Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “You helped your husband run his business?” Decker asked her.

  “It was my business,” she told him, lifting her head to look in his direction. But Decker knew she couldn’t see his face any more clearly than he could see hers, and hers was a pale blur. “My company. Dimitri only pretended to run it. He wanted to go to France, to safety, when the government fell. But I thought we’d turn a bigger profit by sticking around. So we stayed.”

  They sat in silence again, and Decker knew from the sound of her breathing that she was holding back her tears.

  He waited, but she wasn’t going to say it.

  So Decker said it for her. “You think he died because of you.”

  That did the trick. She finally started to cry. “I know he did. And then I . . . I betrayed him.”

  “No,” he said. “You survived. I think he’d be glad about that.”

  Decker didn’t touch her. He didn’t dare. He just sat beside Sophia Ghaffari as she let herself grieve.

  Jimmy had been out in the barn with Tess, getting an updated situation report about Ma’awiya Talal Sayid from Dave. They still didn’t know what medical condition he’d had, or what kind of treatment he’d needed, but Dave had found out that there were no records of any shipments of medical equipment from the Cantara Hospital to Bashir’s palace during the week immediately preceding the earthquake.

  There were, however, records of deliveries to the palace that corresponded with Sayid’s previous visits.

  Dave was in the process of telling them that he was working on getting an exact list of the medical equipment when Guldana had come in, shutting down their conversation.

  The Kazbekistani woman had informed them that due to the bad weather, the party she and Rivka had planned to celebrate Jimmy and Tess’s recent wedding was canceled.

  What a shame. Jimmy had tried to look disappointed.

  However. She was not going to let her good meal go to waste. Dinner would be in an hour. In her best public defender’s voice, Guldana ordered Jimmy to wash up and change before coming inside. And then, refusing to hear Tess’s arguments—helped by the fact that Tess didn’t speak K-stani and Guldana didn’t speak English—Guldana took Tess with her back into the house.

  Tess had met Jimmy’s gaze before Guldana wrapped a blanket around her as protection against the wind and sand. Her unspoken message was clear. Sooner or later they had to talk.

  About the fact that they’d had sex.

  Again.

  Despite his resolve to stay away from her.

  Damn it, he’d come freaking close to doing her right there in an alleyway. Engaging in a public act of lasciviousness was an offense that was punishable by death.

  Hers, not his.

  And, just to put the icing on the cake, there was the Decker thing. Decker pretended it didn’t matter, but Jimmy knew better. In a perfect world, Tess should have been Deck’s girlfriend. So okay. The world was less than perfect, and accidents happened.

  But nailing Tess to the wall in some strangers’ basement could not be passed off as an accident.

  Although it had been there, in the aftermath, that Jimmy had had a eureka moment.

  This was how he was going to do it. It was a win-win situation. He was going to have the instant gratification of a sexual relationship with Tess, which would, in turn, be the impetus of his split from Decker.

  Deck would be so disgusted with him that he’d be glad when Jimmy made some lame excuse not to be part of the next assignment he got from Tom Paoletti. And without Jimmy around, weighing him down, making people eye him suspiciously, Decker would have the career he deserved.

  “Tough day,” Dave commented as the door closed behind Tess.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. He’d’ve thought that figuring out a win-win plan would make him feel less like a giant loser.

  Although the day had not been without good news. Murphy had made it onto that chopper and gotten out before the sandstorm hit. Khalid had ridden Marge back to the barn to share that information with them.

  The kid had also reported that Will Schroeder, hero of the hour, had finally gone into the ER to get his broken wrist treated. Deck was still in City Center, too, with Sophia.

  All in all, things could’ve been a whole helluva lot worse.

  He and Tess could’ve been caught in the midst of their joyride. Tess could’ve pushed him away, for that matter, instead of damn near igniting in his arms as she hungrily kissed him back.

  God damn, the woman could kiss.

  “The storm should abate around four a.m.,” Dave said.

  Jimmy’s heart did a curious dance. It should have been sinking because he wouldn’t be able to avoid that impending conversation with Tess by going out into the night. Sorry, babe, can’t talk now—have to go save the world.

  Instead he’d be forced to go into that upstairs bedroom with her and lock the door behind them and . . .

  “You sure about that?” Jimmy asked Dave.

  And admit that he could no longer keep his hands off of her, drop to his knees, and beg for more.

  Please . . .

  Tess had done some begging just a few hours ago. She’d begged for him to hurry as he’d fumbled to cover himself and then . . . God . . .

  “Yup.”

  It took Jimmy a moment or two to remember what Dave was agreeing to. Storm. End. Four. Tonight.

  Right.

  Although it wasn’t as if Dave had access to the K-stani version of the Weather Channel. But then again, Dave was currently in the middle of a record winning streak when it came to providing accurate information. If he said the storm would freaking abate by four, Jimmy should probably take it as gospel.

  “I’ll make sure Tess knows,” Jimmy told him. She was going to want to get out there and set up another of those portable sat-dishes as soon as possible—get their feeble communications system up and limping along again.

  But first they had to endure Guldana’s dinner.

