Dark of Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Tracy stared at him. “How could you possibly be friends with Izzy Zanella? That was… Thank you.” Rare few, he'd said, which was both respectful and sweet, despite the Tracy-is-a-slut rumors that were surely swirling in the SpecWar community.

  “He's hitting on you,” Lindsey reported. “You may not recognize it, because he's so polite, but this is Jay's way of saying, Yo, hot mama. Consider yourself warned.”

  “You decide that Chief Decker's too old or grumpy for you,” Lopez told Tracy with a smile that could have melted butter, “you know where to find me.”

  And okay. He probably looked really good naked, too. And he was closer to her own age than Deck was. And he was about a billion times less grim and bottled up.

  Friend of Izzy Zanella went into the con column though, along with what was, Tracy realized, a total deal-breaker. He was Not Lawrence Decker.

  God, when had that happened? They hadn't had sex—not even close. Well, all right, maybe a little close. But still. Deck had kissed her—once. One time. She'd grabbed his junk, okay, and then ordered him around a little bit. They'd both gotten naked and stared at each other a whole lot.

  He'd also told her what had happened between Sophia and him—and why he'd been so utterly unable and unwilling to bring their rather odd, strained relationship to the next level.

  And yeah. There it was. That was what had happened. Decker's confession had been the emotional equivalent of full-penetration sex. The intimacy hadn't been physical, but that didn't make it any less powerful and, well, intimate. In fact, everything they'd said and done over the past few hours—including almost dying—felt far more intimate than any sexual act Tracy had ever performed with her rather pathetic line-up of exes.

  And God help her, true to her pattern, she was well on her way to falling for Deck. All she could think about was getting him alone again— so she could spend about four hundred more hours gazing into his crazy-beautiful eyes.

  And yes, okay, she also wanted to hook up with him. Badly enough to chase him down the street, if need be.

  Which, ironically, she was pretty much doing, since Lopez was currently following Decker's truck. Although, right this second, both truck and car had stopped at a railroad crossing, where lights were flashing and flimsy wooden barriers were coming down.

  “What the … ?” Lopez hit his horn.

  “What is he doing?” Lindsey asked, disbelief in her voice.

  Tracy sat forward to see Decker pull his truck into the oncoming lane, and—avoiding the barriers—gun it, tires squealing, across the tracks.

  “Hold on!” Lopez shouted as he yanked the wheel hard left to follow, but the train was nearly on top of them. He hit the brakes as Tracy screamed, and they skidded to a stop on the non-Decker side of the tracks.

  “Are you insane?” Lindsey shouted as the train roared past, hardly more than a foot from the front of the car.

  “SEAL,” Lopez said with a shrug.

  Lindsey turned to Tracy. “Where is he going?”

  “I don't know,” she said. Decker still didn't have a functioning phone—they couldn't even call him to ask.

  “You don't know.” Lindsey clearly didn't believe her.

  Tracy shook her head, fighting a rush of tears.

  “You have no idea why he would want to lose us?” Lindsey persisted as the train kept on coming. It was a freight, with no end in sight. “Because that's what that crazy psycho just did. He freaking lost us.”

  “Maybe he didn't realize how close the train was,” Tracy said, but she didn't need the disbelieving looks that either Lindsey or Lopez sent her from the front seat to recognize how stupid that sounded.

  “After the train passes,” Lopez said, “and the gates go back up? Decker is not going to be waiting for us.”

  “I know,” Tracy said. Had he really been in that much of a hurry to get away from her? Or …

  Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

  “Alyssa told me to get you and Decker to the helo pickup point.” Lindsey was as pissed as Tracy had ever seen her. “She doesn't want to tell me the details about what's going on? That's fine. The assignment's easy enough. Oh, but be sure to bring Lopez, she says, just in case, because apparently someone tried to blow both Decker and Tracy to Kingdom Come at some sleazoid motel in the suck-ass part of town. And for the record, I really don't want to know why you were going there.”

  “Jo Heissman,” Tracy said. “Oh, shit.”

