The Unsung Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Oh, God. “Will they talk?” Charles gripped her shoulders and all but shook her. “Do they know your name?”

  “They’re babies,” she said. “They knew nothing. Rachel called me Maman Belle.” Her lip trembled. “I need to go. If there’s even a chance . . .”

  “There’s not.”

  Charles and Cybele both looked up to see Joe standing in the door. He had tears in his eyes. “I was just there,” he said quietly. “The children were taken away in a truck. All of them.”

  Cybele was silent, her face terrible. “Where?” she whispered.

  Charles gazed at Joe, who met his eyes only briefly before looking away. The news wasn’t going to be good.

  “Where did they take them?” she said again, her voice paper thin in the stillness.

  Joe wiped away his tears with the back of his hand. He couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak.

  “Where?” Cybele said, louder now, pulling away from Charles. “Where did those monsters take my children? I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them! Every one of them!”

  She tried to push past Joe, to get out the door, but he caught her, held her.

  She fought him, slapping and kicking, and he simply endured until she collapsed against him.

  Cybele, who never cried, was sobbing as if her heart were breaking.

  Charles couldn’t move. He stood there, with his own heart in his throat, unable to say or do anything.

  As he watched, her knees gave out. She crumpled to the floor and Joe went with her, his arms still around her. He was crying, too, rocking her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Cybele. I don’t know where they were taken. There’s no way I could know such a thing.”

  “But there must be rumors. There are always rumors.” She pulled back to look at him, her breathing coming in ragged gasps. She searched Joe’s eyes, and her face crumpled. “To one of the death camps,” she breathed.

  “Cherie, it’s only a rumor. We don’t know for sure.”

  As Charles stood there and watched Cybele cry, he knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do to help stop this woman’s grief and pain.

  Nothing.

  But there was nothing he could do.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Eleven

  DAVID HAD FALLEN asleep in his clothes.

  Which was a good thing, because apparently he wasn’t aware of the pounding on his door. He also wasn’t aware when the door opened. But he sure as hell came to fast enough when the overhead lights switched on.

  He must’ve been sleeping with his eyes slightly open. It was as if one second he was in a cave, the next he was on the surface of the sun. He shut them tightly. “Jeez, Bran—”

  “David!”

  He squinted up at . . .

  “Nightshade?”

  He blinked, and sure enough, it was Mallory.

  He reached down, checking to make sure he wasn’t lying there spread-eagled and naked, the way he did nearly every night in his attempt to save money by not turning on the bank account–sucking air conditioner. His hand encountered clothing. Bathing suit, T-shirt. Thank you, God.

  “You actually wear your glasses to bed?”

  He sat up. “No, of course not,” he said, then realized that he did, indeed, still have his glasses on. “Well, not all the time.”

  “David, I’m really sorry I woke you, but it’s kind of an emergency.”

  An emergency. His sleep-fogged mind was slowly coming back on-line. Mallory had gone out with Brandon after the photo shoot. He’d dreaded hearing her come home with him, knowing the two of them were in Bran’s apartment downstairs, together.

  But Mallory wasn’t downstairs. She was here. Alone.

  “Emergency,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing up. “Are you all right? What do you need? What can I do?”

  She smiled wanly. “Brandon is such a jerk.”

  Oh, God. David felt sick. “What did he do to you?”

  “He didn’t do anything except ditch me when I needed help. I’m fine—it’s Tom who’s not feeling so fresh.”

  “Tom?”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of old, but I can usually get it to start. Who’s Tom?”

  “My uncle.” She took his hand and pulled him toward the door. “Remember, I told you about him?”

  “The Navy SEAL.” Mallory was holding his hand. Was this some kind of weird, wonderful dream?

  David caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as she led him out the door. His hair looked like a bad accident. No way was this a dream. If he were dreaming, he’d at least let himself look more like James Bond and less like Jerry Lewis.

