Into the Fire (13 page)

Tess turned toward him with such hope on her face, it nearly broke Dave’s heart. “Where’s…” Jimmy. She didn’t even bother to ask. She knew just from looking at Deck that Nash wasn’t with him. Disappointment and then something that looked a lot like grief filled her eyes.

“He had to stay an extra day,” Decker started, but she cut him off.

“Oh, please,” she said. “Don’t lie. For God’s sake, Deck. Don’t disrespect me that way.” She stood up. Raised her voice. “Tracy, can you give me a lift to the airport a little earlier than we’d planned?”

Tracy appeared in the doorway behind Decker, her eyes wide. “Of course.”

“I was supposed to catch a flight to Florida, tomorrow—today now—at noon. I’m scheduled to spend a few weeks in the Sarasota office, getting their computer system up to speed.” Tess sounded as if absolutely nothing was wrong. The giveaway was the tears that she couldn’t keep from escaping. But she just steadfastly kept wiping them from her eyes. “I was going to change my plans, get this mess cleaned up, but…I’m thinking now that I should let Jim receive his message. I’ll see if I can’t get an earlier flight. If not—I’ll probably be safer at the airport than I am here.”

“I’m sorry, Tess,” Decker said, his voice gruff.

“Yeah.” Tess scooped the broken cow off the table and threw it into the trash on her way out of the room. “I am, too.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

S
EVERAL
W
EEKS
L
ATER
M
ONDAY
, J
ULY
28, 2008
S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

B
ang bang bang!
Someone—guess who—hammered on his door, as Izzy was making himself dinner.

True, the “making” involved little more than heating some leftover pasta and meat sauce in the microwave and throwing together a salad, but he was hungry and he was tired, and he was looking forward—thank you, Tivo—to catching up on two months of new episodes of
South Park.

Bang bang bang bang!

Okay this proved it. His downstairs neighbor was insane. Certain that the two men who’d recently moved into the apartment across the courtyard were part of a terrorist sleeper cell, Mrs. McCrea had taken to spying on them—which was fine with Izzy, although he could think of about four million other far more productive hobbies for the elderly woman. What
wasn’t
fine, however, was the way she relentlessly tried to enlist Izzy’s aid in her campaign.

They keep their curtains down all day, Mrs. McC., because they know if they didn’t, all of their crazy neighbors would be looking in their windows
hadn’t convinced her of anything.

She was solidly in the
if they’re not doing anything wrong, then they should have nothing to hide
camp.

Bang bang ba
—

“I met ’em in the parking lot, Mrs. McC. Matt and Ryan.” Izzy yanked the door open mid-bang. “They’re—Whoa!”

It wasn’t Lynn McCrea standing there, it was Dan Gillman, wearing his usual expression of
Hey, look, I stepped in shit again—it must be Zanella’s fault.
Marky-Mark Jenkins and Jay Lopez were right behind him.

“What are you—” doing here, he was intending to ask, when Gilligan just pulled back and,
wham,
punched Izzy in the face.

Ow! “Gillman, what the fuck!” Izzy said from his new position on the floor. “God damn, I think you broke my nose!”

“You said you weren’t going to hit him,” Jenkins chided Gillman.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Blood poured down Izzy’s T-shirt.

“I lied.” Gillman was flexing and opening his hand as if he’d hurt himself with that suckerpunch. It would serve the bastard right to find out he’d broken his hand and be put off active duty for the next few months.

Lopez crouched next to Izzy, his body language making it clear that, first and foremost, he was there to keep Izzy from leaping to his feet and doing unto Gillman. But he was also obviously there to further torment him by touching the areas around his nose and his eye sockets, making sure the bones in his face were intact.

“Ow!” Izzy said.
“Ow!”

“Nothing’s broken,” Lopez announced, handing Izzy the dish towel that had been hanging on the refrigerator door handle—Jenkins had thrown it to him from the kitchen. “Head back to stop the bleeding.”

Jenk brought him ice in a ziplock baggie. “Back of your neck,” he advised.

“Fuck that.” Izzy put it directly on his face, using the towel to stanch the flow from his nostrils. He glared up at Gillman as best he could. “I repeat my question. What. The fuck?”

“I just got back from Germany,” Gillman told him. “I brought Eden home with me.”

Eden.

Izzy pushed himself to his feet, pretending that this breaking news from Gillman hadn’t, in fact, made his nose stop hurting. Just in case Gillman wanted him to be in pain. “So this is, what?” he asked. “A preemptive strike? Your sister’s back in town, so—”

“She’s pregnant,” Gillman cut him off.

Whoa.

Really?

