“No, he's not going to do that.” Alyssa was patient with him. “It's not safe. I'm making the code red call, Jules. This is no longer your choice, it's mine. We're using the back-in-rehab cover.”
“Oh, crap, no,” Jules said. They'd created a Plan B, before embarking on this dangerous mission, that would allow them to pull Robin—a recovering alcoholic—off the movie set and get him to safety, by pretending that he needed to go back into rehab. The story was going to be all over the TV entertainment “news,” as well as the Internet—it was probably already posted on TMZ.com.
“Robin was completely on board,” Alyssa told him. “He's worried about you and Tess. He wants you to get in the van and get out of there. So do it. Get into the van.”
Tess was already gathering their things—packing up the book that she'd brought and tying her sweatshirt around her waist by its sleeves.
“Jules,” Alyssa said again. “This is all you have to do right now, okay? One step at a time. Just get in the van and get Tess and yourself to safety.”
“What about Decker?” Jules asked.
“I'll keep trying to contact him,” Alyssa said. “He'll work out a way to get in touch with Dave and Sophia.”
Jules exhaled, hard. “Jesus, Lys,” he said. “Seven years old … Haley's almost seven.” Haley Starrett, Sam's daughter from his first disastrous marriage, was funny and sweet and smart, and God, someone had delivered a double-pop to a seven-year-old's head.
“I know,” Alyssa said quietly. “Get back here, Jules. The people who did this are running scared. Which means they've probably already made a mistake. We're going to find them, we're going to track them down, and when we do?” Her voice turned hard as steel. “We're going to put them down like the rabid dogs that they are.”
The flight to LAX was full, which was frustrating because it meant that they probably wouldn't talk.
Not that Dave was ready to say anything—in fact, Sophia could tell he was relieved that they'd had absolutely zero privacy since she'd slammed her way out of the interrogation room at the morgue.
She closed her eyes as the plane took off, as gravity punched her back in her seat—she hated flying, she always had, but today her stomach roiled and she had to grit her teeth against the nausea.
But then Dave reached over and took her hand, lacing their fingers together, giving her a squeeze of reassurance. She knew she must've felt like ice to him, because he surrounded her hand with both of his, trying to warm her.
She kept her eyes closed against the sudden rush of tears.
She wanted, so badly, to go home.
No, what she wanted was to go back in time to Sunday morning. She wanted to put her fingers into her ears so that she wouldn't hear Dave tell her that Maureen had called. She wanted to not go to Boston, not see her father, not get that crazy phone call from Dave while she stood in the hospital lobby …
And not take that unwelcome step back into a world filled with violence and death. She'd had enough of both—she'd realized it with a jolt in the hospital—during the first thirtysomething years of her life.
And it wasn't death like her father's impending demise with which she had the problem. His passing was natural. It was part of the circle of life, and he was more than ready to move on.
The nurse had told Sophia that she wouldn't be surprised if he died within the next few days—especially now that he'd seen her, his only daughter. Especially now that she'd given him the forgiveness that he'd wanted for so long.
Her granting that forgiveness had further lightened her own soul, too.
For twenty minutes. She'd felt absolutely great about where she was in her life, and where she was going—for the twenty minutes from the time that she'd left her father's bedside, until she'd run out of the hospital to find Dave, soaked and bleeding in the parking lot.
There'd been so much blood.
And the truth was that she hadn't stepped back into a violence-filled world. The truth was that, by working at Troubleshooters Incorporated, she had never really left it.
Dave spoke softly, his voice low so that the woman sitting beside her, in the aisle seat, wouldn't overhear. “I'm so sorry.”
Too often, when people said they were sorry, they didn't mean it. Dave, however, was completely sincere. Sophia didn't doubt that. She never had.
“What if we leave?” she asked quietly, too. She opened her eyes to look at him. “What if we just… go somewhere. Far away. Out of the country. We can hide.”
