Dark of Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He hadn't thought he'd be able to fool her, to feign real grief when he knew that Nash was still alive. But now she'd told the man—if there was a man—who'd bagged her—if there was a bag—that she'd been with Decker when he'd heard the tragic news.

  “I admitted, when pressed,” she added, “that you cried.”

  Decker had cried while in a session with her—the night before. But only to try to get the good doctor to reveal her connections to the Agency.

  And yeah, Dr. Heissman wasn't the only liar sitting in his truck.

  “Why would the Agency care where Deck was on the night that Jimmy Nash died?” Tracy asked, apparently unable to keep silent another moment, which was not unexpected. She put the exact right amount of confusion into the question, though, which was nice.

  “I tried asking that very same thing,” Heissman reported, “but my visitor was far more interested in being the interrogator.”

  “I'm supposed to believe, that with a bag over your head,” Decker said, letting his disbelief ring in his voice, “you risked your life to provide the Agency with disinformation … ?”

  “Believe it or not,” she answered quietly, “that's exactly what I did.”

  Tracy moved her thumb against his neck—Jesus—even as he said, “I'm going to have to go with not. Because to believe that you lied to an operative from the very organization that you probably still work for—”

  “What a surprise,” the doctor said tartly. “You're still singing the same song you were the last time I saw you.”

  Which was early in the morning, on the day after Nash had, allegedly, died.

  At that time, Decker had told her that he blamed the Agency in part for Nash's death, and he'd made it very clear to her that if he discovered she was still working for the Agency, if he found out she'd lied to him from the start?

  He'd hunt her down and kill her.

  He knew she was thinking of his threat as he glanced down past Tracy's perfect legs to where Jo was huddled. She met his gaze and held it, almost defiantly.

  And because, apparently, his dick was in charge today, he found himself remembering kissing her—not because he'd particularly wanted to kiss her, but rather because she was there at a time when he'd needed someone to grab on to. And the grabbing had turned into a kiss. Which again fit his pattern. He'd kissed her on the same night that—Jesus—he'd broken down and cried. In looking back and analyzing, it was clear he'd reached some kind of emotional cliff that he'd launched himself off of.

  Jo had said, at the time, that men in his profession often used sex as a substitute for emotional release, and that she didn't take that kiss personally—but that it wouldn't happen again.

  So it hadn't. And in a matter of hours, they'd parted ways.

  But it was entirely possible that the entire incident had freaked him out significantly more than it had her.

  Because as he'd kissed her, the warrior goddess had given way to woman. Her body had been soft against his, clad only in a no-nonsense bathrobe over a silky pink nightgown. Which was completely out of character. She was the sleep-in-flannel-pajamas type.

  Or so he'd thought.

  “I wasn't working for the Agency when I was at Troubleshooters,” Jo told him now, her chin held high. “But as of four o'clock this morning, I'm apparently back on the payroll—and I don't want to be. I refuse to be. Which is why I came to find you. I thought, if anyone could help—if anyone would sympathize, after what Nash went through …”

  Before he could ask exactly what she meant by that—after what Nash went through—Tracy spoke up again.

  “We're going to help you,” she told the doctor. “But it's going to be a difficult couple of days. Tess is coming to San Diego this evening …”

  Decker looked at her sharply in the rearview, fearing that her naiveté had won and she not only believed Jo, but assumed they were all working toward the same goal, but he couldn't catch her gaze as she blithely continued.

  “… and she and Deck are going to rent a boat and scatter Jimmy's ashes, at sunset. I'm afraid no one's at the top of their game right now.”

  And okay, maybe the naive-sounding concern hadn't been so naive but rather part of Tracy's amazing act, because she really did make effortless lying seem like an art form. He almost believed her himself—even knowing that there were no real ashes to scatter.

  Still, he wasn't happy because he very much didn't want Jo Heissman knowing that Tess was going to be in town.

