Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down Read online

  “Jamie, I have enough on you to go to the cops right now.”

  Jamie smirked.

  “I know about the others. All the way from Mikey Pryce.”

  That sent Jamie’s smirk running for the hills.

  “I don’t want to turn you in because Melanie means so much to me, so I’ll give you a break. You leave now and I don’t just mean the restaurant. I’m talking about the city, the state, the country, I don’t care. Just go. Leave us in peace. I’ll make excuses for you.”

  Jamie picked up his glass and polished off the rest of his wine. “I can’t do that.”

  “Then this one is going to get messy.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  Melanie rejoined them. “You two seem to be getting on like a house on fire.”

  “Truer words were never said,” Jamie remarked. His eyes sparkled with the irony of Melanie’s statement.

  “We’ve got so much in common.” Nick reached over and kissed Melanie. “Like you.”

  When the check came, a brief fight over who would pay for the bill ensued. Jamie won. Nick couldn’t help but feel he’d been provided his last meal. While Jamie waited for the waiter to return with his credit card and receipt, Nick took his chance.

  “I’ll check in with the valets for our cars.” He snatched up Jamie’s ticket stub.

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, I insist. Join me, Mel?” He forced the issue by holding out her coat.

  Jamie fumed as Nick walked Melanie out. The valet approached them on the street, but Nick waved him away.

  “What’s going on?” Melanie asked.

  “Three’s a crowd. We need some alone time.” Nick smiled. “I have a surprise.”

  They crossed the street over to Nick’s car. He’d gotten lucky and snagged a parking spot directly across the restaurant. He gunned the engine and was pulling away when Jamie came tearing out of the restaurant. Melanie waved goodbye to him.

  “I feel so bad,” Melanie said. “Where are we going?”

  “Don’t ask questions. You’ll spoil the surprise.”

  He headed out of the city and across the Bay Bridge. When he reached Berkeley, he pointed the car in the direction of the marina. The place was deserted. The restaurants had closed for the night. If it hadn’t been for the street lighting, the marina would have been in total darkness. He parked in the red zone fronting the pier.

  “What are we doing here?” Melanie asked.

  “You’ll see. Come on.”

  He came around to her side of the car and opened the door for her. He took her hand and led her onto the pier, then guided her toward the streetlamp at the end of it.

  “I know we haven’t been dating long,” Nick began, “but I feel I’ve known you all my life.”

  She squeezed his hand. “You’re very sweet.”

  With every step they took, he cataloged his affection for her. His outpourings left her speechless. She never interrupted. She just listened and that was good. Her silence gave him the courage for what he had to do. When they reached the end of the pier, he released her hand and turned to face her. He looked into her eyes and his throat closed up.

  “C’mon. Don’t stop now,” she encouraged. “What is it?”

  Out in the bay, a buoy chimed. The water slapped against the pier.

  He needed encouragement to finish this, to go all the way, and he got it. A racing engine and squealing tires cut through the calm. Jamie had caught up with him. Nick thought he’d spotted Jamie’s Acura on the freeway. He’d hoped for a longer lead. It didn’t matter. Jamie was too late.

  “Melanie, I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “That’s why I wanted to give you this.”

  Nick reached inside his pocket. A distant voice cried out but he and Melanie ignored it. The moment was all that counted. He produced his gift, a small box containing a ring. He fell to one knee.

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Stop,” Jamie cried out. His feet pounded on the wooden planking.

  “Oh, Nick, you shouldn’t have.”

  “Why?” Nick asked.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. Forget Jamie. Forget everything he’s done. Just think about us.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick.” Melanie turned away from him.

  Jamie cried out again.

  Damn him, Nick thought. That son of a bitch wouldn’t win. He jumped to his feet and grabbed Melanie’s arm to prevent her from leaving. She whirled on him. He didn’t see the switchblade she’d removed from her purse until she plunged it into his stomach. Confusion dulled his pain. She jerked the blade free and his legs went out from under him.

