STILL TUESDAY

Someone was following him.

Years of working for the CIA had definitely made Dave paranoid, but there was no doubt about it.

Someone was following him.

At this late hour of the night, the top floor of the vast hospital parking garage was deserted—except for Dave and the person who was following him—and he was glad he’d suggested Sophia wait in the lobby. Seeing her father again had been hard enough—no need to add to the misery by having to schlep to the car through the relentlessly chilly New England rain.

Still, the father-daughter reunion had gone well. Sophia had been gracious in her acceptance of the old man’s tearful apologies. She’d even gone so far as to grant him forgiveness, of sorts. And her father had actually started breathing more easily. Sophia had seemed to feel some relief, too and—

Dave heard the footsteps again and glanced over his shoulder, half hoping it was Sophia’s Aunt Maureen, but knowing, just from the sound of the footfalls, that it was someone much bigger than she was.

And it was, indeed, someone much bigger—than Dave even.

Male, Caucasian, mid-thirties, 250 pounds, about six-six. Gang tatts—teardrops on his face, but faded—as well as inked letters on both of his hands, between his knuckles and the first joints of his fingers. Dave wasn’t close enough to read what they spelled out.

He kept moving—his rental car was just ahead in the far corner of the lot, alone save for a dark blue pickup truck right next to it. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone as he glanced back at the big man again.

Shaved head, pale eyes—it was hard to tell their color in the low-wattage fluorescent streetlights—pierced eyebrow and nose, mangina beneath his lower lip.

Leather jacket slick with rain, jeans, biker boots.

He hadn’t increased his pace at Dave’s double-take, but he also hadn’t angled off toward the only other cluster of cars. He just kept moving, parallel to Dave now—closer to the two vehicles. It was entirely possible that the blue truck was his, and that coincidence had brought them into the parking garage at this exact same moment in time.

Judging a man from his appearance was neither nice nor PC, but before Dave could comment on the weather—hell of a night for a trip to the hospital, at which point the big man would proudly announce that his wife had just had a baby girl, their first child—he heard the unmistakable metal swish of a switchblade knife being unsheathed.

He looked again, and sure enough, the dim light glinted off a nasty-looking blade held with a distinctly non-amateurish grip in the behemoth’s extra-large hand.

Running for his car was not an option—knife-guy was planted neatly between it and Dave.

So Dave stopped, too. He stood there, in the rain, and said, “Are you sure you want to do this?” as he took out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. “Because I’ve already had a difficult day—after a bitch of a week—and this is not going to make it any better.”

The big man smiled, exposing a gold tooth, like he was some kind of villain from a James Bond movie.

“Seriously,” Dave said, “I know I don’t look like much, but I’m former CIA. Plus, I just called for help and... Yes,” he said into the phone to the emergency operator. “David Malkoff, formerly with the CIA? I’m on the top floor of the Fruit Street garage at Mass General, with a thug with a knife. Police backup would be nice—ASAP.” He closed and pocketed his phone, then directly addressed the man. “If you start running now, I won’t come after you.”

The man’s response was to feint forward, then swipe from the left, which sent Dave dancing back, untouched, landing in a defensive crouch as he put it into plain language even an ogre such as this one could understand. “Don’t fuck with me.”

Another swipe, and Dave timed it, turning and throwing his entire body into a roundhouse kick that knocked the knife from the fellow’s colossal hand. It clattered and skittered across the tarmac as Dave scrambled—not very gracefully but so what, there were no judges here giving them points—to put himself between the giant man and the blade.

And yet the goliath was still between Davy and his rental car, which sucked since he’d left his slingshot back in San Diego. And then it sucked even more, when the last little bit of him that wasn’t yet wet got soaked as the skies opened up and the rain came down even harder.

Cssshhhht. The sound was almost hidden by the rush of the falling rain.

“Oh, come on,” Dave said, as he saw that, yes, his attacker had opened another switchblade. “This is where you run away.”

The man finally spoke. “Not yet.”

“It should be obvious that I’m not giving up my wallet,” Dave pointed out.

“I don’t want you to,” the man said, his voice a lilting Irish brogue, a surprisingly musical tenor for such a monster. “Come, man, defend yourself.” He smiled, revealing another flash of that tooth. “Or not.”

He rushed Dave then, and it was like facing down a freight train that was barreling down a mountain. There was no point in trying to pick up that other knife—Irish’s arms were much longer.

But a charge of this sort had no finesse, so Dave stood his ground until the last split second, waiting to see, from the way Irish tensed his wide shoulders, which way that knife was going to go. And again, Dave kicked into it, and again it went sailing, but then Irish crashed into him, which wasn’t as painful as it would have been had the knife been in the man’s hand, but was still quite the body slam.

They hit the ground with Dave already bringing his elbow up, hard, into Irish’s ugly-ass face. He heard the crunch of a broken nose even as the bigger man wrapped one huge arm around him, pinning him, too, with a leg like a tree trunk, keeping him from rolling and scrambling away.

