Lisa Marie Rice - [Ghost Ops]

by I Dream of Danger

  I Dream of Danger

  A Ghost Ops Novel

  Lisa Marie Rice

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my beloved husband, my personal hero

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks once again to my great editor, May Chen,

  and my great agent, Ethan Ellenberg.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  Books by Lisa Marie Rice

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Burial of Judge Oren Thomason

  St. Mary’s Cemetery

  Lawrence, Kansas

  January 10

  He came.

  She knew he’d come. Somehow she’d known.

  She dreamed of him last night. She often dreamed of him, dreams so vivid she woke with tears on her face, aching for him.

  Elle Thomason rose from where she’d thrown dirt onto her father’s coffin, before the two undertaker’s assistants covered it with earth and he would finally, finally be at peace—and that was when she saw him.

  He was outlined against the chilly winter sun on the small hill where the chapel stood. He was only a dark figure against the dying sun, but she would recognize him anywhere, anytime.

  Nick Ross. The boy she’d loved so much, now clearly a man. The dark outline against the pale winter sun was tall and broad-shouldered He’d been lean as a boy, like a young panther. Now he was a lion.

  He saw her. He didn’t wave to her or nod. Neither did she. She simply watched as he walked down the small hill toward her, eyeing him hungrily. She’d waited five long years for this moment.

  In all the dead years, the years of caring for her father as his mind died long before his body, she’d yearned for this moment. As everything else fell from her life, as she lost everything, as her life was taken over by the daily care of a man who no longer controlled anything about himself, the only thing left to her was her imagination. And in her mind, she went wild.

  In her mind, she and Nick were together.

  Her favorite daydream was meeting him in some sophisticated city. New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Even better, London or Paris. Of course, she was sophisticated herself. She’d had a number of love affairs that had taught her a lot. She was well-groomed, successful, utterly in control.

  Turning around in an expensive restaurant, there he’d be.

  In her fantasies she could figure out what she was—poised and successful and happy. But she could never figure out what Nick was. What he’d become. She only knew he’d be handsome and he’d love her. She couldn’t get beyond that point—that he still loved her, after all these years.

  She’d ask why he’d disappeared so suddenly. It was still unfathomable to her. One night she’d gone to bed teasing him that he’d grow up to be Commander Adama of Battlestar Galactica, and the next morning he was gone. Completely disappeared. His things were still in his room. The only articles missing were two pairs of jeans, some Tshirts, a winter jacket, and his gym bag.

  She’d been frantic. She wanted to call the cops, report him missing, but her father had gently taken the phone from her hand and flipped it closed. He never answered her questions and soon, very soon, he became incapable of answering any questions at all.

  Not a phone call, not a letter, not even a postcard. It was as if Nick had dropped off the face of the earth, taking with him her entire existence. From a carefree teenager, the beloved only daughter of a respected and wealthy judge, her life plunged into the pits of hell. Her father started losing his mind day by day, darkness descending, and Nick wasn’t there.

  How many evenings she stared out the window, pretending to read, her father having finally exhausted himself enough to nap in an armchair. Going out on a date was unthinkable. There wasn’t enough money to pay a nurse for evening hours. She’d had to earn extra credits over the summers to graduate at seventeen because she could see the day coming when the money would run out and she’d have to stay home all day to nurse her father, and she wanted at least a high school certificate.

  Dating was out, going to movies with girlfriends was out, having friends over was definitely out. What she got was a nurse coming for a few hours a day in which she could rush to do the shopping and rush to the library to stock up on books. What she got was staring out the window, waiting for Nick.

  Hoping for Nick.

  Yearning for Nick.

  Who never came.

  So in her daydreams, when she finally did meet him, utterly by chance in a big city, she got to choose how it would be. He was either immensely rich and handsome or powerful and handsome. He was never a loser, a drunk, or an addict. That wasn’t Nick.

  Hello, he’d say, stepping back in admiration. Aren’t you beautiful?

  Thank you, she’d answer. I hope you’re well. I’d love to stay and chat, but I need to get back to my—

  Here Elle’s imagination struggled a little. To what? Get back to what? What could possibly be more important than Nick?

  But it didn’t really matter because then he’d say:

  —Have a drink with me. Please. Just five minutes. I’m so glad to see you.

  And, well, this was Nick. And so she would. And then he’d say he loved her and would never leave her again.

  It was a fine daydream and it had to be because it replaced more or less everything a young girl should have—school, friends, first love, dreams, plans …

  The details wavered but the core of it was always the same. He found her whole and happy and successful. Beautiful and elegant and self-assured.

  Not the miserable creature she was now. Pale and pinched from the last four nights of watching her father die when she hadn’t slept at all. Wearing a too-thin jacket that didn’t protect in any way against the cold because the only winter coat she had was ripped along the sleeve.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way at all. But it was.

