Jimmy sat in the dark living room, looking out the big sliding glass doors at the desert.

The moon was full and its light cast shadows on the rock-and brush-cluttered surface of the hillside.

Nothing moved—it was as if the world were in a vacuum. Or as if this house had been built on the surface of the moon.

Jimmy heard Tess coming—she wasn’t trying to be quiet. She also didn’t turn on any lights, which was good, because he didn’t want to see her eyes.

He spoke first. “You read fast.”

“I skimmed,” she admitted as she sat down, way on the other end of the sofa. “I’m going to go over it again, more carefully. I’ve marked seven ops that made me go huh. Some of them are because I worked support on a related op. Some of them, I’m not sure why, but I figured this was a good time to trust my gut. Watch your eyes.”

She reached over then, and clicked on the lamp that sat on the table beside her.

Jimmy squinted, but the light was dim enough and his eyes adjusted quickly. She was holding out his entire massive list, and he took it from her because she seemed to want him to.

“The yellow are the seven in question,” she told him.

But there were other marks, all the way down the page, slashes of pink, highlighting almost every single black op mission that he’d listed there. It was entirely like Tess to use color coding, but... He flipped it over, and the pink marks were on the second page, too. And the third and... It was only on the last page—those listing the ops he’d done after “leaving” the Agency—that the pink disappeared, and he couldn’t figure out what that meant.

“The pink are the ops I knew about,” Tess told him quietly. “Granted, I didn’t know everything about them, but I knew enough.”

Jimmy looked at her, shocked.

She nodded. “Yeah. Despite the covert nature of the Agency’s black ops division, they kept information on these assignments in your file.”

She’d hacked his file, years ago, back when she was working for the Agency’s support staff.

But that didn’t make sense. He knew he had a regular Agency file but... “Information about these jobs were in there?”

“Yup,” she said. “And—for the record? About four months ago, I have to confess that I hacked back in. You were acting crazy and I wanted to see if you were still working for the Agency. But there were no additional entries in your file—in fact it was marked Closed. At the time, I assumed you had a separate file for black op assignments. I dug for it, but I couldn’t find it. But you don’t have one, Jimmy.” She tapped the paper that held his list. “These assignments that you listed here were in that closed file. Except for the last page. Those are all new.”

“Mother of God.”

Tess nodded. “We need to stop looking at the Agency, and instead look hard at former Agency operatives and especially former Agency support. People like me, who could still have access to Agency files and information. People who have the information—and the power—to make former operatives believe that they’re still being hired to work for the Agency.”

And there it was. He’d been doing black ops for someone who wasn’t part of the Agency. But when he’d gone into the Agency’s D.C. annex and pushed his way into Doug Brendon’s private office to talk about his “ongoing” association with the black ops division, Dougie had kicked his ass out into the street. No investigation, no inquiry, no nothing. Which meant Brendon was either involved—or a moron.

“You okay?” Tess asked, and he turned to look at her.

She was sitting there looking back at him exactly the same way she always had. With interest, expectation, intelligence, humor, love, and, yes, not an entirely small amount of exasperation.

“I wish you had trusted me,” she whispered. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you. Trust and honesty and respect. You say you love me, but without the trust—”

“There’s too much to tell,” Jimmy said. “Where do I start? With my mother? She sucked and I left her behind. Because that’s what you do—you decide if you’re going to live or you’re going to die, and I chose not to die. I found people who saved me, only they sucked, too, and I went to jail out of loyalty, for something I didn’t do. And I don’t want to talk about any of it because, like Deck always says, it’s over and done.”

“Fair enough,” she said—which was something else Decker always said. “But—”

“What if there’s no but,” Jimmy said. “What if there’s just me, relieved beyond belief that you aren’t avoiding eye contact and backing away from me because of everything on that list. What if there’s just me, promising to be honest. Promising”—he choked it out, because he knew what was coming—“to respect you.”

“Really,” she said, but she didn’t sound particularly convinced.

“We’ve started over,” Jimmy told her.

