Dark of Night (40 page)

Dave nodded. “I'll get one. There's a drugstore across the street.”

“I've been pregnant before,” she reminded him. “The morning sickness
started at about eight weeks then, too. And it's really morning, noon, and night sickness.”

Morning sickness. Holy shit. For some reason, the mention of morning sickness drove home the fact that Sophia was, right this very moment, carrying a little piece of him around inside of her. It seemed so surreal.

“What can I get for you?” he asked her. “How can I make you feel better?”

She shook her head. “You can't, and … I'm fine.”

“Don't pregnant women eat a lot of crackers?” he asked.

She smiled, but it was wan. “Crackers would be good. For later. Right now, I'm … But, thank you.”

And there they sat.

Dave broke the silence. “It was really great sex,” he said. “I feel good about the fact that it was really,
really
great sex. I don't know why I should feel so good about that, but I do.”

Sophia laughed. “You're not going to be one of those guys who parades me around going
look what I did,
are you?” Her laughter faded, and she added, “I mean, depending on whether or not we decide to stay together.”

Ah, yes. That. Also depending upon whether or not Dave survived these next few days or even weeks.

Dear God. He'd been resolute before, but now it was beyond imperative to keep Sophia safe. If he'd been afraid that she was a target as his so-called fiancée, she was now, literally, twice the target.

He took a deep breath. “Please don't take this the wrong way, but it's important that you don't tell anyone about… the baby.”

He felt himself laugh as he said the word, even as he felt a rush of tears to his eyes. Everything he was feeling, including the hurt from finding out that she'd wanted him only because she thought he was normal, i.e.,
boring—
it was all tangled up in a ball of chaos and confusion, with one fact front and center: that there were people out there looking for him, who wanted him to suffer before they ended his life.

And he could not—he
would not
—let them get anywhere near Sophia and their child.

“God, I want this,” he whispered. “So much. But I don't know how—”

Sophia kissed him.

She kissed him the way she always did—with a sweetness that turned almost instantly to fire. Which was probably his fault. He couldn't get
enough of her and could never keep himself from revving it up, instantly, whether they were out in public or in the privacy of a hotel room.

She pulled back, breathless. “Please don't sleep on the couch.”

Dave reached to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, as he continued to fight the urge to cry. “I don't know,” he said. “Lumpy couch versus king-sized bed. Alone versus the woman of my dreams in my arms …” He put his hand on her stomach. “With our baby right here, handily nearby—in case I need to start her in utero calculus classes.”

Sophia laughed. “Calculus. At seven and a half weeks? I don't think she has more than a brain stem yet, although I could be wrong.” She started to cry again. “Dave, I'm so sorry about—”

“Hey, it's all right,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her. His throat felt unnaturally tight. “She'll grow a real brain. Give her time.”

“How can you be so okay with all of this?” she asked.

He sighed. “Because life's not perfect, Soph. You do the best you can with the cards you're dealt. And my hand is pretty freaking great. I've loved you for forever, and now you're having my baby. God, I finally understand that terrible,
terrible
song, because right now I just want to sing it to you. I won't, though, because, you know. Like I said, I love you, and don't want to subject you to that torture.”

She laughed, but it didn't slow her tears.

“There's also a part of me,” Dave continued, “that's too scared to sing. It's that part of me that's trying to figure out how I'm going to protect you— and our incredible, brilliant, beautiful baby. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I am. And I'm sorry if that sounds too James Bond, but it's only temporary, okay? I'm going to take care of this problem, and then I'm going to come back, and I'm going to marry you, and I'm going to retire from Troubleshooters and get a job in an auto repair shop, only fixing dents in left front fenders of Subarus—or something equally boring.”

“Dave, I don't want you to—”

“Shhh,” he told her, silencing her with a kiss. “That's for the future, okay? Right now, let's just show our baby how much her daddy loves her mommy.”

And with that, Dave kissed her again—because when he was kissing Sophia, he allowed himself to believe not only that she loved him, but that everything was going to work out. And that they were going to live, perhaps not happily, but
contentedly
ever after—which absolutely
was
good enough for him.

D
ecker didn't want her to ride with him.

Tracy sat in the backseat of Navy SEAL Jay Lopez's unassuming little hybrid car and tried to be invisible as they followed Decker through a vaguely industrial part of the city, where he was intending to ditch his poor battered truck.

