Into the Fire (23 page)

“I know,” he said, “but I wanted to. Kind of like I wanted to eat dinner here instead of Taco Bell or Denny’s.”

Eden closed her eyes.

“Don’t cry,” he said, laughing. “Holy jeebus, you weren’t kidding about the crying thing, were you? Come on, sweetheart, really, it’s just dinner.”

In Germany, she’d been able to feed herself for a week with five dollars. True, she’d supplemented her groceries by helping the butcher clean his delivery van in return for scraps for her “dog.”

“Dinner and a ring,” she pointed out as she wiped her eyes with the soft linen napkin.

“Babe, it’s a ring in that it’s round. Really, you haven’t seen it yet. You might not like it. In fact, if you
do
like it, I’m going to be a little worried.”

She looked directly into the amusement that danced in his eyes and felt the same surge of panic that had hit her back in the motel room, when she’d realized they wouldn’t be sharing a room and a bed.
Please, dear God, don’t let him change his mind
mixed crazily with
please, dear God, don’t let him ruin his life this way.

She opened her mouth and “I’ve never been given a ring for not having sex before” came out.

Izzy didn’t look away, didn’t so much as falter. In fact, his smile broadened. “This
has
been a crazy day. And who knows what the future’ll bring. Well, besides Pinkie, who’s not exactly on the express train, is he? You should probably try not to scream when you open that. Thank you.” He glanced up as the waiter brought his beer and her glass of milk.

She waited until the man was gone, then reached for the ring box, and…

She laughed—she couldn’t help it. But it was okay, because Izzy was laughing, too. “It’s a real diamond, but…Think of it as a placeholder,” he said. “Until we get to a town that has a real jewelry store.”

The diamond—a relatively big one—was in the very center of the ring, but the setting was a dog or maybe a bear’s head—it was hard to tell which. But the animal held the gem in its snarling mouth, lips back, teeth bared.

It looked an awful lot like a roasted pig holding an apple. But the gold was worn in places—the ears were mere nubs—which also gave it a kind of scary-human-monster vibe.

“Dalton
does
have a pawn shop,” Izzy said. “This was the only thing they had with a diamond. So…lucky you.”

“I don’t need a diamond,” Eden told him, trying not to cry. “Really, Izzy, I…” There was something engraved on the inside of the ring. “Tutto E Possibile,” she read aloud. “What does that mean?”

“Anything,” Izzy said, “is possible.”

Eden was quiet, tears welling again in her eyes as she sat looking at the ring Izzy’d found in Davio’s Pawn and Paycheck Advance. She put it on her finger and held it out toward the candle to look at it in the light. “It
is
Manbearpig,” she said with a tremulous smile. “Someone call Al Gore. And you
should
be afraid, because I do love it.”

Izzy laughed his surprise. “A fellow South Park fan,” he said. “Be still my triple-lutzing heart.”

“Anything is possible.” She nodded, still blinking back her tears. “I really love that it says that.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.” The fact that those words had been engraved inside the ring had made buying it a no-brainer.

A tear escaped, which both pissed her off and made her laugh. “This is going to get old fast,” she said, “isn’t it?”

“No,” he said. “It’s…charming. And it’s nice that you like the ring. Weird, but nice.”

And there they sat, gazing at each other in the candlelight. Damn, she was pretty. And with makeup on, she looked closer to her real age, which was good. Particularly since she was wearing some kind of sundress type thing that featured her super-sized bosom. Featured and flaunted it.

She tugged the top north, probably because his gaze had drifted south. And she was looking at him now as if she couldn’t quite figure him out.

Izzy cleared his throat. “Finding you a doctor’ll be a priority when we get back to San Diego. That and getting your driver’s license.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I still haven’t figured out what you get out of any of this. Aside from a share in my nonexistent future lottery winnings.”

Izzy shrugged. “I told you. I get to help you. And I get to help your brother. And to torment him at the same time. It’s all good.”

