Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I’ve got two men who’ve worked with me for the past few months who are already en route to Kazabek—Dave Malkoff and Vinh Murphy,” the former SEAL CO continued. “Normally I would’ve asked for your approval as team leader before sending them out, but I couldn’t wait. Murph spent ten years in the Marines; Dave was with the CIA.”

  “I know them both,” Deck said.

  So did Jimmy. Murphy was cool, part African-American, part Vietnamese, with just enough Irish thrown in to make things completely confusing to anyone walking into a room and looking for a guy named Murphy. But CIA agent—former CIA agent, apparently, since he was now working for Paoletti—Dave Malkoff was a complete head case. He was a bundle of raw nerves in need of some serious decaffeination. And a new wardrobe. He made the MIB squad look colorful.

  “Nash isn’t a big fan of Malkoff’s,” Decker told Paoletti, “but I’m okay with him. And Murph’s solid.”

  “I’d also like to send along a computer specialist,” Paoletti told them, “but there’s a real shortage of skilled people. I got a call just this morning from a comspesh who’s had field training, but no experience. I know that’s not ideal. And I’ve never worked with her myself so I can’t vouch for—”

  “Her?” Jimmy interrupted. Whoops. Deck was giving him a look. “Excuse me.” He threw in a little extra respect. “Sir. You’re actually considering sending a woman into Kazbekistan?”

  Sending female agents into K-stan hadn’t been done without a great deal of angst five years ago, before the armpit of a country had had a regime change. And over the past few months things had gotten even worse there. Even the most basic of women’s rights had been flushed down the toilet.

  “She wouldn’t be my first choice,” Paoletti said. “If I had a choice. Like I said, I haven’t worked with this comspesh, I haven’t even met her. But I’m pretty sure you both know her. She just left the Agency.”

  A comspesh that he and Deck knew from the Agency who’d had field training? Oh, no. No, no.

  “She worked in the support office.” Paoletti shuffled through the papers in front of him. “Her name’s . . .”

  Not . . .

  “Tess Bailey.”

  Oh, shit.

  Paoletti looked sharply up at Jimmy. “Problem, Nash?”

  Had he said that aloud?

  Apparently he had, since Deck was looking at him, too.

  “No,” Jimmy lied automatically before his brain fully kicked in. There were a lot of problems with Tess Bailey joining the team, and only one of them related to the fact that he’d spent the night with her two months ago and then left town without calling, without emailing, without a single word.

  “Well, actually yes,” he quickly countered. “She’s great. Don’t get me wrong, Tess Bailey is really, really great. Good person. Smart, resourceful . . . But like you said, she’s got no experience out in the field.” He looked from Decker to Paoletti. “None. Whatsoever.”

  “Everyone’s got to start somewhere,” Decker pointed out.

  “Yes. Yes, they do.” Jimmy turned to face his partner, giving him an SOS message with his eyes. Whose side was he on here? “In Kansas City. Or Lincoln, Nebraska. Lincoln’s a great place to start fieldwork. Not Kazbekistan.”

  Christ, he was going to pop a vein. He forced himself to take a deep breath. There was no way anyone in their right mind was going to send Tess Bailey and her cute little freckles to K-stan, the country that bore the nickname “the Pit.” As in Shit Pit. As in the putrid stank of the worst side of humanity.

  “Tom. May I call you Tom?” Jimmy didn’t wait for Paoletti to give him permission before continuing. “Seriously, Tom, this is a woman who grew up on a farm in Iowa. We’re talking Middle America. Cornfields and blue skies. And she looks it, too. She has no chance of blending in in Kazabek. I mean, she might as well walk off the plane waving an American flag and singing ‘Yankee Doodle.’ I’m telling you, she looks like she stepped out of a Disney movie.”

  “I don’t know what Disney movies you’ve been watching,” Decker said, giving Jimmy a smile that was grimly amused. “But I disagree.” He turned to Paoletti. “I think Tess Bailey would do just fine. Like Nash said, she’s smart and resourceful. In my opinion, she’s ready for the real world. When did she leave the Agency?”

