Dark of Night (18 page)

And turned to Dave. “That was Joe Hirabayashi, from the FBI. He wants us to come to the morgue, so you can identify the man who stabbed you last night.”

“The morgue,” Dave repeated, shifting to sit on the flight of stairs they'd just come down. People generally didn't go to the morgue to appear in a police lineup.

Sophia nodded. “The man from last night? Bald, tattoos, leather jacket, biker boots, gold tooth? He was found a few hours ago, in some park—someplace called the Fenway—with a bullet in his head. Blood splatters on his clothing are a match both for you and Barney Delarow. Your story pans out—you're no longer a suspect.”

And that was why the guards had vanished from his door. That bastard Bill Connell had pulled them and left—without having the decency to inform Dave that he was in the clear.

Sophia sat down next to him on the stairs, and she looked so exhausted, he swallowed the words he was about to say:
So … About that Anise Turiano thing. Do you believe me now?

“How about we take the elevator back upstairs,” she said, “so you can sign all the papers you need to sign to be officially released. I'll go get the car, pick you up out front, and we can go to the morgue and do … whatever needs to be done.”

Dave nodded. “Identifying the skinhead would be a nice step toward finding out who tried to frame me.”

Sophia nodded, too, but then asked, “Why would someone want to frame you?”

“That's definitely the question of the hour. If we find out
who, why
might come for free, like a two-fer.”

She laughed, but it was weary. “You said he mentioned a name— Santucci.”

“Give my best to Santucci,”
Dave repeated.

“How can you give your best to someone you don't know?”

“I don't know.” But whoever Santucci was, Dave was going to find him. Or her. He sighed. “Come on,” he said, tugging at her hand. “You
slept in a chair—after talking to your father for the first time in decades. Let's ID the perp, then go someplace where you can get some rest.”

“I just want to go home.” But she didn't move. In fact, she leaned her head against Dave's shoulder and sighed. “Seeing my father again was nothing,” she told him quietly. “Not compared to seeing you in that parking lot, and thinking …” She drew in a deep breath, and when he turned to look at her, she had tears in her eyes. “When I saw all that blood …”

“Hey,” he said, pulling her chin up so he could kiss her. Her lips were so sweet, so soft. “Come on. You should know better. I'm harder to kill than that.”

She nodded, forcing a smile. “I sometimes forget that you are,” she admitted. “It's just that you're Dave. You're … Dave.”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “I'm not sure what you mean by that but… I gotta agree. Although these days I'm calling myself Lucky Dave.”

Her smile became more real as she held his gaze, but then it faded. She touched him, her fingers almost cold against his face. “I didn't
not
believe you, you know.”

Which wasn't the same thing as her believing him.

“We're both tired,” Dave said. “Let's just get going. Maybe Yashi'll have more information when we get to the morgue.”

The trip to the safe house was going to have to wait.

Tracy knew that wasn't the only reason Decker was antsy as they sat in his truck, in the quiet parking lot of the medical complex that housed Dr. Heissman's new office, waiting for her to show up.

Which wasn't going to be too much longer. In Starbucks, the woman had given them her entire day's schedule—for this very purpose, no doubt.

The parking lot at the VA was too busy, too crowded, too vast—not a good place to connect with the doctor. So here they sat, waiting for her to arrive, as the hands of Tracy's watch moved from 3:45 to 3:46.

But Deck had even more things on his mind besides finding out the details behind that
help me
message.

His secure satellite phone had stopped working, which made it difficult to communicate with any of his fellow operatives.

They'd stopped over at the Troubleshooters office, and the place was empty and locked up tight, which had felt strange. Much to Decker's disgust,
there were no replacement sat phones available. Tracy tracked one down—Lindsey Jenkins had it—but she was in a meeting and wouldn't be able to drop it off until later in the day.

It was while they were there, using the secure landline to get in touch with FBI agent Jules Cassidy, that Decker had really had his cage rattled. He'd called Jules to report the weird new Jo Heissman problem, and in the midst of that conversation, he'd found out that last night, while he and Tracy had been having the world's most unsatisfying sleepover, trouble had come to call on the East Coast.

