“Look, I know you'd rather think that this is about personal feelings, rather than decisions based on strategy and logic—”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Now you're pretending it's logical, not to—”
“Honey, why do you think Liam Smith was found dead, in a deserted part of a Boston city park?” Decker asked, adding, as if she might not remember who Smith was from their earlier conversation, “The man who attacked Dave last night?”
Tracy paused, thinking about it, while Deck just waited, watching her. “Because he was… an unsavory person,” she guessed. “Who went unsavory places, where he got himself killed in an unsavory way.” Assuming there were savory ways to get oneself killed.
“On the very same night he knifes Dave.” Decker's voice was loaded with skepticism. “Come on, Tracy, use that big brain I know you've got. What do we know—from the fact that Smith was shot, point-blank, in the face? The man had a powder burn on his chin.”
“I didn't know that,” she said.
“Well then, I'm telling you now,” he countered. “What does it tell us?”
She wished she could see his eyes, but they were securely covered by those dark glasses. He thought she had a big brain, which was refreshing. Most men combined the word big with boobs when they referred to her. “That… whoever shot him was standing very close to him.” She realized as she spoke the words what that meant—and Decker was right. This wasn't that hard to deduce. “That he probably knew whoever shot him— well enough for the shooter to get that close.”
“Good girl,” he said, and she felt an absurd rush of pleasure. It was particularly absurd considering his word choice.
“I'm not a girl,” she felt compelled to point out. “I'm a woman. And it still could be a coincidence.”
“Liam Smith was found with his clothing stained with both Dave and Barney Delarow's blood,” Decker told her, a muscle jumping in the side of his jaw, as he no doubt thought about what that had meant to Sophia. If Smith had had Dave's blood on him, Dave must've been bleeding badly. Which couldn't have been a happy sight for Sophia. “He was lying there like the perfect little get-out-of-jail-free card for the police and other investigators to find.”
Tracy struggled to understand. “So you think whoever killed Smith wanted Dave not to be charged with Delarow's murder. But… why? After going to all that trouble to frame him?”
He didn't answer. He just waited for her to reach her own conclusion.
She knew Decker thought that the Agency was behind the previous attempts on Jimmy's life. And if the Agency was the all-seeing, all-knowing organization they were reputed to be, then they surely knew that Dave had been friends with Decker and Nash. So …
“You think the Agency thinks that Dave knows whether or not Jimmy's alive.” Tracy kept going, because Decker was nodding. “They hope Dave's… going to … lead them to him?”
He smiled at her. “Correct for two points.”
“Only two?” she said.
“That one wasn't as mind-stretching as figuring out Nash was, you know,” he told her. And she did know—Nash was still alive. And Deck was still unable to say it aloud, despite their cone of silence.
“For which I won an all-expenses-paid vacation,” she reminded him. “To the world's most upscale jail. Provided I ever get there.” She returned to where this conversation had started. “So you're using the fact that the Agency is probably watching Dave's every move as an excuse to not tell him and Sophia the truth.”
Decker laughed his exasperation. “Will you please just let that drop?”
“What if the Agency goes after Dave again?” Tracy asked. “Or what if they go after Sophia this time?”
That got her a flash of his eyes over the top of his glasses.
“Frankly? I think you don't want to tell them because you prefer wallowing in misery,” she said.
“You're out of line,” Decker said quietly, which meant she was finally pissing him off. She'd noticed that about him through the years. He rarely raised his voice. In fact, she'd only seen him get crazy-loud once, when he and Nash got into a physical fight in the Troubleshooters parking lot— shortly before Nash had “died.” She'd stood there, with her mouth literally hanging open, astonished at the sight of Decker beating the crap out of Nash.
“I think you wouldn't recognize happiness if it came up and bit you on the butt,” she countered now. “Or maybe you would, but you wouldn't know what to do with it.”
“I do know what to do with it,” he said. “I know exactly what to do. I leave it the hell alone.”
“You think Sophia's happy with Dave,” she realized.