It was then, even as Dave scraped and ground the heel of his shoe down the front of Irish’s leg, even as he went for the bastard’s eyes, that he felt the piercing cold in his side. Cold and hot at the same time, and he froze for a split second, knowing his mistake had been in letting the big man get too close.

“A man who carries two probably carries three,” Irish breathed in Dave’s ear, then drew his third blade out. “Give my best to Santucci.”

Santucci? Who the fuck was that?

But Jesus, now it hurt.

It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t hot, it was just brain-explodingly painful, and Dave knew he had to move or he was going to get sliced to shreds, so he hammered back again with his elbow as he grabbed for the monster’s balls, but the man rolled, pulling his lower body away, which freed up Dave’s legs, so he kicked and he scrambled and he bit and he flailed, and he turned his head and saw the crazy glint of light reflecting off that first switchblade knife that he’d knocked out of Irish’s hand.

Dave reached for it, rolled toward it, his fingers closing around the handle even as he pushed himself to his hands and knees.

It was only then, gasping for air, wet hair in his face, blood pouring from his side onto the rain-soaked tarmac, that Dave realized Irish was gone.

He heard the sound of approaching police sirens—no doubt it was they that had saved his life—as he grabbed again for his cell phone and dialed Sophia’s number.

He dragged himself toward the rental car—ready to lock himself in, in case Irish decided to come back—as Sophia picked up.

“Hey,” she said. She sounded fine—thank you, Almighty Father. “What’s taking so long?”

“Are you all right?” he gasped.

Her voice changed, turning crisp, efficient. “Yes. What’s going—”

“Stay where you are,” he ordered her. “In the lobby. Is there a security guard?”

“By the door to the ER,” Sophia reported. “Yes. Dave, what’s—”

“Stay with the guard,” Dave told her. “I’m okay, but I was attacked in the parking lot—”

“Oh, my God, Dave!”

“I’m all right,” he said again. “Stay with the guard—I’m going to come to you. The police are on the scene.” He had to shout over the sirens. “They’re going to bring me into the ER. Meet me there.”

He shut his phone, hanging up before she could argue.

And then, thank God, the police were there, a woman in uniform drawing her sidearm as she scrambled out of the cruiser that had squealed to a stop closest to him. “Hands where I can see ’em! Drop the weapon!”

Dave pushed himself back onto his knees, leaving the knife on the ground as he held out his empty left hand.

“Both hands!”

He pulled his right hand from his side—it was covered with a ridiculous amount of his blood, like some kind of horror-movie special effect.

“Jesus!”

“My name is Dave Malkoff,” he told her. “I made the 9-1-1 call. I’m former CIA. I was attacked by a man with a knife—that’s his knife. I’ve been wounded.” Obvious, but sometimes in duress, people needed help getting past their initial shock. “I could use an ambulance.”

“I need an ambulance!” the female cop shouted.

“We need one over here, too,” someone shouted back, and Dave turned to see another uniform—had to be a rookie; the kid was maybe twenty—on the other side of his rental car. “Oh, fuck,” the rookie said, then scrambled away.

Dave could hear the unmistakable sound of vomiting, as the female cop said again, even more horror in her voice, “Jesus!”

He held his side as he pulled himself forward, so he could see around the car and...

Dear God.

The female cop shouted something that seemed to be directed at him, her words a dissonant blur.

Dave didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He had no idea what the answer was. He was suddenly dizzy—maybe from the spinning blue lights atop the police cars or the loss of blood—and try as he might to stanch the flow, he couldn’t keep it from slipping out between his fingers.

The female cop’s weapon was up again, almost in his face, waving in his peripheral vision as she shouted at him, “Is this the man who attacked you?”

The question finally penetrated, and Dave looked up from the grisly sight of a man with his throat slit, lying in a puddle of blood, half underneath his rental car.

It wasn’t the big Irish man, but what the hell...?

“No,” Dave tried to tell the cop. “No...”

The dead man was Barney Delarow, a fellow CIA agent, a real sonuvabitch who’d led the murder investigation against Dave, all those years ago, back when Kathy-slash-Anise’s body had been pulled out of the Seine, just outside of Paris.

“Dave! Dave!”

He turned to see Sophia, running toward him across the parking lot, another woman beside her, and he tried to stand up, to show her he was okay, that he could walk into the ER for the stitches he was going to need, but somehow the driveway smacked him in the face, and he realized he’d fallen.

She was beside him then, on her knees in the rain and the blood. “Help me!” she was shouting. “He needs to get over to the hospital now!”

And then he was being lifted, but he had to tell her, he had to make sure she knew. “I didn’t kill him, Soph. That’s not the man—”

“Hang on,” she told him, tears or maybe it was just rain running down her face. “Dave, damnit, don’t you leave me!”

Oh, shit, did she really think...?

“Never,” he tried to tell her, reaching for her through the darkness that was trying to swallow him, and connecting with her hand. Somehow he couldn’t quite squeeze it. “Never...”

