Dark of Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Tracy was breathing as hard as Decker, who stared at her. She was, no doubt, as wild-eyed as he was.

  “Yes. That. It wasn't …” Her voice came out sounding breathless and thin as she felt her face flush. “I didn't… Your shorts were covered with blood and I was afraid…. So I looked …”

  She shifted, to move back even farther from him, and her arm brushed against him—against him—and oh, dear God. That was fast. Fast and furious, so to speak.

  “Sorry,” she said, even as he said it too.

  “Sorry, I'm … Adrenaline can really … you know. Ramp things up.”

  “Really?” The word left her mouth even as she realized that the right thing to do was to not keep talking about it, but to kiss him again.

  Except he was giving her the body-language equivalent of stay back. Which meant that the real right thing to do was to turn away and count the ridiculous number of life vests Sam and Alyssa had hanging on their garage wall—as if they were prepped and ready for the next big flood.

  Instead, like an idiot, she actually stupidly glanced down and …

  He'd tried to pull the tail of his shirt over himself, but it hadn't really done the trick.

  “Wow,” she said—again, her mouth went off in advance of her brain, so she added, “Sorry. Sorry.” Although she wasn't quite sure what she was doubly sorry for. Kissing him back and ramping things up? Heck, those kisses had ramped things up for her, too, although her ramped-up things weren't as obvious as his.

  His tears—if there had even been any—were long gone. His eyes now brimmed with embarrassment as he reached for his briefs—apparently preferring them on, despite their blood-soaked condition. And yes, he was actually blushing, too—a thin line of flush beneath his tan, right along his cheekbones.

  “It's, you know, physiological,” he told her. “Adrenaline kicks in and…. It, um, can be inconvenient.”

  “Not for your girlfriend,” Tracy pointed out. “I mean, Good-bye, honey. Have a nice day. Hope someone tries to kill you again because last night was amazing….”

  It was supposed to be a joke, but he didn't laugh.

  His briefs were stuck on his right knee, and she tried to help him, which in hindsight was a stupid thing to do, because he really didn't want her help, especially with her own pants-free rear in his face. He said, “I got it, thanks,” in a voice that brooked no argument, which made her instantly let go.

  He efficiently packed himself in, like some kind of dream male underwear model, to tightie-whities that were extra tight and no longer white.

  “I can see why you were, uh, concerned,” he said as he reached down to untie his boots. “I'm a mess.”

  He obviously wasn't going to attempt to pull his blood-soaked jeans back up so Tracy said, “If you want, I can throw them into the washing machine.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that would be good. Thanks. I could really use a shower.”

  “There's a wash sink out here,” Tracy said. It was surreal how polite they were being after licking the insides of each other's mouths. “Unless you know where the key to the house is … ?”

  “No,” he said, “but I don't need it. Just give me a sec.” He got his second boot off, but then took a moment, closing his eyes and holding his forehead.

  “Are you all right?” Tracy asked, her concern instantly back.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yes.”

  “No tunnel vision, double vision, blurred vision … ?”

  “I'm fine.” His words were countered when he reached up to touch the back of his head, and swore.

  “Seriously, Decker,” she told him, helping him pull his jeans off his muscular calves, but keeping her distance this time, staying down by his feet. “It looks to me like you hit your head pretty hard. You've got to tell me—right away—if you start experiencing any symptoms of head injury. I mean, any symptoms in addition to falling out of your truck, unconscious … ?”

  He shook his head gingerly. “That wasn't… I'm okay. It was …”

  “Adrenaline?” she asked, as she yanked his pants free, impatient with his I'm too macho to accept the truth about a potentially fatal injury attitude. That, combined with her embarrassment over that kiss, sparked some seriously confused anger. He'd kissed her, hadn't he? Although it was entirely possible that she had jumped him. But even if she had, he'd definitely kissed her back with enthusiasm. “Too much blood rushing to your—”

  “I fainted,” he said, cutting her off, shooting her a hard look. “All right?” His blush was back—he was clearly embarrassed to have admitted that. “I'm fine. I have a very hard skull. I've hit my head plenty of times, much harder than this. But I lost some blood, and when I got the news about Tess and Jules… I passed out. Okay? Relief can do that.”

