Into the Fire (17 page)

Lopez nodded slowly. Alleluia, he actually believed Izzy. “Dan’s going to want you to do a paternity test. Cut him some slack, okay? Don’t fight him on that.”

“I won’t,” Izzy promised. “I’m happy to do whatever needs to be done.” He looked again at the glass in the yard, at the boarded up window. Clearly someone—Eden—had tried to exit the house via unconventional methods. “Including letting Eden crash at my place until she figures out what she’s going to do, where she’s going to go.”

“That might not be such a good idea,” Lopez warned.

“Maybe not,” Izzy said. “But at least I can’t get her
more
pregnant, right?”

Lopez just looked at him.

“That was a joke,” Izzy said.

“Maybe it’s time to stop joking, Zanella,” Lopez told him, and turned and went into the house.

Izzy took a deep breath, and followed.

S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

“Please sit down.”

“I’d really rather stand.”

Dr. Heissman sighed and tapped the end of her pen on the desk in front of her as Decker closed the door to Tommy’s office behind him. “Do we really need to turn every little thing into a power struggle—”

“No,” Decker said, perhaps more forcefully than he’d intended. “I’d really rather stand because yesterday I got ripshit drunk, fell down the stairs and bruised my coccyx. So if it’s all right with you, ma’am, I’ll stand.”

She gazed at him—giving him a long, measuring look from behind those glasses. “Does that happen often? The ripshit drunk part.”

“Nope,” he said. “Never. Well. Obviously not. But almost never.”

She nodded, glancing down at what he had to assume was his file, there on the desk. He could only guess what was in there.

Dr. Heissman was using Tom Paoletti’s office for her interviews or sessions or whatever the hell this was supposed to be. It felt strange being in there with the door closed, without the CO leaning back in that very chair she was sitting in. But Tom had had a meeting in Hong Kong that couldn’t be rescheduled. Until he returned on Saturday, it made sense for her to take advantage of the privacy. After that? Who knew? With luck she wouldn’t be around much longer than that.

She cleared her throat delicately as she looked back up at Decker. She reminded him of Emily, and it was disconcerting—both the reminder and the realization that he was still able to be reminded of Em, so many years after she’d moved out. “Your friends are terribly worried about you.”

She’d surprised him with that one, and he laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m terribly worried about them, too. Particularly Murphy. So if we can’t move this along…? I’d like to get to work looking for him.”

She sat back, her elbows on the armrests of Tom’s chair, fingers laced in front of her as she looked up at him.

It wasn’t so much that she looked like Em, because she didn’t. In fact, there was nothing of Emily’s girlish cuteness in this woman’s strong face. But in her take-charge attitude? In the way she dressed, in colorful, flowing clothes that hinted of Wiccan influence, in the steady intelligence of her gaze…Yeah, she and Em were both plankholders in the Modern American Women’s Take-No-Shit club.

“What do you want to talk about first?” Dr. Heissman asked him. “The fight you got into with James Nash, or Angelina’s death?”

Jesus.

“Those are my only choices? Don’t you want to hear about my crappy childhood or—”

“The Khobar towers bombing?” she interjected.

“Oh, good,” Decker said. “I was afraid you were going to make this too easy.”

She laughed and then stood up. Back in the conference room, he’d thought that she was tall, but now he could see that he had at least a couple of inches on her. “Can you lean? Because I can sit on the edge of the desk, if you want to lean over here, by the window.”

“I appreciate the effort, Doctor, but trust me, you’re not going to make me comfortable.”

“Please call me Jo.”

“Like we’re friends, huh?” he said, moving to the window. Looking out of it would give him something to do.

“No,” she said, perching on the edge of the desk, “like we’re colleagues, working together toward a common goal. How long have you known Murphy?”

“Since 2004,” he said. “I knew him before that, but I didn’t know him well.”

“But in 2004—a year before Angelina died—you got to know him well.”

“Yes, ma’am. He was a good man. A strong operative. Good attitude, highly skilled. I was always pleased to have him as part of my team, regardless of the op.”

“He was injured back in 2004, when he was part of your team, on assignment in Kazbekistan,” she pointed out. “Can you tell me about that?”

