Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  No, she hadn’t. She wasn’t stupid. She would never tell a perfect stranger her name. Her father had drilled basic safety measures into her from the time she could walk. With a prickly feeling at the back of her neck, she picked up her pace and hurried out of the diner.

  Had he overheard her talking to Juan, Juliet’s doorman?

  That must be it, she thought. This was the closest eatery to her aunt’s building, and some of its residents were bound to eat there on a regular basis. She’d been busy with her bags and ID and probably hadn’t seen everyone coming and going.

  Looking over her shoulder every few seconds, Wendy quickly crossed the street and walked in what she believed was the direction of the Museum of Natural History, hoping she hadn’t gotten herself all turned around.

  When she recognized the planetarium dome, she felt a rush of relief but didn’t slow her pace. She used the Rose Center for Earth and Space entrance and stayed at the fringes of a group of schoolchildren, fourth- and fifth-graders as enthralled by the displays as she was.

  After glancing behind her every two seconds for twenty minutes, she decided that the man in the diner hadn’t followed her. She bought a ticket for one of the space shows. When she sat in her seat in the beautiful auditorium, she liked New York again and dropped into her fantasy that she lived here and knew her way around.

  Wendy convinced herself that the man had overheard her talking with the doorman but was already on his way to the diner and didn’t recognize her until he was sitting next to her.

  No longer feeling so unnerved, Wendy sat back in her seat and focused on the show. She decided she wouldn’t tell Juliet about the man in the diner and how he’d known her name. It was just a coincidence, and she didn’t want her aunt thinking she couldn’t handle herself in the city.

  “Is Wendy there?”

  Juliet could hear the strain in her brother’s voice. She was working at her desk and hadn’t expected Joshua to call. “No, why would she be?”

  “She took off for New York this morning. She took the train from Rutland—”

  “Wendy?”

  “Yes, damn it, Wendy,” he said with impatience, then reined in his frustration, proceeding more calmly, if a little icily. “She left a note saying she was spending a few days with you. Juliet, if you two planned this little scheme and didn’t tell me—”

  “I wasn’t in on any plan.” Juliet suddenly realized what he was saying and felt a crawling sense of dread. “What time did the train get here?”

  “Twelve-thirty.”

  “Good God, Joshua, that was almost three hours ago!”

  “I didn’t find out she was gone until now. I stopped by the house—she left a note on the kitchen table. Sam’s been in and out all day, but he thought she was here. I called her cell phone and left a message. I tried your apartment—” He paused, his emotions surfacing again. “I was hoping you two were off shopping.”

  “When I was home a few weeks ago, Wendy said she wanted to come visit me, but we didn’t set a date. I was open to the idea, but, Joshua, I’d have cleared it with you first.”

  “I know. We argued about this vegan thing last night. I told her to eat a damn steak and put some color back in her cheeks. She looks so stressed out and unhappy all the time—I don’t know what’s going on. It wouldn’t have mattered what I said. She was in a mood. She’s been working on college applications—I offered to help, and she bit my head off.”

  Juliet could envision the exchange between father and daughter. “Maybe the pressure’s getting to her—all these strangers looking at her grades, judging her. I remember hating it. Plus, her mother’s not here to give her moral support. She’s used to that, even more so since she was homeschooled.” Juliet stopped herself. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

  “Find her, will you?”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

  Juliet hung up and grabbed her jacket, quickly telling Tony Cipriani what was going on. He immediately offered to go with her, but she shook her head. They both were tackling paperwork of the dullest kind. She didn’t blame him for looking for an excuse to get out of there, but her partner didn’t need to be tracking down her errant niece with her.

  She took the elevator down to the lobby of the nondescript federal building hoping she wouldn’t have to fight traffic to get uptown. Out on the street, Ethan Brooker was just getting out of a cab.

  Juliet thought she must have conjured him up and was losing her damn mind. She charged out to the street.

  He was real. She hadn’t made him up or mistaken someone else for him.

  “Good,” he said. “You’re here. Saves me from having to lure you out here.”

