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The shore-patrol officer slipped handcuffs onto Crash’s wrists, but Crash didn’t feel a thing.
“Aren’t you going to say anything to defend yourself?” Foster asked.
Crash didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Jake was dead.
He was completely numb as they led him from the hospital, out to a waiting car. There were news cameras everywhere, aimed at him. Crash didn’t even try to hide his face.
He was helped into the car, someone pushing down his head to keep him from hitting it on the frame. Jake was dead. Jake was dead, and Crash should have been able to prevent it. He should have been faster. He should have been smarter. He should have paid attention to the feeling he’d had that something wasn’t right.
Crash stared out through the rain-speckled window of the car as the driver pulled out into the wet December night. He tried to get his brain to work, tried to start picking apart the information Jake had sent him in that file—the information that was recorded just as completely and precisely in his head.
Crash was no longer simply going to find the man responsible for shooting and killing Jake Robinson. He was going to find him, hunt him down and destroy him.
He had no doubt he’d succeed—or die trying.
Dear, sweet Mary. And he’d thought last Christmas had been the absolute pits.
Chapter 1
One year earlier
It was only two days after Thanksgiving, but the city streets were already decked with wreaths and bows and Christmas lights.
The cheery colors and festive sparkle seemed to mock Nell Burns as she drove through the city. She’d come into Washington, D.C. that morning to do a number of errands. Get a new supply of watercolor paper and paint for Daisy. Stop at the health food store and get more of that nasty seaweed stuff. Pick up the admiral’s dress uniform from the dry cleaners near the Pentagon. It had been a week since Jake had been in to town, and it looked as if it would be a while before he returned.
Nell had saved the hardest, most unpleasant task for last. But now there was no avoiding it.
She double-checked the address she’d scribbled on a Post-it note, slowing as she drove past the high-rise building that bore the same number.
There was a parking spot open, right on the street, and she slipped into it, turning off her engine and pulling up the brake.
But instead of getting out of her car, Nell sat there.
What on earth was she going to say?
It was bad enough that in just a few minutes she was going to be knocking on William Hawken’s door. In the two years since she’d started working as Daisy Owen’s personal assistant, she’d met the enigmatic Navy SEAL that her boss thought of as a surrogate son exactly four times.
And each time he’d taken her breath away.
It wasn’t so much that he was handsome….
Actually, it was exactly that he was handsome. He was incredibly, darkly, mysteriously, broodingly, gorgeously handsome. He had the kind of cheekbones that epic poems were written about and a nose that advertised an aristocratic ancestry. And his eyes…Steely gray and heart-stoppingly intense, the force of his gaze was nearly palpable. When he’d looked at her, she’d felt as if he could see right through her, as if he could read her mind.
His lips reminded her of those old gothic romances she’d read when she was younger. He had decidedly cruel lips. Upon seeing them, she’d suddenly realized that rather odd descriptive phrase made perfect sense. His lips were gracefully shaped, but thin and tight, particularly since his default expression was not a smile.
In fact, Nell couldn’t remember ever having seen William Hawken smile.
His friends, or at least the members of his SEAL team—she wasn’t sure if a man that broodingly quiet actually had any friends—called him “Crash.”
Daisy had told her that Billy Hawken had been given that nickname when he was training to become a SEAL. His partner in training had jokingly started calling him Crash because of Hawken’s ability to move silently at all times. In the same manner in which a very, very large man might be nicknamed “Mouse” or “Flea,” Billy Hawken had ever after been known as Crash.
There was no way, no way, Nell would ever consider becoming involved with a man—no matter how disgustingly handsome and intriguing—whose work associates called him “Crash.”
There was also no way she would ever consider becoming involved with a Navy SEAL. From what Nell understood, SEAL was synonymous with superman. The acronym itself stood for Sea, Air and Land, and SEALs were trained to operate with skill and efficiency in all three environments. Direct descendants from the UDTs or Underwater Demolition Teams of World War II, SEALs were experts in everything from gathering information to blowing things up.
They were Special Forces warriors who used unconventional methods and worked in small seven-or eight-man teams. Admiral Jake Robinson had been a SEAL in Vietnam. The stories he’d told were enough to convince Nell that becoming involved with a man like Crash would be sheer insanity.
Of course, she was failing to consider one important point as she made these sweeping statements. The man in question had barely even said four words to her. No wait—he’d said five words the first time they’d met. “Pleased to meet you, Nell.” He had a quiet, richly resonant voice that matched his watchful demeanor damn near perfectly. When he’d said her name, she’d come closer to melting into a pathetic pool of quivering protoplasm at his feet than she’d ever done in her life.