  “Why?” Nick asked, his words weak in his throat.

  Jamie caught up a moment later. He fell to his knees at Nick’s side to examine the wound. “Not again,” he murmured.

  “Not again?”

  Nick looked straight at Melanie. Her gaze was glassy, absent, and a stiffness had overcome her. She was a million miles away from this.

  “Nick, why didn’t you listen to me?” Jamie said. “I tried to warn you. I did everything I could to protect you.”

  “You made me think it was you.”

  “It was easier that way. I didn’t want you thinking it was her. She’s not a bad person. She’s just damaged.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nick tried to move, but the pain in his abdomen stopped him cold.

  “Our father.” Jamie tried to apply pressure to the wound, but blood oozed between his fingers and Nick groaned. “He loved her. Loved her too much. Loved her so much he ruined her. You must have noticed she never talks about him and has no pictures of him in the condo.”

  It started sinking in. “She killed Mikey Pryce.”

  “And all the others. Father was the first.”

  The pain in his heart matched the pain in his stomach. “I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?”

  “I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make sense to anyone except her. You crossed the line for her.”

  “I just wanted to love her.”

  “That’s crossing the line. You can love her. You just can’t love her all the way.”

  It made a twisted kind of sense. Nick pictured the day at the watering hole where Mikey Pryce had promised to love Melanie forever, even promising to marry her. Unwittingly, he’d triggered Melanie’s murderous reflex, which she repeated with Matthew Warner, Miles Talbot and now him. They’d all promised their undying love only to see it die.

  “God, you’re bleeding bad.” Jamie took his hands away. Blood pulsed from the wound and Nick felt his strength drain from him with every pulse. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry, Nick. Truly, I am.”

  Jamie rose to his feet and hugged his sister. “It’s okay. You’ve done nothing wrong. I’ll make this all go away.”

  “Call 911,” Nick pleaded.

  “I wish I could, but I can’t let the police take her,” Jamie said and turned to Melanie. “It’s okay. You’re safe. Now, go back to the car and I’ll take care of this.”

  Seemingly under a hypnotic trance, Melanie followed Jamie’s command and ambled back to the car. Nick screamed out to her, but she was lost to him.

  “You can’t keep protecting her, Jamie,” Nick said as Jamie bent toward him.

  “I know,” Jamie said with genuine regret, “but I can this time.”

  It was the last thing Nick heard as Jamie lifted him over the pier railing and rolled him into the bay.

  JOAN JOHNSTON

  In the hands of Joan Johnston, the human heart becomes a catalyst for suspense. With more than forty novels and ten million copies of her books in print worldwide, she is a proven master of the craft who knows how to complicate the tensions behind everyday relationships. If there’s a character’s heart to be broken, Joan will snap it in two and decide later if it should be allowed to heal.

  In “Watch Out for My Girl,” Nash Benedict finds himself turning Benedict Arno
ld after promising to look after his brother’s girl while he serves in Iraq. An accidental crush becomes an inappropriate affair of the heart. And that leads the characters headlong into a meeting with murder.

  WATCH OUT FOR MY GIRL

  “I had a helluva time getting your number, Benedict. I called because Morgan Hunter is missing.”

  Nash Benedict heard the irritation in the voice of Morgan’s boss, Captain Hart, Commander of Fire Station 7 in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He made no apology. He was hard to reach for good reason. A picture of Morgan’s anguished face the last time he’d seen her flashed across his mind. His voice was unexpectedly thick with emotion as he confirmed, “Morgan’s missing?”

  “She didn’t show up this morning at seven for her twenty-four-hour shift and didn’t call to say she wouldn’t be showing up. She’s never missed a day of work in five years. Never even been late. You can see why I’d be concerned.”

  Nash glanced at his watch. 6:00 p.m. “She’s been missing since seven this morning and you’re just now calling me?”

  “I’d have called you sooner, but nobody knew how to reach you,” the captain retorted.

