Dark of Night (48 page)

She'd brought him another cup of coffee, and as she came forward to set it on his desk, he reached out and, with a touch of a single button on his keyboard, he wiped his computer screen clean.

“Thank you, sir,” he said into his phone, nodding his thanks for the coffee. “I'll have Commander Paoletti give you a call as soon as… Yes, sir. I will, sir.” The phone rattled as he tossed it back into its cradle and he exhaled hard, running both of his hands down his face. “I don't know how Tommy does this. He calls in favors all the time. It's like walking a tightrope—how much ass-kissing is too much, because you don't want to do that, but God forbid you don't pucker up enough.”

“Well, I think it's relative,” Tracy said as she sat in one of the chairs positioned in front of his desk. “Whose ass it is you're kissing? I mean, it makes sense that, same way there are some asses that you want to kiss completely non-figuratively, there're also bound to be some people for whom you can pony up the right amount of respect and figurative smooches, so that it's not really ass-kissing, per se.”

He laughed. “I must be tired, because that just made sense.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Damn straight it made sense. I was serious.”

“The people whose asses I want to kiss,” he told her, “both figuratively and literally, are few and far between.”

Zing. There it was, that electric current between them, as Decker told her very clearly, with his eyes and with the implication in his silence, that Tracy was on his short list.

That silence stretched on, so she filled it. “Do you always watch porn when you talk on the phone?”

“Porn.” He was surprised, and he laughed again as he realized she was referring to his screen wipe. “No, honey, that wasn't porn.”

“I know,” she said. “I just like making you smile.”

It was clear that he didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything. He did, however, look at the door—as if he wished she'd shut it. Or maybe as if he wished she hadn't come in.

“There's not a lot to smile about right now,” he finally said.

“Was that Nash's list you were looking at?” Tracy asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm sorry, but you can't see it.”

“I wasn't asking to,” she said. “I was just… Are you … all right?”

Decker nodded. “Thank you for asking,” he said. “But yes, I'm fine.” She thought he was going to leave it there, but to her surprise, he didn't. “I've been living in this … crazy world a long time. There's not much out there that can still shock me. Besides, I knew a lot of this—I'd figured most of it out. I mean, Jim would disappear for a few days. Or even longer. Then I'd watch the news on TV, and … Two plus two is usually four.”

“Still,” she said. “It must be strange to have it all verified.”

He smiled at that. “What's strange is seeing it in print. You live in this world for long enough, and you stop leaving a paper trail—for anything. And here's this lengthy document with all this information that…. I keep wanting to hit delete.” He shook his head. “You should've seen me after my first in-country assignment for Troubleshooters. I'm supposed to write up an expense report, right? Only I've shredded all my receipts. I went on autopilot and … Tommy paid me back, on faith.” He changed the subject. “How's your arm?”

“It's fine,” she said. “How's yours?”

“Fine.”

“I've got the weirdest buzzing in my ears.”

He nodded. “Residual ringing from the blast,” he said. “Plus fatigue. It's been a long day. You should …” He stopped himself from saying it, and laughed.

So she said it for him. But first she reached behind her and pushed the door shut. It closed with a very loud click.

“I should take a break,” she said. “You should, too. Wanna get naked? Or should we just sit and talk, and then both go entertain ourselves individually, in our respective bathrooms?”

This time, when he laughed, the weariness on his face dissolved. The heat in his eyes also softened into amusement and a different kind of warmth. “You do say exactly what you're thinking, don't you.”

“What's wrong with that?” she asked.

Decker shook his head. “Absolutely nothing.”

“I didn't always,” she told him. “Say what I mean. I know you think self-help books are stupid, but I've learned a lot from them, like, how do
you expect someone to know what you want if you talk in code? Like it's up to them to go and find a secret decoder ring?”

“I don't think
all
self-help books are stupid,” he said.