The second time they’d met, that was when he’d said four words. “Nice seeing you again.” The other times, he’d merely nodded.
In other words, it wasn’t as if he was breaking down her door, trying to get a date.
And he certainly wasn’t doing anything as ridiculous as not only counting the number of times they’d met, but adding up the total number of words she’d ever said to him.
With any luck, he wouldn’t even be home.
But then, of course, she’d have to come back.
Daisy and her longtime, live-in lover, Jake Robinson, had invited Crash out to the farm for dinner several times over the past few weeks. But each time he’d cancelled.
Nell had made this trip into the city to tell him that he must come. Although he wasn’t their child by blood, Crash was the closest thing to a son both Daisy and Jake had ever had. And from what Daisy had told her, Nell knew that Crash considered them his family, too. From the time he was ten, he’d spent every summer and winter break from boarding school with the slightly eccentric pair. From the time his own mother had died, Daisy had opened her home and her heart to him.
But now Daisy had been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer, and she was in the very late stages of the disease. She didn’t want Crash to hear the news over the phone, and Jake was refusing to leave her side.
That had left Nell volunteering to handle the odious task.
Damn, what was she going to say?
“Hi, Billy, um, Bill, how are you? It’s Nell Burns…remember me?”
Crash stared at the woman standing out in the hallway, aware that he was wearing only a towel. He held the knot together with one hand while he pushed his wet hair up and out of his eyes with the other.
Nell laughed nervously, her eyes skimming his near-naked body before returning to his face. “No, you probably don’t know who I am, especially out of context this way. I work for—”
“My cousin, Daisy,” he said. “Of course I know who you are.”
“Daisy’s your cousin?” She was so genuinely surprised, she forgot to be nervous for a moment. “I didn’t realize you were actually related. I just though she was…I mean, that you were…”
The nervousness was back, and she waved her hands gracefully, in a gesture equivalent to a shrug.
“A stray she and Jake just happened to pick up?” he finished for her.
She tried to pretend that she wasn’t fazed, but with her fair coloring, Crash couldn’t miss the fact that she was blushing. Come to think of it, she’d started blushing the minute she’d realized he was standing there in only a towel.
A grown woman who still could blush. It was remarkable, really. And it was reason number five thousand and one on his list of reasons why he should stay far away from her.
She was too nice.
The very first time they’d met, the very first time Crash had looked into her eyes, his pulse had kicked into high gear. There was no doubt about it, it was a purely physical reaction. Jake had introduced him to Nell at some party Daisy had thrown. The instant he’d walked in, Crash had noticed Nell’s blond hair and her trim, slender figure, somehow enhanced by a fairly conservative little black dress. But up close, as he’d said hello, he’d gotten caught in those liquid, blue eyes. The next thing he knew, he was fantasizing about taking her by the hand, pulling her with him up the stairs, into one of the spare bedrooms, pinning her against the door and just…
The alarming part was that Crash knew the physical attraction he felt was extremely mutual. Nell had given him a look that he’d seen before, in other women’s eyes.
It was a look that said she wanted to play with fire. Or at least she thought she did. But there was no way he was going to seduce this girl that Jake and Daisy had spoken so highly of. She was too nice.
He couldn’t see more than a trace of that same look in her eyes now, though. She was incredibly nervous—and upset, he realized suddenly. She was standing there, looking as if she was fighting hard to keep from bursting into tears.
“I was hoping you’d have a few minutes to spare, to sit down and talk,” she told him. For someone so slight of build, she had a deceptively low, husky voice. It was unbelievably sexy. “Maybe go out and get a cup of coffee or…?”
“I’m not exactly dressed for getting coffee.”
“I could go.” She motioned over her shoulder toward the bank of beat-up elevators. “I can wait for you downstairs. Outside. While you get dressed.”
“This isn’t a very good neighborhood,” he said. “It’d be better if you came inside to wait.”
Crash opened the door wider and stepped back to let her in. She hesitated for several long seconds, and he crossed the idea that she was here to seduce him off his list of possible reasons why she’d come.
He wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved.
She finally stepped inside, slipping off her yellow, flannel-lined slicker, hanging it by the hood on the doorknob. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a low, scooped collar that accentuated her honey-blond chinlength hair and her long, elegant neck. Her features were delicate—tiny nose, perfectly shaped lips—with the exception of her jawline, which was strong and stubbornly square.
