Sophia nodded. She knew from his eyes that he knew she'd called herself that because part of her had naively hoped one or the other of her parents would come back. She'd hoped that they would search for her and find her.
“I'm so sorry,” Dave said, his hand as warm and gentle as his eyes as he smoothed back her hair.
“I survived,” she reminded him.
But he shook his head. “ Eleven-year-olds shouldn't have to survive something like that.”
“I like to think I'm lucky,” Sophia told him, leaning against him, grateful for his solid presence as he continued to stroke her hair. “My mother didn't move to the hard-core drugs until after I was born.”
Dave laughed. “ Whoo-hoo. I wonder if Hallmark makes that card. Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for not mainlining heroin until I was nine.” His hand paused. “And there's a question I'd like to ask your father. What the hell was he thinking to leave you with a woman who could well have sold you to a local warlord to get her next fix?”
“Maureen said he didn't know. Which is …”
“Bullshit.” He finished for her.
They sat for a moment in silence, Dave lost in his own thoughts as Sophia tried to think of a single item for the Go-See-Her-Father “pro” column, and came up only with if she went, Maureen would stop calling her.
No, she had to change that would to a might. There was no guarantee the phone calls would stop. They might even increase. Maureen might start asking for money. Or her father might make a “miraculous recovery”—assuming he truly was sick in the first place. He could well follow her back to San Diego and … the thought made her sick to her stomach.
“I don't want to go,” Sophia blurted out. “To Boston.”
“Then we don't go,” Dave said without hesitation, as if it were an absolute. His use of the plural got to her, too. We don't go, as it if were a given that he'd go with her.
She tipped her head back to look up at him. “I'm sorry that I said what I said about—”
“Shh.” He briefly pressed his lips to hers before she could say Decker. “It's done. Forgotten.”
But she couldn't let it go. “You deserve better.”
“What I deserve,” Dave told her quietly, “is honesty. You never need to soften the truth for me, Soph. Never.”
“Sometimes,” she admitted, just as quietly, “I soften the truth”—it was a good description of what she regularly did—“for me.”
He was silent then, the tension in his body the only sign that her words had impacted him.
“Well, whenever you're ready to talk about… anything,” he said, unable to keep his voice completely steady, “I'm here and I'm ready to listen. I know you've … been through a lot and … Just because you survived it doesn't mean it doesn't haunt you.” He cleared his throat. “You know, we haven't talked about Dimitri once since Sacramento.”
Sophia closed her eyes.
“That wasn't meant to be a reprimand,” Dave continued. “I'm just pointing it out. I'm sure it's subconscious on your part. I mean, we make love pretty frequently. Which isn't a complaint,” he added quickly. “Believe me. But chances are strong that I'm not going to say Let's talk about your husband's death when you're on the verge of talking off my clothes. Which I'm happy to have you do anytime.”
“Please,” Sophia said. “Let's not talk about Dimitri now.”
“I wasn't suggesting that we do,” Dave responded. “Just pointing out that… Okay, I just wanted to mention it and I did, so … Enough said.” He paused. “About that, anyway. But at the risk of pissing you off, I do have something else I want to say to you. About your father.”
Sophia opened her eyes. “Dave …”
“Just listen,” he urged her. “I'm not saying you should change your mind. In fact, I'm virtually certain you're going to be sorely dissatisfied with his answers to any of your questions, but I do know—absolutely—that once he's gone? He'll be gone, Soph. And your chance to talk to him, to tell him whatever you might want to tell him? That'll be gone, too. Dead is forever. And you're going to be on this planet for years after he's passed. As crazy as the idea might seem right now, you might reach a point, later in your life, where you'll be able to forgive him. I don't want you to regret letting this last chance to see him slip away.”
She managed a laugh. “Yeah, that wasn't you trying to change my mind.”