  She simply watched as he walked toward her, and everything about her was numb except her heart. Her treacherous, treacherous heart, leaping in joy to see him.

  He didn’t hurry down to her, but his long legs seemed to carry him quickly. He had on a big heavy jacket that came down to midthigh; his gloved hands hung by his side.

  Elle was aware of her own hands, gloveless, almost blue with cold. Embarrassed, she stuck them behind her back.

  And that was how they met, Nick towering over her, face in shadow, looking down at her. The sun was at his back, huge just before sunset, an enormous pale disk. They stood and looked at each other. Elle was struck dumb.

  He was here, right in front of her.

  How she’d longed for this moment and here it was, by the side of her father’s coffin.

  She should say something, she should—

  “Miss?”

  Elle turned. She’d completely forgotten the attendants. “Yes?”

  “You’re going to have to stand back, Miss. We’re going to cover the coffin with dirt.”

  “Oh.” She stepped back and Nick stepped with her. “Of course.”

  She and Nick watched as dirt covered the coffin of her only living relative. She didn’t cry. She’d shed so many tears over the years. There were none left. Her father had gone long before this. What had been left behind was a shell of a per
son, human meat.

  Her father had been witty, well-read, strongly opinionated, charming. That man had died years ago.

  So she watched as they covered the coffin, quickly and efficiently. It was cold and they wanted the job over as fast as possible. When they finished, they put away their tools and faced her.

  There was a gash in the ground now, raw and red. Someday it would be covered with grass as the other graves were, but for now it was clear that the earth had recently claimed one of its own. A tombstone would come, eventually, when she could afford it.

  The funeral home director had quoted figures that made no sense to her. The cheapest one cost over two thousand dollars. It might as well have cost a million. She didn’t have it.

  She didn’t have anything.

  One of the gravediggers pulled off his hat. “Real sorry about the judge, ma’am. You have our condolences.”

  Elle dipped her head. “Thank you. Um …” She opened her purse and peered inside, though she didn’t need to look to see what was in it. One bill. Not a big one, either. She pulled out the twenty and handed it to the man, well aware of the fact that it should have been a hundred-dollar bill, fifty each.

  He picked it up gingerly, looked at his mate in disgust, stuck it in his pants pocket and glared at her.

  Elle understood completely. They had done a hard job. The ground was frozen and they’d toiled. The funeral director had let her know clearly that the cheap option she’d chosen didn’t cover the diggers and that she would have to recompense them herself.

  This was so awful. She felt so raw and exposed, reduced to ashes, to dust. All of this was playing out right in front of Nick, who was observing everything.

  She remembered how observant he was. He always had been. He was seeing her humiliation in 3D HD, up close and personal.

  Elle cleared her throat, reached out a hand toward the gravedigger, then stuck it in her pocket. “I’m sorry it’s not more,” she said quietly. “Perhaps—”

  “Here.” Nick handed over two bills. Her eyes widened when she saw Benjamin Franklin’s face twice. “Thanks for your help.”

  The cap came off again, both men thanked him, nodded to her and walked off.

  Elle stared at the ground, breathing through her pain. Nick had left many years ago, and for all those years, not a day, not a minute, had gone by in which she hadn’t missed him so fiercely she thought she might explode from it.

  All this time she’d yearned for Nick.

  And here he was. At her lowest point.

  “He loved you very much,” she said, looking at the ground.

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  His voice, already deep as a boy, had become deeper, rougher. The voice of a man.

  He was a man. He’d been mature beyond his years when he’d come into their life, a runaway her father found in their backyard one winter evening. He was lying in the snow with a broken, badly infected wrist, dying, so emaciated her father was able to pick him up and carry him in his arms to the car to take him to the hospital.

  From that moment on, Nick Ross belonged to them.

  Until he left them, inexplicably, another cold winter night.

  She looked up at him, hungry for the sight of him. How she’d dreamed of him over these past years! Her dreams had been so vivid, often unsettling. She’d seen him shooting, jumping out of planes, fighting.

  She’d seen him with other women. That had been so hard because her dreams had the bite of reality. She’d seen him naked, making love to women, harsh and demanding, impossibly sexy.

  The Nick standing next to her looked just as he had in her dreams—hard, tough, fully a man. Dark eyes that gave nothing away, close-cropped dark hair, broad shoulders, lean muscles. A formidable man in every way, even though the last time she’d seen him he’d been just on the verge of manhood.

  “He was … sick?” Nick’s voice was hesitant.

  “Yes,” she replied, looking down at the raw gash in the frozen earth. “For a long time.”

  Since you left, she thought to herself. He was never the same, and then he started his fast decline.

