Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He closed his eyes and swore softly. Sat down again, this time farther away from her. Sighed. Glanced at her, but then looked at the floor as he said, “The truth is, Tess, that I don’t want to sleep with you. I really, really don’t.”

  Forget transparent. Could he be any more emphatic with that really?

  “Well. Thanks for clearing that up.” Please, please, don’t let her start to cry. Dead children were one thing, and certainly worthy of tears, but harsh truths from the mouths of idiots she’d slept with were another thing entirely. “If you don’t mind, I have work I need to do . . . ?”

  He swore again. Turned to look at her. She now was the one who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Look, I’m sorry if I—”

  “Yeah, I get it,” she cut him off. “You’re worried about your problematic tendency for premature ejaculation, and I’m—” Why, why, why did she say that? It was downright cruel and not even truthful. He was being honest and forthright when he’d said he didn’t want to sleep with her again, and she, in return, was being a flaming attack-bitch. “I’m such a jerk.”

  Nash was staring at the floor again, the muscle jumping in the side of his jaw.

  “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean that,” she continued. And wasn’t this just perfect. Somehow she’d managed to orchestrate this humiliation-fest so that she was forced to apologize to him about that, too.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. He looked up at her. “And even if you did, it’s okay. Have at me, please, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  There was silence as they sat there, just looking at one other.

  They both spoke, then, at once.

  Tess said, “We can talk about this for hours and it’s not going to—” as Nash told her, “I just want you to know that—” They both stopped.

  “What?” she said, wanting nothing more than for him to leave and knowing that he wasn’t going anywhere until they had this conversation. “If I’m pregnant, then what? Let’s talk about this. Let’s run the worst-case scenario. I’m pregnant. What happens then, James?”

  He stared at her.

  “Are you going to marry me?”

  She’d asked it as a bad joke, but he answered as if she were serious. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. Yeah. If that’s what you want.”

  What? Tess laughed her disbelief. “Yeah, right. What I want is for us to get married and live happily ever after. Happily, except for the fact that you really, really don’t want to sleep with me. Yeah, that’s my idea of a dream relationship. God.”

  He rubbed his forehead. No doubt she was giving him one hell of a headache. Well, join the club. She had a whopper of her own.

  She sighed. “Look, I’m sorry—”

  “Your apology isn’t necessary,” he said, adding when she opened her mouth, “but accepted.” He stood up. “Rivka and Guldana are intending to throw a wedding dinner for us. Probably Friday night.”

  Oh, bloody terrific. Just what Tess wanted—a party to celebrate her relationship with Jimmy Nash. God help her . . . “Please try to talk them out of it.”

  “I did,” he said. “Try, I mean. There’s no, um . . . Look, they need something to celebrate right now, and, well, sorry, but we’re it.”

  Oh, joy. “Is Decker back yet?” she asked.

  For the briefest of moments, Jimmy actually looked startled. “Oh, shit,” he said.

  And Tess knew what he was thinking. Last night, he’d been trying to set Tess up with Decker. And this morning, he’d . . . They’d . . . “Look, it’s not like anything really happened,” she said.

  He gave her a incredulous look. “Yeah, except for the part where we had sex.”

  “We didn’t have sex!” she said scornfully, even though she knew that by most sane definitions, they had. “We accidentally bumped into each other,” she added, knowing how completely stupid she sounded. “Intimately.”

  Nash laughed at that. “Yeah, it was a real ‘whoops’ moment.”

  “It was. It didn’t mean anything,” she persisted. “It wasn’t real.”

  “It was real enough so that you might be pregnant.”

  Round and round and round they went. “Well, I’m not, so just, God, stop with that, will you?”

  “Right. Great.” Nash shook his head as he walked out of the room, turning to look back at her from the doorway. “So. That happened.”

  He closed the door behind him, finally leaving her in peace.

  Or as close to peace as she was likely to get until they boarded that airplane back home to the States.