  Tracy glanced up, caught his look, managed to read his mind, and swore. Sort of. Along with thank God, apparently shit wasn't in her vocabulary either.

  “Shoot. I shouldn't have told you that. Sorry,” she said to Deck, even as she added to the doctor, “He's very protective of Tess.”

  It was beautiful—and almost made the fact that she'd revealed Tess's arrival worthwhile.

  Tracy was beautiful—she was sexy, she was quick-witted, and he wanted to screw her. But that didn't mean shit, because he wanted to screw Jo Heissman, too. When he got like this, he'd unzip his pants for anybody. Again, Sophia was Exhibit A, and Jesus, he hated himself even more than usual today.

  “What do you know about what Nash went through before he died?” Decker asked, referring back to what Dr. Heissman had just said. The words came out far more harshly than they should have, considering he was the person in this truck that he was most disgusted with.

  She sighed wearily. “Nothing new. Only what I already told you.” She looked up at Tracy, to tell her a story that Decker already knew. “I saw Nash once, at Agency headquarters. He was alone and he was going through a locked door that led to the black ops division.”

  “It had a keypad lock. He wouldn't have gotten through without the code, which he wouldn't have known if he wasn't a member of the black ops team,” Deck explained, although she'd probably figured that out.

  “Ghosts, we called them,” Jo chimed in. “The operatives who worked for that division. There were rumors—never substantiated—that ghost operatives had a difficult time breaking ties with the Agency. They were always pressured to take one more mission, do one more job. And there were whispers, too, of methods of applying pressure that had overtones of blackmail. I have no proof, but I feel certain that Nash was subjected to this in the years following his severance from the Agency.”

  “So naturally, while it was going on, you looked the other way.” Decker's words were rude, his voice sounded overly rough and a little too loud, even to his own ears, and he could feel Tracy's curiosity and concern as if it were radiating from her. She moved her hand again, this time to touch him more completely on his neck. Her fingers felt cool against the heat of his skin as she caressed him just a little—a minuscule version of a soothing embrace of support.

  And, yeah, honey, thanks so much—that absolutely helped. Now, instead of thinking about how pissed he was about all of this—including the fact that Jo was completely messing up his plans: to drive Tracy to the safe house and, once there, to make sure they were never alone again—he was instead focusing on how badly he wanted those cool fingers touching a totally different part of his anatomy.

  And now he was getting pissed at Tracy, too, because along with her concern, he was also picking up some curiosity and skepticism. Because despite what he'd told her earlier, it had to be beyond obvious that the animosity he felt toward Jo Heissman was personal. And knowing Tracy, she was no doubt thinking that he'd lied when he said he'd never slept with Jo, because in her world, sex was both the beginning and the end, and yet it also, paradoxically, just wasn't that big of a deal. If you were hungry, you ate. If you were horny, you screwed. And if the attraction was there, like a well-lit Burger King off a desolated stretch of highway at a time when everything else was closed, why the hell not get your rocks off, even though you knew that, like eating fast food, doing so was neither healthy nor smart?

  So, if attraction existed between two people in Tracy's world, and they'd spent any time at all alone together, chances
were strong that they'd gotten it on.

  And since Decker was displaying bits of his deeply burning anger at Dr. Heissman, whom yes, he'd admit to finding attractive—even now, sitting near Tracy, who was desire personified—then according to the rules of Tracy's world, that anger surely had something to do with sex.

  It wouldn't occur to Tracy that he was angry for other reasons, including the fact that during every single one of Decker's therapy sessions, Dr. Heissman had somehow managed to penetrate his expert defenses. She'd crawled around—unwelcome—in the densely murky shit that clogged up the inside of his head.

  In those sessions, Deck had told the doctor things that he'd never told anyone. And, every now and then, when he was man enough to face the truth, he had to admit that the therapy—the talking—had actually helped him.

  These days, he actually felt better about a lot of things that had haunted him for years. He'd finally started to recognize that even though he'd made mistakes in the past, his intentions had always been good and true.