  “He says he wasn’t drinking, but he’s, like, completely trashed,” Mallory told him as they went down the stairs. “I don’t know what he’s taken. I don’t know anything anymore. If you’d told me an hour ago that Tom was on something mind-altering, I would’ve told you you were full of shit. But he’s like . . . he can’t even sit up. I need to get him back to my uncle Joe’s.”

  David stopped short as he saw him. Tom was a big man, and he was sprawled on his side near the last of the tiger lilies. “Maybe we should take him to the hospital.”

  “Not if he’s high,” Mallory said. “He’s career Navy. If he’s using . . .” Her voice shook. “If he’s using . . .”

  “If he’s on something, Mal, the hospital is the best place for him to be.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I know, but . . . Let’s take him to Uncle Joe’s first, okay?” She was really upset about this, on the verge of total meltdown.

  “Absolutely,” David said. “Let me pull my car up onto the lawn instead of trying to wrestle your uncle out to the street. He looks pretty heavy.”

  “He is.”

  He gently freed his hand from her death grip. “I need to run upstairs and get my keys.”

  He moved quickly and was almost at the top when she called to him. “David.”

  He turned to see her looking up at him. In the dim streetlight, her face was only a smudge of pale. Nightshade at her most vulnerable.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “I know what a pain in the ass this must be since you’ve got to get to work so early—”

  “Forget about that,” he said. “It’s no big deal. I’ll be down in a sec.”

  “Charles.”

  Joe had left the light on in the hallway, and in the dimness, he saw Charles’s eyelids flutter.

  He spoke a little louder. “Ashton, wake up.”

  Charles’s eyes opened, but they were glazed from the combined haze of painkillers and sleep. “Another air raid?” he rasped, speaking in his horrendously accented French.

  “No.” There hadn’t been an air raid for close to sixty years. “It’s Tom.”

  As Joe watched, Charles made the journey from 1944 to all the way to today. Who said there was no such thing as time travel?

  “Tom.” When Charles looked at Joe again, his eyes were sharper. “Your Tom?”

  “Mallory—my niece Angela’s daughter—just brought him home.” Joe moved his friend’s walker to the bed. “He’s in pretty bad shape, but he’s refusing to go to the hospital. I’m going to need your help.”

  Kelly sat up, her heart pounding, instantly awake as she turned on the light on her bedside table.

  There it was again—a soft knock on her door.

  Didn’t it figure that as soon as she finally fell asleep someone would need her?

  But who was it?

  “Dad?” It seemed unlikely he’d make it up the stairs with his walker. Besides, she’d programmed the number for her private line into his phone. If he needed her, all he had to do was hit the speed dial.

  “Dr. Ashton?” It wasn’t her father. The voice from the other side of the door was young and decidedly female.

  But who the heck . . . ? Who would have come into the house? Who would have the key? Whoever it was, it definitely wasn’t Mrs. Lerner, the cleaning lad
y.

  “Just a sec.” Kelly pulled back the covers and climbed out of bed. Her robe was on the floor, but the belt that tied it together was nowhere to be found. It was just as well—it was too warm for a robe, and her makeshift pajamas, an old T-shirt and a pair of red plaid boxers, covered her perfectly.

  She opened the door, pushing her hair back out of her face.

  “I’m really sorry to bother you, Dr. Ashton.” The young girl standing self-consciously out in the hallway looked familiar. She was dressed in teenaged contradictions—a body-hugging tank top and a too-large pair of cargo pants that exposed both her glitteringly pierced belly button and the top edge of her underpants. Her hair was dyed an impossible shade of black, and her eyes were light brown, and . . . They should have been hazel. Of course. If her eyes had been more hazel than brown, Kelly would’ve recognized her right away.

  “Mallory Paoletti,” she said. “My God, I haven’t seen you since you were in fifth grade. What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

  There was a boy—a young man, really—standing just behind her, his clothes and hair rumpled as if, like Kelly, he’d been pulled out of bed. Or maybe he’d worked for hours with gel and hairspray to get that effect with his hair. It was hard to tell.