He sighed—an exaggerated expulsion of exasperation, meant to shame her into letting it drop.
She didn't. “You do,” she accused him. “You actually believe—”
“Look, she is happy,” he told her. “I know it. All right? He's good for her. I've seen them together and she's—” Deck swore pungently, as if at himself.
And using her big brain, Tracy realized exactly what he'd just said. He'd seen them together. “You spied on them?” She couldn't keep her delight from showing in her voice, on her face.
“No,” he said tersely.
She just looked at him, eyebrows raised, and he added, “I wasn't spying. I was just …”
“Spying. You're a spy,” she pointed out. “You spied. It's okay. You couldn't help yourself, it's what you do, but …” She paused, a little icked out. “Not, like, through Sophia's bedroom window, right?”
“No! Jesus.” He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. “I wanted to make sure she was okay. And she was. She was, yeah, happy. Okay? I heard her laughing and it was real laughter. And I would never do anything to take that away from her.”
“And you don't think she'd be even happier,” Tracy felt compelled to point out, “with you? I mean, considering she's in love with you?”
He was back to shaking his head, after, once again, hiding his eyes behind his shades.
“So that's it,” Tracy said. “You're just going to quit?”
That got her another flash of his eyes. “Believe me, I quit this game a long time ago.”
That didn't just surprise her—it annoyed her. “So … what then? You're just never going to have sex again?”
He laughed, but then stopped abruptly. “That's really none of your business.”
He'd told her that he hadn't had sex with Dr. Help Me, and he sure as heck hadn't had it with Tracy, last night. She knew something had happened between him and Sophia, but was now starting to believe it had occurred over the course of a single, accidental night.
Tracy had always known that Decker held himself apart from everyone else at Troubleshooters Incorporated, but she was starting to realize that she'd never imagined just how wide that self-imposed gap was. “Did you honestly tell Dr. Heissman that you were thinking about killing yourself?”
He smiled at that—a flash of straight white teeth in his tanned face. “Only you would dare to ask about that. Tracy, honey, you are absolutely a piece of work.”
“Is that a compliment or a disparaging comment?” she mused, forcing herself to pretend that his honey didn't make her heart beat harder. “I've never quite figured that out.”
Decker just laughed—and she couldn't quite tell if it was in despair or amusement.
“You didn't answer my question,” she said, calling him on it. “I think you did tell Dr. Heissman that. But I also think you were totally BS-ing her.” On account of the doctor having worked for the Agency. Decker had filled Tracy in on his suspicions that Dr. H. had still worked for the evil overlord of the Agency as recently as a few months ago, even while she was employed as the one and only member of the psych department at Trouble -shooters Incorporated.
It was creepy to imagine, but Deck seemed to think Dr. H. had taken the job at TS Inc. to keep an eye on Jimmy Nash. And apparently the woman now needed help, so maybe his paranoia was accurate. But did she really need help,
or was she digging for information? That was, hopefully, what they were going to find out—if and when she ever appeared, here at her office.
Tracy glanced at her watch: 3:52.
“What if I told you I wasn't?” Decker asked, but again Tracy couldn't see his eyes through his sunglasses. “Bullshitting her.”
“Well,” she said slowly, aware that this enigmatic man was holding open the door to some extremely personal territory. “I'd make sure you knew that, from my perspective? The world's a better and much safer place with you in it. I'd make sure you knew that you were loved, and that you'd be missed. Badly.”
He didn't respond. They both just sat there for many, many long seconds as she gazed at her own reflection in his sunglasses. But then he turned to look away from her, staring out the front windshield at the deserted parking lot. He shook his head again. And finally spoke.
“I don't get you,” he said. “I just don't. Is it because … I'm here? I'm human? I'm male? I have both a pulse and a dick?” He turned to look back at her, taking off his sunglasses so that she could finally see his eyes. Just like that fraction of a second that she'd thought she'd imagined back in the Starbucks, he let his attraction for her show. Only this time he didn't hold back. “What the hell would a girl like you want with me? You into danger, Tracy? Is that what it is? Because you are playing with fire.”