“You have to put his underwear back,” Tracy told Decker as he set his bag down on Tess and Jimmy’s living room floor, as she forced herself not to burst into tears. Jimmy Nash was alive. He had to be alive, otherwise Deck wouldn’t have come back in here.

She had a million questions—what was going on, was someone after Nash and if they were, were they after Tess, too?—but she focused on the problem at hand. “If I noticed that you took some of his things,” she told Decker, “someone else could, too.”

“I didn’t take any of his underwear,” he countered quietly. “I just moved it a little. And the T-shirts... Tess could wear them. You know, to bed?”

What, was he crazy?

“You’ve been trying to make people believe there’s something going on between the two of you,” she pointed out. “And yes, it’s bound to be incredibly complicated—your guilt, her guilt. But do you really think that she’s going to ask her new lover to bring her some of her old lover’s—her dead lover’s—T-shirts so she can wear them? To bed, no less, where she could presumably occasionally bump into you?”

He shook his head, but it wasn’t in response to her question. It was more of a rejection of this entire conversation.

So Tracy pushed on. “You know I’m right. Buy him new ones,” she told Deck. “Buy him new everything. And we really do need to box up all of his stuff and get it out of here. Because if I were one of the people you wanted to convince that he’s dead...? I’d be wondering why you haven’t done that yet. But I’d stop wondering if you delivered those boxes to Goodwill. Give his clothes away—don’t put ’em in storage, okay? If his life is in danger—and it must be if you’ve gone to all this trouble—just give it all away.”

Decker swore under his breath.

“I know it’s a big expense,” Tracy started, but he stopped her.

“No,” he said, “that’s not... You are one of the people we wanted to convince that he’s dead. And if you figured it out...”

She had to turn away, because his words stung. She took the opportunity to pick up the bag and carry it back into the bedroom. Some of the operatives at Troubleshooters believed her to be less-than in the brain department—she was well aware of that—but she hadn’t thought that Decker was among them. He’d never talked down to her, or treated her with anything other than respect.

“I figured it out because I live upstairs,” she reminded him as he followed her, as he watched her set the bag on the bed. She unzipped it and took out the T-shirts that he’d put in there. There were a half dozen of them, and she made sure she got them all. “Because I guessed. Because I hoped. And because I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Decker countered, as she put the entire pile neatly back into the drawer.

“Didn’t you?” she asked, glancing up at him.

He was standing there, still watching her, arms crossed, feet about shoulder-width apart. He wasn’t a big man, but he was extremely solid—a fact he usually tried to hide by wearing clothes that were not only drab and dull but just a smidgen too large. Today he was dressed in faded blue jeans, with an olive-drab T-shirt that was more form-fitting than usual, since it was hidden beneath a white, brown, and green plaid summer button-down shirt that looked like something Ben Affleck might’ve worn back when he was making Good Will Hunting—before he’d won an Oscar and had money to spend on clothing.

It was kind of funny. There were quite a few very handsome men working at TS Inc., and anyone who didn’t know Lawrence Decker probably wouldn’t have included him in that subset. But they’d have been wrong.

The fact of the matter was that the man worked it—hard—to be nondescript. He tried to blend in with his nothing-special brown hair and his seemingly average light brown eyes that were, in truth, a fascinating mix of green, blue, and brown. Tracy even suspected that he refrained from smiling too often, because his smile was a killer and took him instantly over into the hottie pile.

“You’re an extremely intelligent receptionist,” he told her now in his accentless, average-guy voice. “The key word there being receptionist.” He swore again as he looked at his wristwatch. “Damn it.”

“If you have somewhere to be,” Tracy told him, “we can talk more about this tomorrow. I’ll help you with the shopping. And I’ll get this stuff packed up. Lindsey can help—”

“No,” Deck cut her off. “Lindsey can’t know.”

Which meant Lindsey Jenkins, one of Troubleshooters’ best kick-ass operatives and a former detective with the LAPD, didn’t already know. Which made Tracy feel a little better. Less odd woman out.

She nodded as she went through the rest of the items in the bag. The only other troubling piece of clothing was a sweatshirt that had to be Jimmy’s. She removed it. “Understood. I won’t tell her.”

Deck was still shaking his head as she rezipped the bag. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is too important.”

“Okay then,” she said, finding the right shelf in the closet for the sweatshirt. She raised her voice so he could hear her. “I’ll do the packing by myself. Tomorrow, after work.” But as she came back out of the closet, she saw that Decker’s head-shaking hadn’t stopped.

He just stood there as he looked at her with a full boatload of chagrin in his eyes. “Honey, I’m really sorry, but you’re not going in to work tomorrow.”

“Excuse me?” Tracy stared at him.

Decker didn’t repeat himself. He was obviously aware that she both had heard him and knew precisely what he’d meant. “It’s best if you call Tom from your home phone or your cell—don’t use this line.”

