Chapter 11

DAVID HAD FALLEN asleep in his clothes.

Which was a good thing, because apparently he wasn’t aware of the pounding on his door. He also wasn’t aware when the door opened. But he sure as hell came to fast enough when the overhead lights switched on.

He must’ve been sleeping with his eyes slightly open. It was as if one second he was in a cave, the next he was on the surface of the sun. He shut them tightly. “Jeez, Bran—”

“David!”

He squinted up at . . .

“Nightshade?”

He blinked, and sure enough, it was Mallory.

He reached down, checking to make sure he wasn’t lying there spread-eagled and naked, the way he did nearly every night in his attempt to save money by not turning on the bank account–sucking air conditioner. His hand encountered clothing. Bathing suit, T-shirt. Thank you, God.

“You actually wear your glasses to bed?”

He sat up. “No, of course not,” he said, then realized that he did, indeed, still have his glasses on. “Well, not all the time.”

“David, I’m really sorry I woke you, but it’s kind of an emergency.”

An emergency. His sleep-fogged mind was slowly coming back on-line. Mallory had gone out with Brandon after the photo shoot. He’d dreaded hearing her come home with him, knowing the two of them were in Bran’s apartment downstairs, together.

But Mallory wasn’t downstairs. She was here. Alone.

“Emergency,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing up. “Are you all right? What do you need? What can I do?”

She smiled wanly. “Brandon is such a jerk.”

Oh, God. David felt sick. “What did he do to you?”

“He didn’t do anything except ditch me when I needed help. I’m fine—it’s Tom who’s not feeling so fresh.”

“Tom?”

“Do you have a car?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of old, but I can usually get it to start. Who’s Tom?”

“My uncle.” She took his hand and pulled him toward the door. “Remember, I told you about him?”

“The Navy SEAL.” Mallory was holding his hand. Was this some kind of weird, wonderful dream?

David caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as she led him out the door. His hair looked like a bad accident. No way was this a dream. If he were dreaming, he’d at least let himself look more like James Bond and less like Jerry Lewis.

“He says he wasn’t drinking, but he’s, like, completely trashed,” Mallory told him as they went down the stairs. “I don’t know what he’s taken. I don’t know anything anymore. If you’d told me an hour ago that Tom was on something mind-altering, I would’ve told you you were full of shit. But he’s like . . . he can’t even sit up. I need to get him back to my uncle Joe’s.”

David stopped short as he saw him. Tom was a big man, and he was sprawled on his side near the last of the tiger lilies. “Maybe we should take him to the hospital.”

“Not if he’s high,” Mallory said. “He’s career Navy. If he’s using . . .” Her voice shook. “If he’s using . . .”

“If he’s on something, Mal, the hospital is the best place for him to be.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know, but . . . Let’s take him to Uncle Joe’s first, okay?” She was really upset about this, on the verge of total meltdown.

“Absolutely,” David said. “Let me pull my car up onto the lawn instead of trying to wrestle your uncle out to the street. He looks pretty heavy.”

“He is.”

He gently freed his hand from her death grip. “I need to run upstairs and get my keys.”

He moved quickly and was almost at the top when she called to him. “David.”

He turned to see her looking up at him. In the dim streetlight, her face was only a smudge of pale. Nightshade at her most vulnerable.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I know what a pain in the ass this must be since you’ve got to get to work so early—”

“Forget about that,” he said. “It’s no big deal. I’ll be down in a sec.”

“Charles.”

Joe had left the light on in the hallway, and in the dimness, he saw Charles’s eyelids flutter.

He spoke a little louder. “Ashton, wake up.”

Charles’s eyes opened, but they were glazed from the combined haze of painkillers and sleep. “Another air raid?” he rasped, speaking in his horrendously accented French.

“No.” There hadn’t been an air raid for close to sixty years. “It’s Tom.”

As Joe watched, Charles made the journey from 1944 to all the way to today. Who said there was no such thing as time travel?

“Tom.” When Charles looked at Joe again, his eyes were sharper. “Your Tom?”

“Mallory—my niece Angela’s daughter—just brought him home.” Joe moved his friend’s walker to the bed. “He’s in pretty bad shape, but he’s refusing to go to the hospital. I’m going to need your help.”

Kelly sat up, her heart pounding, instantly awake as she turned on the light on her bedside table.

There it was again—a soft knock on her door.

Didn’t it figure that as soon as she finally fell asleep someone would need her?

But who was it?

“Dad?” It seemed unlikely he’d make it up the stairs with his walker. Besides, she’d programmed the number for her private line into his phone. If he needed her, all he had to do was hit the speed dial.

“Dr. Ashton?” It wasn’t her father. The voice from the other side of the door was young and decidedly female.

