Nightfire: A Protectors Novel: Marine Force Recon

  The man she’d heard described just wasn’t him.

  Except—it was. He hadn’t beat up the woman. But except for that, it was all true. He was a borderline alcoholic and a sex addict and he wasn’t fit for decent women. And he had to come to that conclusion the day a woman rocked his world.

  Chloe Mason had knocked him off his feet. In the few hours he’d spent with her he’d had this totally weird, totally new feeling in his chest. He couldn’t breathe around the tightness in his chest, while at the same time he felt like he was pulling in pure oxygen.

  He recognized it now as happiness—something clean and fresh and beautiful in his world. And he’d ripped it out of his life with his own hands.

  They trooped out in a sad little procession, first Kelly, then Mike, then Sam and Harry bringing up the rear. Instead of spending the day together with his extended family, getting to know quiet, mysterious, beautiful Chloe Mason better, he was dragging his brothers away from their families to deal with squalor. And every step took him away from Chloe.

  That kiss with Chloe at the Del had been the most exciting thing he’d ever experienced, a universe away from the sex he’d been having all his life. Mike had seen a door open and something mysterious and enticing beckoning to him from the other side.

  That door had slammed shut. He’d slammed it shut with his own fucking hands.

  Chloe watched them walk past, her eyes on him. Mike couldn’t meet her eyes. Simply couldn’t. Shame and regret were like acid eating him alive from the inside. He walked past her, eyes straight ahead, face grim.

  Ellen and Nicole watched, too, eyes sad. Ellen had one of her pretty musician’s hands over her mouth and Nicole was cupping her belly where her second daughter nestled.

  Mike couldn’t wait to get away. Away from them and their sad, loving gaze. He knew how much they cared for him. Both women had opened their homes and their hearts to him and how did he repay them? By bringing squalor and filth inside their homes.

  He couldn’t even look at his brothers. They flanked him silently in a sign of support as they marched down the corridor, but they looked straight ahead. No one spoke a word as they rode down in the elevator.

  There were no words to say.

  Chapter 8

  “He didn’t do it,” Ellen said quietly but firmly.

  “Absolutely not.” Nicole was just as firm.

  Chloe looked at them. They meant every word. There was nothing ambiguous in their body language or voices.

  Something eased in her heart, a slight lightening of the oppressive heaviness that had weighed her down as she listened to the police lieutenant interrogating Mike.

  She knew nothing about him, really. And what did she know about men, anyway? Practically nothing. Did she think that just because he’d given her her first orgasm, he was a good guy? Sex and decency were not linked together. She was old enough to know that.

  But still . . . Something inside her resisted the notion that he was capable of hurting that woman the way the lieutenant had said. When he’d touched her in the hotel room, his huge, strong hands had been incredibly tender. She was in uncharted territory with only her admittedly weak knowledge of men and sex to go on, but she just couldn’t see Mike hurting a woman like that.

  She didn’t know Mike at all, but Ellen and Nicole did.

  “If there’s one thing Mike is incapable of, it’s hurting a woman,” Ellen said, rocking Gracie in her arms.

  Nicole rubbed her belly. “Absolutely,” she said. “He’s one of the nicest guys in the world.”

  Their words were directed at her. Chloe had no idea why. She had nothing to do with this. “I’m sure you’re right,” Chloe said gently. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he beat that poor woman up, either.”

  Latent violence had its clear markers. She had an instinctive feel for it. It was why she shied away from her “father” all those years. When her P.I. Amanda uncovered what had happened to her at the age of five, she understood her unconscious obsession.

  After Amanda lifted the rock and found her biological family, Chloe realized that her entire life had been marked by the uncontrolled violence of her mother’s boyfriend. “I don’t think Mike is the type, so you don’t have to convince me,” she offered.

  Nicole and Ellen looked at each other.

  “Yes,” Nicole said, “we do.” She opened her hand in invitation. “Come on. Let’s go in the living room. I don’t think anyone has any appetite for food anymore.”

  No. Chloe’s stomach was as tightly closed as a fist.

