She was so lucky to have Suzanne and Claire in her life. Not everybody had such good friends.
Not everybody had a Douglas.
To her shame, she found herself counting her blessings for the very first time since she’d lost her sight, something she should have done earlier. There were plenty of them. She had no money problems. She was in extremely good health. People cared for her. All of that was worth celebrating.
For the first horrible, black week in the hospital, Allegra had seriously considered suicide. Just ending it all, any way she could. She missed her father fiercely and she simply could not contemplate life in an endless black abyss. But she’d been wrong. There were things to look forward to. Bud and Claire were definitely going to get married and they’d want her to sing at the wedding. One part of her brain, the music lobe, was already putting together the selection of songs, if she could keep from crying with happiness. And Suzanne’s child. If it was a little girl, the three of them would keep her knee-deep in dresses while John drove them all crazy, hovering. A little girl to love. Douglas in her life, in her bed. Maybe, just maybe, life was good, after all.
Allegra smiled.
“You little bitch. You’re going to get what’s coming to you. I’m going to see you dead and then you’ll roast in hell.” Corey Sanderson’s voice was in her ear and his hand grabbed her arm in a painful vise.
Allegra screamed at the top of her voice.
Chapter Fifteen
Hormone replacement therapy.
Kowalski was still chuckling over that one back in his office. Jack Thompson was about five-foot-eight, two-hundred-and-ten pounds, a real ace with a rifle, hairy as a bear and looked like a wrestling champ.
Not a likely candidate for HRT anytime soon.
Hormone replacement therapy, indeed.
“We’ve got to get on top of the Robertson account.” Midnight walked in, frowning over a clipboard. “Fuck, he wants two bodyguards, asap. So I guess we—” he looked up, stopped in his tracks and stared, jaw open.
Kowalski had already deputized two men to protect the publisher who’d published the tell-all memoirs of a former Aryan supremacist and had received death threats from no less than three militia movements.
Midnight was still standing there, catching flies with his mouth. “Well, what the hell you staring at?” Kowalski waved his pen impatiently.
“You’re…smiling.”
John hitched a hip on the corner of his desk. “Threw me for a loop there.”
Kowalski immediately frowned. “Am not smiling,” he growled.
“Are too.”
“Am not.” Kowalski’s jaws clenched at how childish they sounded.
Midnight’s grin split his face. “You sure as hell are—were. I haven’t seen you smile since 1999, and that was only because that sadistic fuckhead Gannon fractured his leg on a HALO.” Midnight shook his head. “Had a smile over that one myself.” He looked at Kowalski, eyes narrowed. “But I have never seen that particular expression on your face before. You look like a sap, my friend. Like a fish with a hook in its mouth, happy to have been landed.”
John easily evaded the book Kowalski threw at his head and laughed. He tilted his head. “Hook looks good in your mouth, though, Senior Chief. I wonder if it has anything to do with a certain gorgeous redhead with a fabulous voice?”
Kowalski bent his head over the report, pretending to read with rapt interest a cost breakdown of a new computer system, when he wasn’t taking in a word. He willed Midnight to get up off his desk and walk away, but Midnight was as strong-willed as he was and looked so settled in he could sit there for days.
This was completely new for Kowalski—being teased about his love life. He’d never had a love life before, just a sex life that no one ever teased him about, for the excellent reason that it wasn’t public. He’d never gone to a party with a woman on his arm, never introduced a woman to his teammates. He’d never been part of a couple.
It occurred to him, for the first time, that now he was. He’d been so overwhelmed with everything that it hadn’t had time to penetrate his thick skull, but all of a sudden there it was—Douglas Kowalski had a mate. Someone to share things with, someone to look after, someone to care about.
It was so odd, that thought. He turned it over in his mind.
A couple. He was part of a couple. Maybe even…an engaged couple. Oh yeah, he could get behind that.
“Come on, Kowalski. I know what you’re going through. I have that hook in my mouth myself. Threw me for a loop, I’ll tell you, and I’ve been out of my head ever since. I’m really happy for you, Senior. Allegra seems like a nice kid. Suzanne loves her so that puts her real high up in my book. Pity about that fucker who beat her up and got away with it. Killed her dad. Blinded her. Personally, I’d have cut his balls off, but what do I know? I’m just a sailor.”
Kowalski put his pen down slowly. There was a loud buzzing in his ears.
“What did you say?” He enunciated each word carefully. His tongue felt big and awkward in his mouth. Someone had beaten Allegra up? Beaten her up? He couldn’t move, could hardly breathe.
Midnight’s eyes bored into his. “Fuck,” he said quietly. “You didn’t know. No one told you.”
“Told. Me. What.” Kowalski wasn’t screaming. He thought that showed enormous self-control. Midnight held his hands up, palms out—okay now, keep calm. Kowalski wondered if what was in his eyes scared Midnight.
“Right, this is what I have, and it’s all from Suzanne, you understand.”
Kowalski nodded, his throat too tight to talk. Every cell of his body was screaming to go out and kill whoever the motherfucker was who’d hurt Allegra, but he was a soldier. He had discipline. Discipline was what had made him what he was.
Midnight raised troubled eyes to his. “The story is this. Allegra was barreling right along in her career, a sort of Irish Norah Jones—that’s straight from Suzanne, what the fuck do I know about music? So anyway, Allegra was very successful and this guy, this, this manager or producer or something who was Mr. Big in the ’80s. Guy named Corey Sanderson—you ever heard of him?”
Kowalski had. Anyone who followed music had. Sanderson was a big-time producer-turned-manager, had helped create a number of the sounds of the ’80s and ’90s and ruled the music world of the Pacific Northwest. Hip-hop, skat, grunge, world music, you name it, Corey Sanderson somehow was behind it or close to it or managing it or making money off it. Corey Sanderson was The Man.