But who the heck . . . ? Who would have come into the house? Who would have the key? Whoever it was, it definitely wasn’t Mrs. Lerner, the cleaning lady.

“Just a sec.” Kelly pulled back the covers and climbed out of bed. Her robe was on the floor, but the belt that tied it together was nowhere to be found. It was just as well—it was too warm for a robe, and her makeshift pajamas, an old T-shirt and a pair of red plaid boxers, covered her perfectly.

She opened the door, pushing her hair back out of her face.

“I’m really sorry to bother you, Dr. Ashton.” The young girl standing self-consciously out in the hallway looked familiar. She was dressed in teenaged contradictions—a body-hugging tank top and a too-large pair of cargo pants that exposed both her glitteringly pierced belly button and the top edge of her underpants. Her hair was dyed an impossible shade of black, and her eyes were light brown, and . . . They should have been hazel. Of course. If her eyes had been more hazel than brown, Kelly would’ve recognized her right away.

“Mallory Paoletti,” she said. “My God, I haven’t seen you since you were in fifth grade. What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

There was a boy—a young man, really—standing just behind her, his clothes and hair rumpled as if, like Kelly, he’d been pulled out of bed. Or maybe he’d worked for hours with gel and hairspray to get that effect with his hair. It was hard to tell.

“There’s a problem,” Mallory said. “But it’s not me, it’s Tom.”

Kelly glanced at the young man again. “Tom?”

“No, he’s David,” Mallory said. “Tom’s downstairs with Uncle Joe and Mr. Ashton. You know, Tom. My uncle?”

Tom. “Yes, of course I know Tom. What’s wrong?”

“They’re arguing about what to do. Tom says he’s not drunk, that he had an accident a few months ago, but he doesn’t want to go to the hospital to get himself checked out.” Mallory gestured to David again. “David thinks he should go see a doctor, because he was really out of it even just a few minutes ago, but see, David’s not obsessed with being a macho he-man. He thinks with his brain, not with his penis.”

David winced, as if he suspected Mallory’s comment hadn’t exactly been a compliment, as if he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted his penis to be the topic of this or any discussion.

Kelly didn’t blame him. She was entirely confused. “Tom’s downstairs, and he’s . . . not drunk, but . . . ?”

“You’re a doctor, right?” Mallory persisted.

“A pediatrician,” Kelly told her.

“Perfect,” Mallory said. “Because right now Tom’s acting like a real baby.”

Tom was okay, as long as he sat with his head down nearly between his knees, with his hands clamped around the back of his neck.

The word okay was relative. At this point in time, it meant that the world wasn’t shaking and shimmying, and he was no longer seeing that world doubled and blurred and through a haze of gray. The odds he was going to puke up his dinner were down to about fifty-fifty, and the roaring in his ears had dropped to a persistent but manageable hum.

“I’m okay,” he said for the fifty-thousandth time. And compared to the way he’d felt just a short time ago, he was. “I just want to go to bed. I want to take a shower and I want to lie down for about eight hours.”

“You were in the hospital for how long?” Charles asked.

Joe was silent—too silent—sitting across from Tom at the cottage’s kitchen table.

“Not very long,” Tom said, not daring to look up at Joe.

“Yes, I think that was what you said before, and I was actually looking for something a little more specific, like two days. Or overnight. Or three months. Or—”

“Not very long,” Tom repeated, enunciating as clearly as possible. “Look, Mr. Ashton, I’m okay—”

“Yes, I believe you said that before, as well. Forgive us if we’re skeptical, considering right now you look like shit on a stick.” For an old dying guy hooked up to an oxygen tank and leaning on a walker, Charles Ashton was a real son of a bitch.

Joe stood. “That’s it. I’m taking him to the emergency room.”

Tom finally looked up at his uncle. “Joe, please, you’ve got to trust me here.”

Joe took his keys down from the wooden hanger that hung by the door. It was in the shape of a giant key—Tom had made it for him in sixth-grade wood-shop with a lot of love and not much skill or patience. It still hung there, carefully dusted and cared for as if it were some kind of work of art. “Get in the car, Tommy.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do, Joe, carry me?”

“Don’t think that I won’t.” Joe was really mad, and just ready to try.

“Look, going to the hospital would just be a waste of time.” Tom tried to sound reasonable, hoping Joe would do the same. “I know what the problem is—I pushed too hard, too soon. I’m getting older—”

“He’s getting older,” Charles said darkly. “Shall I hit him with my walker or my oxygen tank?”

“And it’s not as easy to bounce back from this kind of injury,” Tom finished.

“From what kind of injury?” Joe exploded. “You’ve been here for days and this is the first I’ve heard of any injury.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not that big a deal. I didn’t want to worry you.”

