Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  With him.

  “Not in here,” Nash said now. “Can we step outside?”

  “One second,” Decker said. He had to cross the St. James Hospital off the list. That was kind of funny. St. James.

  Tess had printed out a list of every hospital and health clinic in Kazabek and the immediate suburbs, and he was marking each of them on the map. If he, Dave, and Nash each visited two per day, checking to see if they’d made a delivery of the medical equipment Sayid had needed, they’d be here for at least another week and a half.

  And that was only this list.

  Across the room, Dave had a similar list of hospitals and clinics in all the outlying suburbs and villages within a few dozen miles.

  Tess was now upstairs, on her computer, attempting to get a message out to Tom Paoletti. She and Nash had gone out early and replaced their sat-dish, but this new system wasn’t running as well as the old one had. Which was one of those incredible hindsight revelations. Deck hadn’t realized how well their communication system had been running—until it was gone.

  Tess was trying to send an email request for additional autopsy information on Sayid. There had been no mention of a medical condition—a blood disorder or other chronic disease—in the original autopsy report. If the client still had access to Sayid’s body, she’d told Decker, perhaps they could run additional tests, find out exactly what ailment he’d had. With that info, they would then know if his need for medical care was constant or merely occasional—an important piece of the puzzle.

  It would be nice to know if they were futilely searching for a delivery that had never been made.

  Decker followed Nash out into the yard. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  “Make the word plural,” Nash said. He laughed at Decker’s eye roll. “Let’s start with the easiest first. Sophia.”

  Uh-oh.

  “She mentioned that you got the fifty K needed to get her out of the country.”

  Decker nodded. “Yeah.” The morning was already hot, last night’s wind a thing of the past. Too bad—he could use a breeze right about now.

  Nash crossed his arms. “I thought Paoletti said the client wouldn’t cough it up.”

  “The money’s mine,” Deck said, telling him what he obviously already knew.

  Nash was silent.

  “What’s next?” Deck asked.

  Nash finally spoke. “You don’t really think she’s going to pay you back, do you?”

  “She says she will.”

  “Oh, well, then, if she says so . . .”

  “What’s the problem, Nash? It’s not your money.”

  The muscle in the side of Nash’s jaw was jumping. “Are you prepared to lose it? Because you’re going to lose it all.”

  “Yeah,” Decker told him. “Yes, I’m prepared to lose it all. Is that all right with you? What’s next?”

  “Christ, Larry . . .”

  “What’s next?”

  “Are you screwing her?” Nash asked.

  Deck just looked at him.

  “I don’t particularly like her,” Nash told him—no big surprise. “I certainly don’t trust her. She’s spent at least two months using sex to stay alive, and suddenly you’re just giving her a huge amount of money? I’m sorry, sir, but it’s a legitimate question. As XO of this team— What the fuck am I doing as any team’s XO? But here I am, and hey, what do you know? I have the right to question any team member—any—who appears to have ‘fallen under the influence of an outsider with unknown allegiances.’ And fuck you for bringing me to a place in my life where I’m forced to quote regulations from a rule book.”

  Poor Nash. He was actually right.

  “No, I am not engaged in any inappropriate activity whatsoever with Sophia,” Decker answered. “What’s next?”

  “So is this guilt talking?” Nash wouldn’t let it drop. “Or was this just a fifty-thousand-dollar blow job? No wonder you have sex only once every decade.” He laughed—he had this bad habit of thinking that he was the funniest man alive. “Some men need Viagra to have sex more often. You need an economics class—a refresher course in supply and demand. You have a serious decimal point problem, my friend. You need to move it about three zeroes to the left. These days, fifty bucks and/or a nice dinner covers most kinds of fellatio-induced guilt.”

  “What’s. Next.”

  Nash didn’t notice that Decker was getting pissed. He was too busy laughing at his own pathetic joke.

  “And on we move to problem number two,” Nash said. “Also a woman. What a coincidence.”

  Decker knew what was coming and closed his eyes. Thank the Lord, Nash had finally given in.

  Nash laughed softly. “Shit. This is harder than I thought it would be.”

  “Look,” Decker said. “I know what you’re trying to tell me, and it’s all right—”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s all right with me,” Decker specified.

  “Well, shit,” Nash said again. “It shouldn’t be. You like this girl.”

  “Tess is a woman,” Deck pointed out. “And yeah, I like her. She’s terrific. She’s smart and she’s funny and loyal and sweet . . . and sexy as hell. I’m genuinely happy for you.” And it was true, he really was.

  So much so that he gave Nash a hug.

  Nash stared at him as if he’d lost it. Maybe he had.

  “Congratulations,” Deck said, a little embarrassed.

  And still his partner just stood there.

