Dark of Night (22 page)

With pea-soup-green walls and a chipped industrial-tile floor, the room held little more than a scarred and pitted wooden table and two rickety chairs. There was an ancient sink with a decrepit faucet in the corner, a boxy metal paper-towel holder fused to the wall with that ugly-ass paint, a built-in bookshelf with a lone copy of the King James Bible.

It was a grim and awful room, except it now also held Sophia, who could make the most wretched shithole a place of beauty, just by her ethereal presence.

“Maybe you've forgotten,” she said, her own voice louder than usual, too, as she glared back at him, “but I don't work for you, so as far as that
obey
thing goes—”

“No,” he agreed. “You don't. You're my fiancée. Your… perjurious statement is now—without a doubt—part of an official CIA report—”

“Perjurious?”
she repeated in disbelief, because, yeah, it was a pretty stupid word choice. She hadn't been under oath when she'd answered Bill Connell's questions.

Still, Dave wasn't in the right place to admit that, or to slow down. “Which means that the entire world now knows that if they want to hurt me,” he continued, “and I'm talking
really
hurt me? All they have to do is go after
you.
So thanks a lot.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I was trying to … I didn't think …” She exhaled her frustration and started again. “I actually thought you'd like it if I …”

“Threw me a bone?” he finished for her because he was so goddamned angry, but not really at her—he was angry at himself. Okay, he
was
pretty mad at her, too—for scaring the crap out of him. And, yeah, he was also mad at her because she'd given him everything he'd ever wanted and then some. Which meant that now he was going to know
exactly
what he was missing when he gave her up.

And after seeing those photos, he knew damn well that he was going to have to give her up. God help him.

“What is wrong with you?” she whispered.
“You're
mad at
me
?!”

“What if there was a shooter on one of those rooftops,” he shot back at her, “but there you are—standing there, arguing with me because I'm not enough of an action hero for you—”

“What?!”

“
—so you ignore what I say—”

“I didn't
ignore
you! I didn't want
you
out there, either! You've already been injured, you're hardly …” She searched for the right word.

So he supplied it for her. “Decker.”

Again Sophia exhaled her frustration, yet at the same time, she wouldn't meet his gaze. “That's not what I was going to say.”

His stomach twisted at her words. She didn't say
that's not true.
Because it
was
true. “Yeah, but it's what you meant. I'm
not
Decker. But if I were? Well, we both know that if mighty Decker had told you to do something, God knows you'd not only listen, you'd have done it.”

“That is
not
fair,” she whispered, her eyes huge in a face that was lined and drawn. And still so beautiful, his very soul ached.

“I know,” he admitted. God, he was a bastard, taking this out on her. This was his fault—all of it. He should have known, years ago, that this fiasco with Anise would follow him, wherever he went, forever and ever, amen. “I'm sorry.” He choked the words out. “I'm going to have to call him. Decker. To ask for help.”

Yashi had thought that was a good idea, suggesting they return to San Diego as quickly as possible. And Sophia, too, lit up at the mention of Decker's name.

“Good,” she said. “Dave, that's a
good
thing. Because we
need
help, if we're going to find—”

He cut her off. “I have to put you someplace safe,” he told her, because
they
weren't going to do anything. He was. He'd started this all those
years ago, and he was going to end it. Or die trying. “With someone I can trust. And I absolutely trust Decker.”

That is, he trusted Decker to keep Sophia safe. It was what would happen when she and Decker were locked together, for days, in a secure hotel room, that Dave didn't trust. Or maybe he did. Maybe he knew too well what would happen in that kind of forced intimacy.

They'd talk. And they'd talk. And they'd finally freaking
talk—
about all the things that mattered, the things that Sophia, for some reason, hadn't been able to talk about with anyone. They'd talk about the secrets that, in the darkest, loneliest, most fear-filled and jealous hours of the night, even when Sophia was sleeping beside him, Dave imagined that she was saving to whisper to Lawrence Decker.