  But Lindsey was on a full-blown rant and didn't hear her. “But okay, it really is fine,” she continued, “because I'm down with need to know. I respect that. But what would've been nice to have been told is that Decker, despite a bullet wound in his freaking arm, won't particularly want to go to the helo pickup point. A little warning that we'd have to strong-arm Chief Crazy Pants would've been helpful.”

  Lopez, however, had been paying attention. “Joe who?”

  “Josephine Heissman,” Tracy said again, as the freight train's caboose sped past—and sure enough, with the sudden unobstructed view across the tracks, Decker's truck wasn't anywhere in sight. No doubt about it, he was long gone. “That's where Decker went. Probably to her house.”

  Lindsey blinked at her. “ Dr. Heissman?” she asked. “The shrink?”

  “She lives out on Coronado,” Tracy told them, as she unzipped her computer bag and opened her laptop. Since Jo was a former Troubleshoot-ers employee, Tracy still had her personal information—including her home address—in the company database. “Go,” she ordered Lopez as she looked up the address. “Drive. West. Hurry. Because if Decker did go to her house? He may well have gone to follow through on a threat he made—to kill her.”

  Dr. Heissman was sitting in her living room. She was curled up, one foot tucked beneath her, in an oversized, overstuffed chair, reading a paperback novel.

  She didn't hear Decker come in, and he stood there for quite a few minutes before she noticed him—she was that engrossed.

  It was as if she'd prepared for him—or someone—to pay her a visit. The drapes were closed, shades were drawn—no one could see into the house from the street.

  She'd changed out of her business clothes, into pink sweatpants and a T-shirt, and her hair was up in a ponytail.

  Pink. Huh. It still surprised him that she would wear that girlishly pale color.

  Her feet were bare, and she'd poured herself a glass of wine, which sat with her cell phone on the end table beside her, ignored, as she was clearly caught up in her book. The only sound was that of her turning pages—and the quiet ticking of the clock on the mantel of her fireplace.

  Her home was nice. It was one of those antique cottages that peppered the area—built shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The architectural style was called Arts and Crafts—and the only reason Decker knew that was because SEAL Team Sixteen's Senior Chief Stan Wol-chonok's house was from the same quaint era. Although the senior'd preserved the original rich, dark woodwork in his house. The doctor's had long been painted over, which was a shame.

  Her walls were soothing—tans and beiges and a shade of mustard that was surprisingly nice, with occasional splashes of color from abstract modern artwork: not his favorite, by a long shot. He was a landscape man. Give him a good seashore. Sand dunes. A sailboat on the horizon. But a splotch of colors, arranged in a vaguely sexual scramble? Maybe he was fucked up, but when he looked at art like that, he rarely saw anything besides female genitals and the occasional scrotum. Or he saw absolutely nothing at all— which was somehow worse. It was as if everyone in the world was laughing at a joke that he didn't get. And that made him uncomfortable—like it was additional proof that there was something seriously wrong with him.

  Besides, if he was going to think about uncomfortable things, he might as well take a well-measured moment and acknowledge the fact that he wished, with all of his frozen and jaded heart, that Lindsey and Lopez had shown up at Starrett's just a few minutes later than they had.

  The truth of the matter was
that he'd wanted Tracy to touch him again, as they stood together in that shower.

  Although, if she had touched him, then he'd probably be standing here wishing that Lindsey and Lopez had shown up twenty minutes later and … Bottom line was that Deck knew that even if he'd fucked her, he'd be standing here now wishing he'd had the chance to fuck her again. Of course, if he'd fucked her twice, he'd want a month with her, and then a year, and then an entire goddamn decade. …

  Jesus, he could use a solid decade with Tracy's fire and life and laughter—and yes, particularly her there's nothing wrong with you, Sparky, anything-goes attitude toward sex.

  But really, and far more reasonably than wishing for a full decade, he would've gladly taken just a few more minutes of her looking at him like she was going to enjoy eating him alive.

  If there was something wrong with him? It was wrong with her, too, and … There was absolutely nothing wrong with her. Absolutely nothing.

