He relieved himself without waking Sophia—or falling down and peeing on the wall—and on the way out of the bathroom, he poked his head into the hallway, to test the reaction of the guards. Much could be learned from their response to him—which could be anything from them drawing their weapons and shouting for him to back the hell up, to a nod and a polite request to stay in the room with a please and a sir.
But Dave didn't anticipate the total non-reaction he received—on account of the guards being gone.
The guards were gone.
He moved quickly, back into the room, on legs that weren't quite ready for moving faster than a slow shuffle. “Sophia, help me,” he said, and she snapped awake, leaping from the chair.
“What are you doing out of bed?”
She headed for the nurses’ call button, but he stopped her.
“We're getting out of here,” he told her. “Now. Where are my clothes?” The words weren't even halfway out of his mouth when he opened a cabinet and saw them, folded neatly atop his shoes. They weren't the shirt and pants he'd been wearing last night—those had been ruined— but rather a pair of jeans and one of his polo shirts with a collar, a clean pair of briefs, and socks. Someone, probably Sophia, had gotten this out of the suitcase that was no doubt still in the trunk of their rental car—on account of their never making it to their hotel last night. He scooped the clothing into his arms. “Get your things. Let's go. Now.”
He didn't know whose snafu this was. But whether it was Bill Connell's, the local police chief's, or the individual uniformed officers who'd apparently left their post unattended, it didn't matter.
What mattered was that, for this brief, shining moment in time, Dave could walk out of this hospital, completely unchallenged.
He opened the door and, glory alleluia, the hall was still empty. The nurses’ station seemed to be off to the right. To the left was a long corridor—and a door marked AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY.
“This way.” Sophia brushed past him, taking his arm and leading him left, but she didn't take the mystery door. Instead she went down the hall and took another left and then another. She led him through a set of double doors and around another corner, this time to the right, finally ending at a bank of elevators. She pushed the down button as he juggled his shoes, trying to shake free his briefs, because the last thing he needed was to get picked up for indecent exposure.
There was a sign for stairs on a door across from the elevators, and Sophia pulled him toward it, not missing a beat as she scooped up the shoe he dropped.
And then, thank God, they were in the quiet isolation of the stairwell and she was helping him get dressed, efficiently but gently, careful not to bump his bandaged wound.
It was the first time since the attack that they'd had any kind of real privacy. In fact, it felt like the equivalent of a planetary alignment or the sighting of a comet—exceedingly rare and not likely to happen again in his lifetime. Especially since he fully expected the missing guards to come bursting into the stairwell at any moment.
So Dave grabbed hold of the opportunity with both hands, jumping into the deep end of what should have been a delicately approached, one-toe-into-the-water-at-a-time topic.
“I caught the gonorrhea from oral sex,” he announced as she helped him on with his jeans. “It was the only time we didn't use a condom. Kathy—Anise. And me.”
Sophia's response as she pushed him to sit on the stairs so she could put on his socks and guide his feet into his shoes?
She laughed.
And immediately apologized. “I'm sorry. It's just that… you said that last night—oral sex—and I had no idea what you meant. I was pretty sure it wasn't a request, because you were extremely upset—not to mention nearly unconscious—so …”
He caught her hand, forcing her to look into his eyes. “I didn't kill Anise Turiano, Soph. And I didn't—”
“Shhh.” She gently broke his hold on her to pull down his shirt and straighten his collar, as he fastened his belt. “We can talk about this later. Are you good for the stairs, or should we take the elevator?”
“I'm good,” he lied, starting down, leaning heavily on the banister. “I just wanted you to know—”
“Stop talking and move.”
Back when he and Sophia were in their “just friends” mode, he'd told her about the week he'd spent with Kathy-slash-Anise. He'd confessed that it had been his first-ever sexual experience—about time for a man already in his thirties—which had been hard enough to admit. The fact that he'd ended up catching an STD was icing on the embarrassment cake—and proof that life could be a real bitch.
