Night Watch

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He laughed, too. It was freaking weird. Just a few minutes ago, he couldn’t have imagined laughing again—not in the near future. “Yeah,” he said. “But only after I take you to the first aid station and have them look you over.”

  Brittany was shaking her head. “That place is going to be jammed,” she said. “Let’s just go home.”

  “What if you have a concussion?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Maybe—as a precaution—you should make sure I don’t sleep at all tonight.”

  Her smile and that suggestive comment went a long way to convincing him that she really was okay—along with the fact that she was experimenting by gingerly putting her weight on her right foot.

  “I think I mostly hit the funny bone,” she told him, showing him that she could, indeed, walk unassisted. Like she’d said, she was merely shaken and bruised.

  But head injuries could be tricky. He definitely was going to watch her like a hawk for the next day or so. There were things she shouldn’t do—such as ride home behind him on his motorcycle.

  He could see the ice-cream shop down the street. It was doing a brisk business despite the mayhem that had broken out just a few blocks away. There were umbrella-covered tables out in front, right on the sidewalk.

  “Let me get you an ice cream,” he told her. “You can sit here and eat it while I take the Harley home. I’ll get the car, come back and pick you up.”

  “But I liked being your motorcycle chick,” she said. “Shades of Gidget, you know?”

  “Sorry, but I’m not taking any chances,” he said.

  She knew he was talking about her head. “It’s just a little bump.”

  “Give up,” he told her. “You’re not going to win this one. I’ll be back in…” He looked at his watch. “Twenty-eight minutes.”

  Brittany laughed. “Twenty-eight? Exactly? I had no idea I was having a fling with Mr. Spock.”

  “Very funny. I know how long it takes me to get home from here—thirteen minutes. Add a few for going inside to get the keys to the car…” He opened the door for her. “Careful, there’s a step up—don’t trip again.”

  “I didn’t trip down those stairs,” she told him as they went into the shop. “I was pushed. Hard.”

  Jesus. Probably by some six foot tall coward rushing to save his own sorry ass. “Damn it.” He turned back the way they’d come, and she tugged him inside.

  “Whoever it was, he or she is definitely not still there,” she said. “Your thirst for revenge will have to be sated by chocolate ice cream.”

  “I’m a vanilla man, myself,” he told her. “But I’m going to pass right now. Ice-cream cones and bikes don’t mix.” He slapped a five-dollar bill onto the counter and gave her a quick kiss. “I’ll be back.”

  BRITTANY SAT OUTSIDE, in the warmth of the afternoon sun, eating ice cream and watching people pass by on the sidewalk.

  Her ankle was sore, and her head had a tender spot where she’d connected with the stairs, but other than that, she was absolutely fine.

  She sighed. She’d been looking forward to riding home with her arms wrapped around Wes’s waist. She’d been looking forward to dancing with him some more, too.

  Now he was going to watch her all night.

  Well, okay. Good. He could look all he wanted. And Brittany, well, she’d give him something to watch.

  She realized she’d been ignoring her cone, and she had to lick all the way around it to keep the ice cream from dripping onto her hand. When she looked up, there was a man standing slightly off to the side, watching her.

  At first glance, he seemed to be a nice enough looking guy. He was hair challenged, but that didn’t take away from the handsome bone structure of his face.

  But then he moved closer and she saw his eyes.

  After working in countless emergency rooms on both the east and west coast, Brittany recognized mental illness when she saw it. And this guy, although he dressed nicely and even normally—no mismatched plaids and stripes, no superhero cape, no protective headgear to ward off killer bee attacks—had something in his eyes that set off all of her alarms.

  Not that he necessarily was dangerous. Just that he was different.

  He was holding a set of car keys, so obviously he was highly functional. But he was definitely challenged.

  He couldn’t hold her gaze. But he spoke to her. “You made her cry.”

  It was pretty remarkable, actually. They always approached her. All the certifiable ones did. There could be seven nurses working the shift, and sure enough, the patients who were mentally ill would sidle their way over to Brittany.

  Andy said it was because she spoke to them as if they were real people.

  Britt had laughed at that. “But they are real people,” she’d argued.

  “My point exactly,” the kid had told her.

  She looked at the Hairclub for Men candidate and tried to make both her face and her voice neutral. She didn’t want him coming over and sitting down next to her, but she didn’t want to ignore him, either. On closer inspection, he had the look of a man who’d gone off his medication. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

  “You made her cry,” he said again, and both the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes made her stand up and start backing away.

  Okay, Wes, any time now. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was at least ten minutes before his estimated return.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She cried,” he said. “Her heart is broken.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said again.

  “No you’re not.”

  The man slowly shuffled closer, and Britt kept on backing away, just as one of the employees came out of the ice-cream shop—a kid with a rag in his hand to wipe off the outside tables.

  “Is there a pay phone inside?” she asked him.

  “Nope. Sorry. Nearest one is down the street. Kelley’s.”

  “Thank you.” Brittany looked the direction he pointed, and could see the shamrock green sign for Kelley’s bar. Her heart sank. It was way down at the very end of the street. Her ankle wasn’t seriously injured, but it would take a lot longer to heal completely if she hiked on it.

