Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  Wendy didn’t respond. She opened cans of tomatoes, dumped them in her pot. She added spices, fresh herbs from her grandmother’s garden. The steam and the smells filled the kitchen, and one uncle drifted in, then another, and another, until they all were there, and it was Uncle Sam who noticed the carrot shreds. “Wendy—carrots?”

  “They add sweetness,” she said.

  Her grandmother backed her up, and she and Uncle Will got bowls down from the cupboards while Wendy grated cheese for those who wanted it. Most of her cousins and aunts and the extra cops had left. She put the cheese on the table and dipped out the chili, noticing that Ham had left. Too many people for him, she thought.

  “I liked Matt,” she said in a half whisper when she sat at the table. “I trusted him.”

  Her father took her hand. “We all did. We all got taken.”

  “He was a likable guy,” Uncle Sam said.

  “You can’t live your life not trusting anyone,” her grandfather added.

  Uncle Jeff concurred, then grunted. “But the next guy who shows up for temporary work gets checked out.”

  They all seemed to enjoy the chili. Wendy liked it, too—it had worked out a lot better than her apple crisp.

  A car sounded in the driveway, and she felt her heartbeat quicken. Her grandfather went to the window, his limp more pronounced today. “Ah.” He turned to his family at the table. “The feds are here.”

  He greeted them at the door, and they introduced themselves.

  Joe Collins, Mike Rivera and Nate Winter.

  Wendy smiled tentatively at Special Agent Collins and Chief Rivera, and their serious expressions softened when they saw her. Her father squeezed her hand. “They’ll want to talk to us,” he said.

  “Both of us?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Aunt Juliet followed the three men into the house and made a face. “If someone had handed me a picture of all you guys here in the kitchen when I was seventeen,” she said, “I’d have stuck to landscaping.”

  “You and that mouth,” Chief Rivera said, but he was grinning.

  Then Ethan Brooker walked in, and from her aunt’s look, Wendy decided that no way would Juliet have been happy planting lilacs.

  Juliet joined Ham on the porch. It was early evening, the temperature falling fast. “We’re losing sun,” she said. “In a few more weeks, it’ll be dark at three o’clock.”

  He smiled at her. He looked tired, pale and very sore. “That’s an exaggeration.”

  “Okay, three-thirty.”

  He lifted his eyes to her. “They want to talk to me now?”

  She nodded, knowing he meant Collins, Rivera and Winter. “You can tell them everything. What’s classified will stay classified.”

  “I just—” He got awkwardly to his feet, picked at one of his little bandages. “I just told Dr. O’Farrell stuff I heard. It was never that big a deal.”

  “From what I understand, you prevented some rotten things from happening.”

  He shrugged, obviously pleased, but not wanting to take any credit. “But I almost caused—” He broke off, then continued, his head lowered, “If I hadn’t switched the emeralds.”

  “Bobby Tatro’s a violent man, Ham. If he’d walked away with the emeralds, who knows who else he would have hurt.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I tell myself.” He pulled open the porch door, glancing back at her. “How is Dr. O’Farrell?”

  “She got pretty beat up, but she’s okay. The mental scars are going to take the longest to heal.”

  Ham nodded, his eyes distant. “He’d have tortured her—”

  “I know, Ham. Don’t dwell on what might have been.” Juliet gave him an encouraging smile. “Go talk to Agent Collins.”

  “I don’t understand why Kelleher turned on Dr. O’Farrell.” Ham frowned, shaking his head, muttering to himself as he went inside.

  Juliet sat on the porch steps, a cold wind whipping through the bright leaves of the sugar maple. When the door creaked open behind her, she knew it was Ethan and didn’t look up. He sat next to her, stretching his long legs down the steps and leaning back on his elbows. “I think Officer Paul wants to skin your mother.”

  “Why?”

  “Apparently your fed friends can’t find a room for tonight, and she offered to let them stay here.”