“And my excuse is what?” Tracy couldn’t believe this. “I’m suddenly sick? Like, Hello, Tom, even though I was perfectly fine when I left work this evening, I seem to have come down with... with... West Nile Virus?”

Decker shook his head yet again. It was getting old. “More like you’re taking a vacation with a new boyfriend.”

“With no notice?” She was horrified, and made an are you insane, Napoleon Dynamite-worthy sound. “I would never do that. Not even for... Johnny Depp.”

“Most of the staff is on vacation or taking lost time,” Decker pointed out. “There’s not going to be much to do over the next few weeks. It’s last-minute, yeah, but it’s good timing. Tom’ll agree.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Decker sighed. “Then you apologize and tender your resignation.”

“What?”

“I know, and I’m sorry—”

“Sorry?” she said. “You’re sorry that because you don’t trust me to keep my mouth shut, I’m going to lose my job?”

“It’s not that simple,” Decker told her. “Think about it. If you were me, would you let you walk around, knowing what you now know?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, heavy on the sarcasm. “Because you know me. I can’t keep a secret to save my life. Plus, I’m none too bright. You never know, it might just come flying out of my mouth at any given moment.”

“That’s not what I think,” he told her quietly.

“Isn’t it?” she asked. “And what exactly does it mean—you’re not going to let me walk around? Am I under arrest? Are you going to, like, lock me up? Word of warning: I don’t do well locked in basements. Or closets. Although I’ve never actually been locked in a closet, so on that one, I’m just guessing.”

Decker was shaking his head again, his eyes dark with understanding. “We’ve got a safe house,” he said. “You’ll stay there for the duration. It’s comfortable—”

“Stay,” she said. “Involuntarily, though, right? Like, if I want to, say, go to the mall—”

“Pack a bathing suit—there’s both an indoor and outdoor pool.”

“With a half-naked cabana boy named Rico?” Tracy shot back at him. “Serving drinks with little umbrellas? With enough daiquiris and exotic... dancing from Rico, ditzy, shallow Tracy won’t remember that not only is she in jail, but she’s lost her job....”

He was trying not to smile, which was infuriating. “If you lose your job, I’ll make sure you get it back when this is over and done.”

“And when, exactly, is that going to be?” Tracy asked, arms crossed. He’d mentioned the duration.

“I don’t know,” Deck admitted with that same point-blank honesty that she’d always admired. It wasn’t quite so charming tonight.

“Will you also pay my rent and utilities until that as-yet-undetermined time?”

“Yes,” he replied without a hint of hesitation.

She blinked, because okay, that surprised her. “Seriously?”

“Honey, you have my word.”

And there they stood, just gazing at one another.

Tracy had Decker’s word. It was stupid, but his saying that impressed her. Bottom line, she liked this man. She admired him, very much—even when he’d hurt her feelings and pissed her off.

And then he went and did a double-Decker by voluntarily bringing up the volatile topic she’d tossed out a few moments ago with her locked-in-the-basement comment. “I understand that the idea of having your freedom restricted is a frightening one for you, because you’ve been locked up against your will,” he told her quietly. “But the safe house is huge—you’ll have your own private suite of rooms. There’s a chef’s kitchen, a home theater with an extensive collection of DVDs—”

“I’m a reader,” she informed him. “A voracious one.”

“We’ll make sure you have all the books you want,” he promised. “You can relax by the pool and read. And if it gets too restrictive for you, we’ll figure something out. I’ll get you to the mall. I won’t be able to do it often, but... No one’s locking you in the basement, okay? Never again. Not as long as I’m alive.”

And okay, when he said things like that? As if they were absolute? Not as long as I’m alive. It was hard not to get a little gooey inside.

“Let’s go to your place and make that phone call,” Deck said, grabbing the duffel bag by the handles, “and pack your bag.”

Wait a minute. Tracy trailed after him, into the living room. “Why not just tell Tom the truth—that I know about Jimmy and I’m going with you to... wherever this safe house is.”

“He doesn’t know,” Decker told her, the fact of which floored her.

She had to repeat it, because it seemed so unlikely. “Tom Paoletti doesn’t know.”

“Nope,” Decker said. “Sam and Alyssa do—but only because they’re part of the security team guarding... you know.”

Tracy did know. Guarding Jimmy Nash. Whatever was going on, Deck was spooked enough to not want to say his name aloud, even in a surveillance-free zone.

“Tess knows, obviously,” he continued. “Jules Cassidy, from the FBI. And his, um, husband Robin? But only because he’s providing the cover for the house. Me, and now you. That’s pretty much it.”

Tracy stared at him. Even more astonishing than the fact that she was going to be sharing a safe house with movie star Robin Chadwick Cassidy was the fact that so few people knew that Jimmy was alive. And she hadn’t missed the fact that Dave and Sophia weren’t on that list. Sophia—whom Tracy had been certain was just going to show up at work, one of these days, married to Decker. Like, they were going to leave the office—separately—some Friday night, and return happy and together on Monday, after a weekend spent risking their lives and thwarting some dangerous terrorist.