  “This is a woman you could spend your life with.” Decker hoped Nash was thinking long term.

  “Who are you? Jesus?” Nash backed away from Deck. “You don’t freaking hug me and say congratulations! You punch me in the face and curse me out and . . . listen to what you’re saying! Listen to the way you talk about her—you’re in love with her! This is a woman you could spend your life with! Not me. I’m not looking for someone to spend my life with. Damn it, Deck, you should be mad at me for stealing her out from under you, not hugging me. And when the fuck did we start hugging, anyway?”

  “You didn’t steal her,” Decker said.

  “Yes, I did. I was with her, and I wanted her, so I took her. I’m a total asshole,” Nash said. “I knew how you felt about her, and I still couldn’t keep my hands to myself.”

  What was it Nash had said before about guilt talking? “If you want,” Decker said, “you could give me fifty thousand dollars. It does wonders, you know, in relieving feelings of guilt.”

  Nash stared at him. “You’re joking,” he said. “I’m standing here, trying to have a serious conversation about some extremely serious shit, and you’re joking.”

  “We have work to do,” Decker reminded him. He started back inside. “Was there anything else?”

  “Yeah, you got any extra condoms? I’m almost out. Three last night and one this morning—the woman sure loves to fuck.”

  Deck stopped short and turned back to look at Nash. What the hell? It was as if Nash were trying to make him angry, as if he were disappointed in Decker’s reaction to his earth-shattering news.

  Except Decker had seen the way Tess looked at Nash. The fact that they were involved not only was not a surprise, it was a relief. He’d been hoping it would happen, and his earth hadn’t come anywhere close to shattering when it had.

  Nash, however, looked as if he were standing on shaky ground. He managed to look both defiant and embarrassed. And he glanced around them to make sure no one else had overheard that crude and very personal statement he’d made about Tess.

  And here was an interesting thought. Did Nash actually want Decker to kick his ass?

  Would it make him feel better, less terrified and out of control perhaps, if Decker rang his bell a few times and knocked him to the ground?

  Maybe just the threat of violence would do the trick. Deck was tired—it had been one hell of a long night. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Was it yesterday or the day before?

  “You better be t
reating this woman with the respect that she deserves,” Deck said, his voice as hard as the look he gave Nash.

  Nash said nothing. He just stood there, working hard—from the look of him—on grinding his teeth into little stubs.

  So Deck gave him some more of the same. “Not just when you’re with her, but all the time,” he continued. He’d always hated locker-room talk, and Nash knew it—which made this whole thing even weirder. “Or I’ll kick your ass.”

  “How could she want me when she could have you?” Nash shook his head, his eyes haunted. “I can’t figure that out.”

  This was . . . unique. Them talking like this. Decker had to wonder if Nash found it as strange and wonderful as he did.

  Or just plain terrifying.

  And was Nash really serious? Because from Deck’s point of view, Nash got it completely backwards. How could she want Deck when she could have Nash?

  Either way . . .

  “It doesn’t have to make sense,” Decker said to his friend. “You just . . . roll with it, and thank God for your good fortune.”

  “What if . . . ,” Nash started. He couldn’t seem to look Decker in the eye anymore. “What if I don’t want her?” he finally said. “You know, the same way she wants me? What if I just can’t resist the sex?”

  Decker wanted to cry for his friend. He wanted to urge him not to run away from Tess just because he was scared of everything he was feeling. But to acknowledge both of those things—that Nash was scared, that he had feelings . . .

  He couldn’t do it.

  “Then you better tell her that now,” Deck said instead. “Right? Don’t make her think you’re on the same page and then ditch her after the assignment’s over.”

  That muscle jumped in Nash’s jaw again. “It’s impossible to know what the future will bring.”

  Decker got in his face. “It’ll bring some serious trouble if you string her along and then ditch her after this assignment is over. Do you hear me?”

  Nash didn’t respond. Not to that, anyway. He just said, “Condoms?”

  “There’s a small supply in the medical kit, in the kitchen,” Decker told him before going back into the barn. “You’re going to have to ration.”

  Tess and Nash were late to the meeting.

  Nash had gone up to get her, and it took them at least fifteen minutes to find their way downstairs and over to the barn.

  Tess’s cheeks turned pink when she realized they were all there and waiting—Decker, Dave, and even Sophia.

  “Sorry,” Tess said. “I was, um, researching kidney failure.”

  Sure she was.

  She looked directly at Sophia. “It suddenly occurred to me that what you might’ve seen in Sayid’s room was a dialyzer—a tall machine, kind of narrow, with tubes coming in and going out?”

  Sophia glanced at Decker. She’d just had this exact conversation with him.

  “Understandably, Sophia didn’t spend much time looking at it,” he answered for her.

