Memories: A Husband to RememberNew Year's Daddy (Hqn)

  “No?” Crowley slid a grin of pure evil to his compatriot and said something in Spanish that caused Nikki’s skin to crawl. She didn’t understand the language, but the meaning was clear and deadly. She slammed the door shut, threw the deadbolt and tried to remember where all the doors in the house were. Oh, God, she couldn’t. She didn’t know how many entrances there were, how many ways a murderer could get into the house.

  Trapped. Fear brought a metal taste to the back of her throat. Barely able to breathe, she ran to the bedroom, found the phone and dialed. “Please help me,” she whispered as the dispatcher answered. “My life’s in danger and—” She saw the face of Crowley’s goon in the window and dropped the phone, running to the far end of the house. She heard a door creak open and her heart plummeted. She hadn’t locked the kitchen door behind her.

  It was only a matter of time until he tracked her down.

  Fear, like ice, seemed to clog her blood and keep her feet from moving, but she forced herself to run. She found the door to the basement, left it open and quietly ran up the stairs to the second floor. On the landing she waited, her heart thudding loudly, her blood thundering in her ears. Holding her breath, waiting for her doom, she heard him. Inside. Walking like a predatory cat.

  Trent, where are you?

  She heard the steps creak and the door to the basement bang open farther.

  She moved quickly, silently, diving into the first room she found. A bedroom with twin bunks and a window. Without thinking, she threw open the sash and stepped onto a shingled roof that was pitched gently. On her rump, she slid down the shakes, catching herself on the gutter. She had no choice but to jump. Wrapping her fingers on the sharp metal near a downspout, she lowered her body, heard the gutter groan in protest and dropped, landing in a crouch. She had no plan of escape, only hoped that she could run to a neighbor’s house. But the neighbors on this stretch of the lake were few and far between, separated by dense forest or a long stretch of water.

  Sprinting across the backyard, she raced into the thick shrubbery that rimmed the lake. In the distance she heard a car’s engine roar to life and she thought that the senator had only been bluffing, that he was leaving. Through the leaves she saw the flash of silver. His Mercedes. Thank God. But her relief was short-lived. In the upstairs window of the house, the very window she’d opened, she spied the henchman, his face set in an ugly anger, his eyes searching the grounds.

  “God help me,” she whispered silently, realizing that Diamond Jim had left this cruel man to do his work. He’d make tracks, be far from the scene when her next accident occured. Heart in her throat, she concentrated. Think, Nikki, think! Use that damned brain of yours!

  She couldn’t risk running to the front of the house. From his eagle’s-nest view, the would-be assassin could see her. Her only chance was the forest. Surely she could make her way through the thicket to the next house.

  Running quickly, shoving aside branches and berry vines, she plowed through the undergrowth. Dry leaves and cobwebs clung to her face, vines and sticks tripped her.

  She heard a shout in Spanish and her heart turned to mush. He’d seen her! Run, Nikki, run for your life!

  A limb behind her snapped. Oh, God. He was closing the distance. Her heart was beating like machine-gun fire. Run! Run! Run! Her legs couldn’t move fast enough.

  Déjà vu! This is how she’d felt in Salvaje and in her nightmares. Running, running, being chased by the evil. Footsteps pounded behind her. Closer. Closer. “Please, God, help me!” Her lungs felt ready to explode.

  A gunshot cracked and she stumbled, scraping her knees and scrambling back to her feet.

  She broke through the thicket and found herself on the edge of the cliff, looking down at the lake, far, far below. “No!” she cried as the footsteps plowed closer.

  In terror, she looked over her shoulder and saw her attacker, large and looming, his face, cut by twigs and thorns, twisted into a hideous snarl.

  “Now you will not escape,” he said, smiling and breathing hard.

  Nikki stepped backward, felt her feet teeter and shifted her weight.

  He lunged and she stepped to the side. “You bastard,” she cried, kicking at him as she began to fall.