  And then . . .

  “James, are you all right?” Dave asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, and went to get washed up for dinner.

  Sophia awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright, her heart pounding. Where was she?

  “It’s all right.” Lawrence Decker’s evenly modulated voice came out of the darkness. “I’m on watch.”

  And she remembered. She was in the ballroom of the Hotel Français. Outside the window, a sandstorm raged.

  Padsha Bashir had a price on her head—literally. And Dimitri was dead.

  “Go back to sleep,” Decker told her.

  The way he said it made her think of Star Wars. Of Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Jedi mind tricks.

  You will now go back to sleep.

  “Put your head down,” Decker told her.

  She wasn’t sure how he could see her in this darkness, but she obeyed him, settling back on the coolness of the floor, wishing she had a pillow or two.

  “No one’s going to be out on a night like tonight,” he told her quietly. “You’re safe here.”

  She was safe. She knew that she was. This man wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her. She actually believed that to be true.

  It was quite a remarkable feeling.

  “Close your eyes. Go to sleep,” he told her again.

  So she did.

  Tess was sitting at the card table that Guldana had set up right there in the third-floor bedroom when Jimmy Nash came in.

  He looked confused as he closed the door behind him—she didn’t blame him.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she told him, gesturing to all of it. The table covered with the ornately decorated cloth, the festive meal for two laid out upon it, the romantic candles that made their shadows jump intimately around the room, even herself. She’d been transformed, too.

  “Stopping Guldana wasn’t . . .” Tess tried to laugh. “Well, the words ‘more powerful than a locomotive’ come to mind.”

  He was looking at her, at the dress Guldana had made fo
r her. Well, Guldana had said dress—it was one of the few K-stani words Tess recognized—but this thing was a nightgown, really. It wasn’t something that could be worn in public, unless maybe you were Lil’ Kim.

  It was sort of funny to think about—all those K-stani women, so chastely covered in their full-length robes, wearing the equivalent of Victoria’s Secret lingerie beneath.

  Funny. Right. As if anything having to do with women in K-stan could be considered at all funny. Tess still got a lump in her throat whenever she came face-to-face with Guldana—a still young, very vibrant woman, despite the fact that her dark hair was prematurely streaked with gray.

  Guldana was—had been—a lawyer before the regime change. She’d worked hard to get an education, to build a career and all that came with it—not just a sizable income, but also the respect of her peers.

  But according to the current laws, under the warlords’ rule, men and women could not be peers. Women were not allowed to work. Guldana was forbidden from practicing law.

  Tess could not imagine what it had been like—to lose everything, practically overnight. To wake up to find herself suddenly in a world where merely speaking up could be punishable by a severe beating.

  “She brought me up here,” Tess told Jimmy, “and she’d already filled the bathtub with water that she heated in the kitchen. I mean, she carried it up all those stairs in buckets, and what was I supposed to say? No, I don’t want to take a bath? I was dying to. Then once I took the bath, it seemed rude to not put on the dress—I mean, she went to all that trouble to make it and to cook this dinner, too, and she was already disappointed about having to cancel the party and . . . I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t tell her no.”

  Jimmy didn’t say anything, he just sat down across from her.

  He looked good in candlelight. His hair was wet and slicked back from his face, which, along with the dancing shadows in the room, really accentuated his movie-star cheekbones and eyes.

  “I have no idea what she put in my hair,” Tess told him, since it seemed clear that he wasn’t going to say anything at all, and the silence was freaking her out, “but it’s kind of slippery. It smells good, so I guess it could be worse. She went really heavy with the eyeliner, and you know me, I don’t normally wear a lot of makeup, so . . . Yikes. I look kind of, you know, 1989 Goth. . . .”

  Jimmy smiled at that. And finally spoke. “It works,” he said. But his smile faded much too soon, and he sighed as he looked at all the food laid out in front of them. “This smells amazing.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does.” She was so completely not hungry at all. She wasn’t going to be able to eat, not even a single bite.

  He met her eyes again, but only briefly. “So . . . do we eat? Do we talk? Eat and talk? Talk, then eat? Eat, then talk?”

  Tess couldn’t keep from laughing. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were nervous.”

  He laughed, too. “Yeah, well, I am. Nervous. I’m beyond nervous. I’m . . .”

  He was serious. As she watched, he seemed to brace himself. He looked directly at her and said, “I owe you an apology.”

  Tess looked down at her plate—anything to keep from maintaining eye contact—and sighed. And here we go. . . . “No, Jimmy, you don’t.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Okay. She just had to do this. Get it over with. It was her turn to brace herself, after which she forced herself to look up and steadily hold his gaze. She was blushing, though. She knew she was. “What happened this afternoon wasn’t—”

  “That’s not what—” he interrupted but then cut himself off. Frowned slightly. “What happened this afternoon wasn’t what?”

  “Your fault,” she finished.

  “Oh. Well, I guess that’s probably a matter of interpretation, but—”

  She had to know. She had an idea, but . . . “What did you think I was going to say?”

  That stopped him cold. His eyes shifted, very slightly. “I don’t know.”