  “Adrenaline and blood loss and relief,” she countered, methodically emptying his pockets onto the floor, then carrying his jeans to the washing machine. She threw them in and turned the dial to a heavy-duty wash cycle, small load. Hah. This man was giant when it came to loads. She rinsed her hands in the water that poured into the machine. “You've got your medical issues all figured out. Great. I'm happy you're convinced you're okay—that your fainting wasn't a big deal. As long as you tell me— immediately—if you start experiencing any other symptoms of head injury.”

  He laughed as she shook her hands as dry as she could before opening an overhead cabinet where she found a bottle of laundry soap. She didn't bother measuring it, she just eyeballed it as she poured it in on top of water that was turning an upsetting shade of pink.

  “Not a big deal?” he asked. “Believe me, I'd prefer a fractured skull over having to admit that I fainted like some little old lady.” He exhaled his disgust, and as she turned back to look at him, she saw that he'd pushed himself to his feet, but then crouched back down, all the way to his hands and knees. “Fuck.”

  “Well, that's just stupid,” Tracy said, dropping the lid of the machine with a metallic boing and hurrying back to him. “You'd rather be in a coma?”

  “I'm okay,” he said, waving her off.

  So she stepped back, but stayed close enough to catch him if she needed to. “And you didn't faint like any little old lady that I've ever met. I mean, how would you know anyway? You fainted. I was there, and you did it the same way you do everything. With a truckload of testosterone.” He still hadn't moved. His head was down, his eyes closed, so she inched even closer. “Will you please let me help you?”

  “Don't,” he said. “Don't—I'm trying hard not to puke.”

  “Oh. My. God. And that's not a symptom?” she asked, kneeling beside him. “Of, like, what? Concussion? Or yes, even a fractured skull! Maybe you got your freaking wish! Haven't you read The Secret?”

  Decker opened his eyes and looked directly at her. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He laughed in her face. “Yeah, I've read The Secret—or enough of it to know it's crap. Like I really wished myself here, with a gunshot wound. That's the stupidest shit I ever heard.”

  “Well, I wished Tess and Jules alive,” she retorted. “I believed it with all my heart—so how stupid is it now?” She felt tears spring into her eyes. God, no, don't let her cry again—not over this.

  “Then you better stop believing that I have a concussion,” he shot back at her. He rested his forehead on the garage floor. “Jesus, I'm gonna be sick.”

  Tracy looked around—there was a collection of brightly colored sand toys in a mesh bag, hanging near a pair of skimboards. She went to it, quickly unhooked the bag, and pulled out a yellow plastic pail in the shape of SpongeBob SquarePants and brought it back to Decker.

  “Here,” she said, crouching beside him and putting the pail on the floor next to his head. She took his arm. “Come on. Sit up. Or do you want to lie back down again?”

  She pushed his hair from his face, feeling to see if his forehead was warm. There was no way he could've gotten an infection from that gunshot wound so quickly, was there?


  But she knew from working at Troubleshooters that operatives going into the field always brought antibiotics with them in case of injury, specifically to avoid infection. Maybe it did happen fast. Bullets had to be hor-rendously dirty, and one of them had cut that furrow in Decker's arm.

  He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “It doesn't work,” he said, and at first she didn't follow, but then she realized he was still talking about The Secret. “Because I keep wishing—Jesus—that you'll just please, please stop touching me.”

  Tracy pulled her hand back so fast she almost smacked herself in the face with it. “I'm just trying to help,” she said, as her stinging hurt mor-phed into indignant anger. “God, you're arrogant. Do you honestly think I'm here going, Oh, goody, he thinks he might throw up. I think I'll kiss him again. Yum. You suck and you're stupidly closed-minded, too. Because you d idn't read far enough in the book,” she informed him. “You have to think about the thing you want to have happen. If you put it in a negative form, if you focus on what you don't want, it not only doesn't work, but it gives you the exact opposite of what you really do want. You can't say, like, I don't want it to rain, I don't want it to rain. Because the universe doesn't hear the don't. It just hears want rain. You have to say, I want the sun to shine.”

