Into the Fire (20 page)

“God, I’m sorry,” he said, and she reached over and gave him a skull duster with her notebook. “Ow.”

“We’re done with the apologies,” she reminded him. “Another reason I know how out of it you were is…well…I got a letter from you. In early March. It was, um…Kinda incoherent.”

Murphy looked at her. “You got a letter,” he repeated. “In
March.
You want to be a little more specific with that date?”

“March fourth,” she told him.

“You got a letter, from me?” he said again. “Just a few weeks before Ebersole was killed. And you don’t mention it until
now
?”

“You have any recollection of sending me a letter?” she asked.

“None.”

“It was postmarked Sacramento,” Hannah told him. “It kind of scared me, so I, uh, went looking for you.”

“In March,” he clarified.

She nodded.

“You went to Sacramento.”

“I did,” she said. “I actually, uh, gained access to the Freedom Network compound there. Well, it’s not really in Sacramento. It’s east, in the mountains—”

“You were
in the compound
? In
March,
when Ebersole was
killed
…?” Murphy went all the way from the left lane over to an exit, on the right. He got off the highway and pulled into a deserted gas station and braked to a stop. “Hannah, what the hell?” He looked at her searchingly. “Jesus,” he said. “I asked you to help me kill Ebersole. In that letter. Didn’t I?”

“Kind of,” Hannah admitted. “Like I said, it was pretty incoherent.”

“I want to read it,” he said. He didn’t even bother to ask if she’d saved it. He knew her that well.

“No, you don’t,” she told him. Part of it was written to Angelina, part of it to Hannah, part of it to Tim Ebersole himself.

“Where is it?”

“It’s hidden.”

“Hidden hidden?” he asked. “Or FBI investigation hidden?”

“The latter,” she said. She’d put it in a box in the bedroom closet. It was buried among four hundred and some odd letters that her Uncle Wayne, whom she’d never met, had written to his mother, from his soul-crushing tours in Vietnam. He’d died in the Tet offensive, long before she was born.

“When we get back,” Murphy said, “we’re going to burn it.”

“Murph. It kinda points to temporary insanity.”

His eyes were grim. “It kinda also points to conspiracy.” He spelled out the word for her, his fingers jerky with his anger. “Or you being an accomplice.” He spelled that, too, but with only one C. “Or even…” He shook his head. “Did you find me? In Sacramento?”

“No,” she admitted. “And I also didn’t kill Tim Ebersole.”

He believed her. But despite his challenges when it came to spelling, he was a very smart man, and he knew, as surely as she did, that the FBI investigators were going to compile a list of visitors to the Freedom Network compound, during the approximate time of Ebersole’s death.

And Hannah’s name was going to be on that list.

Which was going to raise some giant red flags, particularly since they were already looking for Murphy.

Just to ask him questions.

Right.

“I spent a week up there,” Hannah told Murphy. “Looking for you. After getting that letter…I was pretty worried.”

“Oh, God.” He closed his eyes. “Please let me say I’m sorry.” He forced himself to look at her, and no doubt about it, he was anguished. “Jesus, Hannah, it was bad enough when I…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

But Hannah knew. It was bad enough when his transgressions had merely been limited to his using her for sex and then trying to kill himself in her living room.

“But this…” There were tears in his eyes. “And you just…welcome me back into your life, like it’s all okay.”

“But it
is
okay.” Damn it, now she was tearing up, too. “That letter…You were asking for help. Not to kill Ebersole. Just to…” She couldn’t look at him so she looked out the passenger window. “You said you needed me. And maybe that was just part of the crazy talk, but…If you need me, bwee, I’m there. Whether it’s Sacramento or San Diego or…or…
London
or, shit, the tenth level of hell. I’m there. You know,
you
were the one who had the problem with us having sex, Murph. Not me. If it were up to me, we’d still both be using each other shamelessly. Twice a day. And three times on Sundays.”

God damn it. Sometimes she said way too much.

Hannah sat there, in the passenger seat of Uncle Pat’s battered little car, as Murphy sat, frozen like a statue, behind the wheel. And neither of them said anything for quite a few moments.

But then he reached over and touched her. Just a finger beneath her chin, turning her head so that she’d look at him.

“You always say things that are…kind of major,” he told her, “and then you don’t look at me, so…”

“I’m embarrassed,” she admitted.

“You don’t think it would…change things?” he asked. “You know, aside from the obvious fact that we’d…both probably sleep a whole lot better on Sunday nights?” He thought about that. “Well, probably every night, but definitely on Sundays.”