But Tracy had stopped being so certain of that when Jimmy had died.

Everything had changed after it became obvious that Decker was applying for Jimmy’s old position in Tess’s life. Except that was just another brick in the wall of his attempt to convince the world that Jimmy was dead.

And like most of the world, Sophia had believed Decker. And she was now playing house with Dave Malkoff.

Which really had to stink for Deck—despite his joy over Jimmy’s not being dead.

“For the record,” Deck told her now, “you’re the only person who figured out what was really going on, so... I’m pretty sure that makes you the opposite of an idiot.”

“I have no idea what’s really going on,” Tracy admitted. “Just that Jimmy is—”

“Don’t say it,” Deck stopped her. “When we get to the house, we’ll fill you in on the details of the situation. You can help with support. In between the books-by-the-pool thing. If you want.”

Tracy shut her mouth, which had dropped open when he said the word support. “I want.”

“Good,” he said. “And please don’t take this personally, but until we get to the safe house? I’m going to be glued to your side.”

Dave was in some kind of serious trouble.

He was still under from the anesthesia he’d been given while the doctors cleaned out and stitched up the knife wound in his side, but when he awoke, there were going to be a slew of questions.

Dear God, the sight of all that blood...

It had sent Sophia hurtling back, to Dimitri’s death, to the violence that had violated their lives and left her a widow.

There’d been so much blood that day, too. It had caked beneath her fingernails and stained her clothes, and she’d sat, numb and shaking, then as now.

Back then, she’d been powerless, helpless—much as the men in the dark suits were trying to make her feel tonight.

But she wasn’t helpless—not anymore—and she stood up, digging in her purse for her cell phone. A big sign was posted on the wall of the hospital waiting area, saying NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED, but to hell with that.

She needed to make this call.

Because just as she was no longer helpless, Dave hadn’t suffered Dimitri’s fate. His injury had been messy, but far from fatal. Fortunately, there had been no internal damage done by that knife, and his condition, post-stitches, had quickly gone from stable to solidly good.

They were keeping him in the hospital overnight, but really only because his stitches were being called “surgery,” and the facility had rules about what constituted an inpatient or an outpatient procedure. The nurse had told her they’d want to keep him in, too, for observation because of the loss of blood. It didn’t warrant a transfusion, but they were giving him fluids—and painkillers—intravenously.

Dave was, the nurses had all told her, an incredibly lucky man. A fraction of an inch in any direction...

But he was going to be fine. Which was unbelievably good news.

On the other hand, the guards at Dave’s hospital room door, the crowd of dark suits waiting to question him further about the dead man in the parking lot, and the seemingly fact-conflicting answers he’d given to their questions when he’d briefly roused in the ER...

That wasn’t so good.

Sophia sought control over her hands, forcing them to stop shaking so that she could dial her phone. She had the private cell number of Jules Cassidy, who worked—high level—at the FBI’s Boston office. He wasn’t so much her friend as a friend of many of the other operators at Troubleshooters.

It rang and rang, but he finally answered, thank God. “Cassidy.” His voice was thick from sleep.

“This is Sophia Ghaffari, from Troubleshooters? I’m so sorry to wake you, sir,” she said. “But it’s rather urgent.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Who is this...?”

“Sophia—” she started.

He finished with her. “Ghaffari, right. Sorry. Of course. I’m having one of these nights where the phone rings every twenty minutes, and each time I wake up with fewer brain cells firing. It’s okay, sweetie, go back to sleep,” he soothed someone in the room with him, no doubt his husband, Robin. “Just let me...” It was clear he was moving, closing a door behind him. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m over at Mass General,” she told him. “Here in Boston. With Dave Malkoff. He was attacked in the parking lot by a man with a knife.” Her voice shook. “He was stabbed.”

“Is he all right?” Jules asked, the warmth of his concern palpable, even through the somewhat shaky cell phone connection.

“He lost a lot of blood, but he’s... Yes,” Sophia told him. “He’s going to be fine.”

“Has he ID’d the perp?” Jules asked. “And, wait a minute. Did you say he was stabbed in the hospital parking lot?”

“We were visiting my father,” Sophia said. “He’s dying and...”

“I’m so sorry,” Jules said. “And... This isn’t meant to be funny, even though it’s going to come out sounding like a sick joke, but... Your father’s not some Tony Soprano type, is he?”

“No,” Sophia said, laughing despite her worry, despite the tears that kept forming in her eyes. “Not a chance.”

“FYI, muggings outside of hospitals aren’t uncommon,” Jules pointed out. “There’ve been cases of addicts trolling emergency room parking lots, hoping to score an OxyContin prescription off some poor schlub who broke his ankle.”

“That’s not what this was,” Sophia said.

“Are you worried for Dave’s safety?” Jules asked. “Because I can call and have a guard put on him—”

“He’s got plenty of guards,” Sophia said. “But they’re the other kind. The kind who are there to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere. And to keep me out. They won’t let me sit with him. I’m in the waiting room.”