“What if you meet someone?” Eden leaned forward to ask, which gave him quite the scenic view. Which probably was not unintentional. This time, though, he kept his eyes on her face. “Like, next Monday, you’re just walking down the street and, bang! It’s love at first sight. Only now you’re married.”

“If that happens,” Izzy said, “I’ll introduce her to you. I’ll explain what’s going on, you’ll verify, and she’ll fall completely in love with me because I’m such a terrific guy.”

“But what if–”

“Eden,” he said. “Stop worrying. You’re worried that I’m going to change my mind, and you’re worried that I’m not. That’s a little nuts.”

She sat there in silence, just looking at him. “I would understand it,” she said quietly, “if we were going to have sex. I understand sex.”

And there it was. Right out on the table. As Izzy stared back into her unswerving gaze, he was suddenly back in his apartment, in the middle of the night, with this girl’s legs wrapped around him and her tongue in his mouth.

“Do you?” he asked. “Because I’m not sure that you do.”

She laughed at that, pointing with both hands to her belly. “Pregnant,” she said.

“That kind of proves
my
point,” Izzy said. “Not yours. I mean, you and Richie weren’t trying for this, am I right?”

That shut her up.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, but he didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Why keep this baby?”

She looked up at him, but stayed silent.

“Knowing who the baby’s father is,” he continued. “Did you…Do you love this guy?” True, she’d told him that Richie was dangerous, but love wasn’t always sane.

Now she was shaking her head. “I don’t,” she said. “I didn’t. It wasn’t—”

Izzy didn’t need her excuses. He’d made his share of stupid mistakes. It happened, end of story. But…“So why keep the baby?” he asked again.

She played with the ring he’d given her, twisting it around and around her finger. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “While I was in Germany, I made an appointment to, like, end the pregnancy? But I woke up that morning and…I don’t know,” she said again. “Maybe it’s because no one has ever depended on me the way Pinkie does. I know it’s going to be hard, raising a baby all by myself. I just…Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone, and I just…couldn’t. I know it sounds crazy—”

“It doesn’t,” Izzy said. “I get it.” He did. He was sitting here right now because
he
just couldn’t. Leave Eden in Vegas.

The waiter brought their soup, and Eden met his gaze across the table. No way would this thimble-sized cup have been enough to make an entire meal, and she knew it, too.

“Thank you,” she said, tears back in her eyes. She swore like a sailor, under her breath.

He had to smile. “You’re welcome.”

“She Will Be Loved,”
she told him. “My favorite song. Favorite band, too. Maroon 5.”

Izzy nodded. “They’re cool.”

“Not as cool as Karen Carpenter,” she said, unable to keep from laughing.

“Zing,” Izzy said, and as they sat there, smiling at each other and eating their soup, he knew that just about everything he’d told himself up to this point was a lie.

He wasn’t marrying Eden Gillman merely because he wanted to help her. Although he did. He wanted to help Danny, too—possibly out of guilt that he’d been blind for so long to the financial woes that plagued the fishboy. But helping Eden and her brother were down toward the bottom of his list of reasons why he was doing this.

Because first and foremost, Izzy was marrying Eden Gillman because he wanted her to keep on smiling at him, the way she was smiling at him right now.

He wanted to be her hero.

Even the appealing idea of getting it on with her was secondary in his quest to see her eyes lit up and her crazy-beautiful smile aimed directly at him.

And how fucked up was that?

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

T
UESDAY
, J
ULY
29
TH
S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

“S
o you heard the gunshots from the car.”

“That’s right. There were five of them.” Decker brought his mug of coffee back to the table, carefully lowering himself into one of the conference room chairs, keeping the table between Dr. Heissman and himself.

“How’s your…coccyx?” she asked, then snickered, but then laughed—at herself. “Sorry. But it’s such an obscene-sounding little word.”

Decker didn’t want to smile, but he found himself doing just that. “It’s a little better today. Thanks.”

