The alarm signifying a security breach went off, two hours after Tess and Jules had left the safe house, making Jimmy’s pulse kick into overdrive and his vision damn near start to tunnel.

They’d been running drills all morning—working on getting down to the panic room as quickly as possible—and his first thought was that this couldn’t possibly be another exercise.

No, this was it. Jules had sent Jimmy’s shirt to the lab for that DNA test, and the death squad from the Agency believed that he wasn’t dead. The attack on Dave had been the warning shot across his bow, and now they were coming for him.

In a fortress like this, Jimmy’s response should have been a resounding Oh, yeah? Suck my balls, only he currently had no clue where Tess was—or Decker—and that scared the living shit out of him. It sent him, spiraling, back toward the place where he’d spent the past year—alone in an emotional darkness, as he’d tried to convince himself that the only way he could keep his fiancée and friends alive was to keep both the truth and himself far away from them.

It was a bad place to be. He knew it—even as he felt himself slipping, as he found himself thinking the same damning thoughts. This wouldn’t be happening if I just disappeared....

Tess had once laughed as she’d told him how hard it was for her to visit her mother—whom she loved very much—without having at least a tiny part of her turn back into a belligerent thirteen-year-old. It happened, she’d said, upon stepping through the door to her mother’s San Francisco art gallery—which was the only way to get into the apartment upstairs. Why can’t you be like the other moms back in Iowa? Why did you leave Daddy to live like this? A fifty-eight-year-old woman really should stop painting for the forty-five seconds needed to run a comb through her hair, and—oh yeah—maybe put on a bra every now and then...?

It happened, Tess had told Jimmy, regardless of how much she prepared herself in advance of each visit. It happened regardless, too, of how appreciative she now was, as an adult, of the fact that her mother had followed her heart and had insisted upon living a life that was true to herself.

Those old feelings were just ghosts, Tess had said to Jimmy, quite a few months ago. Her voice had been soft and warm in the darkness of their bedroom as they lay together, their bodies still connected after making love. Jimmy was pretty sure she’d been trying to get him to open up and talk about his own mother, which he’d done only superficially. It helped, Tess had gone on to say, to identify those ghost feelings for what they were, and gently push them back into the past. Because they didn’t belong here in the present.

That was definitely what Jimmy was feeling right now. Ghosts from the past, made stronger by this crazy fear that Tess was going to die because of his mistakes. And while he recognized both the fact that he was having these ghost feelings and the fact that the situation had changed, dramatically, between those days of darkness and now, he couldn’t stop himself from running old patterns.

If the Agency was coming for him, then screw it. He was going to give them what they wanted—his undeniable silence through death—and end this bullshit here and now.

But then Sam Starrett rapped on his door. The former SEAL must’ve correctly interpreted the look on Jimmy’s face, because he quickly said, “Just another drill. Once more with feeling, you know?”

The relief made Jimmy light-headed—a fact that Starrett obviously realized, because he came all the way into the room and looped Jimmy’s arm around his shoulders. He had Ash in some kind of front-pack sling thing, and the baby gave Jimmy a happy, if soggy, grin.

“Y’okay?” Sam asked.

And Jimmy nodded through the haze. “I can make it to the chair.”

“Not this time,” the taller man announced, and sure enough, there was no wheelchair waiting for them in the hall. “We’re running the no-available-chair scenario.”

Didn’t it figure? All morning long, Jimmy’d bitched and moaned about having to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed to the panic room. Tess and Sam had actually carried him from his bed to the chair. They’d transferred him into another chair that was designed to carry handicapped people down flights of stairs in emergency situations, took him down those stairs, and then transferred him again to a second regular wheelchair to make the final run along the basement hall. They’d quickly learned how to move efficiently together, as a team.

They were the team, that is. Jimmy was the burden. And a true pain in the balls, because he’d insisted—all morning—that he could make it under his own steam. Even though he damn well knew he could never move as fast as those wheels.

But now Sam was giving him a chance to do the run without the chair, and the prospect seemed daunting. It didn’t help that Tess wasn’t there—if she were, he’d be bluffing his ass off, pretending that this didn’t hurt.

“Ow—Christ!”

If Tess were there, he’d at least try to fool her into believing he wasn’t a complete candy-ass crybaby.

“Think of this as a drill combined with physical therapy,” Sam said, annoyingly cheerful as he all but carried both his son and Jimmy down the hall. “Plus a little distraction to keep your mind offa Tess being gone.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said through gritted teeth. “Nothing like a good torture session to while away the time. Thanks so much.”

Sam laughed, but thankfully didn’t make any other idiotic comments as they attacked the stairs.

If Ash hadn’t been with them, Jimmy would’ve said a heartfelt fuck me on each bone-jarring step down.

It was obvious that Sam knew this because he was chuckling—typical Navy SEAL asshole sense of humor—as he dragged Jimmy the last few feet into the panic room and kicked the door shut behind them.

“We’re secure,” he announced into his headpiece microphone as he helped Jimmy onto a soft leather sofa and sprang Ashton from his parachute-like halter—plopping the kid onto Jimmy’s lap.

“What? No, don’t—”

But Sam had already let go, leaving Jimmy no other option besides holding on to the baby. He was surprisingly heavy, and yet still kind of squishy and soft as he solemnly blinked at Jimmy with eyes that were startlingly blue.

During this morning’s drills, Jules’s husband Robin had had possession of the little boy, keeping Sam’s hands free. But Robin had gone to San Diego with Jules and Tess.

Despite their fear that the Agency was trying to shake Jimmy loose by going after his friends, the movie star was keeping to his schedule. He was going to start filming tomorrow, in the city. One of the many things Jules was doing today was upping Robin’s security on the movie set.

