Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  But Joshua ended up pulling her aside. “You okay, Juliet?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “You looked preoccupied all weekend. That business last month with the assassin—”

  “It’s over,” she said. “I was never that involved.” In light of Tatro’s release, she’d all but forgotten about her encounter in August with an international assassin.

  Ethan Brooker had turned up at her apartment in New York and swept her into his hunt for what turned out to be a clever, dangerous killer with a long list of targets. Ethan was almost killed. It wasn’t the first time—he was a Special Forces officer with a knack, at least lately, for attracting trouble.

  “Brooker?” Joshua asked, as if he could read his sister’s mind. “What happened to him?”

  “He took off once the dust settled.”

  “That’s what he did back in May, too.”

  Juliet tried to smile. “No, in May he took off before the dust settled. He’s lucky he didn’t get himself arrested.” Brooker had eventually come back, and he’d told the FBI and the marshals and the Secret Service what he knew about the crazy plot to extort a presidential pardon that he’d helped expose, although not by following the rules. And Brooker had never been that interested in the plot. All he’d cared about was finding out who had murdered his wife and why.

  “Juliet, guys like that…should be left alone.”

  “Ethan’s gone, Joshua. I have no idea where he is. I couldn’t contact him if I wanted to.”

  Her brother gave her a curt nod. “Yeah. Okay. If you ever want to talk, you know where to find me.”

  It was as brotherly a comment as he’d ever made, and Juliet had to force herself not to let her jaw drop. “Thanks,” she said, meaning it, “but Brooker and me—well, there is no such thing.”

  For once, Joshua didn’t argue with her.

  On the five-hour drive back to New York, Juliet kept telling herself that her brother—everyone—was right. For the past year, Ethan Brooker had been a man out of control, willing to do what it took to find his wife’s killers and get the answers to her murder, to satisfy himself that he’d left no stone unturned. Juliet thought back to the time she’d first met Brooker, just before they found the bodies of two thugs in the backyard of the Tennessee boyhood home of the president of the United States. It wasn’t an auspicious start to any kind of relationship.

  He hadn’t turned up in her life in August and stayed at her apartment—on her futon couch—out of any romantic pull to her. He’d needed her help.

  And when he didn’t anymore, he took off.

  Just as well, Juliet told herself, and concentrated on her driving as traffic picked up and the New York skyline came into view.

  Four hours after arriving back in New York, Juliet sat at a grime-encrusted table on the back wall of a Bronx bar that smelled of stale cigars and, somewhat less strongly, urine. She hadn’t touched the coffee she’d ordered. Its color didn’t look right, not that she was fussy. She didn’t point out to the bartender that there was no smoking anymore in New York’s bars. There was probably no peeing on the floor, either.

  George O’Hara—his real name, although he himself said he didn’t have a drop of Irish blood in him—didn’t seem to care as he sat across from her. Dark and hugely overweight, O’Hara was a one-time felon who’d pulled himself together after his release from prison and made a fresh start. He cleaned bars during the day and performed comedy at night. On occasion, he provided Juliet with information. He was selective in what he told her; he had no great desire to tell her anything. But he accepted that some people simply needed to be off the streets.

  Juliet fingered the handle on her coffee mug. “What do you tell people who ask about me?”

  “I tell them you think I’m funny. You do, don’t you?”

  She’d seen his act once. “You’re very funny.”

  “Like my federal agent jokes?”

  “I’m material,” she said. “That’s what you tell anyone who asks about me, isn’t it?”

  He leaned his bulk about a quarter inch closer to her, the best he could do in the cramped quarters. “Nobody asks.”

  “How’s the cleaning?”

  “Pays more in three months than you earn in a year as a marshal.”

  No doubt it did. “You don’t clean this place, do you?”

  George seemed offended. “It wouldn’t smell like pee if I cleaned it.”

  Juliet breathed in through her teeth. That morning, she’d gone kayaking in a pristine Vermont lake. “The cigar smoke’s getting to my sinuses,” she said, then looked out at the crowd of loud, happy drunks, a third of whom were as overweight as O’Hara. Without turning to him, she went on. “I need anything you can give me on Bobby Tatro.”

