Tracy, too, was automatically in the “or not” camp.
“So in order to get back at Lyle, I got loaded and had my first—and last— one-night stand,” she admitted, as he pulled into one of the beach lots. There were too many cars, so he pulled right out again and back onto the road. “I'll freely admit that it was not my finest hour. I compounded it not just by falling in love with Izzy, who was just pretending to be nice— but by telling him that I'd fallen for him. He ran away screaming, and … It was messy, and … Humiliating. Especially when he got married, like, fifteen minutes later, to someone else.”
“To one of his teammate's sisters.” Decker knew that factoid, too. “Word is he got her pregnant. At least you were smart enough to use protection.”
“Yay for me.” Tracy applauded, but then stopped. “Nope, it was still excruciatingly mortifying. And a crushing blow to the ego. Have you seen this girl? And she? Is a girl. She was practically wearing braces and a training bra. Okay, maybe not the training bra, but …”
“I've met her, but it wasn't under the best of circumstances,” he confessed. “And yes, she did seem young.”
“The good news was that—in the entire Charlie-Foxtrot? I finally broke off my engagement with that total man-ho, Lyle.” She sighed. “The bad news is that everybody knows about my … collision with Izzy. And now they think that's my totally slutty MO.”
“No they don't,” he said, pulling into another lot. This one had only a few cars in it, and he headed for a distant, solitary corner.
“Yes they do,” she countered. “You do.”
“I assure you, I don't.”
“Lawrence,” she said, imitating Dr. Heissman's evenly modulated voice, “unlike some people, I can tell when you're lying.”
He laughed as he put the truck into park and killed the engine. “Nice. You're wrong, I'm not lying, but that was very nice.”
Tracy got out of the truck and stood, waiting, as he used the sweeper to check the vehicle, inside and out. And then he came toward her, his apology darn near dripping from him.
She held out her arms and spread her legs—in the classic Leonardo da Vinci pose that every air traveler had assumed at one time or another. He waved the wand slowly over her, being thorough as always.
And she felt herself start to sweat.
The sun was out, sure. And the day was fairly warm, despite the breeze off the ocean. But it was the fact that Decker was tracing the contours of her body with that device, careful not to touch her, that was really heating her up.
She knew, without a doubt, that he would not slip and touch her— and somehow that made it even worse.
“Can I just state for the record—” she started.
“No.” He cut her off.
She turned to look at him in exasperation. “You have no idea what I was going to say.”
“Yeah,” he said, hunkering down to carefully run the wand over and around her sandals and feet. “I do. But let's not go there, okay? I'm having a tough enough day as it is.”
“Go where?” she said, and then gasped as he stood up and, in one fluid motion, stepped—hard—into her personal space. So hard that she was pressed completely against him—stomach, hips, thighs—held in place by his hand at the curve of her waist, arm wrapped around her.
He was solid and warm and—holy Christmas—aroused enough for her to know it. There was no missing that fact—not a chance in heaven. He was sweating excessively, too. A trickle traveled down past his left ear and dripped with a plop onto her arm. His mouth was mere inches from hers, but she still couldn't see his eyes through his sunglasses. “Here,” he said, his voice raspy. “Let's not go here.”
He released her as abruptly as he'd grabbed her, and she almost lost her balance. He immediately turned the device back on, rechecking where he'd held himself against her.
“Why not?” The words spilled out of Tracy before she could stop them. And then, since she'd already jumped into the deep end, she added, “If that was supposed to scare me off, well, sorry, but it pretty much did the opposite. I mean, hello …”
He laughed, but it wasn't a pleasant sound as he thrust the sweeper into her hands and assumed the stance, turning his back to her. “Didn't you just get through telling me that Zanella was allegedly your first and last one-night stand? Let's keep it that way.”
“Allegedly?” She whacked him between the shoulder blades with the wand.
“Ow! What the hell?!”