“Okay,” Jules said. “I’m just going to shut up now and let you tell me what’s going on.”

She took a deep breath, exhaled hard. “Dave says he was attacked by a big man—a skinhead—who ran away when the police arrived. But there was another man at the scene, and I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible he was a CIA operative. A very dead CIA operative. His throat was cut.”

“Oh, crap,” Jules said.

“Yeah. Whoever the dead man is, I’m pretty sure Dave knew him, but he swears he didn’t know he was there until the police found the body. Regardless of that? The dead man was neither big nor bald. I’m also pretty sure there were two knives found—but Dave said his attacker had three. One of the knives was in Dave’s hand when the police arrived, the other was on the pavement by the dead man. They’re testing them for prints and blood—you know, DNA.”

Jules was silent for a moment, then said, “This incident. It’s out of the blue? I mean, from your point of view? Dave hadn’t mentioned an old friend or, I don’t know, an old... enemy?”

“No,” Sophia told him.

“Any secretive phone calls?”

“Not that I noticed,” she said. “No.”

“Mysterious trips?”

“We both travel for work,” she answered, although a small warning bell chimed in the back of her mind. She still didn’t know where Dave had gone just a few days ago, while she was in Denver. She’d assumed it was work-related, but he’d said something about taking several additional days off to come here, to Boston. It hadn’t struck her as odd—additional days—until now.

“What?” Jules asked, perceptive as always.

“No,” she said. “Nothing. We just... In our business, we don’t talk about our assignments. Not outside the security of the office.” But they did talk about it in the office. Dave had known she was going to Denver to close a deal with a new client. But he hadn’t told her about any impending trip. Which, of course, didn’t mean something hadn’t come up while she was away.

Still, with a dead CIA agent in the hospital parking lot, Sophia had to wonder.

She put conviction into her voice. “This is completely out of the blue. I mean, come on. This is Dave we’re talking about.”

To her own ears, she didn’t sound completely convinced, but Jules chuckled.

“I hear you. And okay. I’m going to look into this, see what I can find out.”

“He’s not supposed to regain consciousness until morning, but...”

“This is Dave we’re talking about,” Jules finished for her. “Check.”

“Can you...” Sophia hated to ask, but she wanted in, to Dave’s room. “Please, will you come down here, to the hospital, and throw your weight around?”

“Sweetie, I would if I could, but I’m in California. Robin’s doing a movie out here and... Even if I could break away from my current... situation, it would be tomorrow night—at best—before I could get to you.”

Sophia couldn’t help it. She started to cry, pulling the phone away from her mouth so that Jules wouldn’t hear her.

Somehow he knew anyway. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” he told her. “I’m going to call Yashi. Joe Hirabayashi, okay? He’s one of my best agents—a really great guy. He’ll make sure that, whatever happens, Dave isn’t shipped off to Guantánamo, all right?”

Dear God, she hadn’t even thought of that.

“That was a joke,” Jules said.

“Was it?”

“Yeah, okay, not really,” he admitted. “Let me go and call Yashi. He’ll participate in any further questioning, make sure it’s all kosher.”

“Thank you.”

A nurse came hurrying down the hall, glancing into the waiting area where Sophia was pacing. “Are you Sophia Ghaffari?” she called.

“Excuse me,” Sophia told Jules as she called back to the nurse, “I am.”

“Mr. Malkoff’s awake,” the nurse reported, “and he’s asking for you. He’s extremely agitated—we’re afraid he’s going to hurt himself.”

Sophia was already running. “Please, hurry,” she told Jules as she hung up her phone.

The world was a blur of pain and color and sound, and through the confusion and chaos, Dave was certain of only one thing.

Sophia wasn’t there.

And the only conceivable reason he could come up with for why she wasn’t sitting at his bedside, was that something terrible had happened to her while he was getting stitched up. That whoever was giving orders to the giant Irish skinhead had attacked again, this time going for her.

So Dave ignored the team of suits, most of whom drew their sidearms and shouted at him not to move as he pulled the IV needle out of his arm and swung himself over the metal rail on the side of the hospital bed.

The time for talking was over. He’d tried that, tried shouting, too, but it hadn’t given him what he’d wanted—the reassurance, with his own bleary eyes, that Sophia was alive and in one piece.

He could feel a breeze in a place where breezes didn’t often blow—no doubt because he was wearing one of those ridiculous hospital gowns and his ass was hanging out.

“Ask me if I give a shit,” he said to a nurse, who was backing away from him, her hands out and down, as if she were trying to calm a wild animal.

“Dave! Dear God!”

It was Sophia, thank the Lord. She pushed her way into the room, past the suits and the guns, glaring at them in outrage and disbelief.

“What are you, going to shoot a wounded man? Get those weapons out of here!” She turned toward Dave and added, just as disapprovingly, “Are you out of your mind?”

“I thought...” With his anger and fear dissipated, with their numbing properties drastically diminished, his world had turned into a rather large ball of pain. “Maybe you... needed me.”