Jimmy knew that the FBI agent wasn’t happy about that. Kind of the way Jimmy hadn’t been happy about Tess leaving the safe house without him. But like she’d said, if Jimmy really were dead, she’d come out of her self-exile to help Dave. Which was why she and Decker were planning to meet Dave and Sophia at the airport.

Crossing the room, Sam went to the array of monitors that displayed clear pictures of every room in the house—huh, there was the bed Jimmy was eager to start sharing again with Tess. Note to self: Block that camera before getting her naked.

As Jimmy watched, Sam used one of his currently baby-free hands to push an intercom button so that they could hear his conversation with Alyssa, who was still upstairs, over the main speakers.

“How’d we do?” Sam asked in his good ol’ boy Texas drawl.

“One minute, thirty-four seconds.” Alyssa came through clear as a bell. Ash burbled, clearly pleased to hear his mother’s voice.

“Not bad for the first time.” Sam was the eternal optimist as he grinned, delighted with his son. “That’s right, Big Guy, that’s your mama.”

Alyssa stayed on topic by laughing her derision. “We’ve got to do significantly better if we want to—”

“We can definitely shave it down,” Sam interrupted the woman who was both his wife, his boss, and the mother of his child. How the hell did he handle that? “And we will.”

Even harder for Jimmy to imagine dealing with was the fact that they’d just locked Alyssa on the wrong side of that panic room door. And Sam had done it without blinking. Of course, this was just a drill....

“Maybe I should sleep down here until Tess gets back,” Jimmy sug-gested, raising his voice to be picked up by Sam’s microphone, so Alyssa could hear him, too.

This may have been a panic room, but it was decked out with comfortable furnishings, a flat-screen TV, and a virtual storeroom of supplies. There was enough food and water in here to survive the end of the world.

Although why anyone would want to do that was beyond him.

Ash was starting to wiggle and, again, it was astonishing how strong the kid was, so Jimmy turned him around so they were both more comfortable, with that sturdy little back warm against his chest. He kept one hand on the kid’s belly, and Ash took hold of one of his fingers with a warrior’s grip.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Alyssa said. “Gentlemen, you’re cleared to release the door. Sam, it’s your turn tonight in the kitchen, I have some paperwork to do.” She paused, and when she spoke again, amusement was in her voice. “Unless you’d rather trade?”

“Nope, I’m good with what I’ve got,” Sam answered. “But thanks for asking, ma’am. Over and out.” He switched off both the speaker and his headset, then opened the door with a hydraulic-sounding swoosh. “She always knows exactly what to say so I don’t complain. At least not in her earshot. I’d rather spend an hour in the pool than cook, but I’d rather hit my thumb with a hammer over and over for a full day than do paperwork, so... Don’t look so scared, Nash—I’m not half-bad in the kitchen. I learned from a master—my Uncle Walt, who spent a few years in Italy during World War Two.”

As he spoke, he went out into the hall, pulled a wheelchair back inside with him, set the brake on it, then deftly lifted Ash from Jimmy’s lap. “Need a hand?” he continued in that same neighborly tone.

“No thanks.” But Jimmy was worn out from the scramble down the stairs, and he did need Sam’s help—one strong hand catching him under his elbow, keeping him from falling back into the chair.

As it was, he landed a little too hard, ringing his pain bell.

He would never say it aloud, not in front of Ashton, but the words fucking wheelchair were probably written all over his face. He hated sitting here, but right now he was glad for it.

And he hated it twice as much because of that.

“You’ll be outta this thing in no time,” Sam reassured him, plopping the baby back in Jimmy’s lap.

He hadn’t fully recovered from that brain-jarring peal of pain, but he knew enough to cling to Ash as Sam swiftly wheeled them both out into the hall.

“Barbecue or lasagna?”

It took Jimmy a moment to realize Sam was asking about dinner. “I don’t care.”

“Then it’s grill time tonight. That way I can cook and swim.”

The elevator was open and waiting for them, and Sam backed the chair inside. He pushed the button for the first floor.

“I’m on two,” Jimmy reminded him.

“I know,” Sam said. “But with Jules and Tess gone, we’re shorthanded. I could use a baby wrangler while I’m making the sauce, so it looks like you got yourself a job. This is real Texas barbecue, by the way—I don’t just open a jar.”

“I’m kind of tired.”

But the elevator door opened off the spacious living room, and Sam pushed him out, wheeling him over to the couch that was closest to the open kitchen area. “It has been quite a day and...” He stopped talking, cleared his throat, and started over. “What say we cut the bullcrap and I just tell you up-front that Jules asked me to talk to you. And frankly? I’d far rather let you go back to your room to mope and drive yourself into a panic over Tess. But I promised Jules, so...” He took Ash off Jimmy’s lap and put the baby on his back, on the couch, penning him in with a pillow. “You don’t have to say a word in response—I didn’t promise I’d force you to talk, too, so if you want, you can just sit here and keep Ashton company while I both cook and talk at you. Deal?”

“Do I have a choice?” Jimmy said, as the SEAL all but lifted him out of the wheelchair.

“Nope.” Starrett helped him onto the sofa, next to Ashton, who was starting to whimper. “He likes to be picked up, so he can see what’s going on. He also likes it when you make faces.”

Faces. Ash was starting to demonstrate his Navy SEAL–worthy lung capacity, so Jimmy reached over and carefully picked up the kid, his hands under both of the baby’s now-flailing arms. The T-shirt thing he was wearing—it fastened with snaps between his pudgy legs—felt... damp?

“Or he could need a change.” Starrett raised his voice to be heard over his son as he plopped a bright blue-and-yellow-striped bag on the couch next to Jimmy. “Go wild.”

Jimmy held the baby up and out. “I’m not changing his diaper.”

