“Jack Finch was there,” Jimmy reported. “And Doc Ryan, who ran the psych group. Oh, and the idiot who led support back then. What the fuck was his name?” He squinted to remember. “Matt Hallfield. What an asshole. We used to call him Matt-hole. He had his second in command with him—Russ Stafford.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?” Tess squinted her brain, but nothing came forth.
Jimmy shook his head. “I don't think you ever met him. He never actually said much—although it couldn't have been easy to get a word in edgewise with Matt-hole around. I think Stafford left right around the same time that Hallfield died. Around 2001, I think. Yeah. It was right after 9/11. Although maybe he went into admin and we just never crossed paths again.”
“That's easy enough to find out.” The Agency's records were hacker-proof—unless the hacker had previously worked in the Agency's support division as a computer specialist, the way Tess had. “Ryan and Hallfield were just before my time,” Tess told him. “But people were still talking about Hallfield.”
Apparently the former head of the Agency's support team had had terminal cancer and committed suicide—which had really shaken up the entire organization. The tragedy had prompted then-director Finch to put even more emphasis on the mental health department, making psych evaluations mandatory, even for support staff.
“So Finch and Hallfield and Brendon and the others are talking in your ear,” Tess prompted Jimmy, who'd fallen silent again.
“Yeah,” he said. “They were watching images—both from satellites and from a minicam I was wired with.” He met her eyes. “That was the last time I did a job like that. After that, I managed to break the equipment that they gave me when they sent me out. Eventually, they just stopped giving it to me. But I was too green at the time to … I should've…”
“So they're watching, too,” Tess encouraged him, interrupting his recriminations, “as the Merchant comes out of the church.”
Jimmy nodded. “He's got these kids surrounding him—no big surprise there. Their heads come up to his waist—which is strategic.”
Tess knew what he meant. Body armor—at least the kind most readily available back in the early 1990s—ended roughly at the waist. Really paranoid people might also wear protective shorts, but at the time, it would've been a two-piece ensemble. A sniper trying to take out a body armor–protected target had a shot at getting the job done by aiming for the juncture at the waist, and hoping there was a muffin-top induced gap.
“There's another kid,” Jimmy continued, closing his eyes, “maybe a little younger than the others. He's sitting on this bastard's shoulders, pretty much wrapped around his head. And I can't do it, Tess. I can't take the shot, not at that range, with the weapon that I had. Any bullet I fired would go through the man's head and blast a hole in that kid, too. So I reported that.”
She braced for what she knew was coming.
“But the order comes down, direct from Finch. Do it anyway” Jimmy whispered. “And then Hallfield comes on. And he tells me it's okay. His team has identified the kid as being the son of Fariq al-Qasim, one of the Merchant's top henchmen. And I look through my scope at this little boy, and he's smiling and laughing, like he's enjoying the ride, and I … I can't do it. Time's running out, the target's got maybe ten more seconds before he reaches the safety of his car. And Brendon comes back on, and he's cursing and screaming—Do it, God damn it! And he tells me if I don't, all of those children will die, because he's going to order an airstrike on that vehicle. And I'm a fucking idiot, because I believed him. So I shoot, but I aim for the man's chest, because maybe he's not wearing any body armor at all, you know? I hit him—it's a clear shot, nowhere near any of the kids, and he falls, and I'm out of there. I'm gone.”
But the Merchant had been wearing body armor. He'd survived the attack.
“The threat of the airstrike was just a bluff,” Jimmy said quietly. “I didn't know it then, but no way were we going to risk photos of dead children in every newspaper in the country—and around the world. That was back when the press wasn't entirely run by corporations, when we still cared about shit like that, when public opinion polls mattered. So no harm, no foul—except because I took the shot instead of calling off the mission and fading into the mountains? The motherfucker knew that we'd tried for him. And two days later, he blows up Fariq al-Qasim's son's school bus, as if to say Fuck you. See how strong I am, and how weak you are? Thirty-one children died, including the one whose life I was unable— unwilling—to take.”
“You aren't weak,” Tess argued.
“The kid was going to die anyway,” Jimmy told her. “If I could go back, have a do-over, I'd take the shot and kill the kid. Save thirty others. Plus all the other people that motherfucker killed in terrorist attacks between then and the time he really was deleted.”
“You didn't know that back then,” Tess told him. “You didn't see numbers. You saw a little boy.”
“A seven-year-old boy,” Jimmy said. “And now another seven-year-old boy is dead because of me.”
“No.” She was absolute. “He's dead because there are people out there who are evil, who know that if you're still alive, you have the power to bring them down. And I agree,” she added. “Whoever killed the John Wilsons knew that you were unable to cross that line all those years ago and intentionally kill al-Qasim's son.”
They also no doubt knew that Jimmy had agonized over the choice that he'd made, after he'd found out about that bus. Tess frowned. Wait a minute.
“Who handled your psych evaluations?” she asked.
Jimmy shook his head. “I didn't have psych evaluations back then,” he told her. “Not really. I mean, I did on paper. Dr. Ryan signed off on the reports. But nobody wasted any time on me.”
She stared at him. “You're not kidding, are you?”
