Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  Bobby Tatro was a loner. He was arrogant, sadistic and self-absorbed. If he was responsible for Juan’s murder, Juliet would be surprised if he had an accomplice.

  But Tatro couldn’t have kidnapped whoever Brooker and his team had rescued on his own. He’d had help.

  Juliet’s heart jumped when she saw Wendy’s backpack wedged in her apartment door, keeping it slightly ajar. She didn’t risk telling Rivera, still listening in, and have Tatro or whoever was inside hear her.

  The sound of water dripping….

  “Open the door, Wendy.” It was a man’s voice, sickeningly cajoling, “I forgive you. It’s okay. I’ll take care of you.”

  Wendy… Juliet felt as if her heart had just been ripped out. Her niece was in the apartment, at the mercy of this bastard. Juliet didn’t recognize the voice. It could be Tatro—it could be anyone. But she knew she had to tunnel her thoughts, zero in on the situation and her options.

  The bedroom, the bedroom closet and the bathroom all had doors. But only the bedroom door locked. That likely put the intruder in the hall, talking to Wendy through the bedroom door, trying to lure her out to him. Tatro would toy with her, have a little sadistic fun for himself, let her believe she was safe from him before he burst in on her.

  Juliet stepped over Wendy’s backpack, pushing her apartment door open wider, and landed in water.

  The fish tanks.

  Wendy’s tote bag was acting as a dam for a flood of water flowing from her living room and two smashed tanks. Gold and bright blue and purple fish flapped helplessly or lay unmoving on the floor, amid blue gravel and a little ship’s wheel she used as a prop.

  Orchids and spider plants were upended, loose potting soil soaking up some of the gallons of aquarium water and turning to mud.

  “Wendy, Wendy.” The intruder was obviously unaware that someone had entered the apartment. “I can’t wait forever.”

  Juliet had no idea if Rivera could hear what was going on—if he knew Juan’s killer was in her apartment with her niece and had relayed the information to Cip and NYPD.

  Juliet heard sudden pounding on the bedroom door, and, using the noise to cover the sound of her movement, she charged down the hall and pointed her gun at a dark-haired man in cargo pants. His back was to her as he gave the door a hard kick.

  Juliet didn’t waste any time. “Freeze! Federal marshal! Hands in the air. Now. Do it now!”

  He went still.

  Juliet saw a K-bar in his right hand—the assault-type knife he must have used to kill Juan. “Drop the knife and put your hands up. I’m not saying it again. I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  The knife clattered to the floor. “I guess you’ve got me, pretty marshal.” He raised both his hands above his head. “For now.”

  Tatro. Eyes and gun on him, Juliet called through the bedroom door. “Wendy, are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Her voice sounded strong but very young—and frightened. “I’m by myself.”

  Juliet didn’t let herself feel any relief. “Hands flat against the wall, Tatro. Then your forehead. Touch the wall with your forehead. Do it!”

  He glanced back at her with a cocky smile, a dark curl dropping over his right eye. “I know the drill, blondie.”

  But he complied, spreading his legs without her having to order him to do so. With one hand, Juliet got her cuffs, then approached him, her Glock still trained on him. “Right hand behind your back. Keep your left hand and your forehead against the wall.”

  “I’ve got a headache—”

  “Do it.”

  Sighing as if she were imposing on him, he put his right hand behind his back. Juliet placed her right foot next to his right foot. If he tried anything, she’d knee him in the back of the leg, and he’d go down.

  She cuffed his wrist and gripped the cool metal with her left hand while holstering her gun with her right. If he moved a muscle, she’d yank upwards on the cuffs until he felt the pain. “Left hand behind your back.”

  “My head—”

  “Now, Tatro.”

  He gave her his left hand, most of his weight on his forehead now as he leaned into the wall. Juliet cuffed his other wrist, then locked the cuffs with their little key. Taking a breath, she held the chain that linked the two bands, patted him down on the right side. She switched hands and patted down his left side. Except for the K-bar he’d dropped, he was unarmed. She gave the knife a side kick and sent it sliding across the floor away from Tatro. It’d get bagged as evidence later.

