Dark of Night (26 page)

They would then have to convince Dave and Sophia to get into a car and drive. And drive. Decker would bankroll them with a bag of cash and a series of bogus IDs. Which they'd use to pay for food and lodging—in order to stay under the radar. About a week in, Dave would be instructed to use his credit card—as if by mistake—in some distant city. It would keep the Agency busy, and would tie up God knows how many operators who would be sent to investigate.

Not that Sophia nor Dave would have a clue that any of this had anything to do with Jimmy.

Dave's long-term instructions would be to stay on the move, as isolated as possible, until Decker or Tess contacted them and told them it was safe to return.

Of course, they expected protest from Dave and Sophia—both of whom would be unhappy at the thought of deserting Decker and Tess in what surely was an hour of need.

But the plan was to divide and conquer.

Their first stop would be a hotel—different from the motel at which they were meeting Decker and Tracy—where they'd set up Dave and Sophia in an equally secure room, where they'd be able to talk.

It was likely that Dave and Sophia were being tailed, and that they'd be followed from the airport. That was okay. It was good, in fact.

They'd openly provision the room with food and water—as if Sophia and Dave were preparing to hunker down there for the next several weeks—and put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.

At which point, Tess and Deck would help Dave and Sophia slip out of the hotel, undetected, so they could make their escape while their enemy continued to watch a now-empty room.

Tess and Decker would then return to the motel where Jules was babysitting Tracy—at which point they'd all head back to the safe house.

At least that
had
been their plan—before Dr. Heissman appeared on the scene, going to Decker with her conveniently timed plea for help, which would delay their return. Because they were running late and there'd be no time to do it this evening, in the morning Tess and Deck were going to have to pretend to release Jimmy's ashes into the ocean. And wasn't
that
going to be fun?

“Why don't we just grab Jo Heissman,” Tess said now, “put a gun to her head, and make her tell us who her contacts are at the Agency.”

Jules glanced at her.

“Don't respond to that,” she said before he could even open his mouth. “I know why we don't.” That kind of coercion rarely worked. And the information that came as a result of intimidation or even torture—it was highly suspect and exceedingly faulty. “I'm just pissed off.”

“We'll get more information by working with her,” Jules reassured her. “You've got to be patient, Tess. Because what if she's telling the truth? Or
what if she doesn't have a side—if she's just trying to protect herself, to stay alive … ? If we scare her or threaten her? She may decide that ours is not the side she wants to be on.”

“I know.” Tess sighed. “I'm sorry. I just want this to be over.”

“I'm with you on that,” Jules said, pulling into the potholed driveway of a run-down motel called the Seaside Heights.

It was neither seaside nor at a particularly elevated height. But it did have hourly rates, plus wireless—though only in the lobby.

Tess took her laptop with her as she followed Jules inside, the door screeching as it shut behind her. He went to the front desk as she put her computer on a coffee table that had seen better days, planting herself on an equally faded sofa.

The instructions for accessing the wireless were right there, on a little laminated card. Since her computer was already up and running, she followed the instructions and…

Bingo.

“What'dya say we splurge, sugar-pie, and get ourselves an entire night?” Jules asked her loudly, in a pitch-perfect imitation of Sam Starrett's Texas twang.

Tess laughed her surprise even as she double-checked that her computer's firewalls were in place. Zapping a quick e-mail with the motel's address to Decker's current free-mail account, she called back to Jules, “Absolutely, Pookie. And they say romance is dead.”

Y
ou up for a walk on the beach?” Decker asked.

Tracy looked at him as they headed west, crossing the causeway into Coronado. After Dr. Heissman had gotten out at the pizzeria, she'd reached to turn on the signal jammer, but Decker had shaken his head. Which was weird, but okay. She was, as he was fond of pointing out, “only the receptionist.” Maybe he had some secret-spy reason for wanting them to be listened in on.

Except now he was heading for the beach.

The Strand, with its miles of shoreline, comfortably uncrowded during a workday mid-afternoon, would be the perfect place to check themselves for any unwanted listening and/or tracking devices that Jo Heissman might've planted. And the windswept beach itself would be a good place to talk privately if they did find such a bug.