“Sleep is good,” Hannah said, as she searched the darkness of his eyes. Were they truly discussing this…?

“I’ve already lost too much,” he told her. “I don’t think I can risk…”

She nodded, swallowing her disappointment. “I don’t want you to disappear for another six months, so…It’s probably not worth the experiment.”

This time Murphy looked away. “Han, if I killed Tim Ebersole…I’m going to prison and it’ll be for way longer than six months.”

“If you killed Ebersole,” she said, “you’ll plead temporary insanity. If you don’t remember doing it—Murph, you were very much out of your mind.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but what if I’m not sorry? Now that I’m supposedly back in my right mind. What if I’m glad that he’s dead?”

“You’re not the only one,” she told him. “So drive. Let’s get to Sacramento. We know you were there in early March when you sent that letter. Let’s see if we can’t find someone who knows where you went after that.”

C
HAPTER
T
EN

S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

S
ophia put her overnight bag into the back of Dave’s car and climbed into the front seat. “How’d it go with Dr. Heissman?”

Dave glanced at her only briefly as he navigated his way out of her condo complex parking lot. “It didn’t,” he reported, adding, “She cancelled,” before Sophia could express her disappointment. “Postponed, really. Tom thought she should come up to Dalton with the team, so we rescheduled for tomorrow.” He glanced at her again, his smile wry. “Lucky me. I was ready to do it, so of course, now I have to wait.”

“She seems nice,” Sophia pointed out, as she settled in for the long trip north. It seemed like forever since she and Dave had spent more than just a few minutes together. Sure, they spoke on the phone almost every day, but it just wasn’t the same. She’d missed him, missed the easiness of their friendship.

And sitting in his cluttered car was a lot like sitting across from him at his cluttered desk, in his crowded office. The clutter wasn’t from garbage—old doughnut bags or empty soda cans—but rather things he thought he’d need. Maps, a roll of quarters, an ancient ice scraper, a windshield shade, his iPod, a spare pair of hiking boots, a cooler with bottles of water, a stack of library books, a floppy sunhat, a crank-powered radio, a box of power bars, a portable GPS device, a NASA-approved heat-retaining blanket, a first aid kit, a handful of MREs, binoculars, night vision glasses, a digital camera, a bathing suit, a jacket and tie…

Sophia was pretty sure clean underwear and socks were in there, too, somewhere.

“I’m sure she
is
nice,” Dave agreed evenly. “But whether she’s nice or mean isn’t the issue. I was thinking about it, on the drive over here. You know, what’s everyone so afraid of? And I think it’s her psych degree that makes her so terrifying. What if we talk to her, and she goes,
Yep, you’re totally bonkers. Certifiably nuts. Bring in the men with the white coats.
”

Sophia had to laugh. “She’s not going to say that.”

“Probably not,” Dave said. “But she might. Best case scenario, she’ll tell us what we already know—that we’re exhausted and that we have stress and anger management issues. Which will create more stress and anger that we won’t be able to manage. And no matter what happens, we’re afraid that, once we walk out of her office, we won’t be able to look at ourselves in our bathroom mirrors anymore and fool ourselves into thinking we’re okay.”

“Wouldn’t you rather actually
be
okay?” Sophia asked. “Which is not to say that I don’t think you’re already okay, because I do.”

Dave grinned at her. “Nice save.”

When he smiled, the fatigue that lined his face eased, making him look younger. The new haircut helped in that department, too. Except it wasn’t new. “I can’t believe,” she said, “that you didn’t tell me four months ago that you finally cut your hair.”

Dave reached up and ran his hand through his casually messy shock of thick, dark hair, almost as if he still needed to remind himself that it was no longer shoulder-blade length and tied back from his face. “It just…never came up,” he said as he braked to a stop at a red light.

Sophia turned in her seat to get a better look at him. “You look great, by the way. A lot less like you time-warped in from Woodstock. More like you time-warped in from 1980. It’s very Sid Vicious.”

“I can’t help it—my hair grows ridiculously fast,” Dave defended himself. “Not cutting it was much easier. You know, Tracy has to cut it every two weeks.”

“
Tracy
cuts it,” Sophia repeated, and he rolled his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said as the light turned green and he accelerated through the intersection. “And okay, yeah,
that’s
why I didn’t tell you. Because I knew you’d start with the Tracy thing again.”