Izzy looked to Jenkins and Lopez for confirmation and they both nodded.

“She’s six months along,” Gillman announced, hostility radiating from him, and Izzy suddenly understood his anger. Six
months
…

“You think that
I
…” He laughed, which was probably not the smartest thing to do, under the circumstances.

Both Jenkie and Jay-Lo moved to hold Gillman back.

“Dude,” Izzy said, juggling the ice and the blood-soaked towel along with Gillman’s scathing hatred. “We had this conversation six months ago. It’s none of your business what happened between your sister and me that night. But I will tell you this, I did
not
get her pregnant.”

“That’s not what she says,” Gillman nearly spit at him.

“She claims you’re the father, Iz.” Jenkins was mega-unhappy. “This is partly my fault. I mean, you called me that night and…”

“
Eden
says that
I’m
the father?” Izzy repeated because it just did not make sense.

“She says it wasn’t her ex-boyfriend,” Jenk told him. “What’s his name. Apparently he shoots blanks.”

“Jerry. She says Jerry’s sterile from the treatment of some kind of childhood cancer,” Lopez explained.

And you believe her…?
Izzy looked at Gillman, who apparently did believe his sister this time. Or maybe he didn’t, but he just wanted someone whose ass he could immediately kick. Namely Irving Zanella.

“Where is she?” Izzy asked as Gillman’s cell phone rang. Lopez stayed close as Gillman answered it, moving with him into the kitchen.

“Las Vegas,” Jenk answered.

Ah, damn.
I’m not going back to Vegas…

Jenk lowered his voice. “What the
hell,
Zanella?”

Izzy just shook his head. “I gotta go see her.”

“You
think
?”

“She’s really six months pregnant?” Izzy asked.

Jenkins nodded. “She was staying with their father—who’s apparently not dead. I don’t know why I thought—” He caught Izzy’s look of impatience. “He’s regular Army, stationed at—”

“Ramstein. I know,” Izzy said. The bleeding was slowing—shit, no it wasn’t. He adjusted the towel and applied more pressure.

“Shortly after she got to Germany, he went TDY to Iraq. It was supposed to be for a month,” Jenk told him. “But it was extended and he just got back, day before yesterday. He walks into his apartment, and there’s Eden. Preggers. He freaks, calls Gillman’s mom, who calls Gillman. Who went over, got her, brought her home.”

“He see his dad while he was there?” Izzy asked.

Jenk shook his head. “He didn’t mention it.”

“He hates his father,” Izzy said.

“Not as much as he hates you.” Jenk shook his head, disappointment in his eyes, which hurt more than Izzy would’ve believed. Jenk actually thought Izzy had…But he couldn’t set him straight. He wouldn’t—not until he’d talked to Eden. “You’ve really got to learn to keep your pants zipped, bro.”

“I prefer a button-fly,” Izzy pointed out.

“Why do you do that?” Jenkins asked. “Like you don’t have trouble enough, without dumping a bucket of your crap on top of everything?” He exhaled his exasperation. “You better go wash up and grab your bag. We’re roadtripping to Vegas. And this time, Zanella? What happens in Vegas is, no doubt, going to follow you home and fuck up the entire rest of your miserable life.”

Dave immediately knew what this was about as he went into the conference room and sat down between Sophia and Tracy, the Troubleshooters receptionist.

Tracy had no clue as to what was going on, chattering on as always, as everyone found seats around the big table—talking about a new restaurant that had opened down the street. “It’s Greek, but not greasy Greek, you know, like, heavy on the goat? Their salads are amazing, and they have this…well, it’s like hummus, but it’s made from eggplant? It’s
so
good.”

She was talking to Decker, who looked shell-shocked as he sat on her other side—no doubt because he knew this meeting was at least partly his fault.

They were all there—everyone who had been part of the original assignment in which Angelina Murphy had been killed. Everyone except for PJ, who was still in Iraq.

Dave, Decker, Sophia, Lindsey, and Nash—who looked as if he’d been hit by a truck. He was sitting as far as humanly possible from Decker, across the table and next to Tess, who had flown back from Florida and was looking pretty grim. Which wasn’t easy for her to do with her freckles and Sunday-school-teacher face. Still, somehow she pulled it off.

Even SEAL Chief Cosmo Richter was here today, no doubt at Tom Paoletti’s request. Three and a half years ago he’d taken leave from the Navy when his mother had fallen and broken both wrists. Looking to earn some extra cash to help pay her medical bills, he’d taken what was supposed to be an easy assignment with Troubleshooters Incorporated, protecting Jane Chadwick, a Hollywood movie producer who had been targeted by the neo-Nazi Freedom Network, because the bio-pic she was making outed a gay WWII military hero whose father had been a beloved leader of the KKK.

