The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Needless to say, he hadn’t succeeded.

  In the Extremists’ somewhat volatile opinion, Osman Razeen had betrayed them, betrayed Islam, and therefore needed to die.

  The Extremists and the GIK were all terrorists in the eyes of the K-stani government, and in the eyes of the U.S. as well—particularly after the GIK claimed responsibility for a bomb that killed over two hundred U.S. military personnel.

  So while Meg had lied about the Extremists wanting the ambassador, it was probable that she’d merely substituted the ambassador for Osman Razeen, that the rest of what she’d told him was the truth. And it was possible that that substitution was her only lie—that and her lie by omission when she’d failed to mention the second gun hidden in her boot.

  Of course, who knows what else she’d failed to tell him. If all along her plan had been to take Razeen out of the embassy, she probably had some way to contact the Extremists. She hadn’t mentioned anything about that to anyone.

  Still, lying by omission was the easiest way to lie. Nils had told her that himself. “If you’re going to lie, stick as close to the real truth as possible. Don’t give yourself too many things to remember. If you do, there’s too many potential screwups waiting to happen.”

  He’d said those very words to Meg in DC nearly three years ago.

  Nils closed his eyes. It was the day after he’d followed her over to the foreign service offices. The day after he’d managed to bump into her again “by accident.”

  They’d had dinner the night before—just two old friends, reconnecting after months apart.

  For the most part, they’d managed to keep the conversation light. And the few times Meg had mentioned her dumb shit of a husband, Nils had kept his jaw tightly clamped shut.

  He hadn’t said any of the things he’d been dying to say. That she shouldn’t be wasting her time with that loser. That anyone who’d cheat on her didn’t deserve a second chance.

  Nils also didn’t mention that Daniel Moore was the main reason he was in DC for this pain-in-the-ass inquiry. Moore wanted heads to roll—Nils’s in particular—for publicly embarrassing the staff at the American embassy in K-stan six months ago. He was pushing hard to bring charges up against Nils and his team of SEALs.

  That wasn’t going to happen—Nils had been reassured by both Team Sixteen’s CO and Adm. Chip Crowley himself. In fact, the admiral had shaken his hand and thanked him for getting Abdelaziz out of K-stan—for a job well done.

  But Daniel Moore was high enough on the food chain in the foreign service office to demand this inquiry—this complete and utter waste of Nils’s far-too-precious time.

  Nils was going to have to go in there, answer a bunch of tough questions without revealing any details of what had been a highly covert op, and—worst of all—he was going to have to apologize.

  He could do it. He could give the most poetic, most sincere sounding apology and not mean a single word. And he would do it, because Admiral Crowley had asked him to.

  He’d stand there and look Daniel Moore in the eye and apologize for something he’d not only done right, but he’d also done well.

  But wouldn’t it be sweet if, as he stood there making that apology, he was remembering—in detail—how he’d nailed Moore’s wife?

  Moore’s extremely hot wife. Whom the bastard not only neglected and cheated on, but whom he’d let move half a world away, in a separation that had lasted nearly six months.

  Nils couldn’t believe Meg wanted to get back together with the prick.

  And now he was going to have to make that apology looking into the prick’s eyes with the knowledge that after the inquiry was over, Moore was probably going to go home to her and . . .

  God, Nils wanted her.

  He sat there at dinner, tied in knots, convinced that this woman wasn’t going to sleep with him—not tonight, probably not in this lifetime. Yet despite knowing that, he was still happier than he’d been in months. Simply because she was smiling at him again.

  Meg had mentioned—really just in passing—that while Amy was gone, she was hoping to find the time to paint the girl’s bedroom.

  That was how Nils had found himself, at 1015 the next morning, on the twelfth floor of a modest DC apartment building, elbow-deep in pale pink paint.

  And that was how he found himself walking down Pennsylvania Avenue at 1145—after Meg “convinced” him that they should escape the paint fumes in the apartment while the first coat dried, and go out to eat.

  Yeah, he’d taken a lot of convincing.

  “So where are you taking me for lunch—the White House?”

  Meg turned to give him one of those smiles that melted his guts. “Would you believe me if I told you I have a personal connection to the Oval Office and I’m welcome there any time for lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed. “For a Navy SEAL, you’re pretty gullible, Nilsson.”

  “No, it’s just . . . some people can’t lie, and, sorry, Meg, but you’re one of ’em.”

  “What, do I have a guilty twitch that gives me away?”

  Nils laughed and put his hands in the pockets of his shorts. He had to. He’d been about to reach for her. To take her hand or put his arm around her shoulders. What was he doing here? This was an exercise in total frustration.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Tell me a lie, and I’ll watch for one.”

  She laughed as he took advantage of the opportunity and let himself really look at her. She had laughter lines around her eyes, and a wide, generous mouth that was almost always curving up into a smile. He knew she was older than he was, but he couldn’t even guess by how much. Not that it mattered to him. Her attitude was pure eight-year-old. She loved life completely and it showed it her eyes. It made her ageless and so beautiful, it hurt.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” she admitted. “I don’t know any lies.”

  “See?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Wait. Help me out here. Give me a clue—what do people lie about?”