But of course, life had then turned around and caught him completely off-guard by giving him Sophia, so, truly, how could he complain?
“I lied to the investigators,” he couldn't not tell her. “It's true. But mostly by omission—”
“It doesn't matter,” she told him, helping move past a door that was labeled 3RD FLOOR.
“Yes it does,” he insisted.
“No,” she said, emphatically, “it doesn't.”
“It would've complicated things,” he told her as she continued to support him. They headed down to the second floor, and then the first. “I was treated anonymously, at a clinic, so there were no medical records. And it was a week between the time I thought she'd left me and her body was found, so … Her autopsy revealed that she had the disease, but by that time I was clean. And I know they tested me for it—I was in the hospital with a punctured lung, courtesy of the same ex-KGB thugs who snuffed her. Although there was no hard proof of that, so …”
Dave's insistence that he'd never had unprotected sex with Anise Turi-ano, either before or, God, after her death was confirmed by his clean bill of health. He'd been dropped as the prime suspect—due to insubstantial evidence—although the agents in charge of the investigation remained convinced of his guilt and wrongdoing.
Sophia didn't say anything so Dave kept going. “And as far as Barney Delarow—”
She cut him off. “There's a taxi stand near the main entrance,” she said, “but they could be watching for us there. My gut is to get to the street and just keep moving, try to pick up a cab down toward … what is it? Cambridge Street?”
“No, Charles. Soph, please, if you have any questions at all, about anything—about Anise Turiano—I'll make sure you get the case file so you can—”
She stopped outside the door to the first floor and got right in his face. “David. We'll talk about this later. Can we walk through the lobby, please, without you shouting about all the murders you didn't commit? Let's keep this low-profile, all right?”
Dave gazed into the crystal blue of her eyes, searching for… something he didn't find. He honestly couldn't tell what she was thinking, and that made him feel sick. “What are you doing?” he whispered. “Helping me break out of here, when you don't even believe me?”
She turned away.
What he'd wanted—no, needed—for her to do was look him in the eye and say, I believe you, Dave. I believe everything you say, but instead she'd turned away.
“Yeah,” she said, and he realized that her cell phone had vibrated, and she was taking a phone call.
Great. It was probably Bill Connell himself, telling them that the stairwell was surrounded, and to come out with their hands up.
But then Sophia exhaled hard and said, “Oh, thank heaven,” and then, “ Uh-huh. Yes, wait, hang on, let me write down the address.” She pulled her notebook and pen from her handbag. “Albany Street,” she said. “Got it. No, the rental car has a GPS, so … We'll be there —probably in …” She glanced at her watch. “I want to say an hour, but it'll probably be before then.” She laughed at something said by whoever was on the other end of the call. “See you then and … Thank you so, so much.” Snapping her phone shut, she put both it and her notebook back in her bag.
And turned to Dave. “That was Joe Hirabayashi, from the FBI. He wants us to come to the morgue, so you can identi
fy the man who stabbed you last night.”
“The morgue,” Dave repeated, shifting to sit on the flight of stairs they'd just come down. People generally didn't go to the morgue to appear in a police lineup.
Sophia nodded. “The man from last night? Bald, tattoos, leather jacket, biker boots, gold tooth? He was found a few hours ago, in some park—someplace called the Fenway—with a bullet in his head. Blood splatters on his clothing are a match both for you and Barney Delarow. Your story pans out—you're no longer a suspect.”
And that was why the guards had vanished from his door. That bastard Bill Connell had pulled them and left—without having the decency to inform Dave that he was in the clear.
Sophia sat down next to him on the stairs, and she looked so exhausted, he swallowed the words he was about to say: So … About that Anise Turiano thing. Do you believe me now?
“How about we take the elevator back upstairs,” she said, “so you can sign all the papers you need to sign to be officially released. I'll go get the car, pick you up out front, and we can go to the morgue and do … whatever needs to be done.”