  “Nikki!”

  Another blast from a gun, the charge roaring in her ears as her attacker fell. Screaming, she felt strong arms surround her, saving her from sliding down the cliff. Trent dragged her back to safety. “You’re all right,” he whispered, his gun outstretched in one hand, his other arm a steel band around her middle.

  “Oh, God, Trent!” She clung to him, sobbing, holding him as a spreading stain of dark red seeped from beneath Crowley’s man. He groaned in pain and writhed.

  “Don’t move!” Trent warned him, and Nikki, collapsing, buried her face in his shoulder. He smelled of leather and sweat and gunpowder and he was shaking as violently as she. “Hang on, Nikki, I’m here,” he whispered across her crown. “And I always will be.”

  She couldn’t let go. Trembling, she clung to him as if to life itself. Time stretched endlessly, the minutes ticking by, her heartbeat slowing, the man on the ground moaning pitifully.

  She listened to Trent’s uneven breathing as, in the distance, sirens screamed loudly, people shouted and eventually the police and neighbors arrived. The events played out in slow motion in Nikki’s mind. She remembered Trent talking to one of the officers, taking a drag from a cigarette and pointing toward the house.

  A female officer took her statement, and Nikki was surprisingly calm as she gave it, though her mind seemed disjointed and she kept watching Trent. She was aware of the helicopter and the paramedics who life-flighted the attacker away, over the serene waters of the lake, to be deposited in a nearby hospital, but the events seemed surreal and confused and she was grateful when Trent helped her into his Jeep and they drove to the police station.

  Under the harsh lights, answering harsher questions, Nikki drank several cups of bitter coffee, explaining over and over what had happened. There was talk between the officers, as if they found her story preposterous then finally believable. The man in the hospital had been willing to spill his guts, it seemed. He was going to survive, and his story corroborated Nikki’s and Trent’s.

  According to the would-be assassin, Crowley had known that Nikki had followed him to Salvaje with the express purpose of gathering information to expose him. Crowley had ordered the “accident” to end her life even though he knew her father. Nikki was too determined, too dogged and Crowley recognized her for the enemy she was. The senator had learned of her obsession to expose him from a friend of his...good ol’ Max who worked at the Observer and was jealous of Nikki’s ambition and hard work.

  Eventually, hours later, she and Trent were allowed to go home.

  “You all right?” he asked as he tossed his jacket over her shoulders.

  Bone weary, she offered him the shadow of a smile. “I think so.”

  He helped her into the passenger side of the Jeep, then slid behind the wheel, but he paused before jamming the key into the ignition. Closing his eyes for a second, he turned to her, and when his blue gaze caressed hers, he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, touching her cheek.

  “For?”

  “Everything. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

  “You didn’t have a choice. I had to go to work. I have a life. You couldn’t have followed me minute by minute.”

  “I should have.” Guilt slid stealthily over his features. “I’d hoped you’d come back, but I wasn’t sure, so I left the door open and went to your apartment. When you didn’t show up there, I got worried, returned home and saw Crowley hightailing it out of there. Your car was in the drive and I thought...” his jaw clenched convulsively “...I thought I might be too late. Nikki, if anything would have happened to you...” He leaned heavily back against the seat.
“That bastard will pay. He’s come up with an alibi, you know. Good old slippery Diamond Jim.” Trent’s lips curled into a line of satisfaction. “However, his alibi isn’t that airtight. I know the guy who claims to be having drinks with him, and he can be persuaded to tell the truth.”

  “How?” Nikki asked.

  “The man has a gambling problem. Connected to the wrong circles, owes a lot of money. I know, because I used to deal with him those few weeks when I worked for Crowley. Jimbo’s slipping. He could’ve bought himself a better story, but he didn’t have a lot of time. He didn’t know you’d be at the house or that you’d recognize Rodriguez as the man who’d tossed you over the cliff on Salvaje.