“If it’s really not that big a deal, then when you told me about it, I wouldn’t be worried, would I?”

“Excuse me for thinking you had enough to worry about.” Tom couldn’t help it, his voice started getting louder, too.

“Great, except now all I’m going to do is worry,” Joe countered. “Because I know something bad happens to you, you’re not going to call me!”

“Look, I’m fine—”

“You were in the hospital and you didn’t tell me!”

“You were in the OSS and you won a fucking Medal of Honor, and you didn’t tell me!”

Silence. Even Charles kept his mouth shut after that one.

Tom pressed the tips of his fingers against his eyebrows, against the bridge of his nose. “Shit,” he swore softly, “I’m sorry, Joe. I’m just . . . I’m exhausted. I’ve had a tough night, and the last thing I want to do is go to some ER and get poked and prodded by some pain in the ass doctors all night long.”

“How ’bout I look you over, take your blood pressure? Does that qualify as poking and prodding?”

Kelly. Tom looked up to see her standing in the archway between the kitchen and the dining room. She was carrying her medical bag, and she came farther into the room, setting it down on the table. She was wearing what had to be her pajamas—an old Harvard T-shirt and red boxers that were about four sizes too big. There was nothing remotely sexy about it—except for the fact that she was wearing it. And that was enough. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “house call.”

“Jesus.” Tom sat back. “Don’t touch me. I really need a shower.”

She was undaunted, leaning over to look at him, to shine a little light from an ophthalmoscope into his eyes. “Just look straight at me,” she ordered, her fingers cool and firm beneath his chin.

He was still dripping with sweat, and it wasn’t that fresh, clean, healthy sweat that came with regular physical exertion. It was sick sweat, cold and nasty and profoundly foul-smelling. He couldn’t look into her eyes, he couldn’t bear to. Instead, he focused on her forehead, just above her gracefully arched left eyebrow.

She put down the scope and straightened up slightly, touching him with both hands, her fingers moving gently but methodically through his hair, across his scalp. “Did you fall at all tonight?” she asked. “Hit your head?”

“Not tonight.”

She wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her T-shirt, and as she reached around behind his head, Tom closed his eyes. He was definitely all right, his body returning to normal. Although that wasn’t something he wanted to advertise. Hey, look, Joe, I must be fine because once again, with Kelly Ashton standing directly in front of me, I’m unable to keep from thinking about sex.

“I’m going to ask you some stupid questions, okay?” she said. “Let’s start with your name.”

“Thomas J. Paoletti. You want rank and serial number, too?”

“Nope. But today’s date would be nice.”

“It’s 9 August. Minutes from 10 August.”

“Very good. You want to tell me Joe’s phone number?”

He rattled off the numbers, throwing in her private line at work for good measure.

Kelly looked up from wrapping the blood pressure cuff around his arm. “Very impressive.”

“I retain numbers. I still know the phone numbers and addresses of every apartment I lived in as a kid—and we moved around a lot. I’ll probably remember your work number when I’m eighty.”

“I’m hoping to retire before then,” she said as she pumped the cuff full of air. “Why don’t you plan to call me a few decades earlier? I mean, as long as you know the number, you might as well make use of it. Too tight?”

He shook his head. Was she actually flirting with him? As long as you know the number . . . That was definitely flirting, in public, too. And while he stank to high heaven.

Across the table, Joe had sat down again, but it was only on the edge of his seat. He looked as if he were dying to speak. Mallory and a weird-looking kid he didn’t really recognize but he vaguely thought might’ve been named David were hovering anxiously in the archway that led to the dining room. Charles sat with his arms folded, like the king that he was, actually wearing a satin smoking jacket, critically surveying all that he owned.

Kelly slipped the head of her stethoscope between the cuff and Tom’s arm, pressing his hand between her elbow and her hip. It felt good there. It would’ve felt even better if she’d been naked.

She slowly let the air out of the cuff, listening intently. When she was done, she did it all over again.

“Your blood pressure’s pretty close to perfect,” she finally told him, reaching down to take his pulse, her fingers against his wrist, her focus now on the face of her watch.

Joe couldn’t hold it in any longer. “He could barely walk in here when Mallory and her friend brought him home.”

“Pulse is strong,” Kelly reported.

“You should also know,” Joe continued, “that he was in the hospital for some kind of head injury not too long ago.”

Kelly looked at Joe. “It would probably be a good idea,” she agreed, “if Tom were to fill me in on the details of his previous injury, as well as exactly what happened tonight. But that’s up to him.” She turned to Tom. “Regardless of what you do or don’t decide to tell me, I’d like to talk to you privately. You feel up to tackling the stairs to the second floor?”