“I do appreciate your coming in this early in the morning to do this.” She flipped through the pages of the file that lay open on the table in front of her. Dressed down for travel, she wore jeans and a sleeveless top, sandals on her feet, but looked no less the warrior queen. It wasn’t just the shape of her face, it was the way she sat, as if surveying her kingdom. And her subjects. “On the chance that we do find Vinh Murphy today, I’d like to have as much information as possible.”

That was probably psycho-bullshit, meant to make him feel as if the spotlight weren’t shining in his eyes, but Decker nodded. Still, he knew that the doctor had sat down with Tom and his wife Kelly last night. They’d both been on the scene when Angelina had been shot.

As had Sophia.

The doctor was planning to meet with her later today, up in Dalton, where the search for Murphy’s friend Hannah was ongoing. Hannah was, they all believed, their best bet at finding Murph.

When Tom had called last night to set up this early
A.M
. session, Decker had been certain that the focus of his discussion with the doctor was going to be all about Sophia. In fact, Deck had expected Jo Heissman to come knocking on his door immediately after talking to Dave.

“You were there, when the shooting occurred—just by chance,” she prompted Decker now.

But apparently she really
did
want to talk about Angelina’s murder.

So Deck told her the story. He’d told it many times in the hours after the shooting—to the local police, to the FBI, to Nash and Tess, to everyone at TS Inc. who was struggling to understand what had happened to Murphy and his wife. “I was in the car with Jane Chadwick—our client and the shooter’s real target—and yes, it was just by chance that we both were there. Jane was having an episode of cabin fever. To protect her against the death threats, we’d secured her inside of her home and she was feeling, rightly, confined. She insisted on driving out to Malibu where Tom and Kelly were vacationing in a house on the beach. I was riding along with her—I’d done all I could to talk her out of going in the first place. Although, to be honest, it wasn’t until shots were fired that I truly believed the threat was real.”

“How did that feel?” Dr. Heissman asked. “To be proven wrong about something as important as that?”

And this information about how Decker felt was going to help her help Murphy
…how
?

“We were all shaken by it,” he told her. “We were all surprised. In hindsight, it was clear that we should have taken more precautions.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me, Tom, the FBI team leader. Jane. Everyone.”

“Including Murphy?” she asked.

“Yes. But we—I—should have reinforced procedure. Murphy and Angelina were followed up to Malibu—they went there for dinner, it was a social occasion. If I’d reminded the entire team to take extra precautions 24/7, Murph might’ve spotted the tail and…” Decker cleared his throat. “The night would’ve ended differently.”

She consulted her notes. “According to Tom, Angelina’s murder was premeditated.”

“That’s right,” Decker agreed. Angelina hadn’t been mistaken for Jane, even though the two women had had similar build and coloring. The killer, John Bordette, had followed the Murphys not because he’d expected them to lead him to his real target, Jane, but because he’d intended to shoot
Angelina
that evening. If the motherfucker hadn’t tailed them to Malibu, he would have followed them somewhere else. Bordette had shot and killed Angelina to get their attention. So that they’d take him seriously.

It still made Decker’s stomach churn with anger.

And guilt. Because until Murph and Angelina’s blood had spilled on that Malibu driveway, he
hadn’t
taken the threat seriously.

“So you’re in the car with Jane,” the doctor nudged him. “You hear the shots…”

“Jane was driving, so I reached over with my foot and hit the gas pedal,” Decker told her, working to keep his voice even and measured. “My immediate goal was to get the client out of there. But she saw the blood and the bodies, and she jammed on the brake and ran from the car—toward them. I think she thought it was Cosmo, her boyfriend—husband now—who’d been shot. I followed her. Of course, by this time, the shooter was long gone.”

“You knew this at that moment?” she asked, her head tipped to one side.

“No,” he said. “At that moment, we had no real idea where Bordette was, or even how many shooters were out there.”