“What, you’d rather just sit there like a giant load, while we do all the work?” Sam said cheerfully as he went behind the huge granite-covered island that separated the bulk of the kitchen from the living room. He began getting out a collection of cutting boards, saucepans, and knives. “If it’s anything more toxic than plain old wet, I’ll take over. Otherwise, I’ll talk you through it. There’s a waterproof pad in the side pocket of that bag. Put that down on the couch first. No need to provide Lys with a reason to give us her renting this place doesn’t give us the right to pee on the couch speech. It’s a good one, but I’ve already heard it twice. Even though, considering the rent Robin’s paying, I remain unconvinced that she’s right. You owe the Boy Wonder a huge thank-you, by the way.”

Jimmy didn’t move and Ash’s wailing became halfhearted as he looked over at his father with interest, as Sam serenely got a pile of tomatoes and peppers from the refrigerator and began washing them in the island’s little sink.

“One of the reasons you’re sitting down here instead of up in your bed, like a little whining girl,” he told Jimmy, “is because we got clearance from your doctor to start some strenuous PT. Jules’s been sending your vitals back to the doc, and you finally got his green light.” He pushed the faucet’s handle down and off with his elbow and carried the clean and dripping vegetables to the cutting boards.

“Which means, in case you haven’t figured it out yourself,” he added as he began cutting up the tomatoes, glancing up at Jimmy with a flash of a grin, “that you’re also cleared for other strenuous, non-PT-type activities.”

The man was talking about sex.

Of course, Tess was not only not here, but she was very not happy with him. Just because the doctor gave his green light didn’t mean she was going to do the same.

“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” Sam continued, and he actually did. “It’s not an automatic when you piss off your woman the way you’ve done of late. But picture this: She comes back, tonight or tomorrow—and it will be soon. I know you’re worried about that, but she’s gonna be just fine, and she’ll be here before you know it. So she walks in, and you’re not only up and sitting on the sofa, but you’re hanging with Ash. You go, Hey, I think the baby needs a change, I’m like, Thanks, man, and I stand up, but you’re all, No, I’m right here, Starrett, I got it—let me. And I toss you the diaper bag, and Tess, with her chin on the floor, watches as you expertly change Ashton’s diaper. Now, it’s not hard to do, but you got to start by putting him down on that pad, on his back.”

Shaking his head, Jimmy did just that. It was like flipping a switch, though, because Ashton immediately quieted down.

“Keep one hand on him, so he doesn’t roll off the couch,” Starrett directed. “You need three things from the bag. A fresh diaper, one of those little blanket things, and the wipes. Get ’em all out first, before you take the old diaper off. And then look and see how the diaper he’s wearing is fastened. There’s tape—you see how that works to hold it on?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. Ash was grinning up at him, so he told the kid, “I think your father’s related to Tom Sawyer, and that after this I’m going to be scrubbing the kitchen floor and thanking him for the opportunity.”

“You’re going to peel the tape back and take off the diaper,” Sam instructed. “It’s going to weigh about a ton, so don’t be surprised. As soon as you get it off of him, use the little blanket to cover his package. Otherwise he’s gonna piss in your face. It’s not personal—it’s just a baby-boy thing.”

“It’s not hard to do,” Jimmy repeated Sam’s earlier words, “except he might piss in my face.”

“Wait until Tess sees you do this.” Starrett pointed at him with the gleaming blade of a knife that looked suspiciously like a battle-ready KABAR. “You, my friend, are gonna get laid. Provided you follow through with step two.”

“What? Feed Ash and put him to bed?” Jimmy asked. Man, the used diaper was ridiculously heavy. The baby seemed positively ecstatic with his diaper-free status, and he chortled and flailed, entertained by his own tiny feet, his shiny little butt in the air.

“Better cover—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jimmy said, but he covered the kid only loosely. It seemed a shame to weigh him down again.

“Step two,” Sam lectured, as he continued to chop vegetables, “is all about what you do and say after you and Tess shut the door of your suite.”

“I think I’ve got that part handled, thanks.” Jimmy struggled to open the plastic container of wipes. What the hell was wrong with this thing?

“Yeah but, you’re thinking of step three. You can definitely go from one to three, but it’s two that’s crucial if you really want to make it all work.” He immediately backpedaled. “It’s a crucial truth for my relationship—it may not be true for yours. But, see, we’re both in a unique position, being connected to women who can kick most people’s asses. As much as we might want them to stay out of harm’s way, that’s not in their nature. We love them because they’re in the thick of it—so we’ve got to let them go be in the thick of it.”

He paused as if waiting for Jimmy to respond, but when Jimmy didn’t, he just kept talking.

“Early in my relationship with Alyssa,” Sam continued as Jimmy finally got the container of wipes open and pulled one out, “she went overseas on a bodyguard assignment, and her helo was shot down. I had to sit at home and wait to find out if she’d lived or died. Let me tell you how much that sucked.” He laughed. “When she came back, it was unbelievably hard for me when the time came for her to take another dangerous assignment. So I told her that. I said, This is hard for me. I’m gonna need your help, because it’s always going to be hard, and sometimes I’m gonna screw it up. And I need you to remember, when I do screw it up? That it’s because I’m scared of the things I know are not in your control. It’s not because I don’t have faith in you.”

Jimmy was silent as he wiped off the baby’s belly—which seemed to be the only place Ash was even slightly wet. He looked at the new diaper, which was folded into a smallish square of plastic and God-knows-what.

“This is hard for me and I’m gonna need your help,” Sam repeated. “Those two little sentences can make a world of difference.”

The diaper unfolded into something only slightly more recognizable—with elastic-edged leg-holes and a fairly obvious front and back.

“Other way,” Sam directed. “It’s a boy diaper, so the absorbent part’s in the front.”

Okay, so maybe the front/back thing wasn’t so obvious. And who knew diapers had genders? Jimmy looked at Ash to try to figure out how to do this without picking him up.

