Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “No, I’m fine,” Jimmy said, because she was looking at him as if he’d lost it. Crap, maybe he had for a minute there. “Really. Sorry.” He kissed her, just a quick press of his lips against hers, because he didn’t know how else to erase the worry from her eyes.

  It worked to distract her—God knew it did a similar trick on him.

  He wanted to kiss her again, longer, deeper—a real touch-the-tonsils, full fireworks-inducing event—but he didn’t. He’d save that for later.

  And Decker always said he had no willpower.

  “I’m really fine,” Jimmy said again, and forced a smile to prove it. “It’s just a scrape.”

  He didn’t know that for sure—he hadn’t bothered to stop and look. Still, he’d managed to run back down the stairs. His injury couldn’t be that bad.

  He looked out at the crowd, trying to get a read on who was shit-faced drunk—who would best serve as a catalyst for part two of tonight’s fun.

  “Did you find a way to get Decker out of here?” Tess asked. He could see that he’d managed to confuse her. She was back to folding her arms across her chest.

  “Yeah, I cleared the roof.” He wondered if she had any idea what that meant. He glanced back at the room. There was a man in a green T-shirt who was so tanked his own buddies’ laughter was starting to piss him off.

  But Tess obviously didn’t understand any of what he’d said. “The roof? How . . . ?”

  “I called for some help with our extraction.” Jimmy explained the easy part. “We’ll be flying Deck out of here—a chopper’s coming to pick us up—but first we need a little diversion. Have you ever been in a bar fight?”

  Tess shook her head.

  “Well, you’re about to be. If we get separated, if I can’t make it back over here, keep to the edge of the room. Keep your back to the wall, watch for flying objects, and be ready to duck. Work your way around to that exit sign—the one that’s directly across from the front entrance.” He pointed. “Behind that door are stairs. If you get there first, wait for me or Deck. Don’t open that door without one of us—is that clear?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, and there’s one more important thing,” he said. “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” You may feel a little pressure. . . .

  Tess laughed her amazement.

  “Don’t answer right away,” Nash said. “Give yourself time to think it over.”

  He’d obviously caught her completely off guard. Good.

  “Diego, I—”

  “Heads up,” he interrupted.

  Because here came ol’ Gus, right on cue, searching for Tess, wondering what the fuck was taking so long with their beers, impatient to send Decker to the parking lot where he’d be filled with holes, where he’d gasp out the last breath of his life in the gravel.

  And here came Deck, right behind him, the only real gentleman in this den of bottom-feeders, ready to jump on Gus’s back if he so much as looked cross-eyed at cute little Tess Bailey from support.

  “When I knock over that guy sitting there with the black T-shirt that says ‘Badass,’ ” Nash instructed her, meeting his partner’s gaze from across the room just as Gus spotted him with Tess. Gus reacted, reaching inside of his baseball jacket for either his cell phone or a weapon—it didn’t really matter which because he was so slo-oh-oh, and Deck was already on top of him, “lean over the bar and shout to your girlfriend Crystal that she should call 911, that someone in the crowd has a gun. On your mark, get set . . .”

  Fifteen feet away, Decker brought Gus Mondelay to his knees and then to the floor, which was a damn good thing, because if it had been Nash taking him down, he would have snapped the motherfucker’s neck. “Go!”

  Decker knew the drill.

  After he relieved Mondelay of both his weapon and his cell phone and brought him, with a minimum amount of fuss, to an unconscious state, he was more than ready to vacate the premises as quickly as possible.

  “Green shirt, two o’clock,” Nash shouted, giving Deck a target that was easy to spot, easy to hit.

  After working together for seven years, he and Nash had the fine art of starting a bar fight down to a science. Find two angry drunks sitting fairly close together in the crowd. Knock into them both at the same time, taking them down to the floor, if possible. Come up loud, accusations flying, and start swinging.

  Nash had an uncommon ability to determine a person’s flashpoint in just one glance. Man or woman, he could see ’em, read ’em, and play ’em to his full advantage.

  That was no small skill to have in their line of work.

  True to form, it was only a matter of moments before the fight between Green Shirt and Badass escalated into something even the bouncers couldn’t control. Tables were being knocked over, pitchers and mugs were flying, pool cues were being broken, chairs hefted and thrown.

  It was a solid eight on a scale from one to ten—five being sufficient diversion for an escape.

  Graceful as a dancer, Nash wove his way through the crowd, grabbing Tess Bailey as he headed for what Decker knew to be a fire exit.

  Tess was still without a shirt, a fact that couldn’t have escaped Nash’s attention.

  Instead of heading down and out, they took the stairs up, which was an interesting alternative.

