Dark of Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Are you still friends with Caroline?” Tracy asked.

  Deck laughed. Figured she'd pick up on his mention of Caro. “Not so much, no. Andy always thought I'd marry her, but… After he died, I couldn't look her in the eye.” He looked Tracy in the eye and confessed, “And that was before I slept with her and then didn't call her for about two years.”

  She winced. “Ouch.”

  “It was not my finest hour.”

  “I meant ouch for you,” Tracy told him. “Because you lost her, too.”

  They sat for a moment, just gazing at each other, and then Tracy asked, “How come you couldn't look her in the eye?”

  It was time to change the subject. This was where, the few times Deck had actually spoken to anyone about Andy's death, he'd led the conversation elsewhere. But as he looked back at Tracy, as he looked into her warm and sympathetic eyes, he found himself saying words that he'd never before uttered. “He was still alive when I got to the hospital at the airbase.”

  She blinked. And leaned forward slightly. “Andy was? But I thought you went there to bring his body home.”

  “That's what I told everyone,” Deck admitted, having to whisper because he'd never before said any of this aloud. “A mutual friend, a captain, was a doctor there, and she called me. She knew Andy wasn't going to live. His wife, Becca, had just miscarried and she couldn't travel—the captain knew that and so she called me.”

  “Oh, my God,” Tracy said. “Oh, Deck …”

  “When I saw Andy, I …” He couldn't look at her so he looked at the wall, the floor, the wood grain of his desktop. “The injuries and burns he sustained were …”

  “He must've been in terrible pain,” she murmured. “Burns can be—”

  “Agony,” he agreed, losing himself for a moment in the warmth of her eyes. But then he looked away again, unable to tell her that most of Andy's legs had been gone, as well as his hands. He'd sat with his friend, but there'd been nothing to hold on to, so he'd put his hand on top of Andy's head, where somehow, miraculously, he hadn't been burned.

  “The doctor told me he wouldn't last the night, but… I stayed with him for seventy-three hours. I talked to him. And I promised him—he insisted—that I'd tell his mother and Becca and Caro that he'd died right away. The captain backdated Andy's death certificate, and I made up some bullshit story about how he was missing, but then someone thought they saw him, but then they finally found his body in the rubble and … I brought him home and we buried him, and everyone cried and hugged each other and nodded and said, At least he didn't suffer. And I nodded, too.

  “And Emily knew something was wrong, but I couldn't tell her,” Deck continued quietly. “No, that's not fair to her. I could've, but I didn't. Instead, I let it get between us and drive us even farther apart.”

  “She should have tackled you to the ground.” Tracy was determined to defend him. “I would have. I would have made you tell me.”

  He looked at her, sitting there, with her hair disheveled and her hopeful T-shirt twisted around her, the top button of her jeans undone, as if she'd tried to get more comfortable while under the cover of the blanket. Her chin was up as she gazed at him, as if she expected him to challenge her statement.

  But he agreed with her. “Yeah, I think you probably would've.”

  And then, after getting him to confess, Tracy would've completely rocked his world with the kind of physical sex that was meant to exhaust— to wear out and wear down. At which point she also would have convinced him beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was not just okay but necessary for a man to cry over the painful, horrible death of his best friend in the entire fucking world.

  “I keep thinking the hell with it,” Decker whispered now, as he looked at Tracy sitting there, looking back at him with such love in her eyes. “I keep thinking, if I die tomorrow, which will I remember more fondly, in those last seconds of my life? The fact that I had some unbreakable rule about appropriate behavior in the office? Or the fact that I jettisoned my rule and took the best ten-minute break in the history of the world?”

  Tracy laughed her surprise as she realized he'd changed the subject. “Wow, talk about pressure.”

  “Come here and kiss me,” Decker ordered her. His voice sounded like someone else's to his own ears. “If you just kiss me for ten minutes, it'll rate.”

  But she didn't move. “What if you live?” she asked him quietly. “Tomorrow?”