  In the vast living room, without seeming to, Nicole and Ellen boxed Chloe in between them. Chloe liked them both but she didn’t like being manipulated.

  Once they were seated, Nicole and Ellen shared another look in which it was silently decided Nicole would take the lead.

  “Chloe, my dear. You really must believe us when we say Mike is absolutely innocent of the charges. He—”

  “Oh, I believe you,” Chloe said, looking from one tense face to the other. “Not that my opinion means anything.”

  “Yes it does,” Ellen said softly. “It really does.”

  “Mike likes you.” Nicole touched Chloe’s hand. “I know you got an image in there of a guy who sleeps around a lot and I can’t say that’s not true. Unfortunately it is. You know that old saying about looking for love in the wrong places? That’s Mike. But Mike has never once brought a woman around for us to meet. And both Sam and Harry say he’s never had a stable relationship. We have never seen him act the way he has around you. He couldn’t take his eyes off you. We think he’s very taken with you and maybe”—her hand tightened around Chloe’s—“maybe you’re not indifferent?”

  Chloe flashed on the hotel room, Mike’s mouth on hers, his heavy weight against her, thick penis rubbing against the lips of her sex . . . her body simply lit up at the memory.

  Curse her fair skin. Chloe didn’t need to look in the mirror to know her face was stoplight red. She saw no reason to lie when her very skin was flashing the truth. “No,” she confessed quietly. “I’m not.”

  Ellen smiled gently. “I didn’t think so.” She shot another glance at Nicole. “We didn’t think so. And the reason why we’re being so nosy and probably annoying you by butting into your affairs is that we want Mike to find some happiness. He deserves it.”

  Nicole leaned forward. “He saved our lives. Both our lives. We’ll tell you the stories some other time, but the truth of it, the thing you have to know, is that when our lives were in danger, Mike didn’t hesitate. Sam and Harry, well, they were in love. It was a given they’d put their lives on the line. Mike did what he did out of devotion to his brothers, but also because, for all his tomcatting around, he’s like an old-fashioned knight. We’re worried for him. Worried that he’s been framed for something he didn’t do. That he’s in a mess he can’t get out of.”

  “And we’re worried that at the moment he’s found a woman he can care for, he’s going to lose his chance, together with his freedom,” Ellen said bluntly. She squeezed Chloe’s hand. “Please tell me this won’t spoil anything. Please tell me you’ll give Mike a chance. I’ve never seen him look as happy as he did today. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you. He so deserves a chance at love. Don’t take that away from him.”

  Both women were looking at her with hope in their eyes.

  Chloe suddenly stood, crossing the room to her purse. They desperately wanted to help Mike and, God help her, so did she. There was one woman in the world she trusted to get to the truth of the matter. It was the one number she had on speed dial.

  Nicole and Ellen were watching her, vibes of hope and worry all but quivering around them. “Okay. You want to help Mike? So do I.” She smiled at the voice that answered. “Amanda? This is Chloe. Yes, in San Diego. Amanda, I need your help.” She looked at the two women watching her and, for the first time in her life, felt the sharp, warm bite of family. “We need your help.”

  “Let’s go over it again,” K
elly said in the interrogation room, and Mike stifled a groan. They’d gone over it and over it and over it.

  The bare, ugly room smelled of male tension and despair. Probably what a prison cell smelled like. Mike hoped to God he’d never find out, but it didn’t look good.

  Mike couldn’t blame Kelly. Mila had ID’d him as the man who’d attacked her the minute she woke up from surgery. Defending the real son of a bitch who’d put her in the hospital. Mike understood the police thought they had an airtight case. They didn’t. But they did have enough evidence to keep him in jail until a trial date could be set.

  His brothers wouldn’t allow that. They’d meet any bail the D.A. set, which made Mike angry because it just so happened that this was a tight moment for money. They’d just bought ten thousand acres of land in Baja to use as a law enforcement training center and shooting range for Mexican police trainees who were fighting a vicious drug war. It had been Ellen’s idea and it was a good one but the cost of the huge tract of land and creating ranges and shooting houses had drained them. RBK would have to borrow the money to make his bail. Then his brothers would borrow even more to get him a high-priced criminal lawyer.

