Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She did know that.

  “And if you want to have a contest to see who drives who crazy first,” Nash continued, “well, congratulations, you’re already winning.” He stood up. “Do you have other clothes with you? Because you can’t wear that to K-stan.”

  “Yes, I know. These are interview clothes. I have a suitcase in the rental car.”

  “You can’t take a suitcase to Kazbekistan.”

  “Yes, I know that, too. I just wasn’t sure how many changes of clothing to bring, so—”

  “Get ready to smell bad,” he told her. “Figure that your entire wardrobe’s got to fit in that shoulder bag you’re carrying. And don’t overload it, because you’ll be carrying my bag, too.”

  Tess laughed. Of all the . . . “Look, Nash—”

  “You should get used to calling me James.”

  “James,” she repeated. “I know that you’re trying to frighten me off, but it’s not working. You may not know my brand of toothpaste or my favorite movie, but haven’t you caught on, maybe even just a little bit, that I don’t scare easily?”

  “Colgate regular and it’s probably a toss-up between Moulin Rouge, The Philadelphia Story, and Casablanca,” he reported, smiling briefly at the expression of surprise that she couldn’t keep from her face. “I was in your apartment, remember?”

  Yeah, like she’d ever forget. “Snooping among my DVDs?”

  “No, just keeping my eyes open.”

  “While you snooped among my DVDs.” After she’d finally fallen asleep, he must’ve stopped to look while he was on his way out the door, because she’d been with him every other moment and they’d been nowhere near her entertainment center. Funny, she would have thought he would have been in an enormous hurry to escape before she awoke. Instead he’d stopped to look at her things.

  “I meant what I said about packing light,” Nash told her now. “You really are going to be carrying my bag.”

  “Isn’t that overdoing it a little in terms of following Kazbekistani customs?”

  He lifted the bottle she’d tossed to him, toasting her before he finished off the last of it. “I’ll be carrying our water.”

  Ah. Bottles of water would definitely be much heavier than clothing.

  “Go and get your suitcase, Mrs. Nash,” he said. “I’ll help you figure out what to bring.”

  Mrs. Nash.

  Hearing that from his lips was just too weird.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Decker watched Nash watch Tess Bailey browsing in the airport bookstore.

  Nash looked up, feeling Deck’s gaze.

  Decker shook his head in disgust, and Nash played dumb. “What?”

  It was only because he asked that Decker answered. “You’re an asshole. Two months—and you didn’t call her once. And now you get to pretend to be her adoring husband?”

  Nash was going to share a room with Tess, which by nature would generate intimacy. Add in the adrenaline inherent in a dangerous mission, plus the romance of being in an ancient, foreign city . . .

  “It’s a tough job,” Nash said, trying to turn it into a joke, “but someone’s got to do it.”

  “Yeah, well, do more than pretend, and I’ll beat you until you bleed.”

  Nash looked at him.

  “Yes,” Decker said. “I am serious.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Nash said. “I was just kidding. I’m not going to take advantage of her. I mean, not that she’d let me.” He looked over at Tess. “Although, holy Mother of God, I forgot just how hot she was.”

  Decker shook his head. Hot. Tess Bailey was beautiful and brilliant. She was funny, and enthusiastic, and brave. She was so much more than merely hot.

  And Nash had walked—no, run—away from her.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Decker asked.

  Nash met his gaze only briefly. It was hard to tell if that was because he was uncomfortable with the direction their conversation was going—they didn’t talk like this, not about things that mattered—or if it was because he couldn’t keep his eyes off Tess. “That was a rhetorical question, right? I mean, you don’t want me to make a list or anything. . . .”

  “I thought you didn’t mess with women who worked support.” Decker knew this was senseless. Talking about it wouldn’t change what had happened.

  “I didn’t,” Nash said. “I mean, I never did before. It was just . . . It was that one crazy night.”

  Wait a minute. “One night?”

  “Yeah.”