“I started to listen to some of the things I said to people—mostly men,” Tracy told him, “and I know I sometimes—often—take ten minutes to say something I could say in four seconds, and I'm working on that, too. But I noticed that I'm pretty good at communicating, except when it comes to things that are really important, and then I screw it up because I don't come right out and say what I want. So in case I haven't made it clear yet? I want you. Not just to have sex with, although for the sake of full disclosure, I will, without hesitation, choose sex in any position imaginable over playing gin rummy right now. Although gin rummy would be fun for those times when I wear you out.”

She truly did love making him laugh. But she loved it even more when he surrendered and let himself look at her with that smoldering fire in his eyes.

“Please note I'm keeping your desk between us,” Tracy continued. “I've sensed a certain … volatile element when we're in close proximity. And yet…” She reached out her hand, sliding it across the cluttered surface of his desk. “I can't seem … to stop myself from …”

Holding her gaze, he reached out and interlaced her fingers with his. But then he looked down at their hands on his desk, and he turned her arm over, so he could examine the cuts and scratches she'd gotten from trying to break into Jo Heissman's kitchen.

“I'm so sorry about this,” he murmured as he brushed his thumb gently across her wrist.

“I'm not,” she said. “I was trying to save you. It was silly, I know, but… I'd do it again, in a heartbeat.”

And there they sat, just holding hands, as Decker's fatigue once again hardened his face into an expression that was oddly part wistful and part grim.

His hand was warm and large, with big, blunt fingers that were tough and callused. He was holding on to her only loosely, and she ran her own fingers between his and across his broad palm, loving the contact, as innocent and sweet as it was. It wasn't hard to imagine, though, what it would be like for him to touch her in far less innocent places with those big hands.

He sighed, and Tracy knew he was trying to figure out what to say, and how to say it, so she reluctantly let him go. He didn't try to hold on to her, which wasn't a surprise.

She sat back in her chair and just looked at him as he sighed for a second time. So she said it for him.

“I know that you can't do this,” she told him quietly. “Not here, not like this. I know it's so far outside of your comfort zone that… I wouldn't do that to you, Deck. I'm just teasing when I …” She shook her head. “It's just another game. You know, pretending that we might actually get busy in here.”

He nodded. “I can't,” he said. “I'm only halfway through Nash's list and—”

“I know,” she told him. “And it really is okay.” She forced a smile, tried to lighten what she was saying. “It was very motivating, though. It will continue to be motivating. Let's figure out who we're up against, take them out as quickly as humanly possible—and then have dinner. At my place. Without the dinner. Unless you want to lick it from my naked body. Because that would totally work for me.”

Decker laughed. He closed his eyes and shook his head, and when he looked at her, it was—again—with that soul-melting heat. “You're hurting me,” he said.

“Honey”—she purposely used his standard term of endearment for any and all women—“it cuts both ways. And please note that when I said I understood and that it was okay? I didn't say I'd stop teasing you,” she told him. “But only when the door's closed and no one else can hear.” She stood up to open it, but first leaned slightly across his desk and lowered her voice. “Do let me know, though, if your comfort zone starts … expanding.”

He laughed again, and she couldn't help herself. She reached out and lightly touched his face, her fingers sliding against the smooth warmth of his skin, then rasping against his growth of beard. “This is outrageously sexy,” she said as she caressed his chin, “but for that dinner thing… ? I think I'll make you shave.”

Decker laughed again, but he was definitely sounding choked— which was nice—as she turned and opened the door.

And got back to business. “We should meet with Lindsey,” she told him briskly. A glance at the clock on Deck's desk told her that they'd taken
that full ten minutes—it just hadn't been as satisfying as she'd imagined, back when she'd first confused the pretending with reality. Back before she hadn't given much thought to exactly how noisy it would get inside of Decker's head if they actually
did
have sex, here in his office. “We need to coordinate who's arriving where, when.” She stuck her head into the hall and raised her voice. “Hey, Linds? You got a sec?”

“Hey, where've you been?”

As Dave sat down on the edge of the bed, Sophia pushed her hair back out of her face.

“ Surreal-land,” he said as he looked at her. The light was on in the bathroom, the door open a crack. Nobody was supposed to look good in fluorescent light, but Sophia did. She looked soft and warm and still half-asleep. “I'm kinda still there.”

