Dark Cover (The DARK Files #2) (21 page)

Rain drummed on the chapel’s slate ceiling and dripped from their umbrella, propped against the pew in front of them. With each drop she felt her time with Nick slipping away. For now, she just wanted to make it through the service and return to the house safely.

She shuddered, but not from the damp and cold.

Last night’s lovemaking and his tormented confession had brought them closer. Gradually the tension and anger had seeped from Nick. He’d been romantic and tender and both gentle and demanding. The mere memory left her breathless and dizzy. He held her and loved her as if he’d never let her go. Reminding herself that this rush of elation was only temporary took every ounce of willpower she possessed.

She awakened alone. When she found Nick at his desk, he said only that he needed to catch up on N.D.M. business before the funeral. Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps he was pulling back from a relationship that could go nowhere. The notion seared her chest, but she refused to dwell on it.

The housekeeper arrived early and insisted on preparing them a hot breakfast. As usual, she clucked her tongue at Nick’s lack of a tie, but Vanessa had no complaints about his attire. The charcoal suit and slate-gray turtleneck conveyed perfectly the requisite somber attitude as well as the formidable bearing he wore like armor.

A new driver, an African-American DARK officer named J. T. McNair, brought them to the funeral in the scarred Mercedes. SpeedIt Glass had replaced the windows, but the scrapes and bullet holes would have to wait.

Janine balked, insisting she could take a bus or the Metro, but Nick ignored her protests and hustled her into the back seat with them. When he winked at her, she responded with a tiny smile and seemed to relax.

Though he’d begun the day with outer calm, the tension locked his jaw as they approached the hearse and other cars parked on the circular drive to the chapel. Between the stress of his tortured memories and that of his half brother’s crimes, he found little respite.
He sat beside her now, eyes forward and shoulders rigid. His woodsy scent floated to her with the less pleasant ones of wet wool and hot dust from a seldom-used furnace.

As he had on the day they visited the funeral home, he kept a constant grip on her hand. Did that mean he wasn’t withdrawing from her? No, she wouldn’t go there. But if she could offer him this small lifeline, he could have her hand forever.
At the unintended double entendre, a tremor shot through her. He thought he desired the real Vanessa, but desire was fleeting. The tomboy and the tycoon? Her love would find no forever with him. All she could expect was one day.

One day at a time. To play her part.

She needed no reminders to be Nick’s loving fiancée, but today she struggled to concentrate on who else she was.
Vanessa Wade, DARK officer, specializing in undercover love and self-delusion.

Clamping her lips together to keep them from trembling, she turned her head and caught Simon Byrne’s eye. The mission control officer nodded almost imperceptibly, then scanned the sparse gathering of mourners in the ten rows of pews.

“More security than mourners. Alexei’s legacy,” Nick murmured.

“So far all I see are the usual suspects.” She recognized everyone in the chapel. The five employees of Markos Imports, owners of neighboring shops, a couple of D.C. detectives and Alexei’s defense attorney. And, of course, Janine, who had come for them, not for her former employer.

Quiet whispers brushed the chapel’s stone walls like wind gusting through desiccated leaves. The dour Mr. Falstone stepped to the podium. The susurrus ended.

Nick squeezed her hand as the funeral director began to read a prayer. After a Bible reading and two hymns, the service mercifully concluded.

“Now comes the hard part.” He stood and turned, facing the curious and the concerned.

Employees, business contacts and a few others regarded him as if expecting him to voice a tribute to his late brother. No chance in hell of that.

“Dwight Wickham and Abdul Nadim are sitting together.” A low rumble of displeasure emitted from Nick’s chest. “Look for blood in the water.”

“Tsk, tsk. Nadim seems like a teddy bear, not a shark.”

“Trust me. Abdul doesn’t get regular write-ups in the
Post
financial pages by being cuddly. If those two sharks team up, I’ll be lucky to have a bone of profit from the sale of Markos Imports.”

They proceeded down the aisle and waited at the open doorway to accept greetings and condolences. Wickham and Nadim hesitated by the doorway. Even in suits and somber ties, the two entrepreneurs had the avaricious air of used-car salesmen.

Maybe Nick was right about sharks.

He drew back as they approached the rear. A hawkish-featured man lurked behind the two businessmen.

“Prince Amir. Another shark. Why the hell is he here?” His eyes narrowed to laser-blue slits.