“Yeah,” she pointed out. “Too many times to count.”

“No,” he said. “Not like this. I died, Tess. On that chopper. I died, and I knew it, and I was apeshit, because I also knew you needed me. And there was this light, this beautiful light, and it was so warm and peaceful and the pain was gone and it freaked me out.” It still freaked him out to think about it. “I tried to scream, but nothing came out, so I tried harder and... I don’t know what I did, but I did it.”

“The paramedic said you scared the crap out of him,” Tess whispered. “That he used the defibrillator on you and it wasn’t working, and then you just suddenly started... roaring, he said.” She laughed, but there were tears in her eyes.

“Yeah. I don’t know exactly what happened,” Jimmy admitted. “But I knew I was back because it hurt like a bitch. But that was a good thing. Because as warm as that light was, I knew I wouldn’t find you there.” He took her hand. “I didn’t choose to come into this world the first time around. But that day, in that chopper? That was my choice. I want to be here and I’m not going to screw it up this time around.”

Tess reached over and turned off the light.

It seemed like a strange response, a little distant and cold, like she was going to walk away, but then Jimmy realized that there were headlights approaching, way in the distance, down along the road.

And his heart started to pound.

Tess stood up and moved to the intercom on the wall. Pressed the button. “We’ve got a vehicle approaching.”

“Roger that.” Alyssa Locke’s rich voice came through the speaker, calm and relaxed. “It’s Ric and Annie. Sam and Jules are going down to meet them at the gate.”

Jimmy closed his eyes. Holy Mary, he was jumpy.

“Have you talked to Jimmy?” Alyssa asked.

“I’m doing it,” Tess said.

“Let me know what you decide.” Alyssa signed off.

Tess turned toward him, but her face was in shadows—backlit the way she was by the window and that gorgeous moon.

It was respect time. And the pain he’d felt in that chopper was nothing compared to the way that this was going to hurt.

“You want to go back to San Diego,” Jimmy said, managing to keep his voice even.

“I need to,” she said. “I have to look at Tracy’s computer—at the actual hardware. I can’t do it remote, and I won’t allow it to be sent here.”

“Deck’s gonna be pissed. He doesn’t want you there.”

“Decker doesn’t want you there,” Tess told him. “And he thinks you’re incapable of being a team player. He thinks you’re a child—that you won’t stay back unless I’m here to hold your hand. And he thinks—as do the rest of the Troubleshooters team—that your injuries would make you a burden if you insisted on going with me.”

“Don’t hold back,” Jimmy said. “Say what you really mean.”

She returned to the couch. “You’re amazing, Jimmy. No one thinks that you’re not. It’s incredible that you’re up and walking so soon. But you’re not up to speed. And you’re also not fighting this battle alone. You’re part of this team. And right now, the best thing you can do for all of us is to hang back, and to promise me—and Sam and Alyssa and Jules and Decker—that you will, absolutely, remain here.”

So, let’s see, me and the gay actor and the baby... We’ll hide in the panic room while, hours away from here, where I couldn’t possible reach you in time if something went wrong, these monsters are going to try to kill you? Jimmy clenched his teeth over the words that he knew he couldn’t say.

Tess sighed. “I know how hard this is for you, but you’re not going to be sitting in the panic room twirling your thumbs. I need your help with research. I need more explicit details on these seven events I’ve marked on your list. I’ll be calling you to get that information. It’s not like I’ll be out of touch.”

Jimmy managed a nod.

“But eventually, you are going to have to deal with that,” she told him quietly. “If not now then later. Because I’m good at what I do, and I’m going to be sent on jobs without you, the same way you’re sent out on assignments without me. Which is hard for me, too. You know, it works both ways.”

“But this one,” he tried to explain. “This goatfuck... it’s my fault. They’re after me.”

Tess shook her head. “It started with you, but now they’re after all of us. And if they thought they had problems when they went after you...? They’re about to meet the Troubleshooters team, and boy, are they going to regret ever messing with us.”