  “Facedown on the floor,” she said. “NYPD’s on their way.”

  Cursing her, Tatro did as Juliet ordered. He was an experienced criminal and would know the conditions under which she was authorized to use deadly force.

  “Don’t think this ends here,” he said into the floor. “Your pretty ass is mine, blondie. Just like I promised. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Juliet ignored him. “Wendy—open the door, honey. Come on out. Slowly. Let me see you.”

  “It’s going to take a minute. I barricaded myself in.”

  Juliet heard the sound of what had to be the bureau scraping across the wood floor. Then the door opened, and Wendy cowered on the threshold, pale and shaking badly.

  Tatro snorted. “Fucking little bitch. Auntie showed up in the nick of time, didn’t she? Saved your ass.”

  “Shut the hell up, Tatro,” Juliet said, no intention of chitchatting with him. Wendy must have smashed the fish tanks, distracting him long enough for her to take off to the bedroom.

  “I caught him by surprise.” Wendy’s voice was quiet and steady, not with bravado, Juliet thought, but with shock. “The water was like a dam breaking. It nearly knocked us both down. He dropped his knife. I ran into the bedroom. I knew I couldn’t get past him to get to the elevator.”

  Juliet pushed back an image of her niece struggling with Tatro and tried to reassure her. “He can’t hurt you now.”

  Tony Cipriani arrived on the scene first. NYPD officers were right behind him. Juliet leaned down to Tatro on the floor. “You’re a sick son of a bitch, Tatro, terrorizing a teenage girl. When did you take my picture? How long were you spying on me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You come near me or my family again—”

  Cip tugged on her arm. “Come on, Longstreet. Let’s go.”

  Juliet about-faced, nodded at her partner, then ran to her niece, Wendy’s fingers clawing into her as the girl held on and sobbed.

  “The fish.” Wendy stiffened, standing up straight, shaking off any display of affection—of weakness. “We have to save them.”

  Without making contact with any of the law enforcement officers descending on the building, she started scooping up fish. Most were dead already, Juliet saw, but a few had managed to land in small pools of standing water. The rest of the water had soaked into the floor-boards, probably drenching the apartment under hers.

  Tony winced at Juliet as he watched the girl do her best to save what fish she could. “Longstreet. Jesus—”

  “There’s still water in two of the tanks,” Juliet told Wendy softly. “Put the survivors in there.”

  “They won’t fight with one another?”

  “Not those fish.” And not in their shocked condition.

  Wendy gently lowered survivors into one of the tanks. She was ghostly white and not shaking, not anymore. But Juliet knew that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. “I have to save the fish,” Wendy mumbled. “I don’t want them to die because of me.”

  Cip scooped up a plump goldfish and dumped it in one of the intact tanks. “Look at him go. He probably thinks he jumped in there by himself.”

  Juliet turned away, fighting tears she’d never let Cip or any of the law enforcement types around her see. Her niece shouldn’t have had to face Bobby Tatro. “I need to call my brother. Wendy’s father.”

  Discreetly toeing a dead fish under the leaves of an upended orchid, Cip nodded. “Yeah. You sure as hell
do.”

  Eight

  The Hay-Adams on Washington’s Lafayette Square was one of the more prestigious hotels in a city where prestige mattered more than it did virtually anywhere else in the world. For a few thousand dollars, Ethan could have had a suite with a view of the White House, but he’d opted for a smaller suite with a view of St. John’s Church, indulgence enough to make him feel alive and no longer under even the oblique direction of Mia O’Farrell.

  Obviously O’Farrell hadn’t expected the Hay-Adams. Her reaction to his choice of hotel was fun to watch.

  Her thin, carefully plucked eyebrows went up almost imperceptibly.

  That was it.

  “I’m on my own nickel, if you’re worried about squandering the people’s money.”

  She sat on a small sofa in the living area of his suite. “You don’t care much about squandering your own money, do you?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve never been much of a penny-pincher.”