He'd told Lindsey and Lopez that he didn't want to leave it in Sam and Alyssa's garage. It was entirely possible, even though they'd swept the vehicle carefully, that Jo Heissman
had
left behind some kind of tracking device.

It would have to be something cutting-edge, that didn't yet register on standard bug-sweeping equipment. But technology frequently played leap frog. Tracy had learned about that when, as Troubleshooters’ field equipment supervisor, she'd come across a purchase order for new equipment— a mere two weeks after they'd received brand-new state-of-the-art bug sweepers. She'd thought it was an error, and had brought it to the boss's attention. But Tom had explained that, over those scant few weeks, there'd been a technology bump in which their new equipment had become instantly obsolete.

The tech world moved at lightning speed. Someone would invent a new, undetectable tracking device, Tom had explained, and everyone else would work feverishly on a way to detect it. Once they did, it wouldn't be long before someone else invented a newer, undetectable device—and on and on it went.

So, yes, it was not just possible but entirely likely that Dr. Heissman had slipped a tracking device into Deck's truck. How else could they have been followed to the Seaside Heights Motor Lodge?

Except something wasn't right about that. The timing. It seemed wrong. If the bad guys had followed Deck and Tracy to the motel, when exactly did they have time to plant that bomb?

She and Decker had sat in his truck in the parking lot for several minutes, it was true. But she for one hadn't seen any movement in the motel courtyard.

Although, it was possible that whoever planted the bomb had gone around the back. It was possible the bomb could have been planted outside of the building. Surely forensics or explosion experts could tell that sort of thing.

Tracy wished Decker were there so she could ask him about that.

Yeah.
That
was why she wished Decker were there. Right.

Except the backseat of this little car was not designed for people who were more than three and a half feet tall. She was sharing it, too, with a pizza box. Apparently Jay Lopez had been sitting down to dinner when Lindsey had called, looking for backup. The box was, alas, empty. Her stomach growled, and she dug through her handbag for a PowerBar and came up empty-handed.

“Mark's OCONUS again,” Lindsey said from the front seat.

Tracy realized that she wasn't talking to Lopez, who of course, would have already been aware of the fact that Lindsey's SEAL husband was out of the country.

“He was supposed to be back tomorrow,” Lindsey continued, “but… Looks like they're keeping 'em around awhile longer.”

“Iraq?” Tracy asked, focusing on her friend. It was a good way to avoid obsessing over the way Decker hadn't been able to look at her when she'd come—showered and fully dressed—into the garage. He'd given her zero eye contact as he'd briskly announced that she should go with Lindsey and Lopez, and that he was taking his truck.

“Nope. Afghanistan,” Lindsey reported.

“I was hoping you'd say Germany,” Tracy said.

“I wish.” Lindsey sighed. “It's bad over there.”

“He's going to be okay,” Tracy told her friend. “Mark's good at what he does.”

Lindsey shifted in her seat to better face Tracy. “So … You want to tell me what's going on with the bomb at the motel and the back window of Deck's truck shot out?”

Tracy sighed. “I can't. Not without Decker's permission.” And okay. The word made her blush, even though Lindsey and Lopez couldn't possibly know what had gone on in that bathroom before they'd arrived.

Did I say you could talk?
Here in the quiet of Lopez's car it seemed absurd not only that those words had come out of her mouth, but that Decker had been on board enough to obey her.

Holy crap, he was one nicely put together man. No doubt about it, Lawrence Decker was the reason God had invented nakedness. And even though Tracy's experience with living, breathing, in-the-flesh naked men was seriously limited, she'd seen a statue or two in her time, as well as more than a few male bodies on film—that is, if you could call the adult-cable-channel porn Lyle used to watch “film.” Deck put them all to shame, with the kind of hard muscles that a man couldn't get from merely going to the gym.

“Then … you want to tell me what's going on with you and Deck?” Lindsey asked.

“Nothing's going on,” Tracy started to say, but changed it to a simple, “No.” Lindsey, after all, wasn't an idiot. Naked plus naked equaled something, not nothing. “Not in front of Lopez. No offense, Jay.”

“I'm not listening,” he said.

“And you didn't see me naked either, right?” Tracy asked.

“Sorry, no,” he said. “I definitely saw you naked.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I have an appreciation of fine art, and I recognize what an honor it was to be one of a rare few who've been granted a private viewing of one of God's own masterpieces.”

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.”