Jimmy nodded again. And he made himself say it: “Go to San Diego. But you better finally goddamn marry me when this is over.”

Tess was no fool. “Promise you’ll stay here. Say the words.”

“I promise I’ll stay here goddamn it.”

“Then, yes, Jimmy, I’ll marry you.” She kissed him so sweetly and when she pulled back, he saw that she had tears in her eyes. “Thank you so much for coming back.”

“You do the same, okay?” he whispered. “Just promise me you’ll always do the same.”

“This is a mistake,” Dave said. “We should wait for Tom.”

“We waited for Tom,” Sophia reminded him, as she adjusted his arm around her shoulders and took more of his weight as the hotel elevator door closed. “He’s downstairs, with the car.”

“That’s not good,” he said. “That I didn’t remember that. What else don’t I remember?”

“You promised to buy me a boat,” Ken said from the far corner of the elevator. He’d apologized, in advance, to Sophia, for being unable to help her carry Dave downstairs. As their bodyguard, he needed both hands completely free. “A shiny red one that goes real fast.”

“Yeah, Ken,” Dave said, wincing from the pain in his side. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t do that. But nice try.”

He glanced at Sophia, and she could tell from his eyes that he was hurting far worse than he’d let on. His wound was swollen and inflamed, and she could not believe that he hadn’t mentioned that it had gotten so much worse. She still wouldn’t have known, if he hadn’t done that nosedive onto the hotel room floor.

“That wasn’t a dream, was it?” he asked softly. “What you said to me.”

“Nope,” she said, as she stared up at the changing numbers over the door—fourteen, twelve, eleven—willing this thing to move faster.

“Marry me,” he said. “Will you marry me, Soph?”

She didn’t answer right away. She wanted him to wonder and maybe even to sweat. It was stupid. She was being stupid and a little petty—giving him a ten-second punishment for hiding his pain from her. As if that would make him think twice next time.

And there would be a next time.

As frightened as she was at the idea of losing him, she was not going to make him sacrifice his career for her.

But Sophia didn’t answer Dave’s question about getting married right away, and then she couldn’t answer, because the elevator dinged and the door opened on the eighth floor.

And everything went into slow motion.

Two men—one tall, dark-haired, and almost too handsome, one shorter and wearing a hat—were standing on the eighth-floor landing.

Ken stepped in front of the open door. “Sorry, gents, you’ll have to catch the next—”

There was a sound, like a pop, and the SEAL took a jerky, halting step back as Sophia was sprayed with...

Blood?

Dear God, she was covered with what had to be Ken’s blood as she heard the popping sound again, and this time Ken fell to his knees.

He was shouting—something—Sophia couldn’t make out the words. And Dave was shouting, too, as he pushed her roughly, almost brutally down onto the floor of the elevator. “She’s hit,” Dave was screaming, “she’s hit, too, she’s dead, you killed her,” his eyes lit with his fear and apology, and with...

Resolve? His mouth moved—I love you, he told her silently.

“I’m not,” she tried to tell him, “I’m okay—”

But Dave swung and hit her and the world turned gray and vanished with another of those awful pops.

Decker woke up feeling if not quite refreshed, then pretty damn close.

He’d wrapped himself around Tracy, who was still asleep, breathing slowly and steadily.

His hand was still on her breast. And even though he knew it would probably wake her, he couldn’t keep himself from touching her, letting all that smooth, sleek skin slip beneath his fingers, brushing the softness of her nipple against the too-sensitive palm of his hand.

She hadn’t understood the significance of what he’d told her, when he’d said that he didn’t just want—he wanted her.

It hadn’t been that way with Emily. He’d wanted. Anyone. And she’d walked into the bar, and into his life. He’d loved her because he was with her—not the other way around. And on some level, she’d probably always known that.

And then there was Sophia—another random anybody. Made worse by the fact that he’d known she was desperate when he’d let her unfasten his pants.

And maybe he was lying to himself—he was pretty good at that—but he couldn’t imagine having that random kind of sex-for-the-sake-of-sex with anyone, especially not a stranger, no matter how beautiful and alluring, on the desk in his office.