Months ago, she’d told him about a conversation that she’d had with Tracy, in which the Troubleshooters gorgeous young receptionist had expressed appreciation of…certain of Dave’s physical attributes. He’d blushed and muttered something about his cousin having had a heart attack, so he’d started working out again to avoid a similar trip to the hospital.

“She thinks you’re cute,” Sophia reminded him, “and now she cuts your hair. Every two weeks. And you don’t think she wants to—”

“There was a point,” Dave interrupted, “where I was aware that, yes, I could’ve been a rebound. You know, when what’s-his-name, the school teacher, dumped her. But Tracy and I have very little in common. It would’ve been purely about sex and frankly, I’ve never done that.”

“Never?” Sophia asked. Dave had once admitted to her that he’d never had a serious girlfriend. In high school and college, he’d been too geeky and shy. And after he’d joined the CIA, he hadn’t had time for a romantic relationship. He’d gotten his masters and then a doctorate degree in his spare time, but Sophia had always suspected that
too geeky and shy
remained the real reason that he’d always been so relentlessly alone.

But she’d also always assumed that, after being sent out on dangerous overseas assignments, he’d had his share of 007-like dalliances with the equally dangerous women he’d met. Although now, as she thought about it, that seemed absurd.

Dave was silent, keeping his eyes on the road.

Except, the flipside of that thought—that Dave could still be a virgin—was equally absurd. Wasn’t it?

“So…do you…pay for sex?” she asked, and the look he shot her was so incredulous that she had to laugh. “Sorry. It’s just…” If he didn’t pay for sex, and he didn’t have casual sex, and he’d never had a serious girlfriend…

He was mortified, no doubt because he knew exactly where her thoughts had gone.

“It’s not a big deal,” she told him, and he finally glanced over at her.

“Right,” he said. “Sex is always a huge deal, and you know it.”

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “Sorry.”

“I’m not, you know, a…You know. What you were thinking,” he said, his eyes back on the road, his fingers tight around the steering wheel.

“I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“Yes, you certainly were, and I’m
not.
”

“Okay,” she said.

He was silent, glaring at the road, the muscle jumping in the side of his jaw.

What a great way to start a five-hour drive.

He finally glanced at her, chagrin in his eyes. “Is that really what people think when they look at me?” he asked. “That I’m like that guy in that movie—a forty-year-old virgin?”

“You’re only thirty-eight,” she said, and he shot her another look, this one humorously dark. “Besides, Steve Carell’s pretty hot. If people are comparing you to him—”

“Nice try,” he said. “But they’re not comparing me to Steve Carell. They’re comparing me to some loser he played—”

“Just a few months ago, everyone in the office was speculating on your hot and heavy affair with Paulette,” she interrupted.

He blinked at her. “Paulette?”

“The UPS driver,” she reminded him. “With the big, um…voluptuousness?”

“I know who she is. She moonlights as a personal trainer,” he said. “We made a trade. She helped me set up a workout schedule, and I helped her and her partner install a security system in their home.” He looked at Sophia. “Her lesbian partner?”

Ah. “Well, okay,” Sophia said. “But there was still…rampant speculation.”

“Not anymore,” Dave said. “About a week ago she brought in pictures of her and Denise’s commitment ceremony.”

“Well, before people knew, they weren’t thinking,
There goes Dave the virgin with his lesbian friend.
”

Dave stared at the road. “Tell me honestly, Soph, that you’re not thinking it right now.
Dave the virgin.
”

She sighed. “You said you weren’t, so—”

“You don’t believe me.”

“What does it matter?” she said. “I don’t understand why you think that if you were—I said
if
—that it would make you some kind of loser. You’re
not
a loser.”

“Oh,” Dave said. “What a
good
segue you’ve just handed me, because in fact, I
am.
I’m very
much
a loser, thank you. I was also a virgin for an embarrassingly long time—there, I’ve said it. And it wasn’t because I was being noble or a romantic. I
didn’t
want to pay for it, and the women I was attracted to weren’t interested in me.” He laughed his disgust. “So that
never
I told you before? It was pretty sanctimonious, considering that I would’ve said yes to Tracy’s rebound when I was twenty. Or thirty. Or thirty-three.

“And in the end, I
did
end up paying for it, although at the time I failed to see the price. I was so in love with her and—” He broke off, swearing sharply.

“I’m so sorry,” Sophia said.

“Me, too,” he told her, forcing a smile. “If I could, I’d go back in time and I’d stay far, far away from her, even though doing that would probably make me, yes, still a virgin at age thirty-eight.” He winced. “Did I really just say that out loud?”