  “There’s a problem,” Mallory said. “But it’s not me, it’s Tom.”

  Kelly glanced at the young man again. “Tom?”

  “No, he’s David,” Mallory said. “Tom’s downstairs with Uncle Joe and Mr. Ashton. You know, Tom. My uncle?”

  Tom. “Yes, of course I know Tom. What’s wrong?”

  “They’re arguing about what to do. Tom says he’s not drunk, that he had an accident a few months ago, but he doesn’t want to go to the hospital to get himself checked out.” Mallory gestured to David again. “David thinks he should go see a doctor, because he was really out of it even just a few minutes ago, but see, David’s not obsessed with being a macho he-man. He thinks with his brain, not with his penis.”

  David winced, as if he suspected Mallory’s comment hadn’t exactly been a compliment, as if he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted his penis to be the topic of this or any discussion.

  Kelly didn’t blame him. She was entirely confused. “Tom’s downstairs, and he’s . . . not drunk, but . . . ?”

  “You’re a doctor, right?” Mallory persisted.

  “A pediatrician,” Kelly told her.

  “Perfect,” Mallory said. “Because right now Tom’s acting like a real baby.”

  Tom was okay, as long as he sat with his head down nearly between his knees, with his hands clamped around the back of his neck.

  The word okay was relative. At this point in time, it meant that the world wasn’t shaking and shimmying, and he was no longer seeing that world doubled and blurred and through a haze of gray. The odds he was going to puke up his dinner were down to about fifty-fifty, and the roaring in his ears had dropped to a persistent but manageable hum.

  “I’m okay,” he said for the fifty-thousandth time. And compared to the way he’d felt just a short time ago, he was. “I just want to go to bed. I want to take a shower and I want to lie down for about eight hours.”

  “You were in the hospital for how long?” Charles asked.

  Joe was silent—too silent—sitting across from Tom at the cottage’s kitchen table.

  “Not very long,” Tom said, not daring to look up at Joe.

  “Yes, I think that was what you said before, and I was actually looking for something a little more specific, like two days. Or overnight. Or three months. Or—”

  “Not very long,” Tom repeated, enunciating as clearly as possible. “Look, Mr. Ashton, I’m okay—”

  “Yes, I believe you said that before, as well. Forgive us if we’re skeptical, considering right now you look like shit on a stick.” For an old dying guy hooked up to an oxygen tank and leaning on a walker, Charles Ashton was a real son of a bitch.

  Joe stood. “That’s it. I’m taking him to the emergency room.”

  Tom finally looked up at his uncle. “Joe, please, you’ve got to trust me here.”

  Joe took his keys down from the wooden hanger that hung by the door. It was in the shape of a giant key—Tom had made it for him in sixth-grade wood-shop with a lot of love and not much skill or patience. It still hung there, carefully dusted and cared for as if it were some kind of work of art. “Get in the car, Tommy.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do, Joe, carry me?”

  “Don’t think that I won’t.” Joe was really mad, and just ready to try.

  “Look, going to the hospital would just be a waste of time.” Tom tried to sound reasonable, hoping Joe would do the same. “I know what the problem is—I pushed too hard, too soon. I’m getting older—”

  “He’s getting older,” Charles said darkly. “Shall I hit him with my walker or my oxygen tank?”

  “And it’s not as easy to bounce back from this kind of injury,” Tom finished.

  “From what kind of injury?” Joe exploded. “You’ve been here for days and this is the first I’ve heard of any injury.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s not that big a deal. I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “If it’s really not that big a deal, then when you told me about it, I wouldn’t be worried, would I?”

  “Excuse me for thinking you had enough to worry about.” Tom couldn’t help it, his voice started getting louder, too.

  “Great, except now all I’m going to do is worry,” Joe countered. “Because I know something bad happens to you, you’re not going to call me!”

