Flashpoint (5 page)

“Everyone’s got to start somewhere,” Decker pointed out.

“Yes. Yes, they do.” Jimmy turned to face his partner, giving him an SOS message with his eyes. Whose side was he on here? “In Kansas City. Or Lincoln, Nebraska. Lincoln’s a great place to start fieldwork. Not Kazbekistan.”

Christ, he was going to pop a vein. He forced himself to take a deep breath. There was no way anyone in their right mind was going to send Tess Bailey and her cute little freckles to K-stan, the country that bore the nickname “the Pit.” As in Shit Pit. As in the putrid stank of the worst side of humanity.

“Tom. May I call you Tom?” Jimmy didn’t wait for Paoletti to give him permission before continuing. “Seriously, Tom, this is a woman who grew up on a farm in Iowa. We’re talking Middle America. Cornfields and blue skies. And she looks it, too. She has no chance of blending in in Kazabek. I mean, she might as well walk off the plane waving an American flag and singing ‘Yankee Doodle.’ I’m telling you, she looks like she stepped out of a Disney movie.”

“I don’t know what Disney movies you’ve been watching,” Decker said, giving Jimmy a smile that was grimly amused. “But I disagree.” He turned to Paoletti. “I think Tess Bailey would do just fine. Like Nash said, she’s smart and resourceful. In my opinion, she’s ready for the real world. When did she leave the Agency?”

Jimmy clenched his teeth, squelching a sound of pain. Decker was screwing him. And on purpose, too, if he correctly read the meaning of that smile.

“Just today,” Paoletti reported. “Apparently she got passed over for a field position again. She’s been trying to break out of support for a while.”

“Maybe there’s a good reason she was passed over,” Jimmy pointed out.

Paoletti turned to look at him. “Is there anything specific you know about her that would—”

“Yes,” Decker answered the man before Jimmy could even open his mouth. “The reason she was passed over is that she’s damn good at what she does while sitting at a desk. She’s a hacker, sir. She’s practically hardwired into her computer. It’s poetic, what she can do. She was working as part of a tiger team while she was in college—that’s how she got recruited by the Agency. They were bluffing when they turned her down—I know this for a fact. It’s been the Agency’s experience that most women will settle for support, or even just keep following the rules and applying for fieldwork indefinitely, but apparently she called their bluff and walked. Good for her.”

Paoletti laughed his surprise. “I guess you like her for this slot.”

But Decker wasn’t ready to laugh about this. “Not so much for this particular job, sir. I’m with Nash—I’d rather not bring a woman into K-stan unless there’s no other choice. But you definitely want her as a permanent member of your team.”

Whoa, what was Decker saying? Permanent? Jimmy couldn’t imagine going to K-stan with Tess, let alone working with her on a permanent basis.

Although, wait. Breathe. He himself was only in for this one assignment. He was going to Kazbekistan because he’d told Deck he would. But afterward, he was going to disappear again—this time someplace where Decker wouldn’t find him.

“The Agency’s going to come back to Tess with an offer,” Decker told Paoletti. “And they’re going to do it soon. If you want her—and you do, believe me, sir—you better grab her while you can. Bring her in for an interview—fast.”

A buzzer sounded from the outer office, but Paoletti didn’t move. He just gave Deck a long, measured look. The buzzer sounded again. It was the doorbell. Without a receptionsist out front, the door to the street was kept locked. It sounded a third time before he finally spoke. “Are you involved with this woman, Chief?”

Deck looked surprised and then . . . embarrassed? He glanced at Jimmy before answering. “Did I say something that implied I was—”

“No, you didn’t.” Paoletti cut him off, looking at Jimmy, too, speculation on his face.

Jimmy tried to look only mildly interested—as if this conversation about Tess Bailey wasn’t making him want to squirm in his seat.

“And frankly,” Paoletti added, “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not my business. You just seem to know her rather well, and it reminded me of . . .” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

But it obviously did matter to Deck. “I worked with Tess, sir,” he said, “and I don’t fraternize.”

“This isn’t the Navy,” Paoletti pointed out. “I don’t have any rules about what my people do on their time off. And as far as I’m aware, the Agency didn’t have those kinds of restrictions either.”

“As a rule, sir, I keep intimate relationships separate from work.”

Unlike some asshole whose name just might be Nash. Or mud. The two were apparently synonymous. Decker’s message to Jimmy was loud and clear, even without the pointed look.

The office telephone rang. “Excuse me,” Paoletti said, and picked it up. “Paoletti.”

Jimmy took the opportunity to lean toward Deck. “I’d like to point out that, also as a rule, you never get laid.”

Deck didn’t bother to respond.

“Great,” Paoletti said into the phone. “I’ll be right there to let you in.” He pushed himself to his feet and dropped another bomb, this one of devastating proportions. “Tess Bailey’s out front. Her flight got in early.”