  She’d given George a heads-up. Her mention of Tatro wasn’t out of the blue. George sat back, his chair groaning under him, and when she finally shifted her attention back to him, he sighed. “Word is he’s out of the country.”

  “Where?”

  “South America.”

  “That’s a whole continent, George. Can you be more specific?”

  He shook his head. “He’s hooked up with some vigilante-justice types. He’s going to save the world.”

  “Good. It’ll keep him busy.”

  She picked and prodded some more, but it was all O’Hara had to offer. He promised to keep his ears open—he prided himself on his listening skills. He said they helped make him a better comic. He wasn’t after just the content of what other people were saying, but the rhythm of their speech, its syntax and cadences. Juliet had suggested he put together a class for her fellow deputies, and he’d almost choked on his tongue laughing at the idea.

  But he wasn’t laughing now. “Nobody likes this guy Tatro.”

  “Smart.”

  “What does he want with you?”

  “Nothing, I hope.”

  “You put him away?”

  “I caught him after he was convicted in a federal court and didn’t turn up to serve his sentence.”

  “Ended his party.”

  “I found him in a Wal-Mart parking lot. It wasn’t much of a party.”

  O’Hara held up his beer glass to the dim light. “Those aren’t my fingerprints,” he said, frowning, then set the glass back down on the dark wood table. “How’s your Special Forces guy?”

  “I have no idea. And he’s not ‘my’ Special Forces guy.” Juliet paid for their drinks and got to her feet. “You know how to reach me?”

  “You gave me your cell-phone number, apartment phone, apartment address, office phone, page number, personal e-mail, office e-mail—”

  “I didn’t give you my apartment address.”

  “Oops. Forgot that one didn’t come from you.” He didn’t seem particularly worried or apologetic.

  “If you hear anything, let me know. Do not underestimate this guy. Even if he is a free man, Bobby Tatro is one very bad actor. If you run into him, don’t approach him. Don’t even think my name.”

  George’s expressive eyes—a warm, deep brown—showed concern mixed with outright fear, but not for himself, Juliet realized. For her. But he simply said good-night and thanked her for the beer, ordering another as she made her way through the crowd and back outside. She took the subway back to her borrowed apartment on the Upper West Side, making a point to smile at Juan, the new doorman—Ethan’s success at sneaking into the building had been the last straw for the old one.

  On the elevator, she spoke briefly to a middle-aged couple who seemed self-conscious around her. It took her a few seconds to realize it was probably her badge; she doubted they ran into many federal agents. They were pleasant, artsy types who lived on a higher floor in a bigger, fancier apartment than hers.

  Freda, her theater friend, would be back in just a matter of weeks, but Juliet hadn’t done a thing to find a new apartment. Even a less desirable street on the Upper West Side would be tough on her salary, assuming she could find something.

&n
bsp; She flopped on her futon couch, listening to the familiar, soothing gurgle of her four fish tanks. Why four, she didn’t know. She didn’t even know why she had one fish tank. And her plants—the place was a jungle. But a lady slipper orchid she’d bought at the New York Orchid Show at the World Trade Center, before 9/11, was in bloom, and that pleased her.

  Her cell phone rang. She debated not answering it but rolled off the couch and headed down the hall to her small bedroom. She grabbed her phone off the dresser and took a quick glance at the readout: private. No help there.

  She barely got a chance to say hello when she heard a deep, familiar male voice with a west Texas accent. “Hey, Marshal. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “Brooker—Ethan.” Had she conjured him up by talking about him, thinking about him twice that day? She shook off the thought. If he was calling her, it wasn’t because anything good had happened. “Where are you?”

  “On the same island as you.”

  He was in New York. She sat on the edge of her bed. “At least you sprang for your own room this time.” In August, he’d spent two nights on her futon. She’d slept badly both nights.

  “I need to see you. Tomorrow morning. Federal Hall at 9:00 a.m. Wait for me at the George Washington statue.”