  “Move along, mister,” the kid said to the bald man. “Don’t hassle the paying customers.”

  “Can’t I order an ice-cream cone?” He aimed his anger at the kid as he sat down at the same table Britt had been sitting at moments earlier. He carefully took out his wallet and extracted several dollar bills. “Chocolate chip.”

  “You have to order from the counter,” the kid said, and as they went inside, Brittany took the opportunity to slip away.

  WES MADE IT BACK to the ice-cream shop in record time, only to find that Brittany was gone.

  The only people sitting out front were a mother and her four young children.

  Maybe Britt was inside, and he just couldn’t see her through the glare on the plate glass.

  Wes tried to push away thoughts of Britt having suffered from a worse head injury than he’d imagined, falling unconscious, or becoming disoriented and wandering off….

  He shouldn’t have left her here. He should have stayed with her and taken a cab home. Or to the hospital. But when he left her, she seemed fine. She was fine. He just had to take a deep breath and calm down. She was inside. She didn’t see him pull up. This was not a big deal.

  He pulled into a no standing zone, and jumped out of his car, leaving his flashers on.

  But as he got closer to the shop, he quickly saw that she wasn’t there and the fear returned.

  He opened the door and called to one of the kids behind the counter. “Hey. Do you have a ladies’ room?”

  “No, sir,” she told him, eyeing him oddly.

  “There wasn’t just an ambulance here, was there?” Wes asked, his heart actually in his throat. Please say no…

  “No, sir,” she told him.

  Thank God. But where
the hell was Brittany? “Do you remember seeing a blond woman, about my height? Mid-thirties? Pretty…?” Jesus, he could be describing anyone. “Kind of pointy nose. She was wearing a blue shirt…?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I saw her.” A kid who was wiping tables straightened up. “She asked if we had a pay phone, and I sent her down to Kelley’s.” He gestured down the street with his head.

  “Thanks.” Wes was back in his car in a flash. Why did Britt need to make a call? Was she feeling worse? Had she called a cab to take her to the hospital? Why hadn’t she called him?

  He broke about four traffic laws getting over to Kelley’s as quickly as he could, and parked—again—in a tow zone.

  Kelley’s was a bar about the size of his living room. One glance around told him she wasn’t there. Of course not—there was a big sign on the pay phone: Out of Order.

  Jesus, where was she?

  Everyone had looked up when he came in, and Wes used the opportunity to call to the bartender, “Hey, pal, did a pretty blonde come in here asking—”

  His cell phone rang. He had it out and open in record time. Please, God… “Britt?”

  “Oh, no,” she sounded dismayed. “You got to the ice-cream place and I wasn’t there.”

  The relief that flooded him at the sound of her voice nearly knocked him on his ass. “Are you all right? Where are you?” His voice actually cracked. “Jesus, Britt, you scared the crap out of me.”

  “I’m sorry—I’m fine. Some weird guy was hassling me outside of the ice-cream shop. So I went down the street and… I’m around the corner at a restaurant called The Toucan. I thought I’d be able to get to a phone and call you before you got back.”

  “I made good time,” he told her, waving to the bartender as he went back out onto the sidewalk. “Who the fuh—who was hassling you?” He’d find him and break his knees.

  “Just some guy who was angry at the entire world. He was hassling everyone, not just me. But he was a little scary so—”

  Some angry guy scared her. God. “I shouldn’t have left you alone,” Wes said. “Are you really okay?”

  “Please deposit thirty-five cents for another three minutes,” a computer voice cut in to their call.

  “I’m out of change,” Brittany told him.

  “I’m on my way.” Wes hung up the phone and nearly ran into a man who was standing by his car, right by the front bumper. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

  “You’re not supposed to park here,” the man said. Something about him was slightly off-kilter, like he wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards.

  “It was an emergency,” Wes told him. He opened the door to his car. “Better get back on the sidewalk, buddy—I’m going to pull out, okay?”

  The man shuffled over to the curb. “I’m not your buddy,” he said. “You made her cry.”

  Oo-kay.

  “You should probably stay out of the street,” Wes told him before he got into his car and pulled away.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WES WAS SILENT on the ride home—except when he asked a half a dozen different times if Brittany really was all right.

  She finally turned to him. “Wesley. I’m fine. My ankle’s a little sore and I bumped my head. What do I have to say to get you to believe me?”

  The muscles jumped in his jaw. “Sorry.”

  He pulled into his driveway and got out of the car. He came around and closed her door for her after she got out, and then followed her to his kitchen door. He unlocked it and pushed it open for her, all without saying another word.

  He was tightly wound, every muscle tense.

  Brittany waited until he closed the door behind them. “Are you angry with me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re acting as if you are,” she pointed out.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m… God, I don’t know what I am, Britt. When I couldn’t find you, I thought…” He shook his head. “I was scared to death. And I don’t like being scared.”

  She nodded. “I can relate. I don’t like it, either. I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner, but—”

  “Can we not talk right now?” he asked. “I just… I don’t want to talk, okay?”

