Dark of Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

she'd said, and then rolled his eyes. “Yeah, actually,” he said, “I'm pretty sure I do. I fall somewhere between pickled and poached. Maybe, right after I get a haircut, for abouttwo minutes, I can pass for steamed and … As fascinating as this discussion is, can we save it for tonight? Because—and I should have told you this before, but you stupefied me with your nakedness. …”
    “I'm still naked,” she pointed out, that lip again between her teeth as she played with the hair on his chest, and dear God, Dave could see a whole lot of
as long as we're going to park in the south lot dot dot dot
in her eyes.
    “Right,” he said, as his body stirred at the thought of staying in bed with this woman—his woman—for the rest of the morning, “so I better talk fast. That was your Aunt Maureen on the phone, Soph. Your father's back in the hospital.”
    Jimmy Nash had been dead now for nearly two months, and he could confirm, absolutely, that being dead sucked.
    And, yeah, it was true that
not
being dead had its occasional negative moments, too. For example, getting out of bed for the first time, after the surgeon removed a small but deadly chunk of lead from his chest. That had been unpleasant.
    And watching his memorial service via webcam—that hadn't been as much fun as he'd imagined it might be. In fact, he'd been stunned—and deeply moved—by the sheer number of operators from the SpecWar community who'd shown up to pay their last respects. It was SRO inside that church. On top of
that
shock, it had bothered him immensely to see friends like Dave and Sophia mourning his passing when he was sitting right here, alive if not quite well, in a hospital bed.
    But most of his not being dead was positive. Waking to find Tess Bailey curled up in the chair beside his bed. Waking to find Tess reading in the chair beside his bed. Waking to find Tess running her fingers through his hair or holding his hand as she sat in the chair beside his bed. …
    All by itself, waking was pretty positive, particularly when Jimmy thought about how close he'd come to never waking again. But with her freckles and her sunshine-filled smile, with that palpable love for him in her eyes, Tess made his waking miraculous.
    Deck made it pretty damn good, too. Yeah, Lawrence Decker spent a shitload of time on watch in another chair on the far side of that hospital room. And he always knew exactly what to say, each time Jimmy had surfaced from his narcotics-induced haze.
    “Tess is safe. You're safe. We're all safe.”
    It didn't matter how many times Jimmy came up out of the fog. Decker would reassure him, over and over again, that they were safe. Until Jimmy finally believed him.
    An FBI agent named Jules Cassidy had helped Deck fake Jimmy's death—a con that had been brilliantly realized. Of course, circumstances had provided the perfect setup. Jimmy had been critically injured in a fire-fight with some very bad men—although not, ironically enough, the same bad men who now wanted him dead. He was rushed to a hospital in Fresno via medevac chopper and had, in fact, flat-lined on the flight. This gave additional teeth to the idea that he might not survive his surgery and, in fact, that was the very story Decker and Cassidy had used.
    James Nash, aka Diego Nash, was pronounced dead on the operating table at Cedar Vista Hospital in Fresno, California at 6:14 P.M., Wednesday, 30 July 2008.
    Only a handful of people knew otherwise—and Jimmy trusted them all, completely. There wasn't even a surgeon floating around out there as a potential liability because Cassidy had worked some kind of voodoo at the hospital. Jimmy suspected it involved hacking into and changing medical records, which was probably some kind of a felony, since the agent was acting on his own accord. But Cassidy was purposely keeping his FBI superiors and the entire Bureau out of the loop when it came to the fact that Jimmy was still alive.
    In fact, Jimmy's new identity—one