  “I’m not waiting for you, period—”

  “Don’t tell your fellow marshals.”

  “Marshals are political appointees. One to a district. Technically, my colleagues and me are deputy U.S. marshals.” She sighed. “Damn it, Brooker. Why can’t we just meet for coffee? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll find you in the morning.”

  He disconnected.

  Juliet threw her phone down on the bed. The bed, the bureau, the refinished ladder-back chair—all Freda’s. Juliet had tacked up drawings her nieces and nephews had sent her, photographs of family gatherings she’d missed, a Vermont calendar. Except for her plants and fish, nothing else was hers. When she found a new place, she wasn’t relishing having to furnish it. Subletting had seemed like a good idea at the time. Six months on the Upper West Side—why not? Now, her time was up, and she had to find a new place. At best, a pain in the neck. At worst—it made her realize what a tumbleweed she’d become.

  She tried not to let Brooker’s call get to her. He was dramatic, accustomed to the blackest of black ops and not one, by nature, to reveal too much—especially over the phone.

  Would she meet him at Federal Hall?

  Of course. There’d never been any doubt. Ethan knew it, and so did she.

  Two

  Juliet arrived at Federal Hall on Wall Street at nine on the dot and stood next to the impressive statue of George Washington, who’d been sworn in as president there in 1789.

  She’d decided not to be early for her clandestine meeting—or late. She was up at her usual time of 5:30 a.m., did her three-mile run, lifted a few free weights in her apartment, stretched, showered and dressed in jeans, running shoes, a stretchy button-down shirt and her black leather jacket—a recent splurge.

  She started three hours of firearms training at ten. She meant to have Ethan sent on his way and be back at her desk by then.

  The raspberry lip gloss she’d dabbed on before leaving the U.S. Marshals Service Southeastern New York District Office wasn’t for his sake. It was a cool, dreary morning, and she didn’t want to get chapped lips.

  Juliet recognized one of the heavily armed NYPD officers guarding the New York Stock Exchange, a huge American flag draping its familiar colonnade exterior. New York remained at Orange Alert. Cars had been barred from narrow Wall Street since 9/11. Security was as tight there as anywhere on the planet.

  She wondered what old George would think if he suddenly came to life. It wasn’t even the same building behind him. The original Federal Hall, where the Bill of Rights had been written and the First Congress had met, was torn down; the current one, with its beautiful Greek Revival architecture, was erected in its place in 1842. It was now a National Park Service site.

  Brooker turned the corner of Nassau Street, and as she watched him approach the statue, Juliet didn’t notice anything different about him since she’d last seen him in late August. Except maybe his concussion from his fall in Ravenkill Creek had healed. The assassin he’d followed to Ravenkill, a picturesque village on the Hudson River an hour north of New York, had beaned him on the head with a rock, nearly killing him.

  But that ordeal was over now, and Juliet had hoped Ethan had gone home to Texas finally, to mourn his wife and come to grips with his guilt and regrets—the unalterable fact that he was still alive and she wasn’t.

  He walked between two planters—car bomb deterrents—and walked up the two steps to where she stood. He was a few inches taller than she was and broad-shouldered, his dark hair cropped shorter than a month ago. Whether he was on the periphery of the action or right in the middle of it, Ethan Brooker was a catalyst, was the sort of man who made things happen.

  “I like the leather,” he said.

  “Keeps me warm.” Juliet noticed that his dark eyes were as superalert as ever. “You’re right on time.”

  The sprinkle of rain had turned into a steady drizzle. Pedestrians by the dozen unfurled black umbrellas. Juliet didn’t have one on her. Neither did Ethan. He had on dark charcoal pants, an expensive denim jacket and cowboy boots. His silver belt buckle was right out of the Old West.

  She shoved her fists into her jacket pockets. “No Stetson?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to mistake me for a stockbroker.”

  As if there were a chance.

  His gaze locked on her. “I need your help.”

  The drizzle glistened on his hair and jacket, but he didn’t seem to notice. Juliet licked her lips, tasting the gloss. “I hope you want me to help you move a sofa or something, because if it involves my work—”

  “I need a name.”

