Troubleshooters - Into The Night Part 41

"I don't want alcohol in this house. Under no circ.u.mstances whatsoever. Is that clear?"

She nodded.

"Now. All I'm asking you to do is to spend some time over the next few days thinking. Think about what you want out of life. Think about what makes you happya"truly happy. I know it has a lot to do with Haleya"I think you're a wonderful mother, I really do. But look beyond her, if you can, and try to think about what you want. Can you try to do that?"

Mary Lou couldn't keep her mouth shut any longer. "This is about Alyssa Locke, isn't it?"

He sighed. "No, it isn't. I'm taking a shower."

"She doesn't want youa"she's with someone else now. You told me that yourself!" She followed him out of the kitchen and into the hall. Her voice was shrill but she couldn't seem to make herself shut up.

From the other end of the house, Haley woke up and started to cry.

"Yeah, see, but you don't want me, either," Sam said, his voice surprisingly gentle, his eyes not unkind. "Not really."

"You are so wrong!"

"Am I?" Sam asked as he went into the bathroom. "Maybe you should think some about that, as well. I'm going to be late and you are, too, if you don't get going."

He shut the door.

Heart racing, Mary Lou went in to Haley. She had to stop and sit down, putting her head between her knees to regain her equilibrium, before she got the little girl out of the crib.

She hadn't been this panicked, this uncertain about her future since those unsettling weeks before her wedding day.

Husaam slid down in the driver's seat so that Mary Lou wouldn't see him as she loaded the kid into her car.

She looked upset.

Of course, she looked upset most morningsa"who wouldn't, with that a.s.shole Sam Starrett for a husband?

And yet Mary Lou was no prize. He'd thought she might bea"he'd actually started to genuinely like her. She was pretty and stacked and none too bright. He didn't like women who were rocket scientists. But then...

He still couldn't get over the way she'd so casually pulled up her s.h.i.+rt and fed Haley out in the churchyard, where anyone could see.

That was no way for a married woman to behave. If she were his wife, he'd have her beaten for indecency. She had no right to go and flash the world. No right at all.

And what was with this man who was following her around? This wasn't the first time he'd seen this loser with Mary Lou. Clearly, he was after something.

He'd had him checked out, but background checks could be falsified. He himself knew that quite well.

Still, the information he'd found seemed to be real.

Ihbraham Rahman, born in Saudi Arabiaa"not too far from the city where Husaam had spent much of his childhooda"had became an American citizen in 1990. He owned a share in a Lincoln dealers.h.i.+p in Anaheim with three younger brothers, two cousins, and an unclea"none of whom were even remotely tied to any terrorist activity. And why should they be? They'd embraced the American Dream and were making it pay off.

Not that there wasn't strife in their lives. Apparently Ihbraham had quit his job at the dealers.h.i.+p a few years back, ditched a fiance who was the only daughter of the ailing owner of a nearby BMW dealer, and ran off to reinvent himself as a landscaper, courtesy of the twelve-step program.

The fiance was still carrying a torch and the brothers still had hopes of turning Rahman Lincoln Mercury into Rahman Lincoln Mercury BMW.

So what was Ihbraham doing with Mary Lou?

Obviously, he was sniffing out an easy targeta"looking for an easy lay. And there was no doubt about it. Mary Lou Starrett was ripe and ready for the picking, thanks to her husband's neglect.

She got into her car, and Husaam followed her along the same route she always took to her baby-sitter's house, letting her get way ahead of him. There was no chance she'd see him. None at all.

He was going to have to make it clear that if Mary Lou wanted some extramarital s.e.x, she wouldn't have to look to the hired help. He was willing to do whatever he needed to doa"even sleep with her, what a hards.h.i.+pa"to make sure Rahman didn't mess up this operation.

It was bad enough when Mary Lou had sent her car in to have the trunk lid replaced. His clients had been ready to bolt after she'd discovered one of the weapons he'd put in the trunk of her car.

But Husaam doubted she was bright enough to put two and two together and come up with a plan to a.s.sa.s.sinate the U.S. President. Still, if she told someone else what she had seen...

But she hadn't told anyone. He was willing to bet his reputation and his very life on thata"and even use her and her car as a delivery vehicle one last time, even though her trunk now locked.

A lock wasn't much of a problem in the first place, and it was less of a problem because he now had a key.

