Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  No. There was no way in hell that Mondelay had been talking to Tim. Decker had heard him on the phone with Tim in the past, and it had been all “Yes, sir,” and “Right away, sir.” “Let me kiss your ass, sir,” not “Fuck you, too, douche bag.”

  Something was rotten in the Gentlemen’s Den—something besides Mondelay’s toxic breath, that is.

  Mondelay wasn’t waiting on any goat head. He was waiting for the go ahead. The son of a bitch was setting Decker up.

  Mondelay began the lengthy process of pushing his huge frame up and out of the seat.

  “You boys aren’t leaving, are you?”

  Decker looked up and directly into the eyes of Tess Bailey, the computer specialist from the Agency support office.

  But okay, no. Truth be told, the first place he looked wasn’t into her eyes.

  She’d moved to D.C. a few years ago, from somewhere in the Midwest. Kansas? A small town, she’d told them once when Nash had asked. Her father was a librarian.

  Funny he should remember that about her right now.

  Because, holy shit, Toto, Tess Bailey didn’t look like she was in small-town Kansas anymore.

  “There’s a lady over at the bar who wants to buy your next round,” Tess told him as she shouted to be heard over the music, as he struggled to drag his eyes up to her face.

  Nash. The fact that she was here and half-naked—no, forget the half-naked part, although, Jesus, that was kind of hard to do when she was standing there half-fricking-naked—had to mean that Nash was here, too. And if Nash was here, that meant Decker was right about Mondelay setting him up, and he was about to be executed. Or at least kidnapped.

  He glanced at Mondelay, at the nervous energy that seemed to surround the big man. No, he’d gotten it right the first time. Mondelay was setting him up to be hit.

  Son of a bitch.

  “She said you were cute,” Tess was shouting at Decker, trying desperately for eye contact. He gave it to her. Mostly. “She’s over there, in the back.” She pointed toward the bar with one arm, using the other to hold her tray up against her chest, which made it a little bit easier to pay attention to what she was saying, despite the fact that it still didn’t make any sense. Cute? Who was in the back of the bar?

  Nash, obviously.

  “So what can I get you?” Tess asked, all cheery smile and adorable freckled nose, and extremely bare breasts beneath that tray she was clutching to herself.

  “We’re on our way out,” Mondelay informed her.

  “Free drinks,” Tess said enticingly. “You should sit back down and stay a while.” She looked pointedly at Deck.

  A message from Nash. “I’ll have another beer,” Decker shouted up at her with a nod of confirmation.

  Mondelay laughed his disbelief. “I thought you wanted to meet Tim.”

  Decker made himself smile up at the man who’d set him up to be killed. Two pals, out making the rounds of the strip clubs. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Well, they’re waiting for us now.”

  “That’s good,” Decker said. “They can wait. We don’t want to look too eager, right?” He looked at Tess again. “Make it imported.”

  Mondelay looked at her, too, narrowing his eyes slightly—a sign that he was probably thinking. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “He’ll have another beer, too.” Decker dismissed Tess, hoping she’d take the hint and disappear, fast.

  Mondelay was in one hell of a hurry to leave, but he was never in too much of a hurry not to harass a waitress when he had the chance. “Whatcha hiding there, honey?”

  “I’ll get those beers.”

  Tess was just a little too late. Mondelay had already caught the bottom of her tray, keeping her from leaving. He tugged on it, pulling it away from her, and she let him, but not because she wanted to. She was still smiling, but she wasn’t a good enough liar to hide her discomfort completely. Decker had to look away, hating the fact that she was subjecting herself to this, for him.

  Yeah, who was he kidding here? She was doing this for James “Diego” Nash.

  “How long’ve you worked here?” Mondelay asked her.

  The volume of the music dropped as the routine ended and the stripper left the stage. There’d be about ten minutes for their ears to recover before the next woman started to dance.

  “Not very long,” Tess said. It was still noisy, but she didn’t have to shout quite so loudly anymore.

  “You need to work on your all-over tan.”

  “Yeah,” she said, cool as could be. “I know.”

  “Let her get those beers,” Decker said.

  “I’d throw her a bang,” Mondelay said as if Tess weren’t even standing there. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Deck had been trying to pretend that a woman who was pole dancing on the other side of the bar had caught his full attention, but now he was forced to look up and appraise Tess, whom he knew had a photo of her two little nieces in a frame on her desk along with a plastic action figure of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He knew it was Buffy because Nash had asked her about it once, and she’d told them it represented both female empowerment and the fact that most people had inner depths not apparent to the casual observer.