She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but as far as Crash was concerned, the intelligence and the sheer life in her eyes pushed her clear off the scope.
As he watched, she looked around his living room, taking in his garish purple-and-green-plaid sofa and the two matching easy chairs. She tried to hide her surprise.
“Rented furniture,” he informed her.
She was startled at first, but then she laughed. She was outrageously pretty when she laughed. “You read my mind.”
“I didn’t want you thinking I was a purple-and-green-plaid furniture type by choice.”
There was a glimmer of amusement in Crash’s eyes, and his mouth quirked into what was almost a smile as Nell gazed at him. God, was it possible that William Hawken actually had a sense of humor?
“Let me get something on,” he said as he vanished silently down a hallway toward the back of the apartment.
“Take your time,” she called after him.
The less time he took, the sooner she’d have to tell him the reason she’d come. And she’d just as soon put that off indefinitely.
Nell paced toward the picture window, once again fighting the urge to cry. All of the furniture in the room was rented, she could see that now. Even the TV had a sticker bearing the name of a rental company. It seemed such a depressing way to live—subject to other people’s tastes. She looked out at the overcast sky and sighed. There wasn’t much about today, or about the entire past week and a half, that hadn’t been depressing. As she watched, the clouds opened and it started to rain.
“Do you really want to go out in that?”
Crash’s voice came from just over her shoulder and Nell jumped.
He’d put on a pair of army pants—fatigues, she thought they were called, except instead of being green, these were black—and a black T-shirt. With his dark hair and slightly sallow complexion, he seemed to have stepped out of a black-and-white film. Even his eyes seemed more pale gray than blue.
“If you want, I could make us some coffee,” he continued. “I have beans.”
“You do?”
The amused gleam was back in his eyes. “Yeah, I know. You think, rented furniture—he probably drinks instant. But no. If I have a choice, I make it fresh. It’s a habit I picked up from Jake.”
“Actually, I didn’t really want any coffee,” Nell told him. His eyes were too disconcertingly intense, so she focused on the plaid couch instead. Her stomach was churning, and she felt as if she might be sick. “Maybe we could just, you know, sit down for a minute and…talk?”
“Okay,” Crash said. “Let’s sit down.”
Nell perched on the very edge of the couch as he took the matching chair positioned opposite the window.
She could imagine how dreadfully awful it would be if some near stranger came to her apartment to tell her that her mother had only a few months left to live.
Nell’s eyes filled with tears that she couldn’t hold back any longer. One escaped, and she wiped it away, but not before Crash had noticed.
“Hey.” He moved around the glass-topped coffee table to sit beside her on the couch. “Are you okay?”
It was like a dam breaking. Once the tears started, she couldn’t make them stop.
Silently, she shook her head. She wasn’t okay. Now that she was here, now that she sitting in his living room, she absolutely couldn’t do this. She couldn’t tell him. How could she say such an awful thing? She covered her face with her hands.
“Nell, are you in some kind of trouble?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.
“Did someone hurt you?” he asked.
He touched her, then. Tentatively at first, but then more firmly, putting his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
“Whatever this is about, I can help,” he said quietly. She could feel his fingers in her hair, gently stroking. “This is going to be okay—I promise.”
There was such confidence in his voice. He didn’t have a clue that as soon as she opened her mouth, as soon as she told him why she’d come, it wasn’t going to be okay. Daisy was going to die, and nothing ever was going to be okay again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said softly.
He was so warm, and his arms felt so solid around her. He smelled like soap and shampoo, fresh and innocently clean, like a child.
This was absolutely absurd. She was not a weeper. In fact, she’d held herself together completely over the past week. There had been no time to fall apart. She’d been far too busy scheduling all those second opinions and additional tests, and cancelling an entire three-week Southwestern book-signing tour. Cancelling—not postponing. God, that had been hard. Nell had spent hours on the phone with Dexter Lancaster, Jake and Daisy’s lawyer, dealing with the legal ramifications of the cancelled tour. Nothing about that had been easy.
The truth was, Daisy was more than just Nell’s employer. Daisy was her friend. She was barely forty-five years old. She should have another solid forty years of life ahead of her. It was so damned unfair.
Nell took a deep breath. “I have some bad news to tell you.”
Crash became very still. He stopped running his fingers through her hair. It was entirely possible that he stopped breathing.
But then he spoke. “Is someone dead? Jake or Daisy?”
Nell closed her eyes. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