“That's an insulting thing to say to someone who's just shared something painful with you. Allegedly. God.” She was affronted. “There was nothing alleged about it. Of course, you only said that so I'd get mad at you and back off, because you, Lawrence, are a coward.”
“Honey, trust me, I'm no coward. I'm just sane.” He laughed, muttering as if to himself, “Most of the fucking time, anyway.”
She moved around to skim the wand down his front, but he caught her wrist, and took it from her. “I got it from here, thanks.”
She glared at him as she pointedly rubbed her wrist.
“I didn't hurt you,” he told her. “So stop with the drama.”
“I'm the drama queen?” she said, lacing her voice with heavy disbelief. “I'm not the one who just rubbed myself against you, and then acted as if it was… awful.”
He laughed. “Awful. Yeah. If you don't like me calling you a little girl, then you really need to stop pretending to be one.”
“Okay,” she said. “Non sequitur.”
He shut off the sweeper and shoved it rather violently back behind the seat of the truck. “You know goddamn well that awful wasn't even close to what I was thinking and to pretend otherwise is beneath you. So knock it the hell off.”
Tracy had to argue. “I didn't say I thought that you thought it was awful. I said you were acting as if—”
“Enough,” he said. “Jesus Christ, no wonder Zanella ran screaming!”
Even as the words left Decker's lips, he regretted saying them. Even before he'd finished his sentence, he wished he could hit pause and rewind, and take it back.
It was as if he'd reached out and snuffed the fire that lit Tracy from within as she argued with him.
Jesus, who the hell ever argued with him? No one did—not besides Nash. Which was the reason that, despite their differences in personality and background, the two men were friends. Every-fucking-one else treated Deck as if he were some kind of demigod—with so much respect and even awe that it was impossible to have a relationship that wasn't mentor and trainee, teacher and student, or—Jesus help him—god and worshipful subject.
Every-fucking-one—except Tracy Shapiro. Who had the balls to argue with him, damn near constantly.
“I'm sorry,” he said now. “I didn't mean that.”
“Yes you did,” she said, and the vulnerable hurt in her eyes made him inwardly let out a string of the foulest language he knew—with himself as the well-deserving recipient. “It's um … Well, it's not okay, because it, you know, was pretty mean. But… it's what you think and … It's good to know what people—men—think about you.”
With all of her attitude stripped away, she looked tired and defeated, and he wanted to put it back—that light and life in her eyes.
“It's not what I think,” he said quietly.
“Usually I don't find out,” she told him, “until it's too late.”
“What I think,” he said, “is that Zanella's an asshole.”
But Tracy was shaking her head. “I really can tell when you're lying, okay? At least some of the time. Like now. So, let's just leave our… non-relationship, for lack of a better term, exactly where it is. With an acknowledgment that the sex would be great, and that… everything that wasn't sex would suck. Is that fair enough for you?”
Decker couldn't do it. “I disagree,” he said. “I enjoy your company very much, so …”
She was looking at him as if he were a moron. “I just pitched you a softball,” she implored him. “How hard, exactly, would
it have been to say, Yes, Tracy, sex with you would be great, which would make me feel better. Cheap and shallow, yes, but better. And then we could get into your truck and do whatever we have to do so that we can meet up with Tess.”
“I like you too much,” he admitted. “And the sex would be great. But I'm the one who screws up everything that isn't sex, so … It's not an option—you and me—as appealing as it sometimes—” he corrected himself “—frequently seems.”
“Great.” She was disgusted. “Now you have to go and be nice.”
“I'm not nice,” he told her. “I don't know why people think I am.”
Tracy went around to the passenger side and opened the door to the truck. “Maybe it's because you keep yourself locked away from the rest of the world. Or up on a pedestal. Out of reach. People have to squint to see you, so most of them see you the way they want you to be. God knows I've been guilty of that myself.”
Decker stood in the gravel of the parking lot as she climbed in and slammed the door behind her.
And then, when he didn't move right away, she reached over and hit the horn.