No doubt about it, this was going to be some of the sweetest, easiest money he'd ever earned.

Muldoon woke up alone in Joan's bed.

He could hear the sound of the shower running. Light was coming in through a crack in the curtains, and when he turned to look, the clock on the bedside table read 5:24 A.M.

h.e.l.lo, morning after.

He briefly closed his eyes. Please, G.o.d, let this time be different.

He'd woken up shortly after 0200 to find Joan sprawled bonelessly on the bed beside him, her head on his shoulder, her hand resting almost possessively over his heart.

That was the timea"were she just some random woman he'd met in a bara"that he would have slipped out of the bed, put on his clothes, and left, leaving his phone number if she'd mentioned she'd be in town for a few days, or just a notea"It was funa"if she'd made it clear right from the start that there would be no tomorrow.

Only rarely did he stay until dawn. He'd learned the hard way that the morning after could be fraught with all kinds of peril and pain.

The morning after was the part where he either had to leave or be left. It was the time in which there would be a slight change in the voice of last night's warm lover. There might be a second or two of uncomfortable silence before she cleared her throat and spoke just a shade too politely, or maybe a tad too cheerfully.

Either way, he'd learned that it meant that the nighta"and their brief relations.h.i.+pa"was over.

Was it any wonder that he'd made it his MO to leave before being shown the door?

At 0210, he'd gotten up to go to the bathroom, careful not to wake Joan. Or so he'd thought. When he came back into the bedroom and climbed into beda"no way was he leaving her until he absolutely had toa"she'd snuggled up against him, resuming her same position with her head on his shoulder.

Only her hand had slipped down to his stomach and then lower and...

Muldoon lay there now, tangled in the sheets, smiling up at the ceiling. He should be tired after a night with so little sleep, but really, he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt better.

He had two immediate options. Stay here in bed until Joan got out of the bathroom, or go in there, maybe join her in the shower.

Getting it on in the shower would put an entirely new spin on the concept of a morning after. It would be the Energizer Bunny version of the morning aftera"where the night before just kept on going and going.

He got out of bed, aware that he'd run out of condoms. He'd tucked only a small handful into his jacket pocket before leaving his apartment, but they'd used them all.

Yes, all. Give me an A, give me an L, give me another L, what does that spell? A night filled with a mind-blowing amount of laughter and heart-stopping pleasure.

If there was any getting it on to be done yet this morning, they were going to have to improvise. Unless Joan had some...

When he got to the bathroom, the shower had gone off, but he knocked on the door anyway, trying the k.n.o.b.

Unlocked. He pushed the door open.

Joan was drying herself with one of those oversized hotel towels, and when she saw him looking in, she quickly wrapped it around herself. "You're awake."

Modesty. In the time-tested language of the typical b.u.mmer morning after, rediscovered modesty was never a positive sign.

Still, Joan had spent one night with Muldoon, and thirty years' worth of nights thinking that she was a whole lot less than perfect. It made sense that it might take her some time to adjust to his more accurate reality.

He pointed to the toilet. "Mind if I... ?"

"Oh," she said. "No. Not at all." She took her hairbrush and, still wrapped in her towel, left him alone in the bathroom.

Also not a good sign. Nor was the fact that she completely failed to comment on his body's rather obvious good morning message.

He flushed the toilet.

To shower or not to shower?

If he showered, she might expect him to put his clothes on and shuffle on out the door. As long as he had bed head and was buck naked, she couldn't kick him out so easily.

Could she?

Oh, screw this trying to second-guess every little last thing Joan was thinking. Muldoon went out into the bedroom where she'd turned on the TV to Fox's cable news. He turned it off.

"Hey, I was listening to that." She was wearing her robe and was putting a pair of panty hose on her killer legs.

"Am I going to get to see you again tonight?" he asked, point-blank.

She sighed. Oh, d.a.m.n. Sighs were definitely bad signs.

But then she laughed, thank G.o.d. At least he hoped it was the right kind of laughter. Sure enough, though, she finally seemed to be looking directly at him, and even noting his physical condition, which although having waned significantly was still pretty obviously revved up.

"You can see me all day if you want to come along to this meeting that starts in thirty minutes," she said. "But somehow I think, from rather obvious clues, that see is a euphemism for something that involves body parts other than eyeb.a.l.l.s."