But for Tracy...?

He’d planned it. He’d done it. And now, after the fact? He wasn’t beating himself up about it. In fact, as he lay here on his couch, smiling at the memory, with Tracy’s breast in his hand and his incredibly happy dick pressed tightly against her heart-rate-revving posterior, he could imagine—in the very near future—breaking his rule all over again.

Her nipple had tightened and peaked beneath his touch, and she stirred and stretched and pressed herself more fully into his hand. “I like that,” she murmured.

“Mmm, me, too.”

“You know, that’s an often neglected erogenous zone,” she told him.

“It won’t be with me around,” he told her.

“No.” She laughed and took his hand. “Not me, you. This.” She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed him, right on his palm. “You like touching things, don’t you? You’re into the tactile. You know how I know? I’ve seen you stop yourself from doing it, from reaching out—like you’re afraid it might overload your senses.”

She moved his hand back to her breast, and keeping his fingers open, she drew circles on the center of his palm with the very tip of her taut nipple.

And he went from semi-to fully, painfully aroused—a fact that she couldn’t fail to notice, considering their proximity. “Hmm,” she said, laughter in her voice. “That’s going to be fun to experiment with.”

Decker laughed, too, as he turned her to face him. “I think,” he said, “that has more to do with you than me. We’re not going to get the same reaction if, say, a big fat man touched the palm of my hand with a pencil.”

“Hang on,” she said, as she smiled into his eyes, “we can check. Because I think I’ve got a big fat man in one of my ‘massively huge’ suitcases.”

He laughed again as he kissed her, shifting further so that she was on top of him. “This,” he said as she sat up, straddling him, pushing her hair from her face, her bare breasts full, her soft skin beautiful in the dim glow of the light he’d left burning on his desk, “I like.”

She smiled down at him, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she reached between them to unfasten his pants. “Bet I can make you like it even more.”

He shook his head. “It’d be pretty stupid to bet against that.”

She freed him from his jeans and his shorts, her hands soft and cool against his stomach. “This right here is nice,” she said, touching the muscles in his abdomen, “the way it kind of sweeps down and leads the eye right”—she wrapped her fingers around him—“here.”

Decker reached for her, too, to unzip her jeans, but she shifted back.

“Uh-uh,” she said as she caressed him. “Nope. I’m in charge.” Somehow she managed to hide her smile as she gazed coolly down at him. “No talking, no touching. I’ll tell you what I want you to do, and you’ll do it—is that clear? Nod. Once.”

Okay. Moment of truth. There was sex in the office and then there was sex in the office. And yet, Deck found himself trapped by her gaze and nodding. Once.

“No smiling,” Tracy said as she continued to stroke him, harder now, and suddenly, it wasn’t all that difficult to not smile.

It was hard, however, not to touch her. He wanted those jeans off, wanted her breasts in his hands, her mouth on his mouth, his dick buried inside of her.

But she had other plans.

“Hands behind your head,” she ordered. “Like this...” She let go of him to show him, putting her arms up, elbows bent, hands clasped.

He wanted to ask her to stay that way so he could get his camera because Jesus. Instead, he silently did the same, and if his injured arm hurt, he didn’t feel it. It was inconsequential, a mere inconvenience. He was hyper-aware, though, that he was already breathing hard, his bare chest rising and falling with each breath he took.

She nodded her approval, taking hold of him again, but loosely, with only one hand this time, as she reached out with her other and—lightly—ran her fingers down the smooth underside of his upraised arm, where the nature of his position made his bicep bulge. “Very nice.” She ran her fingers back up the other way. “I like this.”

It took everything he had in him not to move because what she was doing felt unbelievably, erotically good. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep his hips from tightening, couldn’t stop himself from pushing himself more fully into her hand.

She held his gaze as she tightened her grip on him, but then, again, she let him go.

She leaned forward, whispering, “Don’t move,” and then she kissed him, her lips gentle against his mouth.