  It was a damn good question.

  “I've been thinking about that, too,” he admitted. “About the fact that I'd actually like, very much, to, well, live. Which sounds crazy, because most people generally want to? But it's been a long time since I've given a shit.”

  It was hard to see her face completely clearly in the dimness—his circle of light didn't extend out to where she was sitting. But he was pretty sure that there was a sudden sheen of tears in her eyes.

  Which, for some reason, didn't scare him. It had always scared him when Emily cried.

  But Tracy didn't cry. She cleared her throat, and said, “Then maybe, since you do give a shit, it's not entirely inappropriate if we actually, you know…” Her voice trailed off, and Decker waited, curious to see what her word choice would be. If they had sex, fucked, made love… ? He knew, with a flash of clarity, which words he would have used.

  But she didn't finish her sentence. She started over.

  “Maybe it's not breaking the rule. Maybe it's just discarding an old rule and creating a new one.” She paused. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone?”

  He had to smile at that, considering the magnitude of the secret he'd just told her. “I promise.”

  “Not even Nash?”

  He pretended to think about it. “Okay, not even Nash.”

  That made her smile, as he'd hoped it would. “Don't be a jerk.” She took a deep breath and said, “I once saw Tom and Kelly come out of the supply closet. The one right outside the conference room?”

  Her upward inflection at the end of her statement implied that she wanted some sort of response, so he said, “I'm not sure this is something I want to know.”

  “It is,” Tracy insisted. “Try not to be a prude for a second, will you?”

  “I'm not a prude.”

  “Shh,” she said, “we can argue about that in a minute. Listen to what I'm saying, okay? I was collating a report. I was in there—in the conference room—for at least forty minutes. I was facing the door, but I didn't see them go into that closet. Which means they were in there for more than forty minutes. And they were not counting rubber bands.”

  “I don't know,” Deck said. “I go in there myself, sometimes, just to count rubber bands. We have somewhere around four hundred thousand. It takes at least three hours to count 'em all.”

  Tracy laughed as she threw one of the couch pillows at him. “Fine,” she said. “Be a jerk. But for the record? Sam and Alyssa have sex in Alyssa's office all the time, too.”

  “I don't want to know that,” he said, but then asked, “How exactly do you know that?”

  She looked at him, and imitated Sam's Texas drawl, “Tracy, hold all of Lys's calls. We're having an important lunch meetin.” She rolled her eyes. “Hello. Obvious. And when she was pregnant? He used to pretend he was giving her a massage during lunch. Her back is actin up—Tracy, hold her calls. There was definitely massaging going on. Sam just left out the part where there was a happy ending for everyone.”

  “Tom and Kelly, Sam and Alyssa,” Decker pointed out. “They're married.”

  “To someone they work with.”

  “Kelly doesn't work here,” he countered.

  “Yeah, right,” Tracy scoffed. “Tell her that, when one of the operatives needs a house call from a doctor in the middle of the night. Look me in the eye and tell me she's never treated you in a pinch.”

  Decker looked her in the eye, but then shook his head. “Can't.”

  And there they sat, again, in silence.

 
; “Can I just say something more?” Tracy asked. “Because it's important to me that you understand I'm not looking for sex for the sake of sex. Although the sex would be incredibly great. I know that. But I also know that I'm … reckless, when it comes to relationships. And I know that you said—and maybe this was just something you said but you didn't mean— that you didn't want a one-night stand—”

  “I don't,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “That's good. I also know that you've got this kind of weird, deep connection to Sophia”—he opened his mouth to speak, but she silenced him—“shush, let me finish.”

  Decker gestured, Go on.

  “I know she's with Dave right now, but that's just right now,” she said earnestly. “And of course, there's Emily, whom you still talk about with a certain wistfulness. She clearly meant a lot to you.”

  He shook his head. Wistfulness? Was she kidding?

  “And now I find out about Caroline—”

  He couldn't keep his mouth shut any longer. “She and her husband just had their second daughter.”