She whispered back, “To pay his respects, I imagine. Behave.”

“I always do, honey. Watch me.” A feral smile curved his mouth as the three men approached the doorway.

Most of the others had trudged out into the steady downpour. Janine, clutching her purse to her breast, waited by the last pew. Two DARK officers dressed in dark suits and darker expressions — undercover as funeral home employees — edged forward, ready to move if the need arose.

Vanessa expected no trouble from these men other than sharp bargaining. DARK reports said Abdul Nadim and Dwight Wickham were what they appeared to be, successful businessmen. Although the king’s abdication had trampled on his son’s future ascension to the throne, Amir exhibited no apparent political leanings or ambitions.

Hands were shaken all around as Wickham and Nadim shuffled between polite comments about the ceremony and oblique references to the sale of the business.

“Gentlemen,” Nick said, “thank you. On behalf of my family, I appreciate your coming out in the rain today.”

Amir bowed over Vanessa’s hand. “Appropriate weather for such a sad occasion.”

“I wasn’t aware you knew my brother.” Nick curved a proprietary arm around Vanessa’s shoulders. “I appreciate the gesture.”

The Yamari prince waved a manicured hand in dismissal. “I knew Alexei but not well. We met a few years ago at an embassy gathering. He subsequently handled the sale of some family pieces. He had wide knowledge of such things.”

“Yes,” Vanessa hastened to say, “in spite of … his other failings, he was an expert on Eastern antiquities.”

Amid farewells, the party stepped out into the rain and mist. More DARK officers covered the grounds. Good. If New Dawn was planning something, now would be the time. But no figurative red flag of danger popped up. Satisfied, she inhaled the raw air, less stifling than the musty confines of the chapel.

Their companions splashed through puddles toward other cars farther down the drive. A liveried chauffeur at attention held a limousine door for the prince.

She jerked a nod toward the fawning driver. “McNair could take lessons from him in proper chauffeur protocol.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Janine cover a smile.

Nick snorted his disdain as he took the women’s elbows. “I prefer security to sucking up.”

The Mercedes was parked in a reserved space behind the hearse about a hundred feet away. They traipsed toward it across the wet grass.

“Good thing. You won’t get sucking up from McNair,” Vanessa observed wryly. “Instead of holding the door, he seems to have dozed off. I see his cap against the headrest.”

Silent up to that point, Janine said, “Me, I do like a man in uniform. Something about that cap…” She sighed and lifted her shoulder in a very French shrug.

Cap?
Ye gods, no!

Vanessa slipped from Nick’s grasp. She grabbed his and Janine’s arms. She tugged and gestured to the DARK officers.

“Quick, get back to the chapel! Now!”

A scowl darkened Nick’s face, but he let her drag him backward. “What the hell!”

His gaze sharpened as if recognizing the alarm on her face. He curved his arms around the women and they all ran.

Behind them, the Mercedes blew apart in a fiery blast of metal and glass.

THE BLAST THREW
them to the ground. Pressure cartwheeled their umbrellas across the muddy lawn. In an eerie echo of Nick’s nightmare, sizzling debris, steaming in the rain, poured around them and on them.

Seconds later DARK officers helped them to their feet.

Nick spat out mud and grass. Heart pounding, he gripped Vanessa’s shoulders. He searched her pale face for blood or signs of pain. “Are you all right?”

Mud smeared her wool coat and the knees of her black pants. Strands of hair plastered the shoulders of her coat, but her eyes were clear. “Fine. Just wet.”

He followed her gaze to the DARK control officer — Byrne was his name. Even in a suit, no one looked less like a funeral home employee.

She quivered in Nick’s grip like a thoroughbred straining at the gate, but didn’t attempt to break free and join her colleagues.
Danielle
stayed by her lover’s side.

He helped Janine sit up. “Are you hurt?”

“Fine, jus’ fine. Big blow,” she said. “But not so bad like the hurricane that blew away my house.” The unflappable Haitian housekeeper brushed at her muddy clothing with a snowy handkerchief.

He’d long ago informed Janine of New Dawn’s threats, so he wouldn’t have to explain now. She thought the driver was hired protection and knew nothing of DARK’s involvement.

“Pauvre J.T. These enemies of Monsieur Markos,
ils sont méchant
s.”

Nick stared at the smoldering ruin of his Mercedes and its grisly passenger. “Wicked. Yes, Janine, very wicked.”