  She sipped a Coke. He’d had to find her a glass and ice. She was pretty and she looked delicate, but Ethan wasn’t misled. Dr. O’Farrell wasn’t anyone he’d want to cross.

  She’d rescheduled their morning meeting until after lunch, compelling him to spring for a second night in D.C., unless he’d wanted to check out and meet her in a public place or go to her office. And he didn’t.

  “I knew you’d make it out of Colombia alive,” she said.

  He wondered if she’d ever been out of the country. Paris, maybe. London. Montreal. He let his eyes connect with hers. “Did you?”

  Something about his look must have bothered her, because she glanced away and quickly set her Coke on the cocktail table. “Have you told me everything that happened with Tatro and his henchmen?”

  Henchmen. Ethan couldn’t remember someone ever using that word in a high-level meeting. Any meeting. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You can call me Mia.” She smiled tentatively. “It’s fine.”

  He didn’t respond. After today, he hoped never to have to see her again. Not that he disliked her or there was anything wrong with her particularly. He just didn’t want to stay in the same orbit as the Mia O’Farrells of the world.

  “Bobby Tatro was the ringleader?” she asked.

  Her language reminded Ethan of old westerns. Yet he didn’t know many people more tapped into the real world than Mia was. She wasn’t naive—she just seemed that way. A tactic, maybe. A habit. He didn’t know if she was an ideologue or a nut or a pragmatist, or simply an intelligent woman navigating her way through a tough town and a hard job, just trying to do the right thing. Ethan didn’t know if he could trust her. But none of that mattered anymore. He was done. He was going home, even if he didn’t know where that was.

  “It was my job to get Ham Carhill safely out of Colombia. Nobody asked me to sort out the players.”

  O’Farrell frowned so deeply her eyes shut. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

  “I don’t see how that’s my problem.”

  Actually, he did see how it was his problem. After finding the picture of Juliet in Tatro’s hut, Ethan had known he wouldn’t just be flying home to Texas and leaving all the unanswered questions about Mia O’Farrell and who had her ear behind him.

  But he could pretend, at least for now.

  She sat back on the elegant sofa, turning her frown on him. “Who do you think you’re kidding, Major Brooker? That’s why you’re here. Because of the unanswered questions.”

  So much for pretending, he thought. He just shrugged at her without comment.

  “How did Bobby Tatro choose Ham Carhill as his victim? How did he find him? How did he pull off such a complicated operation so soon after his release from federal prison? We can start with those questions. You think I have the answers. I don’t.”

  “Who tipped Tatro off we were on our way?” Ethan fired back. “That’s another good question.”

  Mia’s frown deepened. “You say that as if you think I did.”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  “No.” She inhaled through her nose. “No, I didn’t. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that he wasn’t there—”

  “It wasn’t a coincidence.”

  Ethan glanced around his tastefully decorated suite. He was more suited to a desert foxhole or a HALO jump into the middle of nowhere—swatting mosquitoes in Colombia as he’d done just three days ago. Washington wasn’t his world. Neither was his fancy hotel. But he’d showered, shaved, had a good breakfast and lunch. He could check out now and walk away, not sit here and play games with a presidential adviser who wasn’t telling him everything she knew about Bobby Tatro, Ham Carhill and what had gone down in Colombia over the past few weeks. Not even close. And whatever she was holding back had her scared.

  He hadn’t told her about the photograph of Juliet he’d found in Tatro’s hut. If he was wrong about Mia O’Farrell and she wasn’t just in over her head—if she was a snake—then she didn’t need to know any more details than what he’d given her.

  “You and Deputy Longstreet have had your names in the papers a couple times this year,” Mia said. “It’s possible someone saw the stories and made the connection between you and Ham because of them.”

  “I was more or less a footnote,” Ethan said.

  “Nevertheless, it wasn’t long after your name was in the media this last time, in connection with the assassin in upstate New York in late August, that Ham was kidnapped—a fellow Texan, a neighbor of yours, a very private individual only a handful of people would easily recognize. You ‘just happened’ to be one of that handful.”