  Decker felt a hot rush of anger at Nash, who, no doubt, had been taking his flirtation with Tess to the next level when the call came in that Decker needed assistance. He wasn’t sure what pissed him off more—the fact that Nash had sent Tess in here without her shirt, or that Nash was sleeping with her.

  “Yeah,” he said now to Mondelay, since they’d been talking about the waitresses in these bars like this all week. He gave Tess a smile that he hoped she’d read as an apology for the entire male population. “I would also send her flowers afterward.”

  “Tell me, hon, do women really go for that sentimental bullshit?” Mondelay asked Tess.

  “Nah,” she said. “What we really love is being objectified, used, and cast aside. Why else would I have gotten a job here? I mean, aside from the incredible health plan and the awesome 401(k).”

  Decker laughed as she finally managed to tug her tray free and headed toward the bar.

  He watched her go, aware of the attention she was getting from the other lowlifes in the bar, noting the soft curve of her waist and the way that, although she wasn’t very tall, she carried herself as if she stood head and shoulders above the crowd. He was also aware that it had been a very long time since he’d sent a woman flowers.

  They were in some serious shit here. Whoever set up this ambush had paramilitary training.

  There were too many shooters in position around the building. He couldn’t take them all out.

  Well, he could. The setup was professional, but the shooters were all amateurs. He could take them all out, one by one by one. And like the first two he’d encountered, most of them wouldn’t even hear him coming.

  But Jimmy Nash’s hands were already shaking from clearing that roof. A cigarette would’ve helped, but last time he’d quit, he’d sworn it was for good.

  He washed his hands in the sink in the men’s, trying, through sheer force of will, to make them stop trembling.

  It was that awful picture he had in his head of Decker gunned down in the parking lot that steadied him and made his heart stop hammering damn near out of his chest.

  He’d do anything for Deck.

  They’d been Agency partners longer than most marriages lasted these days. Seven years. Who’d have believed that was possible? Two fucked-up, angry men, one of them—him—accustomed to working alone, first cousin to the devil, and the other a freaking Boy Scout, a former Navy SEAL. . . .

  When Tess had called him tonight and told him what she’d overheard, that HQ essentially knew Decker was being targeted and that they weren’t busting their asses to keep it from happening . . .

  The new Agency director, Doug-the-prick Brendon, hadn’t tried to hide his intense dislike of Jimmy Nash, and therefore Decker by association. But this was going too fucking far.
>
  Jimmy used his wet hands to push his hair back from his face, forcing himself to meet his eyes in the mirror.

  Murderous eyes.

  After he got Decker safely out of here, he was going to hunt down Dougie Brendon, and . . .

  And spend the rest of your life in jail? Jimmy could practically hear Deck’s even voice.

  First they’d have to catch me, he pointed out. And they wouldn’t. He’d made a vow, a long time ago, to do whatever he had to do, so that he’d never get locked up again.

  There are other ways to blow off steam. How many times had Decker said those exact words to him?

  Other ways . . .

  Like Tess Bailey.

  Who was waiting for him in the ladies’ room. Who was unbelievably hot. Who liked him—really liked him. He’d seen it in her eyes. She pretended to have a cold-day-in-July attitude when he flirted with her in the office. But Jimmy saw beyond it, and he knew with just a little more charm and a little bit of well-placed pressure, she’d be giving him a very brightly lit green light. Tonight.

  He’d let Decker handle Doug Brendon.

  Jimmy would handle Tess.

  He smiled at the pun as he opened the men’s room door and went out into the hallway.

  Tonight he would give Tess to himself as a present. Under normal circumstances, he would never get involved with someone from support. But these weren’t normal circumstances.

  His current state of happiness wasn’t completely a result of the adrenaline charging through his system from clearing the roof. When Tess had called, he’d been looking forward to getting naked with a very lovely young tax attorney named Eleanor Gantz.

  Who wasn’t likely to welcome him back anytime in the near future. He’d left her without a word of explanation when he’d heard Decker was in danger.

  Although, truth be told, he couldn’t quite remember what she looked like—his memory was dominated by Tess Bailey in those half-unzipped jeans and nothing more.

  Ouch. Who knew?

  Jimmy pushed open the ladies’ room door, expecting to see her, live and in person. But she wasn’t there. Shit. He checked the stalls—all empty.

  It sobered him fast and he stopped thinking about the latter part of the evening, instead focusing on here and now, on finding Tess.

  He spotted her right away as he went back into the hall. She was standing at the bar. What the Jesus God was she doing there? But then he knew. Decker and Mondelay had ordered drinks.

  And he hadn’t been specific enough in his instructions, assuming “Get your ass in the ladies’ room” meant just that, not “Get your ass in the ladies’ room after you fill their drink order.”

