Trisha Telep (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance (epub)

  She propped up on an elbow and watched him. “It’s OK, I won’t tell anyone.”

  He glanced at her with a questioning look, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Come on, Jack. The night-vision binoculars? The phone call? The urgent meeting you have to race off for?”

  He sighed. “I’m not a SEAL any more.”

  She searched his face. “But you want to be. And you’re helping them. You’re going to help someone bust up that terrorist cell.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then reached over and tucked a curl behind her ear. “Why do I keep underestimating you?”

  “People do it all the time.” She smiled slightly, and then looked down at his chest. She traced a little pattern with her fingernail. “I’m sorry I got you into this. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  He cupped his hand over hers. “I’m glad you got me into this.” He remembered the way he’d felt staring down at that map, seeing his country’s embassy circled in red. Something had shifted inside him. He’d had a purpose before, all those years as a SEAL. He hadn’t had a purpose that mattered in a very long time, and he wanted to go back. Charlotte had given him that. As long as he lived, he’d be indebted to her for it. Maybe someday he’d even find a way to repay her.

  She rested her head against his chest, and he pulled her closer. He felt her shoulders tense. She was fighting tears, and he didn’t know if it was for his benefit or hers, but held on to her and let her win the fight.

  The room was washed with the grey light of dawn when she woke up and realized he’d gone. She sat up and looked around. On his pillow was a paper airplane. Charlotte picked it up and unfolded it to read the note:

  If you ever need me, just call. – J and then a phone number. It was a Los Angeles area code, if she wasn’t mistaken. She remembered the Dodgers cap he’d been wearing when they first met. Maybe he still had some ties to home after all, ties that might bring him back some day. She shrugged into her robe and tucked the note safety inside the pocket.

  Birds trilled from the trees below. She gazed out at the sleepy marina, where the tourist boats still bobbed placidly beside the dock. Her gaze followed a silver Cessna as it taxied across the harbour and picked up speed. Charlotte’s breath caught as it shot up into the air. It receded towards the west, then made a wide arc and circled back.

  She lifted her hand to the sky and smiled as it neared her. The right wing tipped up. Her heart filled. She whispered goodbye and watched him soar away.

  Into the Night Sky

  Charlotte Mede

  One

  NYC – present day

  The hand with the credit card moved with brutal swiftness, cutting the white powder spread on the table like an offering to a god.

  Only Alexa noticed that she trembled picking up the tightly rolled hundred-dollar bill before holding it to her left nostril. Just like blowing out the candles of a birthday cake, only in reverse.

  The white powder was gone, a bullet into her cerebral cortex.

  A burst of clarity, like somebody had turned on an extra bright light. The sounds in the background were simultaneously faded and magnified, and she saw clearly now, as if for the first time. The man with the deep tan, smiling, his eyes inches from hers. The woman in the corner, her dress a shimmering white, her face stretched taut in agony or ecstasy, she couldn’t tell.

  For this people lied, bartered, bought, sold – and killed.

  She took a sip from her vodka and ice to stop the flow of unwanted memories, the cold bringing a fresh reality to her senses. The sunken marble floor gleamed, the swell of the sea a lullaby that helped her crest the waves in her head. She remembered that they were on a yacht in North Cove at the foot of Wall Street.

  The man leaned in closer. “Only the best for the guests. Don’t think this stuff will give me snow lights like last time.”

  She saw beneath the mahogany of his skin and beyond the deep creases at the corners of his eyes. His words were meaningless, buried by the deep draught of cologne that flooded her awareness. Against the drip of cool at the back of her throat, she wrestled with the aromatic clot of bergamot and musk.

  Even with the cocaine fueling her bloodstream, her pulse steadied to a slow gallop. “Only the best for his guests,” she repeated, the irony lost least upon her.

  “Bouncing powder is the only way to get off – if you can afford it.” He directed her by the elbow over to the ornate lapis lazuli fireplace. Her senses artificially heightened, she fixed on a Renoir, a Miro and a Goya lining the opposite wall.