“It wasn't,” he argued. “I'm just saying be certain. And if you're not, well heck, let's go to Boston. I'll be with you the whole time, I promise you. If we get there, and you look at him through the doorway to his room, and you decide you want to turn around without letting him know you're there … ? I'll lead the way home.
“And if you are certain, and you want me to call Maureen back,” Dave continued, “and say that your father's already dead to you so stop calling, be-yotch? I'll do that. I'll help you change your phone number, if you want. I'll help you move. And if you want to say the hell with everything and just get in the car and go to that flea market, find that perfect cabinet? Give me two minutes to shower.”
All the complicated emotions Sophia was feeling—her frustration with Maureen, decades of hurt and anger toward her father, and the complicated mix of everything she felt for Dave—swelled in her chest and rose up, filling her throat. She had to work hard to speak. She had to squeeze her words out, so she said as few of them as possible, hoping that Dave would understand.
“Kiss me.”
And he smiled at her as only Dave could smile, with a mix of amusement, chagrin, and what could only be called pure adoration. It lit him up, made his eyes even warmer, and took about ten years off a face that most people wouldn't call handsome.
But most people had never seen that smile.
“Or we could go with Plan D,” he said, and obeyed her command.
CHAPTER
TWO
TUESDAY
Whenever Tracy Shapiro lugged her groceries home, she found herself wondering what she'd been thinking to get a two-year lease on an apartment that was a “mere” four blocks from a grocery store.
The idea had seemed wonderful. Red-dot savings and smart shopper specials, just a short walk away.
And four blocks was nothing when she was dressed in workout gear and her running shoes.
But in a skirt and heels, coming straight from work, her laptop bag over her shoulder, four blocks was torture.
Of course, it was her choice, so to speak, to take the bus to and from the Troubleshooters Incorporated office, where she worked as the company's trusty receptionist. Assuming that choosing not to take the bus and instead spending her entire paycheck on gas, having nothing left with which to buy food, and starving to death was a viable option.
And it was her fault entirely that she'd been unable to pass up this week's smart shopper special on a particularly healthy brand of soup, in microwavable containers that she could take with her to work. The walk would've been a pleasant one if she'd stuck to her plan of picking up only a bag of salad and some halibut to grill on George.
Foreman, that is. Not her other George—a thought that made her smile grimly.
If she'd had a hand free, she would've fished her cell out of her handbag and called her friend Lindsey, to leave a message on her cell about how she'd just realized her two favorite appliances were both named George.
She'd leave a message, because Lindsey was probably having dinner with her husband, Mark—while basking in his love and adoration.
Or maybe Lindsey would actually pick up the phone, starved for female conversation because her very best friend, Sophia, had slipped into dark-side-of-the-moon mode—that zone of zero communication that often happened in the first lustful, free-fall weeks of a new romantic relationship.
Sophia was too busy to talk to anyone because she was getting busy with Dave Malkoff
Tracy hadn't seen that coming. Not from Sophia's end, anyway. From Dave's, absolutely. But Tracy had always believed that Dave had a better chance of being struck b
y a random falling anvil or getting bitten by a radio active spider than of ever winning the pleasure of beautiful Sophia Ghaf-fari's company.
Dave had a relatively high nerd factor, sure, but he was a very nice person, and he wasn't unpleasant to spend time with. Tracy had cut his hair for him a time or ten. She'd taken him clothes shopping, too. And yes, they'd had a post-tailor-visit dinner—and several glasses of wine—at the Cheesecake Factory, and Tracy had let him know that if he'd made the suggestion, she would've gone home with him.
But he hadn't, so she didn't, and the moment had passed.
Which was just as good, because she didn't seriously like him, not that way. She was just looking for a distraction, which, yeah, sounded sluttier than it really was.
In her defense, at the time she'd been on the rebound from That-Creep-Michael, who'd gone from I love you, I love you to Later, babe, I'm moving to Maine, practically overnight.