  Nash read his mind and answered the question as they continued to climb. “There’s an army in the parking lot, so I called for a budget buster.”

  That was the Agency nickname for a helicopter extraction. Helos were expensive to keep in the air.

  Nash had been pushing Tess in front of him, but now he stopped her from going out the door and onto the roof. “Get behind me,” he ordered as he handed her his shirt. About time—Decker had been on the verge of offering her his own T-shirt.

  Although Tess didn’t seem to notice that Nash’s chivalrous action had come about ten minutes too late. In fact, she was looking at Nash the way women always looked at Nash, particularly after he gave her a smile and leaned in closer to say, “You were great down there.”

  It was so typical. They weren’t even out of danger and Nash was already setting up the getting laid part of his evening.

  Decker would have laughed, but this was Tess Bailey that his partner was messing with. Not only that, but there was something off about Nash tonight, something squirrelly, something . . . brittle. It was almost as if he were going through the motions, or maybe even playacting what was expected of him.

  Deck could hear the sirens of the local police as they approached, called in to break up the bar fight. They were an additional diversion and added protection. With five cop cars in the parking lot, only the craziest sons of bitches in the Freedom Network would attempt a shot at the Agency helo that was coming to scoop them off the roof.

  “We need to keep our eyes open—it’s been a few minutes since I cleared this area,” Nash told them, and just like that, Deck knew.

  Something ugly had gone down when Nash cleared the roof of any potential shooters.

  Decker would never know what had happened. He and Nash didn’t talk about things like that. Sure, Deck could try to bring it up, but the most he’d hear was “Yeah, I had a little trouble. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”

  Except Decker wasn’t buying that anymore. Yes, without a doubt, his partner could handle any form of violence thrown at him and come out on top, or at least alive. But that was significantly different from the psychological handling that was required in this business. It was how Nash was handling the aftermath of violence that was worrying him.

  “Here we go,” Nash said, firing another smile at Tess. The helo was out there. Deck could hear its thrumming approach. “Stay close.”

  Nash met Deck’s eyes, and Deck nodded, his weapon drawn, too. They kicked open the door.

  There was no one up there, no resistance. They were inside the helo and heading quickly out of the area in a matter of seconds.

  It was impossible to talk over the noise from the
blades, but as Decker watched, Nash leaned in to Tess, speaking directly into her ear.

  She laughed, then moved even closer to say something back to him.

  His turn again, and to whatever he’d said, she had no immediate response. There was a significant amount of eye contact though, particularly when Nash reached out and finished buttoning up that shirt he’d given her.

  Maybe Nash would talk to Tess tonight—tell her the things he couldn’t put into words and say to Decker.

  Or maybe he’d simply use her for sex until the scent of death wasn’t so strong in his nostrils anymore, until he thought he’d “handled” whatever it was that he’d had to do tonight to save Decker’s life.

  Tess was watching Deck from across that helo cabin, and he made himself smile at her, hoping that she was using Nash as completely as Nash was using her, wishing she could read his mind and heed his unspoken warning.

  But maybe she could, because she glanced at Nash, looked back at Decker, and made something of a face and a little shrug. Like, Yeah, I know exactly what I’ve gotten myself into, but really, can you blame me . . . ?”

  No, he couldn’t. He just wished . . .

  Decker wished Nash would take Tess home and talk to her about what had happened out on the roof tonight, instead of nailing her.

  Although he knew damn well that his motives for wishing that weren’t entirely pure.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  AGENCY HQ, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Tess hung up the phone.

  She couldn’t believe it.

  Brian Underwood didn’t even have the balls to call her into his office and tell her the news to her face. He’d left a lousy message on her voice mail.

  “Yeah, Bailey, it’s Brian. Sorry to make this a phone call, but it’s twenty-two hundred”—military speak for ten at night. Underwood had never been in the Armed Forces, but he liked people to think that he had—“and this memo just crossed my desk. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow and I didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle, especially since I know you’ve been waiting on this info for a coupla weeks. Long story short, they turned you down for that field position. But hey, that doesn’t mean you can’t apply again in six months. There’s always next time, right? And in the meantime, your work with support is of vital importance. . . .”

  If they hadn’t accepted her this time, when there were still two additional positions that needed filling ASAP, Tess knew she was never going to leave the support office. She would still be here when she was sixty-five, like Mrs. O’Reilly, four cubicles down. And while she could, indeed, appreciate the vital importance of her work, this was not the job she wanted—and it wasn’t the job she’d been promised when she’d signed on.

  But Tess was never going to be promoted into the field.

  Diego Nash had been right.

  Somehow that made it sting even more. She didn’t want Nash to be right—not about this, not about anything. But most of all, she didn’t want to do so much as even think about him ever again.

