“Who was that?” Chuck’s voice was the merest breath in his ear.
“Later.” Cooper’s voice was just as low. He pointed to Julia’s corner house and rotated his fist.
We’re going in the back
. Chuck nodded that he understood. They made their way silently around the house and Cooper let himself in with his key. He slipped into the house and closed the door after Chuck. Moving quietly, efficiently, he pulled a pinpoint flashlight from his pocket and pulled a flashbang and a tripwire from the satchel. He pulled out the towels he’d stuffed into his satchel and gave one to Chuck.
“Dry off,” he whispered. “Can’t leave any tracks.” Chuck nodded and dried off while Cooper fixed the flashbangs to the front and back door handles.
It took forty-five seconds to set it up. Cooper grunted with satisfaction and moved quickly into the bedroom.
He was stuffing some of Julia’s clothes under the blanket to make it look as if she were taking a nap in case someone checked through her windows when he felt Chuck’s hand on his shoulder. He nodded. He’d heard it, too. A car, coming down East Valley Road.
Cooper checked out the window. The car was traveling without headlights. It came to a gliding stop about fifty yards away and two figures got out without the inside lights coming on. They closed the car doors quietly. It was impossible to see their features, but the stealthy way they moved showed Cooper that they were pros.
Cooper pushed Chuck into the closet and pulled the door closed. That should protect them from the worst of the stun blast.
Cooper checked his watch. The men were fifteen minutes early on Davis’ earliest estimate. These guys were fast and they were good.
But he was better.
* * * * *
Julia heard the explosion from three blocks away. The windowpanes of the “Out to Lunch” rattled briefly, then there was utter silence, echoed by the sudden void in her chest.
Julia looked around and saw shocked faces, except for Sandy, Mac and Bernie. Their faces were grim, their weapons held at the shoulder and cocked.
“No,” Julia whispered. Alice stared at the floor and Maisie moved forward to put her arms around Julia’s shoulders. Julia pushed her and her sympathy away with stiff arms. “No,” she said, louder.
No one said anything.
With numb fingers, Julia checked the tip up barrel of her gun for the thousandth time and snapped it back in place. She realized suddenly that if anything had happened to Cooper, she’d have the nerve to use it. She clicked the safety off and bolted out the door so quickly she got past Cooper’s men.
“Hey!” she heard Bernie yell, “Coop said—”
But by then she was out on the street. She didn’t want to hear from Bernie what Cooper had said. She wanted to hear it directly from Cooper. She wanted Cooper himself, in the flesh, to scold her and complain about her lack of obedience. She wanted Cooper to chew her out, tell her she’d put herself in danger, and that he wasn’t going to tolerate it. She wanted Cooper…she wanted Cooper.
Alive.
Julia ran towards her house, wiping tears and snow out of her eyes, slipping a little because she didn’t have the right shoes for bad weather. The snow reached almost to her ankles, but it could have reached her chest and she wouldn’t have noticed or cared. All she wanted was to get to Cooper.
She slid the last few feet before her gate, stopping her slide by a hand to the gatepost, then tore up the rickety steps and slammed the door open, standing wildly panting and wide-eyed in her gunman’s crouch as she took in the scene.
Two sullen handcuffed men were sitting on the floor with their backs to her living room wall and Chuck was reading them their rights in a monotone. Cooper walked in from the bathroom sucking his reddened knuckles, a heavy scowl on his face.
Julia’s heart gave a great lurch and her voice tried to make its way through her throat.
Sha
king, she put the safety back on and put the Tomcat down on the coffee table. “Cooper—” Nothing came out and she tried again. “Cooper.” It was thready and weak, but he heard.
He turned, still frowning, and frowned even more when he saw her. “What the—” he began, then looked past her. “Bernie, I thought I told you to keep her safe.”
Bernie opened his mouth to answer, but he was out of breath. It didn’t make any difference, anyway, because Julia had launched herself into Cooper’s arms with a cry of joy. “Oh God, Cooper, when I heard the explosion, I thought—I thought—”
“I know.” Cooper hugged her tightly. “Listen, I thought I told you to stay put.”
Julia couldn’t talk. She simply nodded into his shoulder.
“I told you to stay put at the ‘Out to Lunch’, didn’t I? That wasn’t asking too much, was it? You were supposed to stay right where you were until I came back to get you.”
Julia nodded, shook her head, nodded then laughed. She pulled her head back from his shoulder. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
It was so wonderful to feel him, his strength, his solidness, even his scratchy jacket smelling of wet wool. She stilled and stared at the two men slumped against her wall. Disengaging herself from Cooper, she walked over and looked down.
“What happened to their faces?” she asked.
“Walked into a door,” Cooper said.
“Resisted arrest,” Chuck said.
Julia studied the battered faces of the enemy. One man was blondish, with a long, dirty ponytail and the other was dark, with a crewcut and three earrings. But no matter the superficial differences, they shared a look. The same look Santana had had. The kind of face was etched into her memory forever. Cold, cruel, brutal. She knew with a sickening certainty that they would have killed her without a second thought.
And Santana still would.
She turned, the thought rousing in a heartbeat all the sheer terror she’d felt over the past seven weeks. “Cooper.” She put a hand to the wall to steady herself. “Cooper, Santana knows where I am now. He can send others—”
“Santana’s not going to be sending anyone anywhere,” Cooper answered. “He’s dead, honey. He died a few hours ago. Heart attack. The nightmare’s over.”
It took a second or two for the words to penetrate.
The nightmare is over. She let the words roll around in her head. The nightmare is over. They hardly made sense.
“Oh,” she said inanely. “Oh, that’s—that’s good.”
Cooper looked at her, frowning. “Sit down, sweetheart.” When she shook her head, he walked her over to the armchair and exerted gentle pressure. “Sit down before you fall down.”