  Mia finally drank more of her Coke, but she didn’t relax. “You’re worried about me, Major. What if I should be worried about you? Ham spent most of the past two years in South America. So that brings me back to the same questions. How did Bobby Tatro figure out who he was, where he was? How did he get to Colombia so soon after his release from prison, find men to hire, get the money to pay them?”

  Ethan half smiled and said to her, “Tatro might not be your ringleader after all.”

  She didn’t seem to notice he was teasing her.

  “What’s Ham saying?”

  “Very little. He blanked out a lot of the past few weeks.”

  Ethan doubted that. Once something got in Ham’s brain, it stayed there. “That’s what he told you?”

  “For now. He needs rest. He doesn’t have the training or the experience you do.” Mia’s frown deepened again, as if she were trying to convince herself that Ham Carhill wasn’t pulling a fast one on her. “He retained every detail of the information he’d gathered pre-kidnapping. We got it in the nick of time. It saved lives.”

  This woman operated in the very bowels of government, knew things few others did—and she tried to get it right. Ethan was fairly certain that whatever Mia O’Farrell was hiding, it wasn’t because she was venal, or just didn’t give a damn about anyone else.

  She leveled her very green eyes on him. “You saved lives, Major Brooker.”

  A torturous route she’d had to take to where he’d saved lives. “Have you considered that Ham’s kidnapping might have had nothing to do with the work he did for you? The Carhills aren’t just rich, you know. They’re richer than God.”

  She reddened slightly. “I realize that. Everything’s happened very fast. Ham has been a surprising asset. He has a brilliant mind—”

  “His family thinks he’s strange.”

  She nodded, looking at her hands.

  “I hope his life and the other lives ‘we’ saved were worth the risks. If you’d wanted answers to the kidnapping, you could have gotten them. Some, if not all of them. But you wanted Ham. That was the mission.” Ethan was just repeating, in essence, what she’d told him. “If my team had been killed, Ham would have been killed.”

  “It’s not what we wanted—”

  “It was an acceptable risk. Better Ham dead and quiet than alive and talking to the wrong people, endangering lives.”


  “Rescuing him saved lives. I just told you. Ham gave us information about a plot that would have killed a dozen innocent people—we averted a real disaster.”

  “Rescued is better than dead. But dead was better than leaving him in the hands of Tatro and his goons. You couldn’t take the risk that Tatro wasn’t after money—that he or whoever was manipulating him wanted what your guy Ham had tucked in that supercharged brain of his. Contacts, information, connections. It’s all what he’s good at acquiring. He absorbs and processes things the rest of us never see to begin with. That’s what you were protecting, Dr. O’Farrell. Not Ham himself, or the lives his information saved.”

  O’Farrell raised her chin, a coolness coming into her steady gaze. “I didn’t call this meeting to explain myself to you, Major Brooker.”

  Ethan ignored her. “Did Tatro make a ransom demand?”

  “No. Not that I know of. Believe it or not, I haven’t figured out precisely what he wanted with Ham.” She paused a moment, as if waiting for him to argue with her. “It’s possible you and your team rescued him before Tatro could decide on his next move.”

  “Possible,” Ethan said, but didn’t believe it. He doubted O’Farrell did, either.

  She set down her Coke and stood, and when Ethan got to his feet, she tilted her head back, studying him, nothing about her expression softening. “What does Deputy Longstreet know about your mission?”

  Not naive at all, Dr. O’Farrell. “She knows I didn’t catch Bobby Tatro.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “As much as I trust anyone.”

  Mia smiled a little. “You’ve heard it all and done it all, haven’t you, Major? I’m sorry. If I had to do it over again, I can’t say I’d ask you to get involved in this situation. Ultimately, we did everything by the book, and I didn’t have the final say about your role. But I could have kept you out of it.”

  “President Poe wanted me in.”

  The clear green eyes focused on him. “Yes, he did.”

  She didn’t go further—why the president wanted him, why Poe had stuck his nose in the Carhill mess at all. For all Ethan knew, those were more questions for which Mia O’Farrell had no answers.