“First of all?” Tracy had to push to speak past her heart, which had securely lodged in her throat. “I'll say it again: I'm a woman, not a girl. Let's get that straight.”
“To me,” he shot back, “you're just a curious little girl, looking for a diversion. For a fancier toy to play with. Honey, do yourself a favor, and stick with the one you've already got.”
She exhaled her outrage. “I'm sorry. Did you miss something here? Like the part of this conversation where I've been trying to talk you into telling Sophia that you love her? Get over yourself.” She forced a laugh. “Wow, that's part of the problem. You're so completely my type. A pulse and a dick, yes, but a giant stone in place of your heart. If I'm sending mixed signals, it's because I am drawn to you, like a moth to a flame. But I'm smarter than that, and I am not doing this.”
“That's right,” he said, putting his sunglasses back on and turning back to the deserted parking lot, “but only because I'm not ‘doing this.’ ”
“Oh, my God,” Tracy said, “could you be any more arrogant? Better stop that, honey, because I'm a headcase and it totally makes me want to fuck you.”
He sharply turned and looked at her again, and this time, despite the sunglasses, his smolder came through. She was afraid, for several long heartbeats, that he was going to yank her to him, and kiss her. Hard.
But then the fear was suddenly diminished by a clean, clear ping of shining hope—that this man would, in fact, do exactly that.
Instead he jumped—and Tracy did, too—as Jo Heissman knocked on the passenger-side window.
Decker swore, starting the truck with a roar—and flipping off the signal jammer; wasn't that interesting?—as Tracy unlocked and pushed open the heavy door.
“Are you crazy?” the doctor said, clearly frightened. “This lot has a security camera—”
“I disabled it,” Decker told her. “You want help? Get in, and get down. On the floor.”
Tracy slid over on the bench seat to make room for the older woman, who hesitated only briefly before she climbed in. Decker, meanwhile, put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the street—almost before Jo had pulled the door shut.
“If you're going to sit that close,” he told Tracy, his voice tight as he looked into the rearview mirror, no doubt to see if anyone was following them, “at least try to look like you mean it.”
CHAPTER
SIX
The alarm signifying a security breach went off, two hours after Tess and Jules had left the safe house, making Jimmy's pulse kick into overdrive and his vision damn near start to tunnel.
They'd been running drills all morning—working on getting down to the panic room as quickly as possible—and his first thought was that this couldn't possibly be another exercise.
No, this was it. Jules had sent Jimmy's shirt to the lab for that DNA test, and the death squad from the Agency believed that he wasn't dead. The attack on Dave had been the warning shot across his bow, and now they were coming for him.
In a fortress like this, Jimmy's response should have been a resounding Oh, yeah? Suck my balls, only he currently had no clue where Tess was— or Decker—and that scared the living shit out of him. It sent him, spiraling, back toward the place where he'd spent the past year—alone in an emotional darkness, as he'd tried to convince himself that the only way he could keep his fiancée and friends alive was to keep both the truth and himself far away from them.
It was a bad place to be. He knew it—even as he felt himself slipping, as he found himself thinking the same damning thoughts. This wouldn't be happening if I just disappeared. …
Tess had once laughed as she'd told him how hard it was for her to visit her mother—whom she loved very much—without having at least a tiny part of her turn back into a belligerent thirteen-year-old. It happened, she'd said, upon stepping through the door to her mother's San Francisco art gallery—which was the only way to get into the apartment upstairs. Why can't you be like the other moms back in Iowa? Why did you leave Daddy to live like this? A fifty-eight-year-old woman really should stop painting for the forty-five seconds needed to run a comb through her hair, and—oh yeah—maybe put on a bra every now and then … ?
It happened, Tess had told Jimmy, regardless of how much she prepared herself in advance of each visit. It happened regardless, too, of how appreciative she now was, as an adult, of the fact that her mother had followed her heart and had insisted upon living a life that was true to herself.
