Dark of Night (12 page)

And okay, when he said things like
that?
As if they were absolute?
Not as long as I'm alive.
It was hard not to get a little gooey inside.

“Let's go to your place and make that phone call,” Deck said, grabbing the duffel bag by the handles, “and pack your bag.”

Wait a minute. Tracy trailed after him, into the living room. “Why not just tell Tom the truth—that I know about Jimmy and I'm going with you to … wherever this safe house is.”

“He doesn't know,” Decker told her, the fact of which floored her.

She had to repeat it, because it seemed so unlikely.
“Tom Paoletti
doesn't know.”

“Nope,” Decker said. “Sam and Alyssa do—but only because they're part of the security team guarding … you know.”

Tracy did know. Guarding Jimmy Nash. Whatever was going on, Deck was spooked enough to not want to say his name aloud, even in a surveillance-free zone.

“Tess knows, obviously,” he continued. “Jules Cassidy, from the FBI. And his, um, husband Robin? But only because he's providing the cover for the house. Me, and now you. That's pretty much it.”

Tracy stared at him. Even more astonishing than the fact that she was going to be sharing a safe house with movie star Robin Chadwick Cassidy was the fact that so few people knew that Jimmy was alive. And she hadn't missed the fact that Dave and Sophia weren't on that list. Sophia—whom Tracy had been certain was just going to show up at work, one of these days, married to Decker. Like, they were going to leave the office— separately—some Friday night, and return happy and together on Monday, after a weekend spent risking their lives and thwarting some dangerous terrorist.

But Tracy had stopped being so certain of that when Jimmy had died.

Everything had changed after it became obvious that Decker was applying for Jimmy's old position in Tess's life. Except
that
was just another brick in the wall of his attempt to convince the world that Jimmy was dead.

And like most of the world, Sophia had believed Decker. And she was now playing house with Dave Malkoff.

Which really had to stink for Deck—despite his joy over Jimmy's not being dead.

“For the record,” Deck told her now, “you're the only person who figured out what was really going on, so … I'm pretty sure that makes you the opposite of an idiot.”

“I have no idea what's really going on,” Tracy admitted. “Just that Jimmy is—”

“Don't say it,” Deck stopped her. “When we get to the house, we'll fill
you in on the details of the situation. You can help with support. In between the books-by-the-pool thing. If you want.”

Tracy shut her mouth, which had dropped open when he said the word
support.
“I want.”

“Good,” he said. “And please don't take this personally, but until we get to the safe house? I'm going to be glued to your side.”

Dave was in some kind of serious trouble.

He was still under from the anesthesia he'd been given while the doctors cleaned out and stitched up the knife wound in his side, but when he awoke, there were going to be a slew of questions.

Dear God, the sight of all that blood…

It had sent Sophia hurtling back, to Dimitri's death, to the violence that had violated their lives and left her a widow.

There'd been so much blood that day, too. It had caked beneath her fingernails and stained her clothes, and she'd sat, numb and shaking, then as now.

Back then, she'd been powerless, helpless—much as the men in the dark suits were trying to make her feel tonight.

But she wasn't helpless—not anymore—and she stood up, digging in her purse for her cell phone. A big sign was posted on the wall of the hospital waiting area, saying NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED, but to hell with that.

She needed to make this call.

Because just as she was no longer helpless, Dave hadn't suffered Dimitri's fate. His injury had been messy, but far from fatal. Fortunately, there had been no internal damage done by that knife, and his condition, post-stitches, had quickly gone from stable to solidly good.

They were keeping him in the hospital overnight, but really only because his stitches were being called “surgery,” and the facility had rules about what constituted an inpatient or an outpatient procedure. The nurse had told her they'd want to keep him in, too, for observation because of the loss of blood. It didn't warrant a transfusion, but they were giving him fluids—and painkillers—intravenously.

Dave was, the nurses had all told her, an incredibly lucky man. A fraction of an inch in any direction …

But he was going to be fine. Which was unbelievably good news.

On the other hand, the guards at Dave's hospital room door, the crowd of dark suits waiting to question him further about the dead man in the parking lot, and the seemingly fact-conflicting answers he'd given to their questions when he'd briefly roused in the ER …

That wasn't so good.