  Juliet pulled her hands out of her pockets and realized the steps were shiny with rain, that she and Ethan were the only ones on Wall Street not rushing for cars, cabs, restaurants and offices. “Sure you don’t want to go for coffee? We could get out of the rain.”

  Brooker shook his head. “I have a flight that leaves in ninety minutes.”

  “Ethan, what the hell—” She contained a sudden bite of impatience. “All right. Go ahead. Give me what you’ve got. If it makes sense and I can help you, I will.”

  “I need the name of a man—an American in his midthirties. I don’t have a good description. Dark, curly hair. Good-looking.”

  “That doesn’t give me much to go on. What else?”

  “He’s an ex-con.”

  “Ah. Now we’re in my world. But you still have to narrow down the possibilities—”

  “He’s after a blond, female marshal.”

  Juliet looked at her hands, saw that they were slick now with the rain. “There are other blond, female marshals.”

  “I need a name, Juliet.”

  She leveled her gaze on him. “Why?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t say. If you take this up the food chain, I still won’t be able to say. But I’ll get my name, one way or the other.”

  A year ago, Ethan Brooker was a respected, decorated career Special Forces officer. Then his wife, an army captain, was murdered in Amsterdam. When the official investigation stalled—Ethan went after answers on his own. His search took him to Night’s Landing, Tennessee, where he posed as a property manager for the Dunnemores, a prominent southern family whose friend and neighbor was John Wesley Poe, the newly elected U.S. president.

  Ethan ended up helping to expose Nick Janssen, who’d schemed to capitalize on his connection to both the Dunnemores and President Poe and extort a presidential pardon for himself. Months earlier, Janssen had skipped the country to avoid federal tax fraud charges—but he wasn’t a simple tax evader. By the time his plot backfired, the world knew he was an international criminal with an extensive network of illegal arms traders, drug dealers, murderers and extortion
ists.

  Janssen had deliberately ordered the murder of U.S. Army Captain Charlene Brooker, whose questions the previous fall had come too close to him and, ultimately, led to her death.

  But it wasn’t until August that Nick Janssen, with Ethan hot on his tail, finally was taken into custody in the Netherlands. He was still in a Dutch prison, fighting extradition to the U.S. to face a jury for his crimes. In a last-ditch attempt to control his own fate, he’d hired an assassin—Ethan had been on her target list. But Libby Smith, too, was in prison, not far, Juliet thought, from where she, Ethan and George Washington stood.

  “Ethan,” she said, pausing for a breath. “I can’t let you suck me into another of your semi-legitimate enterprises.”

  “This one’s legit.”

  “How? Who are you working for—”

  “I need the name, Juliet. Everything you have on this guy.”

  She squinted up at the gray sky amid the skyscrapers, a fat raindrop splatting hard on her forehead. Wiping it off, she looked down at the pedestrians enduring the tight Wall Street security with a nonchalance that was both inspiring and sad. There’d be no going back to pre-9/11 days.

  And no going back, she thought, to the days before she’d met Ethan Brooker over two of Janssen’s dead henchmen, one of whom had pulled the trigger on the gun that had killed Ethan’s wife.

  Char Brooker had died just a year ago. Ethan hadn’t even remotely begun to live a normal life again.

  “Bobby Tatro,” Juliet said. “That’s the name you want.”

  “Who is he?”

  “An ex-con who doesn’t like me. He got out of federal prison in late August, about the time you were here.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  She shook her head, feeling the rain dripping from the ends of her short curls now. Although her hair wasn’t saturated, it was getting there. “Not since he went to prison. I picked him up in Syracuse four years ago. He failed to deliver himself to serve his sentence—he was on the lam for about three months.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  She ran a toe over a tiny pool of freshly fallen rain and didn’t look at Brooker. “I was in the right place at the right time. A Wal-Mart parking lot, as it turns out.” She raised her gaze to the man next to her, realized she didn’t know him at all—and she shouldn’t fool herself into thinking she did. “You have access to his file, don’t you?”