Sam again came to the rescue—although not literally, since he stayed back behind that counter. Bastard. “Grab his feet and lift and slip it under his butt.”

The baby laughed as Jimmy did just that. He replaced the piss shield with the front of the diaper and taped it all securely down. Well, hell. That had been easy. Now, what to do with the used diaper?

“Another thing,” Sam said. “Just an FYI. If Tess is anything like Alyssa... If you start the conversation? Trust me, you can’t buy her a better gift than that. It’s what she wants. For you, you know, to affirm the fact that you’re a team. You can also start by telling her something that’s obvious. Tell her you’re afraid that something you’ve done is going to harm her in some way—”

“In some way?” Jimmy had to interrupt. He covered the baby’s tiny ears. “I’m fucking scared to death that those pricks from the Agency are going to reach out and touch me—through her. It’s bad enough that we think they’ve already tapped Dave—”

“Whoa, don’t tell me,” Sam said. “Tell her. And if that’s too hard to start with, then start with something else. Maybe, you know, that new scar she’s got on her hand.”

Jimmy looked up at him sharply.

“That’s a hard one, too, huh?” Sam mused. “But to be honest, it’s all gonna seem hard, so maybe it’s best to start with the things that’re getting between you.”

Jimmy shook his head in disbelief. “What’d I do?” he asked. “Look at it too much while you were carrying me down the stairs today?”

“No,” Sam said. “But I noticed it myself and figured it had to be bugging the hell out of you.”

Tess had a scar on her right hand—both on her palm and on the back. A bullet had gone right through her, but she was unbelievably lucky—there had been minimum damage. It hadn’t broken a single bone. She’d received the injury during the same incident in which Jimmy had nearly been killed.

He’d taken a bullet to the chest and had hit his head when he’d fallen—knocking himself out cold. Tess had been shot, too, but she’d crawled over to him and, trying to defend them both, she’d reached for the weapon he’d dropped—and gotten shot in the hand.

The scar was small, but it was still new and raw-looking. And every time Jimmy saw it—which was every minute of every day when she was with him—he was reminded of the fact that he hadn’t been able to protect her.

And that the enemy they’d been up against then were amateurs compared to the people they were facing now.

Sam was quiet, still chopping tomatoes, just waiting for Jimmy to respond.

“I don’t know what good talking about it is going to do,” Jimmy finally said. “Except make her self-conscious—”

“I’d bet you a year’s salary,” Sam interrupted, “that that scar means something entirely different to Tess than what it means to you. And maybe if you start seeing it—and other things—through her eyes, it won’t hurt so fricking much.”

“Maybe it’s supposed to hurt,” Jimmy said.

“Ah,” Sam said, putting down his knife. “Okay. Yeah. Here we go. It’s supposed to hurt? What’s supposed to hurt? Life?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “Yeah. It’s hard. It’s always so fucking hard.”

“Well, okay then. Do me a favor, will you, and tell Ashton to quit laughing, because life is supposed to hurt and be hard.”

“You’re oversimplifying,” Jimmy argued. “It’s not supposed to hurt for him. He’s a baby, and you’re here, to protect him—”

“Like you’re here to protect Tess?” Sam countered. “And how do we do that, exactly? And by the way, Lys and I agreed that we wouldn’t say four-letter words in front of Ash, so watch your fucking mouth, dickhead. We also won’t raise our voices in anger in front of him. And if one of us gets sick or injured, he’s not going to know about it. Until he’s old enough, we’re going to be careful what he sees on TV and what we talk about in front of him, because as a four-year-old, he shouldn’t have to worry about the fact that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. He’s going to be dealing with the hurts he can handle—bullies on the playground, skinned knees, coping with wanting things that other kids have that we can’t or won’t give him. But you better believe, by the time that boy turns eighteen, we’ll be treating him like an adult, because the rest of the world sure as hell will be treating him that way, too.”

Jimmy attached the snaps that connected the T-shirt thing Ash was wearing, fastening it securely between his pudgy little legs. “You really think I treat Tess like a child.”

“I think that’s part of the problem, yeah. I think you might also want to try some alternative mission statements on for size. I mean, maybe it’s supposed to hurt? How about maybe it’s okay if it feels good. Not just a little good, sometimes, but really good, most of the time. Look at me.” Starrett held out both hands, one of them still holding that deadly-looking knife. “I just got you to change my kid’s diaper, and I know for a fact that before the month is out? You’ll be doing the really ripe ones, too. See, I have faith in you, Jimbo. You’re a very intelligent man, and you’re going to recognize the correlation between action and reaction—as in Tess’s reaction to you changing Ash’s didee. So that happiness is hanging in my very bright future.

“As for right now? As I make this sauce, I’m enjoying a visit with my Uncle Walt, who loved me like the kind of father I’m trying to be to my kids. I might complain about having to cook, but it’s only because I enjoy complaining—and because it makes Alyssa laugh. After this, I’m gonna fire up the grill, and while our dinner cooks—and it’s gonna smell amazing—Ash and I are gonna take a swim in that pool. Then we’re gonna eat. Walt was a genius and dinner will be a religious experience. Count on it. Oh, and sunset’s going to be a gorgeous show tonight—I’m looking forward to that, too. Then it’s bathtime for Ash, then storytime. It’s Lys’s turn to read, and the sound of her voice is... It just washes over you—it’s even better than the barbecue.

“And then? After my beautiful son is finally asleep, I’m going to spend some time alone with my wife, which, appropriately enough, follows the pattern and will be about a million times better than listening to her read aloud. And, yeah, maybe later tonight, while I’m asleep, some of that hurt and ugliness that I know is out there in the world is going to creep inside of my head, but I also know that if I have a nightmare? I’ll wake up and Alyssa will be there. And if I need to, we’ll talk it through, and it’ll fade away. So if it hurts, it only hurts for a very, very short while.”