Dave nodded. “Identifying the skinhead would be a nice step toward finding out who tried to frame me.”
Sophia nodded, too, but then asked, “Why would someone want to frame you?”
“That's definitely the question of the hour. If we find out who, why might come for free, like a two-fer.”
She laughed, but it was weary. “You said he mentioned a name— Santucci.”
“Give my best to Santucci,” Dave repeated.
“How can you give your best to someone you don't know?”
“I don't know.” But whoever Santucci was, Dave was going to find him. Or her. He sighed. “Come on,” he said, tugging at her hand. “You slept in a chair—after talking to your father for the first time in decades. Let's ID the perp, then go someplace where you can get some rest.”
“I just want to go home.” But she didn't move. In fact, she leaned her head against Dave's shoulder and sighed. “Seeing my father again was nothing,” she told him quietly. “Not compared to seeing you in that parking lot, and thinking …” She drew in a deep breath, and when he turned to look at her, she had tears in her eyes. “When I saw all that blood …”
“Hey,” he said, pulling her chin up so he could kiss her. Her lips were so sweet, so soft. “Come on. You should know better. I'm harder to kill than that.”
She nodded, forcing a smile. “I sometimes forget that you are,” she admitted. “It's just that you're Dave. You're … Dave.”
“Yes, I am,” he said. “I'm not sure what you mean by that but… I gotta agree. Although these days I'm calling myself Lucky Dave.”
Her smile became more real as she held his gaze, but then it faded. She touched him, her fingers almost cold against his face. “I didn't not believe you, you know.”
Which wasn't the same thing as her believing him.
“We're both tired,” Dave said. “Let's just get going. Maybe Yashi'll have more information when we get to the morgue.”
The trip to the safe house was going to have to wait.
Tracy knew that wasn't the only reason Decker was antsy as they sat in his truck, in the quiet parking lot of the medical complex that housed Dr. Heissman's new office, waiting for her to show up.
Which wasn't going to be too much longer. In Starbucks, the woman had given them her entire day's schedule—for this very purpose, no doubt.
The parking lot at the VA was too busy, too crowded, too vast—not a good place to connect with the doctor. So here they sat, waiting for her to arrive, as the hands of Tracy's watch moved from 3:45 to 3:46.
But Deck had even more things on his mind besides finding out the details behind that help me message.
His secure satellite phone had stopped working, which made it difficult to communicate with any of his fellow operatives.
They'd stopped over at the Troubleshooters office, and the place was empty and locked up tight, which had felt strange. Much to Decker's disgust, there were no replacement sat phones available. Tracy tracked one down—Lindsey Jenkins had it—but she was in a meeting and wouldn't be able to drop it off until later in the day.
It was while they were there, using the secure landline to get in touch with FBI agent Jules Cassidy, that Decker had really had his cage rattled. He'd called Jules to report the weird new Jo Heissman problem, and in the midst of that conversation, he'd found out that last night, while he and Tracy had been having the world's most unsatisfying sleepover, trouble had come to call on the East Coast.
Apparently, Dave Malkoff had gotten into a knife fight outside of the Boston hospital where he and Sophia had gone to visit her ailing father.
And yes, the idea of Dave—uncoronated king of the nerds—in a knife fight was enough to send anyone's incredulometer rocketing sky high. But it was the fact that Sophia had actually met with her horror-show of a father that had made Tracy pause.
Decker, too.
Of course, that wasn't entirely unexpected, since every breath he took was all about Sophia. Every heartbeat murmured her name to him. Every nose whistle, every belch, every fart, and okay, now Tracy was just being mean. But she had to admit to feeling envy for the blonde. Although envy plus mean thoughts equaled jealousy, which was unattractive in a woman of a certain age. As in anyone over eighteen —months.