“Sure,” she answered.

They rode in silence down past the Del, and then past the part of the beach where the Navy SEALs trained—the famed obstacle course visible over the top of the privacy fence. Which prompted her to say, “It would be nice, though, if we didn't run into anyone from Team Sixteen.”

Deck glanced at her. “Don't worry. I happen to know that Zanella's out of the country.”

Tracy actually gasped aloud. She heard herself do it, which was stupid. Because it was absurd to think that the story hadn't spread. Everyone
in the Troubleshooters office surely knew about her intimate encounter with Navy SEAL Petty Officer Izzy Zanella. Or at least they knew the cheap, sordid, gossipy part where she'd gotten drunk and slept with him.

“You told me once that you and he
… collided,
was the word you used,” Decker said to her now.

And okay. She
had
told him exactly that. In a phone conversation some months ago—that a mere mortal wouldn't have remembered so accurately. “You have an impressive memory.”

He shrugged. “It's actually pretty average.”

Or so he wanted people to believe. Which brought her to what
she
wanted people to believe. This was, without a doubt, her chance to set her record straight. The fact that the Agency might be listening in was a bonus. Maybe someone would write up a report and spread it throughout the SpecWar community. The heading, in bold font, would read: Tracy Shapiro Not a Total Slut. “I had revenge sex with him. With Izzy,” she clarified, when she got another of those sunglass-shaded glances.

Deck drove a little faster, as if he couldn't wait to reach their destination. “You don't need to expl—”

“My fiancé cheated on me,” she told him and whoever else was listening in. “
Ex-
fiancé. Lyle. He always used to say
believe it or not
when he was making up some excuse for why he was late.
Believe it or not, we had to submit the expense reports for the Fleegerwald case.
It took me a few years longer than it should have, but I finally learned that that was code for
Sorry I'm late, baby, but I had to stay at the office and get a blow job from one of the interns.”

Deck glanced at her again, and she knew he was well aware that Dr. Heissman had said those very words to him.
Believe it or not…

Tracy, too, was automatically in the “or not” camp.

“So in order to get back at Lyle, I got loaded and had my first—and last— one-night stand,” she admitted, as he pulled into one of the beach lots. There were too many cars, so he pulled right out again and back onto the road. “I'll freely admit that it was not my finest hour. I compounded it not just by falling in love with Izzy, who was just pretending to be nice— but by
telling
him that I'd fallen for him. He ran away screaming, and … It was messy, and … Humiliating. Especially when he got married, like, fifteen minutes later, to someone else.”

“To one of his teammate's sisters.” Decker knew that factoid, too. “Word is he got her pregnant. At least you were smart enough to use protection.”

“Yay for me.” Tracy applauded, but then stopped. “Nope, it was still excruciatingly mortifying. And a crushing blow to the ego. Have you seen this girl? And
she? Is
a girl. She was practically wearing braces and a training bra. Okay, maybe not the training bra, but …”

“I've met her, but it wasn't under the best of circumstances,” he confessed. “And yes, she did seem young.”

“The good news was that—in the entire Charlie-Foxtrot? I finally broke off my engagement with that total man-ho, Lyle.” She sighed. “The bad news is that everybody knows about my … collision with Izzy. And now they think that's my totally slutty MO.”

“No they don't,” he said, pulling into another lot. This one had only a few cars in it, and he headed for a distant, solitary corner.

“Yes they do,” she countered.
“You
do.”

“I assure you, I don't.”

“Lawrence,” she said, imitating Dr. Heissman's evenly modulated voice, “unlike some people, I
can
tell when you're lying.”

He laughed as he put the truck into park and killed the engine. “Nice. You're wrong, I'm not lying, but that
was
very nice.”

Tracy got out of the truck and stood, waiting, as he used the sweeper to check the vehicle, inside and out. And then he came toward her, his apology darn near dripping from him.