Sam finally fell quiet, the sound of his knife against the cutting board making a rhythmic thunking sound in the otherwise silent room.

Ash had latched onto his own tiny little thumb and was sucking it with enthusiasm.

So Jimmy cleared his throat. “You, uh, really tell Alyssa everything?”

“Hell, no,” Sam said, putting down the blade and scooping his chopped tomatoes up and into a nearby bowl. “That shit’s hard, although it does get easier. Each time you tell her something that you’re afraid is gonna make you less of a hero in her eyes, but she looks at you like you’ve given her diamonds...? That’s a good thing. So yeah, it does get a little easier, but it’s never gonna be a cakewalk. Remember the magic words of step two: This is hard for me. I’m gonna need your help. And don’t be afraid to use sex as a reward. For you, I mean. You can go point-blank if you want. Hey, sweet thing, here’s my Big Happy List of Slightly Untraditional Yearnings. I really love you and want to move our relationship to the next level and talk about things that are... hard for me to talk about. I’m gonna need your help, and maybe a little incentive, so if you could just glance over the list and let me know how you feel about maybe trying number six. After we talk, of course, because see, I’m a little afraid that I might cry, and, well, number six will definitely cheer me up after...”

Jimmy laughed. “I don’t think anything’s ever been hard for you, Starrett.”

“That’s because I’ve embraced the fact that step two leads not just to step three and the Big Happy List, but also to step four. Which is sit back and laugh your ass off as you enjoy the sometimes crazy but always interesting ride.”

“What do you do about the nightmares on the nights Alyssa’s not home?” Jimmy asked. “How do you deal with knowing that the next time her helicopter goes down, she might not come back? Not ever?”

Sam picked up his knife and began chopping again. “You enjoy today,” he said quietly. “You live your life—right now. If you fill your heart with love, there’s not a lot of room left for fear.” He smiled. “That sage bit of advice is a direct quote from my Uncle Walt.”

“I didn’t have an Uncle Walt,” Jimmy admitted. His father figure had been cut from a different mold entirely.

“Most people didn’t,” Sam agreed. “But you’ve got Tess. For now, anyway. The choice is yours—are you going to do the work you need to do to keep her, or are you going to let her walk away?”

It was the photos that pushed Dave over the edge.

The sight of the man who’d attacked him—identified as Liam Smith from County Cork, Ireland—with part of his face and the back of his head blown off, lying on the table in the morgue, didn’t perturb him even half as much.

Sophia had to squint through her eyelashes and even turn away—it was that awful a sight. But Dave moved closer to the dead man.

“That’s him,” he told FBI agent Joe Hirabayashi. The two men’s voices faded into an indistinct rumble as Sophia found a bench in the hallway and sat, just breathing, with her eyes closed and her head between her knees.

And then Dave was back, his hand warm on her shoulder as he painfully lowered himself down to sit beside her. “I’m so sorry.”

“I think I might be coming down with something,” she said. “I’m usually tougher than that.”

“You shouldn’t have to be.” As usual, he was ready to take the blame. “I should’ve—”

“Do we need to wait here?” she interrupted him. “Or can we go?”

“We can go,” Dave told her, as he helped her up. Or maybe she helped him. It was hard to tell which of them was steadier on their feet. “Yashi’s going to keep me updated with any intel they find on Smith. He had a driver’s license, but it’s doubtful he lives at his listed address. Although, you never know.”

“Does he have a connection to Anise Turiano?” she asked, aware that the woman’s name was enough to make the muscles in Dave’s arm tense.

“Not that we know of,” he answered her evenly as he held open the door that led to the tiny alleyway parking area. “But we don’t know much yet—aside from the fact that he’s wanted in both the UK and Russia, as well as here in the States. He’s got no apparent connection to anyone named Santucci, either. Although there’s something up with that. Something Yashi’s not telling me, which is...” Dave froze. And said a string of eyebrow-raising words that she’d never heard him so much as whisper before—certainly not in that particular order. “Sophia, get back inside.”

The lot was empty. Nothing moved in the cold, gray, late-morning light. But then she saw it, too. A white packet, about the length and width of a paperback novel, had been placed on the windshield of their rental car, held in place by one of the wipers.

“Now.” Dave’s words were a command, not a request, and he turned to open the door, to push her back into the building.

She wouldn’t let go of him. “Not without you.” She raised her voice, calling down the corridor, “Yashi! Joe! We need help!”

The FBI agent was one of the slowest-talking, least excitable men that Sophia had ever met. He must’ve had a resting pulse rate of fourteen, yet he now came running down the hall, quite possibly breaking the record for the twenty-yard dash, his sidearm already drawn as she pulled Dave back inside with her.

“There’s something on the windshield of our car,” she told Yashi, right over Dave, who was saying, “Yashi’s not going out there—it could be a bomb!”

“Get back, away from the window,” Yashi ordered, as Dave broke Sophia’s hold on him and moved, nearly as quickly as Yashi had, not back, but toward the door.

“Dave!” Sophia and Yashi called his name in unison, but he didn’t so much as break stride.

He went out the door first, as Yashi ordered Sophia, “Stay here,” and followed.

“Dave, what is wrong with you?” Sophia shouted.

Through the glass door, she could see Dave quickly scanning the buildings that overlooked the alley, his gaze tracing the rooftops as he searched for a shooter and happily—she could tell from his body language—didn’t find one. It was then he focused his attention on the white packet, slowing as he approached.

“Stay back,” he ordered Yashi, who was several steps behind him.

“If it was a bomb,” Yashi countered in a voice that held only a hint of his usual I’m so bored lethargy, “it’d be under the car, not in plain sight like that. It’s gotta be a message.”

Yashi tried to move past Dave as Sophia stepped through the door and onto the top step of the platform that led to the driveway.