  RBK would go into the hole because of him. The two families would have to tighten their belts because of him. Because he’d behaved like a hormonal teenager instead of a responsible adult.

  The thought made him sick.

  He was innocent. His brothers should just let him rot here until evidence proving him innocent came up or until the case went to trial. Sam and Harry wouldn’t allow that, but he wished they would. Just leave him here and let the truth wind its way to him.

  Mike didn’t want to go home, anyway. He didn’t want to face Ellen and Nicole and above all, he didn’t want to face Chloe. The look on her face when she’d heard what he’d done . . . Mike didn’t have anywhere to go with the burning shame inside him. That sense of hope he’d had since he’d set eyes on her, the glowing warmth in her eyes when she looked at him, those hot tender kisses promising much more—all gone.

  Mike couldn’t stand the thought of the disappointment she must be feeling, how confused and hurt she must be.

  Fuck.

  He’d faced gunfire and mortars without flinching, but the idea of watching a pale Chloe avert her gaze when she saw him—couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t do it.

  He deserved to rot in jail. Not because he’d done what they were accusing him of, but because he’d spent twenty years rolling out of beds he shouldn’t have been in, having fucked women he didn’t care about.

  What did that make him?

  “I went to a bar called The Cave,” he began again, voice calm and remote. “I got there at around eleven. I met a woman there. We talked briefly—”

  There was a knock at the door that surprised both Mike and Kelly. You don’t interrupt an interrogation, that was an iron rule. Kelly’s jaw clenched and Mike felt sorry for the rookie who didn’t know better on the other side of the door.

  To his surprise, it wasn’t a rookie. It was a detective Mike knew well from his SWAT days, Jerry Klein, and—Jesus. Harry and Sam, right behind him.

  Kelly rose, furious. He was right. What the fuck were Harry and Sam thinking? This wasn’t an expression of solidarity with a friend, this was interference with due process. There were legal implications to stopping a law enforcement officer from carrying out his duties.

  Before Kelly could open his mouth to blast Jerry for allowing civilians into the interrogation room, Jerry put a laptop on the interrogation table.

  “Sorry, boss, but I thought you needed to see this. These two, ah, civilians brought it to my notice.” Jerry stood at attention, flicking Mike a gaze he couldn’t interpret. Then, amazingly, Jerry winked at him.

  What the fuck?

  Jerry powered up the laptop and stepped back to give Harry access to the keyboard.

  Harry was a wizard at computers, much better than Mike. Everyone leaned forward to watch him do his thing, but his thing turned out to simply be him opening his email.

  He moved the mouse around.

  “Ellen contacted me with some news. Chloe called this hotshot private investigator in Boston and damned if she didn’t come up with something. Something really important.” The email had a series of attachments. Harry clicked on the first one. It opened and the screen filled with grainy black-and-white footage shot at night. The camera had a slight wide-angle lens, enough to show about ten yards without too great a distortion. Everyone watched as a woman came up, punching in something below the bottom of the screen. It was footage from an ATM. No one spoke as four people walked up and withdrew money. White letters on the bottom right-hand side of the screen showed the time and date: JAN 4, 3:02 A.M. At 3:07 A.M. the screen was blank, then a figure appeared at the extreme right-hand side and streaked across the screen.

  Harry’s fingers danced over the keyboard as the four men watched. Harry slowed the film down on a slider, pressed a key and froze the frame with the figure dead center. It was Mike, running. His body was blurred but the camera had caught him as he turned his head and his features were clear.

  “That was taken at 3:07:45 A.M., from an ATM on Griffin, about four blocks from Alameda. We can follow Mike’s path as he runs down to the shore, ending up at the ferry at 3:48 A.M.”

  They watched a series of footage clips from security cameras along his route, fourteen attachments in all. Whoever Chloe contacted was good. She obviously had excellent facial recognition software and in a short span of time had canvassed almost all the security cameras in a broad sweep from Alameda to the ferry landing. That took smarts and serious crunching power.