  Juliet nearly choked. “She did what? Oh, hell. I’m not going back to New York until tomorrow. The last thing I want to do is run into Joe Collins on the way to the bathroom in his boxer shorts.”

  Ethan was clearly amused. “No tent tonight?”

  “Uh-uh. Not after all the sneaking around in the woods I did today.”

  “That’s not it.” He settled his black eyes on her, studying her, and she had the feeling he could slice right through all her defenses and see straight through to her soul. “You want to be close to your family. You might not ever live full-time in Vermont again, but it’s still home.”

  “Oh, heavens,” she said. “I’ll become a flatlander.”

  He grinned. “The flatlands aren’t so bad.” A gust of wind scattered orange leaves at his feet. “Ham’s parents have chartered a jet for him, and he’s offered me a ride to wherever I want to go.”

  Juliet nodded. “You’ll go back to Texas.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ethan—”

  “I don’t know what comes next for me, Juliet. I have to figure that out. For the past year, I haven’t thought much beyond getting through the next twenty-four hours.”

  “When do you and Ham leave?”

  “As soon as he finishes up with the big three in there.”

  She smiled at him. “Maybe I’ll land on your doorstep next time.”

  Twenty-Two

  Mia wore slim pants and a sweater to her meeting with President Poe one week after her ordeal in Vermont. She couldn’t bear to put on panty hose, tuck in a blouse, find the right brooch, the right earrings. Her doctors had told her to give herself time. They didn’t understand the world in which she operated.

  “I recommend you not let Ethan Brooker slip away. He’s too good to lose,” she told the president. They were in a windowless room, at a surprisingly rickety table. “He’s finished with active military duty, but he’ll never be a rancher.”

  Poe didn’t speak for a moment. Then he asked softly, “What about you?”

  She raised her eyes to him, again noting what a remarkably handsome man he was. And a decent one. “You have to cut me loose.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. President—” She looked at him as if he were being dense on purpose. “I got information from a vigilante mercenary. I was tortured. I endangered—” She stopped herself and added simply, “I screwed up.”

  “You have a different perspective now. Your work isn’t all theoretical. The lives you and Mr. Carhill saved are the lives of real people.” He drummed the table for a few seconds with all ten fingers. “We only have the tip of the iceberg. We need to find Kelleher’s associates, the men who followed you to New York, who engineered Bobby Tatro’s escape. I realize you’re not an investigator, but we have a lot of work to do.”

  Mia didn’t know what to say. She thought of Vermont and pumpkins and apples, and the Longstreets, especially Joshua, whose kindness to her, whose uncomplicated principles, continued to bring her comfort, and she found herself unable to speak.

  “Mia?”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “No.” President Poe got to his feet. “No, I’m sorry. You’ve been through hell. Take some time off. All the time you need. Then, if you want to, we can talk.”

  Joshua picked fallen leaves off the pumpkins he and Wendy had set out on each step to his porch. She hadn’t wanted to carve them. The air was frosty and clear, and the leaves were dropping fast, leaving behind the burgundy and rusts of the oak trees, the evergreens. The leaf-peepers had gone home, the skiers hadn’t yet arrived. The media and the federal investigators had finally left town. His corner of Vermont was quiet agai
n.

  And Wendy was going to be all right. Her mother had charged down from Nova Scotia but only spent a few days with her, because their daughter wanted her to go back—wanted, she said, for her to finish her yoga study, go after her own dreams. The three of them—mother, father, daughter—walked down to the lake one morning and scattered Teddy’s ashes together. Before her mother left, Wendy announced to both her parents that she didn’t want to be a doctor—or a cop or a landscaper, or a yoga teacher.

  She didn’t know what she wanted to be.

  That was fine with Joshua and his ex-wife. Wendy was just seventeen. Neither of them had realized just how much their daughter had anguished over her decision.

  He dumped the stray leaves onto the yard. He didn’t know why he bothered. By morning, more leaves would have blown onto the steps, the pumpkins, up onto the porch. Barry swept every morning, but couldn’t keep up. But it gave him something to complain about.