“No problem,” Tom lied. This was it. If he could stand up and walk up the stairs without falling on his face, all talk about dragging him to the ER would probably stop.

He stood and the world shifted slightly. “Mind if I take a quick shower first?” he asked Kelly, trying to draw her attention away from the fact that he wasn’t quite as steady as he’d thought, that he was holding on to the back of his chair.

“Nope.” She didn’t miss a thing. “As long as you think you’re up to it. I’ll be up in five minutes.”

She followed him out into the hall, as did Joe, and watched him every step up the stairs.

Finally, he reached the top and he looked down at her. He’d started to sweat again, but she was too far away to see that. “Ta da,” he said.

Or maybe she wasn’t too far away. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Don’t lock the bathroom door. You’ve got five minutes. Be out of the shower by then or I’m coming in after you.”

“That a threat—or a promise?” he asked.

God, what was he doing, saying something like that to Kelly? He’d meant to disarm her, to draw her attention away from the fact that climbing the stairs had damn near wrung the last of his energy from him. It was a tactic that had worked for him with female doctors and nurses in the past, designed to fluster and embarrass.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “That was . . . That wasn’t very nice. I beg your pardon.”

He beat a quick retreat before he could say or do anything else stupid.

Kelly took a deep breath as she stood outside of Tom’s bedroom door.

Mallory had described the way she’d found Tom staggering through the carnival, as if he were drunk or high. He’d started to come around as Joe had helped bring him into the cottage, and apparently his first coherent words once he was home were “No hospital, no doctors.”

When Tom realized Mal thought he was on drugs, he’d been quick to offer up the explanation of a relatively recent head injury and hospitalization, which had placated Mallory but sent Joe into a tizzy.

Throughout all this, at least after Kelly had made the scene, Charles hadn’t coughed once. His color was good and he actually seemed to be enjoying himself, the old sadist. Or maybe it was being needed. Apparently Joe had awakened Charles, asking for his help.

She’d have to keep that in mind. But right now she had to deal with Tom “No hospital, no doctors” Paoletti. She had to approach him as a friend, with the medical knowledge of a doctor, and convince him to go to a hospital. Not necessarily tonight—the fact that he was alert and coherent kept it from being a dire emergency—but certainly first thing tomorrow.

Kelly squared her shoulders and knocked on Tom’s door.

“It’s open.”

She turned the doorknob, and there she was, about to step inside, invited into Tom’s bedroom for the first time in her life.

There he was, too. Sitting on his bed in a pair of shorts and a fresh T-shirt, looking like a dream come true, all hard muscles and heavy-lidded eyes, his hair damp from his shower.

He watched expressionlessly as she came in and closed the door behind her.

Her heart was pounding as she glanced around the room she knew so well from her days of tree-house spying. It looked different from this perspective. Less exotic. Less mystical. His desk was small and bare. His dresser was freshly painted a gleaming white, his reading glasses, his wallet, a handful of change, and a comb on top. His closet door was tightly shut, his towel hanging on the outside knob. There was nothing on the floor besides his duffel bag in the corner—no clothes, no pile of books.

This wasn’t his room anymore. It was just a room he stayed in while he visited. She knew what that was like.

“Feel any better?” she asked.

He moved his head noncommittally.

God, she was nervous. She was used to patients she could charm with a stuffed animal or a funny hat. She was used to patients who didn’t have hair on their chests.

Patients she didn’t have a crush on.

She just had to be direct. To the point. “Who do you want me to be right now, Tom? Dr. Ashton? Or your friend Kelly?”

He smiled at that, a flash of those impossibly adorable dimples. “Are the two really separable?”

“No, not really. But while Dr. Ashton would politely pull up a chair and probably get nowhere in finding out what’s going on with you, Kelly would sit Indian style on the end of your bed and stay until she wrestled the truth from you.”

“That could take all night,” he said.

Kelly sat on the end of his bed. “Is that a threat or a promise?”

He looked over at her sharply as she flashed hot and then cold. Oh, God, had she really said that? What was she doing? Was she actually hitting on a man who’d barely been able to climb a flight of stairs on his own? Tom needed her, and this couldn’t be helping. She stood up again. “Sorry. Wow. Bad timing, huh?”

He was laughing incredulously. “Holy God. Are you, like . . .” He laughed again, shaking his head slightly. “You can’t be . . . serious, right?”

Kelly couldn’t stand the fact that he was laughing at her, and her embarrassment was replaced by a surge of indignation. “Why can’t I be serious? I’ve always found you . . .”

Oh, good grief, what was she saying? Her college roommate had had a word for men like Tom. Fuckable. Kelly and Evie had spent many nights near-hysterical with laughter, compiling a top ten list of men—mostly movie stars—who were one hundred percent fuckable. Which meant, they’d decided, that they’d fall into the arms and beds of any of those men without question, without comment, without objection. It was pure animal attraction, pure lust, pure sex.