And as for Deck's supposed relationship with Tess? Whatever it was right now, it couldn't possibly last. They might indeed have reached for each other, for comfort, to ease their mutual pain. Dave had seen it happen before. Two lonely, grief-stricken people, settling—in a way that was far different from how Sophia had settled for him.

It was different because James Nash, may his soul rest in peace, would be with them, his spirit lingering, forever. So Decker and Tess would, eventually, drift apart. If they hadn't already begun to do so. Dave honestly d idn't know. He hadn't so much as spoken to either of them since the memorial service.

“Put
me … ?” Sophia interrupted his thoughts. It was clear she didn't like that any more than she'd liked
obey.
But then she glanced over at the packet of photographs that he'd tossed onto the table. “I'm not sure I want to know what's in there.”

As she looked into his eyes, Dave knew that she was imagining that those pictures were far more provocative than they truly were—at least seemingly so. He could only guess what she was thinking. Maybe that the photos were of the two of them, being intimate. Or maybe they were of him, catching gonorrhea from Kathy-slash-Anise.

Yeah, if someone had pictures of that, Dave absolutely wouldn't ask for doubles for his photo album. It was only recently, since he'd become Sophia's lover, that his memories of Kathy, laughing with him—in truth, her name was Anise and she was laughing
at
him—had finally begun to fade.

And he liked it far better that way.

Of course, maybe Sophia thought the photos in that packet were of him killing Anise, stepping back from the bloody mess as she grabbed the slit in her throat, gasping and gurgling, eyes staring, as her life slipped through her fingers. …

Sophia had said she believed him, that she didn't think he'd wielded the knife that had taken Anise's life. But her doubt still shone through.

“They're photos of you,” Dave told her, as he turned to the table to push them from the packet, being careful to spread them out on the rough wooden surface with a pen he carried in his pocket. He did that even though he knew there'd be no fingerprints on them, no DNA—nothing at all to identify whoever had put them on the rental car.

She stepped closer, and he shifted to put the table between them as he watched her face, her eyes. He saw her realization that these pictures had been taken just last night. She'd been shot standing in the hospital lobby, through the big glass windows, while she'd waited for Dave to get the car.

She also knew—he could tell from her expression that she'd figured it out—that she could have been shot in a very different way. That camera could just as easily have been a sniper rifle. The photos were blurred slightly from the heavy rain, and taken from high above—no doubt from the roof of the building across the street.

“It's probable these photos were taken by the person or persons who hired Liam Smith to kill Barney Delarow and attack me,” Dave told her.

“What do they want?” she asked, her eyes almost crystal clear as she looked over at him.

Dave shook his head. “If it were purely revenge, I'd already be lying next to Smith, here in the morgue.” Or, Jesus Christ, maybe Sophia would. “If they wanted me dead, I'd be dead by now.”

“How can you be so blasé—” she started.

“Because it's true. At the very least I'd still be in intensive care. If Smith had been told to kill me,” he told her, “he would have. He got the best of me, Soph. If he wanted to, he could have sliced me into pieces—” He cut himself off as she turned away, her movement sudden, as she rushed toward the sink in the corner.

Damnit, he hadn't been thinking, and now she leaned over the chipped porcelain, eyes tightly closed, gripping the edges with knuckles that were white.

Just as she'd done last night.

Only this time it wasn't her bastard of a father who'd turned her stomach and made her physically ill—it was Dave.

Good work.

He touched her arm, her back, and she turned to look up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears, her face almost shockingly pale. “I
don't want
this,” she said through clenched teeth, her voice shaking.

“I know,” Dave whispered, feeling his own eyes fill with tears. “I'm so sorry. I thought it was over. I thought …” He had to look away, had to wipe his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I was fooling myself. I think, deep down, I always knew it was going to come back and haunt me and … I should have told you, right from the start.”

“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.