First the death threats had come via e-mail. Then someone started shooting—and Murphy had been injured and his wife had been killed.

With the exception of Tracy, everyone sitting around this table had been part of the team assigned to protect the movie producer. And with the exception of Tracy, everyone sitting around this table had been irrevocably changed by the tragedy of Angelina’s death.

Some, however, had been changed more than others.

Tom Paoletti came into the conference room, followed by Alyssa Locke, his second in command, and a woman Dave had never seen before. She was in her late forties and had what he thought of as hippie hair. Long and dark and streaked with silver—she was going gray naturally. Tom pulled out a chair for her, directly to the left of his seat, and she sat down, thanking him with a smile that lit her still-pretty face.

As Dave watched, she folded her hands calmly in front of her. And then, as Tom and Alyssa both settled in, taking these few moments before the meeting started to deal with some of their relentless paperwork, the woman calmly looked around the table.

She studied each of them, one by one, and when she saw that Dave was looking back at her, she held his gaze, her mouth lifting slightly at one corner—as if they were sharing a joke.

He couldn’t quite tell what color her eyes were behind her glasses—blue or maybe green. Either way, they were filled with a mix of amusement, compassion, warmth, and understanding.

She knew that he’d figured out why she was here—but it was no joke.

Every operative in this room was about to get his or her head shrunk. Whether they wanted to or not.

Beside him, Sophia was surprisingly serene, especially considering the turmoil last Friday. But then again, Dave knew that she’d been going to therapy—willingly—for nearly a year now. This wasn’t terrifying new territory for her.

But for the rest of them…The idea of sitting down and talking about their feelings?

Dear God.

Dave had called Sophia over the weekend. She’d left early on Friday, and he wanted to make sure she was okay. He’d wanted to talk to her about what had happened that morning, out in the parking lot.

Instead, they’d spent the entire phone call discussing Ken Burns’s documentary on World War II.

Dear God, indeed.

Today, even their mighty leader Tom looked far less easygoing than usual, his face showing signs of strain. But he also had the determined expression of a man with resolve. He’d made up his mind—there would be no talking him out of this one.

Not that someone wouldn’t try.

Dave glanced down the table at Decker, who, yes, had also figured out their mystery guest’s secret identity.

Deck wouldn’t meet Dave’s gaze—no doubt because he was well aware that this was mostly his fault.

Yeah, this meeting was a direct ramification of what would forevermore be known as the Friday Morning Parking Lot Brawl. Which Dave, at least, had seen coming for well over six months now.

Larry Decker had been tied in an emotional knot
before
Hannah Whitfield showed up in the Troubleshooters San Diego office six months ago, looking for Vinh Murphy. After her visit, however, Deck got wound up even more tightly.

And James Nash’s ongoing crazy-ass behavior hadn’t helped things any. Tension in the entire office had spiked to an all-time high.

Decker got super terse. He normally wasn’t any kind of a chatterbox, but Dave hadn’t heard him utter more than a few sentences in as many months. Never one for socializing, Deck had stopped even pretending to hang with the team after hours.

He stayed late, came in early—and showed up on every weekend, too. He worked as if work were as necessary to him as the air that he breathed.

Dave suspected that it was.

He’d seen it happen before, to men and women alike. It was not uncommon, in this business, to try to grab tightly to what little you thought you could control. And to believe that, if you just worked longer hours, everything would be all right.

Except the lives you save don’t make up for the ones you’ve lost. But you can’t stop hoping that somehow, someway, if you just keep trying, you’ll reach a magical point of absolution—and with it will come sweet relief.

But there was no mathematical formula, no secret recipe, no guarantees. The only guarantee was death—dark, and sudden, and permanent. Too many good men and women sought relief by walking into a bullet. It didn’t matter whether they pulled the trigger themselves or let some perp do the dirty work. The end result was the same.

The pain would end, sure. But it was, absolutely, the coward’s way out.

Still, Dave had been worried about Decker for months, but everyone he spoke to seemed to think that Deck was just being Deck. The current spate of al Qaeda Internet chatter had him on edge—it had everyone ramped up. Decker wanted to get out there and
do
something—just like the rest of them.

But then, three days ago—last Friday—it had become crystal clear that Decker was starting to fray.

They’d all pulled into the Troubleshooters parking lot at the same time that morning. Dave, Decker, Nash, and the always-lovely Sophia, who was back in town after another several-month stint away. They got out of their cars and trucks, ready to start another day of work, greeting each other as they unloaded briefcases filled with files and various bags of gear and equipment.