  “Look, I’m fine—”

  “You were in the hospital and you didn’t tell me!”

  “You were in the OSS and you won a fucking Medal of Honor, and you didn’t tell me!”

  Silence. Even Charles kept his mouth shut after that one.

  Tom pressed the tips of his fingers against his eyebrows, against the bridge of his nose. “Shit,” he swore softly, “I’m sorry, Joe. I’m just . . . I’m exhausted. I’ve had a tough night, and the last thing I want to do is go to some ER and get poked and prodded by some pain in the ass doctors all night long.”

  “How ’bout I look you over, take your blood pressure? Does that qualify as poking and prodding?”

  Kelly. Tom looked up to see her standing in the archway between the kitchen and the dining room. She was carrying her medical bag, and she came farther into the room, setting it down on the table. She was wearing what had to be her pajamas—an old Harvard T-shirt and red boxers that were about four sizes too big. There was nothing remotely sexy about it—except for the fact that she was wearing it. And that was enough. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “house call.”

  “Jesus.” Tom sat back. “Don’t touch me. I really need a shower.”

  She was undaunted, leaning over to look at him, to shine a little light from an ophthalmoscope into his eyes. “Just look straight at me,” she ordered, her fingers cool and firm beneath his chin.

  He was still dripping with sweat, and it wasn’t that fresh, clean, healthy sweat that came with regular physical exertion. It was sick sweat, cold and nasty and profoundly foul-smelling. He couldn’t look into her eyes, he couldn’t bear to. Instead, he focused on her forehead, just above her gracefully arched left eyebrow.

  She put down the scope and straightened up slightly, touching him with both hands, her fingers moving gently but methodically through his hair, across his scalp. “Did you fall at all tonight?” she asked. “Hit your head?”

  “Not tonight.”

  She wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her T-shirt, and as she reached around behind his head, Tom closed his eyes. He was definitely all right, his body returning to normal. Although that wasn’t something he wanted to advertise. Hey, look, Joe, I must be fine because once again, with Kelly Ashton standing directly in front of me, I’m unable to keep from thinking about sex.

  “I’m going to ask you some stupid
questions, okay?” she said. “Let’s start with your name.”

  “Thomas J. Paoletti. You want rank and serial number, too?”

  “Nope. But today’s date would be nice.”

  “It’s 9 August. Minutes from 10 August.”

  “Very good. You want to tell me Joe’s phone number?”

  He rattled off the numbers, throwing in her private line at work for good measure.

  Kelly looked up from wrapping the blood pressure cuff around his arm. “Very impressive.”

  “I retain numbers. I still know the phone numbers and addresses of every apartment I lived in as a kid—and we moved around a lot. I’ll probably remember your work number when I’m eighty.”

  “I’m hoping to retire before then,” she said as she pumped the cuff full of air. “Why don’t you plan to call me a few decades earlier? I mean, as long as you know the number, you might as well make use of it. Too tight?”

  He shook his head. Was she actually flirting with him? As long as you know the number . . . That was definitely flirting, in public, too. And while he stank to high heaven.

  Across the table, Joe had sat down again, but it was only on the edge of his seat. He looked as if he were dying to speak. Mallory and a weird-looking kid he didn’t really recognize but he vaguely thought might’ve been named David were hovering anxiously in the archway that led to the dining room. Charles sat with his arms folded, like the king that he was, actually wearing a satin smoking jacket, critically surveying all that he owned.

  Kelly slipped the head of her stethoscope between the cuff and Tom’s arm, pressing his hand between her elbow and her hip. It felt good there. It would’ve felt even better if she’d been naked.

  She slowly let the air out of the cuff, listening intently. When she was done, she did it all over again.

  “Your blood pressure’s pretty close to perfect,” she finally told him, reaching down to take his pulse, her fingers against his wrist, her focus now on the face of her watch.

  Joe couldn’t hold it in any longer. “He could barely walk in here when Mallory and her friend brought him home.”