“Help me get him back into bed,” she commanded someone—the nurse—who appeared and took his right arm as Sophia took his left.

She was there, she was real, she was warm, she was solid.

And that was his blood staining her shirt and pants.

A second nurse lowered the railing—it was much easier getting in and out that way—and Dave settled back into the hospital bed, where it didn’t hurt quite so much. “I’m so sorry,” he told Sophia.

“Shhh,” she said, her eyes filled with tears. She held tightly to his hand and brushed his hair back, out of his face, as the nurse checked his wound, rehooked him to his IV bag, and added a second bag to the cocktail. “I’m sorry that I let them kick me out.”

“What happened?” Dave asked. “Was that really Barney Delarow—”

“Excuse me, Ms. Ghaffari,” one of the suits stepped forward to say, “I’m going to have to insist that you leave. Until you’ve given your statement to the authorities...”

His voice trailed off, because Sophia had turned to look up at him, giving him her full attention—which often resulted in grown men being struck dumb. Even with blood on her clothes, hair bedraggled from the rain, she was angelic. “And you are...?” she asked.

He cleared his throat—not once, not twice, but three times. “Special Agent Bill Connell. I’m in charge of this investigation.”

Dave focused his eyes, and... yup, it was Connell, with his florid complexion and hard-drinker’s vein-riddled nose. Bill was nearly as big of an asshole as Barney Delarow had been. Wasn’t this just swell?

“Good,” Sophia said, “then I’ll give my statement to you, right here and now. It’s pretty simple. Dave and I flew to Boston to see my father, who’s in this hospital, in the cancer ward. We came in late, and likewise, it was late when we were finally ready to leave the hospital to go to our hotel. It was also raining, so Dave went to get the car. I waited in the lobby, which is where I was when he called me on my cell phone. He made certain I was okay, and then told me he’d been attacked in the parking garage.”

Whatever was in that new IV bag was making him even more woozy, so Dave used his right hand—the one that Sophia wasn’t tightly holding—and pulled the little tube under the hospital blanket. He folded it in half, effectively stopping the drip, even as he forced himself to focus.

“He told me to stay with the security guard,” Sophia continued, turning to look at Dave, “which I did, since she went into the garage herself, to assist the police as they arrived on the scene. Dave was trying to get to his feet when I got there, but his injury was severe and he fell. He seemed to recognize the dead man, whose throat had been slit, and who was lying partly under our car.” Her voice didn’t shake or wobble but her words became slightly more precise, and Dave cursed himself for putting her through this. “Dave insisted—quite emphatically—that this was not the man who’d attacked him. He said that his attacker had been large, with a shaved head. Dave also insisted that he was unaware of the dead man’s presence until the police brought it to his attention.

“Because Dave was bleeding heavily,” she continued, “I was, at this point, focusing on getting him onto a stretcher and over to the ER. You now know everything I know, Special Agent Connell. Although surely there’s footage from a security camera.”

“Conveniently, there’s not,” Connell said. “Camera went out of order a few hours earlier. That’s something you know how to do, isn’t it, Malkoff?”

“As does nearly everyone in this room,” Sophia countered.

“Except we weren’t on the premises earlier,” he pointed out, looking from Sophia to Dave, looking at their hands, which were tightly clasped together. “You work with Malkoff at Troubleshooters Incorporated?”

“That’s correct,” Sophia told him. “But he’s also my fiancé.”

What? Dave looked at her, but she squeezed his hand and shot him her don’t argue look, disguised behind a sweet smile.

“Really,” Connell said on a laugh that was a mix of amusement and disbelief. “Malkoff, you old dog, you. What is it with you and obscenely beautiful women? You must be hung like a horse.” He turned to Sophia. “He tell you he has a habit of killing his fiancées?”

Color had already been rising in Sophia’s cheeks over that horse comment, but now her demeanor turned positively icy. “If you’re referring to Anise Turiano, yes, he’s told me about her. About how she found out he worked for the CIA and tried to sell him to the highest bidder. About how he nearly died, thanks to her betrayal.”

“He tell you that her body was pulled out of a river, wrapped in plastic?” Connell asked. “Which was nice, since it preserved some of the forensic evidence. His DNA was all over her, inside and out—”

“I was cleared of those charges,” Dave interrupted. “Sophia knows that, yes.”

“She know that Turiano’s throat was slit?” Connell asked him. “Much as Barney Delarow’s was tonight? Or how about the fact that your semen was found in Turiano’s body, with forensic evidence indicating ejaculation occurred after she was dead?”

Oh, shit.

“Yeah,” Dave said, giving Sophia an apologetic smile, although it probably came out more like a wince. She was moving her thumb across the back of his hand—just the slightest of caresses. It was both soothing and reassuring. “That didn’t come up, because, you know—and you do know, Bill—that it was verified, through extensive testing, that the minute amounts of my... DNA found inside the body contained chemicals—spermicides and traces of latex—indicating that sperm had been taken from a used condom and—”

“That’s right,” Connell said. “I forgot. According to your statement, you and your first fiancée always used condoms. Mr. Careful.”