  Except for the fact they worked for the same company, that she was just a little too young, and that he didn't have enough room in his life for a full-time, high-maintenance girlfriend. And anything he started with Tracy would be full-time and highest maintenance, he did not doubt that.

  Although the fact that he was more than likely going to die in the near future countered all of those arguments—at least it did if he were thinking selfishly. It added to them if he was thinking about Tracy, who'd be left behind to bury him.

  That was something he never wanted to lay on anyone, having buried his share of friends. Damn, but thinking about that made his battered head ache.

  It was then that he must have sighed—heavily enough to make Jo Heissman look up. She saw him and gasped, leaping to her feet and knocking over that long-stemmed glass of wine.

  Decker didn't move. He just dispassionately watched it go down—a dark red splash of liquid on the pale-colored rug.

  She put her book spine up on the arm of her chair, her voice an accusation. “You startled me.” It was clear she was on the verge of bustling into the kitchen to get a towel to blot at the spill, so he shifted slightly to block her.

  “Leave it,” he said, and she stopped and looked at him. Really looked this time.

  “What's wrong?” she asked, perceptive as always.

  “You honestly don't know?”

  She shook her head, her eyes narrowing as she noticed the bandage on his arm. “You've been hurt. Are you all right?”

  “You and your friends …” He gave his performance everything he had in him, calling up every ounce of pain he'd felt on that hellish ride from the motel to Starrett's—before Tracy had found the text messages that proved that there was, indeed, a God. Or that there truly was power to The Secret. Still, it didn't take much effort to bring it back—the emptiness, the despair, the howling, impotent, yet still-vicious rage. He couldn't do more than whisper. “You and your friends killed Tess.”

  Jo Heissman's reaction to his words was physical. She blanched as she took a step backwards, actually lurching and nearly falling down. “Oh, merciful God,” she said as she caught herself and sank into her chair. “Oh, no. Oh, Deck, I'm so, so sorry.”

  Her concern and distress—and surprise—were genuine. But then he saw it dawn in her eyes—the realization that he blamed her and that he'd come there to follow through on that threat he'd made two months ago. He saw her glance toward her cell phone, saw her look at her front door. He saw her weigh her options—call for help, run. …

  Instead, she chose surrender as she stayed where she was and clasped her shaking hands together in her lap. “Well, I guess it's now or never as far as your trusting me. Which I know that you don't. But I do. I trust you.”

  He took her phone off the table, and pocketed it. “Did they tell you to plant a tracking device in my truck?”

  “No! I didn't—I wouldn't. I would have told you. Lawrence, please, sit down and talk to me.”

  He shook his head. “I'm not really in the mood for a therapy session right now, thanks.”

  She apparently didn't care, because she pushed on. “Not only do I trust you, but I also have faith in you. I know you're distressed, and you have every right to be, but you're not a killer—as much as you'd like other people to believe that you are.”

  “You're wrong,” he said, which was stupid, because he knew that she was trying to engage him. What he needed to do was keep his mouth shut, unholster his sidearm, and scare her into silence. Last thing he needed was her crawling around inside of his head—and maybe bumping into Tracy while she was in there.

  No, wait. It wasn't Tracy, it was Nash that he was worried the doctor would find out about.

  Tracy—Jesus. What was he doing, thinking about her right now?

  “No, I'm not,” Dr. Heissman was saying. “You've killed. I understand that. You're a soldier in a bloody and awful war. Of course you've taken lives. But not like this. Never an … execution.” She met his eyes with a gaze that was steady and absolute, despite her trembling hands. “Not without sufficient proof—and as angry as I know you are, you don't have that. You can't—because the proof you need doesn't exist. And even if you somehow had enough … circumstantial evidence to convince yourself … Well, you didn't kill the man who was directly responsible for Jim Nash's death. You brought him in alive.”

  Decker wanted to applaud—she was playing both the shrink and logic cards with perfection. “I'm not the same man I was back then,” he said, which was, oddly enough, a truth.