“And yet you ran into his potential kill zone.”

“My job was to protect Jane.”

“With your life?”

“If necessary,” Decker said. “We secured Jane, called for medical assistance for both Murphy and his wife, secured the area, then located the shooter’s position. Former position. He
was
gone.”

“When you first saw the bodies on the driveway,” Dr. Heissman asked, “who did you think had been shot?”

“I saw right away that it was Murphy and Angelina,” Decker told her. “But I didn’t know that there weren’t any additional casualties. Tom’s wife, Kelly, was pregnant at the time…I was afraid that she’d been hit, too,” he said, because he knew the next question was going to be
how did you feel.
He threw her a little extra touchie-feelie emotional pain. “I was afraid for the baby. It was like a…horrendous nightmare.”

Too much?

Possibly, because she smiled at him. But her eyes were sympathetic as she looked up from her notes.

Decker waited for it. A question about or mention of Sophia.
Sophia Ghaffari was there, too, wasn’t she? Can you describe the way your heart nearly stopped when you saw her, covered with what turned out to be Murphy and Angelina’s blood?

But it didn’t come. She didn’t say anything other than “You’re doing great.”

So he asked, “Great enough to be greenlit to go overseas?”

Dr. Heissman sat back in her seat as she studied him. “What exactly happens when you go overseas?”

“I get to keep bad people from killing good people,” he said. “And sometimes I get to kill the bad people, which is something I’m very good at doing.”

“And you don’t maybe think that has something to do with your…current nihilistic behavior?”

Decker smiled. “Nihilistic. Is that your diagnosis?”

“Officially?” she asked. “No. But it’s certainly a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder, which is the diagnosis I’m leaning more and more toward.”

“Jesus,” Decker said. “Here we go.”

“You disagree?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What would you call it?” she asked.

“I’d call it nothing,” he answered. “I’d call it normal. I’d call it skillfully doing a difficult job that’s fucking got to be done to keep the world safe for democracy. Excuse me.”

“Honest language doesn’t offend me. In fact, I’d prefer that you didn’t try to censor yourself. Let’s go back to the driveway.”

Oh, let’s not. Let’s never go there again. At least not voluntarily. God knows Deck went there often enough in his dreams.

“What were the extent of Murphy and Angelina’s injuries?” the shrink asked.

“I’m sure Kelly Paoletti was able to tell you, with far more accuracy,” Decker replied. Tommy’s wife was a doctor.

“As a former SEAL, you’ve had
some
medical training. You must’ve had some sort of initial reaction to their condition, when you first arrived at the scene.”

“I was sure Angelina was dead,” he said flatly. “When I first saw her. Murphy was…” The man had been critically injured himself, yet he was trying to get to his wife, trying to put back the pieces of her skull that had been blown away.

Angelina! No! Angelina!
Murph’s anguished voice still echoed in Decker’s head.

Jesus.

“In critical condition,” he finished the sentence he’d started. “But still conscious. Tommy and Cosmo both were telling him that Angelina was going to be okay, but we all knew she wasn’t going to make it.”

“Tom told me that he’d hoped she would.”

Decker nodded. “Kelly believes in miracles. So Tommy pretends he does, too.”

“And you don’t?”

“Fishes and loaves, maybe on a sunny day. Lazarus raised from the dead? No.”

“That must’ve been hard,” Dr. Heissman said. “Feeling as if you were lying to Vinh Murphy.”

“We kept him alive and relatively calm until the paramedics came,” Decker said. “We did what we had to do.”

“Do you mean that?” she asked. “Or is it just lip service?”

She was almost unbearably astute, holding his gaze with a challenge in her eyes.
I dare you to be honest…

“It’s lip service,” he agreed.

She didn’t celebrate her victory at all. She just pushed harder, but gently, her voice softer. “What do you think would’ve happened if you had been honest with Murphy about his wife’s condition?”