  He caught her appreciative glance. “Amazing what money can buy. Did you notice the helicopter pad on your way in? Somebody running around here swears there’s also a submarine tucked away below deck.”

  “Such excess – I like it. Very much.” She took another sip from her drink and removed her elbow from his surprisingly soft hands. Voices tumbled from above, echoing in her head, the source a dozen or so people clustered around the pool on the main deck. The pool, another gem that only fathoms of money could buy. Bronze and inlaid with an original twelfth-century mosaic from Turkey which, with the flick of a computer key, could be transformed into a dance floor.

  The woman in the corner, in the shimmer of white, had disappeared moments ago. She and Marcus Wright, if that was really his name, were alone. The drug in her veins pulsed with false courage.

  “He collects art, does he?”

  Wright chuckled. “He collects everything.”

  “I’d love to get to know the owner of this wonder,” she said, glancing around admiringly before sinking into the Giorgetti chaise, crossing her legs. Wright was hardly immune, his glance taking in the length of bare skin beneath the simple ivory sheath.

  “Don’t know if that’s a good idea. Unless you like looking right into the fucking sun.”

  “I might go blind?” She knew how to bluff, her eyes holding his.

  Wright paused for a slice of a second then switched on a Baccarat crystal wall sconce. The soft light stung. “Everybody wants to know the guy but it’s in his own best interests to stay out of the glare, if you get what I mean.” This time he was looking at more than simply her legs. “You can’t blame him for being paranoid, especially when people start sniffing around for no good reason. How’d you get an invitation to this party anyway?”

  “A friend of a friend. Somebody who’s equally paranoid and suspicious.” Even in the flattering glow of the lounge, Wright appeared older than she had first thought, perhaps in his mid-fifties, dissipation lining a face no surgical magic wand could touch. And it was always the eyes, the emptiness. She clutched the tumbler between her palms more tightly, forcing a casual tone. “I’ve yet to meet our host.”

  “Let’s just say sometimes he doesn’t show.” Wright shrugged carelessly beneath the fine linen of his shirt.

  “Really? So he does all of this for what purpose exactly? To have his guests test the merchandise?”

  Wright sat down opposite her, a careless man, the kind she had met many years ago. He wouldn’t care until it was too late, and maybe not even then.

  “I don’t know and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.” He propped one leg thoughtlessly on the priceless lapis-lazuli-encrusted side table. “I’d be real careful about asking too many questions.”

  “Even if they are of a business nature?” she tested.

  Wright eyed her speculatively, taking in the heavy fall of her hair, the cut of her dress, not failing to notice the discreet, but serious, cabochon diamond and white gold band on her left hand.

  “Doesn’t look as though you’re down to your last million.”

  She glanced at the Goya opposite. The mad grin of the shepherd leered, guessing at half-buried truths she never wanted to unearth again, as if to acknowledge that great art and great suffering were mankind’s claim to fame. The glass in her hand was suddenly slippery, the ice long since melted. She placed the crystal tumbler carefully on the table between them.

  “It’s never
enough.”

  “What’s never enough? Money? Or thrills?”

  Alexa’s shoulders tightened, ignoring the last question. “I’m looking for something else entirely.”

  “You’re looking for—” Wright paused as though to suggest an abomination “—an introduction?”

  “If it can be arranged.”

  “And why should I?”

  “It might be lucrative for you.”

  He shook his head, his smile revealing a shark’s small white teeth. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Alexa. Either you’re blowing smoke or the coke’s really gone to your head. Wouldn’t be the first time somebody too bored and too rich decided to walk on the wildest side there is.”

  She forced a small smile to bloom on her face. “Motivation is a strange thing. Regardless, you’ll regret turning down my offer. As a matter of fact, I know that you will.”

  “You’ve got a fuck of a lot of confidence. Which must mean you either don’t know what you’re doing, or you do.”

  “Care to take a guess which it is?”