  Sophia closed her eyes as the American crossed to the sinks. Her head was ringing and her side was on fire—she’d caught one of those pipes in the ribs.

  She heard him turn on the water, heard him splashing, heard the water go off.

  The pain was nothing compared to the fear.

  She was dead, she was dead, she was dead.

  She’d failed to kill him, and now he was going to kill her.

  Thy will be done.

  The words echoed in her head even though she hadn’t been to church since she was fifteen. Not since she’d decided enough was enough—that her parents’ so-called spiritual quest was little more than a combination of a traveling jones and an opium addiction.

  Sophia wondered for the first time in years where Cleo and Paul were now, if they were even still alive. If they’d ever even noticed that they’d left her behind in Kathmandu.

  She wondered if it would hurt—a bullet to the brain—or if there would suddenly just be nothing.

  Nothing.

  She tried to tell herself that the nothing would probably be better than this fear—but she feared the nothing.

  Still, it didn’t come. Her heart still beat. She still breathed, drawing in one ragged, painful breath after another.

  Something cold hit her leg, and she flinched. But when she opened her eyes, she saw that the American had wet a cloth and tossed it onto her lap.

  He spoke, his voice as chilly as that rag. “Wipe your face.”

  And, as Sophia did just that, she knew. If it was his intention to kill her here and now, he would have already done so.

  No. She looked up at him, into eyes that were flat and empty of all compassion. She was living her worst nightmare. She was going to be dragged to Bashir’s palace and beheaded.

  She wouldn’t go.

  When he came closer, she would grab for the gun—her gun—that he’d tucked so casually into the top of his pants. She knew she had no prayer of getting it away from him. But in the struggle, he would shoot her.

  She was not going back.

  She was not going back.

  As she watched, heart pounding, the American kept his distance as he dug something out of his pocket. A leather wallet. He opened it.

  And he tossed a bill—U.S. currency—at her. It fluttered onto the floor and Abraham Lincoln stared up at her. Five dollars.

  “You completely blew your chance for a tip,” he told her flatly. “Oh, and if you happen to see Dimitri or his partner, tell ’em I’m looking for ’em.”

  And he walked out the door.

  Khalid had just fallen asleep, curled in a ball on the floor near Murphy, when Decker strolled into the kitchen.

  Jimmy grabbed the man and dragged him out into the yard, lowering his voice so it wouldn’t carry inside. “About time you got back here.”

  Deck shook him off. “I’m not that late.”

  “Yeah, but you are late. You’re never late. You should have called.” As he said it, Jimmy realized they’d had this exact conversation many times in the past, only the words that had just left his lips were usually Decker’s.

  “We have phones?” Deck asked. Man, he looked exhausted. He was completely wrung out.

  “In a limited area, yeah,” Jimmy told him. “If you’d checked your messages, you’d know that.”

  Some life came back into Deck’s eyes. “Tess?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “S
he’s got the computer up and running, too.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s probably going to complain to you because I wouldn’t let her plant a sat-dish at the top of the Grande Hotel.”

  Decker nodded and Jimmy realized that he was more than exhausted. He was angry. And upset. Christ, when was the last time he’d seen Decker upset? Angry, yes, and grim, almost always, but . . .

  “Everything all right?” Jimmy asked. There was no way Deck could know about what happened this morning, about Jimmy and Tess and . . .

  Decker met his gaze only briefly. “Yes.” It was an obvious lie. But the real message was also clear. Back off. “What do you have for me?” he continued.

  Jimmy normally would’ve gotten on Deck’s case, but he was clearly in no mood for anything but efficiently listed facts. So Jimmy gave him just that. “Murph got back a couple of hours ago. He said many of his contacts have gone missing, and the people he did speak to aren’t saying much of anything. Rumors are a dime a dozen, though. He was waiting for you to get back before going into details. He’s sleeping now. So is Tess. You should probably do the same.”

  “What about Dave?” Decker asked.