He smiled tightly at her disbelief. “I think they liked me—exactly the way they'd found me. Why change perfection, you know?”
“So you never sat down with—”
“Nope. There was this one time, when an outside mental health organization came in, and Ryan's office cribbed me the answers for the written test. Told me what to say in the interview, too. I kept it in my repertoire— kind of like Christmas carols. You dust 'em off and sing a rousing chorus once a year.”
“That's not the way it's supposed to work. Finch and Brendon—”
“Weren't interested in my mental health,” Jimmy finished for her. “I don't think they expected me to live long enough to need it. I don't think they wanted me to live long enough to. …”
“Do you think they're behind—”
“Finch is dead,” he told her. “And Brendon … He just wasn't that smart.”
“He was smart enough to become head of the entire Agency.”
“He was a political appointee,” Jimmy pointed out.
Right. “What happened to Dr. Ryan?” Tess asked. “Didn't he have a heart attack, right in his office? He didn't come back from that, did he?”
“No. He died, I don't know, maybe a few months later?”
“When was that?” she asked.
Jimmy shook his head. “Honestly? I tried to stay as far from Ryan's department as possible.”
It wouldn't be hard to find out that date. “It just seems weird,” she said, “that almost everyone in a leadership position in that situation room is now dead.”
“I have no clue what happened to Russ Stafford.”
“I wonder if he went down into the black ops sector.”
“No.” Jimmy dismissed the idea. “I would have seen him there.”
Tess had to look away, because that one little sentence held so much information. Jimmy had performed so many black ops for the Agency, he'd known everyone in black ops support.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that you should make a list of everyone you came into contact with at the Agency. And as many as you can remember of the ops that you performed.”
“I've done that,” he sa
id. “I gave it to Cassidy.”
“You already … wow.” She was surprised. “You did it while I was… in San Diego?”
Something flickered in his eyes, and he opened his mouth, and she knew with a heart-aching sense of dread that the next thing he said to her was going to be a lie. But then he closed his eyes and exhaled, hard, and said, “Please don't be mad. But I made the lists back when I was in the hospital.”
“What?” she said. “When?”
“Whenever you went to shower, or get coffee,” he admitted, an apology in his eyes.
“I'm not mad,” she said. And she wasn't. The wobble in her voice was from her relief—and disbelief—that he'd actually told her the truth. “I'm a little confused. You could barely hold a pen. I could've helped.”
“I didn't want you to,” he said quietly. “I didn't want you to see it. The ops list. I didn't want…” He shook his head. “I told Cassidy that I thought it would upset you, but the truth is, I didn't want you to find out all the really awful shit I've done.”
“I've seen your Agency files,” she reminded him.
“This is different. Black ops…”
“Jimmy.” She squeezed the words out past her heart, which was again lodged securely in her throat. “You know me better than that.”
“But I could see it,” he confessed, “in Cassidy's eyes. He looked at the list, and then he looked at me differently.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if he had a terrible headache. “I don't want you to look at me like that.”
“I won't.”
“You might.”
“But if I don't see the list,” she gently pointed out, “won't you always wonder?”
Jimmy looked at her then. “I'd rather wonder with you, than know without you.”
“You're going to have to trust me,” Tess told him, and there they sat.
“Is it okay,” he finally asked, “if I show you the list in the morning?”
Tess nodded. “Yeah.” It had been a long day—for both of them. And if Jimmy were going to continue to heal, he needed to get his rest. She, however, still had work to do.
“I love you,” she reminded him as she got to her feet, as she held out a hand to help him up, too. “I'm not going to love you any less tomorrow.”
Jimmy nodded, but she could tell from his eyes that, although he desperately wanted to, he didn't believe her.
“Sorry it's not a scone.”
Decker stood in Sam Starrett's kitchen, on legs that were still way too unsteady, staring at Tracy Shapiro, who'd just offered him a cookie.
No, offer was too gentle a word. She was forcing the fucking thing on him. And damn it, he watched himself reach out and take it from her hand. His fingers brushed against hers by accident—or maybe not—and he wanted …
He wanted to kiss her again, and not stop this time. He wanted to back her up against the cabinets and lift her onto the counter and spread her long, gorgeous legs. He wasn't quite tall enough, and he'd have to stand on his toes as he pushed himself inside of her, as he made her come.
Himself, too. This wasn't complete altruism he was feeling here.
Feeling.
Yeah.
She was right when she'd said that she was making him feel something other than his usual misery. He'd been far from miserable while he was kissing her.
It was only afterwards that he'd been fully submerged in a steaming pit of despair.
But Jesus, she was beautiful, even with her hair a mess and her face smudged with dirt and blood. With her classically beautiful, almost perfectly proportioned features, with those big expressive eyes and her flawlessly perfect skin, she was a knockout—and that was before looking southward at her stammer-inducing, brain-freezing, incredibly female curves. Her breast had nearly overflowed his hand—and he had big hands.
He'd also liked the force with which she'd kissed him back—as if she'd seen his bet and raised him the limit, as if she were ready and willing to escalate from that not-very-gentle kiss to full body-slamming, heart-stoppingly rough-and-tumble sex in a single heartbeat.
