Night Is Mine (31 page)

“So, if She was willing to waste my li—” There had to be an easier way to do this. It was easy enough when they were flying. Go military.

“If our target of interest is willing to waste an asset such as me, such as my father’s daughter, then what is her target of interest?”

“You tell me, honey. You’ve been doing the fieldwork on this one. Me? I’m just the itinerant boyfriend of some babe.”

“Babe?” No one had ever called her a babe, except for a few of the newbies who’d learned better real fast.

“I’m a twenty-nine-year-old woman who is way past—”

“Being a cutie and now deep into babeland. A babe who looks even hotter in dress blues than an apron, I might add.”

“You may not.” For one thing it was making her blush. For another, if he kept complimenting her and teasing her like this, she might let her guard down around him. No matter what else, he was still her once—and hopefully future—commanding officer. Though the present was foggy… No. She couldn’t risk going there. Not with how she already felt about this man.

“Maybe…” She searched for a return to the subject as they followed a fresh set of high-schoolers east along the mall toward the Capitol. “Maybe she’s into cheap thrills.”

“Murder’s usually a pretty spendy thrill. Generally has a lot of hard time associated with it.” Mark winked at a little blonde who had slowed down at the back of the pack, causing her to blush wildly and return to her friends. By the time she dared look back, Mark had led Emily deep into a crowd of Japanese tourists headed toward the World War II Memorial.

“It’s the light weapon that makes a hole in that. That came closer to, um, bringing about the demise of herself rather than me. I can’t make it scan.” Emily let her eyes casually sweep the crowd, but even if any of them spoke English, none were paying them any mind.

“You’re right on that.” Mark harrumphed unhappily and stopped to stare up at the sky. “No airplanes.”

Several of the Japanese tourists noticed him looking up and checked out the darkening October sky themselves. A couple took pictures of it. They’d get home and look at the blank blue photo and wonder, “What was I thinking when I took this?” Emily covered her mouth to keep from laughing.

“Peter’s in his big white home. Twenty-five kilometers around him are no-fly. It’s the clearest airspace on the East Coast, a real pleasure to fly in.”

“Twenty-five klicks? About a minute and a half for a subsonic cruise missile. Twenty seconds for a Sidewinder if you could get within the fifteen-klick range to launch it.”

“It’s not considered polite to point out the defense-system fallacies of the house you’re a guest in.”

Mark nodded. “Point taken. Never thought of it that way. Seems all so safe with the men in black stalking about.”

“And the bubble follows him, too. That’s why the motorcades always book out of the airports so fast. As long as he’s there, nothing flies.”

“And you’re enjoying this?”

Now there was an interesting thought. Did she enjoy being inside the “bubble” her father had warned her about the day she landed? Perhaps she did. She’d grown up as the daughter of a senior FBI agent, then assistant director, then director. She’d spent most of her life in the center of very heavily protected forward bases and training camps as secret as any terrorist training center.

“What if—?” Mark studied a massive willow tree as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. He focused so intently on whatever he was thinking that he dropped her hand to cross his arms over his chest. She resisted the urge to move closer and slip her fingers around the crook of his elbow to stay close.

“Am I going to like this?”

Mark shrugged, “Probably not, but what do I care? You won’t let me get you between the sheets, so if I offend you, it won’t make a whole lot of difference in our blissful domestic arrangements.”

His failure in that quest was really bothering him, which was kind of sweet. But she needed him to stay on track so she definitely wouldn’t tell him that his proximity was working on her defenses far more successfully than he knew.

“Okay. What is it I’m not going to like?”

“What if she wants to look endangered? I mean, come on. Who brings a top military pilot in as their personal chef? She could have anyone.”

Before Emily could even work up a halfhearted snarl in defense of her cooking, he cut her off.

“You cook almost as good as you look, which is saying one hell of a lot. But personal chef to the First—well, you know who. That’s world-class credentials. You focus on culinary arts for a couple decades, open a couple of four-star restaurants, and that may earn you a one-in-a-thousand shot at it. You study helicopter operations for those same years, and you ain’t even close. If you’re looking for something that doesn’t scan, that’s it. It’s a setup, and so far she’s called all the shots, some of them literal.”

“You really think she’s the one behind whatever is happening?”

He continued to stare at the tree, nodding slowly. “It’s my current theory.”

They were in sight of the Reflecting Pool. Too many memories of Sneaker Boy on the north side, so she aimed them south. A mess. She was a complete mess. Mark wanted her, perhaps Peter as well. Her career was screwed up. And her life had nearly been screwed up twice now in a very permanent fashion.

Someone had to save her from this.

Someone had to…

Mark made a noise but she raised a hand to silence him.

Someone had said to her… something. She could almost picture it. No image came clear. There was no movie of the brain to connect the line to. No visual—

“Ha! That’s it!”

“What?”

“I was blind.”

“And now you see. Should I break into a chorus of ‘Amazing Grace’ for you?”

She punched Mark’s arm. Hard. With some knuckle in it on the nerve center.

He raised a fist to return the favor. She grabbed it, applied pressure behind the thumb, and twisted it sharply. He dropped to his knees before she bothered to let him go.

“I was blind, still drugged, and in the hospital.”

He staggered upright, massaging his offended hand.

“But I remember Katherine saying to me, ‘I knew you could save me.’ She said it again on the helicopter, the next time we flew together. She knew ahead of time that we’d be attacked. That I could—”

They’d stopped when she dropped him to the ground, and a crowd of tourists now came from behind and had to swarm around them like a herd of camera-eyed ants.

