Into the Fire (4 page)

“I’m always the family emergency,” she answered, pissed off. “It’s pretty much been a full-time job since I turned twelve.”

Izzy laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“I’ve been gone for three months,” Eden told him. “I’ve been e-mailing my mother—she knows I’m safe.” She caught herself, shivering again as the breeze kicked up. “Was safe.”

“You’re safe,” Izzy told Gillman’s little sister, as his hopes and dreams of nailing her shriveled and died a painful death.

She folded her arms across her chest, sheer attitude in human form. “Probably what happened is Greg, my stepfather, found out about the e-mail. He probably thought he could trace it and find me—which he couldn’t. I’m not an idiot. But Mom probably panicked and called Danny because she was afraid when Greg went after me, I’d fight back.” She laughed—defiance mixed with despair. “I’m not sure who she’s more worried will get hurt—him or me. Probably him.”

“If you’re eighteen, he can’t touch you—if he does, you can press charges,” Izzy pointed out.

Eden nodded. “And then there’s that. I can press charges.” She paused. “Tomorrow.”

“You’re only seventeen,” he said in a burst of disbelief, and she nodded. Flipping great. Not that seventeen wasn’t the age of consent in California. It was. But damn, a man had to draw a line somewhere, and his had always been twenty. Okay, depending on extreme circumstances, nineteen and a half.

“Until midnight,” she told him, and tears suddenly welled in her eyes. “Happy birthday to me, huh?”

Ditched in a Krispy Kreme by some scumball, a day before her birthday, with her wicked stepfather hot on her heels, ready to lock her in the basement. It was like a master class in the unfairness of life, a bitch-slap from the powers of the universe.

“You must be hungry,” Izzy said, and she looked up, having—once again—successfully blinked back her tears. Dang it, this girl was tough.

She nodded. “I haven’t slept in a while, either,” she admitted.

As she held his gaze, Izzy’s heart started its gymnastics routine again, and he had to look away. Gillman’s little sister, he reminded himself. Seven-fucking-teen. What the hell was he going to do if the fishboy didn’t call back before morning? Viable options swirled through his head, dangerously mixing with the no-longer viable ones he’d been considering mere moments earlier.

He’d open a bottle of wine, and they’d share it out on his deck while they also shared secrets. She’d soon feel comfortable enough around him to let herself weep from the pain of being abandoned, after which they’d have sex, right on his lounge chair.

“I’m kind of at your mercy,” Eden told him now.

Shit.

She waited, just watching him.

She was hungry. He could cook her that steak he had in his fridge. After dinner, he’d get her set up on the couch, careful to keep his distance. But he’d awaken in the night, hearing her crying as if her heart were breaking, and he’d go to her and just hold her. And after the storm of tears had passed, he’d make her laugh.

After which she’d kiss him and his head would explode and they’d have sex, right on his couch.

Shit.
Shit.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Izzy finally told her. “We’ll drive through Mickey D’s, get you something fast to eat. I need to go home, take a quick shower, and find something to wear that doesn’t smell like ass. I’ll grab a sweatshirt that you can borrow, too. Then we’ll find someplace for you to stay tonight that isn’t with me—maybe Jenk and Lindsey’s. They, uh, have a couch that’s more comfortable than mine.

“And then, after midnight, if Danny hasn’t called by then, we’ll call him at your mom’s house,” Izzy continued. “You’ll be eighteen and no one will make you do anything that you don’t want to do. Does that sound like a plan?”

Gratitude shone in Eden Gillman’s eyes as she nodded. “Thank you.”

God
damn,
she was gorgeous and yeah, a little crazy, and more than a little wild. Aside from the too-young thing, she was Izzy’s idea of perfection, and the kicker was that he was pretty sure she liked him, too. She thought he was her hero. A flipping knight in shining armor.

He was some hero. Yeah, he was going to call his buddy Jenk and see if he and his wife Lindsey wouldn’t mind if Dan Gillman’s little sister spent the night, but it didn’t have squat to do with the comfort-factor of Izzy’s sofa.