  “You use The Secret to control the weather?” he said, painfully pushing himself into a sitting position. She practically had to sit on her hands not to reach to help him. “Honey, if you can do that, you definitely need to ask Tommy for a raise.”

  She made a sound of exasperation as he made sure that his overshirt covered his still-obvious symptom of too much adrenaline. “That was just an example,” she said. “A simple one. Easy to understand—even for those of us who are blockheads. It wasn't supposed to—”

  “How about if I don't just wish it or think it?” he cut her off. “How about I actually say it? No fricking secret, just right on the table. Don't. Touch me. I'm human, okay? And it's too much for me right now. I shouldn't have kissed you, it was wrong, and if I could, God damn it, I'd take it back.”

  She didn't know what to say to that, so she just sat there as the washing machine finally finished filling with water and the wash cycle kicked on.

  “And Jesus, please. Don't look at me like that,” he added, saying again, more quietly this time, “It's too much.”

  Tracy nodded as she looked away. She pushed herself back to her feet, hyper-aware that she was wearing only a pair of thong panties with a tank top that was now dirty and torn. She tried to keep her front to him as she went to the back of the truck, where she had two “massively huge” suitcases of clothes. She opened the truck bed's hard plastic cover, unzipped one of her bags, and found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. But then she pulled out a second T-shirt, because after she washed up in the sink, she was going to need to use something to dry herself off.

  She'd brought soap—organic and chemical-free—and she dug for that, too, because the alternative was to use Sam and Alyssa's laundry detergent, which would dry her skin. Last thing she needed was a rash that wasn't figurative.

  “I'm not looking at you,” she informed Decker as she marched past him to the sink, carrying her clean clothes, careful not to hold them against her. She had streaks of his blood pretty much all over her, mixed in with some of her own, too. Her elbow was a mess. “Now it's up to you to not look at me while I wash up and get dressed.”

  “I'll get the door open so you can use the shower in the house,” he said, back on his hands and knees. He was pretending he was in that position on purpose, as he searched through the rubble of items she'd removed from his pants pockets, looking for God knows what.

  “Yeah, well, I kind of need it to happen in this lifetime,” she said, turning on the water in the sink and waiting for it to warm up, “so I'm just going to—”

  “Okay,” Decker cut her off, removing several small metal tools from a small leather packet. “All right. You win. Help me. Over to the stairs so I can get the freaking door open. We'll get inside, we'll both get cleaned up. I can do this.”

  She set her clean clothes down atop the dryer as he made it all the way to his feet. He spread his legs in an attempt not to sway, but she wasn't fooled.

  “I win?” she asked as she stalked over to him and looped his arm around her shoulders, putting her own arm around his trim and annoyingly attractive waist. “I'm sorry. The blast from the bomb that nearly killed us must still be interfering with my ability to hear clearly, because I could've sworn I just heard you say that I win. What exactly do I win? Besides this fabulous chance to look at you and touch you without being frantically warded off by the sign of the cross?”

  They made it over to the stairs and up them, but none of it was easy for him, considering his current shade of green. He inserted the little metal instrument into the lock, and …

  The door didn't open.

  Decker swore under his breath. “Hold still,” he ordered.

  “I'm not the one who's about to fall on his head,” she retorted. “Again.” But she tried to brace him more absolutely, which unfortunately required more physical contact. She put her left leg around behind him, so that he was standing on the step between her feet.

  Between her legs.

  Don't think that. Don't go there. He wanted to take back that mistake of a kiss, and Tracy now believed—absolutely—that even if they got into the house, even if the people who'd set the bomb and shot Decker surrendered to the authorities, even if the planets aligned and choirs of angels sang their blessing, that she and this man were never, not in a million years ever, going to finish what they'd started.