Those old feelings were just ghosts, Tess had said to Jimmy, quite a few months ago. Her voice had been soft and warm in the darkness of their bedroom as they lay together, their bodies still connected after making love. Jimmy was pretty sure she'd been trying to get him to open up and talk about his own mother, which he'd done only superficially. It helped, Tess had gone on to say, to identify those ghost feelings for what they were, and gently push them back into the past. Because they didn't belong here in the present.
That was definitely what Jimmy was feeling right now. Ghosts from the past, made stronger by this crazy fear that Tess was going to die because of his mistakes. And while he recognized both the fact that he was having these ghost feelings and the fact that the situation had changed, dramatically, between those days of darkness and now, he couldn't stop himself from running old patterns.
If the Agency was coming for him, then screw it. He was going to give them what they wanted—his undeniable silence through death—and end this bullshit here and now.
But then Sam Starrett rapped on his door. The former SEAL must've correctly interpreted the look on Jimmy's face, because he quickly said, “Just another drill. Once more with feeling, you know?”
The relief made Jimmy light-headed—a fact that Starrett obviously realized, because he came all the way into the room and looped Jimmy's arm around his shoulders. He had Ash in some kind of front-pack sling thing, and the baby gave Jimmy a happy, if soggy, grin.
“Y'okay?” Sam asked.
And Jimmy nodded through the haze. “I can make it to the chair.”
“Not this time,” the taller man announced, and sure enough, there was no wheelchair waiting for them in the hall. “We're running the no-available-chair scenario.”
Didn't it figure? All morning long, Jimmy'd bitched and moaned about having to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed to the panic room. Tess and Sam had actually carried him from his bed to the chair. They'd transferred him into another chair that was designed to carry handicapped people down flights of stairs in emergency situations, took him down those stairs, and then transferred him again to a second regular wheelchair to make the final run along the base
ment hall. They'd quickly learned how to move efficiently together, as a team.
They were the team, that is. Jimmy was the burden. And a true pain in the balls, because he'd insisted—all morning—that he could make it under his own steam. Even though he damn well knew he could never move as fast as those wheels.
But now Sam was giving him a chance to do the run without the chair, and the prospect seemed daunting. It didn't help that Tess wasn't there—if she were, he'd be bluffing his ass off, pretending that this didn't hurt.
“Ow—Christ!”
If Tess were there, he'd at least try to fool her into believing he wasn't a complete candy-ass crybaby.
“Think of this as a drill combined with physical therapy,” Sam said, annoyingly cheerful as he all but carried both his son and Jimmy down the hall. “Plus a little distraction to keep your mind offa Tess being gone.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said through gritted teeth. “Nothing like a good torture session to while away the time. Thanks so much.”
Sam laughed, but thankfully didn't make any other idiotic comments as they attacked the stairs.
If Ash hadn't been with them, Jimmy would've said a heartfelt fuck me on each bone-jarring step down.
It was obvious that Sam knew this because he was chuckling—typical Navy SEAL asshole sense of humor—as he dragged Jimmy the last few feet into the panic room and kicked the door shut behind them.
“We're secure,” he announced into his headpiece microphone as he helped Jimmy onto a soft leather sofa and sprang Ashton from his parachute-like halter—plopping the kid onto Jimmy's lap.
“What? No, don't—”
But Sam had already let go, leaving Jimmy no other option besides holding on to the baby. He was surprisingly heavy, and yet still kind of squishy and soft as he solemnly blinked at Jimmy with eyes that were star-tlingly blue.
During this morning's drills, Jules's husband Robin had had possession of the little boy, keeping Sam's hands free. But Robin had gone to San Diego with Jules and Tess.
Despite their fear that the Agency was trying to shake Jimmy loose by going after his friends, the movie star was keeping to his schedule. He was going to start filming tomorrow, in the city. One of the many things Jules was doing today was upping Robin's security on the movie set.
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