Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  He’d once tried to explain to her how the game worked.

  “There are four levels to poker.” They’d been lying together alongside his favorite trout stream, just enjoying the day and each other rather than bothering the fish.

  “First, as a beginner, you’re worried about your own cards. Second, later, you’re worried about what you think others have. The third level is,” he ticked them off on her fingers, “when you’re worried what others think you have. Fourth, and this is where it starts to get really fun, you’ve learned that the cards no longer matter. At that level it’s all a mental game of making the other guy think you’ve got what you want him to think. You almost don’t have to look at your cards.”

  She’d asked if there was another level.

  Another two rounds at the table and she finally spotted what had caught Mark’s attention a dozen or more hands before. Maybe all the way back at the first hand.

  This game wasn’t between the six who’d started or the four still in the game. It was really between two people. And they were playing at a whole other level. They were playing Mark’s fifth level. He was just staying in to keep it interesting, bleeding his chips as slowly as possible.

  The two players were building up sizable stacks of chips at everyone else’s expense, but that didn’t matter, either.

  They weren’t playing poker.

  This was warfare.

  ***

  John slapped down two black chips, made sure he put a sharp snap into them as he slammed them down on the table. Because of the low-priced game they were playing, the black chips were ten dollars.

  “Hey, ten-buck limit, dude. Can’t you count?” Crazy Tim.

  Screw him.

  John watched Connie. No tell. Her eyes didn’t travel to Mark or the President. Skipping the order around the table, she reached down into her own pile and pulled out four blacks and threw them on the pile in the center.

  Mark whistled.

  The President tossed in his cards with a weak laugh.

  John slapped on two more blacks to match her bet. Let her stew on that.

  “Wa’ll…”

  Henderson and his goddamn, weak-ass, fake Texas accent.

  “I’ve jes’ gotta see this ’un.” He dribbled from on high, four black chips, wiping himself out.

  Connie tossed down her cards. Three aces.

  John tossed four hearts down on the pile of chips one at a time, holding the fifth, twisting it back and forth in front of Connie’s face for just a moment, before slamming it down and revealing he really had a flush that pounded the shit out of her lousy aces.

  Major Henderson started laughing. Started soft, but it grew. Others at the table joined him uncertainly.

  John just wanted to smack him. Might be worth the time in the brig to shut the man up. He kept his eyes on Connie. She didn’t look aside either.

  Out of the corner of his eye, John could see the Major flash his hand at his wife and the President before laying the cards out on the table in a neat fan.

  “Threes and twos, the nicest little full house of the night. Come to Daddy.” He swept the chips over to himself in a big pile.

  Before the cards and chips were even clear, Connie smacked down five blacks as an ante.

  John was reaching for his own chips when the Major caught his wrist.

  He pulled against it but didn’t get very far. He might be a few inches taller than the Major and several inches wider, but the man was seriously powerful. Henderson kept John’s hand pinned to the table when he tried to free it again.

  “Enough, you two.” The joking Mark Henderson was gone, so was the quiet poker player. This was the commanding officer.

  “You’re both done here. Now take it outside.”

  Connie was up and gone before Henderson even released John. Pushed past the President and the Secret Service agents as if they were mere slalom gates to be shoved aside in her race for the door. She snagged her jacket as she shot out of the room.

  John was no more than ten steps behind her.

  Chapter 54

  “Just stay the hell away from me!” Connie could feel him close behind her as she shot out of the Grand Hotel lobby and into the street-lit night. Snow. Over to her right, a bridge. Strömbron. Get out and away. It was all she could think to do.

  The freezing weather slapped at her as she crossed onto the bridge toward the palace and Old Stockholm. She could feel the heat of her cheeks in sharp contrast to the night chill.

  Damn the man. “Damn you, John Wallace!” she shouted loud enough for him to hear as she crossed onto the bridge. She didn’t need to turn to know that he continued to stalk her. Matching her pace. Boiling as deeply inside as she was.

  Anger pounded at her. Drove at her. Drove her.

  Across the bridge, she continued past the palace. She took a left, past the palace guards in their sharp blue and black.

  She hated this. The anger so deep, so vast she became lost in it. She hated losing control. This wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t who she wanted to be. If only it would stop. A massive wall blocked her progress just past the lights of the palace.

  Left or right or… She couldn’t decide. She continued until the wall stopped her and she laid her cheek against the cold stone.

  The anger boiled up inside until she couldn’t hold it in. She retched against the wall. And retched again. She’d eaten nothing. Couldn’t remember when she last had, her stomach knotted past tolerance. Fort Campbell maybe? All that came up was a thin bile.

  And she couldn’t stop. It was like she was heaving her soul out against the wall. The pain scorched through her. A line of agony starting at her gut and driving up her chest and out her throat.

  She fell to her knees and heard a soft, “God damn it!” from close beside her the moment before John’s strong hands wrapped around to support her. One across the small of her back and the other supporting her aching gut muscles as they once again tried to heave the anger out of her. The poison that had been killing her for years and she’d never been able to stop.

  “Breathe, damn it.”

  She heaved again, her chest aching in need of air.

