Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  He withdrew a folded piece of paper from a back pocket of his jeans and opened it onto her bed. Juliet saw that it was a copy of Bobby Tatro’s doctored picture of her.

  She finished dressing. “You made a copy?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “You knew you were giving me the original—you figured you might not see it again. Ethan—” She sighed at him. “You don’t want to annoy Rivera and Collins.”

  He smiled. “Too late.”

  “Meddling in or impeding a federal investigation isn’t a real good idea. I don’t care who you’ve got covering your butt in Washington.”

  He let her comment stand and tapped his copy of her picture. “No doorman in the background. I was thinking Tatro took the picture, but I don’t know. Anything pinpoint the timing for you?”

  “My jeans,” she said.

  “They look good on you.”

  “They’re the same ones I’m wearing now. I bought them and my leather jacket in late August.”

  “In New York?”

  She nodded. “They’re expensive, but I indulged because they fit so well. You have no idea what it’s like for a woman to find the perfect pair of jeans. I hate shopping, so when I do finally drag myself to a store, I make myself try on stuff. If it fits, I buy it. Especially pants.”

  Juliet stared at her image, recalling the dressing room at Saks, checking the fit of the jeans in the mirror. Ethan had just exited from her life, again, after the capture of the international assassin he’d been hunting.

  She’d spent too much money on clothes that day.

  “I was still thinking I’d make it to Tennessee for Nate Winter and Sarah Dunnemore’s wedding.” She pulled on her holster and Glock. “Look at the angle of the shot. Whoever took my picture wasn’t in my face.” She got her leather jacket. “Sure it wasn’t you?”

  “No, ma’am.” Ethan moved in close to her. “I’d have been in your face. You’re grasping.”

  Juliet took a breath. What the hell was wrong with her? “Ethan—”

  She shut her eyes a moment, the full range of emotions and physical sensations of last night rushing over her. He’d taken her with the mindless ferocity of a man with nothing to lose and nothing to gain—with no thought of the past or the future. To think they had a relationship—a romance—going, she knew, was pure self-delusion.

  When she looked at him again, he hadn’t moved. “You’re right. I’m grasping. But if you took the picture and Tatro just happened on it and had his fun, it wouldn’t be so damn creepy.” She tried to smile. “It’d just be irritating.”

  They took her truck, traffic light early on a Saturday morning. When they arrived at the USMS office, Mike Rivera was scowling at a grayish cup of coffee. “My powder creamer didn’t melt. It looks like a debris field.”

  Juliet perked up. “There’s coffee?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  With that ringing endorsement, Ethan passed, but she ducked out, grabbed the Big Apple mug off her desk and headed for the coffeemaker. But even she couldn’t drink its contents. Deciding against making a fresh pot and leaving Rivera and Ethan alone for too long, she switched off the power and rejoined them.

  She sat on one of the plastic chairs in front of Rivera’s desk. Ethan, she noticed, stayed on his feet. “Have you got a legit ID for Juan?” she asked.

  Rivera shook his head. “Nothing’s turned up. When did he start as your doorman?”

  “First of September.”

  “Before or after Tatro was released from prison?”

  “I’m not sure. After, I think, but only by a matter of days. The building managers hired him. They must have checked references—”

  “Collins is looking into it. What kind of doorman was this guy?”

  “Efficient, pleasant. We all liked him.”

  “Well, who knows. Being a John Doe doesn’t mean he’s tied into this thing.” Rivera pinned his gaze on Brooker, who seemed to expect a higher level of scrutiny now that a man had turned up dead. “You got a look at the doorman?”

  “Yes, sir. I saw him Thursday afternoon. Same time I saw Juliet’s niece.”

  “Why’d you stop at her building in the first place?”

  “In case she was taking the day off.”

  Rivera drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. “You didn’t want to try here first. Thought you might get lucky.”

  Ethan shrugged without answering.

  “Or,” Rivera went on, “you were on Tatro’s trail.”

  Juliet angled Ethan a sharp look. “Were you?”

