Read Online Dark of Night by Suzanne Brockmann - Free Book Online Page A

breathing as Tess carefully stretched out beside him. She rested her arm across his stomach as she took his hand and interlaced their fingers, her leg across his thighs.
    The full body contact seemed to soothe him, and it wasn't long before he moved—to wipe his eyes with the heel of his other hand.
    “Shit,” he said again, but softer this time. “It's the same fucking nightmare, every fucking night.”
    That was more information than he'd ever given her, but of course they hadn't been able to talk freely in the hospital, with the nurses constantly coming in and out. Here, however…
    Heart pounding, Tess quietly asked him, “Can you tell me … ?”
    Jimmy was silent for a long time—which was not a surprise. Talking about himself—his feelings and fears—was not one of his stronger skills, and she'd all but given up on his ever answering when suddenly he spoke.
    “Did we get the DNA results back from that shirt?”
    Tess sighed at his change of subject. “Not yet. Maybe in the morning.”
    “But we sent it out to the lab?” he asked.
    The shirt in question was the one he'd been wearing when some unknown person had tried to kill him. It was, apparently, only one in a number of recent incidents in which Jimmy had nearly ended up dead—and Tess couldn't think about that too much or her head would explode.
    But the shirt didn't just have only Jimmy's blood on it—it also had the blood of his attacker.
    That shirt was—and Jimmy hadn't told her this, but she'd figured it out by doing the calendar math—one of the reasons their apartment had been searched and trashed last July. His attacker had wanted his DNA sample back.
    “We sent it on Monday morning,” she told him, her frustration leaking out in the terseness of her reply. “Early yesterday.”
    “It's Tuesday?” He was surprised and disgusted with himself. “What the hell have I been doing?”
    “Sleeping,” she informed him. “It's what bodies do when they need to heal.”
    “We need to back down on my pain meds,” he told her, “because those dreams …” He shook his head—a rustle against the pillow in the darkness.
    “The dreams are all yours. Last meds you took were …” She had to think about it. “Before we got into the van.”
    He sighed heavily. “Great.”
    “I wish,” Tess said so softly she was almost inaudible, “you could tell me. …”
    He was silent again, and she closed her eyes, knowing that if he weren't still so weak, this was where he'd kiss her. Make love to her. Try to tell her, through touch and eye contact, all the things he couldn't bring himself say.
    “It's okay,” she said, “if you don't—”
    But Jimmy spoke, cutting her off. “I'm on assignment,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper in the dark. “Another black op covert from the motherfuckers at the Agency.”
    She was surprised—and a little confused. “In your dream,” she clarified, the words falling out of her mouth even as she realized she should just zip it and let him talk.
    But he seemed okay with her question. “Yeah. But the assignment in the dream has the same MO as the others. The real ones. A phone call to tell me where and when. Background information in a file in a bus station locker. Whoever it is on the other end of the phone, he knows my travel plans, my schedule at Troubleshooters—sometimes before I do.”
    Tess hardly dared to breathe, praying that he'd keep talking.
    He did. “This time I'm in New Mexico—some little town called Ket-tleston—and I can't believe I've gotten a call, but it's not a deletion, thank God.” His voice shook. “God, Tess.”
    “I'm here,” she said, through a throat that was tight from the sudden tears that sprang up—tears she didn't dare let escape. “It's all right.”
    “No,” he said, “it's not.”
    “It's over,” she reminded him.
    “Sometimes I think it'll never be over.” His voice was rough with emotion.
    “But it is,” she insisted.
    “After all this,