  He'd done the best he could, given the circumstances. His relatively new acceptance of that had brought him peace. Of sorts.

  A fact which, ironically, pissed him off.

  It pissed him off because he didn't trust Jo Heissman then, and he sure as double-fuck didn't trust her now, with her ridiculous bag-over-the-head story. Help me, his ass.

  His bullshit meter was highly tuned and it was screaming. He trusted his instincts completely, and his gut told him that she'd been hiding something from him right from the start. He'd been aware of it during their so-called sessions, and he was aware of it now.

  He didn't trust her, he didn't like her, but throw her a bang? Apparently today, his answer to that question was a hearty hell, yeah.

  “I didn't look the other way.” Dr. Heissman let some of her own anger show in her clipped words and in the flush that darkened her patrician cheekbones. “Not with Nash and not with any of the other operatives who were being—in my opinion—unfairly pressured to take on additional assignments. I filed reports and became very unpopular. When it became clear that my suspicions were being ignored, I resigned. Needless to say, no one pressured me to stay.” She laughed her disgust. “Until now. In addition to last night's interrogation, I was given an assignment.”

  “Let me guess,” Decker said. “You were told to contact me.”

  She nodded. “That's right.”

  “Which you're doing right now.”

  “I wasn't told to contact you and tell you everything that I've just told you,” she pointed out, and it was clear he was pissing her off.

  Tough shit.

  “Which, incidentally, would've been the way I'd've done it, if I were you. Play both sides,” Decker told her. “But go on. What else, pray tell, were you told to do?”

  “To find out where you are, what you've been doing, where you go when you disappear. Apparently, you disappear quite often these days. He told me to persuade you to go back into therapy—”

  “That's never going to happen.”

  “Obviously,” Dr. Heissman said, with quite an edge to her normal dulcet voice. “I'm just letting you know what this man said. If you'd rather not know, then—”

  “What did he threaten you with?” Decker asked.

  “I had a bag over my head,” she reminded him. “He said he had a gun, but—”

  “No,” he cut her off again. “I'm talking blackmail threat. He said go gather this info, you said sorry, I no longer work for the Agency, he said oh yes you do and where shall I tell them to send your paycheck, you said no thank you, and he said you'll do this, or … What? What was his threat?”

  The flush was back on her cheeks. “I'd … rather not say.”

  Sex. It had to be sex. Cheating on taxes or some other kind of financial fraud generally didn't warrant that kind of a blush.

  “Is it pictures they have, or a video?” Decker asked her.

  She shook her head, as Tracy—eyes wide—wisely stay silent. “I refuse to be blackmailed,” Jo decreed. “Which is why I came to you.”

  Maybe. It was also possible that everything she'd said was a scam to win his trust.

  “I know how these things work,” Deck said. “They don't just say we have a video, they give it to you. A copy, of course. I'm going to have to see it, first to verify that it exists, and second to weigh the blackmail material.” He could see that neither Jo nor Tracy understood, so he explained. “If the video is of your son committing murder, there's a strong chance that you're going to do whatever your Agency master tells you to do, to keep it from going public. If it's you getting inside the head of one of your clients while he gets inside of—”

  “It's neither of those things,” she cut him off, rather sharply. Clearly it was a touchy subject. “And yes, it's photos. But it's really only a minor embarrassment—I've never done anything of which I'm ashamed.”

  “And yet you'd really rather not say,” he reminded her.

  “Because I value my privacy,” she retorted. “I'm well aware that the choices I've made today—by coming to you—are going to result in the publication of those photos. I see no reason to endure the violation of my privacy before I absolutely have to.”

  “Honey, I just gave you a reason,” Decker said. “Take it or leave it.”

  She made a sound that was part laughter, part disgusted exhale, part sigh of resignation, and said, “He was significantly younger and … He was my daughter's ex-boyfriend, okay?”

  Well, here's to you, Dr. Heissman.