Apparently, Dave Malkoff had gotten into a knife fight outside of the Boston hospital where he and Sophia had gone to visit her ailing father.

And yes, the idea of Dave—uncoronated king of the nerds—in a knife fight was enough to send anyone's incredulometer rocketing sky high. But it was the fact that Sophia had actually met with her horror-show of a father that had made Tracy pause.

Decker, too.

Of course, that wasn't entirely unexpected, since every breath he took was all about Sophia. Every heartbeat murmured her name to him. Every nose whistle, every belch, every fart, and okay, now Tracy was just being mean. But she had to admit to feeling envy for the blonde. Although envy plus mean thoughts equaled jealousy, which was unattractive in a woman of a certain age. As in anyone over eighteen
—months.

And, realistically? While it was fun to flirt and to daydream and to play a muted version
of That Dawg Would So Totally Cut Off His Left Nut to Do Me
with many of the men at Troubleshooters—including Lawrence Decker—the man had been ragingly right last night. Having a fling with someone she worked with would be crazy complicated.

And also, Tracy knew darn well that she didn't fling. She relation-shipped. Upon full penetration, she bypassed logic and reason and went directly to I-Love-You Land. Which was massively stupid—she knew that, too.

These days, though, Tracy was a realist. Or at least she'd started trying harder to be a realist in the wake of her bewildering breakup with Michael-the-Creep, who'd ripped out her heart after she'd just barely gotten it sewn back into her chest. She'd still been vulnerable and emotionally raw following the fiasco with her cheating ex-fiancé Lyle and then that bastard with his Navy SEAL muscles, Irving Zanella. His nickname was
Izzy, but it helped, in getting over him—which had taken far too long, considering it had been only one night—to think of him as
Irving.

So yes, she'd been neither realistic nor smart when she'd gotten involved with all three of those losers. And she definitely hadn't been realistic or smart last night at dinner with Decker, when she'd gone on a fishing expedition, using George as bait.

Hello, extremely attractive, slightly older, and hopefully more mature man sitting at my kitchen table. I've always found you hot. I also haven't had sex in a very,
very
long time, and well… here we both are. I know from my mirror that many men think that I'm both beautiful and sexy. So if you put in just a small amount of effort, I will let you talk your way into my bed tonight.

But Decker apparently was
too
mature—to the point of recognizing what an awful mistake
that
would have been. Or maybe he was simply too in love with Sophia ever to dally, even briefly, with any other woman.

Either that or he was totally gay.

And yes, all right,
that
was Tracy's inner jealous crybaby bubbling forth.

She had plenty of gay friends, and although observation and gaydar could never provide a completely accurate verdict—not like asking “Are you gay?” and getting back an answer, “Yes”—she was virtually certain Decker's orientation was strictly hetero.

Although picturing him naked with, say, Izzy Zanella? It worked for her in a rather odd way.

“You're awfully quiet,” Decker said, interrupting her wayward thoughts.

She laughed as she glanced at him. With his sunglasses on, he was harder than ever to read. Still, she was pretty certain that telling him she was imagining being in the middle of a Zanella-Decker sandwich wouldn't go over well. So instead she switched on the signal jammer and said, “You really need to tell Sophia the truth.”

Of course, he started shaking his head the moment Sophia's name crossed her lips.

They'd picked up the jammer when they'd stopped in at the TS office. If anyone was trying to listen in with long-distance microphones, it would screw with the signal, but make it appear to the listener as if the problem was radio interference from passing trucks or taxis.

It wasn't as creative or colorful—both figuratively and actually—as taping George to the window and flipping on his shower-safe switch. But on the other hand, it wasn't likely to get them arrested, either. And it did allow them to talk freely without fear of being overheard. And over the past few hours, Decker had filled her in, completely, on the situation with Jimmy Nash.

Well, probably not
completely.

