“There was nothing there,” Tom told her, his frustration tightening his voice. “Locke watched the front windows from up in the Congregational church tower, and Starrett watched from the end of the hall while Jazz and I searched the place. No bomb, no explosives, no suitcase filled with semiautomatics. It was just . . . a really nice hotel suite. He had only one suitcase, filled with golf clothes. There was an open bottle of mineral water on the table; we took that—for fingerprints. There was a nice clear set on it, which we sent electronically to a guy I know—who found a match right away. The prints belong to—guess who? One Richard Rakowski.”
Oh, no.
Tom rubbed his forehead. “I need a shower.”
“Tom, are you sure—”
He stood up. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
“Jazz is ordering pizza.”
“Great,” he said. “Because I don’t think they serve pizza too often in the nuthouse.”
He started toward Joe’s cottage. She hurried after him. “Being mistaken isn’t exactly the same thing as being crazy.”
He stopped and looked at her, the wind whipping the trees crazily around them. “I still believe this guy’s the Merchant. I still think there’s a threat. I’m still scared out of my goddamned mind about what a man like that could do in a town like this.”
She took a step back from the vehemence in his voice.
He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “Well, there we go,” he said much more quietly. “There’s the way to keep our distance. Crazy’s okay, but obsessed doesn’t do it for you, huh, babe?” He made a tsking sound. “Too bad.”
Twenty
AT 2315, TOM gave up and dialed Kelly’s private line. He knew she was still up. He could see the light on in her bedroom window.
“Ashton.”
“It’s only me. It’s not about Betsy.”
“Oh, thank God.” Relief was thick in her voice.
“I’m sorry.” Tom felt like a complete ass. “I didn’t want to call on the house line and risk waking your father, but I . . . How is Betsy?”
“Much better,” Kelly said. “She’s been doing much better with this new antinausea drug that Dr. Martin’s trying. I mean, her long-term outlook is still touch and go, but . . .” She laughed softly and he clung to the sound. “Is this really why you called me at quarter after eleven at night?”
He’d called because he’d wanted to talk to her, had to talk to her. But he didn’t just want to show up in her room. They’d restructured all their boundaries this evening out by the swing, and he no longer had a clue about what she wanted or expected from him. But God, he was desperate. His hands were shaking.
“No.” He had to clear his throat. “Look, I know I’ve been a complete bastard, but I . . .” He managed to stop before his voice shook. Shit.
“Tom, are you all right?”
The silence stretched on as Tom fought his tears, fought even to say one word. Fought and lost. No. Dammit, no, he wasn’t all right. “I’m sorry,” he said, and hung up the phone.
Kelly carried her medical bag as she ran across the driveway in her nightgown and a pair of her father’s old boots that had been sitting in the mudroom off the kitchen.
Joe’s house was dark, but the front door was unlocked. Nothing to steal, Joe always claimed. Besides, who’d rob his little house when there was that great big treasure-filled Ashton estate right next door?
She’d thought the rain had let up, and it had, but it was still coming down enough to make her drip as she stepped into Joe’s living room. She pushed her wet hair back from her face, kicked off her father’s boots, and took the stairs to Tom’s room two at a time.
His door was tightly shut, and she stopped outside of it, suddenly scared to death.
She leaned her forehead against it, just listening, clutching her bag to her chest.
She heard what she was afraid of hearing, what she’d dreaded hearing. Choked sobs. Ragged breathing.
Tom was crying.
Oh, God. Oh, God. What should she do? She had to go in there, to make sure he wasn’t physically hurt. The doctor in her wouldn’t let her walk away.
But the woman in her knew that the last thing Tom would want was for her to see him cry.
Still, she’d been reading about head injuries. Even though his CAT scan had come back looking good, there could well have been a blood vessel in his brain weakened by the injury or the operation. She needed to talk to him, to look into his eyes, to take his blood pressure. To make sure his very life wasn’t suddenly in danger.
And she needed that more than he needed her not to see him cry.
She knocked on his door.
There was dead silence from inside the room.
She knocked again. “Tom?”
“Don’t come in.” His voice sounded raw.
It was all she could do to keep from crying, too. “I have to.”
“Just go home.”
“I can’t.” She tried the knob. His door was unlocked.
His room was dark, but she could see him sitting on his bed. He stood as he realized she was coming in, tried to wipe his face. “Jesus! Do you mind? Get the fuck out!”
Her voice shook. “You can’t call me, asking for help, and then expect me to ignore you.”
“I didn’t ask you for help!”
“Then why did you call me?”
“Kelly, please, just leave.”
She went into the room, closed the door behind her.
“Oh, Christ!”
“Tom, I have to make sure you’re all right.” She set her bag down at the end of his bed. “Are you dizzy? Is—”
“It’s not my head. It’s my fucking life, all right? Everything I’ve worked so hard for—and tomorrow I’m going to flush it down the fucking toilet! But I don’t have a choice!” His voice cracked. “I don’t have a goddamned choice!”
He broke down, and Kelly’s heart broke for him. She pulled him into her arms, holding him close.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Tom.” She was crying, too. “I wish I could make it right.”
Mallory woke up alone in David’s bed.