She didn’t want to obey him. It was just that her knees buckled.
Julia felt a deep tremor start from within and her fingers bit into the arms of the chair. Dots swam in front of her eyes and she tried to focus. Her mind was finding it hard to absorb what Cooper had just said.
The nightmare is over.
Weeks and weeks of agonizing fear, of a loneliness so deep she sometimes thought she would die of that alone. Weeks of isolation and exile. Of waking shuddering and sweating from sleep only to find that the waking terror was worse than the terror that stalked her in her dreams. Of teaching herself to live from minute to minute because she had no future.
The nightmare is over.
A great sob exploded from her chest, then another.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, dazed. The enormity of it struck her all over again. She could hardly catch her breath, could hardly get her mind around the thought.
Cooper took her trembling hands in his and she stared blindly at their linked fingers. “It’s over. I don’t have to stay here anymore. I can do what I want. I can go home. Oh dear God, I can go home again. I can’t wait. Oh, God, I can’t wait. I want to go home now.” Tears were leaking out of her eyes and her heart was thumping wildly in her chest. Julia barely noticed when Cooper released her.
She raked her trembling hands through her hair. Her head was filled with one thought—home.
The nightmare is over.
She looked around and focused on Cooper, watching him retreat. Chuck was retreating, too. Bernie had turned his back and was standing stiffly by the door.
All of a sudden, Julia remembered what she’d said and it struck her how Cooper would take it. He thought she meant that she wanted to go home and never come back. But she hadn’t meant that—not at all. What she’d really meant was—she’d meant…she didn’t know what she’d meant.
Julia tried to gather her thoughts but it didn’t work. It only made her head hurt.
She realized now how far she’d come in understanding Cooper, how well she had learned to read his face, because all of a sudden she couldn’t read anything at all. He stood before her, straight and tall and broad, his face an impenetrable mask.
Chuck was herding the two shackled prisoners out the door. Bernie had already left. Cooper had one hand on the doorjamb.
“You won’t be bothered again.” Cooper’s voice was as remote as his face. “Davis said that he’ll call you in for a deposition but it won’t be anytime soon. I’ll book you a flight out tomorrow. One of my men will take you to the airport.”
“No, I—” Julia stretched out a hand. She couldn’t stand to see that blank look on Cooper’s face. But the emotions were washing through her in great roiling waves, so enormous she couldn’t get a handle on any one. She bit her trembling lips and let her hand drop.
There was so much she wanted to say to Cooper, but it looked like she wasn’t going to have the time because he was out the door and past her gate before she could get her leaden feet to stir.
Maybe it was better this way.
There was no way on this earth that she could explain anything to anyone, not tonight, certainly not right now.
Julia sank bank onto her couch. The horrendous little couch with the broken springs.
It struck her, for the first time, that she was going to miss that stupid couch. Her own couch in Boston was covered in an exquisite beige Sanderson chintz but this couch, ugly as it was, had…character.
There were a lot of things she was going to miss.
She was going home. For the first time, Julia allowed herself to savor that thought. Home.
Home.
But what did she have there? What was home now? What was waiting for her? Her job? Even if she managed to get her job back, she’d been starting to get dissatisfied with it. She’d even toyed with the idea of setting up as a freelance book doctor. Since the takeover, personnel were shuffled so often she never got a chance to deepen her ties with her colleagues or the authors. She was basically a faceless paper-pusher with a good degree.
She would see Jean and Dora again.
But Julia suddenly realized that all the time she’d been in Simpson, she hadn’t wondered how they were getting on. She and Jean and Dora had got along reasonably well together at the office, read the same books and met on Saturdays for coffee and gossip. That was all.
It wasn’t like here, where she was intimately involved in the daily lives of her friends. She wanted to know what Alice would be doing, if the “Out to Lunch” would be a success. She wanted to go on trying out Maisie’s wonderful recipes. She wanted to help Beth redecorate. Matt had mentioned that he had written a hundred twenty pages of a science fiction epic and she wanted to read it.
She couldn’t leave them.
Julia started at the wet muzzle laid adoringly on her knee. Federico, her sleek Siamese, had found another family to lord it over. Not like Fred. Fred needed her. She couldn’t leave Fred.
She couldn’t leave Cooper.
Not in a million years.
It had been the emotion and relief of the moment that had made her react that way, but the fog was beginning to clear. She wanted Cooper back—her Cooper who made her feel safe and excited all at once, who scolded her and repaired things for her. Cooper who was so exciting in bed she sometimes thought her heart would stop.
That great tidal wave of emotions was receding, leaving her calmer now and resolute.
She’d been foolish, but that was okay. Cooper would forgive her. He had to or she’d…she’d beat him up. They’d had a mock fight once, and he’d laughed so hard she’d managed to wrestle him to the floor.
Some martial arts expert.
Well, if he had his stupid pride, she didn’t. Julia stood up, grateful her knees were finally steady.
She picked up the phone and stared at it. There was no dial tone. She shook it as if that would give her a signal. The phone rang, startling her and she dropped the receiver, frowning at it. It rang again and she realized that it was the doorbell ringing and not the phone.
Whoever it was would have to go away because she didn’t want to talk to anyone right now but Cooper.
Julia opened the door. Mary Ferguson stood on her doorstep, shoulders covered in snow, clutching an overnight case. “Hi.” Mary smiled timidly. “I’m leaving. Going back to Daddy. I guess he was right all along. I just wanted to say goodbye. Can I come in for a minute?”
Mary definitely wasn’t Cooper. Julia wanted her to go away. Good manners warred briefly with her desire to run after Cooper and good manners won by a hair. She’d say goodbye to Mary and then go run after Cooper.
“Sure.” Julia smiled wanly and stepped back. “Come on in.”