  Wright shook his head. “No thanks. I like living too much.”

  “He can’t be that bad.” Although Alexa knew just how bad he was.

  Wright exhaled sharply, clearly uneasy with the focus of the conversation. He was on the Gabriella to party and this scene was bringing him down. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

  She bent her head to hide her disappointment, absently twisting the rings on her left hand. Then she rose and tilted her head towards the murmur of people on the main deck. “I suppose I’ll have to find our host on my own.”

  “The man doesn’t like people nosing around, I told you.” He was nervous, leaning over the table between them, reaching into the inside pocket of his dinner jacket. “Plus you don’t even look like his type, no offence. His women are a little more obvious if you know what I’m getting at.”

  Bile rose in her throat, a caustic mix of anger and revulsion so strong she thought her chest would explode. God, let it never come to that.

  “Another hit?” Wright asked without looking at her, bent over the table.

  His words jangled her nerves like cut piano wire. She had to get out of the room.

  Wright’s voice had lost its studied laziness, picking up on her tension. His hands stilled as he gazed at her over a little mound of white powder. “I don’t usually repeat myself but you’re looking for the worst kind of trouble.”

  She held her breath to keep from screaming, then swallowed the urge to laugh hysterically. If only it were that simple. She caught, and held, his glance and there was no hiding the look in her eyes.

  “You’re wasting your time warning me.” The statement came straight from what was left of her soul.

  His hand stopped mid-air, a small packet clenched between elegantly manicured fingers. “Look, I’m just telling you that ugly things can happen . . .”

  Her smile was bleak. “Ugly things have already happened, Mr Wright.”

  And I have the scar tissue to prove it.

  Alexa Stoppard forced herself to slow down, to walk deliberately up the majestic spiral staircase in the atrium, her hand trailing the onyx and silver handrail. The false courage was beginning to fail her now, the pumping in her veins fading to a faint rhythm and leaving her with the beginnings of a headache.

  Up on the main deck, she skirted the open-air bar and the dozen or so people brandishing champagne flutes and false smiles. The woman in white laughing wildly at something somebody said. Three men in a corner feigning heartbreak as she walked by. She ignored their gestures and disappeared around the corner, swept along by her own brand of desperation.

  Maybe Wright was right and Rafael Hunter wouldn’t show. It could take weeks and months to get anywhere close to him. He was probably better protected than most heads of state.

  She hurried now up a short flight of stairs to the bridge deck. The sharp scent of the tidal estuary of the Hudson River cleared her head, a warm breeze blowing off shore. Pulling the hair back from her face, she rested against the rail of the Gabriella, Manhattan at her feet. Daylight bled into dusk as North Cove was transformed into a dangerous playground by the sea. A short distance away on shore a child gathered up her pail and shovel, looking for stones, while an anxious mother followed close behind. The little girl was four, maybe five. Alexa stared and then looked away, the dull headache tightening around her forehead like a tourniquet.

  She never cried, not even at Julian’s funeral, but now she felt the unfamiliar sensation of building tears, salt water biting at deep wounds. Zachary had relinquished Julian’s papers, giving her what she needed to secure an invitation aboard the Gabriella. As long as he’d been alive, her husband had kept away everything that might hurt her. Names, dates, locations. The possible whereabouts of Hunter.

  Twelve years. But little had changed. Hunter was probably millions of dollars richer with millions more lost lives to account for. She would find him.

  Because this time she wasn’t alone.

  The thought of Zachary Coombs brought a sad smile to her face. He’d tried but failed to put her off, an old warrior who recognized when to raise the flag of defeat. Against his better judgment and directly against his best friend’s wishes, he made the one simple phone call that had opened the gates of hell and unleashed the forces of her past.

  If Julian were still alive he would have never forgiven him.

  The wind shifted and, despite the calm of the sky, a faint rumble of thunder sounded. The ship continued its gentle movement in counterpoint to the tightening of her stomach. She pulled away from the rail to peer into the purpling horizon.