  He had on a battered brown leather jacket, a denim shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, and he hadn’t shaved in several days. His eyes were harder, blacker, more piercing even than Juliet remembered. They looked as if they could set fire to the building.

  “Man, Brooker,” Juliet said. “Wherever they sent you, it wasn’t a Club Med.”

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  She gave him the basics, and his reaction—as if he, too, was worried that someone had harmed Wendy, or, God forbid, thought she was Juliet—scared the hell out of her. “You’ve seen her? My niece?”

  “I saw a teenage girl get out of a cab and drag a backpack and tote bag up the steps to your building. Small, long dark hair?”

  “That’s her. When—”

  “Over an hour ago. I’ve been sitting in traffic.”

  Juliet frowned, trying to think. “We have a new doorman.” She didn’t tell Ethan that letting him sneak up to her apartment in late August was the reason the old doorman was gone. “He should have called me—”

  “Water over the dam. Let’s go.”

  She didn’t budge. “Wait a minute. You were at my building—and now you’re here?”

  “We need to talk.” His tone held no hint that he was thinking about roses and sun-kissed cafés. “I didn’t get your guy.”

  Bobby Tatro. Juliet didn’t want him in her thoughts at the same time as her niece. “I supposed I’d have heard if you had. All right. Come with me. We’ll take my truck. We can talk on the way.”

  Joshua Longstreet headed outside, Wendy’s note still on the long, scarred pine table where she’d left it. Only by chance was he the first to see it. Everyone else was at landscaping jobs.

  The late afternoon air was chilly, the sun low in the sky.

  He debated getting into his truck and heading to New York himself. But what good would he do at this point? If Wendy had changed her mind and was on her way back to Vermont, he wanted to be here when she arrived, if only to—What? How did he punish a seventeen-year-old girl who barely acknowledged him as her father?

  Matt Kelleher was stacking pumpkins on a wooden trailer that Joshua had pulled out to the edge of the driveway yesterday. Wendy had intended to decorate it with dried cornstalks. Her grandparents had said she could keep the money from whatever pumpkins she sold. But Joshua had said the wrong thing, a lame joke about whether the pumpkins felt pain when they were carved, and they’d argued, and apparently they hadn’t patched things up as well as he thought they had, because first thing this morning, she’d lit out for New York.

  “Thought I’d finish up these pumpkins,” Kelleher said, lifting a big one onto the trailer. “I didn’t see you get here. I was up at my trailer.”

  “Did you happen to see my daughter this morning?”

  “Wendy? No, not this morning. I haven’t seen her all day, in fact. I assumed she was with her grandparents.” His brow furrowed with concern. “Why? Has something happened?”

  “She sneaked off to visit my sister in New York.”

  “Oh, I get it. That’s not good. She mentioned wanting to see her aunt’s apartment—I guess she’s moving?”

  Joshua nodded. “It’s a long story.”

  Kelleher set the pumpkin on the trailer. “Wendy seems like a good kid. Leve
lheaded for seventeen. You worried about her?”

  “My sister—Juliet—had no idea Wendy was coming.” Joshua didn’t know why he was telling this man his troubles. “Need a hand with the pumpkins?”

  “No, there aren’t many left. I like the work.”

  It’d only been a couple of days, but so far, Joshua hadn’t heard any negative reports from his family about Kelleher—they all seemed to like him.

  Sam’s truck pulled into the driveway. Joshua filled him in on what was going on with Wendy. Sam’s kids weren’t angels, but they’d never gone traipsing off to New York without permission. They went to public school. They played soccer and field hockey, and they hated carob.

  Normal kids, Joshua thought, hated carob.

  His daughter loved it.

  But he was damn near in tears when he climbed back into his cruiser and headed for town. He glanced at himself in his rearview mirror. He had a hint of gray in his darkish blond hair, and he looked tired and cynical, even for forty. He’d been divorced for a decade and hadn’t remarried. There was no woman currently in his life.

  And his only daughter hated him.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and Joshua had no idea what to do about it.