  “Not specifically, no.” He spoke directly to Rivera. “I was in New York to give Juliet the picture Tatro had of her.”

  The chief deputy didn’t seem convinced.

  Juliet shifted in her chair. “If Tatro wanted to hurt me, he could have beat me over the head or broken into my apartment any time during the past month since he got out of prison. Why wait until yesterday? Why wait until I wasn’t home? Even if he and ‘Juan’ were working together, same thing. They had a month.”

  Rivera grunted. “If Tatro and the doorman were working together, the doorman must have done something to piss Tatro off.” He picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers like a baton. “As far as I can see, Major Brooker, you’re the trigger—the catalyst. You and this rescue mission of yours.”

  Ethan had provided some details to Rivera and Collins last night. Colombia. The rescue of an American contractor of interest at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

  He’d never used the words hostage or kidnapping.

  And he never said who’d invited him to participate in the mission. He didn’t define his role, but Juliet surmised that he’d led a handpicked rescue team—he was an officer, he was experienced, and he was the type. Their job was to get their guy out of there, not figure out what had happened and who was responsible. They hadn’t had a lot of time, and there was no room for mistakes.

  “Bobby Tatro didn’t take Juliet’s picture,” Ethan said. “He was in Colombia. Check. You’ll find out he took a flight from Newark to Miami to Bogotá on the Friday of Labor Day weekend.”

  Rivera lifted a brow. “We’ll check. Return flight?”

  “None that I’m aware of.”

  “You ever put your eyes on him when you were down there?”

  Ethan shook his head.

  “But you have confirmation—”

  “No. Not the kind you mean.”

  “Your rescued American,” Juliet said. “He confirmed Tatro’s involvement in the kidnapping, didn’t he?”

  Ethan glanced at her but didn’t answer.

  “Unless he was deliberately misleading you—”

  “You mean unless he was lying,” Ethan said.

  “Was he?”

  “I don’t know. My guess? He wasn’t in any condition to lie, but he’s smart—smarter than the rest of us. It’s not out of the question.”

  “Where’s your guy now?” Rivera asked abruptly.

  “Home.”

  It was an insufficient answer, and Rivera took in a sharp breath through his nostrils, which was never a good sign. Juliet sat forward in her chair. “Tatro knew my niece’s name in the coffee shop on Thursday,” she said. “What if he didn’t overhear her and Juan talking? What if Juan told him?”

  “It’ll be interesting to see what Tatro has to say.” Rivera absently took a gulp of coffee, apparently having forgotten how bad it was, and nearly spit it out. He set the mug hard on his desk. “I want a name, Brooker. Someone in Washington I can call. Someone who can talk.”

  “I’ll pass along your name and number.”

  Rivera swore under his breath but didn’t push any further, then shifted his attention back to Juliet, his black eyes softening ever so slightly. “It’ll ease your niece’s mind to know your doorman didn’t die because he was trying to protect her.”

  He didn’t bother asking more questions, raising more possibilities, just
kicked Juliet and Ethan out of his office and told them to stay in touch.

  Juliet nearly ripped the door off its hinges climbing into her truck. She stabbed the key into the ignition. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and concluding that the concussion you got in August when you fell into Ravenkill Creek affected your brain. That’s why you slept with me before telling me you’d figured out the doorman was involved in this mess.”

  “I’m not that complicated, Juliet.” Ethan pulled his door shut as the engine started. “Mostly I was just thinking about sleeping with you.”

  “There’s more.” She jammed the truck into gear. “There’s a lot more you’re not telling us.”

  “I think that’s clear.”

  “This rescue mission was a black op. Off the radar.” She jammed into Reverse and hit the gas too hard, screeching out of her space, then braking hard, glaring at him. “It’s my niece who was terrorized yesterday, my apartment that was ransacked, my fish that are dead and put up for adoption—”

  “Juliet.”

  She ignored him, shifted into second gear. “And I’m the one you just screwed.”