  “He spent the night in the barn—with a bag of saline attached to his arm. He went out when Murphy came in—I told him to be back here at oh-eight-hundred so we could regroup. I thought that would give you enough time to take one of your combat naps.” Jimmy glanced at his watch. It was 7:20. Of course, he’d expected Deck in much earlier than this.

  “That’s good,” Deck said. “That’s perfect. I just need to close my eyes for a few minutes. How about you—did you get some sleep?”

  “I’m fine,” Jimmy said. Larry, what exactly happened out there last night? He didn’t dare ask. Doing so would give Decker permission to ask some decidedly tough questions of his own.

  Decker was looking at him, obviously aware that “I’m fine” was not the same as “Yes, I slept.” And yet he didn’t comment. And he wouldn’t comment—as long as Jimmy managed to get his job done.

  “Oh, Rivka and Guldana gave their bedroom—third floor—to Tess and me,” Jimmy reported as casually as he possibly could. “We set it up so they’d walk in on us, you know, in the pantry, together, when they came home and . . . Because the third floor’s the only place the phones work, so . . .”

  Decker’s reaction was to stand there, just looking at him.

  Jimmy kept talking. “I’m going to take advantage of the fact that Tess isn’t using the computer right now and get online and—”

  Decker finally spoke. “Do me a favor,” he said. “See what you can find out about Dimitri Ghaffari—is he married, who’s his wife, does he have any business ties to either Michel Lartet or Padsha Bashir, last known street address . . . whatever you can dig up. I currently know jack about the guy.” He turned toward the house with a nod. “Thanks.”

  Jimmy just watched as Deck went into the kitchen. But then Deck turned around and came right back out. “That kid, Khalid, is sleeping in my bed.”

  “Sorry,” Jimmy said. “I told him to lie down on mine—”

  “Because you were filled with an overwhelming desire for head lice?” Decker interrupted. He was seriously pissed, practically popping a vein, and Jimmy knew it had nothing to do with the K-stani boy. “Because it’s been at least two years since you’ve had to be dipped in chemicals and—”

  “Because he came here straight from the hospital, where he spent the night with his little brother in the ER waiting room,” Jimmy said quietly.

  This was actually something he’d learned from Decker. Lowering his voice was often more effective than raising it. If someone was loud and in his face, sure, he could shout back, but they’d probably just try to shout over him. But if he got really quiet, they’d have to shut up in order to listen.

  It didn’t work all the time, but it worked right now. Decker had shut up, but he still looked as if he were seconds from taking Jimmy down into the dirt and pounding the crap out of him.

  “Khalid hasn’t slept since the quake,” Jimmy continued now. He should have said, Why don’t you tell me what you’re really angry about? What happened out there to make you late? But he didn’t dare. Decker was his partner, his brother, his friend. He’d die for the man, and he knew Decker would do the same for him. But talking . . . putting voice to deep feelings . . . This was something they never did.

  So he kept on discussing Khalid. “He came here to pick up his horse and wagon so he could get to work and earn the money his family’s going to need to keep food on the table. In case you haven’t noticed, the cost of living in Kazabek has just gone up—dramatically.”

  Deck may have been silent, but the way he was shaking his head broadcast his disbelief loud and clear. “You hired him, didn’t you?” he finally asked.

  And told him that his first assignment was to get some sleep so he was fresh when they needed to get moving, yes. “We need transportation,” Jimmy pointed out. “Khalid’s got a wagon.”

  “We don’t know who this kid is, who he’s connected to.”

  “Like that’s anything new,” Jimmy countered. “Like Rivka himself wouldn’t sell us out to the highest bidder, if he had the—”

  Decker’s eyes were arctic. “We don’t have room on this assignment for you to pick up your usual pack of strays.”

  “I’m not—”

  “And yet you’ll do it anyway,” Deck cut him off. “You do whatever you fucking want, whenever you fucking want to.”

  Whoa.

  Jimmy wasn’t often speechless, but he was grateful he was speechless now, because as soon as his brain clicked back on, he knew that getting defensive wasn’t the way to go.