  Someday soon, Morgan Hunter would be his sister-in-law. She was dating his younger brother, Carter, who’d left six months ago for a one-year tour of duty in Iraq.

  “Watch out for my girl, Nash. Don’t let anything happen to her while I’m serving my country overseas.”

  Nash had known what Carter really meant was Don’t let some son of a bitch move in on Morgan while I’m serving my country overseas. Carter had never imagined that something sinister might threaten his girl. Or that the something sinister might be his elder brother.

  Nash felt the blood pound in his temples. Carter had asked only one favor. And Nash had failed to deliver. Completely.

  He’d done his best over the past six months, while Carter was dismantling IEDs—improvised explosive devices—in Iraq, to keep an eye on Carter’s girl. In between covert missions for the U.S. president, Nash had gone sailing with Morgan on Chesapeake Bay, laughed with her at a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Kennedy Center and picked crabs with her at the Crab Shack in Baltimore.

  Nash hadn’t expected to fall in love with his brother’s girl any more than he’d expected her to disappear.

  But he was in love with Morgan Hunter. And no one had seen hide nor hair of the woman for the past eighteen hours.

  Nash felt a wave of guilt wash over him. This was his fault. Morgan had run from him. Because of what he’d done last night on her front doorstep.

  He hadn’t meant to kiss her. They’d been convulsed with laughter, leaning helplessly on each other. She’d turned her face up to his, sharing the hilarious moment. On impulse he’d lowered his head, and his mouth had found hers. For a moment, she’d responded. Hungrily.

  Then she’d gasped and backed up a step. And stared at him in the harsh porch light with wide, wounded brown eyes. Asking him without words how he could betray his brother. How he could betray her trust.

  Nash didn’t want Morgan to be the victim of some accident, but he grasped at that possibility as something besides his behavior that might have caused her absence from work. “You’ve checked with the area hospitals?” he asked the commander.

  “I called the hospitals, I checked with her father in Bethesda, I’ve left messages on her cell—which have gone straight to voice mail. I even sent another firefighter to her apartment in Avendale,” Captain Hart said.

  “The front door was unlocked, but the place was pristine, no signs of disturbance. Her purse was there with her wallet inside. But her keys and her cell phone and her Jeep were missing.”

  “Are you telling me no one has any idea where she might have gone?” Nash asked the station commander.

  “I figured you would know, Benedict. You’re the one she’s been spending all her free time with.” Captain Hart made it an accusation.

  “I don’t have a clue where she is,” Nash snapped. “She was fine when I left her about ten last night.” Except, perhaps, for feeling as guilty then about what had happened between them as Nash did now.

  “I can’t believe you kissed me! What were you thinking? I’m going to marry your brother when he comes home. I love him.” She’d swiped the back of her hand across her mouth as though to wipe away his kiss, staring at him above that erasing hand through wary, watery eyes.

  “I miss Carter,” she’d said quietly, using his brother’s name to stab him in the heart. “I think it would be better if we don’t see each other anymore,” she’d added, twisting the knife.

  Nash shuddered at the memory.

  “One of my best firefighters has disappeared,” the captain said. “If you know anything—”

  “I don’t!” Nash could hear the affection and agony in the commander’s voice. He knew exactly how the man felt.

  “I’ll be calling the local precinct to file a missing persons report when enough time has passed. I don’t like the looks of this, Benedict. I don’t like it at all.”

  Nash closed his cell phone and slipped it back into the pocket of his cammies. He was scheduled to leave for El Salvador with his team on a covert presidential mission at midnight.

  Which gave him just six hours to find his brother’s girl.

  And make amends. Assuming she would let him apologize. Assuming that the reason she’d disappeared was nothing more sinister than an unwanted kiss.

  Nash felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as he thought of what else might have happened to Morgan Hunter.

  What if Juan Espinoza, the drug lord whose coca crop Nash had ruined the last time he was in Colombia, had figured out the identity of his nemesis, “The Ghost,” and made good on his threat.