  A car pulled up to the curb in front of his house. A woman. Small, with dark auburn hair.

  Mia O’Farrell. She got out and smiled at him over the top of the car. “I like the pumpkins.”

  It’d been three weeks since she’d collapsed into his arms. She looked strong, and the terror and pain had gone out of her eyes. Joshua walked out to her. “What—”

  “I’m not here on business,” she said quickly. “I took some time off. I’ve been staring at the walls of my apartment too long.”

  Joshua was at a rare loss. “Um…come on in.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting—”

  “Not at all.”

  Barry came out onto the porch and assessed the situation. “Are you inviting her to the football game?”

  “That’s Barry Small, my downstairs neighbor,” Joshua said to Mia. “My nephew’s playing football tonight at the high school. Wendy and I are going. She’s bringing apple cider, and Barry’s making some kind of vegetable casserole.” He smiled. “I hope you like eggplant.”

  “It all sounds wonderful.”

  “Good.”

  “Thank you.” The tension seemed to go out of her. “I should have called, but I didn’t know if I’d get here and turn around and drive straight back to Washington.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” Joshua said, liking the warmth that had come into her green eyes.

  To Ethan’s mind, the tidy house in Tampa looked as if it belonged to a retired army brigadier general. Sherwin Hood had never really approved of his daughter’s choice of husband. That she’d gone off to Amsterdam on her own and was killed there, was, in her father’s mind, Ethan’s doing.

  But some of the older man’s hatred and anger had dissipated, the hard edges of his grief worn down to a sense of loss that he’d fought learning to live with for as long as he could, until the memories of his first-born daughter had forced him to smile again.

  At least, that was how he told it to Ethan over iced tea at the pool.

  Felicity, Char’s younger sister, who hadn’t gone into the military, was a different matter. “There’s no good ruining your life because Char’s gone,” she said, following him out to the driveway. “She never hated you. She was an army brat, a career officer, herself. She always understood even when the mission came before her.”

  “Felicity—”

  “Don’t pretend now that it didn’t come first.” But there was no resentment in her dark eyes. “I wish I could blame you. It’d be easier somehow. But I’m living each day to its fullest. That’s what Char would have wanted—for both of us.”

  “I’m sorry, Felicity. If I could have saved her—”

  She smiled sadly. “You can’t save everyone. It’s been a year, Ethan. Love again. If you need my permission. If you need hers.”

  On his way out, he saw Char’s picture on the living room wall, smiling, alone in her wedding dress. He blew her a kiss and said goodbye.

  His brother in Texas called him on his cell phone at the airport. “Your marshal is here,” Luke said. “Deputy Longstreet. She says she’s on business and watching for snakes.”

  “My flight’s boarding now.”

  “Good. I’ll stall her until you get here.”

  Twenty-Three

  Juliet had to use her badge to get herself past the Carhills’ security people. She’d all but had to shoot Luke Brooker to get off the Brooker ranch. He’d tried to stall her with iced tea, the grand tour, the piano and small talk about snakes and quail-hunting before she finally told him to give up. “Don’t you want me to show you Ethan’s baby pictures?” he’d asked with a glint in his eye that reminded her of his younger brother.

  If he’d been there, she’d have taken Ethan out to see the Carhills with her. Since he wasn’t, she went alone.

  She loved the Brookers’ corner of west Texas. The grandness of the landscape, the big open sky and the sense of space and possibility. But Luke had said they’d known when Ethan was four that he wasn’t staying on the ranch. Juliet figured that was when he’d jumped out of his first plane.

  Faye Carhill brought her into a formal living room decorated in shades of cream and gold. Juliet sat on a lush vanilla sofa, feeling inelegant in her functional skirt and jacket. “How’s Ham?” she asked.

  “Oh, fine, fine.” Faye smiled nervously, smoothing her St. John Knits pants as she sat on a wing chair in a gold-and-cream brocade. “He’s here—out by the pool,” she said, casually, as if he weren’t recuperating from a horrible ordeal.