Not that either of them had ever done such a thing. Not even close. Evie had been as cautious as Kelly when it came to men. But it had been fun to pretend to be so daring and bold.

And Tom Paoletti had been in Kelly’s top ten every single time. He wasn’t the kind of man a woman should dare to love. She’d learned that too well, all those years ago. But as far as that other verb went . . .

Kelly pretended to be engrossed in the view from his windows. She could see the tree that held her tree house from one, see her own bedroom balcony from the other. So this was what it looked like from here.

“You’ve always found me what?” Tom asked.

Oh, drat. “I suppose it’s too late to say never mind.”

He laughed. “Well, yeah. Unless this is a new doctoring technique. Giving the patient renewed will to live by increasing levels of curiosity and frustration.”

She turned to face him. “I’m here as your friend, not your doctor. I don’t want to be your doctor.”

“Great, then sit down.” When she started for the chair that was over by his desk, he added, “Over here. Friend.”

He was watching her with those incredible Paoletti eyes, those windows to that wild Paoletti soul. The heat she could see in them was off the chart and she nearly tripped on the throw rug.

It was like some kind of challenge, as if he were testing her to see just how real her vague, almost come-on had been.

So she sat on his bed. Not as far away from him as she could be, but not too close, either.

“You’ve always found me to be . . .” he said again.

“Extremely attractive,” she said briskly. “Big deal. You know what you look like. Let’s drop this, okay? Tell me about your injury. What happened? How’d you end up in the hospital?”

He was silent for a moment, just looking at her. But then he nodded as if he’d made up his mind to tell her the truth.

“All right. I was on an op with my Troubleshooters, the SO squad from Team Sixteen,” he said. “These guys are the best, the elite of an already elite organization. I can’t tell you where we were. I can’t tell you what we were doing. All I can say is, we ended up clusterfucked—if you’ll pardon the expression. Trust me, it’s exactly what it sounds like. And once things started going wrong, they kept going wrong.”

He told her about the helicopter going down, about the blast that had sent him flying.

“Actually,” he added with a smile, “that was the okay part. It was landing that caused the problem. Let’s just say my dismount needs work.”

God, he could actually joke about it. “Where did you hit?” she asked.

“Where didn’t I hit?” he countered, then relented. “Like I said, I don’t remember much of it, but apparently I came down pretty hard on the left front of my head. I fractured my left temporal bone.”

Kelly moved closer. “I know I did this downstairs, but . . . do you mind?”

Tom shook his head, and she reached up, gently touching his head, lightly at first then a little bit harder. Now that she was looking, she could see the tiny red scar from his surgery. It was so small, it was almost invisible. “Let me know if anything hurts,” she murmured.

“It’s mutual, you know,” he said suddenly. “This attraction thing.”

His face was about five inches from hers, his leg close enough for her to feel his body heat. His gaze dropped to her mouth for several long seconds, and Kelly knew it. This was it. After waiting for a lifetime, Tom Paoletti was finally going to kiss her again.

“It’s extremely mutual,” he said again. And then he pulled back, away from her. “But there’re a few more details you need to understand before this goes any further.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “I was in a coma for weeks, this injury could well be career ending, and I think I’m losing my mind, big time.”

For weeks he was in a coma? . . .

“I’ve been seeing this guy,” he said. “And I don’t know if he’s real or if he’s some paranoid figment caused by—” He choked on the words. “—brain damage from my injury. He’s called the Merchant. He’s a terrorist, Kelly.”

He was watching for her reaction, and she knew she gave him a big one there. “A terrorist. You mean, like, a terrorist?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It sounds nuts.”

“Tom, are you—”

“I need to tell you all of it,” he said. “Just let me get it all out, and then if you have any questions . . .”

Kelly nodded. Fair enough. A terrorist . . .

She listened as he told her about the Merchant, a man who delivered death for money. The Paris embassy bombing in ’96 was apparently his handiwork. Tom had been part of a team sent to catch him.

“I lived and breathed him for months, preparing to go up against him. It was like a government approved obsession,” he told her. “My team studied the son of a bitch until we’d be able to recognize him in a dark room at midnight while wearing blindfolds. I knew him so well, Kelly, I swear, I could think like the bastard—anticipate his every move. When his cell—his team—was tracked to England, we moved in, ready to take him down. We would’ve, too, if we could have operated without the restrictions from the bureaucrats. Instead, it was a goatfuck. Again, excuse me.”

Kelly laughed despite herself, despite the seriousness of what he was telling her. “A goatfuck this time. Is that better or worse than a clusterfuck?”