  Never say never was a popular adage at Troubleshooters Inc., but right now never gonna happen was written all over Decker's every move, his every bit of body language, his every expression on his not-particularly-handsome-yet-still-gorgeous face. Which was his loss.

  Unfortunately, it was Tracy's loss, too.

  She tried to steady him even more by clinging to the door frame with her left hand—there was no banister—and she finally gave up and just wrapped her right arm around his waist, her front pressed solidly against his back. “I've got you,” she said. “Just concentrate on the lock. You can do this with your eyes closed. We both know that.”

  In the past, she'd witnessed him getting past far more difficult locks— like the one on her motel room door, on that near-deadly training mission in New Hampshire, back when she'd first started working for Trouble -shooters. Tracy had been in the shower, and he'd let himself into the room she was sharing with Sophia. He'd been looking for clothes to bring to the tiny blond woman who'd fallen into some kind of pond, out in below-freezing weather.

  For Decker, it always came back to Sophia. It was good to remember that, especially while experiencing this kind of warm and sweaty full-body contact. God, he was ripped—the six-pack beneath her hand was hard-muscled and tight and sexy as hell.

  So Tracy told him, “I sent an e-mail to Alyssa, letting her know that you won't be able to pick up Dave and Sophia at the airport.”

  “Damn it,” he swore. “I forgot about them.”

  “That's okay,” she said. “I didn't.”

  He glanced back at her, over his shoulder—his eyes a flash of color in his grimly pale face. “It's not okay.”

  “Yeah, Deck, you know what? It actually is.” She exhaled her disgust. “Didn't you just finish telling me that you're human? Well, congratulations, you really are. Fortunately, you're not alone tonight. I'm here to help you, and I did. Thank you, Tracy. Why, you're welcome, Deck.”

  The muscles in his entire body strained and tightened even more as he did something with that little metal lockpick. And, yes! The door finally popped open.

  “See?” Tracy said. “I knew you could do it.”

  “Don't tell me you visualized it, because I won't be able to keep from throwing up.”

  “Fine,” she sniffed. “I won't tell you, then.”

  The security alarm starte
d to beep its warning. They had only a short time—maybe thirty seconds—to input the code before it started to wail.

  Decker moved to go into the house, but Tracy stopped him. “Let me. I'm moving faster.” She made sure, though, that he was steady before she let go of him and slipped through the door into Sam and Alyssa's shadow-filled kitchen.

  “Code's the same as for the garage.” Decker started to recite the numbers, but she cut him off.

  “I remember it.” The alarm control box was identical to the one that provided electronic security at the office. Tracy punched in the code, and the light stopped flashing, and turned from red to green.

  They were in.

  “Did Alyssa e-mail you back?” Decker asked, holding on to both sides of the frame as he came through the door, as Tracy quickly checked to make sure all the blinds were down before she tried the various light switches and found one that lit the kitchen.

  There was a set of hooks holding raincoats—slickers—in a little mud-room that led directly to the backyard. She took one and covered her backside, tying it by the long, yellow arms around her waist as she answered him. “Not yet. Not that I know of.”

  He still looked as if keeling over were an option, and she reached for him—but apparently he'd used up all his asking-for-help cards. He was back to waving her off as he sat down heavily at the kitchen table. “I'm okay.”

  She quickly went into the garage and got both her computer and her clean clothes. She set her laptop down on the counter and shook her head as Decker looked at her.

  “Still no response from anyone. And by the way, if you're dizzy from loss of blood instead of oh, say, a fractured skull,” she pointed out, “it'll help if you have a cookie and some orange juice—you know, like when you go to the bloodmobile?”

  “I don't give blood,” he told her. “Too many inoculations from trips overseas.”

  “Well, I do,” she said, as she searched through the kitchen cabinets, “and they give you a cookie and some juice if you feel like you're going to faint.”

  “I really don't want a cookie,” Decker said. “Or juice.”