Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  Joshua stirred. “Whatever you remember, honey.”

  She reached for another apple. “I remember everything he said. I keep thinking about it.” She set the apple on her cutting board and sliced it in half. “He let me practice my Spanish. He was—nice. I don’t care if he’s not who he said he was.”

  Tony Cipriani had called Juliet on her way to Vermont with an ID for their John Doe doorman. Juliet kept the information to herself. She didn’t want that knowledge coloring her niece’s memory of any conversations she and “Juan” had had in New York. Juliet had pulled Joshua aside after she’d arrived, giving him the basics, no details. He’d reluctantly agreed with her strategy.

  “Take me through what you talked about,” she said. “Something you think is insignificant could turn out to be important.”

  Wendy spun around, knife in hand, tears shining in her brown eyes. “Why? You have the man who killed him.” She stared suddenly at her knife and went deathly pale. Her fingers opened, and she deliberately let the knife drop to the floor. “I have enough apples for my apple crisp,” she mumbled, turning back to the counter.

  Without a word, Joshua picked up the knife and rinsed it off in the sink.

  Tatro’s K-bar. The blood on its blade. That image had probably just materialized for Wendy. Juliet could see it herself, could smell Tatro’s sweat, hear his taunts. “Wendy, if you could concentrate on Juan—”

  “He asked about the tin with Teddy’s ashes.” Using both hands, Wendy scooped oats into a battered aluminum measuring cup. “I told him it contained loose-leaf tea.”

  “He searched your bags?”

  She nodded. “He was following security procedures. He asked to see my ID.” Frowning, Wendy dumped oats into her mixing bowl, then pulled the necklace she always wore from inside her sweatshirt and fingered its small polished rose quartz stone. “He commented on my necklace. I told him I don’t like fancy gems. He said something like, ‘No diamonds and emeralds for you, huh?’ And then he said you didn’t seem the type, either.”

  “He mentioned me specifically?”

  “He said you never know, maybe you have a soft side that likes a little luxury. I think that’s pretty close. I remember—” She released her necklace and pushed up the sleeves to her sweatshirt, then she dug into the bowl, mixing honey and oats and oil with her hands.

  “And on Friday,” Juliet said, moving forward despite Joshua’s tight look. “What did he say to you?”

  She continued to knead her mixture. “He just seemed surprised that I’d come back on my own. He let me use his key to get into your apartment. That was it, pretty much.”

  “How was his demeanor? Did he seem—”

  “I know what demeanor means. He was friendly. He never seemed nervous or angry or anything, like that man—Tatro. It’s not like Tatro had got there first and threatened to kill Juan if he didn’t say the right thing and was in hiding, watching us.” Wendy pulled her hands out of her bowl and scraped the excess oats and goo off her fingers. “I don’t think that’s what happened.”

  Wendy had already told Joe Collins that she hadn’t seen any sign of Tatro on her return to the Upper West Side Friday morning—not until he was shoving her into her aunt’s apartment.

  Juliet abandoned her coffee. It was her sixth cup of the day. More than enough. “I know this has been hard, but there’s something I need to tell you. We have new information—”

  Joshua stood up straight. “I’ll tell her.”

  Juliet didn’t argue with him. After all, he was Wendy’s father.

  Wendy sprinkled the oat mixture over the apple slices she’d arranged in a ceramic pie plate. Pretending she hadn’t heard the exchange between her father and aunt, she wiped off her hands with a damp dishcloth, then put the apple crisp in the oven and set the timer.

  But when she turned around, her cheeks were flushed, rosy pink with emotion. “Tell me what?”

  “I’ll be outside,” Juliet said quietly.

  Walking outside only reminded her what an intrusion she was. The autumn leaves blazed against the bright afternoon sun. Spaceshot worked up the energy to haul himself to his feet and lick her hand. “Hey, buddy,” she said, “it’s been a rough few days.”

  She headed behind the small barn where her family had kept chickens and the occasional sheep or goat for as long as she could remember. The last of the dahlias and even a few hollyhocks bloomed against the rough-hewn barn boards. Vines of blue morning glories tangled on trellises, and the hard-to-describe pink of cone flowers reminded her of summertime.