  “Maybe that was a mistake,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes burned with fatigue, frustration, unreasonable anger. “Maybe it was.”

  She wondered if Char Brooker had known even half of what her husband had done in the line of duty. An army intelligence officer herself, she still wouldn’t necessarily be privy to his missions. Even with the post-9/11 intelligence reforms, operational security would still prevent him from giving her details she didn’t need to have.

  Juliet realized just how little she knew about the man sitting next to her.

  Ethan said nothing on the drive back to the Upper West Side. Once in her apartment, he washed up and got his stuff together. Juliet looked at her rumpled sheets—the fitted sheet was half off—and tried to find it in herself to regret last night. But she couldn’t, and she didn’t.

  She stood in her bedroom doorway, arms crossed on her chest as Ethan walked past her into the hall. “Wendy said Tatro’s eyes were stone-cold with hatred. She’d never seen anything like them.”

  Ethan stopped and tucked a short curl, one of about a thousand sticking out, behind her ear. “You need a chance to clear your head.” His voice was steady, without even a hint of an edgy undertone. “Take a shower, get something to eat.”

  “I’m making a pot of coffee.”

  She didn’t ask him to stay. He didn’t offer.

  When he was gone, Juliet latched the dead bolt behind him. Fatigue overwhelmed her. She pictured Wendy, alone, sneaking back for her dead dog’s ashes and ending up in a fight for her life.

  “Hell.”

  Juliet headed for the kitchen and the coffeepot. If making love to Ethan last night had been an act of madness, she thought, then so be it. She was entitled.

  Eleven

  Spaceshot trundled behind Wendy to the apple orchard on the hill above the house, making her feel better because usually he would stay flopped down on the driveway in the sun. He seemed to sense that she needed company. He was uncritical, uncomplaining. And he didn’t hover. Her grandmother, her father—they’d been hovering since she got back yesterday and barfed up her guts.

  Her grandfather, who’d been shot when she was still a baby, told his wife and eldest son to give her some space. Wendy had never felt such a sense of solidarity with him. Usually he was all about Longstreet landscaping, drainage and plantings and what trucks and bulldozers were on the fritz, or about talking cop stuff—but he hadn’t asked her to take him through what’d happened in New York yesterday. He had the story from her dad. That was enough.

  Wendy set her half-bushel basket under a tree laden with fat, ripe apples. Cortland, perfect for applesauce and pies. The air was crisp, the morning sun sparkling on the bright leaves on the hills around her. Her father had taken the day off and said he was there if she needed him for anything. But she didn’t want to think about yesterday. She wanted to pick apples.

  She patted Spaceshot’s head. “Why don’t you go find a rabbit to chase? The exercise will do you good.” She made a face. “Just don’t catch it and eat it.”

  But the dog dropped into the tall grass and stretched out, summoning just enough energy to wag his tail.

  Wendy started collecting the apples she could reach by standing on tiptoe. She picked one, then another, then stopped, taking a deep breath. Tears formed in her eyes. She blamed the cool temperature and the breeze. Her hands shook slightly—she’d had oatmeal with chopped nuts and apples for breakfast. Her grandmother had offered to scramble her some eggs.

  A cluster of perfect apples teased her, just beyond her reach. Determined to stick to her task—to not weaken and succumb to her fears—Wendy hoisted herself onto a rough-barked branch, working her way out to the alluring apples. The branch hardly even moved under her weight. There were tools she could have used to reach the apples high in the tree, but she wanted to use her hands.

  Spaceshot stirred. “Easy, boy,” a man’s voice said.

  Peeking through the leaves of her branch, Wendy saw Matt Kelleher stepping around the dog, who hadn’t troubled himself to get up.

  Kelleher, in jeans and a sports sweatshirt, squinted up at her in the tree. “Need some help?”

  “Not really, but thanks.”

  He raised both hands toward her. “Here. I can take those apples and put them in your basket.”

  Sprawled out on her branch, her legs hooked around it for balance, Wendy lowered the two apples she’d picked down to him.

  “These are beauties,” he said.