  Fool.

  Not him—her. She was the fool. Not for letting him in that night. No, she knew exactly what she was getting—a one-night stand—when he’d asked to come up and she’d said yes.

  She was a fool for thinking they’d actually connected. Somehow, something had happened to her brain after he’d kissed her in her kitchen. God, what a kiss. But sometime after that kiss and before the next morning, when she’d woken up, alone—and moronically surprised that he’d vanished with no word, no note—she’d fallen prey to Stupid Woman syndrome.

  She’d slept with a man who was known as a player. She’d known that about him before she’d unlocked her apartment door. She’d accepted as fact that they were going to have nothing more than a fling.

  And yet somehow she’d ended up thinking that this time it had been different. This time it had been meaningful. This time it had been special. This time he’d still be there in the morning—in fact, he’d be there for thirty-five years of mornings to come.

  Yeah, right.

  Fool.

  And she was an even bigger fool for the way her heart still raced when the phone rang. What did she really think? That after two months of dead silence, Nash was suddenly going to call?

  Flowers had arrived the very next morning. But they were from Deck. The card had a short message, in Decker’s own neat handwriting: “Thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty.” Tess knew his handwriting well. She’d processed many of his requisition sheets over the past few years. And in case she’d had any doubt, he’d signed it, “Lawrence Decker.”

  On Monday, there was an email in her inbox that Decker had sent to the assistant director—a glowing recommendation that Tess be promoted to a field position. He’d written a brief note at the top of the copy he’d forwarded to her. “I’m not sure how much this will help.”

  She’d sent a reply, just a short “Thank you,” but the email had bounced back to her—a sign that the system was freaking out again. It bounced a few days later, too, when she’d tried to resend.

  At that point, she’d actually become scared, thinking that Nash and Decker might be dead. They hadn’t been into the office since that night. No paperwork had come through with their names on it either.

  As the days continued to pass, she’d done some digging and found out to her shock that they’d left the Agency. Resigned. Just like that. They were gone and they weren’t coming back. Like most of their work in the field, their departure had been quiet. Covert.

  Tess had dug farther, actually hacking into accounting, to find out that a rather substantial severance payment had been sent to Nash, care of a small hotel in Ensenada, Mexico, on the Pacific coast.

  He was not just gone, he was gone. As in thousands of miles away.

  And he hadn’t bothered to send her so much as a postcard with an insincere “Wish you were here.”

  That had been a bad day, too. One of her all-time worst ever. Although today was coming pretty close to matching it.

  It wasn’t even nine a.m., but Tess had to get out of here. She grabbed her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. Most of her colleagues were still arriving, but her workday was over.

  No. Correction. Her Agency career was over.

  She took the framed snapshot of her nieces and her piece of the Berlin Wall—too small to be effective as a paperweight but heavy with importance and laden with history—her favorite pen, and her Jean-Luc Picard, Psyduck, and Buffy action figures from her desktop. That was all she wanted—the stupid lemon mints that Nash had liked so much could stay for the next naive recruit.

  She took forty-five seconds to type up a letter, another ten to print it out.

  Brian was already in his office, door closed, hiding from her. His administrative assistant, Carol, tried to intercept, but Tess wasn’t about to be stopped. Unlike Brian, she needed to deliver this message face-to-face.

  She knocked and opened the door without waiting for his go-ahead. He was on the phone, and he looked up at her, the surprise on his broad face morphing instantly into recognition and guilt.

  Yeah, he should feel guilty—making promises that he had no intention of keeping.

  “Hang on, Milt,” he said into the phone, then put his hand over the receiver. “Bailey. You’re upset. Of course. Why don’t you take the day off?” He glanced toward the door, where his assistant was hovering. “Carol, will you check my schedule for this week and see when I have a spare twenty minutes to sit down and talk to Tess?”

  Twenty minutes. This was her life, and he was going to give her twenty minutes of “Try again in six months” later in the week—when she knew for damn sure that right now he and Milton Heinrik were discussing nothing more important than a trade in their fantasy baseball league.

  “I quit,” she said. She handed it to him in writing, too, and walked out the d
oor.

  KAZABEK, KAZBEKISTAN

  Kazbekistani warlord Padsha Bashir had a firm grasp of the English language. He’d honed his language skills while attending college in the States. It seemed almost ludicrous that one of the most feared warlords in this country was an alum of Boston University; a member of the class of ’82.

  Sophia stood impassively as the other women prepared her for this morning’s encounter, dressing her in a gown of sheerest gauze, brushing out the tangled knot of her just-washed hair. She didn’t bother to resist the dabs of perfume placed between her breasts and along her throat. She was saving her strength for the nightmare that was coming.