It was still raining. She could hear it coming down on the roof directly overhead.
The lamp was on in the corner, by David’s drawing table. He was sitting there, leaning over his work, his left hand holding his hair back from his face.
He’d put on a pair of boxers, but that was it, and the muscles in his shoulders and back gleamed in the light.
Mallory could feel her heart. It seemed to fill her chest with a calm warmth even while it sent her blood surging through her veins. Desire and peace. How could one person make her feel both of those things, both at the same time?
Angela hadn’t understood. After she’d met David, she’d had only two things to say. Mallory’s babies would have slanted eyes. And at least this one—meaning David—would never leave her, implying that he was a loser.
It wasn’t quite the complete acceptance Mallory had wished for, but she was glad her mother had waited to make the crack about the eyes until David was in the bathroom. He’d find out about Angela’s ignorance at some point, but now was just a little too soon.
As for her mother’s other comment, Mal hoped with all her heart that it was true, that David would never leave her.
Angela looked at him and saw a guy with bad hair who was uncomfortable and awkward inside his own body. Mallory saw a beautiful man who loved her.
She didn’t think she’d moved, but he glanced up from his drawing. “I’m sorry, is this light bothering you?”
“No.” Mallory got up, wrapping the sheet around her, still uncomfortable with the idea of walking around naked the way David did so easily. “What are you doing?”
He sat back to let her look, reaching for her, pulling her close to him, his hands warm and gentle.
She felt him watching her as she looked at the still-rough sketches he’d
done. It was Nightshade, and she was in superhero mode, scowling at the leader of a mangy, cyber-looking gang.
“If I turn out to be wrong about you,” Nightshade was saying in David’s perfect block letters, “I will kick you so hard your balls will come out your nose. Do you understand?”
Mallory laughed as she looked at David. “That sounds very familiar.”
He smiled back at her. “It was too good not to use.”
There was heat in his eyes, but he didn’t move, didn’t kiss her. He just looked at her.
And Mallory looked back, losing herself in that falling elevator feeling that took her breath away.
She wanted him again. Wanted to make love. But . . . “The box of condoms says they’re not one hundred percent effective. But it doesn’t say how effective they are. I mean, God, are they ninety-nine percent effective or ten percent or—”
“I think it depends,” David told her. “I think I remember reading that it varies from somewhere in the high eighties—”
“Eighty percent? Holy shit. That means that twenty percent of the time . . .”
“That’s if you use them the wrong way,” he added quickly, “or if they break.”
“Break.” Oh, God. She hadn’t thought about that. Condoms could break. It was true. She’d learned that in health class.
“But if you use them correctly, they’re close to ninety-eight percent effective.”
Mallory looked at him. That meant best case scenario, two percent of the time . . .
“You know, if I get you pregnant, I won’t leave you the way your father left your mother.” David kissed her. “If I get you pregnant, I’ll marry you.”
“I don’t want you to have to marry me. I don’t want to do it that way.” She kissed him, too. “I want to make love to you all the time, except that two percent scares me. Because that means for every hundred times we make love, then at least two times I’ll be at risk to get pregnant, right? And all you really need is one time—I’m living proof of that. And if we make love three hundred times, then that’s six times, and—”
David laughed.
“It’s not funny. I’m serious!” But it was hard to keep a straight face, his laughter was so infectious.
“I’m not laughing at you,” he told her with a kiss. “I’m laughing because you told me you want to make love to me three hundred times—which is really great news. It does things to me you can’t even imagine. But right after telling me that, I’m supposed to try to explain percentages and probability to you?”
He kissed her again, longer this time, lingeringly. “I can’t get enough of you, either, Nightshade. I’m willing to take the risk—even if that box said fifty percent effective. But this isn’t just about me, it’s about you, too, and if you don’t want to . . .”
Don’t want to wasn’t even close.
Mallory let the sheet drop.
Tom lay on his back on his bed, one arm around Kelly, the other up, elbow bent, over his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this tired.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d broken down and cried. When he was fourteen, and his soon-to-be stepfather had beaten the shit out of him for something ridiculous, like a glass of spilled root beer at dinner, and his mother hadn’t said a word in his defense?
When he was fifteen, and his mother had packed up all his things and told him to move into Joe’s house for good, when she’d chosen that vicious bastard she’d married over her own flesh and blood?
When he’d found out that Angela had gotten pregnant and would probably never escape from this soul-sucking town?
When not-even-sixteen-year-old Kelly had whispered for him to meet her later, in her tree house, when she’d turned and looked back at him, letting him see in her eyes that she wanted him to kiss her again, that she wanted him, and he knew like a rock in his gut that he had to leave town as quickly as possible, or else he’d never leave at all?
Because that was really why he’d left. He’d told himself it was about her not being old enough. But he could have waited until she was old enough. He could’ve done it. For Kelly, he would have waited forever. He could have slowed things down, kept them both from going too far until she was ready.
She’d been in love with him. He knew she’d been in love with him. And if he’d stayed, they would’ve had what Mallory and David had found.
They’d have children by now, because he would have married Kelly. He’d be lying here on this bed with his wife, instead of his sometimes, almost lover.
