James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

“Wakefield was denied bail,” said the anchorwoman. “A trial date has not yet been set.”

Trial. The very thought made Jack shudder. Neil had offered to pay him out of the Freedom Institute’s operating budget, but Jack knew how that would play out. Jack would present a bill, and Neil would wax on about all the schoolchildren who would have to go without textbooks because there was no money to sue the mayor for paying six-figure salaries to his chauffeur, his barber, and a nineteen-year-old waitress at Hooters who was also his “secretary.”

Jack switched off the TV, changed into jogging shorts and a T-shirt (his standard sleepwear), and headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

He’d been too busy all day to think much about Jamal Wakefield, but, naturally, bedtime brought the nagging questions to the fore. Had Jamal been out of the country when McKenna was murdered, or did he go on the run after she was killed? Was he telling the truth about the first round of secret interrogation, or was he making up an alibi? The polygraph examination was clear enough: no signs of deception. But that had absolutely no bearing on what was perhaps the biggest question of all.

“Why in the hell are you even doing this?” he asked his reflection in the mirror.

It sure wasn’t for the pat on the back from friends and family. Grandpa Swyteck had seemed to sum up the absurdity of it all. It had taken Jack two hours to calm him down from his “combative” episode, and it had been hard to tell if Grandpa was grasping any of the things Jack was telling him about his day. Finally, he’d leveled off at a semilucid level-or so Jack had thought.

“My grandson defending terrorists,” he’d said bitterly.

Apparently he’d absorbed plenty. “Accused terrorists, Grandpa.”

“That’s a hell of a job for a Jew.”

Jack had blinked hard, not comprehending. “A lot of the lawyers representing the detainees are Jewish, actually.”

The ceiling tiles had suddenly caught Grandpa’s attention, and he was swatting at dust floaters like a man catching flies. Jack needed to reel him back in before the nurse returned to chart him as “combative.”

“Grandpa, you know we’re not Jewish, right?”

“What do you mean we’re not Jewish?”

In truth, Jack had never known his grandfather to be of any faith, but the angry glare had taken Jack aback. “You were born in Bohemia in what used to be Czechoslovakia. We’re Czech.”

“Yes, Czech Jews.”

Jack could have spent the next ten minutes trying to explain that even though Grandpa had never been a churchgoing man, his son-Jack’s father-had gone to Mass every Sunday, married a Catholic girl from Cuba, and even taken communion from the pope during his second term as governor. But Grandpa had dozed off, exhausted from his earlier struggle with the nurse.

“Getting old sucks,” Jack said to the forty-year-old man in the mirror.

Jack heard a car door slam. He returned his toothbrush to the rack and peered out the bathroom window, but overgrown palm fronds blocked his view of the driveway. He listened.

Footsteps.

Someone was definitely out there. Key Biscayne was safe by Miami standards, but the last time anyone had shown up unexpectedly at his house after midnight, a couple of pissed-off Colombians had decided to express their displeasure with his courtroom performance by turning his 1966 Mustang into a charred hunk of metal. Jack went down the hall to the living room and waited. It was dark, lighted only in places by the dim glow of an outdoor porch lamp that shined through the open slats in the draperies. He listened, hearing nothing. But something-a sixth sense-told him that someone was on the other side of that door.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

There was no answer, but as he started forward, the knock startled him. It had the familiar rhythm:

DUH, duh-duh-duh-duh, DUH…

He stood in silence, waiting for the final DUH, DUH. Instead, there was the voice he knew well:

“I’m baaaaack,” said Andie.

She couldn’t carry personal items-including a house key-when she was working undercover. Jack smiled as he hurried to turn the deadbolt and open the door. He barely got a look at her face before she burst across the threshold, threw her arms around his neck, and planted her lips on his. The passion was contagious, but finally she stopped for air.

“You’re blond,” he said.

“You like it?”

He wasn’t sure-but he was glad the FBI hadn’t forced her to cut her hair for her assignment. “Looks great.” He laced his fingers with hers and noticed she was not wearing the engagement ring he’d given her.

“Sorry,” she said, attuned to his discovery. “I love my diamond, but it doesn’t fit the undercover role.”

It was the most she’d told him about her assignment to date. “Are you going to tell what role that is?”

“If I told you…”

“I know, I know: You’d have to kill me.”

“That’s the bad news,” she said, smiling coyly. “The good news is: Wait until I show you my preferred method of execution.”

“So you are going to tell me?”

“No. In your case, I punish the ignorant.”

“You mean innocent.”

“Keep arguing, Counselor, and you’re going to end up with a suspended sentence.” She closed the door with a hind kick, her eyes never leaving his. “I have to be back at noon.”

Jack glanced toward the bedroom, then back. “That doesn’t give us much time.”

“I’m going to take a quick shower,” she said. “How about you join me?”

“Hmm. Very tempting, honey. But there’s absolutely no way we’ll get out of there without having sex, and sex in that teeny-tiny shower stall rates right up there with sex on a coffee table. Alluring in theory, but what the hell’s the point when there’s a perfectly good mattress twenty feet away?”

“You’re such a putz.”

“It’s a gift. I’ll open some wine.”

She kissed him and went off to the bedroom. Jack found a bottle of red in the wine chiller. His collection was comprised mostly of gifts from clients, and this bottle of Betts amp; Scholl Hermitage Rouge was from Mr. Scholler himself-an old friend who’d had the good sense to listen to his wife and buy up declining apartment buildings on Miami Beach right before Miami Vice made art deco cool again. Timing was everything in life.

“Jack,” Andie sang out from the shower, “naked, sex-starved woman wants her wine.”

Luck didn’t hurt, either.

“Coming,” he said, a glass in each hand.

Theirs was not the perfect engagement, but Jack had given up on perfect long ago, right about the time he’d discovered that his first marriage was the perfect storm. A man didn’t ask an FBI agent to marry him and then tell her not to do her job. No more than Andie would tell Jack not to do his-with the exception of Jamal Wakefield. Andie had made it her business to tell Jack to stay away from him. More than anything else-more than the grief he’d caught for defending an accused terrorist, more than the emotional burden of a murder case involving a blind cop and a dead teenager-Andie’s decision to step on his wing tips was eating at Jack.

A billow of steam moistened his face as he entered the bathroom.

“Here you go,” he said as he opened the shower door. She was gorgeous even when shaving her legs.

Andie gave him a kiss, took a long sip of wine, and handed the glass back to him. Jack leaned against the wall, keeping an eye on the blurred beauty behind the foggy shower door. And he was still thinking about Jamal Wakefield. He just couldn’t let it go.

“So you really don’t want me to take that case, huh?”

The shower door opened a crack. She had shampoo in her hair and a look of incredulity on her face. “You want to talk about that now?”