  “Besides, Jim thought you wouldn’t escape this time. He wanted it to look like an accident, just like before.” Turning, he gazed deep into her eyes. “We’ll nail them, Nikki. Together. You’ve got yourself the story of a lifetime.”

  The story of a lifetime. Proof that she could be “one of the boys” at the Observer. Why did it seem so little? “And you. What did you get?”

  “I’ve got a monkey off my back. At first when I worked for Crowley, I thought he was honest and upright and the best man to represent the people of this state. But I found out he was dirty and crooked and I’ve spent the last few years determined to bring him down.”

  “So now your life’s quest is over,” she said, attempting to sound lighthearted when her insides felt weighted with stones.

  “Yep. Suppose so.” He stepped on the throttle and twisted the ignition. The Jeep’s engine caught, and within a few minutes they had merged into the slow stream of traffic heading away from the center of the city.

  Through the night, Trent drove to her apartment. He parked, and without asking, helped her up the stairs and inside. “Why did you come back to see me?” he asked as she slid out of her jacket.

  “I thought we needed to have it out.”

  “It?”

  “Everything.” She snapped on the lights, trying to break the intimacy, the spell of being with him. She looked into his eyes and wished that things were different between them. “You lied to me.”

  “And you’ll never forgive me.”

  Her teeth sunk into her lower lip. “I don’t think I can.”

  He looked about to say something, changed his mind and turned toward the door. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I loved you, Nikki. And I’ve never been so damned scared in my life. When I saw you on the cliff...” He leaned back against the door and his face turned the color of chalk.

  Her heart turned over. Love him! Trust him! Forgive him! He did it for you!

  “When I figured out that you were on Salvaje digging up dirt on Crowley I thought I should try to protect you. I didn’t lie when I said that I took one look at you in Seattle and lost all perspective. Seeing you on the island only reinforced my feelings. That’s why I came up with the cock-and-bull story about being married. I just wanted to get you safe and hustle you off the island as quickly as I could. I thought that if we traveled together, posed as husband and wife, Crowley and his men wouldn’t be so suspicious. It might have worked, too, if it hadn’t been for the storm.” His mouth twisted into a sad smile.

  “What if I hadn’t lost my memory?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I don’t know. I would have come up with something else.”

  “You took one helluva chance.”

  He stared at her. And the words, I did it for you didn’t come to his lips. Instead, he read the censure in her eyes, slid one final look down her body and said, “You know how I feel and you know where I live. Oh, by the way, it’s not really my house.”

  Another lie.

  “I rent it from a friend.”

  Well, not so bad.

  He opened the door. “Goodbye, Nikki.” With a quick glance over his shoulder, he was gone, the door shut behind him, and giving into the exhaustion that overcame her, she slid to the floor, dropped her head in her hands and cried.

  * * *

  Nikki sipped a cup of coffee and stared at the small television on Frank Pianzani’s desk. It had been nearly a week since her story broke, and in that time she’d become Frank’s new star reporter. Max, having been exposed for tipping off the senator, had been fired.

  Frank was pleased with himself. Thanks to Nikki, the Observer had scooped all the competition, and now the outcome of her incredible work was on the evening news.

  Nikki stared at the screen and watched as Senator Crowley’s face, showing signs of strain, appeared. His voice, however, still rang like an orator’s. “I categorically deny the charges. They are absolutely false and all the constituents of the state of Washington who have voted for me over the years know that I’ve never accepted a bribe, nor have I accepted gifts from special interest groups.”

  “What about the man in the hospital? Felipe Rodriguez?”

  “I don’t know much about him. He’s only been on my payroll a month or two. But the man is obviously suffering from delusions. His story is too bizarre to be believed. Why, just look at my record—”

  “Rodriguez claims that you met on Salvaje, that you were recently there and that you paid him to kill an American citizen, Nicole Carrothers, a reporter for the Observer.”