  He pounced on his cell phone when it rang.

  “She’s fine,” Juliet said. “She was just back from the Museum of Natural History when I got here.”

  “Put her on.”

  “We’re still in the lobby. Let me get her up to my apartment. Then I’ll have her call you.”

  Joshua gripped the phone. “Juliet—”

  “Trust me, Joshua, okay?”

  And he heard his daughter say cheerfully, as if she hadn’t done a damn thing wrong, “I’m fine, Dad. Really!”

  Relief and anger flooded over him, and he knew his sister was right; if he talked to Wendy now, in his current state, he’d just make matters worse. “All right,” he told Juliet. “I’m on my way home. Have her call me there.”

  It was almost dark when he reached White River Junction. The temperature had fallen. He parked in the short driveway of the Victorian he’d bought after his divorce and had slowly renovated over the years. His downstairs tenant, Barry Small, a member of the Greatest Generation, was up on a stepladder, stringing pumpkin-shaped lights across the porch in his shorts.

  Joshua got out of his truck. “You’re going to freeze your nuts off.”

  “Good. At least I’ll know they’re still there. Grab the other end of these lights, will you? I picked them up at Wal-Mart on sale.”

  “Pumpkin lights?”

  “For the trick-or-treaters.”

  Joshua didn’t point out Halloween wasn’t for nearly a month.

  Barry stretched a bony arm, hooking a length of wire over a thick staple. “You can never have enough light up here this time of year. Another few weeks and it’ll be darker than the pits of hell at three-thirty in the afternoon.”

  He wasn’t exaggerating by much. Except for his years in the army during World War Two, Barry had lived in Vermont his entire life, but he hated the long, dark winters. From October through the middle of May, he’d bitch to Joshua and threaten to move to Key West. He was a widower with four adult kids, none of whom lived in Vermont.

  “How’s Wendy the Vegan?”

  “She’s with her New York aunt,” he said, outlining his daughter’s adventures for the day.

  Barry glanced down from his stepladder, his lined face picking up the orange glow of one of his plastic pumpkins. “You sound irritated, Trooper Longstreet. Cut the girl some slack. She took a train to New York. It’s not the moon. You’re just ticked off because she likes everyone else better than she does you.”

  “Thanks, Barry.”

  The old man shrugged. “Comes with the territory.”

  Joshua walked behind him and caught the other end of the lights. “I think you’re going to need another strand. You’re about three feet short of the other end of the porch.”

  “This is it. It’ll have to do. I’m only spending so much on pumpkin lights.”

  It wouldn’t do. It’d look bizarre, but Joshua didn’t care.

  Here he was on a cool autumn night, stringing up pumpkin lights with his eighty-year-old tenant and neighbor.

  “I have no life, Barry.”

  The old man put one hand on Joshua’s shoulder, balancing himself as he climbed down off his stepladder. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you for how long? I made up a pitcher of margaritas. We can pretend we’re in Acapulco.”

  Joshua eyed the old man’s lights. Pitiful. “Got salt for the margaritas?”

  “And little umbrellas.”

  Before he realized it, Joshua cracked a smile.

  Barry gave him a victorious slap on the shoulder, and they headed inside.

  Six

  Ethan could tell that the bartender didn’t like him. He had trim gray hair and looked as if bartending was his vocation, not the backup plan, and he’d had his eye on Ethan since he took a high stool at the bar and ordered a Belgian beer on tap. The restaurant was on Amsterdam Avenue, on a corner, with a lot of windows and a neighborhood feel. He had more to tell Juliet. They hadn’t talked much on the tense ride uptown. She’d ordered him to meet her there after she got her wandering niece settled. Ethan almost told the bartender that he was there at the request of a deputy U.S. marshal, but doubted the man liked federal agents any better than whatever he thought Ethan was.

  “Not from around here?”

  “No, sir. Texas.”

  “There’s no smoking in here. It’s the law.”

  “I quit smoking.”

  The guy rolled his eyes. “When?”

  Ethan glanced at his watch. “About six hours ago.”