  “It was an exclusive relationship,” she said sharply, “that lasted several months, and didn't begin, might I add, until well after he and Ivy split up and she'd already moved in with her current partner. And the way you're looking at me right now? Coo-coo-ca-choo, right? That's why I didn't want to tell you. But it's a fact that having those pictures go public is only going to result in hurt feelings. It'll compound my already strained relationship with my daughter, which is unfortunate. But there'll be no damage to my career or my reputation. He wasn't a patient. He wasn't a student. He was a very attractive younger man with whom I spent a pleasant few months.”

  “Coo-coo-ca-choo?” Tracy asked.

  “Mrs. Robinson. Simon and Garfunkel,” Decker told her. “Theme song from The Graduate?”

  “Got it,” Tracy said. “These days us hep young'uns call it a cougar attack.”

  Jo actually winced at that. “His name was Peter. I'm planning to get back in touch with him, to warn him that these pictures have surfaced,” she said.

  Decker shook his head. “Don't.”

  “Well, I'm certainly not going to let him stumble over them on the Internet.”

  “When did the affair take place?” he asked her.

  “It wasn't an affair. It was—”

  “Before, during, or after your years at the Agency?”

  She shut her mouth. Blinked. “During,” she said. “It was close to the end.”

  “Huh,” Decker said. Coincidental? He would bet that it wasn't. “Where were you when the photos were taken? Was it at your place or his?”

  “A hotel,” she answered. “We took a weekend and went to New York City. Do you honestly think that Peter had something to do with …” She shook her head in disbelief. Her obvious disappointment and hurt almost made him feel sorry for her.

  Almost. Because he still wasn't convinced this wasn't part of an act. “I think you had a relationship with an attractive man at the end of your tenure with the Agency, and now these photos have turned up. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the next thing they hit you with is ‘proof that this Peter was one of your patients.”

  “But he wasn't,” she said.

  “They're the Agency,” he countered. “Whatever documents they provide will at the very least be realistic enough to create a controversy. Count on it.”

  Jo looked from Decker to Tracy and back.

  “So what are you doing?” she asked. “Are you actually trying to frighten me into �
� What? Being their bitch?”

  She'd surprised him with her slang, but his laughter didn't last longer than a short bark. “I'm suggesting,” he told her, “that it's possible you're not being honest with us about the nature of the material they're holding over you.”

  She nodded, clearly upset. “I should have gone to the Troubleshoot-ers office, to Tom Paoletti.”

  “Why didn't you?” Decker asked.

  She met his eyes, and there it was again—that kiss. But she just shook her head. “Because I'm a fool.” She laughed her disgust at herself. “And because, yes, they told me to contact you.”

  “I believe her,” Tracy said, but her words were punctuated by the poke of a fingernail into his shoulder. His ex-fiancée, Emily, had well-cared-for nails, too, and Jesus, he'd loved it when she'd dug in as he'd rode her, hard, as he'd sent her spinning into a freefall so intense that she often left scratches down his back and across his ass. She'd always been embarrassed and aghast in the aftermath, but he'd gotten off on it.

  “Why are they so interested in you?” the doctor asked him. “What are they after?”

  Decker just looked at her.

  “Okay,” she said. “You're right. It would be foolish to tell me anything. You've never trusted me. I know that. But I'm going to be contacted again. If I were you, I'd like to know what these people want and who they are.” She paused. “Unless you already know.”

  “Why don't we just go to the Agency,” Tracy chimed in. “Why don't we just show up and walk in the door and—”

  “We need to be certain before we do that,” Decker said, cutting her off. “Whether or not they're actually from the Agency, they've got access to Agency information. We go there, they'll know we've been there and …” He shook his head. “I'm not ready for that.”

  “Then, why don't we put Dr. Heissman somewhere safe,” Tracy suggested. “Then we can go to her house, and wait for this man to come back, only, surprise, it's not her, it's me—and you, ready to kick his butt. We tie him up and fingerprint him, and presto, we have his identity.”