  “I’m sorry.” The deep voice was low, as if murmuring for her ears alone, though there was no one else on the cemetery grounds. There had been about thirty people at the funeral itself, but they left immediately, as soon as the service was over. Everyone had jobs, places to be, things to do. Nobody stayed for the interment. They’d paid their respects to the man her father had been and left. Her father had been dead to the town long before his body left this earth.

  She nodded, throat tight.

  “It’s cold. You should have worn something warmer.”

  Elle huffed out a breath that would have been laughter in other circumstances. The cloud of steam rose quickly and dissipated into the frigid air. Yes, she should have worn something warmer. Of course.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “I, um, I forgot.”

  Why are we talking about coats? It seemed so surreal.

  “Where’s your car?” Nick asked in his rough voice. “You should get home. You’re freezing.”

  Elle looked back up at him in panic. He’s leaving already? That couldn’t be!

  Her throat tightened even more. He couldn’t leave, he couldn’t. He couldn’t be that cruel.

  The words tumbled out without her thinking. “I don’t have a car. The undertakers were supposed to give me a ride home.” Nolan Cruise, the DA, had driven her to the edge of the cemetery and dropped her off, apologizing for not being able to stay.

  She looked around, but they’d gone. The cemetery was utterly deserted. Obviously, the two men had thought she already had a ride home. With Nick.

  Oh God. The first time she saw him in five years and she needed to beg a ride home from him. She straightened, pulled her lightweight jacket around her tightly, trying to wrap her dignity around her too.

  “That’s okay. I—” Her mind whirred uselessly. Saying she’d walk would be ridiculous. Nick knew perfectly well how far home was. At least a two-hour walk. She was trying to invent someone who could plausibly give her a ride home when he took her elbow in a firm grip and started walking toward the exit. “Let’s go.”

  Elle scrambled to keep up. Nick, always tall, had grown another couple of inches. His long legs ate up the grassy terrain. In a few minutes they were outside the gates of the cemetery, walking under the arched stone sign with Requiescat in Pacem engraved on the front.

  Yes, indeed. Rest in peace, Daddy.

  His last years, as his mind went, had not been peaceful. They had been dark and despairing as he felt himself slip day by day. Even after his mind had gone, she’d sensed the lingering despair.

  He’s gone to a better place, the few people who’d come to the funeral had said. The old truism was right. Wherever he was now, it couldn’t be worse than the life he had left behind.

  She and Nick were walking along an empty driveway, which was always full of cars on Memorial Day and was mainly empty the other 364 days a year. Nick pulled out a remote and a big black expensive-looking car lit up, the doors unlocking with a whomp.

  “Nice car,” she ventured. There was so much to be said, but his face was so forbidding, so remote; she could only make the blandest of comments.

  “Rental,” he said tersely and held open the passenger side door for her.

  A thousand questions jostled in her head but she simply sat, holding her jacket tightly around her while he got into the driver’s seat and took off. A minute later, warm air was washing over her and the trembling she hadn’t noticed eased off.

  He knew exactly where to go, of course.

  He might have forgotten her, he might have forgotten her father, but he wouldn’t have forgotten where they had all lived together. That was another thing about Nick. His amazing sense of direction. The last few years before he ran off, whenever they went on an outing together, her father had counted on Nick to guide them. And for the last two years, after he got his learner’s license, to drive th
em all where they needed to go.

  The judge had probably started dementing already, though there were no signs of it then. He had been, as always, ramrod straight, with iron gray hair brushed back, always elegant and collected. The opposite of the shambles of a man she’d buried.

  It helped to think of Daddy and not to concentrate on Nick, driving with careless expertise. He’d always been superb behind the wheel, right from the start. The instructor had told Daddy that he hadn’t had to teach Nick anything. It was as if he’d been born knowing how to drive.

  Elle stared straight ahead, doing her best not to take peeks at Nick. It was almost impossible. He was like a black hole, pulling in gravity toward him. Impossible to ignore, yet impossible to look at directly.

  A thousand words were on the tip of her tongue. How are you how have you been where do you live now do you like it there … Empty words really. Because what she wanted to know, she couldn’t say.

  Why did you leave us? Why did you leave me?

  The unspoken words choked her. She was afraid to open her mouth because they would come tumbling out. She had no filter, no defense mechanism. Plus, she’d lived alone so long with a father who could neither understand her nor respond to her, she’d grown used to saying exactly what she thought.

  She wasn’t even fit company anymore.

  But something should be said. They hadn’t seen each other in five years. Five years, seven months, and two days. Each minute of which she’d missed him. Even in her sleep.

  She concentrated on practicing the words. If she said them slowly, one at a time, surely nothing else would escape her mouth. How have you been?

  How. Have. You. Been?

  There, she could say that. Four simple words. And he’d answer and she’d try really, really hard not to push. She could do this. She could—

  “We’re here,” Nick said and swerved so that the vehicle was parked outside the garage.