“I think he would’ve stopped fighting,” Decker said. “I think he would’ve let himself die.”

“Which you now believe would’ve been a better option for him.”

“Regardless of what I believe now, the fact is we didn’t give him that choice.”

“Was Murphy really in a place where he could make—literally—a life-and-death decision?” she leaned forward to ask.

Decker stared into her eyes. How the hell had she gotten him to actually talk about this? She’d done it yesterday, too. She asked, he dodged or told her what he thought she wanted to hear, and then, suddenly, before he knew it, he was putting voice to things he usually didn’t even dare let himself
think
about.

“Was he in a place where he could’ve made
any
kind of decision?” she persisted. “As team leader, surely you’ve allowed your team members to make command decisions from time to time. But at
that
time, in
that
moment, would you have allowed Murphy to decide, say, the best way to approach the place from whence the shooter had fired those five shots?”

“Of course not.”

“You did what you had to do,” she repeated his own words. “It’s not lip service, Lawrence.”

Maybe not. But he
had
known about the anguish that was roaring Murphy’s way. He knew, too, what it felt like to want to die, but to be unwilling or maybe just unable to take his own life. But somehow, for now, he managed to break the spell this woman had cast over him, and he didn’t admit to any of that.

“Thank you for that insight,” he said instead, trying his best to sound appreciative and sincere. “That was…helpful.”

But she didn’t respond. She just gazed at him. It was all he could do not to squirm.

“Is there anything else I can help you with this morning?” Decker finally asked.

She smiled at that. “Are you planning to come out there? To Dalton?”

“No,” he said. “I have work to do, here.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

“If I were Murphy,” Decker told her quietly, “I wouldn’t want anything to do with me. He was…relatively close to Dave. I’ll let Dave handle…the situation.”

“Dave.” She checked her notes. “Malkoff. With the pretty eyes. Right. I haven’t had a chance to meet with him yet.”

What? “Didn’t you speak to him yesterday afternoon?”

“No,” she said, “I had to reschedule that session. I’ll be talking to him later today.”

“Ah.” And
that
explained the lack of probing questions about Sophia.

Dr. Heissman looked up at him. “So…what are you afraid Dave is going to tell me?”

“I’m not afraid,” Decker said, laughing because the only other option was to cry, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do that. “What’s my tell?” He was definitely telegraphing something. Either that, or she could somehow magically read him, despite all of his years working to make sure he gave nothing away with his facial expression or body language.

“You’re a poker player, huh?” she said.

“Occasionally. What was my tell?”

“Your energy level changed,” she told him. “Just slightly.”

“Guess I won’t be playing poker with you.”

“I’ve worked with a large number of military and agency operatives,” she said, “none of whom come skipping in to our meetings, eager to open up and talk, none of whom have what you call a
tell.
But I’ve learned to read when you’re being evasive, or when you’re presenting half-truths, or, such as with your question about Dave, when you’ve been thrown off balance—even if it was just for a fraction of a second.”

“I’m usually pretty good at that kind of thing, too,” Decker admitted. “But I’m not as good as you.”

“Take that statement, for example,” she said with a smile. “It’s an attempt to redirect. To steer our conversation away from the danger zone. In this case, Dave, and whatever it is that you’re afraid he’s going to tell me.”

Decker laughed as he pushed himself out of his chair, as he headed for the conference room door. This session was over. He had work to do. “Again, I’m not afraid he’s going to tell you. I
know
he is.”

“So why not just tell me yourself?”

Decker turned, with his hand on the doorknob. She’d turned, too, swiveling her chair to face him. She had delicate ankles for someone so tall. Her feet were narrow and graceful, too, with toenails she’d painted a bright shade of red.

She sat there, patiently waiting for him to finish staring at her.

“He’s going to tell you about me and…Sophia Ghaffari,” Decker finally said.

Dr. Heissman nodded. “I have a note in my file that you and Sophia have…something of a history.”