She thought he was still freaked out by the news of her pregnancy. “I'm sorry that I blindsided you—”

“No,” Dave said. “Soph, this is… I just got off the phone with James Nash.”

Sophia looked at him and as he looked back at her, she woke up. She sat up. “What? How?”

He told her, all of it, the whole long story that Nash has given him over the phone, and she cried, and okay, he even cried a little, too. But then he told her that Nash, Alyssa, Jules Cassidy, and Decker all believed that the knife attack and subsequent framing of Dave for Barney Delarow's murder had nothing to do with Anise Turiano, and everything to do with Nash.

“It was a test,” Dave said, “to see if I knew whether Nash was really dead or still alive. The apparent thought being that if I knew Nash was alive, I would've contacted him after being attacked. Santucci, by the way? Nash's name before he became Nash.”

“Oh, my God,” Sophia breathed.

“Nash said he wanted to tell me,” Dave told her, “right from the start, but…” He cleared his throat and said it. “Decker wanted distance. From me. And you.”

She nodded and, unable to hold his gaze, looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. “Please, can we not have a fight about Decker right now?”

“He's at the Troubleshooters office,” Dave told her. “He wants us to come there. He says we'll be safer, and I agree. We should pack up and go. As soon as Tom gets back, if you're up for it.” Their boss had gone to make sure his family was safe. After he brought Kelly and Charlie to the office, he would be back to help Ken escort Dave and Sophia over there.

“Are you up for it?” she asked. “Did you sleep? Because I know you're not going to sleep once you get to the office.”

“I'm fine,” he said, and stood up to get his things from the bathroom.

But Sophia stopped him with a hand on his arm. “We probably won't have a chance to talk after we get over there, and I know I said some things before that hurt you—”

“You don't have to explain,” he said.

“But I do—”

“No,” he said, gently shaking her free and turning on the light on the bedside table. His cell phone was there, plugged into the base of the lamp, and he unplugged it and slipped it into his pocket. “I know I said that I'd change, that I'd be whoever, whatever you want me to be, but that's insane. And stupid. You know me. You
know
me. I'm the same man I've always been. And you either want me or you don't. You either love me or you don't. I can't make you love me—”

“But you did,” she said. She'd followed him to the edge of the bed, and knelt there, pillow in her lap. “Somehow, you did. That night in Sacramento, I told myself I was having sex with a friend. A dear friend, who loved me. That was what I wanted. To be loved. But then you kissed me, and … God, Dave. And I thought, okay, maybe it was just because I hadn't had sex in a long time, and I pretended for a while that it was just about that—the sex. And I convinced myself that you were exactly what I needed because you were safe, because you would never, ever leave me— and even if you did, it would be okay because I didn't love you the same way I loved Dimitri.”

Dave stood there, wishing he were sitting down, unwilling to press his hand against his side because then she'd know he was hurting, as he waited for her to finish. God, he was too tired and in too much pain to cry.

“I know this,” he said quietly, “I know. I don't expect you to love me the way you loved Dimitri. Or even Decker. I would never assume that you—”

“But I do,” she said. “You're not listening to me. I
do
love you. I love
you
more
than I ever loved Dimitri, more than I ever loved Decker, because I wasn't friends with either of them, Dave. Not the way I am with you.”

He struggled to understand—as well as to stay standing.

“You're my best friend,” Sophia told him, and he focused on her face, on that gracefully shaped mouth that he loved to see curving up into a smile, “and you're my lover—you're my everything, including the father of my child. You're my
life,
Dave. And when I saw you in that parking lot, and you were bleeding and I thought that I might lose you, it scared me to death. Because I wasn't supposed to care. I wasn't supposed to love you that much.” The tears that she'd been fighting escaped, flowing down her face, as she whispered, “But I do. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I
do.”

“Wow,” Dave heard himself say, as if from a million miles away. “This is a really, really good dream.”

And the world went black.

Tracy slept on Decker's couch.

He'd turned off the overhead light when she'd first dozed off, then spread a blanket over her when she went into a deeper REM cycle.