“Get inside, God damn it!” Dave roared at her, even as he beat Yashi to the packet and snatched it up before the FBI agent could. “Are both of you crazy?”

“It’s photos,” Yashi called to Sophia. “It’s a packet of pictures.”

Whatever they were photos of, Dave got even more grim as he glanced through them. Yashi tried to take them, but Dave kept the packet out of the other man’s reach and view, then headed purposefully toward Sophia. “Get,” he said. “Inside. Now.”

She got, but only because he was coming back into the building, too. In fact, she held the door for him, which made him even angrier with her. If that was possible. Of course, she was pretty angry with him, too.

“If you thought it was a bomb, the correct procedure is to call the bomb squad and—”

Dave ignored her completely as he turned to Yashi, who again was right behind him. “We need a room with privacy.” His voice was clipped, his eyes hard, his face that of a stranger as he took Sophia’s arm none too gently. “And we need it now.”

“If I tell you to do something,” Dave told Sophia, his voice harsh and a little too loud even in his own ears, as Yashi closed the door to the interrogation room behind him, leaving to try to book them on the next available flight to California, “you do it. You don’t ask why. You don’t argue. You obey.”

The little room had a single translucent, bar-covered window that didn’t do much in terms of providing natural light. Fluorescent bulbs hung in two upside-down trays from the ceiling. One of the bars was spas-ming, the light flickering on and off intermittently, which only added to Dave’s growing headache.

With pea-soup-green walls and a chipped industrial-tile floor, the room held little more than a scarred and pitted wooden table and two rickety chairs. There was an ancient sink with a decrepit faucet in the corner, a boxy metal paper-towel holder fused to the wall with that ugly-ass paint, a built-in bookshelf with a lone copy of the King James Bible.

It was a grim and awful room, except it now also held Sophia, who could make the most wretched shithole a place of beauty, just by her ethereal presence.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” she said, her own voice louder than usual, too, as she glared back at him, “but I don’t work for you, so as far as that obey thing goes—”

“No,” he agreed. “You don’t. You’re my fiancée. Your... perjurious statement is now—without a doubt—part of an official CIA report—”

“Perjurious?” she repeated in disbelief, because, yeah, it was a pretty stupid word choice. She hadn’t been under oath when she’d answered Bill Connell’s questions.

Still, Dave wasn’t in the right place to admit that, or to slow down. “Which means that the entire world now knows that if they want to hurt me,” he continued, “and I’m talking really hurt me? All they have to do is go after you. So thanks a lot.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I was trying to... I didn’t think...” She exhaled her frustration and started again. “I actually thought you’d like it if I...”

“Threw me a bone?” he finished for her because he was so goddamned angry, but not really at her—he was angry at himself. Okay, he was pretty mad at her, too—for scaring the crap out of him. And, yeah, he was also mad at her because she’d given him everything he’d ever wanted and then some. Which meant that now he was going to know exactly what he was missing when he gave her up.

And after seeing those photos, he knew damn well that he was going to have to give her up. God help him.

“What is wrong with you?” she whispered. “You’re mad at me?!”

“What if there was a shooter on one of those rooftops,” he shot back at her, “but there you are—standing there, arguing with me because I’m not enough of an action hero for you—”

“What?!”

“—so you ignore what I say—”

“I didn’t ignore you! I didn’t want you out there, either! You’ve already been injured, you’re hardly...” She searched for the right word.

So he supplied it for her. “Decker.”

Again Sophia exhaled her frustration, yet at the same time, she wouldn’t meet his gaze. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

His stomach twisted at her words. She didn’t say that’s not true. Because it was true. “Yeah, but it’s what you meant. I’m not Decker. But if I were? Well, we both know that if mighty Decker had told you to do something, God knows you’d not only listen, you’d have done it.”

“That is not fair,” she whispered, her eyes huge in a face that was lined and drawn. And still so beautiful, his very soul ached.

“I know,” he admitted. God, he was a bastard, taking this out on her. This was his fault—all of it. He should have known, years ago, that this fiasco with Anise would follow him, wherever he went, forever and ever, amen. “I’m sorry.” He choked the words out. “I’m going to have to call him. Decker. To ask for help.”

Yashi had thought that was a good idea, suggesting they return to San Diego as quickly as possible. And Sophia, too, lit up at the mention of Decker’s name.

“Good,” she said. “Dave, that’s a good thing. Because we need help, if we’re going to find—”

He cut her off. “I have to put you someplace safe,” he told her, because they weren’t going to do anything. He was. He’d started this all those years ago, and he was going to end it. Or die trying. “With someone I can trust. And I absolutely trust Decker.”

That is, he trusted Decker to keep Sophia safe. It was what would happen when she and Decker were locked together, for days, in a secure hotel room, that Dave didn’t trust. Or maybe he did. Maybe he knew too well what would happen in that kind of forced intimacy.

They’d talk. And they’d talk. And they’d finally freaking talk—about all the things that mattered, the things that Sophia, for some reason, hadn’t been able to talk about with anyone. They’d talk about the secrets that, in the darkest, loneliest, most fear-filled and jealous hours of the night, even when Sophia was sleeping beside him, Dave imagined that she was saving to whisper to Lawrence Decker.

And as for Deck’s supposed relationship with Tess? Whatever it was right now, it couldn’t possibly last. They might indeed have reached for each other, for comfort, to ease their mutual pain. Dave had seen it happen before. Two lonely, grief-stricken people, settling—in a way that was far different from how Sophia had settled for him.

It was different because James Nash, may his soul rest in peace, would be with them, his spirit lingering, forever. So Decker and Tess would, eventually, drift apart. If they hadn’t already begun to do so. Dave honestly didn’t know. He hadn’t so much as spoken to either of them since the memorial service.