Jimmy didn’t so much as blink. Mentally, he’d jumped out of his seat and run right through the wall into the back parking lot—like Wile E. Coyote used to do on the Road Runner—leaving behind a hole in the shape of a desperately fleeing man. Physically though, he didn’t move an eyelash.

“That fast enough for you, Chief?” Paoletti smiled at Decker.

As the former SEAL CO vanished into the outer office, Decker turned and looked at Jimmy. His eyes were decidedly chilly.

“You didn’t call her after we left the Agency, did you?” Deck guessed correctly, although it was a mystery how he suddenly knew that. Because Jimmy was still not reacting to Tess’s unexpected appearance. Not at all. Nothing, nada, zip. No expression whatsoever. “You didn’t tell her where you were going, you just left town, no word.”

It was pointless to lie. “Yeah.” Crap, how was he going to handle this?

“You are such an asshole.” Deck was going to be no help. He was genuinely pissed at Jimmy.

It didn’t happen often, but when it did—look out.

“Yeah, I know.” He
was
an asshole. Had he really thought he’d simply never run into Tess again? Had he honestly believed it would be that easy?

“You know what I never do?” Deck said flatly. “I never find myself in the awkward situation of having to work with someone I’ve screwed, both literally and figuratively. Jesus, Nash.”

Jimmy could hear Tess’s voice in the outer office—her laughter as she responded to the lower rumble of Paoletti’s voice. Shit.
Shit.
Any second she was going to walk in here and . . .

“You don’t have to worry,” Decker told him. “Not right now, anyway. She’s a professional—she’s going to behave like a professional. It’s later, when she gets you alone—”

Oh, Holy Christ. “Don’t let her get me alone.” Jimmy broke down and begged.

“Fuck you,” Decker said, and actually meant it. He stood up, headed toward the door that led to the outer office. “I’m not just going to
let
it happen, asshole. I’m going to help set it up.”

“No, Deck, listen,” Jimmy said. “You don’t get it. . . .”

But what could he possibly say to make Decker understand when he himself didn’t even fully comprehend the reason he’d run so hard and fast from Tess?

But Decker wasn’t waiting for him to try to explain the inexplicable.

He was already gone.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Decker intercepted Tess and Paoletti before they came into the conference room.

“Hey, Tess,” he said, holding out his hand for her to shake. “How’ve you been?”

She was surprised to see him. Genuinely pleased, too, with a wide smile that was sincere. “Lawrence Decker! I didn’t expect to see you in San Diego.”

She took his breath away, she looked so good. Healthy, with high energy. Happy. As if she hadn’t spent the past two months pining away after Nash. Of course, maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed when he’d left.

Her brown hair was cut short—even shorter than it had been that night she and Nash had saved his ass at that strip club outside of D.C. She was dressed more formally now in a feminine version of a business suit, a crisp white shirt buttoned nearly to her throat. It was a far cry from those half-undone jeans and nothing else, but okay, thinking about that was seriously inappropriate right now. Decker was certain that a perceptive woman could always tell when a man was remembering what she looked like naked.

And Tess was extremely perceptive.

“Yeah,” he said, thinking instead about Nash sitting in that conference room. “We just flew in this morning.”

She picked up on that
we
, and her expression changed. It was subtle—she was good at masking it—but her entire body seemed to tense. So much for hoping that she hadn’t noticed when Nash left.

God damn Nash. Deck promised himself to take the son of a bitch into the sparring ring as soon as possible—and beat the shit out of him, under pretense of physical training.

Of course, Decker would get equally thrashed, but maybe he deserved it, too. He should have said something to Nash three years ago, when Tess first came to work at support. Something like, “Hey, I really like this one.”

And then Nash would’ve kept his hands off of her.

Of course, so would’ve Decker.

Because Nash was right about one thing. Refusing to mix work and sex, and then working 24/7, pretty much meant a total lack of sex.

Decker was going to have to do something about that in the very near future.

Right now he turned to Tom Paoletti. “If you want, Nash and I could step outside for a while, let you talk to Tess privately.”

This was the equivalent of a job interview for her. He tried to imagine doing an interview with Emily in the room. Well, okay, bad example, because on some levels he’d been relieved when she’d moved out of their apartment. But still . . .

“No, let’s keep you part of this,” Commander Paoletti said, leading the way back into the conference room.

Deck watched as Tess braced herself. She took a deep breath, stuck a pleasant smile on her face, and . . .

Nash was on his feet, looking equally casual, hands in his pockets. He greeted Tess with a completely impersonal smile. “Tess Bailey. What a surprise.”

“I bet,” she said. “How are you? How was Mexico?”

As Decker watched, something flickered in her eyes, and he knew she’d just realized that she’d given something vital away.

Nash hadn’t told her he was going to Mexico. Which meant that she’d cared enough to look for him after he’d left.