She held out her arms and spread her legs—in the classic Leonardo da Vinci pose that every air traveler had assumed at one time or another. He waved the wand slowly over her, being thorough as always.

And she felt herself start to sweat.

The sun was out, sure. And the day was fairly warm, despite the breeze off the ocean. But it was the fact that Decker was tracing the contours of her body with that device, careful not to touch her, that was really heating her up.

She knew, without a doubt, that he would not slip and touch her— and somehow that made it even worse.

“Can I just state for the record—” she started.

“No.” He cut her off.

She turned to look at him in exasperation. “You have no idea what I was going to say.”

“Yeah,” he said, hunkering down to carefully run the wand over and around her sandals and feet. “I do. But let's not go there, okay? I'm having a tough enough day as it is.”

“Go where?” she said, and then gasped as he stood up and, in one fluid motion, stepped—hard—into her personal space. So hard that she was pressed completely against him—stomach, hips, thighs—held in place by his hand at the curve of her waist, arm wrapped around her.

He was solid and warm and—holy Christmas—aroused enough for her to know it. There was no missing that fact—not a chance in heaven. He was sweating excessively, too. A trickle traveled down past his left ear and dripped with a plop onto her arm. His mouth was mere inches from hers, but she still couldn't see his eyes through his sunglasses. “Here,” he said, his voice raspy. “Let's not go
here.”

He released her as abruptly as he'd grabbed her, and she almost lost her balance. He immediately turned the device back on, rechecking where he'd held himself against her.

“Why not?” The words spilled out of Tracy before she could stop them. And then, since she'd already jumped into the deep end, she added, “If that was supposed to scare me off, well, sorry, but it pretty much did the opposite. I mean,
hello …
”

He laughed, but it wasn't a pleasant sound as he thrust the sweeper into her hands and assumed the stance, turning his back to her. “Didn't you just get through telling me that Zanella was allegedly your first
and last
one-night stand? Let's keep it that way.”

“Allegedly?” She whacked him between the shoulder blades with the wand.

“Ow! What the hell?!”

“That's an insulting thing to say to someone who's just shared something painful with you.
Allegedly.
God.” She was affronted. “There was nothing alleged about it. Of course, you only said that so I'd get mad at you and back off, because you,
Lawrence,
are a coward.”

“Honey, trust me, I'm no coward. I'm just sane.” He laughed, muttering as if to himself, “Most of the fucking time, anyway.”

She moved around to skim the wand down his front, but he caught her wrist, and took it from her. “I got it from here, thanks.”

She glared at him as she pointedly rubbed her wrist.

“I didn't hurt you,” he told her. “So stop with the drama.”

“I'm
the drama queen?” she said, lacing her voice with heavy disbelief. “I'm not the one who just rubbed myself against you, and then acted as if it was… awful.”

He laughed. “Awful. Yeah. If you don't like me calling you a little girl, then you really need to stop pretending to be one.”

“Okay,” she said. “Non
sequitur.”

He shut off the sweeper and shoved it rather violently back behind the seat of the truck. “You know goddamn well that
awful
wasn't even close to what I was thinking and to pretend otherwise is beneath you. So knock it the hell off.”

Tracy had to argue. “I didn't say I thought that
you thought
it was awful. I said you were
acting
as if—”

“Enough,” he said. “Jesus Christ, no wonder Zanella ran screaming!”

Even as the words left Decker's lips, he regretted saying them. Even before he'd finished his sentence, he wished he could hit pause and rewind, and take it back.

It was as if he'd reached out and snuffed the fire that lit Tracy from within as she argued with him.

Jesus, who the hell ever argued with him? No one did—not besides Nash. Which was the reason that, despite their differences in personality and background, the two men were friends. Every-fucking-one else treated Deck as if he were some kind of demigod—with so much respect and even awe that it was impossible to have a relationship that wasn't mentor and trainee, teacher and student, or—Jesus help him—god and worshipful subject.

Every-fucking-one—except Tracy Shapiro. Who had the balls to argue with him, damn near constantly.

“I'm sorry,” he said now. “I didn't mean that.”