Sophia sought control over her hands, forcing them to stop shaking so that she could dial her phone. She had the private cell number of Jules Cas-sidy, who worked—high level—atthe FBI's Boston office. He wasn'tso much
her
friend as a friend of many of the other operators atTroubleshooters.

It rang and rang, but he finally answered, thank God. “Cassidy.” His voice was thick from sleep.

“This is Sophia Ghaffari, from Troubleshooters? I'm so sorry to wake you, sir,” she said. “But it's rather urgent.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.
“Who
is this … ?”

“Sophia—” she started.

He finished with her. “Ghaffari, right. Sorry. Of course. I'm having one of these nights where the phone rings every twenty minutes, and each time I wake up with fewer brain cells firing. It's okay, sweetie, go back to sleep,” he soothed someone in the room with him, no doubt his husband, Robin. “Just let me …” It was clear he was moving, closing a door behind him. “What's going on?”

“I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm over at Mass General,” she told him. “Here in Boston. With Dave Malkoff He was attacked in the parking lot by a man with a knife.” Her voice shook. “He was stabbed.”

“Is he all right?” Jules asked, the warmth of his concern palpable, even through the somewhat shaky cell phone connection.

“He lost a lot of blood, but he's… Yes,” Sophia told him. “He's going to be fine.”

“Has he ID'd the perp?” Jules asked. “And, wait a minute. Did you say he was stabbed in the
hospital
parking lot?”

“We were visiting my father,” Sophia said. “He's dying and …”

“I'm so sorry,” Jules said. “And … This isn't meant to be funny, even though it's going to come out sounding like a sick joke, but… Your father's not some Tony Soprano type, is he?”

“No,” Sophia said, laughing despite her worry, despite the tears that kept forming in her eyes. “Not a chance.”

“FYI, muggings outside of hospitals aren't uncommon,” Jules pointed out. “There've been cases of addicts trolling emergency room parking lots, hoping to score an OxyContin prescription off some poor schlub who broke his ankle.”

“That's not what this was,” Sophia said.

“Are you worried for Dave's safety?” Jules asked. “Because I can call and have a guard put on him—”

“He's got plenty of guards,” Sophia said. “But they're the other kind. The kind who are there to make sure he doesn't go anywhere. And to keep me out. They won't let me sit with him. I'm in the waiting room.”

“Okay,” Jules said. “I'm just going to shut up now and let you tell me what's going on.”

She took a deep breath, exhaled hard. “Dave says he was attacked by a big man—a skinhead—who ran away when the police arrived. But there was another man at the scene, and I don't know for sure, but it's possible he was a CIA operative. A very dead CIA operative. His throat was cut.”

“Oh, crap,” Jules said.

“Yeah. Whoever the dead man is, I'm pretty sure Dave knew him, but he swears he didn't know he was there until the police found the body. Regardless of that? The dead man was neither big nor bald. I'm also pretty sure there were two knives found—but Dave said his attacker had three. One of the knives was in Dave's hand when the police arrived, the other was on the pavement by the dead man. They're testing them for prints and blood—you know, DNA.”

Jules was silent for a moment, then said, “This incident. It's out of the blue? I mean, from your point of view? Dave hadn't mentioned an old friend or, I don't know, an old … enemy?”

“No,” Sophia told him.

“Any secretive phone calls?”

“Not that I noticed,” she said. “No.”

“Mysterious trips?”

“We both travel for work,” she answered, although a small warning bell chimed in the back of her mind. She still didn't know where Dave had gone just a few days ago, while she was in Denver. She'd assumed it was work-related, but he'd said something about taking several additional days off to come here, to Boston. It hadn't struck her as odd
—additional
days— until now.

“What?” Jules asked, perceptive as always.

“No,” she said. “Nothing. We just… In our business, we don't talk about our assignments. Not outside the security of the office.” But they did talk about it
in
the office. Dave had known she was going to Denver to close a deal with a new client. But he hadn't told her about any impending trip. Which, of course, didn't mean something hadn't come up while she was away.

Still, with a dead CIA agent in the hospital parking lot, Sophia had to wonder.

She put conviction into her voice. “This
is
completely out of the blue. I mean, come on. This is
Dave
we're talking about.”