Sure, he probably wouldn’t be a SEAL, but hey, in a few weeks, he wasn’t going to be a SEAL anymore, anyway.
If he had known then what he knew now, would he have left?
“The what ifs can really kill you,” he said.
Kelly lifted her head slightly to look at him. “Don’t play that game,” she said. “You can’t win.”
But he had to. “What if I hadn’t left that summer, Kel? What if I’d met you in the tree house that night?”
She laughed softly, lowering her head back to his shoulder. Her hand was warm against his chest, against his heart. “I would’ve lost my virginity a lot earlier than nineteen.”
“I’m in love with you.”
He felt her freeze. It was funny, because she wasn’t moving to start with. But he felt her get even more still.
Not a good sign.
“I didn’t say that expecting any kind of response,” he told her. “It was just something I had to, you know, say.” Definitely time to change the subject. “I went back to room 104 tonight, and I dusted for fingerprints. You know what I found?”
“No,” she said faintly.
“I found prints for Maria Consuela, Ginny Tipten, Gloria Haynes, and Erique Romano—all employees of the Baldwin’s Bridge Hotel. I found some old, smudged prints for George and Helena Waters and Mr. Ernest Roddiman, all previous patrons of the hotel. But I did not find one single other print for Richard Rakowski. There was nothing on the outside or inside of his suitcase, nothing on the buckle of a belt that was packed with a pair of plaid golf pants in that suitcase, nothing on the closet door or the TV or the telephone. Nothing.”
It had taken him hours to dust, hours to clean it up, all the while aware that the man calling himself Richard Rakowski could return any moment. His team was watching, and Tom was wired with a radio so he could talk to them. But their heads-up wouldn’t give him much time to get out or even hide.
He pushed the pillows behind him, pushed himself so that he was sitting up. Kelly sat up, too. “Yes, that’s very suspicious—no other prints of his in the room except the ones that probably were planted on that bottle,” he continued. “I know exactly what you’re dying to ask. You’re also dying to find out what the hell aka Richard Rakowski is doing away from his two hundred and eighty dollar a night hotel room at nine o’clock at night. Right?”
Kelly nodded. Her hair had gotten wet in the rain, and it was curling around her face as it dried. Combined with the white cotton nightgown, it made her look impossibly young.
Tom reached for the alarm clock on his bedside table, turning it to face them. “You’re wondering why at nearly midnight I still haven’t received a call from my team telling me our man’s back in his room. And you’re right to wonder. It’s some kind of decoy room, some kind of . . . hell, I don’t know. Maybe he’s going to bring the bomb there at the last minute. Maybe it’s a precaution designed to throw people like me off his track. Maybe he’s the goddamned paranoid one.”
He gazed into her eyes. “It’s him, Kelly, I know it’s him. I have these moments where I’m so completely convinced, I can taste it. And I know the celebration for the Fifty-fifth is his target. I know I have to tell someone. Only they’re not going to believe me. I have no proof, I have nothing but an empty hotel room without any fingerprints, a set of pictures of a man who’s basically got the same shape skull as the Merchant did.” His voice shook. God, don’t let him start crying again. “And then I start to
wonder. Maybe I am nuts. Maybe it’s the injury that makes me so blindingly certain it’s him. But I’ve decided . . .” He had to stop and clear his throat. “I have to call Admiral Crowley.”
He’d made up his mind tonight. Or rather, he’d resigned himself to making the call first thing in the morning. There really wasn’t a decision to be made. There was only one right thing to do in this situation, and he had to do it.
Even if it meant giving up his career, his entire life.
“If I’m wrong about this . . .” He had to stop for a second because his goddamned lip was trembling. “If I’m wrong, if I’m seeing dead terrorists when I shouldn’t be, then I don’t deserve the command of SEAL Team Sixteen. If I’m wrong, I should accept a medical discharge. It’s not what I hoped for, but there’s no shame in it.”
“There’s not.” She moved to push herself even farther up, to kneel beside him on the bed. “But there’s also a chance, with a few more months of rest, you’ll be—”
“No,” he said. “Once I call Admiral Crowley in the morning, once I sound the alarm, I’m not going to be given a few more months. My doctor’s a captain who’s wearing a choke collar—and Rear Admiral Tucker’s on the end of his leash. I’ll go before a medical board almost immediately, I can guarantee it. And seeing dead terrorists in Massachusetts isn’t something even a bipartisan board is going to take lightly. If I do this—when I do this—there’s a good chance that not only will I be discharged, but I’ll be psych evaled to death—and confined for the duration.”
Kelly had tears in her eyes.
“But I can’t not tell anyone,” Tom said softly. “I can’t just ignore it. And I’m running out of time.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked. “To make it any easier? Is there someone I can talk to, or call for you, or . . . ?”
He shook his head, afraid to reach for her, especially after she’d pulled back, after she’d almost seemed to make a point not to touch him.
I’m in love with you. It was a stupid-ass thing to have said. He’d scared the hell out of her, even more than he’d done with his crazy talk about terrorists. It should have scared the hell out of him, too, but tonight he’d gone out to a point way beyond fear.
The Unsung Hero Page 37