And, realistically? While it was fun to flirt and to daydream and to play a muted version of That Dawg Would So Totally Cut Off His Left Nut to Do Me with many of the men at Troubleshooters—including Lawrence Decker—the man had been ragingly right last night. Having a fling with someone she worked with would be crazy complicated.
And also, Tracy knew darn well that she didn't fling. She relation-shipped. Upon full penetration, she bypassed logic and reason and went directly to I-Love-You Land. Which was massively stupid—she knew that, too.
These days, though, Tracy was a realist. Or at least she'd started trying harder to be a realist in the wake of her bewildering breakup with Michael-the-Creep, who'd ripped out her heart after she'd just barely gotten it sewn back into her chest. She'd still been vulnerable and emotionally raw following the fiasco with her cheating ex-fiancé Lyle and then that bastard with his Navy SEAL muscles, Irving Zanella. His nickname was Izzy, but it helped, in getting over him—which had taken far too long, considering it had been only one night—to think of him as Irving.
So yes, she'd been neither realistic nor smart when she'd gotten involved with all three of those losers. And she definitely hadn't been realistic or smart last night at dinner with Decker, when she'd gone on a fishing expedition, using George as bait.
Hello, extremely attractive, slightly older, and hopefully more mature man sitting at my kitchen table. I've always found you hot. I also haven't had sex in a very, very long time, and well… here we both are. I know from my mirror that many men think that I'm both beautiful and sexy. So if you put in just a small amount of effort, I will let you talk your way into my bed tonight.
But Decker apparently was too mature—to the point of recognizing what an awful mistake that would have been. Or maybe he was simply too in love with Sophia ever to dally, even briefly, with any other woman.
Either that or he was totally gay.
And yes, all right, that was Tracy's inner jealous crybaby bubbling forth.
She had plenty of gay friends, and although observation and gaydar could never provide a completely accurate verdict—not like asking “Are you gay?” and getting back an answer, “Yes”—she was virtually certain Decker's orientation was strictly hetero.
Although picturing him naked with, say, Izzy Zanella? It worked for her in a rather odd way.
“You're awfully quiet,” Decker said, interrupting her wayward thoughts.
She laughed as she glanced at him. With his sunglasses on, he was harder than ever to read. Still, she was pretty certain that telling him she was imagining being in the middle of a Zanella-Decker sandwich wou
ldn't go over well. So instead she switched on the signal jammer and said, “You really need to tell Sophia the truth.”
Of course, he started shaking his head the moment Sophia's name crossed her lips.
They'd picked up the jammer when they'd stopped in at the TS office. If anyone was trying to listen in with long-distance microphones, it would screw with the signal, but make it appear to the listener as if the problem was radio interference from passing trucks or taxis.
It wasn't as creative or colorful—both figuratively and actually—as taping George to the window and flipping on his shower-safe switch. But on the other hand, it wasn't likely to get them arrested, either. And it did allow them to talk freely without fear of being overheard. And over the past few hours, Decker had filled her in, completely, on the situation with Jimmy Nash.
Well, probably not completely.
But Tracy knew there was a plan afoot to make the bad guys who tried to kill Jimmy—whoever they were—believe that the FBI had opened an investigation to see if Decker and/or Tess weren't somehow connected to potentially criminal activities that Nash had engaged in. It had something to do with a bloodstained shirt and a list of people whom Jimmy had apparently deleted while he'd worked black ops for the Agency.
Tracy hadn't asked exactly what that meant—to delete—but really, she hadn't had to.
She chose now to talk of less violent but no less volatile things. Such as Sophia.
“You need to tell her,” she persisted. “You bring this with you”—she pointed to the jammer—“when you pick them up at the airport tonight. You get them into the truck and … You tell them both the truth.” That Jimmy was alive.
Decker just shook his head.
“Okay,” Tracy said, shifting so that she was turned more toward him. “Yes. Dave's going to get hurt. It's unavoidable, but—”
“It's not about that,” he said.
“Sure, you can believe, if you want, that—”
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