  “Relationships. They lie when they cheat on a lover. Although those are mostly lies of omission. I mean, it’s not as if when you come home, your wife says, ‘So how was your day, dear? Have any adulterous affairs with anyone I know?’ so that then you can lie and say, ‘No.’ ”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Sorry.” He was sorry. But what he really wanted to say was that her getting back together with her cheater husband was also extremely unfunny. He opened his mouth, but she stopped him with a touch on his arm.

  “Let’s not go there,” she said. “Please?”

  For several heartbeats, Nils just gazed into her eyes. Please.

  How could he do anything but acquiesce?

  They walked for a minute in silence, heading west on Constitution Avenue now, with Nils wishing she was still touching him, wishing he’d had the nerve to tell her that he wanted to talk to her about Daniel. As her friend, he wanted to make sure she’d thought this reconciliation thing through.

  As her friend—yeah, right.

  Meanwhile, he’d completely killed their conversation. What had they been talking about anyway? Lying? Great.

  “People lie about their past,” he told her. He knew all about that. “So why don’t you tell me a lie about when you were a kid. I know—tell me about when you were sixteen and you ran off to join the circus.”

  Meg looked at him, eyes wide. “But I did run off to join the circus when I was sixteen. Well, it wasn’t really a circus—it was one of those traveling carnivals.”

  For a half second, Nils actually believed her. But then she went on.

  “Life at home was so miserable, I figured anything was better—”

  “Nah,” he said. “Nope. You lose. Your delivery was really good—that big eyes thing was a great touch, but you need to remember who you’re lying to. I know you pretty well. You’ve already told me you had a storybook childhood. Parents who backed you no matter what you did, two adoring you
nger sisters, right? Bonnie and . . . Kelly?”

  “Kiley.” She looked at him with admiration. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t remember it.”

  “Close enough.”

  “No,” he said. “No such thing as close enough. Not if you’re trying to get away with a lie. You have to be exact, every time. No slipups. See, what you did wrong was you took what was already a big lie—running away to join a carnival—and you made it more complicated than it had to be by lying about the way it was at home, too. If you’d told me you’d run off to join the carnival because even though things were great at home—the truth, right?—your mother once got you so mad that you wanted to scare her. And then you think of a time when your mother got you really pissed—something that really happened, and you plug that little truth into your big lie and . . .”

  Meg was laughing.

  “What?” he asked. Her laughter was so contagious, he found himself smiling back at her.

  “I can’t believe you’re teaching me how to lie.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “Teaching you. Because you’re never going to use any of this. I mean, when are you going to lie? Never. Maybe when you rob Fort Knox, right?” He snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “I don’t have a lot of opportunity in my job to practice lying,” she agreed. “Unlike you.” She gazed at him, all teasing gone from her face. “If I hadn’t guessed that you weren’t Abdelaziz, would you have told me, John? You know, after the real Abdelaziz was safely on board that U.S. aircraft carrier?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and she smiled. “I know you, too, you know, and right now, you’re deciding whether to tell me the truth or to lie. I won’t be able to tell the difference. But I would appreciate the truth.”

  The truth.

  “No, I wouldn’t have told you,” he admitted.

  Just as he’d expected, she didn’t like the truth, and he tried to explain. “I didn’t want you to get into trouble, and if I’d told you—”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that I might want to help you? That I would be able to help you? Come on, John, we were already friends and—”

  This time he cut her off. “But we weren’t,” he said. “Not really. You were friends with Abdelaziz.”

  Christ, why had he said that? Talk about writing all your insecurities on your ass and then mooning the world.

  Meg, of course, didn’t miss it. “How often do you do that kind of role-playing thing—you know, take on different personas?”

  All the time. In fact, every minute he was awake.

  Nils could do a convincing version of slightly bored and very relaxed even when facing enemy fire. But for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to pull it off right now. Or maybe it would have been convincing to most people, but not to Meg. He was certain that despite her protests otherwise, this woman could see right through him.

  “Not often,” he told her. “Most of our missions are covert—we go in and out without anyone knowing we’ve even been there.”

  She was watching him as they walked, and he could’ve sworn that she could see everything that he wasn’t saying, streaming out behind him in a long, tangled, messy trail.

  But she didn’t call him on it. She nodded. “I can’t even imagine what it is that you do.”

  “Mostly I do what you do. I’m a languages specialist. I translate . . . stuff.”

  Meg laughed. “Yeah, except you probably don’t do your translating the way I do—in an office, on a desk, with plenty of good light and a definite shortage of people shooting at me.”

  “People don’t shoot at me.”

  That was the truth—at least most of the time. But Nils knew she didn’t quite believe him.

  They walked for a moment in silence, until Meg turned to him and said, “Where did you grow up?”

  “Long Island.”

  “What’s with the accent?”

  “What accent?”

  “My point exactly,” she said. “Now, I’d figure you were lying about Long Island, except that you’re smarter than that. You know I’d wonder about the accent, so you must really be from Long Island. Unless you figured I’d figure you had to be telling the truth because you had no New York accent—”

  “Amagansett,” he said. “Out by Montauk and East Hampton. You know, silver spoon country. Old money. We don’t do accents.” He did his best slightly bored aristocrat for her. “How droll of you to think otherwise.”