  Decker could feel his blood pressure rising. “You had a one-night stand. With Tess Bailey.” Fuck. He’d thought Nash’s fling with Tess had been going on for a while. “That night at the Den.”

  “Yeah,” Nash said. “I mean, well . . . You saw her.”

  “Yes,” Decker said. “Yes, I did.”

  “How could I say no?”

  Jesus, Nash was practically drooling as he watched Tess.

  Decker got right up in his face, but he kept his voice low. “I meant what I said before, douche bag. You so much as touch her again, and I will beat the living shit out of you.”

  Nash was amused. “Shit, Deck, you sound like I slept with your girlfriend.” He stopped laughing and actually looked shocked. He did a double take, looking from Deck to Tess and back in disbelief. “Did I sleep with your girlfriend?”

  Okay, now they’d managed to dive headfirst into territory Decker didn’t want explored. “No. Forget it, all right?”

  He turned away, and Nash let him go. But then he followed. “I swear to God, I didn’t know.”

  Decker gave up. “Look, she wasn’t my girlfriend. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s never going to be my girlfriend.”

  “She could be.”

  “No,” Deck said. “Even if . . .” He laughed his disgust. “I’m her team leader now.”

  “To hell with that.”

  Decker just shook his head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Life goes on,” Decker said.

  Nash was back to watching Tess. He sighed. “Shit.”

  “Tom Paoletti gave me an additional job to do while we’re in Kazabek,” Decker told him. “He asked me not to mention the details to anyone else—including you.” That got Nash’s full attention.

  “That figures,” he said. “I could tell he didn’t really like me.”

  “Give him time,” Decker said. “He’s naturally got some questions about you.”

  “So that’s what the closed door was about. This secondary assignment, and him asking you questions—like are you sure you can trust me?” Nash’s laughter sounded remarkably real. If Decker didn’t know him so well, he would have been certain that Nash didn’t give a damn.

  But Deck knew that it bothered him. Nash pretended that he found it all amusing, but he was particularly sensitive to some of the nastier rumors that circulated about him.

  “Yeah,” Decker said. “I told him that as long as we paid you enough, you wouldn’t flip to the other side.”

  “Screw you!” This time Nash’s laughter was real.

  Decker smiled. In truth, Tom hadn’t asked the trust question that everyone usually always asked about Nash. He hadn’t had to—he was a smart man who knew he’d gotten enough of an answer when Deck had told him he didn’t keep secrets from Nash, that anything Tom told Decker would find its way to Nash’s ears, no exception.

  Well, okay. Maybe Deck would keep it secret if Tom wanted to throw Nash a surprise birthday party. But probably not, because Nash hated being surprised.

  So if Tom didn’t like that, well, Deck wished him luck with the new company and this mission, but . . .

  Tom had told him to chill out and sit back down.

  “He asked me to look up a guy named Dimitri Ghaffari,” Decker told Nash now. “See if he and his American partner are good candidates for recruitment to Tom’s team. We don’t have a name for the partner—in fact that could be something Ghaffari made up to build his reputation. It rings of
urban legend: Ghaffari and his rich American backer.

  “Tom doesn’t know much about him, but Ghaffari’s name has come up often enough over the past few years. Apparently he did import/export out of a home base in Kazabek. Business has tanked since the K-stani government deteriorated.”

  The warlords who were running most of the country these days wanted to keep the West out, and people like Ghaffari had made a living bringing it in.

  Ghaffari could well be looking for work, and his loyalties no doubt would be on the side of those who supported capitalism.

  “He might’ve been killed in the quake,” Nash pointed out.

  “Yeah.”

  “Everyone we know in Kazabek might’ve been killed in the quake.”

  “Yeah.” That was a sobering thought.

  “This assignment already blows,” Nash said.

  “Yeah,” Decker agreed. But if that laptop was real, and there was even the slimmest chance that it was somewhere in the rubble, with even just the smallest portion of its hard drive intact . . .