  “Okay,” Tracy said. “I'll put her in the nothing lasts forever column with Sophia. As opposed to Jo Heissman, who's here in the could be fun column with me.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said, laughing. “Jo Heissman would not be fun.” Of course, that hadn't been what he was thinking just yesterday—Jesus, was that really less than twenty-four hours ago? It had been a long, long day.

  “My point is,” Tracy told him, “that I know I'm not the only woman in your life—and these are just the women I know about. Tess. I didn't think of Tess.”

  “Please don't,” Deck said.

  “My point,” she said again, because apparently she hadn't yet made it, “is that there's a world of options between one night and, you know, the illusion of forever. Shades of gray,” she told him. “We could go into this believing that we're going to just be together until we're not together anymore. It doesn't have to be the beginning and the end, Deck. It doesn't have to be perfection. It could just be what it is.”

  He didn't say anything, he didn't move—because he was trying to find the words to tell her that, whatever this was, it felt big, and that scared him. Although now it scared him even more to think that it might not feel as big to her.

  “Your turn to talk,” she said. “I mean, I could keep babbling if you want, but I'd rather know what you think. About that.”

  “I think,” he said slowly, “that we've covered it all. We could live, I could die—I'm not going to let you die. That's not an option. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm not in love with Sophia, and if I never see Emily again it would be too soon. I'm over-caffeinated, my arm hurts, my back stings, I'm pretty sure I smell bad, and all I can think about is how much I want to kiss you. Probably because I know damn well that if I do kiss you, we're not going to stop there. And I am going to kiss you, I'm definitely going to kiss you and yeah, that scares me—a lot—because I've never wanted anyone as much as I want you. Right now. Right here. To hell with right or wrong. To hell with everything except me and you. What do you think? About that?”

  Tracy stared at him, her eyes wide, for several long, silent seconds. But then she stood up. In three long strides, she was locking the door. As she turned to face him, she said, “I think, Game on.”

  Decker kissed her.

  Tracy didn't see him move, but somehow he was around his desk— maybe he'd gone up and over the top—and he'd slammed himself against her and was, God, yes, kissing her.

  It was crazy and breathtaking—like a dream that suddenly went from her weeding her garden in the placid late-summer sunlight, to full-power, heart-pounding, gonna-come-any-second-now intercourse.

  Except they still had their clothes on—and God, she wanted them off.

  But she loved kissing this man too much to stop. He kissed her as if he owned her, as if he would never, ever let her go. She loved the feel of him, too, so solid—both his chest, which she was plastered against, and his back, which she'd wrapped her arms around because being plastered against him wasn't enough. She wanted to be even closer.

  His hands weren't gentle as he touched her, as he tried to pull her closer, too, as he pushed the solidness of his thigh between her legs as if he wanted to crawl inside of her.

  She wanted that, too. Desperately.

  Condom. She wanted to stop kissing him just for the nanoseconds necessary to tell him that she'd pocketed some condoms from the equipment locker—they were allegedly used to protect the more sensitive weapon muzzles from rain and water—and yet at the same time, she didn't want to stop kissing him.

  Her desire to not stop won out—until she realized he had her shirt half off. She stopped kissing him then, to help him pull it over her head, and while she was doing that, he unfastened her bra.

  “Shh,” he said, “shhh!” and she realized that she was laughing, but she couldn't stop. She was giddy and she tried to unfasten both her pants and his at the same time, but gave up when he kissed her again, his hand on her breast, hot and so possessive.

  He hiked her up so that she was sitting on his desk, and she pulled free from his mouth in alarm—but she didn't knock anything off, which was good, because Lindsey and Lopez would've come running at the clatter. She realized then, as he pushed her back, as he yanked her jeans down her legs, that she hadn't knocked anything off his desk because he'd cleared it completely, probably while she'd been sleeping.

  He'd shaved, too, Tracy realized with a jolt.