“Car bomb,” he said. “Other than that—nope, can’t tell you about it. The mission was classified.”

She smiled. “I have clearance,” she said. “The details are in your file.”

“Then you don’t need me to tell you about it, do you?” he countered.

“Let me rephrase,” she said. “How did you feel when Murphy was injured by a car bomb in Kazbekistan?”

Blue. Behind her trendy, square-shaped glasses, her eyes were blue.

Decker looked out the window. His own office was two doors down the hall, facing the same view of the park across the street. Pretty much any time of day, children were out there, playing on a colorful climbing gym that was decked out as a pirate ship. Tommy’s wife, Kelly, sometimes brought their son, Charlie, to play, and Tommy often joined them.

Decker had watched them once, from his office window, as his boss let Charlie chase him around and around, over and even under the pirate ship, as Kelly laughed.

Tommy made a great pirate.

He glanced at Dr. Heissman, who was sitting there, patiently waiting for him to answer her question.
How did you feel…?

Mad as hell. And as if he were spiraling out of control.

“It was a trying day,” he finally said. “Murph’s injury wasn’t the only…problem I was dealing with at that time.”

“You managed to get him onto a helicopter, out of the country, to a hospital with far more advanced technology,” she said.

“Yes,” Decker said. “We did.”

“As a result, doctors were able to save his leg.”

“That’s correct.” And, as a result, Murphy was back at work, mere months later. Where he rejoined Decker’s team, which was assigned to protect a Hollywood movie producer who was receiving death threats…

The shrink—Jo—was gazing at him. “Isn’t that something to be proud of? Saving his leg?”

This time Decker held her gaze. “I did my job. It was part of my job as team leader.”

“To protect and care for your team members,” she clarified.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She swung one foot a little, just gazing at him, so he turned back to the window.

“You ever
what if
?” she asked.

He turned. “Excuse me?”

“What if you hadn’t been able to get him out? What if Vinh Murphy had lost his leg that day?”

Decker shook his head. Jesus. “I never
…what if.
No.”

“What if you hadn’t been able to get him out, and he’d died?” she pressed. “Because the description of the conditions in Kazabek at that time are horrific.”

“I never
what if,
” Decker repeated.

“I think it’s highly likely that he
would
have died if you hadn’t gotten him out, don’t you agree?”

Je
sus. “Yeah,” Decker said. He knew exactly what she was driving at. So he gave it to her. “He would have died. I don’t doubt that. And
what if
he’d died? Angelina would be alive today. But Murphy didn’t die, and
she
did. We can stand here what if-ing until the sun goes down, and it won’t change a thing.”

“Would you have preferred that outcome?” she asked. “That Murphy die instead of his wife?”

Jesus.
“I know for a fact that
he
would’ve preferred it,” he said. “I’m sorry, is there a point to this?”

“But would
you
have preferred it?”

“She didn’t volunteer to be put in danger,” Decker told her. “Murphy knew—we all know—the potential consequences of our chosen profession. So yes, okay? It would have been better if Murphy had died. But I forgot to bring my crystal ball on that earlier op.”

“Would you say that, when Murphy was injured by that car bomb, you did the best you could, given the circumstances that you found yourself in?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It might be good if you actually said it every now and then,” the doctor gently said.
“I did the best I could.”

“I did the best I could.” Decker was determined to play whatever games she wanted to play, but as the words left his mouth, something tightened in his chest.

They stood for a long moment, in silence.

She broke it. “How do you feel—right now?”

He forced a laugh around that tightness. “Like this is bullshit.”

“You ever talk about any of this with anyone?” she asked. “A girlfriend—”

“No.”

“No, you haven’t—”

“No girlfriend,” he clarified. “But if you write me a prescription, I’ll go out to the CVS and pick one up, right away.”

She laughed. “You’re funnier than your file implies.”

“Tell me what I need to say or do to get your clearance to go on overseas missions.”

The doctor—Jo—shook her head. “That’s not the way it works.”