  “As I said—delusions. His story is preposterous. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have no further comment.”

  Frank snapped off the set. “Looks like old Diamond Jim isn’t going to seek reelection.”

  “Good.”

  “And the senate ethics committee will look into your allegations.”

  “More good news.”

  “It just keeps coming and coming,” Frank said, standing and stretching. His white shirt was wrinkled, and he snapped his suspenders happily. “You know, I don’t think I ever gave you enough credit around here.”

  “You didn’t,” Nikki said.

  Frank rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Too late.”

  “What?”

  Nikki offered him her most ingratiating smile. “I quit.”

  Frank looked as if she’d beaned him with a bowling ball. “Quit? You can’t quit!”

  Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a long, white envelope. “Just watch me.”

  “This has something to do with that husband of yours, doesn’t it? Just because things aren’t working out between you two...” Realizing he’d overstepped his bounds, Frank grabbed his reading glasses off his desk and shoved them onto his nose. “Don’t tell me, the Times offered you more money.”

  She grinned, but the deep-seated satisfaction she hoped to feel didn’t surface. How could she explain that she’d proved her point, made her statement, and now had to move on? Her life had been turned upside down and inside out in the last week and never once had she seen Trent.

  Everyone else, but not Trent. Her father, mother and sisters had rallied around her in her time of need. Calling and visiting, sick at the thought that she’d nearly lost her life. There had been many questions about her husband, and Nikki had ducked them all, saying only that the marriage wasn’t yet on stable ground and after the events of the past few weeks, they’d both decided they needed some space.

  Her family had thought the reaction odd, but she’d muddled through, dealing with the police, other reporters, interviews and her job. Through it all, she’d felt lonely and empty inside.

  Well, today her life was going to change. One way or the other. Grabbing her coat, she took the elevator to the parking garage and climbed into her little convertible. The backseat was filled with the clutter that had been her desk: notes, pens, paper, recorder, Rolodex file, books and general paraphernalia that she’d accumulated in her years with the Observer.

  It was time to move on. Crossing her fingers, she put her car into gear and hoped
that she would be moving in the direction she hoped to.

  You know where I live.

  Nerves strung tight, she eased her way through traffic, flipped on the radio and hummed along to an old Bruce Springsteen hit. But her thoughts weren’t on the lyrics or even the melody; her thoughts were with Trent and what she had to say to him.

  She turned into the drive of the house on Lake Washington and her heart sank. His Jeep was missing and the house looked empty and cold, as if no one lived there. The police tape, denoting a crime scene, had been stripped away, but there was no sign of Trent.

  She knocked loudly on the front door and waited.

  Nothing. Not one sign of life. A few dry leaves rattled in the old oak trees before floating downward and being caught in a tiny gust to dance for a few seconds before landing on the ground. Just like us, Nikki thought, watching with sadness. She and Trent had danced for a few weeks and drifted apart.

  Wrong. You pushed him away. She walked around the house and an uneasy feeling wrapped around her, a feeling that she was stepping on her own grave. Rubbing her arms, she followed the path she’d taken on the day she’d been attacked, saw the broken branches in the forest, noticed the footprints, observed the dark stain on the grass and dry leaves where the blood of her attacker had pooled.

  Trent had risked his life to save her.

  Shivering, she told herself she was lucky and she stared across the lake, past the steel-colored water to the opposite shore where houses were tucked in the evergreen forest.

  “Nikki?” Trent’s voice whispered on the wind. She turned and found him approaching, his hair ruffling in the breeze, his familiar leather jacket open at the throat. “What’re you doing here? I saw your car and...” His voice drifted away as his gaze caught and held in hers.

  “I thought we had some unfinished business,” she said, feeling the ridiculous urge to break down and cry. Lord, she seemed to fall to pieces whenever she was around him. Blinking against that sudden rush of tears, she walked to him and linked her arm through his. “Come on, let’s not stay here.”