  Jimmy clenched his teeth, squelching a sound of pain. Decker was screwing him. And on purpose, too, if he correctly read the meaning of that smile.

  “Just today,” Paoletti reported. “Apparently she got passed over for a field position again. She’s been trying to break out of support for a while.”

  “Maybe there’s a good reason she was passed over,” Jimmy pointed out.

  Paoletti turned to look at him. “Is there anything specific you know about her that would—”

  “Yes,” Decker answered the man before Jimmy could even open his mouth. “The reason she was passed over is that she’s damn good at what she does while sitting at a desk. She’s a hacker, sir. She’s practically hardwired into her computer. It’s poetic, what she can do. She was working as part of a tiger team while she was in college—that’s how she got recruited by the Agency. They were bluffing when they turned her down—I know this for a fact. It’s been the Agency’s experience that most women will settle for support, or even just keep following the rules and applying for fieldwork indefinitely, but apparently she called their bluff and walked. Good for her.”

  Paoletti laughed his surprise. “I guess you like her for this slot.”

  But Decker wasn’t ready to laugh about this. “Not so much for this particular job, sir. I’m with Nash—I’d rather not bring a woman into K-stan unless there’s no other choice. But you definitely want her as a permanent member of your team.”

  Whoa, what was Decker saying? Permanent? Jimmy couldn’t imagine going to K-stan with Tess, let alone working with her on a permanent basis.

  Although, wait. Breathe. He himself was only in for this one assignment. He was going to Kazbekistan because he’d told Deck he would. But afterward, he was going to disappear again—this time someplace where Decker wouldn’t find him.

  “The Agency’s going to come back to Tess with an offer,” Decker told Paoletti. “And they’re going to do it soon. If you want her—and you do, believe me, sir—you better grab her while you can. Bring her in for an interview—fast.”

  A buzzer sounded from the outer office, but Paoletti didn’t move. He just gave Deck a long, measured look. The buzzer sounded again. It was the doorbell. Without a receptionsist out front, the door to the street was kept locked. It sounded a third time before he finally spoke. “Are you involved with this woman, Chief?”

  Deck looked surprised and then . . . embarrassed? He glanced at Jimmy before answering. “Did I say something that implied I was—”

  “No, you didn’t.” Paoletti cut him off, looking at Jimmy, too, speculation on his face.

  Jimmy tried to look only mildly interested—as if this conversation about Tess Bailey wasn’t making him want to squirm in his seat.

  “And frankly,” Paoletti added, “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not my business. You just seem to know her rather well, and it reminded me of . . .” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  But it obviously did matter to Deck. “I worked with Tess, sir,” he said, “and I don’t fraternize.”

  “This isn’t the Navy,” Paoletti pointed out. “I don’t have any rules about what my people do on their time off. And as far as I’m aware, the Agency didn’t have those kinds of restrictions either.”

  “As a rule, sir, I keep intimate relationships separate from work.”

  Unlike some asshole whose name just might be Nash. Or mud. The two were apparently synonymous. Decker’s message to Jimmy was loud and clear, even without the pointed look.

  The office telephone rang. “Excuse me,” Paoletti said, and picked it up. “Paoletti.”

  Jimmy took the opportunity to lean toward Deck. “I’d like to point out that, also
as a rule, you never get laid.”

  Deck didn’t bother to respond.

  “Great,” Paoletti said into the phone. “I’ll be right there to let you in.” He pushed himself to his feet and dropped another bomb, this one of devastating proportions. “Tess Bailey’s out front. Her flight got in early.”

  Jimmy didn’t so much as blink. Mentally, he’d jumped out of his seat and run right through the wall into the back parking lot—like Wile E. Coyote used to do on the Road Runner—leaving behind a hole in the shape of a desperately fleeing man. Physically though, he didn’t move an eyelash.

  “That fast enough for you, Chief?” Paoletti smiled at Decker.

  As the former SEAL CO vanished into the outer office, Decker turned and looked at Jimmy. His eyes were decidedly chilly.