And that fiasco was after the world's most embarrassing one-night stand ever, with Navy SEAL Irving Zanella, who'd immediately left for six months of punishment duty because he'd gone UA—the Navy's version of AWOL—to save Tracy from a psycho-killer who'd wanted to use her corpse for an art project.
Which was something she absolutely could not think about while walking alone down a dimly lit city street.
Tracy picked up her pace, her shoulders screaming, the handles of the plastic bags cutting into her hands as she hurried the last few blocks. And then she was turning the corner onto her street, in sight of her building where—oh, good!—Tess and Jimmy were home, light streaming from their open living room window. They would surely hear her if she screamed loudly, and if there was one thing she was good at, it was being loud and…
Shoot.
She slowed her pace, looking up at that brightly lit window, at the ceiling fan she could see spinning, at Tess's once jungle-worthy collection of house plants, now brown from neglect.
Tess and Jimmy weren't home.
Tess and Jimmy would never be home again, because Jimmy Nash was dead.
Really.
For weeks, Tracy had held her breath, waiting for someone in the office—Jimmy's good friend Lawrence Decker, or maybe even the boss, Tom Paoletti—to give her a wink and a nod, letting her in on The Big Secret. Which was, of course, that Jimmy was only pretending to be dead.
For a while, she'd found clues and hints in nearly everything.
The coffee mug in the office, for example.
For as long as Tracy had worked at Troubleshooters Incorporated, Jimmy and Deck had had an ongoing competition for the coffee mug with the smiley face. It had nothing to do with the silly artwork, and everything to do with its super size. It held more coffee—ergo, they would steal it from each other's desks.
It had been sitting on Jimmy's desk, half full with cold coffee, the morning Tracy had come in to the office after word had gone out that he'd died.
The sight of it had made her cry, but she'd washed it out and carefully set it back on his desk. It seemed somehow wrong to put it in the cabinet with the other mugs. And there it had sat, in an office that no one used, that everyone walked a little bit faster to get past, because Jimmy was gone.
But on Decker's first day back, some weeks after the memorial service, he'd headed for the coffee station, which was out in the waiting area near Tracy's reception desk. And as he poured himself a cup, she'd realized that he'd swiped that smiley face mug off Jimmy's old desk.
It seemed weird that he would have done that—as if seeing that mug sitting there should have made him cry, too. Inwardly, of course, because he was an alpha male.
But he hadn't even looked upset—he hadn't look anything—and Tracy had found herself holding her breath again, waiting for Decker to glance at her, toast her with that mug, and give her a we both know Nash isn't really dead nod.
But he hadn't.
And okay, it wasn't just stupid things like coffee mug usage that fed Tracy's fantasy.
She'd asked both Lindsey and Troubleshooters XO Alyssa Locke if didn't they think it was strange that Decker had delivered Tim Ebersole, leader of the neo-Nazi group called the Freedom Network, to the authorities in close to one healthy piece?
Neither of the two women had understood her question, so she'd clarified. Decker could just as easily have delivered Ebersole's lifeless body to the FBI. He absolutely could have killed the murderous SOB—claiming self-defense and ridding the world of Ebersole's evil—and no one would have questioned him.
Tim Ebersole was directly, absolutely responsible for Jimmy Nash's death. No one doubted that.
And yet Decker had let the man live.
Lindsey had agreed that it was a little weird, but Alyssa had told Tracy, “That's what makes Decker Decker,” which made a certain amount of sense.
Lawrence Decker was one of a kind.
He was also an enigma. Just when Tracy thought she'd figured him out, identifying him as a man of certainty and consistency, always ordering the exact same type of pizza or coffee, he'd go and do something completely unexpected.
She, however, was as predictable as a stone.
Even when the cold hard truth was staring her in the face, she “what if-ed” her way into believing improbable and ridiculous possibilities.
What if Jimmy were just pretending to be dead … ?
And yes, it was probably the fact that, before Decker had caught him and brought him to justice, creepy and evil Tim Ebersole had faked his death, that had made Tracy come up with that ridiculous idea.
