Into the Fire (21 page)

“That number doesn’t have anything to do with partners. It’s the number of times that violent crimes were committed against you. And if you’re asking me if I think Decker is freaked out by that, I’d have to say yeah. He struggles with it. I do, too.”

“But
you
don’t run away from me,” she pointed out. “Except, maybe you’d run, too, if you really thought I wanted to get intimate with you.”

He laughed—a fast bark of sound. “Sophia, if I thought, for even half a second, that you truly wanted to have rebound sex with me, if I honestly thought that would make you feel better about the way Decker’s been avoiding you, I would pull this car over to the side of the road right now.
Right
now.”

He was serious.

“You don’t do rebound sex,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, well, I would do anything for you,” Dave told her. “Anything. Including lose my recently reinstated virginity—which I’m not so sure I’m completely happy about. The reinstatement, that is.”

He
was
serious. And as he stopped the car at another traffic light, he turned to look at her. “I would never run away from you,” he told her. “The problem is with Decker, not with you, Soph, okay? There’s nothing wrong with you. Yes, you’ve been a victim, you’ve lived through some pretty intense stuff, but you’ve obviously moved on. If he hasn’t…”

The driver in the car behind them leaned on his horn. The light had turned green. But Dave just sat there, looking at her. He had hazel eyes—a mix of brown and green—with ridiculously long lashes.

“That’s on him,” he continued. “You’re one in a billion, Sophia. Decker’s a fool.”

“Thank you,” Sophia whispered, as the car went around them with a blaring doppler effect of noise.

He smiled as he waved his hands over her. “Presto-change-o!” He clapped, sharply, twice. “There. I’ve reinstated
your
virginity. If you could do it for me, I can do it for you.”

“Dave, I was married.” Talk about a lifetime ago…She met his eyes and knew he was thinking the same thing she was. They’d never talked about Dimitri, about how violently her husband had died at Padsha Bashir’s hand. And yet, she knew that—somehow—Dave knew. Maybe not every gruesome detail, but he knew enough.

“That was your first life,” he told her now, as he put the car in gear and finally drove. “The nightmare with Bashir was your second, and this one’s your third. We’re both starting fresh. So okay. In
this
version of the movie, the thirty-eight-year-old virgin and the ho no mo’ hit the road—”

Sophia laughed. “Ho no more? Nice.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much. They hit the road on a journey of self-discovery and unexpected surprises, as they attempt to locate and help an old friend—” He broke off. “I always thought Murphy would come to you. For, I don’t know, help or…If anyone could talk to him—really understand what it had been like for him to lose Angelina…”

“I don’t know if I could have done it,” Sophia confessed. “Even if he had come to me. I still…” She cut herself off. Even after years of therapy, she hadn’t yet talked to anyone about the details of Dimitri’s death.
I was standing beside him,
she’d told her therapist, reciting only the cold hard facts.
And Bashir swung his sword…And just like that, Dimitri was dead.
“I still struggle with it.”

“Of course you do,” Dave said quietly. “It’s never going to be easy. Just maybe someday a little easier. For Murphy, too,” he added. “Provided he doesn’t spend the rest of his life in jail.”

D
ALTON
, C
ALIFORNIA

“You got
two
rooms…?” Eden was genuinely surprised.

“Yeah.” Izzy carried her duffle bag up the stairs, looking at the numbers on the motel keys: 218 and 222. He’d purposely requested that the two rooms not be right next to each other. “I thought that would be best.”

He unlocked 218’s door, opening it to reveal a standard motel setup. Two double beds, a TV, built-in dresser, little table with chairs, sink outside the bathroom, big mirror above it. It was small but clean—not that there was another choice here in Dalton. This was definitely a one-motel town.

Eden silently followed him in as he put her bag on the dresser. She’d slept away the entire drive from Vegas. She’d just instantly shut down as soon as she’d climbed into the rental car. Apparently needing copious amounts of sleep was a pregnant woman thing.

Although, ironically, her swollen belly made her look less like a woman and more like a little girl. Her lack of makeup wasn’t helping. Izzy didn’t have to work to imagine the muttering and whispering of gossip when he brought this girl back to San Diego. Zanella and his child bride.