The tightness continued to bear down on him. It was making him vaguely nauseated, and he desperately needed air. He needed to get out of here, but he planted himself, determined to see this through. “I’m cooperating.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Or are you just telling me what you think I want to hear.” She made it a statement, not a question.

“It doesn’t serve me,” Decker told her tightly, “to dwell on past mistakes. I like to focus instead on making sure they don’t happen again.”

“I’m assuming we’re talking now about the Hollywood assignment,” she said, “where…mistakes were made?”

“Shit, yeah,” he exhaled. “And because of it, Angelina’s dead.” His voice actually cracked, damn it.

But the shrink didn’t leap all over it, all over him. Instead, she just sat there, on Tommy Paoletti’s desk, looking at him with those gentle eyes in that warrior goddess face, giving him a moment to regain his equilibrium.

And somehow, that made him even angrier than he would’ve been if she had jumped down his throat.

“You want to know how I
felt
when Angelina died?” he asked as the tightness in his chest moved up into his neck and his face as well. He practically had to squeeze the words out. “I felt bad. I felt so goddamn bad, I wanted to die, too. I thought about killing myself—about killing Murphy and then killing myself. It was only for a half a second, but yeah, I actually considered it.”

He’d shocked her. Shit, he’d shocked himself.

“So you blame yourself for Angelina’s death.”

“I was team leader,” Decker said quietly now. “The mistakes made were mine.” Jesus, the tightness had turned into a solid block of sorrow, so profoundly heavy, it was as if an enormous monster were crouched on his chest.

“You mentioned mistakes before, too,” the doctor said, just as quietly. “Exactly what mistakes—”

He cut her off, turning abruptly, heading for the door. “I have to go now.”

She slid off the desk, but she obviously knew better than to try to stop him. “I’m going to recommend to Tom that you and I set up a regular time to talk—”

“Do whatever you need to do,” he said curtly as he went out the door.

D
ALTON
, C
ALIFORNIA

Murphy was sitting there, in front of Hannah’s laptop computer in the main room of the cabin, waiting for her to explain why Dave Malkoff, from Troubleshooters Incorporated, had sent her nearly a dozen e-mails over the past few days.

“I went there,” she told him as she pulled another chair from the dining table over to the desk. “To the Troubleshooters office. I thought you were going to…do something crazy, so…” She scanned the subject headers as she sat down next to him.
Hoping this is still your e-mail address
was the first one sent—last Friday morning. She reached for the mouse and clicked it open.

Hannah,

Have you heard from Murphy lately?

—Dave Malkoff (from Troubleshooters Inc.)

Murph tapped her arm, and she looked over at him. He’d shaved this morning, as he’d done every morning for the past two weeks, and his lean cheeks were smooth. He smelled good, too. Unlike Hannah, he always showered and changed out of his workout gear well before lunchtime. She sometimes stayed grunged up until dinner, because what the hell.

But now she was aware both of the bead of sweat that was lazing its way down past her ear, and the fact that her tank top was soaked. She couldn’t smell herself, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t reek. It just meant that she’d gotten used to her own stench.

Personal toxic fumes aside, it was a little disarming to be sitting quite this close to Murphy, particularly after that conversation they’d just had on the porch.

Dude, I’d wanted to get with you for years.

“You went all the way to San Diego?” Murphy asked her.

“Yeah.” She opened the next e-mail.
Re: Hoping this is still your e-mail address.
It was dated Saturday morning. Murphy tapped her arm again, but she shook her head. She was reading.

Hannah,

I didn’t manage to convey just how important it is that I get in touch with Vinh Murphy, as soon as possible. It’s quite important.

Hoping you can help me,
Dave (from TS Inc)

“Dave Malkoff wants to talk to you,” Hannah said, even though he was sitting right there and reading the e-mail, too.

But Murphy was directly in front of the keyboard, and he opened a memo window and typed, “How did you get down to San Diego?”

He had such large fingers, it seemed almost unbelievable that he could manipulate the small-sized keyboard, but the words appeared on the screen almost as fast as she could read them.

“I drove,” Hannah answered. E-mails three, four, and five were variations on the same theme. Dave was looking for Murphy. Did she know where he was?