  Yeah, he was so lying. Tess laughed her outrage. “You thought I was going to say, ‘What happened this afternoon really wasn’t that big a deal, I mean, it doesn’t even count as real sex because it was over so soon, and as far as orgasms went it only rated about a point oh five on a scale from one to ten,’ and you are such a loser, Nash, because you can’t even go into your ‘That Was a Mistake, Tess’ speech until you run ‘Was It Good for You, Too?’ and reassure yourself that yes, you are a sex god.”

  She was good and mad at him now—which sure beat embarrassed—and she pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “Screw you, Nash. You’ve got the floor tonight, I’ve got the bed. I don’t care whose turn it really is. I’m exhausted, I’m sore, I’ve got scrapes in places I didn’t know it was possible to scrape—”

  “Are you all right?” He actually sounded concerned.

  Compared to Murphy, she was ready to run a marathon. But compared to the way she’d felt a week ago as she’d gotten ready for bed in her own apartment . . .

  “Everything hurts,” she told him. “My toenails hurt, all right? So just let me get some sleep.”

  She heard him sigh as she crossed to the bed and pulled back the covers. Damn it, she had this slimy stuff on her hair. She could either wash it out now, with the tepid water still in the bathtub, or wash it out in the morning, when the water was cold.

  “Do I get a chance to talk?” Jimmy asked. “Or would you just prefer to go with the script you wrote?”

  Washing it out meant she’d have to walk right past him.

  Cold water in the morning might be nice, but not washing it out now meant she’d slime up the sheets, which she’d surely regret tomorrow night.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now you’re not talking to me. Nice.”

  Tess sighed as she set the alarm on her watch. “I’m not not talking to you, Nash. I’m just not talking. I’m tired. I’ve had something of an eventful day.”

  “Don’t set it for any earlier than four a.m.,” Jimmy told her.

  “I have to replace that sat-dish under cover of darkness,” she reminded him. “Four a.m. is cutting it a little close.”

  “You can’t replace it until the wind stops,” he pointed out. “That’s not going to happen until about four.”

  Still . . . “I’ll check the weather around midnight,” she told him.

  “Dave says the storm’s not going to end until about four.”

  She reset her watch to two a.m.

  “So Dave’s information is good, while mine is suspect,” he said.

  “Dave is happy to let everyone do their share, while it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if I woke up at four to find out that while we mere mortals were sleeping, you single-handedly replaced the damaged equipment, led Sophia—on foot—over the mountains and across the border to safety, and rebuilt Khalid’s house and barn.”

  “Damn,” Jimmy said. “You really think I’m that good, huh?”

  “That wasn’t a compliment,” she told him as she rummaged in her bag for the T-shirt she slept in. “You’re a lousy team player, Nash. The part I left out was where your brain explodes from lack of sleep—and then we’re left shorthanded.”

  “I’ve slept more on this assignment than I ever have before,” Jimmy told her. “I think I’ve got at least, oh, four or five solid days before my brain explodes.”

  God. “Is everything a joke to you?”

  His response was immediate. “No, which is why I want you to sit back down so we can talk.”

  “So you can apologize,” she clarified.

  “I’m sorry is one of the things I’d like to say, yeah. Because I am. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you.”

  What? She turned to look at him. Did he just say . . . ?

  “Although, you know, it really wasn’t a complete lie when I said it,” he continued. “Even though I did really want to, I also didn’t. Because, well, Deck’s my friend, and I thought maybe if I was out of the picture he’
d have a chance with you and—”

  “What are you talking about?” Tess asked.

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “You lost me,” she said. “You’re sorry because you lied to me? Which lie, exactly, are you referring to, Nash? I want to make sure we’re talking about the same one.”

  He made one of those wounded, offended sounds that liars could make so well.

  “You lie so often, you don’t even recognize when you’re doing it anymore.” She held out her hand, pretending to be him, lowering her voice to say, “Hi, how’re you doing? I’m Nash. Diego Nash.” She switched back to her own voice. “Truth or lie?”

  He laughed. “It’s not that simple.”

  And again, she’d had enough. “You want to apologize to me?” she started, as he spoke over her.

  “Okay. You’re right,” he said. “I lie. All the time because, yes, that’s not the name I was born with. But you’re wrong, too. It also happens to be the truth, because it’s who I am right now. Like most things, it’s more yin and yang than truth or lie.”

  “Oh, just cut the crap and apologize, Confucius, so we can get this over with!”

  He must’ve known she was seconds from losing it, because he obviously reined himself in. “I’m sorry for—,” he started.

  “Apology accepted.” She turned away.

  He was on his feet. “God damn it—”

  “I think you should sleep in the barn,” she told him, praying he would leave the room before all her frustration and anger and upset from this awful, awful day took its toll and she started to cry.

  “—you don’t even know what I’m apologizing for!”

  “I don’t care,” she whispered. “I just want you to go.”

  “Well, tough shit,” he said. “Because I do care, and I’m not going until you hear me out. Jesus Christ, Tess, what happened this afternoon in that basement was the most honest interchange we’ve had since I got back from Mexico.”