No, it was all about the removal of temptation. A total temptation-ectomy, that’s what he was looking to perform. Because gallant and brave Sir Izzy was a frakking coward. He was afraid, nay, terrified down to his very scumbag of a soul, that even though this girl
was
Gillman’s sister, he would not be able to keep his hands off of her. Especially not when the clock struck twelve and she magically turned into an eighteen-year-old.

Even though, prior to tonight, his line had always been twenty.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Izzy said.

And with that, the most beautiful woman in the world crossed the parking lot and climbed into the cab of his truck.

S
MALLWOOD
, K
ANSAS

“Loading dock,” Decker said, and it was clear he was talking to Dave, not Nash. Dave knew that Deck and Nash could read each other’s minds. They didn’t need spoken language.

The AmLux Headquarters loading dock was dimly lit, and indeed, the perfect entry point into the building. It wasn’t heavily guarded either—a lone sentry, bundled up against the cold, sat at a table near the freight elevators.

The guard’s presence was a glitch—albeit a small one—in Troubleshooters Incorporated’s red-cell attack plan.

TS Inc. was
the
top personal security firm in the U.S.—no, make that the world. They—and Dave Malkoff, Lawrence Decker, and James Nash were three of the firm’s top operatives—provided security to people who needed to venture into some of the most dangerous places on the planet.

They also provided security-testing to “paranoia accounts” like tonight’s client, AmLux, whose CEO was convinced that, even though their corporate headquarters was smack in the middle of America’s heartland, they were a potential terrorist target.

Which was why Dave had followed Decker and Nash silently around the side of the AmLux building, slipping past a series of ready-and-waiting guards. They were bright-eyed and aware that tonight they would be tested, but not so bright-eyed and aware as to have spotted Dave, Deck, and Nash.

Being
red cell
meant that during tonight’s op, the trio of men from TS Inc. would play the part of the terrorists. They were the bad guys, and their job was to break into AmLux, access the corporation’s computers—both to steal their “secrets” and to take out their entire system—and then plant a series of bombs that would bring down the building.

Not that they’d actually do any of that, despite Decker’s displeasure at being given this assignment in the first place.
Fucking waste of time
were his exact words, and Dave could relate. But the money AmLux was paying for tonight’s cakewalk was not insignificant.

So the bombs they’d plant would be pretend, and as for the computers—they’d simply put a very small bug in their system that would read, “You’ve been compromised!” Dave had recorded the audiotrack for the message, and he’d done his best to sound like the relentlessly cheerful AOL guy who announced the presence of e-mail. He was pretty good at mimicking voices.

And that was probably going to be his sole contribution to this op. Yeah, yeah, when they got to the CEO’s office, Dave would break into the computer and plant the bug. But either Decker or Nash could have done it just as easily.

And yet Tommy Paoletti, the commanding officer of Troubleshooters Inc., had assigned all three of them to this job. Theirs was not to question why, but instead to do or mock-die.

Except no way were they going to mock-die, up against this team of total amateurs.

As they now watched from the shadows of the loading dock, the lone guard checked in with the main gate, using his cell phone to do so. “Henderson here.” His voice carried clearly over to them. “All clear.”

Decker and Nash exchanged another look over the bags of gear they’d silently carried in, and Dave whispered what they were thinking. “No password or code.”

No radio, either. But surely this guard had a panic button to alert the rest of his security team to trouble. Without a panic button, anyone trying to break in would be able to walk up to him and take him out before he finished dialing his phone for backup. That was pretty gosh-darn stupid.

“Panic button’s over on the wall,” Nash pointed out. Tall, dark, and strikingly movie-star handsome to Decker’s average height, average hair color, and blandly nondescript face, the two men didn’t just look mismatched. They
were
mismatched.

Average-looking Larry Decker had been a chief in the mighty U.S. Navy SEALs. James Nash, however, didn’t merely not have a military background—he didn’t have a background, period. His entire past had been magically erased from his official file, although Dave suspected that he’d done jail time and hadn’t always played for the good guys. Which made him perfect for red-cell type assignments like the one they were currently on.

Personality, background, education—Decker and Nash couldn’t have been more different. And yet they were close in a way that Dave—a former CIA loner—had never been close to anyone. The two men were more than friends—they were teammates. And they’d been so for years, having been partners at the clandestine and mysteriously unnamed “Agency” before coming to work for Troubleshooters Incorporated.