He had to fight not to respond as she licked him, her tongue warm and sweet—and gone way too soon.

She kissed his chin, his neck, his chest—swiftly licking the nipple above his pounding heart. But then she went back up to his arm and kissed the same expanse that she’d touched so lightly—“Mmm”—humming her approval.

She moved back to his other nipple, then trailed kisses down his stomach. He knew what was coming, he knew it with a certainty that redefined his faith in God, and yet it still damn near killed him when her mouth landed on him, when she kissed him and licked him and sucked him—but he couldn’t touch her, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.

All he could do was watch. She knew his vantage point was a particularly good one, because she made sure to give him plenty of eye contact. Or maybe she was just policing him. Either way, it worked for him. Completely.

All of his muscles were tight and tense as he held himself still, as she used her hand to add to the pleasure she was giving him with her mouth. He could feel her laughing, the vibration adding to the sensation of her lips, her tongue, and he had to close his eyes, because it was too much, too good, no, it was too fucking great—and he was going to...

“Don’t move,” she said again. “Don’t. Move.”

Jesus, he had to... He needed... Colors flashed behind his eyelids as he clenched every muscle in his body even more tightly, as he gritted his teeth and tried to silence the moan, the growl that he could feel building in the back of his throat.

“Don’t move,” she ordered him again. “Just come. Now.”

And Decker let go.

He let go, and all that there was, was yes.

It roared through him, consumed him, incinerated him. He was everything and nothing, light and darkness. The world ended and kept turning. Time stopped and rushed forward. Life had meaning and he was both here and gone. Exploding, cartwheeling, shattering, obliterating, for the first time in an eternity, Decker truly, completely, totally let himself go.

He didn’t know how long it was that he hung, suspended, in that place of sheer pleasure. He didn’t know how long it was that he lay there, gasping, still not moving, his hands still up behind his head—he was nothing if not a rule follower. But he slowly became aware of his surroundings, of Tracy’s hair fanned out across his chest, the weight of her head on his stomach as she, too, caught her breath.

He wanted to slow it all down, to hold on to it, to make it last, because it was sex to the nth—sex unlike any sex he’d ever had, ever. But it was already over. Already done.

And he recognized, immediately, that part of what had made it so great was that he’d stopped thinking. He hadn’t brought anything with him—no baggage, no analysis, no sense of what he should or shouldn’t be feeling.

It was just him and Tracy. And pleasure the likes of which he would never have believed possible.

And he already, absolutely, couldn’t wait until they did it again.

She lifted her head then, her hair sliding across his stomach as she sat back up, still straddling him, still bare-breasted, still breathtakingly beautiful.

And in love with him.

She’d told him so.

“You have my permission to smile,” she said now, still in that stern voice.

He did just that, laughing a little, as he held her gaze. “What I really want,” he whispered, “is permission to do that to you.”

The look on her face was beautiful, but as she opened her mouth to answer him, someone knocked on his door.

She froze, and Decker quickly sat up, covering her with the blanket, just in case the lock didn’t hold.

“Deck?” It was Lindsey out there. She knocked again. “I’m really sorry to wake you, sir, but there’s been a clusterfuck of some magnitude, and we need you out here, right away.”

Decker was furious. Tracy could tell because he got very, very quiet. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

His T-shirt was also on inside out. She hoped for his sake that no one else had noticed that, but... No such luck. Jo Heissman was sitting at the conference table, looking from Decker to Tracy and back, with a curiously bland expression on her face.

Lindsey, meanwhile, stood her ground against Deck’s wrath, chin out. “Because Tom was handling it. He is still the boss here. And he told me I should let you sleep.”

Complications had developed from the knife wound Dave had gotten in Boston. Apparently, an infection had set in, and he’d passed out at the hotel while Tom Paoletti was bringing his family here to the office, for safety.

It made Tracy want to look beneath Deck’s bandage, to check that bullet wound in his arm.

To be honest, she hadn’t even known Kelly and Charlie Paoletti were here—they must’ve arrived while she and Deck were sleeping, et cetera. Apparently, they’d already left, rushing over to the hospital to be with Tom.