  “It was some kind of medical machine,” she told Tess, “and yes, it was tall, but other than that . . .” She shrugged.

  Tess handed Deck a printout from her computer. “I’d bet the farm that three times a week Sayid needed something called—”

  “Hemodialysis,” he finished for her. “You’d win that bet. I just spoke to Tom Paoletti, who, long story short, found out that the autopsy team was having a deadline crisis, so they rushed the report—including only information about the injuries that pertained to Sayid’s death. The fact that he had something called a”—he consulted a piece of paper upon which he’d handwritten some notes—“PTFE graft in his arm—access for hemodialysis. It was considered unimportant.” Deck laughed his disgust. “File that under information we could have used a week ago. Which reminds me,” he interrupted himself. “Paoletti let me know that Vinh Murphy’s doing well.”

  “Thank God,” Tess breathed, the only one of them brave enough to give voice to her relief. She turned to look up at Nash, who was standing close enough to touch her—just a hand briefly on her back—without anyone but Sophia noticing.

  “He’s been medevaced all the way to Germany,” Decker told them, “and he’s already had the first round of surgery on his leg. Commander Paoletti also gave me a heads-up—Murph’s name is going to be released on a list of Americans killed from that car bomb, so if you happen to catch the news and hear he’s dead, don’t get upset. It’s being done to protect the helo crew and the hospital staff who helped smuggle him out.”

  “Angelina’s been told he’s all right, hasn’t she?” Tess asked.

  “I’m sure Tom’s taken care of that,” Decker said. “But when I talk to him again, I’ll double-check.”

  “Any news on who’s behind the car bomb?” Tess asked.

  “GIK extremists,” Dave answered. “There’s lots of talk on the streets—rumors that there’ll be more attacks. We need to keep our eyes open when we’re out there, and stay away from potential targets.”

  “Like hospitals?” Nash asked.

  Decker handed a piece of paper to Nash and to Dave. Sophia leaned closer and saw that it was a list of names and addresses of hospitals. “Here’s what we need to look for,” he started, but Tess interrupted him.

  “Where’s mine?” she asked.

  Decker glanced at Nash. “We decided the risks of sending you out alone were too—”

  “We decided?” she said.

  “I decided,” he told her, taking the bullet for Nash, whose idea it clearly had been. “The police have been known to keep tabs on people who’ve been in custody. If you were seen going from hospital to hospital asking questions about dialysis equipment, you could put this entire mission in jeopardy.”

  Tess backed down. What could she say to that? But it was clear from the look she gave Nash that he was going to hear more about this later.

  “Let’s get to it,” Decker said.

  It was well after four a.m. when Jimmy returned. Tess was still up, obviously waiting for him, and he was so overwhelmingly glad about that, he almost turned around and ran right back down the stairs.

  Instead he closed the door behind him and carried the bucket of water he’d brought up from the kitchen into the bathroom.

  He heard the click as she closed her computer. “How did it go?”

  As he came back out of the bathroom, he was sure he let nothing show on his face, but somehow, just by looking at him, she knew there’d been trouble. She scrambled to her feet. “What happened?”

  It seemed pointless to lie or even to soften it. “I was set up. My contact—Leo—figured out that it was Sophia Ghaffari I wanted smuggled across the border. I guess his plan was to grab me and, uh, convince me to tell them where she was hiding.” That part he did soften by not using the T-word—torture. No point in upsetting her—Deck hadn’t let it get that far.

  Tess was at his side instantly. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” Jimmy met her eyes and knew she was remembering that that was what she’d told him, while sitting in a K-stani prison. He corrected himself. “I’m not hurt. Deck came in, got me out of there.”

  The lump on the back of his head where they hit him didn’t show—she didn’t have to know about that. But he’d scraped the heel of his right hand when he’d fallen, and she found that now.

  “You need to clean this out,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m going to. I brought up some water.”

  “Any other ‘dings’?” she asked, looking at him hard.

  “I don’t think so.” He allowed himself only the briefest of embraces before he pulled away from her. She was warm and soft and he knew that all he had to do was kiss her and she’d fall back with him onto the bed. He desperately wanted to take advantage of this adrenaline-induced hard-on he was still packing, but right now he smelled bad.

  Cold sweat always made him stink.

  Of course, he hadn’t started to sweat until he and Deck were on their way back here. It wasn’t unt
il he started thinking about how bad it would be if one of Leo’s men managed to follow them to Rivka’s that he got good and scared. If he and Decker let that happen, Sophia wouldn’t be the only one in danger.

  Tess would be at risk, too.

  Someone coming in to grab up Sophia might take Tess instead. Or they might simply take both women to Padsha Bashir, not knowing or even caring which one would win them that hefty reward.