“But you did.” Sophia was doing what he always did for her—defending him against himself. She would have reached for him, but he made himself take a step back, holding only her arm as he helped her over to the table and into a chair.
“No, I didn't tell you everything,” Dave said quietly.
“You told me enough.” She rested her head on the table, her forehead against her folded arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked—a stupid question, because it was clear that she wasn't.
Still, she nodded, head still down, eyes closed. Yes.
Right.
“You told me more than enough,” she repeated.
“I left a lot out,” he told her, “like the fact that there's a contingent over at the CIA still looking to prove that I'm guilty of murder and treason.” He laughed—it came out sounding hollow as he sat, too. God, his side hurt, but it was nowhere near as bad as the ache in his heart. “And deviant sexual acts—let's not forget about that.”
“Dave—” she started, lifting her head to look at him, but he cut her off.
“I also failed to mention to you that Turiano's killers were never caught. Or that I purposely let a former KGB operative believe I'd slit her throat because I naively thought that that would look good on my international ‘résumé.’ ” He shook his head as he looked at the cracked tile on the floor—anywhere but into her eyes. “It's possible whoever hired Smith is a former colleague of Turiano's. Or even, I don't know, a family member. Looking for payback.”
What do they want? Sophia had asked him.
It was possible that whoever was behind all of this wanted money. Or maybe they wanted nothing more than to put Dave through hell before they killed him.
“You really think, that after all this time … ?” Sophia asked now. “Just out of nowhere? Without instigation or provocation?”
He made himself meet her gaze. “That man you said set you up in Kazabek—the Frenchman, Michel Lartet. You once said you blamed him for Dimitri's death. Do you blame him still?”
His seeming change of subject had caught her off-guard. But then something shifted in her eyes, and it was clear she understood.
Dave knew that Lartet, a former friend of hers, had helped set up the meeting at which a Kazbekistani warlord named Padsha Bashir had killed Sophia's husband and, with Dimitri's blood still spattered on her clothes, had married her—to gain possession of her property and finances.
And her. In a society where women had no rights, Bashir had gained possession of Sophia, too.
After months of abuse and fear, she'd escaped from his palace during a devastating earthquake. That is, after running Bashir through with his own sword.
She hadn't killed him—although Dave suspected she'd wept at the news that he'd survived her attack. It hadn't been until some days later that she had, with the help of the Troubleshooters team, fired one of the guns that riddled him with bullets and ended his miserable life.
He knew that, at that time, she'd no doubt longed with all of her damaged heart to do the same to Michel Lartet.
Sophia answered Dave's question now with a nod. Yes, she still blamed him. “I'd cheer at the news of his death. But I wouldn't go after him. No. Even if I met him in a dark alley with a gun? I'd hold him there until the police came, and I would testify against him in court and Lord willing, help to lock him up forever. But I wouldn't …”
Kill him. She didn't say the words, but she didn't have to as Dave nodded his own understanding. He knew—because she'd told him, and also because he'd witnessed it—just how hard she'd worked, in the years since Dimitri's death, to put the past behind her. To move on. Time and distance had softened her need for violent revenge.
“But what if that earthquake had never happened?” Dave asked her. “What if you'd spent all these years not in California, but locked in Bashir's palace?”
Had that happened, Sophia would, absolutely, not be the woman she was today. They both knew that.
“So you think that someone who'd been close to Turiano,” Sophia asked, “was… in prison for all these years, and recently released?”
“That's one possibility,” Dave admitted. “Or maybe they just found out that I was tied to her death. Hardly anyone is like you, Soph. Most people don't try to heal after trauma and loss. They don't seek help. They just live with it, and let it, I don't know, fester.”
“Did you?” she asked.
He blinked at her.
“Did you let it fester?” she asked, even though he knew exactly what she'd meant.
Dave shook his head. “No.”
“I say her name,” Sophia said, “and you get… so tense.”
“She broke my heart.”
She was silent then, eyes down, her hands in her lap, fingers working nervously against what must've been a rough place on her fingernail. He wanted to still her fingers, to cover her hands with his own, but he didn't dare touch her—afraid he wouldn't be able to do what he had to do if this woman whom he loved so desperately was warm and soft in his arms.
“When I came back from Denver,” she finally broke the silence to say. “Last week. You were away, on a trip.”
Oh, shit. Dave understood what she was asking. “That had nothing to do with any of this,” he told her.
“Are you sure—”
“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely.” She opened her mouth to speak again, and he stopped her. “Soph. Trust me. Please. My trip is not something we want to be talking about right now. We've got enough on our plate. Besides, it's completely irrelevant.”
She was ready to argue—Dave saw it in her eyes—and he braced himself because, face it, saying no to her, for anything at all, wasn't among his strengths.
But he was not going to tell her anything about going back into Kazbekistan, and what he'd found out while there. Certainly not right now—although, now, it was quite possible that that was a conversation they would never have.
His intel, however, would not go to waste—he could share it with Decker.