  “You didn’t call her after we left the Agency, did you?” Deck guessed correctly, although it was a mystery how he suddenly knew that. Because Jimmy was still not reacting to Tess’s unexpected appearance. Not at all. Nothing, nada, zip. No expression whatsoever. “You didn’t tell her where you were going, you just left town, no word.”

  It was pointless to lie. “Yeah.” Crap, how was he going to handle this?

  “You are such an asshole.” Deck was going to be no help. He was genuinely pissed at Jimmy.

  It didn’t happen often, but when it did—look out.

  “Yeah, I know.” He was an asshole. Had he really thought he’d simply never run into Tess again? Had he honestly believed it would be that easy?

  “You know what I never do?” Deck said flatly. “I never find myself in the awkward situation of having to work with someone I’ve screwed, both literally and figuratively. Jesus, Nash.”

  Jimmy could hear Tess’s voice in the outer office—her laughter as she responded to the lower rumble of Paoletti’s voice. Shit. Shit. Any second she was going to walk in here and . . .

  “You don’t have to worry,” Decker told him. “Not right now, anyway. She’s a professional—she’s going to behave like a professional. It’s later, when she gets you alone—”

  Oh, Holy Christ. “Don’t let her get me alone.” Jimmy broke down and begged.

  “Fuck you,” Decker said, and actually meant it. He stood up, headed toward the door that led to the outer office. “I’m not just going to let it happen, asshole. I’m going to help set it up.”

  “No, Deck, listen,” Jimmy said. “You don’t get it. . . .”

  But what could he possibly say to make Decker understand when he himself didn’t even fully comprehend the reason he’d run so hard and fast from Tess?

  But Decker wasn’t waiting for him to try to explain the inexplicable.

  He was already gone.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Decker intercepted Tess and Paoletti before they came into the conference room.

  “Hey, Tess,” he said, holding out his hand for her to shake. “How’ve you been?”

  She was surprised to see him. Genuinely pleased, too, with a wide smile that was sincere. “Lawrence Decker! I didn’t expect to see you in San Diego.”

  She took his breath away, she looked so good. Healthy, with high energy. Happy. As if she hadn’t spent the past two months pining away after Nash. Of course, maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed when he’d left.

  Her brown hair was cut short—even shorter than it had been that night she and Nash had saved his ass at that strip club outside of D.C. She was dressed more formally now in a feminine version of a business suit, a crisp white shirt buttoned nearly to her throat. It was a far cry from those half-undone jeans and nothing else, but okay, thinking about that was seriously inappropriate right now. Decker was certain that a perceptive woman could always tell when a man was remembering what she looked like naked.

  And Tess was extremely perceptive.

  “Yeah,” he said, thinking instead about Nash sitting in that conference room. “We just flew in this morning.”

  She picked up on that we, and her expression changed. It was subtle—she was good at masking it—but her entire body seemed to tense. So much for hoping that she hadn’t noticed when Nash left.

  God damn Nash. Deck promised himself to take the son of a bitch into the sparring ring as soon as possible—and beat the shit out of him, under pretense of physical training.

  Of course, Decker would get equally thrashed, but maybe he deserved it, too. He should have said something to Nash three years ago, when Tess first came to work at support. Something like, “Hey, I really like this one.”

  And then Nash would’ve kept his hands off of her.

  Of course, so would’ve Decker.

  Because Nash was right about one thing. Refusing to mix work and sex, and then working 24/7, pretty much meant a total lack of sex.

  Decker was going to have to do something about that in the very near future.

  Right now he turned to Tom Paoletti. “If you want, Nash and I could step outside for a while, let you talk to Tess privately.”

  This was the equivalent of a job interview for her. He tried to imagine doing an interview with Emily in the room. Well, okay, bad example, because on some levels he’d been relieved when she’d moved out of their apartment. But still . . .

  “No, let’s keep you part of this,” Commander Paoletti said, leading the way back into the conference room.

  Deck watched as Tess braced herself. She took a deep breath, stuck a pleasant smile on her face, and . . .