“Speed or finesse?” Decker asked Nash now as all three men crouched in the shadows.

Nash just laughed—and moved.

Apparently, speed it was.

“Stay with the gear,” Deck ordered Dave. It was a more respectful step up from the “Stay put,” Dave would’ve gotten from the man even just a few short months ago. Deck had gotten injured in a car accident, and Dave—despite his own broken wrist—had carried him through a blizzard to safety. He’d earned Deck’s respect that day, but despite that, they still weren’t quite friends.

Which was probably as much Dave’s fault as Decker’s. Although truth be told, Deck had gotten even less chatty and even more grim after his release from the hospital. Dave couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the man laugh.

Out on the loading dock, the security guard didn’t see either Decker or Nash coming—Dave barely saw it go down himself. One moment the poor guy was doing the
Times
crossword, the next he was on the concrete floor, his cheek pressed against the dirt and grit, his mouth already gagged as Nash bound his hands behind his back.

Dave winced at Nash’s less-than-gentle handling. This was, after all, just an exercise.

Decker, meanwhile, had possession of the guard’s cell phone, searching through the list of outgoing calls. “Check-in’s every five minutes,” he announced as Nash dragged Henderson back toward Dave and the shadows.

Where Nash scared the shit out of the man as he opened his switchblade with the cold sound of metal against metal. “Here’s where I slit your throat,” he said over the man’s alarmed noises.

“Not really,” Dave interjected, giving Nash a chiding look.

“Relax, Malkoff. He knew I was kidding.” Nash made the knife vanish, instead slapping an “I’m dead,” sticker on the guard’s forehead. He grabbed the bags of gear and humped them over toward Decker.

The guard was looking up at Dave, lots of white still showing in his eyes. He made noise that sounded like an indignant,
You didn’t have to kill me.

“Yeah, Henderson, we kinda did,” Dave told him mildly. “We’re ruthless terrorists. If we left you alive, you might have been able to signal for help.” So Nash had dragged him back here and “killed” him. Hidden behind the forklift, Henderson’s “blood” wouldn’t be seen right away from someone just glancing in at the loading dock.

Ruthless terrorists weren’t the only ones who knew that, at times, dead was the only guarantee of silence and mission success. Dave didn’t want to think about how often they’d all done something similar in a real world situation—only without the cute sticker. And he would be willing to bet that Nash, James Nash, had done it more times than he could count.

“You’re dead. If you move,” Dave gave Henderson the standard warning, “or raise an alarm, the outcome of this exercise will be compromised. We’ll need to reschedule, AmLux will be out tens of thousands of dollars, and you will no longer be employed. Do you understand?”

The guard nodded. He was sullen, but he’d gotten the message.

“Dave.” Decker had already overridden the freight elevator’s security system, and the monstrous thing was open and ready, the two former partners waiting impatiently inside.

Dave ran to catch up and as the door closed behind them, Nash glanced at his watch. “Three minutes fifteen to check in.” Again Nash and Deck exchanged an information-laden look.

“Do we bluff or blow?” Dave asked as the elevator rose, trying not to feel like excess baggage. Why was he here?

Apparently Decker was thinking the exact same thing—except about himself.

“Blow,” he said shortly. “Why make it harder for ourselves? They’re afraid of terrorists, let’s suicide-bomber up.”

Prior to 9/11, security teams had assumed that anyone interested in breaking into a facility wouldn’t do so unless it was possible for them also to get back out. Suicide bombers, however, needed only to get in.

“Bluff
and
blow.” Nash took the guard’s cell phone from Deck, handing it to Dave. “Buy us more time, Malkoff. Make ’em think you’re Henderson.”

The elevator doors opened onto a floor that was dimly lit. As if in unspoken agreement, Nash went left and Decker went right.

Leaving Dave, as usual, standing alone.

He opened Henderson’s phone and dialed.

A
LIFETIME AGO
…
J
ANUARY
2001
F
RESNO
, C
ALIFORNIA

Murphy’s spirits lifted as he pulled into the apartment parking lot and saw Hannah’s familiar little car, with its bumper sticker that announced
A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE
.