  No matter how protected they were in their warm spot against the old barn, a killing frost would get them. There’d be one before too long—this was Vermont, after all.

  Joshua joined her. “She’s gone up to her room while the apple crisp is baking. Says she’s working on her college essays, but I doubt it.”

  “Joshua, I’m sorry I had to bring it all up again.”

  He shook his head, but everything about him was tight, emotionally unable to accept what had happened to his daughter. As an experienced law enforcement officer, he understood. As a father—never. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It wasn’t Wendy’s fault, either.”

  “Yeah.” He looked away. “I know.”

  Juliet sighed, wishing she didn’t have more to tell him. “I need to fill you in on a couple things I didn’t mention earlier. My partner, Tony Cipriani—you met him at my place on Friday. He’s been doing some legwork. He’s the one who called me on my way up here and told me the doorman’s real name was Vincente Perez, that he was from Miami.”

  At her pause, Joshua’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

  “Cip’s looking into his background. Right now, we know his name came up in a smuggling investigation down there. He disappeared about a month ago.”

  “That’s when he took the job as your doorman?”

  She nodded.

  “What kind of smuggling?”

  “South American artifacts and gems—primarily emeralds. Presumably drugs, too. I don’t think Wendy needs to know these details, but that’s your call.”

  “This son of a bitch Perez asked Wendy about you and jewels. Hell, Juliet—” He swore, kicking a loose rock, winging it against the barn. “Don’t tell me this goddamn mess is about stolen emeralds.”

  “It’s not that simple,” she said. “I wish it were.”

  He inhaled through his nose, reining in his emotions, then sighed at her. “Go on.”

  “Ethan Brooker led some kind of black op mission to rescue an American Bobby Tatro was holding in Colombia. I don’t have all the details.”

  “Brooker?” Joshua exhaled, shaking his head. “Damn, Juliet. I thought you were finished with him.”

  “Well—it’s tough if some friend of his gets snatched by an ex-con who threatened to kill me.”

  “That’s who was kidnapped? One of Brooker’s Special Forces buddies?”

  Juliet didn’t answer right away. Cip had produced a name for her. The Carhills of west Texas. Ultrarich, ultraprivate. A young, brilliant son reportedly into adventures in South America. She immediately thought of George’s Texan in the black cowboy hat, but the information wasn’t solid enough for her to share with her brother.

  “I don’t think it was a Special Forces type,” she said. “Anyway, when Ethan and his rescue team showed up for their guy, Tatro had already taken off.”

  “He knew Brooker was on his way?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m trying—” She reined in her own scattered emotions. “I can’t get my head around how and why Tatro got involved in this business in Colombia in the first place.”

  Joshua nodded in agreement. “It sounds like a big operation to pull off fresh out of prison.”

  “Then there’s what he and Perez—‘Juan’—wanted with me. Tatro’s had it in for me since Syracuse. He thinks I cheated to find him at the Wal-Mart parking lot.”

  “You didn’t just happen to run into him?”
/>   Juliet shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me.”

  She took a breath, then plunged in with the rest of what she had to say. “There’s a picture.” She paused, debating how much to tell her brother about the picture Ethan had found in Tatro’s Colombian hut. But she told him everything.

  “The sick fuck,” Joshua said when she finished. “If the doorman, not Tatro, took the picture, then why did Tatro up and kill him? Complicates things, doesn’t it?” He rubbed the back of his neck, sighed at the sky, then returned his hard gaze to his sister. “Wendy picked a hell of a day to sneak off to New York.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. What are you going to do now?”

  She tried to smile. “Take a walk down to the lake.”

  “Don’t be too long.” He almost managed to smile back at her. “Wendy’s apple crisp will be out of the oven soon.”