To her own ears, she didn't sound completely convinced, but Jules chuckled.

“I hear you. And okay. I'm going to look into this, see what I can find out.”

“He's not supposed to regain consciousness until morning, but …”

“This is Dave we're talking about,” Jules finished for her. “Check.”

“Can you …” Sophia hated to ask, but she wanted in, to Dave's room. “Please, will you come down here, to the hospital, and throw your weight around?”

“Sweetie, I would if I could, but I'm in California. Robin's doing a movie out here and … Even if I could break away from my current… situation, it would be tomorrow night—at best—before I could get to you.”

Sophia couldn't help it. She started to cry, pulling the phone away from her mouth so that Jules wouldn't hear her.

Somehow he knew anyway. “Here's what I'm going to do,” he told her. “I'm going to call Yashi. Joe Hirabayashi, okay? He's one of my best agents—a really great guy. He'll make sure that, whatever happens, Dave isn't shipped off to Guantánamo, all right?”

Dear God, she hadn't even thought
of that.

“That was a joke,” Jules said.

“Was it?”

“Yeah, okay, not really,” he admitted. “Let me go and call Yashi. He'll participate in any further questioning, make sure it's all kosher.”

“Thank you.”

A nurse came hurrying down the hall, glancing into the waiting area where Sophia was pacing. “Are you Sophia Ghaffari?” she called.

“Excuse me,” Sophia told Jules as she called back to the nurse, “I am.” “Mr. Malkoffs awake,” the nurse reported, “and he's asking for you. He's extremely agitated—we're afraid he's going to hurt himself.”

Sophia was already running. “Please, hurry,” she told Jules as she hung up her phone.

The world was a blur of pain and color and sound, and through the confusion and chaos, Dave was certain of only one thing.

Sophia wasn't there.

And the only conceivable reason he could come up with for why she wasn't sitting at his bedside, was that something terrible had happened to her while he was getting stitched up. That whoever was giving orders to the giant Irish skinhead had attacked again, this time going for her.

So Dave ignored the team of suits, most of whom drew their sidearms and shouted at him not to move as he pulled the IV needle out of his arm and swung himself over the metal rail on the side of the hospital bed.

The time for talking was over. He'd tried that, tried shouting, too, but it hadn't given him what he'd wanted—the reassurance, with his own bleary eyes, that Sophia was alive and in one piece.

He could feel a breeze in a place where breezes didn't often blow—no doubt because he was wearing one of those ridiculous hospital gowns and his ass was hanging out.

“Ask me if I give a shit,” he said to a nurse, who was backing away from him, her hands out and down, as if she were trying to calm a wild animal.

“Dave! Dear God!”

It was Sophia, thank the Lord. She pushed her way into the room, past the suits and the guns, glaring at them in outrage and disbelief.

“What are you, going to shoot a wounded man? Get those weapons out of here!” She turned toward Dave and added, just as disapprovingly, “Are you out of your mind?”

“I thought …” With his anger and fear dissipated, with their numbing properties drastically diminished, his world had turned into a rather large ball of pain. “Maybe you … needed me.”

“Help me get him back into bed,” she commanded someone—the nurse—who appeared and took his right arm as Sophia took his left.

She was there, she was real, she was warm, she was solid.

And that was
his
blood staining her shirt and pants.

A second nurse lowered the railing—it was much easier getting in and out that way—and Dave settled back into the hospital bed, where it didn't hurt quite so much. “I'm so sorry,” he told Sophia.

“Shhh,” she said, her eyes filled with tears. She held tightly to his hand and brushed his hair back, out of his face, as the nurse checked his wound, rehooked him to his IV bag, and added a second bag to the cocktail.
“I'm
sorry that I let them kick me out.”

“What happened?” Dave asked. “Was that really Barney Delarow—”

“Excuse me, Ms. Ghaffari,” one of the suits stepped forward to say, “I'm going to have to insist that you leave. Until you've given your statement to the authorities …”

His voice trailed off, because Sophia had turned to look up at him, giving him her full attention—which often resulted in grown men being struck dumb. Even with blood on her clothes, hair bedraggled from the rain, she was angelic. “And you are … ?” she asked.