Sophia’s thumb stilled, and as Dave met her eyes he knew instantly what she was thinking.

One of the few things that he had told Sophia about his brief but tumultuous love affair with Kathy-slash-Anise was that the woman had given him an STD. Which implied that there had been at least some unprotected sexual contact.

Connell just kept on flapping his mouth. “Your story was that you didn’t murder Anise Turiano and then fuck her dead body in a homicidal rage, but rather that you were framed. Right.”

Dave shook his head as he looked at Sophia in silent apology.

But the CIA agent wasn’t done. “Dave passed a lie detector test,” Connell continued, speaking to Sophia now, “and since no one’s ever bullshitted their way past one of those before... Case closed.”

“It was closed,” Dave said quietly, just wanting the asshole to leave the room, so he could talk to Sophia. Try to explain. “So if you’re done—”

“Interestingly,” Connell said, “Barney Delarow kept the Turiano file active on his computer. He accessed it just this morning.”

Okay, so that wasn’t good news.

“You know anything about that?” Connell probed.

Wearily, Dave shook his head. “I haven’t seen Barney in years.”

“Phone contact?” Connell asked. “ E-mail?”

“None,” Dave said.

“That’s easy enough to verify,” Connell pointed out.

“Yes,” Dave said. “I’m very aware of that and I’ll say it again: I’ve had zero contact with Barney Delarow since I left the CIA. And I’m sorry, but shouldn’t you take advantage of the fact that I’m relatively alert by getting my description of the man who knifed me—and probably killed Delarow, too? Maybe bring in a police sketch artist, get a picture for a BOLO?”

But Connell had turned to Sophia. “Whose idea was it to come to Boston yesterday?”

“My Aunt Maureen’s,” she told him flatly. “My father took a turn for the worse, we got a call Sunday morning, so we came. I came. Dave came with me.”

“I’ll bet he did,” Connell said with a smirk. “I bet he comes with you a lot.”

And that was it. Dave was done. He sat up, ripping pain in his side be damned. “Get out of my room,” he spat. “Your superior will be hearing from me about your disrespectful—”

“Relax,” Connell said. “It was a joke. She doesn’t mind—”

“She minds,” Sophia said curtly, even as she tried to push Dave back. “Nurse!”

One of the nurses came bustling back in, frowning at the IV bags, which, of course, weren’t dripping as they were supposed to. Dave let go of the tube just before she pulled back the blanket to check both it and his stitches. But she wasn’t fooled. “You’re going to be one of those patients, aren’t you, Mr. Malkoff?”

“Soph, you got a pen and paper?” Dave asked, and she released his hand to search through her purse.

“Go,” she said a moment later, clicking her pen open.

“White, male, six-six, two-fifty, gold tooth, Irish accent, although that could’ve been faked,” he told her even as he felt the sedative or painkiller or whatever they’d given him slipping through his veins. “He mentioned a name. Santucci. Give my best to Santucci. I don’t know a Santucci, do you?”

She shook her head, and he went on to describe the man completely as she wrote it all down, even as he felt his eyes start to roll back in his head.

He could hear her then, speaking to someone—no doubt Connell. “FBI agent Joe Hirabayashi from the Boston office will be here at any moment. I’ll give this information to him, since it’s clear you’re not really interested in a true investigation.”

Connell: “It doesn’t alarm you, even a little bit, that Anise Turiano’s killer was never found?”

“No, it doesn’t. She apparently had dealings with a number of dangerous people—”

“Including David Malkoff.”

“I’ll thank you to get out of this room. Dave’s asleep and can’t answer your accusations—”

“And you don’t worry—”

“If you have any additional questions for me”—Sophia’s voice was sharp—“you can ask them after Mr. Hirabayashi has arrived.”

“Ma’am, I’m not the bad guy here.”

“Yeah?” Sophia laughed her disdain. “Coulda fooled me.”

Another voice then, the nurse, insistent: “The patient needs his rest.”

There was the sound of a door closing, and then Sophia was back, her hand gentle on Dave’s forehead, her fingers interlacing with his. She leaned over him and kissed him, and he breathed in the sweetness of her perfume.

He wasn’t asleep, not yet—there was a reason he’d fought to stay awake. There was something he still had to tell her. But it took such effort to move his mouth and he couldn’t squeeze her hand no matter how hard he tried.

“Soph,” he breathed, and forced his eyes open.

Her face was right there, above him—beautiful and surprised.

“Oral,” he said. “Sex.”

He could see her confusion, and he knew she didn’t understand.

“Didn’t... kill her. Wanted to.”

“Shhh,” she said. “It’s okay. Go to sleep. I’ll be right here.”

“Would have,” he told her. “Didn’t.”

“It’s okay,” she said again, and Dave surrendered to the darkness, hoping that she was right, but knowing that they were in for a very bumpy ride.