  “Your husband?” Juliet asked.

  “He’s in his library. He has calls to make.” She added awkwardly, “Business.”

  “Is this where you got the ransom call—here at home?”

  “Deputy Longstreet, is this an official visit? Should I have my attorney present?”

  “You can have your attorney present if you want. Ham asked me to stop by some time and see him. I figured I would.”

  “I’m sure you want to see Ethan, too.”

  “He’s not in town.” There was a town—Luke Brooker had offered to show it to her. Juliet told him seeing a hunk of the Brooker ranch was enough for her; nonetheless she’d enjoyed his company. She returned her attention to Faye Carhill, and said, “I’m here about the five-million ransom demand that Matt Kelleher made.”

  “You haven’t caught all of his accomplices—”

  “We’re working on it.” Juliet leaned back into the soft cushions, studying Ham’s mother for any sign of discomfort, but saw none. But she did see a resemblance to her son, in her eyes, around her mouth, that might have surprised, even dismayed, her. “Ethan’s told the authorities everything, Mrs. Carhill. You told him that you didn’t pay the ransom. The five million.”

  She shifted on her chair. “I asked him to keep our conversation private.”

  “Well, then he’d have been in trouble with the FBI and the United States Marshals Service and, maybe worst of all, the Vermont State Police.” Juliet kept her tone light, but Faye didn’t smile. “Mrs. Carhill, you lied to Ethan. You paid the ransom.”

  “Deputy Longstreet, I think you should leave.”

  Juliet ignored her. “I’ll bet Kelleher was thrilled. His original plan was to use Ham to lure Ethan into his orbit and convert him to the cause or kill him. He hooked into your son because of Ham’s friendship with Ethan.”

  “If you’re implying my son bragged about his friendship with a Special Forces officer—”

  “I’m not. Kelleher could have found out on his own. Ethan had his name in the papers in the spring, not long before Kelleher hooked Ham up with his friend in Washington.”

  “I hate this,” Faye said tightly, in a low voice. “Ham should have known better.”

  “From what I understand, he did a lot of good.” Juliet gave his mother a chance to say something, but she didn’t. “He also was on to Kelleher’s smuggling operation. Kelleher knew he had to do something. He just didn’t know what.”

  Faye turned away, refusing to listen.

  Juliet sighed. “Ham knew he wa
s in over his head and came to New York to find Ethan. That’s just what Kelleher wanted. He followed your son and saw Bobby Tatro sneaking around—which is how he got involved. At first, Kelleher didn’t want Ham putting the pieces together about the smuggling, but he could have just shot Ham and been done with him. What he really was after was a way to get Ethan to Colombia. That’s why he put out word that Ethan could identify your son.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “I didn’t, either. I keep picturing your son getting grabbed in Colombia.” But that, she knew, wasn’t what his mother was picturing—Juliet guessed that Faye Carhill could only see herself and her husband and the disruption to their quiet, private lives of tremendous privilege. Juliet went on, “Kelleher did as much manipulating and maneuvering as he could. Then he called you.”

  Faye spun around in her chair, her pale eyes shining with tears. “What would you have had us do?”

  “I’d have had you call your local FBI office. Instead, you paid the ransom. Then, when you realized your son was safe, you took it away.”

  “How could we—”

  “You’re wealthy, very well-connected people, Mrs. Carhill. You found a way to get your money back out of Kelleher’s account. Maybe that was the right thing to do—that money sure as hell wasn’t going to a good cause. But if you’d told people—if you’d told your own son—” Juliet sat forward, half wishing she’d stayed at the Brooker ranch and looked at those baby pictures of Ethan. “What Kelleher did isn’t your responsibility. But what you did is. Ham thought the emeralds were the ransom.”

  “He wanted to make it all right,” Faye whispered. “That’s my son, you know. He always thinks there’s a right and a wrong choice.”