  Nate Winter waited for Ethan on the small dock on the wide, slow Cumberland River. Ethan had called from the Nashville airport. Winter, a senior deputy U.S. marshal, and his new bride, Sarah Dunnemore Winter, were spending a long weekend in Night’s Landing, where the Dunnemores had lived for generations. Sarah’s parents had finally retired and were living there more or less full-time. But they were traveling now—India. Her father, a retired diplomat, had a touch of wanderlust.

  The Dunnemores had been in the Netherlands in the spring while Ethan was posing as their property manager, after a tentative lead had taken him to Night’s Landing. After months of no answers, no suspects in Char’s murder, he’d decided to shake some trees on his own and see if her killers fell out.

  Generous, decent people, surprisingly down-to-earth, the Dunnemores had never questioned his story about being a good ol’ boy from Texas who was working as a gardener until he got his break as a songwriter.

  Ethan had written a few songs during his weeks in Night’s Landing. He’d given one to Sarah and Nate as a wedding present, intending it as a bit of a joke—but Sarah had told him she really liked it. And she wasn’t one for polite lies. She’d meant it.

  He passed the tiny cottage where he’d lived, where he’d almost given up on finding the answers to Char’s death—where he’d almost given up on himself. But Sarah’s push for answers of her own—who’d shot her brother in Central Park, what did it have to do with her and her family—and her trust, her essential kindness, had helped Ethan to pull himself back from the precipice, from the point of no return.

  Nate’s intolerance for any bullshit hadn’t hurt, either.

  Sarah, a historical archaeologist, hadn’t come out to the dock. She was up in the main house, its squared-off logs sawed by her great-grandfather, who’d figured a house would help him get a wife.

  The car Ethan had hired at the airport waited in the driveway. He didn’t have a lot of time before his flight north.

  The landscape of old-fashioned flowers and shrubs and huge old shade trees was still lush and green in early October, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows.

  Ethan walked out onto the dock, but Nate kept his back to him. Not long after he’d met and fallen in love with Sarah Dunnemore in Night’s Landing, Nate was assigned to USMS headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. He and Sarah were living, temporarily, in a historic northern Virginia house rumored to be haunted by both Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee.

  Ethan had stopped for a visit in September, a week after Sarah’s brother and his Diplomatic Security agent had captured Janssen’s assassin. Sarah had served him sweet-tea punch and fried-apricot pie on the porch and talked about Abe and Bobby Lee and how happy she was, a week before her wedding.

  Then her husband had whisked him away to a private meeting with President Poe and Mia O’Farrell, and it was off to Colombia to rescue Ham Carhill.

  But Nate Winter had been there for the meeting. He knew about the mission.

  “Sorry I missed your wedding,” Ethan said. He didn’t exactly know why, but he’d been invited. “I hear it was perfect.”

  A tall, dark-haired, rangy man, Nate was a no-nonsense law-enforcement officer. The fact that his wife was like a daughter to the president of the United States wasn’t something Winter would view as an advantage—it just came with falling in love with Sarah Dunnemore.

  Even at dusk, Winter’s eyes were a piercing blue. “I take it you’re not here for a social visit, Major.”

  “You remember you drove me to the White House the first week in September, before your wedding?” Ethan didn’t wait for Nate to respond. He laid out the facts. “We met with the president and Mia O’Farrell. You didn’t stay for the entire meeting, but I think you know the basics of what I was asked to do.”

  Winter wasn’t the type to lay out what he knew. “Go on.”

  “We got our guy. He’s safe. The rest of it’s a mess. I’ll assume you’ve talked to Mike Rivera or Joe Collins and know about Juliet Longstreet’s ex-con.”

  Nate didn’t say a word.

  Ethan looked out at the water, remembered his frustration in the weeks before Sarah Dunnemore, sipping sweet-tea punch on the porch of her Tennessee family home, had learned that her twin brother and another marshal—Nate—had been shot. By the time Juliet arrived on the Cumberland River, all hell had broken loose. But it seemed like five years ago, instead of just five months. “Tatro’s in jail, my guy’s free,” Ethan said. “But this thing isn’t over. There’s more to it—”

  “And that’s your business?”

  He looked at Winter, his unchanging expression, his steady self-control. “Was it your business to come down here in May? You weren’t supposed to investigate the shooting. You were one of the victims.”