  “You have any nickels on you?” Nash asked. “We’re flying in to Ikrimah, and, well, I usually have enough time to pick up a few rolls of nickels from the bank.”

  Decker dug through his pockets. He had only a few mixed in with the pennies and dimes. He gave them to Nash. “Maybe the bookstore has an extra roll.”

  “Ah.” Nash managed to smile. “Good idea.” He looked over at Tess again, but then caught Decker watching him. “I honest to God didn’t know about . . .” He shook his head.

  “There was nothing to know,” Decker said, and went to help Tess find a book to read on the flight.

  KAZABEK, KAZBEKISTAN

  The first aftershock had caught her unprepared. Sophia had forgotten how intense it could be, much like another earthquake itself.

  After escaping Padsha Bashir’s palace, she’d found her way to the old Hotel Français, near City Center, where she had lived with her parents when she was barely ten years old, an entire lifetime ago. The hotel had been crumbling and in ill-repair even then, and she’d heard two months back—before she’d foolishly accepted Bashir’s invitation to that ill-fated luncheon where Dimitri had been served his final meal—that the Français had shut its doors. The old wreck had been sold and was scheduled to be either restored or demolished in the very near future.

  But Sophia had lived in Kazabek for long enough to know that the very near future could be any time between the end of the year and the end of the decade. It wasn’t likely to be sooner, because, in K-stan, changes of that magnitude took time.

  And sure enough, the building was still standing. Part of the roof had decayed, but as she made a slow circuit of the rambling place, she could see that the walls weren’t cracked—at least no more than they had been before.

  The basement door was locked, but locks had never been a challenge for her. She opened it without doing any damage. No one would know she’d gone inside.

  The entire hotel was empty, all of the furnishings and wall hangings missing, and all the towels and the maids’ uniforms that had lined the little corridor by the laundry room gone.

  On the first floor, outside what had once been a restaurant, she found the ladies’ washroom. Comprised of two small rooms, one a former sitting area, now empty, the other filled with sinks and stalls, it had a door that locked, a cool tile floor, and most important, windows way up high on the interior wall, looking out over the center courtyard. If she burned a candle in there at night, the light wouldn’t be seen from the street.

  If she had a candle.

  The water, amazingly, still worked. It came, with a gush of rust and slime, from the faucet of one of a row of sinks that lined one mirrored wall.

  Sophia let it go until it ran clear and then she drank. She washed using the soap still in the glass globes—apparently not everything had been taken from the hotel. The soap was thick and congealing from age and evaporation, but she used it to wash not just her torn and bleeding feet and the most recent cuts on her arm where Bashir had reminded her of the sharpness of his sword, but all of her. Everywhere he or one of his horrible friends ever touched.

  She even washed her hair, wanting to be rid of the perfumed scent of the palace.

  She had virtually nothing but the nearly transparent white gown and the sheet—she washed those, too—that she’d wrapped herself in after killing Bashir. No real clothes, no passport, no papers, no money, no food. No friends who would be willing to help her.

  Because Bashir’s nephews would seek revenge. The entire city would be searching for her, eager for the reward. It would be a big reward—the kind that could turn her friends into her worst enemies. With her blond hair, she had to be careful. She’d be easy for anyone to spot.

  After checking that the door was locked, she wrapped herself in that wet sheet and lay down on the tile floor, exhausted and needing to sleep.

  And, for the first time in months, able to sleep.

  She may have had nothing, but she had water and she had her freedom.

  Mere hours ago she’d been little more than a prisoner, a slave to a man she despised. Compared to that, she was now far richer than her wildest dreams.

  WORLD AIRLINES FLIGHT 576, SAN DIEGO TO HONG KONG

  Tess looked up from her book to see the flight attendant standing in the aisle of the plane with a tray of champagne flutes.

  The only seats available at such short notice on this intercontinental flight had been in first class. What a shame.

  Tess smiled and shook her head—no thanks—and, ignoring the murmur of voices around her, returned her attention to her book.