Oh, Dave…
“If you were a woman, you’d be considered virtuous.”

“But I’m not a woman, therefore I am a loser.”

“Stop saying that.”

“But it’s true,” he said with absolute certainty. “She not only left me for dead and robbed me blind, she also gave me gonorrhea. But the worst was when she turned up dead, with my DNA all over her.” He glanced at her again, as if to gauge her shock. “A lot of people thought I killed her. Some of them still think I did. I ended up having to leave the CIA because of it. I’m lucky I didn’t go to prison.”

Dave’s leaving the CIA had led him to work for Troubleshooters Incorporated, which had led him to be in Kazbekistan, where he’d helped save Sophia’s life all those years ago….

“What was her name?” Sophia asked now.

“Her real name, or the one she gave me when she was pretending to fall in love with me, too?”

Oh, Dave.

“It was Anise,” he answered her quietly. “She told me her name was Kathy, but it was really Anise. She wasn’t a good person, Soph, so don’t go thinking
there but for the grace of God,
all right? Her life wasn’t in danger—at least not when she first met me. She didn’t need help, she didn’t need…” He shook his head. “Love couldn’t save her—nothing could. She conned men for a living. She charmed them, she had sex with them, and then she robbed them, and she targeted me while I was in Paris, undercover, and when she found out—somehow—I still don’t know how. But she somehow found out that I worked for the CIA, and she tried to sell me to the highest bidder, which nearly killed me, and did kill her. End of story. Except somewhere in there I lost my virginity and caught gonorrhea. Which sucks, by the way. It feels like you’re peeing razor-sharp shards of your shattered heart.”

“It’s not as painful for women,” she told him. “I used to pray that I’d get it again.” Because it meant that Padsha Bashir, the Kazbekistani warlord who’d killed her husband and taken her as one of his many wives, wouldn’t touch her—or pass her around to his friends—until the antibiotics had cleaned her up.

Dave, of course, had taken note of that
again.
“Whoo-hoo,” he said with absolutely no inflection. “We can start our own STD club. Go us.”

“It was a lifetime ago,” she said.

“Yeah,” Dave agreed. “That’s kind of the way I look at it, too. It all happened in my other life. BTS. Before Troubleshooters.”

“Before Decker,” she added softly.

Dave glanced at her again. “You…want to talk about that?”

“Nope,” she said. Absolutely not. In an attempt to lighten things up, she said, “Too bad you don’t do rebound sex, because I could help you lose your virginity, which, by the way, I’ve reinstated for you, since the gonorrhea definitely canceled out the sex.”

The look he shot her was both alarmed and horrified. There was not much amusement in there. In fact, she could see exactly none in his eyes.

“Sorry,” she said. “Bad joke. It’s just…We’re like some awful setup for a road movie.
A thirty-eight-year-old virgin and a former hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold set out on a life-changing journey, discovering they have a common bond in the various STDs they’ve been exposed to in the past.
”

“You were never a hooker.” Dave was always quick to defend her—even when her self-deprecating words were merely an attempt at a bad joke. “You did what you had to do to survive.”

Sophia didn’t bother to argue, because on one level, he was right. She
had
survived. She’d done more than survive, because after being horribly, hideously battered by life, she’d actually recovered enough to want an intimate relationship again. Sure, she’d been in love with Larry Decker for years—but it was only because on some level she’d known he would always safely keep his distance. She’d instinctively known that she would have to make the first move when
she
was finally ready. She’d have to grab him, the way she did in the parking lot last Friday.

Except, when she’d finally grabbed Decker, he’d gently disengaged and walked away. Probably because
he
hadn’t yet recovered from
her
hideous past. Probably because he never would.

“Do you ever wonder what the exact number is?” Sophia asked. “You know, of the men I’ve had sex with? I was in Bashir’s palace for forty-one days. I didn’t work every single day”—it had helped to think of it as work—“but sometimes, when he had guests, I would…Three, maybe four times a day…I was American and blond, so…I was pretty popular. Of course, it wasn’t always sex they wanted.” She knew that Dave knew about the cutting—he’d seen her multitude of fading scars. “I figure it was somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred and ten.”

The muscle was jumping in Dave’s jaw.

“I wouldn’t want to have sex with someone who’d had that many partners in that short a time span,” Sophia admitted. “It’s creepy.”

“It might be if you’re Wilt Chamberlain,” Dave told her. “You know, if the sex was by choice. But it wasn’t.”

She started to make her usual argument—she never fought back, she always submitted and did what she was told—but he cut her off.