  “No,” she agreed, “you're not. You're still plenty angry, yes, I can see that. And rightfully so. I know how much you loved them—both Jim and Tess. God, I'm so sorry. But… your anger is different. It's … You're different than you were in our therapy sessions. I can see it in you. You're at peace. Somehow. It's…” She shook her head. “You are different. And you're lying about… something.” Her voice caught. “God, please tell me you're lying to me about Tess.”

  She was just guessing. She had to be. She'd told him earlier that day that she had trouble reading him, that she couldn't tell when he was lying. And yet…

  She paused only momentarily and when he didn't respond, when he didn't so much as blink, she kept talking. Her words of reason were her only available defense, and she wielded them expertly. “I know you want to see the blackmail photos before you make any decisions in terms of… what you intend to do with me.”

  “Nah,” he said, “I really don't. I'm just going to shoot you. At the very least it'll shut you the hell up.”

  She was no idiot, so she lowered her head and finally kept her mouth shut as he crossed the room and sat down on her leather sofa. It was nice. Distressed and soft, it was the yellow-brown color of a well-worn pair of cowboy boots. “But okay, you're right. I'm lying. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to shoot you. At least not tonight. And Tess isn't really dead.”

  Her head came up, her eyes wide. “Thank God. Is she”—her gaze flicked to the bandage on his arm—“all right?”

  “Yeah. They did try to kill her, though,” he told her. “Your friends tried to take all of us out with a bomb. I got a little shot in the aftermath, but everyone's fine.”

  “A little shot… ?” she said.

  “It happens.”

  “Whoever did that—they're not my friends.” She didn't bother accusing him of being an asshole for telling her that Tess was dead. She knew damn well why he'd done it—to try to see what she knew, if anything, about the attempted hit.

  What she knew was jackshit, and he actually believed her when she'd said she hadn't planted a tracking device. It still didn't mean she wasn't in league with whoever had set that bomb—although he was starting to believe that less and less.

  “Don't get too excited,” Decker warned her. “I might decide to kill you anyway, just because you piss me off.”

  “How could you joke about… any of this?” She cut herself off. “Don't bother answering that. I do understand how difficult this must be, and in order to cope, it's natural to—”


  “I'm not joking,” he said. “Where are those photos?”

  She stood up, and he did, too.

  “Stay in your seat, please,” he said. “Just tell me where I can find them.”

  Dr. Heissman nodded. “On the kitchen table,” she said, as she slowly sat back down in her chair. “I was expecting you to ask for them. I had them ready—to send to you, if that was what you wanted.”

  Yeah, like he was going to give her the mailing address for the safe house. Dream on.

  She watched as he went into the dining area and through the open door into her little kitchen. The cottage was so small, she could see him clearly from where she sat—and vice versa. She had one of those old-fashioned refrigerators with the rounded top and front, and a gas stove that had a griddle in the middle. It was cozy, like he'd stepped into a time warp back to his Grandma Lillian's kitchen in New Jersey—with everything neat and tidy, and with its homey and simple white curtains covering both the window over the sink and the panes of glass in the back door.

  A small, two-seat table was over against the wall, and on it lay one of those cardboard USPS priority mailers, with his name already printed in block letters on the front. It was unsealed, and he looked in to find another envelope—plain, brown, and taped shut. He pulled it out.

  “I was hoping,” she said, her voice faltering for the first time, which made him glance up to see that she'd gone another shade paler, “that you wouldn't have to look at them while I was here.”

  “Sorry,” he said as he tore open the envelope and dumped the photos—half a dozen eight-by-ten glossies—onto the table. “You're not going anywhere. I've recently acquired this strange new attachment to not dying.”

  In the other room, Jo Heissman silently sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  The first few photos were pretty traditional blackmail shots. In them she was having missionary-position sex with a dark-haired young man, his tattooed ass gleaming. He covered most of the doctor's body as she lay on a bed in an opulent hotel room. Her face was clearly visible, though— there was no question it was her. And that she was enjoying herself thoroughly.