  Nash was on his feet, looking equally casual, hands in his pockets. He greeted Tess with a completely impersonal smile. “Tess Bailey. What a surprise.”

  “I bet,” she said. “How are you? How was Mexico?”

  As Decker watched, something flickered in her eyes, and he knew she’d just realized that she’d given something vital away.

  Nash hadn’t told her he was going to Mexico. Which meant that she’d cared enough to look for him after he’d left.

  Deck could see from the way Nash was standing, from his “Oh, uh . . . It was . . . uh, great,” that he’d picked up on that info, too.

  He wondered if Nash had taken Tess’s seemingly innocent question one step further and realized that not only had she looked for him, but she was good enough to find him.

  And intelligent enough not to pursue him.

  “That’s . . . great,” Tess said. “You look like you got some rest. I’m glad.”

  She really meant it. She really was glad.

  Decker couldn’t have loved his partner more if he were his own brother, but never before had he wanted quite so badly to break Nash’s nose.

  But then he looked over and realized that Nash knew she meant it, too. And the son of a bitch was actually shaken. Tess and Commander Paoletti probably didn’t notice it, but Decker sure as hell did.

  And wasn’t that interesting? Nash. Shaken.

  They all sat down, and Decker sat back and watched everyone’s body language as Paoletti—as easygoing and relaxed as ever—explained about the earthquake and the missing laptop. Tess—feigning casual comfort and sitting in a position that signaled she was interested in this job and open to all possibilities—asked questions and made comments that let them all know she was completely up to speed on both al-Qaeda and Kazbekistan, and entirely capable of holding her own as a member of the team.

  Nash was very, very quiet. Normally never going for long without some comment or joke, he simply sat and listened while Tess answered Paoletti’s inquiries about why she’d left the Agency, about her training, about her background.

  He was completely motionless and closed. Legs and arms crossed, shoulders tight. He looked as if he might explode, if someone held a burning match to him.

  Tess had plenty of questions for Tom Paoletti, too, about Troubleshooters Incorporated.

  “This team you’re building for this assignment in K-stan, is it a permanent grouping of personnel?” she asked. In other words, if she signed on now to work with Decker and Nash, would she be working with De
cker and Nash forever and ever, amen?

  “No,” Paoletti told her. “Each team will be created from the larger pool of personnel, depending on the needs of the assignment and the preferences of the individual team leader.”

  Tess looked at Decker, one eyebrow raised. “And you honestly want me on your team for this assignment?”

  Decker shifted in his seat. “Honestly?” he said. “No.”

  She blinked at him, then laughed, turning to look questioningly at Tom Paoletti.

  But Deck wasn’t done. “No one in this room wants to send a woman to Kazbekistan. But we need a comspesh, and our choice seems to be either you or no comspesh at all.”

  Tess nodded, meeting his gaze again. “I appreciate your honesty. As a woman, I’m not particularly happy at the thought of going there. On the other hand, I am completely thrilled at the idea of participating in such an important assignment. If we can locate that laptop and gain access to al-Qaeda’s plans . . .” She looked at Paoletti again. “If you’re offering me this job, I accept.”

  Nash suddenly spoke up. “What about Mike Giacomo?”

  “Gigamike?” Decker laughed. Nash despised Gigamike Giacomo.

  “Yeah,” Nash said. “Sure, he’s an idiot, but no more so than freaking David Malkoff. Gig’s a comspesh and he’s male.”

  “I don’t want him on my team.” Deck put finality in his voice.

  There was silence then. Paoletti had definitely picked up on the tension in the room. But he just sat back, watching.

  “There are steps we can take to ensure Tess is as safe as possible,” Decker continued.

  “Yeah, except at night, because as an unmarried woman, she can’t sleep in the same room with us.” Nash was done being silent. “Depending on where we’re staying, there’s a chance she might even be housed in a different building than we are—”

  Tess cut Nash off. “So I’ll go in as a married woman. Who’ll know that I’m not?”

  “That’ll work only if you pretend to be married to one of us,” Decker pointed out. He looked at Paoletti. “But that’s a good idea. If we can get Tess a new passport and papers on short notice . . .”