“Putme...?” Sophia interrupted his thoughts. It was clear she didn’t like that any more than she’d liked obey. But then she glanced over at the packet of photographs that he’d tossed onto the table. “I’m not sure I want to know what’s in there.”

As she looked into his eyes, Dave knew that she was imagining that those pictures were far more provocative than they truly were—at least seemingly so. He could only guess what she was thinking. Maybe that the photos were of the two of them, being intimate. Or maybe they were of him, catching gonorrhea from Kathy-slash-Anise.

Yeah, if someone had pictures of that, Dave absolutely wouldn’t ask for doubles for his photo album. It was only recently, since he’d become Sophia’s lover, that his memories of Kathy, laughing with him—in truth, her name was Anise and she was laughing at him—had finally begun to fade.

And he liked it far better that way.

Of course, maybe Sophia thought the photos in that packet were of him killing Anise, stepping back from the bloody mess as she grabbed the slit in her throat, gasping and gurgling, eyes staring, as her life slipped through her fingers....

Sophia had said she believed him, that she didn’t think he’d wielded the knife that had taken Anise’s life. But her doubt still shone through.

“They’re photos of you,” Dave told her, as he turned to the table to push them from the packet, being careful to spread them out on the rough wooden surface with a pen he carried in his pocket. He did that even though he knew there’d be no fingerprints on them, no DNA—nothing at all to identify whoever had put them on the rental car.

She stepped closer, and he shifted to put the table between them as he watched her face, her eyes. He saw her realization that these pictures had been taken just last night. She’d been shot standing in the hospital lobby, through the big glass windows, while she’d waited for Dave to get the car.

She also knew—he could tell from her expression that she’d figured it out—that she could have been shot in a very different way. That camera could just as easily have been a sniper rifle. The photos were blurred slightly from the heavy rain, and taken from high above—no doubt from the roof of the building across the street.

“It’s probable these photos were taken by the person or persons who hired Liam Smith to kill Barney Delarow and attack me,” Dave told her.

“What do they want?” she asked, her eyes almost crystal clear as she looked over at him.

Dave shook his head. “If it were purely revenge, I’d already be lying next to Smith, here in the morgue.” Or, Jesus Christ, maybe Sophia would. “If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead by now.”

“How can you be so blasé—” she started.

“Because it’s true. At the very least I’d still be in intensive care. If Smith had been told to kill me,” he told her, “he would have. He got the best of me, Soph. If he wanted to, he could have sliced me into pieces—” He cut himself off as she turned away, her movement sudden, as she rushed toward the sink in the corner.

Damnit, he hadn’t been thinking, and now she leaned over the chipped porcelain, eyes tightly closed, gripping the edges with knuckles that were white.

Just as she’d done last night.

Only this time it wasn’t her bastard of a father who’d turned her stomach and made her physically ill—it was Dave.

Good work.

He touched her arm, her back, and she turned to look up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears, her face almost shockingly pale. “I don’t want this,” she said through clenched teeth, her voice shaking.

“I know,” Dave whispered, feeling his own eyes fill with tears. “I’m so sorry. I thought it was over. I thought...” He had to look away, had to wipe his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I was fooling myself. I think, deep down, I always knew it was going to come back and haunt me and... I should have told you, right from the start.”

“But you did.” Sophia was doing what he always did for her—defending him against himself. She would have reached for him, but he made himself take a step back, holding only her arm as he helped her over to the table and into a chair.

“No, I didn’t tell you everything,” Dave said quietly.

“You told me enough.” She rested her head on the table, her forehead against her folded arms.

“Are you all right?” he asked—a stupid question, because it was clear that she wasn’t.

Still, she nodded, head still down, eyes closed. Yes.

Right.

“You told me more than enough,” she repeated.

“I left a lot out,” he told her, “like the fact that there’s a contingent over at the CIA still looking to prove that I’m guilty of murder and treason.” He laughed—it came out sounding hollow as he sat, too. God, his side hurt, but it was nowhere near as bad as the ache in his heart. “And deviant sexual acts—let’s not forget about that.”

“Dave—” she started, lifting her head to look at him, but he cut her off.

“I also failed to mention to you that Turiano’s killers were never caught. Or that I purposely let a former KGB operative believe I’d slit her throat because I naively thought that that would look good on my international ‘résumé.’ ” He shook his head as he looked at the cracked tile on the floor—anywhere but into her eyes. “It’s possible whoever hired Smith is a former colleague of Turiano’s. Or even, I don’t know, a family member. Looking for payback.”

What do they want? Sophia had asked him.

It was possible that whoever was behind all of this wanted money. Or maybe they wanted nothing more than to put Dave through hell before they killed him.

“You really think, that after all this time...?” Sophia asked now. “Just out of nowhere? Without instigation or provocation?”

He made himself meet her gaze. “That man you said set you up in Kazabek—the Frenchman, Michel Lartet. You once said you blamed him for Dimitri’s death. Do you blame him still?”

His seeming change of subject had caught her off-guard. But then something shifted in her eyes, and it was clear she understood.

Dave knew that Lartet, a former friend of hers, had helped set up the meeting at which a Kazbekistani warlord named Padsha Bashir had killed Sophia’s husband and, with Dimitri’s blood still spattered on her clothes, had married her—to gain possession of her property and finances.

And her. In a society where women had no rights, Bashir had gained possession of Sophia, too.

After months of abuse and fear, she’d escaped from his palace during a devastating earthquake. That is, after running Bashir through with his own sword.

She hadn’t killed him—although Dave suspected she’d wept at the news that he’d survived her attack. It hadn’t been until some days later that she had, with the help of the Troubleshooters team, fired one of the guns that riddled him with bullets and ended his miserable life.

He knew that, at that time, she’d no doubt longed with all of her damaged heart to do the same to Michel Lartet.