  Whatever Decker was pissed off about, it probably didn’t have anything to do with Jimmy. Because there was no real reason for Deck to be pissed with him. Well, okay, except for the part, just a few hours ago, where he’d had unprotected sex with the woman that Decker had a thing for.

  Of course, Deck didn’t know about that. Yet.

  Jimmy met his friend’s glacial gaze. On the other hand, Deck was a very smart man. He’d no doubt figured it out.

  Shit. “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. “But she was all over me. I don’t know why I couldn’t seem to . . .” Stay away from her.

  Now the look on Deck’s face was one he’d never seen before—a mix of emotions Jimmy didn’t realize Decker ever allowed himself to feel.

  And as Deck opened his mouth, Jimmy knew they were about to go where neither of them had gone before. Decker was going to tell him what had happened out there.

  But movement over by the house made them both look up. Tess was standing in the doorway, and from her expression, Jimmy knew she’d been there for the past few minutes. Perfect. Perfect.

  Decker shut his mouth.

  “We need transportation, and the kid’s got a horse and wagon,” Jimmy said again, both disappointed and relieved that Decker wasn’t going to spill any of his closely guarded secrets.

  “Wake me in forty.” Decker nodded curtly to Tess as he went past her into the house.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  “Word on the street is that Sayid came to Kazabek to meet with one of the local warlords,” Murphy reported.

  “Padsha Bashir,” Dave Malkoff agreed.

  After Dave had returned, Jimmy woke Decker and Murphy. Tess had quietly followed them out to the barn to talk, because Khalid, the K-stani boy who owned the cart and horse, was still asleep in the kitchen.

  It was a good excuse that also took them out of range of their host’s overly attentive ears.

  Tess and the others had watched silently as Murphy did a quick but thorough sweep of the brick-and-mud structure, checking to make sure no listening devices had been planted there in the night.

  “Yeah,” the huge former Marine said now. There was a little bit of California surfer in his otherwise accentless voice. “That’s the name I kept hearing, too.”
<
br />   Dude. Tess couldn’t help smiling as she silently embellished his sentences for him.

  But she stopped smiling when he added, “Bashir’s been connected to the GIK for years.”

  Because the GIK—a group of Kazbekistani religious extremists—had ties to al-Qaeda. Ties that both sides were working on strengthening, apparently. There was nothing even remotely funny about that.

  “There’s a concerted recovery effort still going on over at Bashir’s palace, where a large portion of the roof collapsed,” Dave reported. Although he looked significantly better than he had the day before, he was still pale, and there was a big bruise on the back of his hand from the IV he’d given himself.

  While Murphy lounged on a bale of hay, Dave sat up straight, as if he were attending a board meeting. “Sayid’s listed as missing,” he continued. “Rumor has it he was with Bashir at the time of the quake. They both ran in different directions, and no one’s seen Sayid since.”

  “Bashir’s palace is well within our five-kilometer radius of the Cantara hospital, where Sayid allegedly died,” Nash said. He was standing, leaning with one shoulder against the wooden wall of the stall, arms casually crossed. “So it fits.”

  “It’s not alleged,” Tess volunteered, and they all turned to look at her. Everyone but Jimmy Nash, that is. After this morning, he was probably never going to look at her again. Attempting to talk about their unfortunate . . . encounter had only made things worse.

  But it was more than just the flat-out rejection that made her feel so rotten. It was the fact that she’d thought she’d broken the code when it came to reading James Nash. She’d thought she knew him. And she’d actually believed that she’d seen attraction in his eyes when he looked at her.

  What a fool.

  She’d seen what she wanted to see.

  And the truth was, she couldn’t read him any better than she could read Decker. Who was looking at her now, his eyes and face relaying only his default nonexpression.

  She was all over me, she’d heard Jimmy—Nash—telling Deck.

  Tess felt her face start to heat with a blush, but she pushed on. She really hadn’t expected Nash to mention anything about their early morning encounter.