It created a far nicer scenario than the one in which Jimmy was forever gone.
But the truth was, as much as she wished otherwise, that this was real life, not some Hollywood thriller where Jimmy would emerge from hiding when the time was right.
No, Jimmy Nash was dead—his ashes contained in a pathetic little urn that now sat on the mantel of the gas fireplace in the apartment he'd once shared with Tess.
Tracy knew, because she'd found it there. She'd recognized it—it had sat on the altar of the church during his funeral.
The memorial service was lovely.
Why were some people so unbelievably stupid?
Someone—a client—had said that, just today, to Decker, in the lobby, right in front of Tracy's desk.
The memorial service wasn't lovely. A good friend had died. Violently. And Tracy was sorry, but there were no comforting words or musical selections that could make anything even remotely connected to that tragedy into something that could ever be described as lovely.
She sighed as she humped her groceries up the stairs past Jimmy and Tess's, to her own apartment, remarkably fatigued after what had been an unusually quiet day at Troubleshooters Incorporated.
She hadn't created an incident, although she'd been tempted to. Instead, she'd sat at her desk and bit back the words she wanted to say— Personally? I thought the memorial service sucked—as she'd forced a smile at the imbecile who'd uttered that crap.
Decker had shown the king of the buttholes to the door and headed to his office, hand on the back of his neck as if he'd had a killer of a headache.
“Can I get you some coffee?” Tracy had asked him, and he'd actually looked surprised. Or maybe that had been fear she'd seen in his usually steady eyes, so she added, “Tom just made a fresh pot.” Subtext: Someone else me made it—not me.
She'd long since learned how to make a proper pot of coffee, but those first few months she'd worked as Troubleshooter's receptionist, she'd gotten it really wrong, too many times.
And the myth that her coffee was unpalatable lived on.
“No thanks,” he'd said. “I'm all set.”
“I'm sorry about …” She'd pointed to the door. “Lovely. God.”
Deck had smiled ruefully, and disappeared back into his office, leaving her to the scheduling, which was becoming quite the challenge.
Sam and Alyssa had just gotten the boss's permission for a solid month of lost time—what was he thinking? And Dave was going to
Boston with Sophia, whose father was in the hospital. Their return date was unknown. Tess was still on medical leave, and Decker, too, was only working part-time and if anyone else called in with some excuse not to show up, they might as well shut the office down for the entire rest of September.
And maybe they should. They could all use a break.
Tracy set her grocery bags down in the hall as she unlocked her apartment door. She went inside, kicking it shut behind her as she hustled the groceries into the kitchen, where she put the salad and the fish in the fridge, because dinner could wait. She hurried into her bedroom, dumping her laptop on her bed so she could change into a T-shirt and jeans.
It had to be Lawrence Decker down there in Tess and Jimmy's apartment. He was probably—finally—helping Tess by clearing Jimmy's clothing out of the place.
His doing so would put the final nail in the coffin —bad analogy, wow—of Tracy's fading hope that Jimmy was still alive. For a moment, before she zipped up her jeans, she paused, and considered pretending that she hadn't seen the light, so that she wouldn't have to help, wouldn't have to know.
But throwing out Jimmy's clothes was not going to be an easy task for Deck, who'd been friends with the dead man for more than ten years.
The very least Tracy could do was help get the job done, twice as quickly.
Slipping her sneakers onto her bare feet, she grabbed the laundry basket that was in the corner of her bedroom, and went to do just that.
Jimmy was having a nightmare.
It was a frequent occurrence—and had been, even before he'd been shot and nearly died.
Tess had learned through the years they'd been together that it wasn't always necessary to wake him. Sometimes it was enough just to put her arms around him and hold him tight.
But here, a half-day's drive from San Diego, in this remote desert safe house that Jules and Decker had set up, she was still sleeping on a cot that she'd placed in the corner so as not to disturb him.
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