  “Maybe now’s the best time to talk,” she countered. “If you’re really that upset, you should get it out instead of internalizing it.”

  “Thanks but no thanks.” He took a glass from the cabinet and got himself some water, his movements tight, almost jerky. “You know, we talk too much. I thought this relationship was supposed to be based on sex. On…” He used a verb that should have made her take a step back. A verb that was meant to make her take a step back.

  But Brittany knew exactly what he was doing.

  Or rather, trying to do.

  And she didn’t even flinch. It was going to take more than a few bad words for him to push her away just because his feelings for her scared him.

  “You care about me too much,” she guessed—correctly from his reaction. “And realizing just how much you care has really freaked you out, hasn’t it?”

  He made a sound that might have been laughter, might have been pain. “I don’t have room for you,” he said and winced, swearing softly. “That sounds awful and I’m sorry, babe, but I—”

  “No,” she said. “No, Wes, I know what you mean. I know why you said it.” And she did. She knew, without a doubt, that he was thinking about Ethan. He was thinking about loss, and about how he wouldn’t feel the pain of loss if he had nothing to lose. “I’m not going to die, honey. I’m not Ethan.”

  “Oh, perfect,” he said, famous Skelly temper flaring. “Bring Ethan into it. Why the hell not? Let’s make this a complete misery-fest.”

  “I think that everything you do comes back to Ethan’s death,” Brittany told him quietly. “Everything. Your love affair with Lana—the wife of a close friend. Unrequited love—how perfect is that for you? You can’t lose her because she’s not yours to lose. Except you can’t win, either. You can never win, never be happy as long as you—”

  “Look,” he said. “I’m really not interested in this. I’m going to go take a nap. You want to come lie down with me, fine. You don’t, that’s fine, too.”

  But she blocked the door that led to his bedroom. “You said you were scared today. What were you afraid of, Wes?”

  He didn’t answer.

  He didn’t need to—she knew. “You were afraid I was hurt worse that I let on,” she said. “You were afraid I was badly injured. And what if I had been?”

  Wes shook his head. “Brittany, don’t. I already spent too much time there. It was not fun.”

  “If I had been badly hurt,” she asked instead, “whose fault would it have been?”

  He said one choice word on an exhale of air.

  “Mine,” she answered for him. “It would have been my fault, not yours. I’m the one who tripped down those stairs—”

  “You said you were pushed.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. I was pushed. So it wasn’t completely my fault, but that doesn’t make it yours either.”

  “If I had been with you, no one would’ve gotten close enough to push you—you better believe that.”

  “Right,” she said. “And if you had been with me the summer I turned twenty-two, I never would’ve gone out to the movies with my ex-husband that first time. So does that make my entire fiasco of a rotten marriage your fault, too?”

  He grimly shook his head. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “You weren’t there when those creeps took a potshot at the president last year,” she said. “So is it your fault that that Secret Service agent died?”

  “No.”

  “So why, then, is it your fault that Ethan died?”

  He was silent, just glaring at her. “You just don’t know when to stop, do you?” he finally said.

  “Wes, why is it your fault that Ethan died?” she asked again.

&nb
sp; “Goddamn it. It’s not. That’s what you want me to say, right?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s what I want you to believe.”

  “Well, I do believe it,” he said harshly. “I couldn’t have saved him even if I were in the car with him. I’m not a superhero—I have no delusions about myself. None at all. Some of the guys in Alpha Squad think they’re one step short of immortal. They think they’re goddamn invincible. But hey—remember me? I’m the family screwup. I have a long history of annoying the crap out of everyone I ever meet—”

  “Not me,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Wes said, his voice breaking. “Jesus, I can’t figure that one out. You’re, like, one of the nicest women I’ve ever met and no matter what I do or say, you still like me. I don’t get it.”

  He actually had tears in his eyes. Brittany took a step toward him, reaching for him, but he backed away.

  “Sweetie, it’s because I see the real you,” she told him, refusing to be daunted. “I see a wonderful, kind, compassionate, very strong and very intelligent man who is so much fun to be around, who gives so much of himself so generously. I see someone special—”

  “That was Ethan.” His voice got louder as he used anger to keep himself from crying. “Not me. He was the special one. I was the one who always pushed the boundaries, the annoying kid who tested everyone’s patience day in and day out. I’m the troublemaker, the roof-walker, the risk-taker, the tormentor. I’m the one who should have died. If one of us had to go, it goddamn should have been me!”

  Silence.

  Brittany suspected Wes had surprised himself with that statement more than he’d surprised her.

  “It should have been me,” he whispered as he used the heels of his hands to wipe his eyes before any tears could escape. God forbid he actually cry. “It’s been years and years and I’m still angry as hell that it wasn’t me in that car instead of Ethan.”

  “Oh, honey,” Brittany told him. “I for one am so glad it wasn’t you. And, for what it’s worth, sweet kids are nice, but I’ve always preferred the annoying ones. They grow up to be the most fascinating men.”

  Wes reached for her then. He practically lunged for her, pulling her close and kissing her almost painfully hard.