  It got the laugh he was hoping for.

  “So why’d you join the Navy?” Meg asked.

  “You mean, instead of the family business?” Nils smiled. Everything he was telling her was the truth. It was entirely up to her as to how to interpret it. “You would have had to meet my father to understand. He died two years ago, had a stroke about five years before that. He couldn’t speak and was in a wheelchair, but he was still capable of driving the nurses crazy at the retirement home.”

  “Your mother . . . ?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “She’s been . . . gone a little bit longer.” That one wasn’t quite a full lie, but it was close. His mother had been dead for so long he almost couldn’t remember what it was like back when she was alive.

  Almost.

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said. Most people didn’t mean it when they said they were sorry, but Meg did.

  “Your folks are both still around, right? Still living in . . .” Nils made a face. “Don’t tell me . . . I’ll get it . . . Massachusetts . . . western Boston suburb . . . Ah, hell, help me out here.”

  “Nope,” she said. “This time we’re talking about you. I’m still trying to figure out which part of that story you just told me was the lie.”

  “Why would I lie to you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she mused. “I haven’t figured that out yet either.”

  Sam found John Nilsson sitting on the floor in what had been Meg Moore’s hotel room.

  “I should have searched her,” Nils said, shaking his head in disgust, as Sam hunkered down next to him.

  “You were at a disadvantage,” Sam told his friend, “considering that you’ve wanted to get with her for three years now. She was crying on your shoulder, man—you were distracted.” He laughed. “And you know, I still don’t know if there should be an again added to that first sentence. You are one secretive bastard, Johnny.”

  “She’s going to die. The FBI are going to track her down, and they’re going to use deadly force and . . . Ah, Christ.”

  Sam stared out at the blandly decorated hotel room, pretending not to see the tears in Nils’s eyes. “We could find her first.”

  “Yeah, right.” Nils laughed, but there was no humor in it. He used the heels of his hands to brusquely wipe his face. “Like I have any kind of a clue where she went when she left DC.”

  “Well.” Sam cleared his throat. “That’s the interesting part. Remember that long-distance tracking device WildCard’s been working on?”

  Nils looked up sharply, meeting Sam’s gaze for the first time. His eyes were redrimmed; it was obvious the man hadn’t slept more than a few hours in too many days to count.

  “She’s moving south on Route 95,” Sam told his friend. “I’m on duty in about five minutes, so unless you want to wait for my shift to end—”

  “Hell, no. Sorry, but—”

  “I figured. That’s why WildCard’s in the lobby with his laptop. If the two of you leave now, with a little luck, you can find her and be back by dinnertime.”

  “For the next few weeks,” Eve told Amy and the Bear, “Ralph and I worked with Nicky. We were determined to erase his fear of learning, of being labeled stupid. We focused on having fun. I remember, Ralph made us dress up as smugglers from the days of the Napoleonic Wars and took us exploring the network of caves that ran all along that part of the coast.

  “And we did our own archeological dig—uncovered mostly mud and a few suspiciously familiar looking spoons I’m
sure Ralph seeded in the site. We went fishing and studied the local marine life, flew kites and learned about weather and wind, and had picnics by the sea. And as we sat on our blanket, Ralph would beg me to read aloud to him—to him, not to Nick, mind you. Of course, Nick couldn’t help but overhear.

  “And slowly but surely Nicky came to life again. We started to read not just from books, but from plays as well—with both Ralph and me playing a role. And one day Nick cleared his throat and asked if he could take a part, too. Ralph was so low-key about it. I was about to faint, I was so thrilled, but Ralph just matter-of-factly figured out a method for feeding Nick his lines. It was the most wonderful day.”

  She smiled ruefully at Amy. “At least until we returned to the estate for dinner. Ralph had been watching me during our walk home—I could feel his eyes on me. And I knew I’d done a poor job that day of pretending to be indifferent to him. Ever since that night in the moonlight, I’d been careful not to be alone with Ralph, and I tried not to let him see just how much I adored him. But that wasn’t easy to do. Of course he never spoke of it when Nick was around, but he didn’t understand why I always ran away from him.

  “And that evening, just as I suspected, he asked for a private word with me. Nick went inside, and . . . there we were.”

  The early evening sun was still hot against her face. Her clothes were dirty and damp from perspiration and the sea spray. Tendrils of hair had long escaped her twist and they hung lankly around her sunburned face.

  And yet Ralph looked at her as if he saw none of her imperfections.

  “Why won’t it work?” he asked, completely dissolving the past few weeks, bringing them right back to where they’d left off that night they’d come back from London. The ever-present glint of humor was gone from his eyes. He was utterly serious.

  Eve had to tell him the truth. But she couldn’t squeeze the words out past her heart, which was lodged firmly in her throat. She just shook her head and started for the door.

  He caught her hand. “I have to know. Is it because . . . are you promised to someone else? Someone back in California?”

  “No,” she said before she could think straight, before she realized that lying and saying yes would make Ralph—always such a gentleman—back away for good.