Carla Neggers - Night’s Landing

What did the caller expect to have that was worth five million dollars?

Nicholas regretted having blurted a name. His men had lost track of Ethan Brooker weeks ago.

Was he responsible for the Central Park attack?

Was it a trap he’d set?

In hindsight, Janssen knew he’d handled the former Special Forces officer badly. By not presenting authorities with a suspect for Brooker’s wife’s death, Nicholas had put his entire operation-he’d put himself-in jeopardy. The only answer now was to have Ethan Brooker killed. The sooner the better.

Five million dollars. It was ridiculous.

Janssen didn’t call Rousseau back to tell him about the anonymous call. It wouldn’t affect his orders. He knew what he needed to do. If the trail in New York led to Ethan Brooker, distraught widower, army officer bent on revenge, then Rousseau would deal with it.

Leaning back in his chair, Janssen listened to the noise of the street below him. While he wanted to recapture the urge to have a whore, he couldn’t. He could only imagine his mother on her death bed in northern Virginia, calling for her only son-her only child-as she sobbed herself quietly into the grave.

He let the tears flow unchecked. There was no one to see them, no one in his life who cared or understood that he’d loved his mother.

“Why?” she’d cried to him over the phone. “Why didn’t you just pay your taxes like everyone else?”

But his life was so much more complicated than his mother had ever been able to grasp.

Now he didn’t even dare send money for her headstone.

The federal government would hound him forever. They’d never let him come home. They’d slap him in cuffs at his poor mother’s grave and stick him in jail until he stood trial. He’d added how many years to his maximum sentence by running? Five years, ten years? He didn’t even know.

His lawyers had urged him to surrender to U.S. authorities. They’d have been relieved if he’d turned himself over to Rob Dunnemore at the Rijksmuseum.

But Janssen knew if he went to trial, he’d be convicted, and if he went to prison, he’d never get out.

If his enemies didn’t rat him out, his so-called friends would. One way or the other, the feds would figure out that tax evasion was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to his crimes.

And once he was vulnerable, friend and enemy alike would find a way to kill him. He wouldn’t last a month in prison. The federal authorities couldn’t protect him.

No one would care that he planned to do good with the fortune he’d amassed. If the ends didn’t fully justify the means, he knew he wasn’t a bad man. Look at Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Hearst. Had they led exemplary lives? They all had skeletons in their closets.

“Mama, Mama,” he whispered. “What do I do?”

But there was no answer. She was dead, gone forever.

Juliet carried a monstrous spider plant to her kitchen sink and wondered when and where this weird, irritating conversation with Joe Collins would end. She turned on the spray faucet, aware of the senior FBI special agent watching her from the table. The doorman, none too happy, had called ten minutes ago to announce her unexpected “guest.” Collins had requested a bit of her time to ask her a few questions, and when she’d said okay-what other choice was there?-he’d parked himself at her table and told her to continue with what she was doing.

Watering plants. Lots of plants.

The life of a real, live deputy U.S. marshal.

Since Collins was from New York, he had to know that even a small apartment on the Upper West Side was still an expensive undertaking, well beyond what she could afford. It wasn’t so great by suburban standards. The bathroom had a view of a brick wall. The living-room windows were constantly blackened by soot. There was no garbage disposal. But the building had a fantastic location, it had an elevator, it had a doorman-what was not to like?

And, for her, it was damn near free thanks to a generous friend who was in L.A. on some theater project for at least six months.

Then Juliet, her plants and her fish would have to find a new home.

She’d explained the friend in L.A. before Collins even asked, which she regretted. It made her sound defensive, as if he had reason to think she was on the take or something.

He fiddled with an unlit cigarette. “All these plants are yours?”

“All mine.”

“You like New York?”

“I like the work I’m doing here.”

“You were here first, before Deputy Dunnemore.”

She wanted to ask Collins what the hell her relationship with Rob had to do with who freaking shot him in Central Park, but decided that wasn’t the way to go. Stay cool. Answer the agent’s questions. She squirted more water down into the spider plant’s roots. “I’ve been in New York eighteen months. Rob got here in February. It was hard to pretend I’m not as driven as I am when we were working out of the same district.” Using her fingers, she wiped dust off the dampened variegated spikes. “We called it quits in March.”

“Not that I asked,” Collins said.

She glanced around at him. “You were going to.”

“How did you two meet?”

“Rob came up here from Baltimore to collect a prisoner.”

“It’d be tough, I think, being married to someone doing the same job as me. My wife’s a high-school guidance counselor.”

Juliet sighed. There’d never been talk of marriage with her and Rob. “Good for her.”

“Hardest job in the world. These kids-you just hurt for some of them. Shit lives, shit choices.” Collins rolled his cigarette between his fingers. “Dunnemore. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“Silver plate, not pure silver. The Dunnemores aren’t rich. They’re not poor, either, but the father doesn’t come from money. He was assistant secretary of state once, but, hell, I don’t think he made much more than we do.”

That drew a half smile from Collins. “You ever make it to the family home in Tennessee? Night’s Landing. Sounds like a nice place, doesn’t it?”

“No.” She gave the spider plant a final, hard spray. “Never made it.”

“Sore subject?”

Rob had invited her down for a weekend in March, a month before his vacation in Amsterdam. Said they could get a jump on spring. She’d worked instead. She could have gotten off-they both knew it.

End of romance.

“Not at all,” she told Collins. “Just didn’t work out.”

“Nate Winter’s down there with the sister. You get a feel for her when she was up here?”

“Nice. Smart. Pretty. Impulsive. Agent Collins-”

“She got an anonymous letter in the mail.”

Juliet grabbed another plant, an orchid she was surprised wasn’t dead yet. As much as she loved plants, they had to be hardy to survive her lifestyle and the tough conditions of her borrowed New York apartment.

Collins carefully returned his cigarette to his pack, but she noticed it was bent, bits of tobacco spilling out onto the table. She’d let him smoke. She didn’t care. But it broke house rules. For all she knew, her friend had little cigarette smoke alarms all through the place.

She set the orchid in the sink. She forgot what kind it was, but it wasn’t that pretty when it was blooming and was truly ugly when it wasn’t. She gave an audible sigh. “Okay, is this where I’m supposed to ask ‘what anonymous letter’?” But she immediately regretted her irritable remark. “Sorry. I guess I’m as nerved up about this whole business as anyone.”

“Feel like you’re next?”

“No, goddammit. What a thing to say.”

He shrugged, then told her about the letter. Sarah’s call. Nate’s flight to Tennessee. How she said she’d torn apart the phones looking for taps. Juliet smiled at that one-she had a feeling that, never mind the delicate gold rings and blond good looks, Sarah Dunnemore would do just about anything.