“You said, back in the hospital,” Sophia pointed out, “that if there was anything I wanted to know—”
“Anything about Anise Turiano. And I'm telling you that the trip I took has nothing to do with—”
“You said I could ask you about anything.”
Dave grabbed his head, to try to stop the pounding in his temples. Because she was right—he had said that. She was right—but it didn't matter, because he wasn't going to talk about this. Not at a time when he needed to push her away. And yeah, the fact that he wasn't going to answer her questions was going to help to do just that, so …
“You said just ask,” she reminded him, her heart in her eyes, “so I'm asking. If it's really irrelevant, why not just tell me and then I'll say, Okay, yes, that is irrelevant—”
Yashi saved him from her reasonable logic, knocking on that closed door.
“Come in,” Dave called.
He felt Sophia's gaze on him as he turned to see the FBI agent push open the door and peek in. Yashi was clearly afraid of the conversation he was interrupting—his dark brown eyes were apologetic. No doubt their raised voices had been heard from the hallway.
“There were two seats on a nonstop to LAX out of Logan,” he reported as he glanced from Dave to Sophia and back. “But we've got to leave for the airport, like, now. I'm going to drive you, 'cause we're keeping your rental, to go over it for prints.”
Dave pushed himself to his feet. God, he ached all over. Except for his stitches, which stung. “You're not going to find anything.”
“I know,” Yashi agreed with a shrug as Sophia stood, too. “But it's procedure.”
She seemed a little shaky, so Dave moved closer, watching her, ready to help her if she needed his support.
His physical support. He knew, because he knew her so well, that she wasn't just angry. She was hugely disappointed in him—which hurt.
But hey. The next few days were going to include pain the likes of which he'd nev
er felt before. This was nothing compared to the shitstorm into which he knew he was heading.
Yashi nodded with his head toward the photos. “We'll want to hold on to those, too.”
“Is there a ladies’ room … ?” Sophia asked.
“Of course,” Yashi said. “Down the hall. First door on the right.”
He held the door open for her, but she didn't move. Instead she said, “Will you give us just one more minute, please?”
Dave looked to Yashi for help. “We really should—”
“A figurative minute, Dave,” she said tightly. “Thirty seconds'll do it.” She turned to Yashi. “Please.”
And Yashi again closed the door tightly behind him.
Sophia looked at Dave. “I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again: I don't care what you did or didn't do to some … she-bitch who would've killed you if she'd had the chance. I don't care why you did whatever you did—and I don't care that you didn't tell me the details before now. We all have secrets. Believe me, I understand. But even if you don't think whatever it was you were doing last week somehow stirred this up or just, I don't know, made whatever is happening worse? You could be wrong.”
“I'm not.”
“You could be. Even you, David, have been wrong in the past. You're not perfect—”
“I'm well aware of that!”
“Someone tried to kill you, and now seems to be threatening me—”
“There's an understatement!”
“Is it?” she asked. “I don't know. All I know for certain is that right now, when you need to be forthcoming about everything, you suddenly won't talk to me!”
“What happened to We all have secrets?” It was a snarky thing to say, Dave knew it.
Sophia got in his face. “My secrets aren't going to get me killed. And you better believe if I thought, for one second, that my secrets put either one of us into danger? I'd be talking. And talking. And talking.”
She didn't let him respond, she didn't wait for him to rebut or even retort. She just marched out the door, slamming it shut behind her.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Tracy was sitting much too close. Especially considering the fact that just a few scant moments ago she'd told Decker she wanted to do him.
And yeah, okay, she was allegedly being sarcastic.
But she'd said the words, using the grittiest verb available, and Deck had felt his head snap back. And sure, she could pretend that she hadn't meant it, but there had been quite a moment there when their gazes had caught and held. It was obvious they both knew damn well, should they let it go that far, that there would be some serious heat between them.
Not that he would ever let it happen. He had better control than that.
Except now Tracy was sitting too damn close, the warmth of her thigh against his leg. She'd looped her arm around the back of the truck's bench seat, and rested her hand tentatively on his shoulder, which meant that his right arm brushed the softness of her left breast every time he took a left turn. Or a right. And okay, yeah—it happened every time he moved the steering wheel, and he was about to lose his goddamned mind.
It was just a charade meant to fool anyone who might be watching into thinking that Jo Heissman wasn't crouched and hiding on the cab floor at Tracy's feet. Although if someone from the Agency had followed the doctor to her office and seen her approach Decker's truck, then watched as the truck pulled out of the lot, they pretty much knew she was in here.
But Decker wanted her on the floor for a variety of reasons, most of them right out of the Spy v. Spy playbook. But some of his reasons weren't even that lofty—one being that he wanted Jo Heissman to be uncomfortable, and the other being that he wanted Tracy to have to sit that close.
Decker could feel her fingers, near the collar of his shirt, near the back of his neck. And Jesus, he was in a weird, weird place if he was sitting here, like some sixteen-year-old hard-on, thinking about the fact that if he braked a little too hard at the next red light, Tracy's hand might move and she might actually touch him, skin against skin.
He wanted to be touched like that so badly, it was embarrassing.