Deck could see from the way Nash was standing, from his “Oh, uh . . . It was . . . uh, great,” that he’d picked up on that info, too.

He wondered if Nash had taken Tess’s seemingly innocent question one step further and realized that not only had she looked for him, but she was good enough to find him.

And intelligent enough not to pursue him.

“That’s . . . great,” Tess said. “You look like you got some rest. I’m glad.”

She really meant it. She really
was
glad.

Decker couldn’t have loved his partner more if he were his own brother, but never before had he wanted quite so badly to break Nash’s nose.

But then he looked over and realized that Nash knew she meant it, too. And the son of a bitch was actually shaken. Tess and Commander Paoletti probably didn’t notice it, but Decker sure as hell did.

And wasn’t
that
interesting? Nash. Shaken.

They all sat down, and Decker sat back and watched everyone’s body language as Paoletti—as easygoing and relaxed as ever—explained about the earthquake and the missing laptop. Tess—feigning casual comfort and sitting in a position that signaled she was interested in this job and open to all possibilities—asked questions and made comments that let them all know she was completely up to speed on both al-Qaeda and Kazbekistan, and entirely capable of holding her own as a member of the team.

Nash was very, very quiet. Normally never going for long without some comment or joke, he simply sat and listened while Tess answered Paoletti’s inquiries about why she’d left the Agency, about her training, about her background.

He was completely motionless and closed. Legs and arms crossed, shoulders tight. He looked as if he might explode, if someone held a burning match to him.

Tess had plenty of questions for Tom Paoletti, too, about Troubleshooters Incorporated.

“This team you’re building for this assignment in K-stan, is it a permanent grouping of personnel?” she asked. In other words, if she signed on now to work with Decker and Nash, would she be working with Decker and Nash forever and ever, amen?

“No,” Paoletti told her. “Each team will be created from the larger pool of personnel, depending on the needs of the assignment and the preferences of the individual team leader.”

Tess looked at Decker, one eyebrow raised. “And you honestly want me on your team for this assignment?”

Decker shifted in his seat. “Honestly?” he said. “No.”

She blinked at him, then laughed, turning to look questioningly at Tom Paoletti.

But Deck wasn’t done. “No one in this room wants to send a woman to Kazbekistan. But we need a comspesh, and our choice seems to be either you or no comspesh at all.”

Tess nodded, meeting his gaze again. “I appreciate your honesty. As a woman, I’m not particularly happy at the thought of going there. On the other hand, I
am
completely thrilled at the idea of participating in such an important assignment. If we can locate that laptop and gain access to al-Qaeda’s plans . . .” She looked at Paoletti again. “If you’re offering me this job, I accept.”

Nash suddenly spoke up. “What about Mike Giacomo?”

“Gigamike?” Decker laughed. Nash despised Gigamike Giacomo.

“Yeah,” Nash said. “Sure, he’s an idiot, but no more so than freaking David Malkoff. Gig’s a comspesh and he’s male.”

“I don’t want him on my team.” Deck put finality in his voice.

There was silence then. Paoletti had definitely picked up on the tension in the room. But he just sat back, watching.

“There are steps we can take to ensure Tess is as safe as possible,” Decker continued.

“Yeah, except at night, because as an unmarried woman, she can’t sleep in the same room with us.” Nash was done being silent. “Depending on where we’re staying, there’s a chance she might even be housed in a different building than we are—”

Tess cut Nash off. “So I’ll go in as a married woman. Who’ll know that I’m not?”

“That’ll work only if you pretend to be married to one of us,” Decker pointed out. He looked at Paoletti. “But that’s a good idea. If we can get Tess a new passport and papers on short notice . . .”

Paoletti nodded. “I’ll get whatever documents we need.”

“Then one of us can pretend to be her husband and be with her at all times,” Deck said.

“It can’t be Decker,” Nash said to Paoletti, to Tess. “Too many of our contacts in Kazabek think he’s got a K-stani wife back here in the States.”

That was true. In the past, Deck had worked hard to establish an identity, a cover, on his frequent trips to K-stan. He’d created Melisande, his fictional wife, and it had helped him gain acceptance and trust. To show up now with a different “wife” would be the equivalent of tattooing the words “I am an agent of the U.S. Government” on his forehead. Even now, three years after his last visit.

“And it can’t be Dave Malkoff,” Nash continued. “No one in their right mind would believe Tess would marry him. Our cover would be blown before we even got out of the airport.”

Tess cleared her throat and crossed her legs. “I don’t know Dave, so I’m not sure whether you’re insulting me or—”

“Him,” Nash said quickly. “I’m insulting him.”

“Dave
is
lacking in certain social skills,” Decker told her.

“He’s a freak,” Nash said bluntly, going for truth over tact. “And he looks and acts like a total geek.”