  The screen was showing the broad apron in front of the ferry where Mike was jogging in place. Steam from his breath wreathed his face but he was recognizable. He barely remembered the jog home, though he did remember waiting a while for the ferry, on a reduced schedule from midnight to 6 A.M.

  The camera switched briefly to a view of the ocean, and the ferry slowly approaching the landing, then switched back to the passenger side, where four people were waiting with Mike, still hopping up and down.

  They watched as five people boarded the ferry, including Mike. The time at the bottom of the footage read 4:10 A.M.

  The final attachment was footage of Mike jogging down to their apartment complex on Coronado Shores, into the condo, exchanging a word with the night watchman.

  Mike had said he’d come home at five, which their condo’s security cams would have caught. It would have been to beat Mila Kosavich up at 4 A.M. and drive home by five. But Mike had jogged his way home and they had it on film.

  “My understanding,” Harry said to Kelly with a hard look, “is that the 911 call came in at 4:02 A.M. The ferry landing is 14.7 miles from Alameda. Mike couldn’t possibly have been at the woman’s apartment.”

  All eyes turned to Kelly. He stood mulling it over, then put his notebook carefully down on the table next to the computer.

  He turned to Mike. “Case dismissed,” he said quietly, then gave a half smile. “Glad I don’t have to arrest you, Keillor.”

  “Ditto, man.” Mike let out a huge breath, realizing what had just happened.

  Chloe had set him free.

  Sam and Harry clapped both Mike and Kelly on the back and the tension in the room disappeared.

  Mike held out his hand to Kelly. Kelly was a good guy. He’d only been doing his duty. “Good luck with finding the bastard who put that woman in the hospital.”

  “Yeah.” Kelly’s clasp was warm and hard and brief. “We have word there was a boyfriend who liked pounding on her. We’ll look at him. You stay out of trouble, you hear?”

  Oh yeah. Mike had learned a really big lesson tonight. Even though he was terrified it was too late for Chloe.

  Sam clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get going. We still have to celebrate. Our women are waiting.”

  Our women. For Sam and Harry that was literally true. They had great wives and two lovely daugh
ters waiting for them. In another world, the world where Mike hadn’t fucked his way through a battalion of women, that other world where he hadn’t met sweet, utterly enticing Chloe Mason after screwing a cokehead who couldn’t get him to beat her up, so she called in someone else to finish the job, he’d go back to his woman, too.

  In this other world, he and Chloe would have a clean slate, able to start this new fresh thing they had.

  Whereas in this world, they’d hardly begun and she’d already learned the very worst about him.

  He’d come on to her hard. He rarely came on to women like he had with Chloe. Maybe because he looked for women in low places, they came on to him.

  But with Chloe, he’d been instantly drawn in, instantly attracted. And he’d—he’d courted her. Focused on her, happy just to be in the same room with her. Knowing something important was happening.

  For just a second there, he thought he was living Sam and Harry’s dream. They’d both been instantly smitten by their women and look how that had turned out. They were both insanely happy, both settled, both wildly in love with their wives and daughters.

  And Mike—idiot that he was—thought he’d found what he hadn’t been looking for. Found something real and true and lasting. Clean and bright. And he’d crushed it with his own hands the moment he’d found it.

  He’d never know. Right now a part of him wanted Chloe close to him like he wanted air and water. And another part of him wanted to keep her at a distance. She’d had a rough life and she deserved better than him.

  Because who was he kidding? If they got together, she’d find a woman he’d fucked around every corner. His past was like a tar pit. He would never be free, he could only taint her with it.

  Harry was quiet as they rode down in the elevator. Sam didn’t even notice. He was exhilarated, happy Mike was out of trouble, looking forward to picking up the celebrations where they’d left off.

  And, knowing Sam, very happy to be getting back to Nicole and Merry.

  As the elevator doors opened, Harry stuck out an arm, blocking Mike. Harry was strong. Mike was stronger. He could wipe the floor with Harry. But Harry had something to say to him and he couldn’t pound his brother. He loved him too much.