  Muttering about how much he hated wiseacres, the bartender set a frosty glass in front of Ethan and moved to the opposite end of the bar to wait on another customer, presumably one who didn’t smell like cigarettes.

  Ethan had finished his beer and was resisting ordering another one when Juliet pushed past a trio of women examining the menu posted in the entry and sat next to him. “Saving me a seat?”

  “It was easy. Nobody wants to sit next to me.”

  “I wonder why.”

  The restaurant was warm and pleasant, the plates passing by on waiters’ trays piled high with comfort food. Mac and cheese, meat loaf, mashed potatoes. Ethan supposed he should have been hungry, but he wasn’t.

  “How’s your niece?” he asked.

  They’d found her skipping on the steps of Juliet’s building. When she saw her aunt, she got a little weepy, which made Ethan more compliant when Juliet, tight-lipped, said to give her an hour.

  “She’s camped out in front of the television watching an episode of The Vicar of Dibley.” At his puzzled look, Juliet added, “British comedy. Wendy gave me the DVD set for Christmas.”

  “Just as well you didn’t invite me up.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I had a beer.”

  “I had Thai food with Wendy before I left. She’s a vegan.”

  “Orthodox vegetarian, right? No animal products at all.”

  “Correct. She thinks she might eat eggs. She’s only been at it a few weeks. Her dog died—” Juliet caught herself. “Never mind.”

  She ordered sparkling water with lime. Ethan resisted ordering another beer. The bartender obviously didn’t recognize her nor seemed to notice that she was armed, which probably meant she wasn’t one of the locals who frequented the place. She could have picked the joint for that reason, but Ethan suspected Deputy Longstreet wasn’t a regular anywhere in her neighborhood.

  When her water arrived, she stared at it a moment. Her cheeks were flushed. With her fair skin, she flushed easily. The warm restaurant, the upset with her niece. Him. She had reasons to get a little pink in the cheeks.

  “I’m glad you weren’t killed,” she said, still not looking at him.

  “I never said that what I was doing was dangerous.”<
br />
  She drank some of her water. “Did our mutual friend do anything illegal?” Friend didn’t exactly describe Bobby Tatro.

  Ethan didn’t answer her. He didn’t want to lie, and he didn’t want to tell the truth.

  “I want to know what’s going on,” Juliet said. “I’m not playing your game anymore.”

  Ethan smelled the cigarette smoke on himself and decided he at least could have shaved before he’d beelined for the marshals. For Juliet.

  Something was freaking wrong with him.

  “Tatro and a handful of other bad operators grabbed a guy I could identify. I can’t go into who he is. It didn’t happen in this country.” Ethan spoke quietly, but he wasn’t concerned about anyone overhearing him. Who’d know what in hell he was talking about? They’d think he was describing a movie script or something. “Tatro cleared out before my team arrived. We never saw him.”

  “Convenient. He was tipped off?”

  “We weren’t there for answers. We were there to get our man.”

  He noticed her throat as she sipped more of her water, the frost on the glass melting onto her fingers. She had slender fingers with blunt nails—some nicked—no doubt from the physical, hectic life she led, the work she did. When she looked at him, her blue eyes were wide and clear. “It’s odd, don’t you think, that Tatro chose a ‘guy’ you could identify?” She set the glass down hard but with control. “That’s a hell of a coincidence, Major.”

  “I agree.” Brooker’s head hurt. He needed a shower, sleep. A pity the niece had turned up… He shut off that thought fast. “My guy’s safe. Your guy’s still on the loose.”

  “If Tatro’s responsible for a kidnapping—”

  “What kidnapping?”

  Juliet glowered at him. “You just said he grabbed a guy you could identify. That sounds like kidnapping to me. I could take you in and get answers that way. Rivera would love it. He hasn’t liked you much since you took off on us in Tennessee.”

  “I came back.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I have a lot of questions of my own,” Ethan said in a steady voice, knowing he could only tell her certain things. “If Bobby Tatro blames you for putting me on to him—”