Night Fall Read online

  A blinding flash of light forced her to squeeze her eyes shut. It was followed by an enormous explosion. The percussion rocked the building hard enough to knock Kess and Nomis off their feet.

  Dear God. Were they all going to die tonight?

  Nomis’s body covered hers as debris and huge chunks of steel and building material rained down on them. It sounded like the end of the world.

  One moment Kess was being smothered under Nomis’s rock-hard body, the next she…wasn’t.

  Someone slapped her face. “Ow!” she yelled, opening her eyes.

  Simon chuckled, his face filling her vision. She loved his face, scratches, dirt, and all. He grinned. “Only you would say ‘ow’ to a wake-up tap, and laugh as a building was falling on you.”

  “Is he dead?” Kess asked weakly. She’d used up about twenty years’ worth of adrenaline, and it had left her a little disoriented and woozy.

  “You still had some of his power banked in you. The combo of that, coupled with touching Nomis for the first time, magnified my power. Noek Joubert…disintegrated.”

  “That means totally-never-to-come-back-dead, right?”

  “Right.” When he brushed her hair off her forehead, his fingers seemed a little shaky to her.

  Kess grabbed his hand, although grabbed was hardly the word for her ridiculously feeble grip on his fingers. “Are you okay?”

  He smiled. “I don’t have broken ribs and lacerations and bruises.”

  “They’ll heal,” she assured him.

  “Sooner than later,” he assured her flatly. “Close your eyes and take a little nap, sweetheart, I’ve gotta get back to work.”

  Her heart, which was still jumping around in her chest like Mexican jumping beans, took up a ponderous beat. “Of course. I’ll be fine.” She looked past him and frowned. “Are we…”

  “Medical floor of HQ.” He looked beyond her and beckoned someone over. “This is Beth. She’s going to take good care of you while I’m gone.”

  Kess looked at the woman through her good eye, the other being almost swollen shut. Great. She looked like shit. Again. And here was a pretty brunette to “take care” of her. “My lucky day,” she mumbled.

  Simon, still holding her hand, said to the doctor, “Caleb Edge will be in in about five minutes to fix all this. Give her something for the pain if she needs it.” He squeezed her hand. “Be good until I get back.”

  “Who’s Caleb Edge, and does that mean I can be naughty when you get back?”

  “When can I get out of here?” Kess demanded belligerently as the door opened to admit Simon the next morning. Her heart did a triple axel as he came into the room wearing dark pants and a black T-shirt that outlined his rock-hard body. Kess looked at him, getting her fill. Once again she looked like crap while Simon was spit and polished and looking as though he’d just stepped out of GQ’s “Soldier of Fortune” issue.

  He’d teleported her to T-FLAC HQ in Montana the day before and she hadn’t seen him since they’d put her on a gurney and wheeled her into a room. She’d gone to sleep beaten to a pulp, and woken to find herself bathed with not a mark on her.

  These spy types had all sorts of extra-cool advantages.

  “I’m sick and tired of being prodded and checked and stared at.” She sounded like a sulky teenager, and adjusted her tone because she was already annoyed at herself. Plucking at the starched sheet over her legs, she scowled at him. “The bruises already healed, and the cracks in my ribs are—gone, apparently. They certainly feel fine. I met Caleb Edge last night. Not only is he extremely good-looking, he did a laying-of-hands thing on me, and twenty seconds later I was well enough to dance a jig. If I knew how to dance a jig.”

  “Glad Caleb made it. I didn’t want you in pain for a second more than necessary.”

  “Is he a healer or something?”

  Simon nodded. “One of his powers.”

  “A handy one to have in your line of work. Now can I leave?”

  His lips, his firm, clever attentive lips, almost—almost, tilted in a smile, as his eyes tracked her from the waist up; the rest of her was under the sheet. “Not loving T-FLAC’s fabulous hospitality, I see.”

  “Not much to see in a twelve-by-twelve room for twelve hours. I’d like to take a tour of the place,” she told him, searching for a sign of his mood. He should have his photograph under inscrutable in Webster’s.

  “You can leave whenever you like,” he told her, his big scarred hands holding the foot rail of the bed.

  “I can?” Kess threw the covers back and leapt off the bed. Simon was by her side gripping her elbow a nanosecond later as she faltered, unsteady on her feet.

  “Whoa! You’re bound to be dizzy.”

  She was. A little. Not enough to stay in bed though. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Incinerated. They’re getting you something now.”

  Kess looked up at him, her eyes narrowed. “I hope it’s something red and slinky. No. Make that black and slinky. Really slinky. And FM heels too. And a push-up bra. I’m sick of you seeing me when I look like I’ve never seen a comb in my life.”

  “You don’t need a push-up bra. You’re—”

  Trust a man to pick on the push-up bra! “But I do need a comb, is that what you’re telling me?”