“It’s messier.” Tom’s smile was rueful. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend you. That language just kind of slips out when I talk about this shit.” He winced. “Sorry.”

“Do I look offended?”

His gaze was almost palpable. “You look . . .” He shook his head, looking away, exhaling a burst of air. “I’ve got to tell you the rest of this before . . .” He cleared his throat. “We went in—badly—and the shooting started almost immediately. That’s my definition of a goat, you know, fuck. When the shooting starts. SEALs operate very quietly. We’re trained to insert and extract covertly. No one knows we’re there until long after we’re gone—if then. But once you start firing an MP4 submachine gun, people tend to notice you. Our plan was to go in and grab the Merchant silently. I don’t even know what went wrong—who started shooting first—but suddenly we were in the middle of a firefight. And the Merchant ran. The bastard escaped.

“According to allegedly reliable sources, he was seriously injured. And when he dropped out of sight—and it’s been years since anyone’s heard anything from him—a lot of people presumed he’d died.”

“But not you.”

“I try not to make a habit of ever presuming anything.” Tom rubbed his forehead as if his head was hurting badly again. “So okay. Here I am. Years later. In the middle of an entirely new clusterfuck. The helo goes down, and the blast knocks me on my head. I come to a few minutes later, and even though I’ve got a headache from hell, I figure everything’s cool, I can stand up, I remember my name—I’m going to be okay.”

“The lucid interval,” Kelly said softly. Even with extremely severe head injuries, there tended to be some amount of time, as much as an hour or two, before internal bleeding caused coma.

“Exactly. And right on schedule, a few hours later, my vision’s tunneling. I’m checking out. My XO, Jazz Jacquette, literally carries me to safety, but it’s fifteen hours before I hit the nearest ER, and by that time, I’m in a pretty deep coma. Apparently, there was both epidural and subdural hemorrhages putting pressure on my brain. The surgeon drills a little hole in my skull, drains whatever needs to be drained, ties off whatever needs to be tied off, monkeys around in there, doing God knows what. A few weeks later, I wake up.”

A few weeks? God, he was lucky.

“And I’m the miracle man, because everything still works. There’s no apparent brain damage. I can talk, I can walk, I can read and write. I remember just about everything—there’s no huge chunk of my life missing. I go through all the tests with flying colors. Except for one. And it wasn’t even a real test.”

He’d pushed himself back so that he was leaning against the headboard of his bed, and he sat there now, with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

“First day back on CONUS,” Tom told her, “that’s Continental United States, in Navyspeak—I have a little run-in with a rear admiral who was trying to downsize and eliminate Team Sixteen.” He shifted, resting his head back against the wall. “I got a little too angry.”

He told her evenly about the psych evaluations, the medical reports, the conclusion that his injury had caused his aggressive behavior, the required convalescent leave. Kelly knew it wasn’t easy for him to tell her any of this.

“When I go back, I’ve got to convince the Navy shrinks and doctors that I’m up to speed or else it’s thank you very much and welcome back to the civilian world, Mr. Paoletti,” he said. “I came here believing that my career is riding on my ability to get mentally healthy over the next thirty days.”

Tom sat forward, gazing directly into her eyes. “But now that I’ve started spotting international terrorists in Baldwin’s Bridge, I’m wondering if I’m suffering from some kind of weird injury-related paranoia. For the first time in my life, I’m doubting myself, Kelly.” His voice broke, and he faltered. “I need to know if I’m fit for command, or if my career’s over.”

Kelly didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do. But he wasn’t finished.

“I’m telling you this for a couple of reasons,” he continued. “Obviously, I need to find a doctor I can trust—someone I can have faith in to be dead honest with me about what’s going on here. Also obviously, after tonight, I need another CAT scan, to find out if something’s started bleeding inside my head again. I doubt it, but I have to make sure. I need to find out more about this paranoia crap, too. I need to know what the hell’s real and what’s not.”

He took a deep breath, letting it out in a rush. “Okay. Lecture’s over. Any questions from the captive audience?”

Questions. God. She had about four thousand.

“Terrorists,” Kelly said. “Plural. You said you’ve spotted terrorists—more than one?”

“Oh, yeah, tonight’s bullshit.” He winced. “Sorry.”

“I know the word,” she told him. “I’ve even used it upon occasion. I’ve used the other words, too, and . . . Just tell me what happened tonight.”

He did, in that matter-of-fact, reporter-dry manner, as if his career, his life weren’t on the verge of destruction. The convenience store. The man with the eyeball tattoo on his hand. It was pretty gutsy to mark his people so visibly on the hand, but that was always part of this Merchant’s deal. Apparently, just seeing that tattoo was enough to make most people scared to death.