  Nate sighed, some of his rigidness easing. “Fair point. Go on. What do you want me to do?”

  “Mia O’Farrell’s on her last nerve.”

  “I don’t deal with her.”

  “You were there with her and the president, Nate. You can see he trusts her.”

  “Shouldn’t he?”

  “You just might want to let him know that she’s hanging by a thread.”

  Nate had no visible reaction. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  Ethan shrugged, smiled. “Poe doesn’t show up at my house for fried-apricot pie.”

  Again, Nate didn’t indulge in so much as a twitch of a smile. No jokes about his wife’s friendship with John Wesley Poe. Or her fried pies.

  “What does Juliet know about your meeting with O’Farrell?”

  “Not as much as she wants to. She’s about as big a hard-ass as you are, Winter. The no-stone-left-unturned type.”

  Nate didn’t disagree, but he said, “O’Farrell’s on her way to New York. She’s meeting with Rivera and Collins in the morning. There’s no need to keep them in the dark as much as she has been.”

  “You set up the meeting?”

  He shrugged, not answering. “Brooker—you might want to be careful.”

  “With Tatro, Mia, Collins, Rivera or Juliet?”

  A near smile. “All of the above. You must know by now you’re not the type to be satisfied sitting on the sidelines. You want to fill in the blanks, find the answers. It’s the way you’re wired, Major.” The hard blue gaze stayed on him. “It’s why you ended up digging in the dirt here in Night’s Landing.”

  Literally and figuratively, Ethan thought. He gestured toward the beautiful Dunnemore lawn. “The stuff I planted looks pretty good, don’t you think?”

  But Nate didn’t let up. “Why is Dr. O’Farrell on her last nerve?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t need to be here, now would I?”

  “You have an idea. Or you wouldn’t have come all this way.”

  “When I was in Afghanistan, I helped put some psycho vigilante mercenaries out of business. It didn’t make the papers, but it was a pretty big deal. Most of them got away. A few didn’t, but they were low-level players.” Ethan didn’t like taking the kind of leap he was taking now, but he wasn’t a l
aw-enforcement officer—he was just a guy trying to figure things out. “I think some vigilante psycho could be manipulating O’Farrell.”

  “Does she realize it?”

  “Now she does, at least to a degree.”

  “Same guys as in Afghanistan?”

  Ethan paused. “Maybe.”

  “The president and I—” Nate hesitated, then went on, his tone more amiable, his manner more approachable. “We get along okay, but it’s Sarah he has the bond with—he’s one of her closest friends. She adores him, and Poe adores her.”

  “This one’s not her fight.”

  A darkness came into Nate’s eyes, and he was obviously remembering the caves and the snakes and the dead bodies from his first visit to Night’s Landing that spring.

  “I’ll see to it Poe gets your message about O’Farrell,” Nate said abruptly, then shifted immediately into southern-host mode—Sarah’s influence, no doubt. Nate was another northern New Englander. “Do you have time to join us for dinner? Sarah made a congealed salad this afternoon that seems to involve coconut and fruit cocktail.”

  “I didn’t think anyone ate congealed salads anymore.”

  “She says they bring back memories of her grandmother.”

  Ethan grinned. “It’s a shame I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “Do I want to know where you’re headed?” Nate asked quietly.

  “North.”

  Ethan only gave one word, but Nate obviously didn’t need more. “Juliet’s got a good career ahead of her, Brooker.”

  Ethan took the comment for what it was—a warning not to screw up her life.

  He left Winter on the dock and headed across the lawn, the grass he’d tended warm and soft under his feet. Sarah had come onto the porch. She smiled and waved to him. She was a beautiful woman with honey-colored hair and a strength people often didn’t realize she had.

  With Juliet, people noticed her strength first.

  Ethan waved back and gave her a cheeky smile that made her laugh. He’d damn near screwed up Sarah’s life when he’d pretended to be a good ol’ boy from Texas. Now he hoped it wasn’t too late for him to avoid screwing up Juliet’s life.