  “Okay, Connie. Honey, just focus on my hands. Focus on my voice. It’ll be okay. It’ll work out. Don’t ask me how, I don’t have a frickin’ clue, but it will. Now, just focus on my voice and breathe before you pass out.”

  She tried. She really did. And got half a breath before the next spasm drove it back out of her.

  Chapter 55

  When at last Connie stopped, John pulled her in. She was shaking now with the exhaustion and the cold.

  He didn’t even think about it, just swept her up in his arms and looked for a place to go. Behind was the palace, but the hotel was too far. She needed to get warm now.

  He turned left and headed for the end of the building’s stone wall. It opened into a narrow street to the left. Shops and cafés lined the far side, but they were closed and shuttered at this hour. To the right, a broad square opened before them. The front of the building she’d been sick upon soared above them. An older couple came out a door at the top of a half flight of steps leading to the massive doors. He headed over and the couple held the door for him, letting a warm light spill down the stairs.

  He nodded in thanks as he carried Connie through. She lay against his chest and shook as the shivers wracked through her almost as hard as the sickness. She’d wrung herself out but good.

  Through the doors, he stumbled to a halt and for just a moment forgot about the woman in his arms. He’d crossed into another world, one of gold and wonder. She’d been sick against the wall of a church. A cathedral.

  Pillars of red brick soared fifty feet or more to the distant ceiling. He wandered forward across a diamond-laid aisle of marble between rows of worn wooden pews. A pulpit fit for a pope soared above the congregation. Fanciful carvings evoked an era of knights and kings more than God and angels.

  He reached the center of the nave and staggered t
o a halt.

  “Holy crap.”

  Despite the shivers that still shook her, Connie stirred and looked to see what had stopped him and caught his attention. He’d never imagined she could feel fragile, but she did.

  “What in the world?”

  A statue of a great gray horse, twice life-size and dressed in golden armor, stood upon a massive pedestal. Astride his back, an equally ornately clad knight wielded a golden sword. Beneath his feet, a lance driven deep in its chest, a fearsome dragon struggled for the last time. He lay on a deathbed of human skulls, broken bones, and harsh rock.

  “Well, ain’t that something.”

  “St. George and the Dragon.”

  Of course Connie would know who it was.

  “The knight and the horse represent the Kingdom of Sweden, the dragon her vanquished foes, mostly the Danes.”

  She turned her attention back to him. “You can put me down now, John.”

  He considered for a moment, but that was all. “Nope. Can’t say as I will. Things make sense when you’re right where you are. And they haven’t been making sense when there’s any distance between us. Besides, I have some questions.” He headed over to sit in a pew across the wide central nave that would let them face the statue. The cathedral was empty at this hour, anyone with common sense having long since gone to bed.

  She tried to push out of his arms but was still weak enough to make her easy to hold. He could see her considering some more drastic actions but then, thankfully, dismissing them. She might be a woman who was wrung out, but she was U.S. Army Special Forces. His throat was still sore from the last female soldier who’d been pissed at him.

  Finally, she lay her head back on his shoulder. “So ask.” Her voice was filled with infinite exhaustion.

  He considered the hundred questions, the thousand, but one burned brightest among them.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “It was time for your family to be—”

  “Connie,” he cut her off and fought to keep the heat he felt out of his voice, “you are sitting in a cathedral that’s probably older than our country, probably a couple times older, and that seems a pretty lousy place to be telling a lie.”

  “I’m not. I really thin—”

  “Okay. Different question.” He stared up at the statue for a long moment. Was it possible she didn’t know why she’d left? Sitting here in this old church, with her curled so wonderfully in his arms, maybe it was time to slay a few dragons. He didn’t know them all, but he could make a few guesses.

  “I know you care about people. I know you do. You cared for Grumps, didn’t you?”

  “I…” She buried her face in his shoulder a moment. “I fixed his tractor.”

  “You. Fixed. His. Tractor.” That was an answer? Either he was wrong about the woman or he was losing his mind.

  “Yes.”

  “And that means… what? That you like fixing tractors?”

  “No. Well, I do, though that was my first one, but that wasn’t the point.”

  “And the point was?” It was like pulling teeth to get past her shields.

  She struggled up from his lap until she sat upright across his knees, half turned to face him.

  “John, you have this family. And… and they love you.” She waved her arms as if encompassing the world and almost pitched herself from his lap. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Tighter than a flight crew. As close as my dad and me. Maybe even more.” The last a surprised whisper, then a throat clearing.

  “Your parents are so proud of you, and Larry worships you, and Noreen wants to be just like you. You’re the ultimate big brother symbol brought to real life.”

  “They’re just my family.” Mostly.

  Before he could follow where that ugly-ass thought led, she jabbed his shoulder hard enough to hurt right in the nerve cluster. If not for layers of shirt, vest, and parka, he’d be on the floor whimpering right now.

  “No! Don’t! Don’t you dare belittle them for even a second. You have no idea. I—”

  This time when she went to stand, he let her go. Doubted he could hold her back if he tried. She strode over to the statue and back. Sharp, purposeful strides of a soldier, though her arms still wrapped tightly about herself. She still fought the bone-deep chill.