  This wasn't some spur-of-the moment, impetuous decision he'd made as the result of fatigue and caffeine and hormones gone awry. He'd cleared off his desk and he'd shaved—he'd planned to be right here, right now— because he'd made up his mind that this was what he wanted.

  She was what he wanted.

  Tracy grabbed for the back pocket of her jeans just in time, just before they were out of her reach—and pulled free the foil-wrapped accordion line of condoms that she'd snagged from the closet for exactly this purpose.

  But Decker had gotten some of his own—and he'd not only managed to unfasten his pants while he'd undressed her, but he was almost done covering himself, too.

  For several seconds, time seemed to hang as she looked at him, as he gazed back at her as she lay there, naked and sprawled across his desk, propped up on her elbows, hair wild around her shoulders, legs spread as she waited for him.

  He still had most of his clothes on, but he took off his shirt, since it got in the way, leaving him bare-chested with his jeans unzipped.

  The devil in her made her stop him before he took that last step toward her. “Wait,” she said. “This is a big deal for me. I mean, you're not green.”

  It took him a second to understand what she meant, but by then she'd reached between them and taken hold of him—holy God, he put George to shame—both wrapping her fingers around the whole wonderful, solid, living length of him, and rubbing him against her because even though she'd told him to do just that, she couldn't wait.

  He was laughing now, too—she was the one telling him to “Shh!” as she pushed him just a little bit inside of her—and it felt so good—using him as she used George, to touch herself in … exactly … the right… place.

  “Tracy,” he breathed, his eyes hot, his mouth still wet from those long, deep kisses they'd just shared, and although he grabbed her wrist, he didn't pull her hand away from him, so she didn't stop what she was doing.

  “I just want to …” Her voice came out sounding breathless as she pushed him even farther inside of her.

  He wasn't laughing anymore as he said, “Honey, I gotta …”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said as he reached for her, his hands hot on her bare skin even as she locked her legs around his waist. He claimed her mouth again—the man could kiss—as he pulled her hips toward him and filled her with him—with all of him.

  “Hunh,” he exhaled, as she said, “Ohh,” even as she pushed him deeper, still deeper.

  She loved the way he was hol
ding her, loved the way he was kissing her, his talented tongue filling her mouth, and she really loved the way he was moving, with her, against her, driving himself inside of her, as if he could not and would never get enough of her.

  She came much too soon, exploding as she clenched her teeth around the sounds she wanted to make as she tried to be quiet. It was just as good, because I love you, God, I love you, was back there, in her throat, and if they'd been in her bedroom or even in her kitchen—she wanted to do this again, on her kitchen table; and okay, to be honest she wanted to do this on every table on the entire planet—she could well have said it, sung it, screamed it aloud.

  Instead she swallowed the words as she felt him, too, buck and rock against her as he came and came and please, God, let it be the greatest sex ever in his entire life so that he wouldn't…

  Run.

  Screaming.

  Tracy couldn't help herself, she started to cry, because there was no way that this man, this incredible, amazing, wonderful, brilliant, funny, sexy-as-hell man could ever, in a million years, love someone as average as she was.

  “Hey,” he breathed in her ear. He was breathing hard and she could feel his arms, his entire body shaking as he held her there, still held her close, their bodies still joined. “Where'd you go?”

  “I'm right here,” she whispered back.

  “I didn't hurt you, did I?” He was actually worried—he pulled back to look at her, to look into her eyes. Which, of course, meant that he saw that she was crying.

  She made herself laugh, willing her tears to dry up as she wiped her eyes. “I'm just…” She shook her head as she pushed slightly against him, which made him pull back, pull away, pull out.

  Leaving her feeling cold and vulnerable. And a little too naked.

  “Seriously,” he said as she slipped off his desk and began searching for her underwear. It took him far less time to discard the condom and fasten his pants. “You're going to stop with the honesty?” he continued. “You're going to stop saying exactly what you're thinking, now?”