  A blur of black appeared off shore, an ink blot spreading its nasty stain. The rumble was a roar now, a huge storm cloud closing in. The deep grunt of rotor blades were transformed into a giant metal insect floating above, at one with the sky, hovering over the yacht. The stench of fuel, a great wind, her hair and dress plastered against her body.

  A half-formed thought blossomed like the beginnings of a plague. Bright light flooded the yacht as the helicopter touched down with awkward grace.

  Instinct told her to run. She pushed herself away from the rail and turned to stumble down the stairs, a childhood monster biting at her heels. Afraid to look over her shoulder, she was back on the main deck in seconds. And then, like in a horror movie, the film began to unspool.

  Above, near the bridge, blades sliced the air as men loaded with AK-47s poured from the helicopter and on to the landing pad. How many? Four? Five? They fired from the hip, shooting wildly, scattering Gabriella’s guests like petals in a storm. Crystal shattered, deck chairs overturned. People lunged for the stairs below.

  She froze, impulse taking over, as screams ripped the air whenever a round hit its mark.

  Get down, get down, get down. The words ricocheted through her brain while a flat-out panic pushed her to the floor. She made herself small, her skin slippery against teak and the hot fear knocking the air out of her lungs.

  Smoke, ash and a fervent prayer. Hopeless. She didn’t even believe.

  It had never come to this, those many years ago. But she knew it had been there, in the background, a miasma that poisoned everything she was and everything she did.

  She squeezed her eyes tight against the smoke and then the smell of sweat as a gloved hand clamped over her shoulders and the butt of an AK-47 jammed into her ribs. The man dragged her up in front of him, making sure he stayed behind her, the gun still buried in her flesh.

  It would end before it even started. She didn’t struggle but forced her eyes open.

  Marcus Wright – his shirt tail flapping in the wind and debris like he was still looking for a vodka or another hit – lurched towards her.

  Her breath rushed back into her lungs.

  Alexa winced as her head was forced back in a brutal grip. She couldn’t look away over the ship’s rails to the blue of the river, now festooned with palls of smoke. Wright’s bizarre smile held a demon
ic intensity as he rushed straight towards hell. Towards her.

  His words sailed over the growl of helicopter blades, indecipherable.

  The grip around her waist didn’t ease but the gun swung away from her. Before she could breathe again, before she could groan a protest, three red holes flowered on Wright’s still immaculate shirt.

  For countless seconds he swayed – high, smiling and suspended between life and death – then collapsed to the floor.

  The gun jammed back into her ribs and, before she could be sick, a dirty rag was pressed over her mouth and nose. The rough movements barely registered as her arms were wrenched behind her back, cutting off her last coherent thought.

  I can’t go back. I can’t . . .

  Two

  Washington, DC

  Zachary Coombs, retired Supreme Court judge, hauled long and hard on his cigar. His wife detested the habit but she was at their country house in McLean, Virginia so he didn’t have to care.

  He punched a number into the phone at his desk, checking first to make sure he had a secure line.

  The voice on the other end snapped to attention. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you this evening?”

  He dispensed with niceties. “Mrs Stoppard, I want to know where she is at all times, is that clear?”

  “We’re on it, sir.”

  Coombs exhaled a curl of cigar smoke. “I don’t want you on it – I want you on top of it.” The former judge’s voice brooked no dissent. Well into his seventies, he knew his reputation as one of the toughest supporters of the war on drugs still carried weight. He could quote the statistics in his sleep, that 40 per cent of violence and crime was drug related, that of the thousands of sentenced prisoners in federal institutions, those in for drug law violations were the largest single category.

  “Mrs Stoppard’s car dropped her off at North Cove and she boarded the yacht Gabriella where she has been for the last two hours.”

  Coombs grunted and then set down his cigar. He didn’t have to enquire as to the registered owner of that floating castle. “Keep me posted. Doesn’t matter what time it is. I damn well want to know.”