He didn’t particularly care what people said, but Dan Gillman, his new b-i-l, would hate it.

And it was possible that Eden would hate it, too.

“I thought maybe we could take the next couple of days and get to know each other better,” Izzy told her. “Before sharing a…room.”

He could see worry in her eyes. “Can you really afford two?”

“We’re good,” he reassured her. “I’ve got some money saved. Not a lot, but…Enough. And okay, I’m just going to say it. Please don’t be offended, but when we get married, I’m not going to give you access to my bank accounts.”

She shook her head. “I’m not offended. I didn’t expect—”

“You’re going to need to trust that I’ll be able to pay our bills,” he said. “We’ll work out a weekly budget for things like food and…of course, you’ll need clothes as you continue to…expand.”

“I won’t,” she told him earnestly. “I have a lot of hand-me-downs from a neighbor in Germany. I’m all set.”

Izzy nodded. Damn, she was tense—both unsure of what she’d gotten herself into,
and
afraid that he’d change his mind and leave her once again adrift. He should’ve just squelched her protest while they were in Vegas, and just gone and married her. She would be feeling a hell of a lot more secure right now.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he said, trying to keep it all matter-of-fact, even though, inwardly, he, too, was wondering what the Jesus God he was doing. “I think we should be really up front about what we both expect from this…arrangement.” He made himself say the word. “This marriage. Things like, if you’re home all day, you could maybe do the laundry, or keep the apartment clean. If you’re feeling up to it.”

“I will,” she promised. “I can also grocery shop.” She did a quick one-eighty. “But I don’t need to, if, you know, you don’t want to let me use your truck.” She shook her head. “Forget it. I’m sorry. Just…tell me what you want and I’ll—”

“I’m fine with it,” Izzy interrupted her. “It’s just a truck—it’s not like I’m in love with it or anything. You have a driver’s license, right?”

“Not exactly,” she said.

He laughed. “Any reason why you can’t get one? Like, warrants out for your arrest? Or maybe a suspension for going a hundred and seventy on the Five?”

Eden shook her head. “No, I just never got around to getting one. I know how to drive. I just need to pass the test.”

“We’ll put that on our to-do list,” Izzy said. “That way, when I’m OCONUS, you’ll be able to drive Pinkie downtown, to get his first tattoo.”

Finally—a smile. But it faded too fast, particularly when he said, “We should also talk about sex. As in not having it for a while,” he added. “I mean, yeah, if it turns out that we really do both like each other, sure, I could see sex being a…part of this relationship, but…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t want you to feel like it’s a requirement, because it’s not.”

Eden nodded, but he could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe him.

Probably because he was still standing there, in her room, taking up all that space—and talking about sex. God damn, but he was an idiot.

So he cleared his throat again and backed up to the door. “Look, I’ll let you get settled in. How about I come back at 1800—six o’clock—and we go out to dinner? We could, you know, go out on a date.”

Her nervousness was apparently contagious. He hadn’t delivered such a pathetic and kerflummoxed-sounding invitation to dinner since high school. And here he was, talking to his freaking fiancée, for Christ’s sake. What did he think this girl was going to say, no?

And he’d apparently surprised her again. “You mean, like, get dressed up?”

“If you want,” Izzy said. Mr. Smooth. “Yeah.”

She was silent.

“We don’t have to,” he quickly backpedaled. “I just thought—”

Eden burst into tears.

“I’m sorry.” Izzy literally backed up and bumped the door. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” she said, and he realized that she was laughing, too. “Please, don’t think…I’d love to. Have dinner with you. My hormones are just…Lately I’ve been crying a lot. It’s awful, and…” She grabbed a tissue from the bathroom sink and loudly blew her nose. “Sorry.”

“Well, okay,” Izzy said. Holy shit. “Then I’ll see you at six.”

Eden nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.” Her eyes flooded with tears again. “I just want you to know that I’m…aware of how lucky I am.” Her voice shook, but she soldiered on. “I still can’t quite believe you’re doing this. I didn’t expect it and…We don’t need to talk about anything. Just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

Rumor has it, I give good head…

Oh, of all the things in the world
not
to be thinking…

Except Izzy realized with a flash of heat, that she was thinking it, too. He’d gotten them two rooms to make her feel more comfortable, and instead had ratcheted up her stress levels. Because sex was the only thing she felt certain that she could give him. It was—in her eyes—the only way she could guarantee that he wouldn’t change his mind.