He was silent for a long time, just gazing at her. And she realized, as she looked back at him, that she had absolutely no clue what he was thinking right now—or how he would respond. A muscle was jumping in the side of his face as he clenched his jaw. The Dave she could read so well had been replaced by this expressionless near-stranger.
He finally spoke. “Forever?” he asked her.
Sophia nodded, searching for the man who was so good at making her laugh, but not finding him in these somber eyes. “If we have to, yes.”
“You don't mean that,” he said quietly. “And even if you did, I would never do that to you. Take you away from your friends, your job, your entire life?”
“I don't care,” she insisted.
“Yeah,” he said, “you do. And even if we did it, Soph, even if we ran? We'd spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders and—” He broke off, shaking his head. “No.” His eyes got even harder, his face and his voice now stony, too. “This has to end. It's going to end.”
“How?” she asked him, a flood of tears rushing to her eyes. “With you dying? Because I don't want it to end that way.”
“It won't,” he whispered. He never could stand to see her cry.
“You can't promise that,” she accused him.
And he nodded his agreement, his mouth a grim line. “I know.”
I want my Dave—the real Dave—back, she was tempted to say, but the woman sitting next to her had taken off the earphones to her iPod. The plane had reached what seemed to be cruising altitude, and the need for Sophia to cling so desperately to Dave's hands had passed.
So she let him go.
Just as she let go of her fantasies. Because this was the real Dave—this tight-jawed operative sitting beside her now. The truth of the matter was that this man had been one of the CIA's top field agents long before she'd met him.
And for the past few months, she'd just been playing at normal. For the past few months, she'd been fooling herself. She'd wanted a home and a family—not another grave to tend. And the really stupid part? It was that she'd seen Dave in action, plenty of times. He'd helped save her life more than once through the years—including that very first night they'd made love.
But the fact that he was comfortable not just toting a submachine gun but also using it had somehow always seemed the exception rather than the rule. Yes, he regularly went out on overseas assignments, but to Sophia, he'd always seemed so much more at home sitting in an office, at a computer.
But he hadn't resigned from his job with the CIA by choice—he'd left under a cloud of suspicion and shame. He'd told her as much, months ago, but until now, she hadn't given any thought to what that really meant—and how it surely had affected him.
With his hair a mess, bleary-eyed from doing research on his computer, coffee mug in hand, slightly overweight and out of shape, dressed down in cargo shorts and a T-shirt touting the name of some ancient rock band—his favorite was The Ramones—he'd often kept his desk between himself and the rest of the world. But that hadn't been the real Dave— Sophia knew this now. That had been a slapped-down, heartbroken, eating-too-much-chocolate-to-make-himself-feel-better, subdued version of David Malkoff, CIA operative extraordinaire.
And the hard truth was that one of the main reasons Sophia had chosen him—and moving their relationship from friends to lovers had been her choice—was because she wanted to feel safe. Because she didn't want extraordinary.
“I don't know what we're doing here,” she
said to him now, regardless of the iPod woman's astonishingly overt curiosity. “If you won't talk to me. …”
Dave nodded, as if he'd been waiting for her to say those very words. “I'm sorry,” he said again, and again, it was clear that he was sincere. He was extremely sorry.
It was then that the flight attendant came by, selling snacks and drinks. They both shook their heads, but the attendant stayed in the aisle to serve the iPod lady a coffee.
Until the cart was gone, they sat in a somewhat awkward silence.
Sophia finally broke it. “I get that you don't want to talk to me,” she said. “Will you talk to Decker or—” She stopped herself. Gave a laugh that came out sounding far more like a sob. “I was actually going to say Jimmy Nash. I must be more exhausted than I thought.”
There was a flash of real pain mixed with the sympathy in Dave's eyes. “I forget that he's gone sometimes, too.” He exhaled hard. “I wish I could talk to him. We were closer than most people think.”