The woman had no fear—which was a real problem, since Deck too often scared the shit out of himself. If she didn't stop him, then who the hell would?
And the really stupid thing? It was that if his jeans hadn't already been down around his knees, he wouldn't have stopped kissing her. Which would have ultimately resulted in his jeans getting pulled down to his knees as she straddled him and he slammed himself inside of her.
Yeah, if he hadn't gotten injured and bled all over his clothes, she'd be fucking him blind right now, on the cold concrete floor of their co-workers’ garage.
So, no. He didn't want a goddamned cookie.
He put it down on the kitchen counter, and Tracy opened her mouth to protest, of course.
Decker spoke over her. “You need to wash out that elbow,” he told her—and she bent her arm and tried to see it, which never worked, but gave him a better look at the scrape. It was a real mess, with ground-in dirt that would hurt like a bitch to clean. “Why don't you shower, and after you're dressed, I'll help you with it.”
“You've got a scrape on your back that's way worse than this,” she countered.
“I doubt it,” he said. His shoulders felt rug-burned and raw, true, but there'd be no pieces of dirt to pick from his skin because his shirt was intact. He didn't have to see it to know that.
Tracy, of course, was indignant. “It is,” she informed him. “It's—”
“Why,” he interrupted her, “is everything always an argument or a contest with you?”
She made a sound of exasperation and total disgust, and he realized he should have kept a count of how many times, today alone, he'd provoked that particular noise from her. It was probably well into double digits.
“Since when is informing you of a fact an argument?” she asked. “As for contest? You win. Okay? I concede any and all contests. Congratulations—you're the biggest idiot in the room.”
She pushed her hair back from her face, and left behind a streak of soot above her eyebrow.
Soot?
Jesus.
He'd had no idea they'd been that close to the smoke and flames from the explosion, and he had to hang on to the counter as relief flooded him again. He was incredibly lucky that they weren't both dead. Doubly lucky, considering someone had been lying in wait for them with a sniper rifle.
“Are you all right?” Concern softened Tracy's eyes as she reached for him. But she didn't make contact—she didn't let herself.
Which was simultaneously a blessing and a shame.
“I'm fine,” he said.
His nausea had evened out quite a bit once they'd gotten inside the house. He was feeling less as if he were going to hurl any second— although now that the ringing in his ears was fading and the dizziness was departing, he felt every stinging scrape and battered bruise. His arm was throbbing in unison with his heartbeat. Among other things.
“I really don't want to leave you alone out here,” she said. “Why don't we find the bathroom. You can shower while I'm in there. The bathroom,” she added quickly. “Not the shower. You get to shower alone. Unless you need help …”
Her words inspired images of her head tipped back as water cascaded down her face, her throat, her magnificent breasts as she helped him as only a naked woman in his shower could. …
“Not that kind of help,” she chastised him. “Even I'm not pathetic enough to suggest that we … God.”
“I knew what you meant,” he defended himself. “You're there if I fall down. Which I'm not going to do.”
“If you knew what I meant, then you shouldn't have been thinking—”
“You can't possibly know what I was thinking,” he interrupted.
Tracy exhaled her disgust. “Oh, please. You're a man. What is that statistic? Men think about sex something like four thousand times a minute. You were thinking it. I could see that you were thinking it.”
“Is four thou
sand times a minute even possible—”
“It's the equivalent of constantly,” Tracy shot back. “Even for someone who's as much of a prude as you are.”
“I'm a prude,” he repeated. “Yet I think about sex constantly?”
“That's usually how it works,” she told him. “You're so bottled up, your head's going to explode.”
“Your analysis of me”—he was incredulous—“comes from what? The fact that I haven't tried to fuck you by now?”
She flinched at his harshness, but didn't back down. “No,” she retorted, and took a breath, about to launch into what was sure to be an infuriating counterattack.
“It's called restraint,” he shot at her before she could begin. “You should try it sometime.”
It made her sputter, and say, “I had no idea restraint was a synonym for cowardice.”
Oh, no. No.
“You know, you kissed me,” she continued.
“You took off my pants.” The words came out of his mouth before he could stop. He knew, damn well, that her intent hadn't been at all salacious.
But she blushed, even as she defended herself. “To make sure you weren't going to die! Do me a favor? If I'm ever lying on the ground, unconscious and covered in blood? Undress me. I'd rather not die simply to protect your pious and distorted sense of decorum.”
“I won't have to undress you,” he told her. “You barely wear any clothes as it is.”
“Oh!” she said. “My! God! You just proved my point. You sound like my grandfather! My pants are wrapped around your wounded arm—in case you didn't notice.”
“I'm not talking about your lack of pants,” he pointed out, aware as hell that he, too, wasn't wearing any. “I'm talking about…”
“The way I dress when I've got pants on,” she finished for him. “I know. Which makes you a misogynist as well as a prude. Women didn't dress that way when your Oma was young. No, Opa, they did. Oma just didn't have any boobs after spending four years on rations in London—and giving most of her share of the food to Uncle Paul.”
“The jeans you were wearing last night were not your grandmother's.” Why was he arguing? There was no way he could win this.
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