"I want to see you tonight," he said. "And yes, not only do I want to see you with my eyes, I want to taste you and touch you and make you come at least three different ways."

That caught her attention. And so much for his waning physical condition.

"You're making this really hard for me." Joan didn't look happy. "Mike, I already decided..."

Oh, s.h.i.+t. Decisions had been made. "You decided what?"

Another sigh. "That we cool it until after the President's visit. I mean, come on. I'm sleeping with the President's daughter's boyfriend," she said "This is not a smart career move."

"I'm not anyone's boyfriend," he said, aware that his words were pathetically true. He'd hoped, after last night, that he and Joan...

But no. What was wrong with him? This was old news. He'd seen it plenty of times before. He was drawn to women like Joan. Strong women. Career women. Women who saw him as a temporary diversion, a short-term plaything instead of a legitimate boyfriend.

Legitimate boyfriends were corporate CEOs or the attorney general or a vice president at Microsoft. Legitimate boyfriends were not Navy SEALs.

Not once in his life had he ever been taken home to meet his lover's parents. Not once.

So, yeah. Cooling it for the next week for the sake of Joan's career was nothing new. In fact, any shrink worth his fee would tell Muldoon that he sought out this type of women. He was only attracted to the kind of women who would beat the c.r.a.p out of him emotionally, if he were dumb enough to wait around for it.

"Today the entire world is going to watch that video clip of you and Brooke from last night," she told him. "They're already showing it. I'm really lucky they don't have additional footage of you and me in the Ladybug Lounge. Sweet G.o.d above, what was I thinking? Not that I'm regretting last night," she hastily added. "But making out in a bar isn't appropriate behavior for a member of the President's staffa" never mind the fact that you'rea""

"Okay," he interrupted. "Okay. Say we cool it for a week. Then what?"

"Then I'm on vacation," she said, as if that answered everything.

"For two weeks," he clarified.

"That's right."

He shook his head. "There's no guarantee I'll be around for those two weeks." In fact, he knew Operation Black Lagoon would be happening shortly after the President's visit. He could very well be gone for most of that time. But he couldn't tell Joan that. He couldn't mention the op at all. "If I do have to leave town, I probably won't have time to call you to tell you about it. So if I suddenly disappear, you need to know that I'm not just blowing you off, okay?"

Her eyes had widened. "Are you telling me that you're going to Afghanistan?"

"No. Joan. G.o.d. I'm not telling you anything. I can't tell you anything. I'm ... Look, what if we see each other this week, but we're really discreet? You know, careful that no one sees us together anda""

"That's a given," she said. "No matter if it's now or a week from now. I have to think about what it looks like, and it's going to look like I'm sleeping with the President's daughter's boyfriend."

"Who cares what it looks like? It's not the trutha""

"I care," Joan told him. "I would care what it looks like even if Brooke weren't in the picture. Even if her senator friend announced he wasn't going to be Bryant's running mate, that he wasn't running for reelection, that he was divorcing his b.i.t.c.hy wife and marrying Brooke. Even then, I'd be extremely careful about our relations.h.i.+p. Have you looked into a mirror lately, Michael? If we showed up in public with our hands all over each other, people are going to wonder what the h.e.l.l a beautiful young man like you is doing with me."

He shook his head. "That's ridiculousa""

"No, it's not. To be frank and to the point, I don't want them thinking about me like thata"wondering if I'm that good in bed, or if I pay you, or if there's some other kind of favor that I'ma""

"Maybe they'll think that you're fun to be with," he said. "Maybe they'll thinka"a"

"Look, Michael, I'm sorry about this, but I honestly don't know what to do about us. It's freaking me out. Yes, I want to see you again. I really do. But I don't think it can be untila""

"Next week," he finished for her. "Okay. Yeah. I hear you. I don't like it, but I'll respect your decision. You know, call me if you change your mind and all that, but..."

"Please don't be angry. Last night wasa"

"Great. I know. I thought so, too." He started pulling on his clothes, bed head be d.a.m.ned. He didn't want to hear this. He'd heard this kind of speech before. Next week would come, and she wouldn't call him. Or, shoot, maybe she would. And maybe he'd be in town for a few days during her vacation and he'd get laid again. But eventually she'd have to go back to Was.h.i.+ngton, and that would be that.

End of story.

He should have left at 0200.