But Tracy knew there was a plan afoot to make the bad guys who tried to kill Jimmy—whoever they were—believe that the FBI had opened an investigation to see if Decker and/or Tess weren't somehow connected to potentially criminal activities that Nash had engaged in. It had something to do with a bloodstained shirt and a list of people whom Jimmy had apparently deleted while he'd worked black ops for the Agency.

Tracy hadn't asked exactly what that meant—to
delete—
but really, she hadn't had to.

She chose now to talk of less violent but no less volatile things. Such as Sophia.

“You need to tell her,” she persisted. “You bring this with you”—she pointed to the jammer—“when you pick them up at the airport tonight. You get them into the truck and … You tell them both the truth.” That Jimmy was alive.

Decker just shook his head.

“Okay,” Tracy said, shifting so that she was turned more toward him. “Yes. Dave's going to get hurt. It's unavoidable, but—”

“It's not about that,” he said.

“Sure, you can believe, if you want, that—”

“Look, I know you'd rather think that this is about personal feelings, rather than decisions based on strategy and logic—”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Now you're pretending it's
logical,
not to—”

“Honey, why do
you
think Liam Smith was found dead, in a deserted part of a Boston city park?” Decker asked, adding, as if she might not remember who Smith was from their earlier conversation, “The man who attacked Dave last night?”

Tracy paused, thinking about it, while Deck just waited, watching her. “Because he was… an unsavory person,” she guessed. “Who went unsavory places, where he got himself killed in an unsavory way.” Assuming there were savory ways to get oneself killed.

“On the very same night he knifes Dave.” Decker's voice was loaded with skepticism. “Come on, Tracy, use that big brain I
know
you've got. What do we know—from the fact that Smith was shot, point-blank, in the face? The man had a powder burn on his chin.”

“I didn't know that,” she said.

“Well then, I'm telling you now,” he countered. “What does it tell us?”

She wished she could see his eyes, but they were securely covered by those dark glasses. He thought she had a big brain, which was refreshing. Most men combined the word
big
with
boobs
when they referred to her
.
“That… whoever shot him was standing very close to him.” She realized as she spoke the words what
that
meant—and Decker was right. This wasn't that hard to deduce. “That he probably knew whoever shot him— well enough for the shooter to get that close.”

“Good girl,” he said, and she felt an absurd rush of pleasure. It was particularly absurd considering his word choice.

“I'm not a girl,” she felt compelled to point out. “I'm a woman. And it still
could
be a coincidence.”

“Liam Smith was found with his clothing stained with both Dave and Barney Delarow's blood,” Decker told her, a muscle jumping in the side of his jaw, as he no doubt thought about what that had meant to Sophia. If Smith had had Dave's blood on him, Dave must've been bleeding badly. Which couldn't have been a happy sight for Sophia. “He was lying there like the perfect little get-out-of-jail-free card for the police and other investigators to find.”

Tracy struggled to understand. “So you think whoever killed Smith wanted Dave
not
to be charged with Delarow's murder. But… why? After going to all that trouble to frame him?”

He didn't answer. He just waited for her to reach her own conclusion.

She knew Decker thought that the Agency was behind the previous attempts on Jimmy's life. And if the Agency
was
the all-seeing, all-knowing organization they were reputed to be, then they surely knew that Dave had been friends with Decker and Nash. So …

“You think the
Agency
thinks that
Dave knows
whether or not Jimmy's alive.” Tracy kept going, because Decker was nodding. “They hope Dave's… going to … lead them to him?”

He smiled at her. “Correct for two points.”

“Only two?” she said.

“That one wasn't as mind-stretching as figuring out Nash was, you know,” he told her. And she did know—Nash was
still alive.
And Deck was still unable to say it aloud, despite their cone of silence.

“For which I won an all-expenses-paid vacation,” she reminded him. “To the world's most upscale jail. Provided I ever get there.” She returned to where this conversation had started. “So you're using the fact that the Agency is probably watching Dave's every move as an excuse to not tell him and Sophia the truth.”

Decker laughed his exasperation. “Will you please just let that drop?”

“What if the Agency goes after Dave again?” Tracy asked. “Or what if they go after Sophia this time?”

That got her a flash of his eyes over the top of his glasses.