  His eyes turned the color of the forest. “In a fighting mood, are we?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Blackthorne,” she told him, glaring up at him. He was so damn tall, and she was barefoot. He’d been in the room for several minutes and in those eternal several minutes he’d made no attempt to kiss her, or touch her, or—Damn it, he wasn’t doing any of the things she wanted him to do, damn him. “I am so not in the mood.”

  “Are you in the mood for some good news?”

  That didn’t sound very lover-like. “What?”

  “Once McKay got Angela Sidel’s testimony, he managed to get your case thrown out.”

  “Oh, Simon—” You are the most amazing man I will ever meet in a hundred lifetimes.

  “There’s more. Not only are you in the clear, Wexler was arrested for the rape of Ms. Sidel as well as three other women. And assault charges have been filed by half a dozen former employees for rape or assault. He’s going to be on the receiving end of assault himself for a long time.”

  Relief washed over her. “Thank you hardly seems adequate. But thank you for doing this. For me. For Angela. For the other women.”

  His hand rose as if he was going to touch her, then dropped away. “Talked to Phillips earlier,” he told her, his voice a little choked. “We’ve created an antidote to the virus. Instead of administering it, we’re going to do an aerial spraying in about two hours. Should eradicate the virus. They also came up with an antiviral for those already infected. The shot won’t be one hundred percent effective, but we’re doing our best to save as many as we can.”

  Kess closed her eyes for a second. “Thank God.” When she opened her eyes Simon seemed to be standing a little closer. “The election was today, right?”

  “Mr. and Mr. Jungo Kamau were elected president and first gentleman in a landslide election late last night.”

  He was looking at her so oddly. Was he trying to figure out how to say “Thanks for a lovely interlude”? Was he waiting for her to let him off the hook?

  All Kess could manage was “Oh.”

  “Went out to my place last night. Was building it by hand, but I decided to put a little magic in it and get it ready.”

  “Oh, so your magic’s working at full throttle now? Great. Really great.”

  “Had to get the house finished so I can bring my lady home. It’s snowing out there, you know.”

  Kess used the heels of both hands to smack him in the solar plexus, knocking him back two steps. “Shut up about your stupid damn One Day Woman!” She hurt deep inside and her eyes stung. “She’s here. Right in front of your idiotic, ‘too blind to see me right in front of your face’…um…eyes. Damn it. I’m her. I’m your One Day Woman. I
’ve always been your One Day Woman. Do I have to dye my blasted hair brown for you to recognize me? Do I have to have a boob enlargement? A brain reduction? What the hell do I have to do short of tattooing Simon Blackthorne’s One Day Damn Woman on my forehead to get you to see what’s right in front of you. Me.

  “I want to be the center of your universe. Just as you’re the center of mine. I’m your woman. You’re my man. I don’t care if that sounds like a bad country-western lyric. We belong together, damn it.”

  Simon’s expression lightened and he cupped her cheek with a gentle hand. “Marry me, Kess.”

  I love you, Kess, would have been the right freaking words, blast the man. She shoved at his chest again. “Now see? You’re just saying that to make me crazy. You can’t possibly love me as much as I love you, and I’m damned if I’ll settle for being a stand-in. I refuse to have to look over my shoulder for the next fifty years in case your One Day Woman is behind me, closer than she appears in my rearview mirror.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners, and he shook his head slightly, as if to say, poor woman. What a nut job. Kess could swear he could read her soul and probably her mind as his mouth quirked up in the beginnings of a smile.

  “This isn’t funny, you know,” she said crossly. “I’m once again unemployed. Or possibly unemployable. And frankly I’m not sure that a tame PR job would suit me anymore anyway. I think I’ve been ruined.”

  His mouth quirked, but he said quite seriously, “Quite understandable given the last few weeks. Private armies get a bum rap, you know.”

  She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Um…Okay.”

  “What do you think about kids?”

  Her heart did a little skip. “Whose?”

  “Ours.”

  “I think ours would be perfect, but given that we don’t have any, the question is moot.”

  Simon laughed. “I hope they’ll be imperfect, and amazing, just like their mother.” He picked her up and deposited her on the bed. With a click the door locked. He stretched out beside her, pulling her into his arms. “Fortunately the job I have in mind is fairly close to home, and I think I have enough pull to get you part-time work if you chose to stay home with the kids.”

  Kess stroked his face. He needed a shave, but he smelled clean and fresh and larger than life, and her heart filled with joy just being in his arms. She kissed his chin. “I have no freaking idea what you’re talking about.” Too scared to build a castle on a pipe dream, she finger-combed his hair off his forehead.

  “T-FLAC is going to offer you a job in our information dissemination department.”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Holy shit!” Her entire being lit up with a thousand-watt smile. “You mean I get to work in this cool building with all these amazingly cool people?”

  “I’m the coolest.”

  “Without a doubt—Will I be issued a gun?”

  He tilted her head up and kissed her. It was an extremely effective way to shut her up. She hoped he used it for the next fifty or sixty years.

  Finally he let her up for air.

  Kess blinked. They were no longer in the pale green hospital room.