As Tom went on, Kelly closed her eyes, picturing him running after a man on a bike, just a short time out of the hospital after a near-fatal head injury. He described the dizziness, the tunnel vision that had hit him at the carnival.

“All of a sudden, I realize I’m in a crowd of people who’ve all got the Merchant’s mark on the back of their hands. It was like a nightmare, Kelly. For a minute, I was sure I’d gone completely insane.”

His hands were shaking, just from recounting it, and Kelly couldn’t help herself. She reached out and held on to him.

“And then I realized,” he told her, his voice barely more than a whisper, “it wasn’t a tattoo. It was a hand stamp from the carnival. I can only assume that the guy in the Honey Farms—that the mark on his hand was from the carnival, too. I see one thing, and my mind turns it into something else. Something sinister. Sounds pretty goddamned paranoid, huh?” His voice shook. “If that’s the case, then Admiral Tucker’s right in wanting me gone. There’s no room for me in the SEAL teams.”

He’d been holding her hand tightly, but just like that, he loosened his grip. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get all weird on you.”

He tried to pull away, but Kelly wouldn’t let him go. “You spend an awful lot of time apologizing to me.”

Tom nodded. “I have this overwhelming urge to tell you I’m sorry about that, but somehow I suspect that would be the wrong thing to say.”

Kelly laughed, emotion balled tightly in her chest. She was on the verge of tears. Again. How many times could a person cry in one night? Shouldn’t there be some sort of daily limit to emotional outbursts? Although, if there were, she’d probably built up a lifetime supply from holding it all inside during those years she’d lived with her father and then Gary.

And after what Tom had just told her, this was not a time to be reserved. Reaching up, she touched his face. “Thank you for telling me all this,” she said softly. “I won’t tell anyone—not even Joe. I promise. Not unless you want me to.”

His skin was warm, his cheek slightly rough against her palm. He’d shaved this morning, but this morning had been hours and hours ago.

“Kelly, you did hear everything I just said, right? I’m probably crazy. And I’m twenty-eight days from being unemployed. And homeless. I live on base, so I’ll have to move out, and—”

“But you’re not alone,” she countered. “I’ll help you. I know one of the top neurosurgeons in Boston. In the world. He’s brilliant—you can trust him, I promise. I’ll go with you to see him, if you want. He’ll schedule a CAT scan for you first thing tomorrow and—”

“But you’re a doctor. I trust you.”

Oh, God. “I can’t be your doctor. You need a specialist. Besides, I don’t want to be your doctor. I want . . .”

Kelly didn’t think. She didn’t plan. She didn’t anticipate or analyze. She just leaned forward and kissed Tom Paoletti.

His lips were warm and impossibly soft. He tasted like toothpaste—he must’ve brushed his teeth right before she came up to his room.

It was a small kiss, a gentle, brief one, not deep and lingering, not soul shattering and near orgasmic, not at all the way she’d remembered kissing Tom had been.

She’d surprised the hell out of him—and out of herself as well.

She stared at him, and he stared back at her for what seemed like twenty minutes, but was probably more like twenty seconds.

Then he spoke. “I’m crazy. Hello? Didn’t you understand what I just told you?” His laughter was edged with a dangerous-sounding desperation. “Christ, and then you kiss me anyway. Where’s your common sense, Ashton? What were you thinking?”

She shook her head. “You’re not crazy. You might still be suffering side effects from your injury, but—”

“Those side effects could be permanent and you know it,” he said harshly.

Hearing the pain in his voice, Kelly reached for him again. She put her arms around him and held him close. Lord, it was like hugging an unyielding mountain. But this mountain had a heart. With her head against his shoulder, she could hear Tom’s heart racing.

It didn’t take very long for him to relent. He put his arms around her, too, tentatively, though, almost reluctantly touching her hair.

“I can help you,” she whispered. “I don’t know that much about head injuries as serious as the one you’ve had, but I can certainly look up the information. I’ll find out whatever I can. And we’ll get you that CAT scan, too.”

His arms tightened around her. “Thanks.” He shifted, pushing her back so that he was holding her by her shoulders, a full arm’s-length away. “But, Kelly, look. I think—”

She knew what he thought. And it was time for him to find out what she thought. She took hold of his arms, too, all but shaking him. “It’s possible you’ve had permanent damage that’s making you misinterpret and assign some kind of negative meaning to the things you see. But it’s also possible that this paranoia, or whatever you want to call it, will fade in time—like the headaches and dizziness you’ve been having. It’s probable that you simply need more time to recuperate. Maybe even more than thirty days.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have more than thirty days.”

“Tom, if you fractured your leg, you wouldn’t be kicked out of the Navy if it didn’t heal in thirty days, would you?”

“No, of course not.”

“What’s the difference?” she persisted.