“That’s why I’m here.” Emily half-closed her eyes, trying to see more clearly, but the thoughts came slowly, a word at a time. “That’s why she wanted me.”

“Why?”

“She wanted a dupe who could protect her against her own attempts on her life. Who better than me, a female SOAR pilot?”

“Well, she didn’t actually do them personally.”

Emily started off again.

“But what if she did?”

“How?” That finally stopped Mark from massaging his wrist.

Emily searched in her mind, trying to visualize Admiral Parker’s initial briefing.

“Remember the picture I showed you of the limo?”

“Shattered glass. Little spark-plug porcelain bits on the floor. No shooter found. That’s what you said.”

“Picture it.” She waved her hand at the golden sky as if it were a window. “You’re a shooter standing outside her limousine. You point and fire. Those fragments cause an intensely reactive shattering of the glass. Where are the little fragments of porcelain going to end up?”

“Outside on the ground.” Mark’s voice was soft as he got the image.

“But they didn’t. They ended up inside. Katherine shattered the window herself, from the inside, maybe just by throwing a handful of porcelain chips.”

“And was injured by the unexpected reaction of the glass’s violent shattering.” Mark nodded as the piece fit. “But what about the plane?”

They paused and stared across the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson Memorial, awash in floodlights overpowering the evening.

“They never found the radio controller. They never found who launched it. Some accomplice lets it fly from well outside the fence, beyond the main cameras. Then he or she drives up to the White House gate. Perfect alibi. He’s chatting with gate security as the First Lady flies the plane directly at her own window. If someone had thought to look in her desk drawer after the attack, they’d probably have found the controller. It was planned as a dud. Designed not to explode on impact with her office window.”

Mark grabbed her upper arm, dragged her about, and began heading north.

“Where are we going?” She dug in her heels.

“FBI. Or Secret Service. I don’t care, but we have to tell them.”

“Tell them what?”

Mark stumbled to a halt.

“The highest-profile attacks in the history of the White House, actually occurring inside the grounds, and we’re going to claim that they were staged by the most popular First Lady since Jackie O.? That some accomplice ‘unknown,’” she made quote marks in the air with her fingers, “fired a light weapon at her helicopter, dropped it on the ground, and walked into the back door of the Executive Office Building?” She turned away and continued their progress toward the Lincoln Memorial.

“To make matters worse, only seven people in the world know why I’m here, and only two know about you.”

Mark harrumphed. “Then who is the unknown? Vice President Zack Thomas? Kath—”

Emily nudged him in the ribs.

“She,” Emily emphasized the word, “certainly flirts enough with him. Do we claim that they want to kill off Peter and take over the big white home? No one would believe a word.”

Emily could feel the world spin. As if she were the center, standing directly on a new pole of rotation, carrying them all in a circular orbit except her. Somehow she’d stepped right into the middle of the mess.

“But I don’t get why she’s doing it.”

“Who cares? Let’s get you out while we still can.”

Chivalrous of Mark, really. Mr. Alpha Male protecting the poor, helpless female.

More of the spinning pieces clicked into place. Were beginning to fit.

“Or we could just wait. She’ll reveal herself eventually. Make a mistake.”

Mark huffed in exasperation. “I’m not a huge fan of that option.”

“Not your operation.”

He sighed again. “Well, at least I’ll have more time to work my wiles on you. You have to give in at some point. I’m a pretty charming guy, you know.”

“Dream on, big boy.”

Even though she was there, she couldn’t figure out how Mark did it.

One moment, they had wandered into the eeriest of the Washington monuments, the Korean War Memorial. Full dusk had arrived, the surrounding trees plunging them into a premature night. Only the faintest of lights broke the darkness. Life-sized bronze foot soldiers were frozen in midstride. Rifles to the ready, ponchos draped fitfully over battle gear. Eyes watchful for the enemy. And then, your eyes focused on the wall behind the soldiers. And the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men marching forward out of the etching into the graveyard of war.

These were the men she had chosen to join. They had died in the tens of thousands, now nameless except to those who once loved them.

Would she one day be part of such a memorial? Would her name be carved on the Night Stalker memorial in front of Grimm Hall for her mother to visit and touch once a year?

The next moment, Mark had her pressed against that wall, his mouth on hers, one hand at the small of her back and the other sliding inside her jacket and over her breast. And she wasn’t complaining.

She leaned her head back, exposing her throat, hoping he would ravage it. Just take her. And he did. His hands explored in ways that sent shivers of heat coursing up her spine as her pulse thundered into her brain. Rolling her head to the side, offering him more of her neck, she saw the images carved in the marble. All of those legions of soldiers.

With a sharp shove, she managed to force a breath of space despite her body’s scream for anything but distance.

“Not here. Not now.”

Mark growled and didn’t back off. He leaned in again, but as the hunger had momentarily left his eyes. She could see them focus past her at the dead who marched from the marble.

He swore violently and strode away until he stood frozen among the bronzed figures on patrol. Lost in the shadows. Head hanging. Little more than a statue himself.

Emily took a deep breath, seeking a strength she didn’t find, then rearranged her clothes and moved to his side. This time she did tuck her hand around his elbow and hold it close.

He nodded slowly, once. Twice. Then they moved off together without any further word.

Her head cleared a little as they moved back toward her old buddy Honest Abe. Cleared until Mark’s kiss wasn’t the only thing she could feel. Until the memory of his lust-clouded eyes wasn’t the only thing she could see. She did her best to pick up the conversation where they’d left off.

“Waiting around wouldn’t be my first choice either. If we’re right, I’d rather avoid the risk of dying in whatever game she cooks up next. They’re a little on the hazardous side for my taste.”