It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
Suzanne Brockmann

It Came Upon a

Midnight Clear

Suzanne

Brockmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For Tom Magness

(1960–1979)

I never had the chance to tell you that

I’m glad I didn’t miss the dance.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Prologue

Crash Hawken shaved in the men’s room.

He’d been keeping vigil at the hospital in Washington, D.C., for two days running, and his heavy stubble, along with his long hair and the bandage on his arm, made him look even more dangerous than he usually did.

He’d left only to change the shirt he’d been wearing—the one that had been stained with Admiral Jake Robinson’s blood—and to access a computer file that Jake had sent him electronically, mere hours before he had been gunned down in his own home.

Gunned down in his own home…Even though Crash had been there, even though he’d taken part in the firefight, even though he’d been wounded himself, it still seemed so unbelievable.

Crash had thought that last year’s dismal holiday season had been about as bad as it could get.

He’d been wrong.

He was going to have to call Nell, tell her Jake had been wounded. She’d want to know. She deserved to know. And Crash could use a reason to hear her voice again. Maybe even see her. With a rush of despair, he realized something he’d been hiding from himself for months—he wanted to see her. God, he wanted so badly to see Nell’s smile.

The men’s room door opened as Crash rinsed the disposable razor he’d picked up in the hospital commissary. He glanced into the mirror, and directly into Tom Foster’s scowling face.

What were the odds that the Federal Intelligence Commission commander had only come in to take a leak?

Slim to none.

Crash nodded at the man.

“What I don’t understand,” Foster said, as if the conversation they’d started two nights ago had never been interrupted, “is how you could be the last man standing in a room with five-and-a-half dead men, and not know what happened.”

Crash put the plastic protective cap on over the razor’s blade. “I didn’t see who fired the first shot,” he said evenly. “All I saw was Jake getting hit. After that, I know exactly what happened.” He turned to face Foster. “I took out the shooters who were trying to finish Jake off.”

Shooters. Not men. They’d lost their identities and become nothing more than targets when they’d opened fire on Jake Robinson. And like targets in a shooting range, Crash had efficiently and methodically taken them out.

“Who would want to assassinate the admiral?”

Crash shook his head and gave the same answer he’d given Tom two days earlier. “I don’t know.”

It wasn’t a lie. He didn’t know. Not for sure. But he had a file full of information that was going to help him find the man who had orchestrated this assassination attempt. Jake had fought both pain and rapidly fading consciousness to make sure he had understood there was a connection between this attempt on his life and that top-secret, encoded file Crash had received that very same morning.

“Come on, Lieutenant. Surely you can at least make a guess.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve never found it useful to speculate in situations like this.”

“Three of the men you brought into Admiral Robinson’s house were operating under false names and identifications. Were you aware of that?”