He frowned at her as if suddenly just aware that instead of holding her at a full arm’s-length, he was now gripping her by the elbows. Her thigh was pressed against his. She was all but sitting on his lap.

“Maybe you should go,” he said. “I thought if I told you everything, then you’d . . .”

She gazed at him. “What?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But there are a hell of a lot of options to choose from besides kissing me. Jesus.”

God, he was back to that again. Kelly’s temper flared. “I’m sorry if it was that awful. I didn’t think, I just did it, all right? If I’d been thinking, I would’ve just kept wanting to kiss you—without ever daring to do it. At least this way, I’ve done it. Now I know. And so what, all right? Obviously, in my memory, I exaggerated the reality. It was actually kind of pedestrian, if you want to know the truth.”

“Pedestrian?” Tom laughed in disbelief. “Well, sure. You gave me absolutely no warning, no body language clues, nothing. It was like some kind of blitz-kiss. A hit and run. It was a bad excuse for half a kiss.”

That was it. She was now completely humiliated. Kelly tried to pull away, but this time he wouldn’t let her go. She opened her mouth to say . . . what? She wasn’t sure what she intended to tell him, but she suddenly couldn’t speak.

Because he was about to kiss her.

And boy, did she see it coming. He gave her plenty of warning. He moved slowly. He even stopped with his lips the merest whisper from hers.

“Now I know I’m crazy,” he breathed.

And then he kissed her.

He brushed his lips against hers in the most tinglingly delicate caress. He kissed her again, still gently, but parting her lips with his tongue, tasting her, sweetly claiming her mouth.

Kelly melted. This was the kiss she remembered. When he would’ve pulled back, she kissed him again, wanting more. For years, she’d wanted more.

There was a knock on the door, and it swung open. It was Joe, and there was no way in hell he could’ve missed Kelly’s guilty leap back, away from Tom.

Kelly couldn’t bring herself to look at either of them.

“Sorry.” Joe cleared his throat, as embarrassed as she was. “What’s the verdict?”

Tom cleared his throat, too. “I’m fine.”

“I was asking Kelly.”

“Tom’s going to go to the hospital,” Kelly reported as briskly as she possibly could, “but not until the morning. I’m going to take him into Boston for a CAT scan then.”

“Good.” Joe looked from Tom to Kelly and back again. “Good.” He started to swing the door closed again. “I’ll walk Charles back to the house.”

Kelly nearly leapt for the door. “Oh,” she said, “no, I’ll do that. I was . . . just leaving.”

But Joe was already gone, and she was alone again with Tom.

“Why don’t we go into Boston in the morning,” she said, still trying to be brisk, still unable to look at him, “but not until rush hour’s over. About nine-thirty?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

She turned to leave.

“Kelly.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Don’t you dare. That was . . .” God, just say it. How would he ever know how she felt unless she opened her mouth and said it? She turned to face him, looked him straight in the eye. “It was incredible. And I’m looking forward to doing it again. Maybe after we have dinner tomorrow night?”

Well, she’d surprised him again, that much was obvious. He didn’t seem to know what to say, and Kelly tried not to die inside. It was possible he didn’t think kissing her was so incredible. It was possible he’d only done it to prove a point, to make sure she knew he wasn’t pedestrian. It was possible he had no intention of kissing her ever again.

As she watched, Tom rubbed his forehead, put pressure on the bridge of his nose. “So, I guess crazy’s not a problem for you, huh?”

Kelly had to laugh at that, despite the fact that she wasn’t really sure which was worse—the idea that Tom might be imagining the Merchant, or the idea that there really was a terrorist here in Baldwin’s Bridge. “You always had the reputation for being a little crazy back in high school. Besides, side effects from a head injury don’t really qualify as being clinically crazy.”

He looked up at her. “I hope you don’t believe everything you heard about me in high school.”

“Only the good stuff.”

Tom smiled. “God, was there any good stuff?”

Oh, yeah. Not that her mother would have agreed with her definition of good. Kelly opened his door. “I’ll see you in the morning. But if you want to go to the hospital tonight, just call. I can be over here in a minute if you need me.”

“Kelly.” He stopped her again. “Everything I told you—about the Merchant? I need you to—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” she told him. “You know that.”

He nodded. “I just had to say it.”

She looked back at him, her hand on the doorknob. “What if you’re not imagining this?” she asked. “What if you really did see this man?”

“Then I figure out what his target is, and I stop him,” Tom said.

He made the near impossible sound so easy. But he said it with such confidence, Kelly found herself believing him.

Believing in him.

“Until I know for certain that I am nuts, I’ve got to act as if the threat is real,” he added. “I’ve got some . . . friends coming into town in a few days to help me out.”

“You’ve got friends here in town, too,” she told him.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “I know.”