If not for Vanessa’s sudden alarm, they would’ve died in the same inferno as the driver. He could’ve lost her. All that warmth and passion could’ve been snuffed out in an instant. A steel band vised his chest, and his hands shook.
He’d never cared this much before. She was a woman meant to have a home and family, a woman with more strings than the London Symphony Orchestra. And he was a man bound to his demons.

He wrapped her in his arms and buried his nose in her hair. Her familiar fragrance blocked out the confusing thoughts and the smells of burning metal, fabric and flesh.
He couldn’t yet grasp what he felt, so instead, he said, “I’m sorry about McNair.”

She shook her head, her face rubbing against his damp suit. “That’s not McNair. It’s not J.T. in the car.” She lifted her gaze to his.

“You saw something at the last minute. What was it?”

She smiled at the housekeeper, who was gaping at her statement. “Janine, you said something about his cap. We all saw the chauffeur’s cap against the headrest. But McNair wasn’t wearing a cap.”

“
Mon Dieu!
Then where is that man?” Janine exclaimed.

“He can’t be far. The … security people will find him.” She stepped back and stared at her hands. Blood smeared the palms and fingers. “Nick, you’re bleeding!”

He hadn’t noticed, but now he felt stinging sensations as if a spray of buckshot had peppered his back. He must’ve taken the brunt when he covered the two women from the blast.

Cheeks pale as parchment, Vanessa turned him around. “Your raincoat’s in shreds. Burned and sliced by falling shrapnel. You’ll need stitches.”

Shrapnel. Staccato bursts of Kalashnikov rounds. RPGs. The sting of cordite and smoke … and burning flesh.
The attack in the village tattooed his brain. He squeezed his eyes shut and fisted his hands to keep them from shaking.

“I be fixin’ you a healin’ salve, Monsieur Nick.” Janine clucked her tongue.

Affection and compassion in her eyes, Vanessa lifted his arm around her shoulders, as if she could support him.

He couldn’t utter the words that it wasn’t today’s wounds that coated his face with a cold sweat. If only a salve were the cure. Dredging up strength, he murmured thanks.
Over the fire’s roar, sirens and the protest of fire-truck klaxons screamed toward them.

Mr. Falstone stood in the chapel doorway with the organist. Shoulders slumped like his jowls, he didn’t look so pompous. He shook his head at the burning frame that had been Falstone and Drumm’s newest hearse.

Around them DARK was slowly bringing order to chaos. Their tiny radios squawking, men and women strode by — crows with black raincoats flapping over their somber feathers.
Behind the barricade the D.C. detectives had set up, the vultures peered and pointed. A man in lime-green bicycle shorts and a helmet craned his neck to see over the somberly clad mourners.

The Somalia flashback receded, and Nick focused on the present situation. Was one of those people a real vulture?
Ice congealed in his gut at the image of Vanessa in that inferno. The bomber had killed whoever had been in the car and might’ve gotten them, too. “Look at that bunch. Did one of the guests I greeted set up this bombing?”

Vanessa’s brow crinkled. “Security was tight. And I see no motive. How would Husam Al-Din collect his ten million if you or I were dead? And who is in the car?”

Rage boiled his blood. His jaw tightened reflexively. “If I had the damn money, I’d be tempted to give it to the bastard just to end this thing.”
He was vaguely aware of her shocked intake of breath, but his brain was working on the problem.

Vanessa had put her life on the line enough. End the threat? Yes, that was what he must do.

Police, fire trucks and ambulances added to the chaos of who was in charge. No one was injured in the blast but Nick and the unknown driver. The emergency medics dispensed blankets to keep the others warm until the authorities released them.

Vanessa watched as an EMT cleaned and smeared antiseptic cream on Nick’s cuts and burns. Only one cut appeared deep enough for stitches, and Nick persuaded the man to sew him up then and there so he wouldn’t have to endure a hospital. She left Janine standing over him at the ambulance while she went to check on what had happened to J. T. McNair.

After a brief search, Byrne and Harris had found the driver out cold in a clump of shrubbery.
A search of the burned Mercedes determined that the so-called chauffeur was a suicide bomber. Sticks of dynamite and a detonator strapped around his torso formed the extra bulk. None of the DARK personnel knew how he got to the chapel. And whoever his accomplice was sure wasn’t volunteering the information.