She nodded, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “I know. He told me—more than once—how much he admired you.” She was silent for a moment—they both were; he'd turned slightly away—and then she said, “I understand why you wouldn't be eager to talk to Deck. …”
Her voice trailed off because Dave turned to look at her, and tears were shining in his eyes. “Life can be tough,” he whispered, “and we don't always get what we want. God knows Tess and Nash didn't. And I know you didn't—with your father and mother and … with Dimitri's murder.”
She didn't argue—she couldn't.
“We're both so tired,” he continued as he pushed up the armrest that was between them, making sure it was securely out of the way. He turned off the overhead lights and pulled down the window shade. “Can we just table this discussion for now? Please? Just come here. You're freezing.”
He put his arm around her and pulled her close so she was as comfortable as possible, with her head on his shoulder. Then he put a blanket around them both. Taking care of her—as always.
“If you want, we can fight about this more tomorrow,” he said wearily. “But close your eyes and rest for now, okay?”
She was chilled, and he was so warm. So Dave. So much so that she almost started to cry. Instead she pulled his head down and kissed him.
To hell with the curious iPod lady.
He hadn't shaved while in the hospital, and his chin rasped against her as he hesitated only slightly before accepting her kiss, just as he always did. He returned it as something longer, deeper, hotter—again, as he always did.
And when he finally pulled back, she was breathless and dizzy. And as surprised by it as she always was.
“I'm going to make things right,” he whispered. “Whatever happens, you're going to be safe, I promise you that.”
He kissed her again, and she knew in that instant what her real problem was. She'd gotten into this relationship with Dave, thinking that she was settling for someone nice enough. Someone who loved her and would never hurt her. Someone who would be a good husband and a loving father to her children as they sailed through life on an easy, even keel.
Her problem really wasn't that there were mysteries unsolved, questions unanswered—that seemingly transparent Dave did, in fact, have secrets that he kept from her, from everybody.
Her real problem was that, after all the sorrow and loss in her life, she desperately didn't want to be in a relationship with someone she absolutely couldn't bear to live without.
And yet here she was, with the same fear she'd felt last night, as she'd followed Dave into the hospital, welling up in her throat whenever she so much as thought about his putting himself in danger.
Don't leave me, she'd said.
Never, he'd answered, but she'd learned, the hard way, that that was a promise no one could keep.
CHAPTER
NINE
A head, on the left,” Tracy announced, as she spotted the sign with the stylized ocean waves for the Seaside Heights Motor Lodge a fraction of a second before Decker did. The neon lights were faded and dull in the still of the early evening, and most of the letters were missing—it said only SSD HGTS. The road was divided and they had to pass the place and U-turn to get to its parking lot.
“Somebody needs to buy a vowel, and wow, hourly rates?” Tracy craned her neck to look at the place as they went past. “Very classy. My mother would be so proud.”
Decker glanced at her. She'd been quiet for most of the trip from the beach—even during the endless crawl in hellishly heavy traffic that had made the forty-minute drive take nearly an hour and a half. Of course, they'd stopped to pick up sandwiches, which had tacked on thirty additional grueling minutes.
“Not that I'm going to tell her. I mean, even if I did, she would just look at me as if I were certifiable.” Now that she'd started talking, it was clear she didn't know how to fall silent again, because she just kept the babble going. “She thinks I'm overqualified, and that Troubleshooters is just a fancy name for the local Rent-A-Cop company. She doesn't get why I'm not sending out my résumé to every doctor and his dentist brother in Southern California. She actually e-mailed me a list that was called something like ‘Eligible Men in the Medical Profession Across the United States,’ and I'm like, Why stop there, Mom? Why not send me the ‘Fifty-Two Years Old and Unhappily Married’ list, while you're at it. As long as I'm marrying for mercenary reasons, why not be a home wrecker, too.” She exhaled her disgust. “When she's not pushing the receptionist-marries-the-doctor plan, she's trying to get me back together with Lyle. My ex. She's like, All men cheat, Tracy. That's just the way they're wired—”
“It's okay if we don't talk,” Decker finally cut her off as he braked to a stop behind a line of traffic sitting at a light, waiting to make the turn. “I know you're still upset with me.”