  “I love you, Katie Scarlett Goodall,” Simon said thickly, slipping her out of the open-backed hospital gown very carefully and pushing her back against the plush cushions of a sofa in front of a crackling fire. “Who knew I’d been waiting for a feisty, sassy, beautiful redhead my entire life?”

  “Will you conjure up a slinky black dress and FM heels for me, and take me out to dinner tomorrow? I want a first date. With wine and flowers and flirting and music. I want to look beautiful for you.”

  “You’re beautiful to me just as you are, right now—” He smiled when she frowned mockingly, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I’ll conjure anything you want.”

  “You, I just want you.”

  “That’s going to be a constant,” he said nibbling her throat. “No magic necessary.”

  Everything about him was magic to Kess, and it had nothing to do with Simon being a wizard. He started kissing his way down her body, his lips warm and damp as he murmured soft, sexy words against her skin.

  For a moment before she closed her eyes in sheer bliss, she looked at the room behind him. Even though she’d never been there, she recognized the rock fireplace, and the snow-covered view outside the enormous wood-clad windows.

  Kess knew exactly where she was.

  She was home.

  Night Fall is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2008 by Cherry Adair

  Excerpt from Night Secrets copyright © 2008 by Cherry Adair

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Night Secrets by Cherry Adair. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-50936-9

  www.ballantinebooks.com

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  NOVOS COMEÇOS MEDI-SPA

  RIO DE JANEIRO

  BRAZIL

  0100

  He was screwed.

  Face pressed to the gritty sand, Lucas Fox attempted to unscramble his brain.

  Think, damn it.

  Unfortunately he’d fallen forty feet to land on his head. It wasn’t nearly as hard as his friends claimed it to be. And speaking of friends—he could use a little help right about now.

  The night sky was bright with the light cones of five military choppers illuminating a crosshatch pattern over both the choppy ocean and the narrow strip of beachfront where he lay. They whopwhop-whopped back and forth, stirring up sand and causing palm fronds to dance wildly. Down the entire sugary length of the beach, the rows of bright pastel-colored beach houses were strung like gaudy beads and the violently swaying palms were lit up as if it were high noon.

  If he were visible, he’d be…fucking visible. He was a sitting duck out in the open. A ruffled wave lapped up to dance playfully against his foot. A futile attempt to move out of the surf made his head swim.

  Acknowledging concussion—been there, done that—Lucas focused on cataloging his injuries while his lungs automatically fought for air. Everything hurt like hell. By some miracle he hadn’t broken his neck, a definite plus. He’d been shot, but only once, and in the fleshy part of his shoulder. Been there, done that, too. He’d live.

  Maybe. Right now he was hanging onto invisibility by willpower alone. He’d been at the tail end of a Trace Teleport, following Mica Esar, a Half wizard, when his powers had fizzled out midair. He’d dropped like a rock. The sand wasn’t nearly as goddamned soft as it looked.

  Obviously he’d been unconscious long enough to hear the distant echo of his window of opportunity slam shut. A chopper flew directly overhead, making the inside of his eyelids burn red.

  Lucas managed to stay out of sight until it passed. Sustaining invisibility was like holding your breath underwater for too long. Eventually you had to come up for air.

  He had to teleport off the beach.

  He gave it his best shot. Visualizing the hidden end of the long white beach, the sheltered, grassy section of land, he thought himself there.

  Sand still pressed into his cheek. Damn it to hell. Nothing.

  He faded in and out of consciousness. A bad thing. Apparently, it was impossible for him to use two powers
at once.

  He could maintain invisibility for only minutes at a time, but he couldn’t maintain invisibility and attempt teleportation. One or the other apparently. Fuckit.

  He needed cover, and he needed it fast.

  Move.

  Too dizzy to think, let alone stand, he fought to hold onto iffy invisibility, his only protection against the searchers. The vibrating ground, thanks to the heavy rotors on the low-flying Hueys, made his brain hurt, and swirling sand stuck like fire ants to his abraded skin. The shouts of the soldiers gathered south of his position let him know they were forming a grid to search the beach and surrounding area. His shoulder ached like a bitch. The bullet had gone through and through, and sand adhered to the bloody wound.

  Well and truly screwed.

  It took everything in him to remain cognizant. His stomach pitched again and his vision blurred. Great. Just frigging great.

  Sucking in a hard-won breath, he considered his options before he passed out again.

  Wearing a bikini and carrying a glass of chilled wine in defense against the lingering heat of the day, Sydney McBride stood to one side of the picture window and widened the gap between the slats of the wood shutters with her fingers to get a better look outside.

  She’d been typing up the day’s notes and contemplating a swim by moonlight when she’d heard the incredibly loud noise of helicopters overhead. She’d raced to switch off the lights in the bungalow so she could watch the action on the beach unobserved.

  The night sky was artificially bright as searchlights strafed the white-capped surface of the water. The illumination also showed at least twenty gun-wielding, uniformed men searching the beach and surrounding area. “Who or what are you guys looking for?” she murmured, intrigued. Clearly someone, or many someones, dangerous.