Kowalski nodded and Midnight continued. “Anyway, Allegra signed with this guy who was supposed to help her make this leap right up into superstardom, but he fumbled the ball, lost his mojo. From what I gather, this Sanderson guy started pushing Allegra to go in directions she wasn’t musically suited for. Now that’s a direct quote from Suzanne, I wouldn’t know musical directions if they hit me upside the head. Allegra was increasingly unhappy, her career was tanking because this guy was forcing her to sing and play things that weren’t her style. Allegra was on a big tour last summer, and they were selling fewer and fewer tickets, lots of cancellations, the whole enchilada was sinking fast. Allegra confessed her unhappiness to Suzanne and Suzanne took a look at her contract. And I gotta say that as a businesswoman, Suzanne is sharp as a tack. She’s given me excellent business advice. You really want my girl on your side, and not as your enemy. Sanderson was her enemy. She hated the guy’s guts and found a way for Allegra to get out of her contract with him.”
Kowalski had goose pimples. A sudden flash of what was coming made his skin crawl.
“At the end of the summer tour, Suzanne had Allegra make an appointment with Sanderson to discuss terminating the business relationship. Allegra took her dad with her. According to Suzanne, Allegra’s dad was this really sweet professor of music, but not the most forceful guy in the world, you know what I mean?”
Kowalski glared at Midnight. “Cut to the chase.”
Midnight rolled his eyes. “Okay—bottom line. A week after the end of the disastrous summer tour, on the 9th of September, Allegra and her father went to Sanderson with a letter of termination of contract drawn up by Suzanne. At midnight, Suzanne was called in by the police because they’d found her number in Allegra’s purse. The father was dead—blunt instrument trauma to the head—and Allegra was in a coma. She’d been severely beaten around the head and her jaw was broken. Now sit down and listen to the rest.” Midnight put a hand on his shoulder. Kowalski had risen, murder in his heart. “So this fucker Sanderson wriggles out of it. He lawyers up fast and good, hires one of the best mouthpieces around. Allegra stayed in a coma for six weeks and when she finally came out of it she was blind, her jaw was broken and she had amnesia. No way could she testify. Sanderson’s lawyer pushed for a speedy trial, his story was they had a disagreement, Allegra’s father and Allegra herself became violent and he defended himself.”
“Bullshit.” Every muscle Kowalski had was taut, fighting ready. He was literally seeing red, veins popping in his eyes from rage. He was vaguely aware of a crackling sound and looked down at the pen he’d snapped in his fist, wishing it was this Sanderson fucker’s neck.
“Yeah. You know it, I know it, Suzanne knew it and probably the judge and lawyers knew it, too. He gets a reduced sentence of manslaughter for killing the dad, self-defense for beating Allegra up. He’s not even in jail, the fucker, he’s in some fancy psychiatric institution to learn something called ‘impulse control’.” Midnight snorted his disgust. “Shithead got away with murder and a brutal assault. But the only eyewitnesses were a dead man and a woman in a coma with her jaw wired shut and—later—a woman who has total amnesia regarding the event. Allegra apparently can’t remember anything past a week before the night of the attack, when she’d just come back from the tour. She doesn’t even remember wanting to get out of the contract. Doctors say that with the amount of head trauma she’d sustained, amnesia regarding the event is not uncommon. And no one can say when she’ll regain her memory.”
“Soon. It’ll come back soon.” Kowalski looked up at Midnight. “She’s having flashbacks.”
“She’s having what?”
“Flashbacks. It’s coming back to her, faster and faster, I’d say. And she’s suffering from PTSD.” That was what he’d seen in her, though he hadn’t recognized it. The other cases of PTSD he’d witnessed had been in soldiers, so he hadn’t recognized it in Allegra.
One of hi
s men who’d suffered head trauma in an attack had had partial amnesia. Two months gone from his life, starting from a month before the attack. His memory of the firefight had come back in vicious little spurts—like sudden glimpses of hell, he’d said—that had scared him shitless. That was what was happening with Allegra. “What’s this guy Sanderson look like?”
“I’ve never seen him, just saw the photos in the papers. Medium height, long blond hair. Dandy, real fancy dresser.”
“Uh huh.” Exactly who Allegra thought she’d seen in Lawrence Square. “She’s definitely having flashbacks, she’s getting her memory back. Yesterday—”
Midnight’s cell rang and he held a hand up, glancing at the display with a frown. “It’s Suzanne, I wonder if something’s wrong.” He opened the cell phone. “Yeah honey, you okay? Uh huh. What?” Midnight’s gaze shot to Kowalski. “Allegra? She hurt? Uh huh. I’m on my way.”
Midnight was closest to the door but Kowalski beat him to it.
Kowalski drove. Midnight didn’t even press the issue, and he didn’t say a word when Kowalski broke three state laws and a couple of federal ones on the way to The Garden.
Kowalski got there as fast as a land vehicle could make it and was out of the SUV while it was still rocking to a stop.
While rocketing toward the restaurant, Midnight had told him what he’d heard from Suzanne. Allegra had heard Corey Sanderson’s voice—and his hand touching her—and had panicked.
Kowalksi burst into The Garden. He had tunnel vision, just like in combat, and all he saw was her, Allegra, sitting on a chair, stricken and shaking, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her waist in an attempt to comfort herself. Her face was bloodless. Suzanne was sitting next to her, a hand on her shoulder.
“Allegra?” he croaked, and she looked up, head wobbling, beautiful blind eyes dark with distress.
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