“It was your idea to wait a few days,” he reminded her. “If it were up to me, we would’ve gotten married this afternoon. And I still would’ve gotten us two rooms tonight.”

Eden was standing there, struggling to comprehend.

“Yeah,” Izzy said, “I don’t really get it myself. I like you, and I’m in a position to help. And yeah, everyone makes a big deal about getting married, but it’s just a piece of paper. A contract. I sign a lease every year for my apartment. This is just another contract, except you’re going to sign it, too. We’ll also sign a prenup, and…If you want, we can make sure I get something—a reward—for being Mr. Nice. Like, if I win the lottery while we’re married, the money is mine. But if you win, we split it, fifty-fifty, okay?”

“If I win the lottery,” she repeated, her skepticism in her eyes.

“Or if you write your memoir and sell it for a quarter of a million dollars,” he said.
“Pinkie and Izzy and Me.”

Eden laughed at that. “So half of mine is yours and none of yours is mine.” She sounded a little less worried. “Okay, but…I’m not exactly planning to write a memoir any time soon.”

“Or if you go out for a hike and discover oil,” he said. “Or you find old Mrs. Flurgenbloomen’s lost cockapoo Pointdexter and get a twenty-thousand-dollar reward. You buy an old book at a yard sale and it turns out to have belonged to George Washington and—”

“Okay,” she said, laughing. “I get it.”

“The possibilities are endless.”

“They sound more like impossibilities to me,” she said.

“Pinkie is the cutest baby in the history of the world, and the
National Voice
wants to pay you two million dollars for his pictures,” Izzy continued. “Or he’s, like, bat-boy…”

“That’s not funny.” She narrowed her eyes at him as she tried not to laugh.

“I have a similar idea for how we handle sex,” he said, and yeah, that was totally her hot topic. Her body language rocketed to defcon two. “Say we give it a coupla days and decide we’re going to leave sex out of our marriage. For whatever reason, it doesn’t matter why.” He pushed it, hoping for a reaction. “But if we’re not having sex—together? Then I can have it with other people, but you can’t. As long as you’re married to me, it’s me or no one. I won’t have you stepping out on me, especially when I’m out of the country.”

Her chin went up. “I would never do that.”

“Good,” Izzy said. “Because if you did, I would divorce your ass so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you.”

Her stance changed completely from what had once been impending flight to full fight. Atta girl. He gave himself a pat on the back while he was at it—for flipping the issue of sex upside down.

“You sign that marriage contract,” he continued, “and you’re agreeing not to get it on with anyone else, until after the marriage is dissolved.”

As opposed to her signing on to become his sex slave, which would’ve been nice for a while, but eventually would’ve messed up his head. His big one, with the brain in it, that is.

“Fair enough,” Eden finally said, apparently deciding not to fight him on this. “The rules apply to me, but not to you. I can live with that.”

“Great,” Izzy said, swallowing his disappointment. What did he think? She was going to say,
No way am I even potentially sharing you with someone else. Of course we’re going to have sex—great sex. Not because of any sense of obligation on my part, but because I find you alarmingly attractive and I’m already halfway in love with you…

Right.

“Why don’t you unpack or…whatever,” he continued. “Maybe put on a little makeup so that you at least look, you know, eighteen. And we’ll sit down to dinner and talk about…all the other things we need to talk about.”

He didn’t wait to hear her response. He just opened the door, and made his escape.

T
HE MOUNTAINS EAST OF
S
ACRAMENTO
, C
ALIFORNIA

Hannah had been inside the Sacramento-area Freedom Network compound.

Murphy couldn’t shake the image of her driving inside and having the gate clang shut behind her, locking her in with hundreds of Tim Ebersole’s true believers—people who would have torn her to pieces had they known who she really was, and why she was there.

She had gone in because she was looking for him. Because of some letter he’d written her in the throes of grief-stricken alcohol-and-drug-induced madness.

Murph finished up his cold dinner—a couple of cans of tuna and a chunk of bread—sitting on the slightly damp leaves that littered the forest floor outside of their blind.