It was triple weird since all that petty, juvenile trash was running rampant through his brain, even as he listened to Jo Heissman tell her story.
“I was paid a visit,” she was saying, “at four o'clock this morning, by a man who put a bag over my head—both to intimidate me and to conceal his identity. It was not a pleasant way to wake up.”
“You must have been terrified.” Tracy, again, was handling the conversational niceties—expressing sympathy, making the proper noises of support. Which was good, because if Decker had spoken he'd've given away the fact that he was skeptical—of the existence of both man and bag. “Are you all right?”
“I'm fine,” Dr. Heissman said. “He didn't do more than threaten me.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Tracy said, which made him glance at her in the mirror. Who the hell said Thank goodness instead of Thank God?
Tracy did, apparently, because her response wasn't an act. Or was it? She seemed sincerely relieved, her full focus on the doctor, whom she appeared to believe with a naiveté that was sweetly charming. Which reminded Decker of the insult he'd hurled just before Dr. Heissman had made the scene. You're a little girl.
But there was no doubt about it. This was a full-grown woman sitting next to him.
“What did he want?” Tracy asked.
It was then that Jo Heissman hesitated, looking from Tracy to Deck. She wore expensive, rectangular-shaped glasses that added an additional level of elegant bookishness to her already intelligent eyes. She was closer to his own age than Tracy was, yet she was still a very good-looking woman. Her blue eyes and pale skin were a sharp contrast to her long, dark, yet-streaked-with-natural-gray hair. And her warrior-goddess attitude was not at all altered by the fact that he was making her sit, her knees up near her ears, on the grungy floor mat of his truck.
No doubt about it, he was a bastard for making her sit there, and he was a little surprised that she hadn't asked if she could join them on the bench seat, like a real person, now that they'd traveled several winding miles. But she didn't, so he let her stay where she was.
No one was following them—Deck was being careful—but that didn't mean a thing. The doctor could well be carrying—either intentionally or not—a GPS beacon which would reveal their location. In his current dour mood, he would bet she was carrying it intentionally.
“He said he was from the Agency's black ops division. And that he wanted information.” Dr. Heissman spoke directly to Decker now. “About you.”
This time when Decker glanced into the rearview, both to check the traffic pattern behind them—nope, they still weren't being followed—and to gauge Tracy's reaction, the receptionist was looking back at him.
Her eyes were blue, too, and just as sharply intelligent as the doctor's. The silent message she was sending him was clear—she was now leaving all responses and follow-up questions completely to him.
Yeah, he'd see how long that would last.
But for now, Deck cleared his throat. “What did he want to know?” he asked.
“Information concerning the last time I'd been in contact with you,” Dr. Heissman answered. “He wanted dates, times… Methods — phone calls, e-mails, in-person meetings …”
Of which there had been exactly none.
“He was interested in the nature of our relationship,” she continued. “Did I know you well?” She paused. “He asked where you were and what you did—on the night that Jim Nash died. We went over it in quite some detail. He was interested in minutiae.”
Tracy chose that very moment to move her hand. Just slightly. But enough to touch Decker with her thumb, just on the bare skin side of his shirt collar.
It was not by accident. And it took everything in him not to react. But almost instantly he realized he should react—in some way—to the startling nature of Jo Heissman's
news, so he said, “What the hell … ?” which also gave him a few extra seconds to push away the sudden images of sex that had jammed his brain waves: graphic and extremely visceral thoughts of slipping into welcoming arms and sliding into the slick, tight heat of any willing woman, not necessarily Tracy, although Tracy would certainly do.
And, Jesus, this was not what he should be thinking about when he'd just found out that the Agency—or someone saying they were with the Agency, which was not the same thing—was digging around, looking for more information, no doubt to verify that Nash was, indeed, dead.
Or still alive—in which case they would try to find him to reverse that condition. This was, Deck believed, absolutely in response to that DNA test on that bloody shirt of Nash's.
No, now was not the time for his body to decide it needed to challenge the long-held rules of his self-imposed celibacy. It happened from time to time—a petulant challenge—and usually at the most inopportune moments. Which this absolutely was. So, in truth, this latest uprising, so to speak, fit his ongoing pattern.
Apparently scones weren't the only thing on his predictable-behavior list.
“I don't know what's going on,” Jo said, as he stared at the road, at the taillights of the car in front of him, and reminded himself of the disasters that always awaited him when he surrendered to his body's demands. Sophia was, as always, Exhibit A.
“But I tend to get uncooperative and downright cranky when people put bags over my head,” she continued. “So I told him you were with me at the FBI headquarters in Sacramento for most of the evening that Jim Nash died. And that, since at that time I was your therapist, I told him I'd counseled you, extensively, when the news came down about Nash's death.”
What the fuck?
Decker forced himself to focus on what the shrink had just said, which was that she'd lied to the alleged Agency operative who'd broken into her home. Decker hadn't been with Dr. Heissman for most of that evening— he'd been helping Jules Cassidy make arrangements for Nash's postoperative hospital care. Among other things. He'd purposely been far away from her when she'd received the news that Nash had died, because yes, she had briefly been his therapist.
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