“I'm not,” she lied, and he looked at her again. “I'm not,” she insisted. “I do think you're a total loser, but at the same time I feel sorry for you, because you're obviously going to spend your life alone and pathetic.” She paused for maybe a sixteenth of a second before adding, “Of course, when I walk into this flea-ridden, no-sleep-all-sleaze motel with you, the forty private investigators hiding in the parking lot, staking the place out, are going to think that we're here to get it on, and maybe that's enough for you—having people think that—”
“Your mother's wrong,” Decker changed the subject, because getting it on with Tracy was a topic he wanted to avoid. Especially when she was right. Anyone who saw him approach the motel with Tracy was going to think that he was one lucky, lucky son of a bitch. And he could be, with just a small amount of effort. Still. Even now. Even after his thoughtlessly cruel comment about Zanella running away screaming.
He paused to see if she'd shut up, and what d'you know? She had. She was waiting for him to continue, although he could tell from her eyes that she had at least several more paragraphs of opinion to impart. So he changed the subject more completely, by saying, “All men aren't wired to cheat.”
“I know that,” she said, but then she asked, “Did you?” The look of stunned surprise he shot her must've held some confusion, because she felt compelled to be more specific. “Ever cheat on what’ s-her-name? Your former fiancée. Emily?”
Jesus. What an intensely personal question to ask anyone, let alone a co-worker. Especially since he couldn't recall ever discussing with Tracy the fact that he so much as had a former fiancée, let alone that her name was Emily.
But apparently she didn't care that her question was also an admittance of the fact that she'd been gossiping about him with someone in the office, because she simply sat there, looking back at him, as if she expected him to answer. So he did.
“Yeah,” he said, as the light turned green and the cars in front of him started to move.
Tracy reacted as violently as if he'd reached out and smacked her, sitting back in the seat and all but gasping at his confession. “Seriously?”
“I ch
eated on her,” he confirmed. “After she cheated on me. It was…” What had Tracy called it? “Revenge sex. But I think the ultimate revenge was Em's, because …” Tracy was still watching him, waiting for the end of his sentence. So he gave it to her. “I knew it didn't matter what I did. I knew she wouldn't care. She hadn't moved out yet, but inside of her head, she was already gone. There was nothing I could do or say to change that. And the sex—cheating on her to do unto her, you know … ? It only made me feel like a bigger piece of shit.”
“I'm sorry,” she said quietly, but then surprised him by adding, “but that's such total male crap. There was nothing I could do or say to change that.” She mocked him, pitching her voice ridiculously low. “Of course there was something you could've done, you just didn't want to make the investment.”
He laughed his disgust as he made the U-turn far too fast, on tires that squealed their protest. “I didn't make the investment? I'm sorry, but that's total female crap. She didn't want me— if she did, she wouldn't've had a problem with my being gone so often. I was a chief with the SEAL teams, for God's sake. I invested in everything but the reality—which was that we were doomed from the start—because she was investing all of her time and effort into trying to turn me into someone that I fucking wasn't!”
Jesus Christ, what was it about Tracy Shapiro that caused him to lose his shit so quickly? He made a point never to raise his voice, and yet here he was, damn near shouting at her again, peppering his speech with a word that he'd noticed she very rarely used. In fact, the only time he'd heard her say it was when she'd used it as a verb. “Excuse me,” he appended. “I'm … sorry.”
She was thinking close to the same thing. “You know, I can always tell when you're not really angry, because you get loud and you swear a lot. When the anger's real, you're quiet and it's way more scary.”
He didn't slow down enough as he pulled into the potholed parking lot for the motel, and the truck bounced crazily, gravel spraying as he hit the brakes too hard. There was a too-small spot between two badly parked sedans, and he zipped the truck in, still going too fast, because the asshole in him wanted to make her squeak with alarm.
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