“So what?” she argued. “People fall in love and get married for all different reasons. Maybe he’s great in bed. In my experience, just because a guy isn’t
GQ
handsome doesn’t automatically mean he’s not great in bed. And vice versa.”

O-kay. Decker didn’t dare look at Nash.
And vice versa.
He didn’t want to begin to speculate about the subtext of
that
message.

Tess broke the silence. “Well, I sure know how to stop a conversation cold, don’t I? My comment was inappropriate, and I’m sorry, but it really annoys me when people are judged on their appearance.”

“Dave Malkoff is a freak because he’s a freak,” Nash told her in that completely calm voice he used when he was hiding an emotional reaction. “He’s book smart, but if someone didn’t remind him to go home, he’d starve to death in his office. The fact that he looks like a geek is secondary to—”

“It can’t be Dave,” Paoletti interrupted the discussion. “
Or
Murphy. So we might as well get that idea off the table. They’re already en route to Kazabek. They’re out of the loop. They both spent significant time in K-stan before the borders were closed—I have no way of knowing what kind of cover they already have in place. I apologize for not having that information.” He looked at Nash, and he didn’t look entirely happy. “It’ll have to be you.”

Decker was watching Tess. She kept her face carefully blank.

Nash was noticeably silent again, too.

“Is that going to work?” Decker asked them both.

“If Tess is going, in order for her to be safe, it’ll have to work,” Nash said. He even managed to smile. “Won’t it?”

“I can make anything work,” Tess agreed. “Particularly for the short term.”

“Good,” Paoletti, standing up. “Figure out a cover story. Chief, with me in my office. Now.”

Tess sat at the receptionist’s desk in the outer office of Troubleshooters Incorporated, flipping through the packet of information on Kazbekistan that Tom Paoletti had emailed to her, waiting for Jimmy Nash to come out of the bathroom.

She’d already read it twice. And she’d done extra extensive research on the country, downloading info from the State Department and other Web sites for savvy travelers onto her laptop. She’d studied it all on the flight to San Diego.

She couldn’t believe how quickly this had happened. She’d called Tom Paoletti on the rumor that he was looking for people. He’d actually answered his own phone, they’d had a conversation, and she’d faxed over her resume. He’d called her ten minutes later to tell her he had a job he wanted her to consider and that there was a plane ticket waiting for her at Dulles so they could meet face-to-face.

At the time, he hadn’t mentioned Lawrence Decker or Diego “My name’s Jimmy” Nash.

And here came Nash now, his carefully polite smile—more suitable for strangers than people who had been naked together—perfectly in place.

This entire assignment had the potential to be one giant, embarrassing ball of pain. For both of them.

But particularly for her.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” she said point-blank. It seemed a far better route to take than avoidance. Ignoring the anvil that was hurtling down from the sky could only work for a limited time. And she didn’t want him to think she’d followed him here.

Especially since she’d already given away the fact that she’d gone looking for him, at least electronically, by asking about Mexico. Boy, for a Mensa member, she could be a total imbecile. She felt the need to explain that further. “I had no idea you and Decker were leaving the Agency. I was worried when you dropped off the map, so I checked around and found out . . . It wasn’t because I wanted anything else from you.”

“I know,” Nash said. She couldn’t tell if he was lying. “I also know you’ve wanted to go into the field for a long time, so . . .”

“Here I am,” she said.

“Yeah. Here you are.” He sat down across the wide expanse of the desk from her. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”

Tess rolled her eyes. “No, you’re not. You’re sorry that you’re forced to work with me now. You’re sorry you didn’t foresee that possibility. I’m into honesty, Nash, remember?”

“Yeah.” He met her gaze only fleetingly. “I, uh, do remember.” He laughed softly. “God, this is awkward.”

“Why?” she asked, and this time he really looked at her, with wariness and disbelief in his eyes, neither of which he tried to hide from her. “I’m serious,” she added. “Why should this have to be awkward?”

Apparently she’d rendered him speechless.

“I don’t know about you, but I had some really great sex that night,” she told him. “It was incredible. You’re very good in bed. I’m sorry if I implied otherwise when we were talking about Dave Malkoff—you just really pissed me off. And yeah, okay, it’s true, the first time
was
a little quick, but you more than made up for it later—”

“Tess, stop. Look, you have every right to be angry—”

“But I’m not,” she said. “I’m really not. I’m just . . . Yes, okay, I
am
, but not about what you think. I didn’t even realize it until Decker said you were here, until I saw you again.” She closed her eyes, wishing there was an easy way to explain. “I didn’t expect you to call me because we had sex that night, Jimmy. I expected you to call me because, well, I thought we were friends.”

Tess opened her eyes and he was staring at the floor, jaw muscles jumping. When he glanced at her, his eyes were filled with chagrin. If it was an act, it was brilliant.

“Are we really going to be able to do this?” he asked.