Which would have made him laugh, if he wasn't so pissed off—at himself, at Tracy, at Jo Heissman, at whoever those fuckers were who wanted Nash dead.
He climbed in behind the wheel. “Look, Tracy—”
“Shh,” she said. “Don't talk. Unless it's to tell me where we're going.”
Decker sighed. “Kinko's,” he said as he put the truck into gear. “To use their computers to check my free-mail account.”
“We don't have to go to Kinko's,” Tracy told him, trying to be business-as-usual, but still obviously subdued and hurt by his verbal bludgeon. “I've got my laptop and one of those anywhere Internet jacks. If you want, I can get online right here.”
Jules knew, as soon as he heard Alyssa's voice on the phone, that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.
“Are you still in the van?” she said, instead of Hello, when he answered the call.
“No, we've reached our destination,” he told her, purposely being vague despite the secure line. “We're waiting for contact.” He glanced at his watch. Decker should have been here by now. “What's going on? Is everyone all right?”
Tess looked over at that. She was sitting on the other motel room bed, ankles crossed, surfing through the cable stations with the sound muted.
“Everyone here is fine,” Alyssa said, and he repeated that for Tess's benefit.
“I'm putting you on speaker. Who's not there who's not fine?” Jules asked Alyssa, and sure enough, she hesitated, which told him volumes.
“The person I'm waiting for is late,” Jules reported. “Is that—”
“No.” Alyssa was absolute. “Deck's fine—at least as far as I know.”
He made a noise that was at least part protest, and she added, “We're scrambling the hell out of this call. It's secure; we can talk openly. This isn't about Decker.” She paused. “Jules, Max called and …”
What was it that was so difficult for her to tell him?
Max Bhagat was Jules's boss—and Alyssa's former boss—who worked out of the FBI's D.C. office. At one point, before Sam had gotten his shit together, Jules had been convinced that Alyssa and Max would be perfect together—romantically. He was wrong—that was before he understood that heartfelt imperfection was often better than logically perceived perfection.
“Max noticed,” Alyssa told Jules as he gritted his teeth and waited for the virtual grand piano to drop on his recently highlighted head, “what he thought was a familiar name in a bizarre triple homicide case that came across his desk.”
“Oh, crap,” Jules said. Familiar name and bizarre triple homicide were two phrases he'd hoped never to hear in the same sentence.
“Sam wants me to make sure you understand that this isn't your fault,” Alyssa said.
“Just tell me what's going on,” Jules demanded, trying to quell the sick feeling in his stomach that came from knowing that his best friends were neither alarmists nor melodramatic. Whatever this was about, it was going to be bad.
“All three of the murders took place yesterday and last night,” she informed him, crisp and businesslike as she conveyed the facts. “One in Annapolis, Maryland; one in Cincinnati, Ohio; and one in some little two-stoplight town called Biskin's River, Georgia. MO is identical— double-pop to the head. Ballistic tests haven't come back, but I've already checked the miles and airline flight times, and it's within the realm of possibility that the perp is the same person. It would've required some work to make all the flights, but… It's definitely do-able. Biskin's River's about a two-hour drive outside of Atlanta.”
Tess had sat up on the edge of the bed as she listened, her pretty face somber, her eyes filled with questions as she gazed at Jules.
“Who are the victims?” Jules asked as he saw a reflection of his own guarded wariness and brace-for-it anxiety in Tess's eyes. “Will you please just tell me? Come on, do it like a Band-Aid—rip it off.”
“The victims were all named John Wilson,” Alyssa said.
What? John Who?
“Oh, my God,” Tess breathed, and as Jules looked at her, he saw horror in her eyes. “Dr. John Wilson …”
And Jules remembered. Tess had helped him build an entire intricately detailed life for one extremely fictional John Wilson, the physician who'd “signed” Jim Nash's death certificate.