  “Aren’t they? There are a couple more—”

  “I can get them.”

  But any help took the fun out of her adventure. She didn’t say anything as he reached up and plucked the two remaining apples from her elusive cluster, then dropped them into her basket. He was tall enough that he didn’t need to climb up into the tree.

  “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday,” Matt said. “I hope you didn’t go to New York because of something I said.”

  “No, I’d been wanting to do it for a while.”

  He didn’t seem convinced. “Your grandmother asked me to check on you,” he said.

  “I haven’t been gone thirty minutes—”

  “She says it’s been an hour. She can’t help but worry.”

  Wendy sat up on her branch and sighed. “I suppose not. Is my dad back?”

  “Just pulled into the driveway when I left.”

  Great, she thought without enthusiasm. Although she did want to see him. She couldn’t explain it. He’d slept on the couch in the living room last night—he wouldn’t go home and leave her there alone. But this morning, early, he’d gone to the state police barracks. He didn’t say why, but Wendy figured he wanted to check if there was anything new on Bobby Tatro and Juan’s murder. Her father wouldn’t say so to her, but Wendy knew he questioned whether Tatro had worked alone—she’d overheard him and her grandfather and uncle Paul talking last night. They were all irritated Juliet hadn’t told them the man who’d threatened her had just gotten out of prison. On the other hand, they also understood her reticence; law enforcement officers got threats all the time.

  Reaching up over her head, Wendy grabbed another branch with both hands and swung herself to the ground, landing in a rut. She went flying toward the ground, but Matt caught her by the arm, steadying her before she could end up flat on her face.

  Wendy brushed back her hair. “Thanks. I’m fine.”

  “I can see that.”

  He had a nice manner, and she liked talking to him. He wasn’t bad-looking, except she didn’t like his shaved head, and he was in good shape. A lot of the guys who dropped in from nowhere to do seasonal work tended to look more down-and-out. “I just want to pick a few more apples,” she said. “Then I’ll head back to the house. Tell Gram not to worry, okay? My dad, too.”

  “Sure, kid.”

  “Thanks.�
��

  But he didn’t move.

  She tilted her head back, wishing she were taller. Her arm and leg muscles ached from carting her backpack and tote bag all over New York and pushing Juliet’s bureau in front of her bedroom door yesterday—and from the tension of fighting off that awful man. She couldn’t get his pale gray eyes out of her mind.

  A killer’s eyes.

  “Wendy,” Kelleher said quietly, gently.

  “What?”

  “You okay?”

  “Oh.” Suddenly she thought she’d be sick, but she made herself nod. “Yes.”

  “You’ve gone a little white there, miss. Are you thinking about what happened yesterday?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.

  “Sometimes bad memories will pop up out of nowhere and won’t let go. It’s normal. Give yourself some time. Be patient.”

  She nodded at his understanding, the urge to vomit subsiding. She squinted at him. “I know I was lucky.”

  He seemed taken aback. “Lucky?”

  “Not to be hurt.”

  “A guy you knew was murdered. Another guy tried to kill you—”

  She shivered, suddenly cold. She could hear the fish tanks breaking, the water rushing out of them—it’d seemed like such a huge amount, more than she’d expected. Fish squirming. Glass everywhere. That man—Tatro—cursing her.

  Matt Kelleher touched her elbow. “Wendy?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you. But ‘lucky’ is going to New York to visit your aunt and coming back with bags from Saks Fifth Avenue. I know what you’re trying to say, but you don’t have to pretend nothing happened just because you walked away.”

  “You’re right.” She brightened, focusing on her basket of apples, then scooping one up and shining it on her flannel shirt. “You’ll tell Gram and my dad I’m okay? I’ll be down soon. I’m making applesauce and apple crisp later.”

  Matt smiled. “Apple crisp is one of my favorites.”

  “Really? I’ll make sure I save you some. Gram puts ice cream on hers, but I don’t eat dairy products. But it’s okay if you do. I mean, I’m not going to make a big thing about it.”