  “I’ll find you, El Fantasma. Then I’ll find what you love most. And I’ll destroy it.”

  Nash huffed out a breath. He hadn’t feared the threat because he’d been sure his cover was unassailable. No one except his elite team knew that Nash Benedict, son of presidential advisor Foster Benedict, was the scourge of the South American drug trade. And of Montana militiamen. And Basque separatists. And Somalian war lords.

  What if one of his many foes had found him out? And come seeking vengeance—through the woman he loved. Maybe his kiss had nothing to do with Morgan’s disappearance.

  Nash felt adrenaline spill into his veins. Felt his muscles cord with tension and his neck hairs hackle, a feral beast readying for battle.

  But he was also a rational man, and his thoughts held him in place. If Morgan had been kidnapped, why hadn’t he received a ransom note? Or a vindictive message telling him that what he loved most was lost forever?

  Maybe the note is on the way.

  That thought sent a chill rattling down his spine.

  And maybe you’re freaking out over nothing. Maybe Morgan took off for a while to think.

  And missed work? Without calling her boss?

  Morgan Hunter was the strongest, most confident, most “together” woman he knew, which was a great part of his attraction to her. She was a firefighter who often dealt with life-and-death emergencies. Would a woman with her self-confidence, her physical and emotional strength, fall apart from a single kiss, for which the perpetrator had been well-chastised on the spot?

  He had to find Morgan and bring her home safe. That was the least he could do after kissing his brother’s girl.

  Morgan Hunter couldn’t believe the predicament in which she found herself. She’d felt confused and upset when she’d grabbed her keys an hour after Nash Benedict had kissed her and gone for a drive to think.

  She hadn’t planned to be gone long. She’d left the radio off in her Jeep, because she didn’t want to be distracted or soothed. She wanted to examine her feelings with brutal honesty. Because she had strong feelings for Nash Benedict that conflicted with her love for his brother.

  She’d left home without thinking which direction she was going. When she finally noticed her surroundings an
hour later, she was driving along a winding, deserted rock-and-gravel road. Almost at the same instant a deer appeared in her headlights.

  The deer froze. And so did she.

  At least, for that part of a second that would have allowed her to brake before she hit the animal. Or make a wiser choice than the one she made.

  Morgan had seen enough accident victims as a firefighter to know that hitting anything head-on, even if she was only going forty-five, was a bad move. So she jerked the wheel to miss the deer, then jerked it again to miss the gnarled trunk of an ancient black walnut—and flipped her Jeep.

  It rolled three times before it came to an abrupt and jarring halt right-side-up in the embrace of a copse of spruce. Sometime during one of those rolls, the driver’s side air bag had deployed. It was already deflating, but Morgan smelled the acrid scent of the cartridge that had exploded to fill it with air, and watched wide-eyed as a stream of white smoke rose behind the steering wheel.

  It had all happened so fast!

  Morgan couldn’t believe she was alive. And apparently unhurt. She gasped with relief and felt a sharp pain in her chest. Not entirely unhurt. She had either badly bruised or broken a rib. She reached down with a trembling hand to fumble at the seat belt release.

  She felt tremendously relieved when she heard a click and the seat belt let go. With the constricting pressure gone from her chest, she took another deep breath.

  “Ow,” she croaked. Could that excruciating pain be the result of a rib that was simply bruised? She would have to be very careful. If she put a broken rib through her lung out here in the middle of nowhere, it was goodbye, so long, adios, baby.

  She recognized the swelling along the back of her neck as a whiplash injury. Warm blood dripped from her chin, and she realized she must have bitten her cheek or her lip.

  Morgan was afraid to move. Afraid to discover another injury. Most of the full moon’s light was blocked by trees that had only half shed their autumn leaves. She reached around the deflated air bag, searching for the keys, which she found in the ignition. She tasted blood as she caught her lower lip in her teeth for luck—and turned the key.