“I don't know how or why Max remembered Dr. Wilson's name,” Alyssa continued, “but he did, and …”
“What the fuck?” Jules said. He'd purposely made their make-believe Dr. Wilson an older man, on the cusp of retirement, gotten him a passport and sent him “safely” overseas with his equally fictional wife.
“The three John Wilsons who were killed weren't doctors,” Alyssa told him. “They were just civilians.”
Jesus God, he was going to be sick, but he could tell from her voice that she hadn't told him the worst of it, though what could be worse than knowing that, two months ago, by choosing two common-enough American names—John and Wilson—entirely on a whim because he and Robin had recently rewatched Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Jules had condemned three innocent men to death.
“Jules,” Alyssa said, all of the precise former-military-officer gone from her voice. Her words were thick with compassion. “One of the John Wilsons … He was only seven years old.”
Jules closed his eyes. “Oh, dear God,” he whispered.
“Alyssa, please, don't tell Jimmy,” Tess implored. “Not until I get back. I need to be there—”
“Yeah,” Alyssa said, regret heavy in her tone. “I'm afraid that horse has already left the barn. He walked in—rolled in, actually—on a conversation I was having with Sam and … Tess, I'm sorry, but we had to put him into lockdown.”
“Oh, no,” Tess said.
“Jules, you and Tess need to get out of there, ASAP.”
“What kind of monsters would do something like this?” Jules asked. “Who are these people?” He stood up on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. “God damn it, how many John Wilsons are there in this country? We need to issue some kind of warning, give them protection—”
“That's pretty standard in a case like this,” Alyssa said. “Murders linked by a common name? Max told me they've already been in touch with all of the John Wilsons who file taxes—”
“Children don't file taxes,” Jules pointed out.
“There'll be a press release issued. They'll get the story on the news.”
“That's not good enough,” Jules said. “We have to—”
“No.” She was definite. “It's important that we let the FBI handle this. You need to stay far away from it. Don't even call Max—you're supposed to be on vacation. Communicate with him through me. This is another message that we've been sent—let's not react without thinking this through.”
“Thinking this through?” Jules couldn't keep himself from shouting. “My God, Alyssa—I'm going to be thinking this throu
gh for the entire rest of my life!”
“You're upset,” she said. “I know that. You have every right to be. I'm upset, too. I know what you're thinking and feeling and it's awful and it's not your fault, but I know you think it is, and I'm so, so sorry, but right now you and Tess must get back into the van. Quietly. Quickly. Just take your things and go.”
“Jesus, I underestimated them,” Jules said.
“We all did,” Alyssa agreed. “You're not alone in that.”
“Yeah, but I'm in charge,” he countered. “I'm responsible for—”
“Right now, you're responsible for getting yourself and Tess to safety,” she cut him off, that Navy-Lieutenant edge back in her voice. “Jules, I need you to recognize that you're probably not thinking clearly here. I need you to step down and let me make the decisions right now. Just temporarily, until we regroup.”
Jules laughed. “You think I'm not thinking clearly? I'm thinking a little too clearly—”
“And I'm telling you, sir, that I know that you're not—that you can't be,” she interrupted him again. “I need you to trust me.”
It was the sir that got to him. Alyssa never sired him unless she was dead serious.
“I trust you,” he said on an exhale.
“Then put me in charge.”
“You're in charge.”
“Good,” she said. “Now follow my orders, and get yourself and Tess into the van, because you are in danger. This message was directed at you, Jules. Whoever they are, they know you were on the scene when Jim Nash died — ”
“Oh, my God,” he said. “Robin—”
“I've already called him in,” Alyssa told him. “I was having trouble reaching you, so I anticipated—”
“It's fine,” Jules said. “Just tell me he's safe.”
“He's safe. Ric and Annie are with him. They've arranged for helicopter transport—the goal is to get all of you back here as quickly as possible. They're going to call in with a rendezvous point. You're going to head back in with Robin and Tess, while Ric and Annie bring the van—”
“Robin starts filming tomorrow,” Jules said, and as the words left his lips he realized how inane they were.
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