Sophia answered Dave’s question now with a nod. Yes, she still blamed him. “I’d cheer at the news of his death. But I wouldn’t go after him. No. Even if I met him in a dark alley with a gun? I’d hold him there until the police came, and I would testify against him in court and Lord willing, help to lock him up forever. But I wouldn’t...”

Kill him. She didn’t say the words, but she didn’t have to as Dave nodded his own understanding. He knew—because she’d told him, and also because he’d witnessed it—just how hard she’d worked, in the years since Dimitri’s death, to put the past behind her. To move on. Time and distance had softened her need for violent revenge.

“But what if that earthquake had never happened?” Dave asked her. “What if you’d spent all these years not in California, but locked in Bashir’s palace?”

Had that happened, Sophia would, absolutely, not be the woman she was today. They both knew that.

“So you think that someone who’d been close to Turiano,” Sophia asked, “was... in prison for all these years, and recently released?”

“That’s one possibility,” Dave admitted. “Or maybe they just found out that I was tied to her death. Hardly anyone is like you, Soph. Most people don’t try to heal after trauma and loss. They don’t seek help. They just live with it, and let it, I don’t know, fester.”

“Did you?” she asked.

He blinked at her.

“Did you let it fester?” she asked, even though he knew exactly what she’d meant.

Dave shook his head. “No.”

“I say her name,” Sophia said, “and you get... so tense.”

“She broke my heart.”

She was silent then, eyes down, her hands in her lap, fingers working nervously against what must’ve been a rough place on her fingernail. He wanted to still her fingers, to cover her hands with his own, but he didn’t dare touch her—afraid he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to do if this woman whom he loved so desperately was warm and soft in his arms.

“When I came back from Denver,” she finally broke the silence to say. “Last week. You were away, on a trip.”

Oh, shit. Dave understood what she was asking. “That had nothing to do with any of this,” he told her.

“Are you sure—”

“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely.” She opened her mouth to speak again, and he stopped her. “Soph. Trust me. Please. My trip is not something we want to be talking about right now. We’ve got enough on our plate. Besides, it’s completely irrelevant.”

She was ready to argue—Dave saw it in her eyes—and he braced himself because, face it, saying no to her, for anything at all, wasn’t among his strengths.

But he was not going to tell her anything about going back into Kazbekistan, and what he’d found out while there. Certainly not right now—although, now, it was quite possible that that was a conversation they would never have.

His intel, however, would not go to waste—he could share it with Decker.

“You said, back in the hospital,” Sophia pointed out, “that if there was anything I wanted to know—”

“Anything about Anise Turiano. And I’m telling you that the trip I took has nothing to do with—”

“You said I could ask you about anything.”

Dave grabbed his head, to try to stop the pounding in his temples. Because she was right—he had said that. She was right—but it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going to talk about this. Not at a time when he needed to push her away. And yeah, the fact that he wasn’t going to answer her questions was going to help to do just that, so...

“You said just ask,” she reminded him, her heart in her eyes, “so I’m asking. If it’s really irrelevant, why not just tell me and then I’ll say, Okay, yes, that is irrelevant—”

Yashi saved him from her reasonable logic, knocking on that closed door.

“Come in,” Dave called.

He felt Sophia’s gaze on him as he turned to see the FBI agent push open the door and peek in. Yashi was clearly afraid of the conversation he was interrupting—his dark brown eyes were apologetic. No doubt their raised voices had been heard from the hallway.

“There were two seats on a nonstop to LAX out of Logan,” he reported as he glanced from Dave to Sophia and back. “But we’ve got to leave for the airport, like, now. I’m going to drive you, ’cause we’re keeping your rental, to go over it for prints.”

Dave pushed himself to his feet. God, he ached all over. Except for his stitches, which stung. “You’re not going to find anything.”

“I know,” Yashi agreed with a shrug as Sophia stood, too. “But it’s procedure.”

She seemed a little shaky, so Dave moved closer, watching her, ready to help her if she needed his support.

His physical support. He knew, because he knew her so well, that she wasn’t just angry. She was hugely disappointed in him—which hurt.

But hey. The next few days were going to include pain the likes of which he’d never felt before. This was nothing compared to the shitstorm into which he knew he was heading.

Yashi nodded with his head toward the photos. “We’ll want to hold on to those, too.”

“Is there a ladies’ room...?” Sophia asked.

“Of course,” Yashi said. “Down the hall. First door on the right.”

He held the door open for her, but she didn’t move. Instead she said, “Will you give us just one more minute, please?”

Dave looked to Yashi for help. “We really should—”

“A figurative minute, Dave,” she said tightly. “Thirty seconds’ll do it.” She turned to Yashi. “Please.”

And Yashi again closed the door tightly behind him.

Sophia looked at Dave. “I’ve said this before, and I’m going to say it again: I don’t care what you did or didn’t do to some... she-bitch who would’ve killed you if she’d had the chance. I don’t care why you did whatever you did—and I don’t care that you didn’t tell me the details before now. We all have secrets. Believe me, I understand. But even if you don’t think whatever it was you were doing last week somehow stirred this up or just, I don’t know, made whatever is happening worse? You could be wrong.”

“I’m not.”

“You could be. Even you, David, have been wrong in the past. You’re not perfect—”

“I’m well aware of that!”

“Someone tried to kill you, and now seems to be threatening me—”

“There’s an understatement!”

“Is it?” she asked. “I don’t know. All I know for certain is that right now, when you need to be forthcoming about everything, you suddenly won’t talk to me!”

“What happened to We all have secrets?” It was a snarky thing to say, Dave knew it.

Sophia got in his face. “My secrets aren’t going to get me killed. And you better believe if I thought, for one second, that my secrets put either one of us into danger? I’d be talking. And talking. And talking.”

She didn’t let him respond, she didn’t wait for him to rebut or even retort. She just marched out the door, slamming it shut behind her.