  Twice, three times she made the journey over and back, stamping across the old stone floor and back. Odd-shaped stones with engravings… crypts. She was walking over the graves of kings long dead and buried.

  She stopped in front of him and faced him square on.

  “How many times did Paps help with your homework? Can you count how many meals your ma has made for you? How often did you stop what you wanted to be doing to babysit your little sister? How many thousand lessons did you learn from Grumps about how to be a man?”

  “How should I know? A lot. It’s what you do.”

  “It’s what you do.” She let her repetition stretch into silence. “It’s what you do, John. You probably won’t understand this. No reason you should. I’ll be glad for you if you can’t.” She cricked her neck to one side, and he could hear joints popping in the midnight silence of the cathedral.

  “My mom died when I was three. I don’t remember her at all.” She spoke fast and hard, as if giving a lecture. As if maybe if she said the words fast enough, dead enough, she wouldn’t feel them, even though he could see how much each one cost her.

  “Maybe that’s when remembering things became so important to me. My dad, him they shot down when I was thirteen. Somewhere unknown, unrecorded. That’s my family. Done. Gone. A feeble grandmother who lived off an Army pension, feeding me if she remembered. No one. From seventh grade on, whether I succeeded or failed was up to me and me alone. The only thing that poor old woman did for me was hang on until I was sixteen so that I didn’t have to enter the foster care system. Shopping, homework, paying the electric bill, fixing the water heater. That was all me.”

  He wanted to reach for her. For fear she would crack like old stone and crumble before him, never to be put back together. But her eyes stopped him. They weren’t looking at him. They were focused somewhere over his head, much farther away than the cathedral walls.

  “And then I met Grumps. You know, he came to me my first morning there at your house. At your home. I was standing in the kitchen trying to figure out if it was okay to make breakfast before anyone was up. He never said a word. We made oatmeal together, leaned back against the counter side by side as we ate it from mismatched bowls. Not all Army issue, but old bowls, with chips and history and care. He headed outside at first light and I just followed along. I don’t know why. Guess I was supposed to.”

  She blinked and squinted against the dawn light she was seeing in her too perfect memory.

  “We watched the sunrise over those endless fields that surround your place. They go on forever, John. You’ve lived among them. Stable. Always there. You can’t appreciate the wonder of that. All that work and heart and the soul of all that dark, rich soil. And the generations of effort that it took to make and maintain those fields.

  “After sunrise, he led me into the barn to this beat-up old rust-bucket of a worn-down tractor. When he patted her on the radiator, I knew. He loved that machine. He loved it like the land. And he was sharing it with me…”

  Now her face did begin to crumble. Her jaw shook, she started blinking and couldn’t stop. She leaned forward so that her hair spilled over her face as she covered it with her hands.

  “He shared it with me. Because he knew. Though we’d never spoken a word to each other. He knew what I didn’t have. Could see the hole in me where I’m supposed to have a heart. I’m a goddamn walking, talking Tin Man, John. So, Grumps gave me a reason to be there. To be with him. He believed that I was a whole person. You have no idea what that feels like.”

  As her knees went loose, he gathered her back into his arms.

  “Oh god, John. I miss that old man so much. How can you love someone that much who you’ve
only known for three days? How?”

  He held her as she wept against his shoulder. Not the wracking, silent, dry-eyed battles that she fought with her inner demons. She wept softly from simple grief.

  How can you love someone that much who you barely knew?

  He held her tighter.

  It wasn’t so hard. Not so hard at all.

  Chapter 56

  Connie felt wrung out, drained to the very core, as she lay in John’s arms with her head resting on his shoulder. She considered adding embarrassed to the list but finally rejected it. In an odd way, she felt good, light even. Free of the burden she hadn’t known she carried, didn’t know what it had been. She simply felt free from beneath its pressing weight.

  She slid from his lap until they sat side by side with her leaning safe inside the protective curve of his strong right arm. They held hands across, his left to her right, and gazed at St. George and his golden sword raised high before the final deathblow to the serpent below.

  They sat quietly for a long time in the pew. Just at peace. Stopped. She’d leaned her head on his shoulder and he’d rested his cheek on her hair.

  When the night could get no quieter, Connie finally found the space inside to speak. Though she kept her voice to little more than a whisper, it seemed to fill the cathedral. Not with long, creepy echoes, but as if it enjoyed traveling about the space.

  “I’m sorry, John. I shouldn’t have left, but I didn’t think I had a choice. I couldn’t get far enough from the memories. Everywhere I went, there was someone talking about Grumps. When I went out to stand by the fields, I’d remember the three mornings we had stood there together in silence and watched the sun come up over those beautiful fields. In the barn…” She let her voice trail off because she couldn’t find the heart to speak of it.

  It seemed wrong to compare the ornate and golden wonder of Stockholm Cathedral with an old barn, but standing in the latter was as close as she’d ever come to a religious experience. In the empty tractor bay, with the sun still shining down from the barn’s high windows, she could hear Grumps’s easy laugh. The old pine walls whispering with his stories. The air even more quiet than when he napped in the sunlight.