  The biggest problem with her standing at the bar was not the fact that she was bare breasted and surrounded by drunken and leering men.

  No, the biggest problem was that she was surrounded by other bare breasted women—i.e., the real waitstaff of the Gentlemen’s Den. Who were going to wonder what Tess was doing cheating them out of their hard-earned tips.

  And sure enough, as Jimmy watched, an older woman with long golden curls, who looked an awful lot like the figurehead of an old sailing ship—those things had to be implants—tapped Tess on the shoulder.

  He couldn’t possibly hear USS Bitch-on-Wheels from this distance. Her face was at the wrong angle for him to read her lips, but her body language was clear: “Who the hell are you?”

  Time for a little secondary rescue.

  He took off his jacket and tossed it into the corner. No one in this dive so much as owned a suit and his was ruined anyway. He snatched off his tie, too, loosened his collar, and rolled up his sleeves as he pushed his way through the crowd and over to the bar.

  “Oh, here he is now,” Tess was saying to Miss Figurehead as he moved into earshot. She smiled at him, which was distracting as hell, because, like most hetero men, he’d been trained to pick up a strong positive message from the glorious combination of naked breasts and a warm, welcoming smile. He forced himself to focus on what she was saying.

  “I was just telling Crystal about the practical joke—you know,” Tess said, crossing her arms in front of her, “that we’re playing on your cousin?”

  Well, how about that? She didn’t need rescuing. The Figurehead—Crystal—didn’t look like the type to swallow, but she’d done just that with Tess’s story.

  “Honey, give her a little something extra,” Tess told him, “because she lost that tip she would have gotten.”

  Jimmy dug into his pocket for his billfold and pulled out two twenty-dollar bills.

  Tess reached for a third, taking the money and handing it to her brand-new best friend. “Will you order those two beers for me?” she asked Crystal.

  The waitress did better than that—she went back behind the bar to fetch ’em herself.

  Tess turned to Jimmy, who took the opportunity to put his arm around her—she had, after all, called him honey. He was just being a good team player and following her lead, letting that smooth skin slide beneath his fingers.

  “Thanks.” She lowered her voice, turning in closer, using him as a way to hide herself—from the rest of the crowd at least. “May I have my shirt back?”

  “Whoops,” he said. Her shirt was in the pocket of his jacket, which was somewhere on the floor by the restrooms. That is, if someone hadn’t already found it and taken it home.

  ” ‘Whoops?’ “ she said, looking up at him, fire in her eyes.

  As Jimmy stared down at her, she pressed even closer. Which might’ve kept him from looking, but sure as hell sent his other senses into a dance of joy. It was as if they shared the same shirt—she was so soft and warm and alive. He wanted her with a sudden sharpness that triggered an equally powerful realization. It was so strong it nearly made him stagger.

  He didn’t deserve her.

  He had no right even to touch her. Not with these hands.

  “Are you all right?” Tess whispered.

  Caught in a weird time warp, Jimmy looked down into her eyes. They were light brown—a nothing-special color as far as eyes went—but he’d always been drawn to the intelligence and warmth he could see in them. He realized now, in this odd, lingering moment of clarity, that Tess’s eyes were beautiful. She was beautiful.

  An angel come to save him . . .

  “No,” he said, because for that instant he hated the idea of lying to her, and it had been a long time since he’d last felt anywhere close to all right.

  Her eyes widened, and he knew that she’d spotted the blood on his shoe and the hole in his pants—number three on the roof had fought back—and assumed he’d been hurt. In truth, his physical health was the last thing he’d been thinking about.

  But then Crystal put two bottles of beer on the bar, and Tess turned to thank her, and reality snapped back around. And she wasn’t angelic or even beautiful anymore—she was merely Tess Bailey from support, kind of pretty in an interesting way. Her smile was crooked and her nose was rather oddly shaped and her face was too round—she’d probably have jowls before she turned fifty.

  Of course, right now the combination of interesting plus half naked made her look sizzling hot. And since right now was all that ever mattered to Jimmy, he pushed away the last lingering residuals of brightness that had momentarily dazzled him.

  He was going to go home with Tess tonight. She didn’t know it yet, but it was a given. She wasn’t going to save him, though. At least not more than temporarily.

  He was too far gone for that.

  As for what he did or didn’t deserve . . . Real life was nothing like the movies, where villains were punished for their sins, and the righteous triumphed.

  Which was damn lucky for him.

  “Do you need me to get Decker?” When Crystal moved off, Tess’s full attention was back on him—her concern something he could have reached out and held in his hands.

  “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 t
here. “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. . . .