  It was a somewhat anemic spy thriller that had been written during the Cold War. The hero was a James Bond type who reminded her a little of Jimmy Nash. He was tall, handsome, and extremely skilled, clever with a dry wit. But like most fictional secret agents, this character never, ever whined and complained to his support staff.

  It was remarkable how often authors left out those particular moments—the scenes where the superagent comes striding into the office, scowling at everyone and demanding to be told why no one had let him know before he went to Turkey that his credit card had expired last week.

  Yeah, Tess would’ve liked to read the scene where Miss Moneypenny pulls the e-memo titled “See Me NOW About Your Credit Card’s Impending Expiration” from James’s email box, prints it out, and hands it to him, then tartly asks him what more he would like her to do to keep him informed, especially when he’s too busy wining and dining some babe in a black leather catsuit to read his blasted email.

  She looked up as Nash returned from the bathroom and, with a smile, slipped past her into the window seat. The difference between no Nash and Nash was like night and day, and she had to force her gaze back to the open pages of her book. Reading with him sitting beside her was a challenge. The man had an enormous presence.

  He could a fill an entire room—let alone the small first-class cabin of a commercial airliner—with just a smile.

  It was similar to the way he’d filled the car that night, as he’d driven her home.

  She’d left her own car in the parking lot at the Gentlemen’s Den, and wouldn’t be able to pick it up until morning. That bar fight Decker and Nash had started had escalated, and the entire street was blocked with police and emergency vehicles.

  The helicopter that scooped them from the roof of the strip club had brought them to Agency headquarters, where Nash had quickly claimed the keys to the last of the loaner cars in the lot.

  “Come on, I’ll give you a lift,” he’d told her.

  But Tess had hesitated before climbing in. “Don’t you have, like, other things to do?” she’d asked. “Debriefings . . . ?” Didn’t Decker need him?

  But Nash had smiled his best smile. And the combination of that smile plus the white tank-style undershirt—she still had on his dress shirt—that hugged his chest and showed off his muscular shoulders and arms actually made her heart skip a be
at. Her response to him had been both tacky and clichéd, but true.

  So she’d gotten into the car. Accepted the ride. With her eyes wide open.

  Tess couldn’t remember what they’d talked about on the way to her apartment. Nash was good at keeping a conversation going, though, at keeping it light and easy.

  There had actually been a parking space open in front of her building. Was it possible he’d arranged that, too? Or maybe he was just born lucky. He’d parallel parked the way he did everything—with confidence and skill.

  “I’ll walk you up.” He didn’t ask, he told her. Tess looked at him, and he smiled very slightly. “That way you can give me back my shirt.”

  She didn’t want or need any excuse to let him come up.

  But she just smiled back at him as they got out of the car and went up the steps, as she unlocked her apartment door and led him inside.

  “Can I get you something besides your shirt?” she asked, unfastening the buttons as she went into the kitchen, starting at the bottom and working her way up. “Beer, soda . . . ?” Condom?

  Was she really going to do this?

  “A beer would be great.” Nash, tall, dark, and almost unbelievably gorgeous, followed her.

  Yes, she was.

  The apartment’s last tenants had redone the kitchen with a cow motif gone mad, and he clashed with the kitschy wallpaper and stenciled cabinets. It was like seeing James Bond in bed with the cast from Oklahoma!

  “Cute,” he said as he looked around him.

  “Yeah, right,” she said, reaching into the refrigerator for two bottles of beer. “Try living with it.” She twisted off the tops. “I eat out a lot.”

  Not quite the truth, unless out could be defined as the takeout she ate at her desk at work, eyes on her computer screen.

  Still, as far as comparisons went, she was closer to Bond than Aunt Eller. And after she handed him one of the beers, she proved it.

  Because she also handed him his shirt, taking him completely by surprise for the second time that night.

  Her audacity made her own pulse race, but really, they both knew damn well why he’d come upstairs. And if she’d had any doubts at all, they were erased by the look that was now in his eyes, and by his smile.