Who had been shot at by a sniper on the street outside the hotel—at about the same time SEAL Chief Ken Karmody had taken two bullets to the chest, and one to the leg in the elevator, which had stopped on the eighth floor.

Tom had leaned over to pick up his sat phone from the floor of his car, and a bullet that otherwise would have killed him instantly merely left a two-inch furrow just behind his left ear. It hadn’t knocked him unconscious—not quite. But it had bled heavily and created quite a scene as he’d staggered into the hotel, weapon drawn.

The elevator in the lobby had opened to reveal Karmody, critically wounded. Sophia had been in that elevator, too, unwounded but unconscious.

Dave Malkoff was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Sophia now?” Decker asked tersely.

“Lopez and Cosmo are bringing her back from the hospital,” Lindsey reported.

“They’re bringing her here,” Decker clarified.

“Yes, sir. They should arrive soon. They drove Kelly and Charlie over there to be with Tom. The FBI has already arranged for guards to be placed on both the chief and Tom. Everyone agreed that it would be best if Cosmo and Lopez got Sophia here immediately.”

Ken was currently in surgery, as doctors raced to repair the damage done by bullets at close range. No one had said as much, but Tracy knew from the extent of his injuries that it would be a miracle if he survived. His wife, Savannah von Hopf, of the van Hopfs, had chartered a jet out of New York and was flying in.

Tracy had always been jealous of Savannah, who worked as a high-powered attorney despite having bushels of inherited money, but she didn’t even remotely envy the other woman now.

Tom, meanwhile, was in the hospital, because an X-ray had revealed a hairline skull fracture. Such injuries could result in bleeding in the brain, and he was undergoing the first of what would no doubt be a night of observation and cat scans.

Tracy made a note in the office calendar to send flowers to the nurses who were going to have to live through that. Knowing Tom, he was going to be pissed and insisting he get back to work. Kelly was going to have to get out the whips and chains, and okay. Suddenly that seemingly casual expression held a whole new meaning.

“Alyssa’s on her way,” Lindsey reported to Decker. She looked at her watch. “ETA ten minutes.”

Decker nodded. When Alyssa arrived, as company XO, she’d be in charge. Until then, he was in command. “I need Commander Koehl on the line, and I need him now.”

Tracy stood up. “I can do that.”

Deck shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is going to need finessing. Lindsey...”

“I’m on it.” Lindsey vanished down the hall.

He realized how negative his words had sounded. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” Tracy reassured him. Lindsey’s husband Mark was on Koehl’s SEAL team. “She’ll get through to him before I will. Jo and I’ll go to the lobby and wait for Sophia. I’ll let you know as soon as she arrives.”

He nodded. And beneath his layers of grim, beneath his anger, Tracy could see an echo of all the intimacies they’d shared over the past few days. And beneath that, she could see his fear for Dave.

“We’ll find him,” she told him quietly. “We’ll get him back.”

He nodded as he looked into her eyes, but then he glanced at Jo Heissman, who was sitting there, pretending not to listen.

He gestured with his head, and Tracy followed him out into the hall.

“You really have that much faith that that Secret thing works?” he asked her.

“No,” she said, touching his hand down where no one could see them. “But I have that much faith in you.”

He didn’t say anything, but he held onto her, linking just one of his fingers with one of hers, so she added, “In case you don’t have time to, I don’t know, say good-bye or... In case you have to leave quickly? I’m just going to say it now. Be as careful as you can, without getting too inside your head about being careful. I’ll be here when you get back.”

She felt tears start to form in her eyes, and she blinked, hard, because getting all weepy would only undermine her message.

“Lew Koehl on line one,” Lindsey shouted from her office. “Jackpot! Am I great, or am I the greatest?”

Deck dropped Tracy’s hand and was already moving.

She chased him down the hall. “Sir.”

It felt weird calling him that, and indeed, he shot her a look.

“Chief,” she corrected herself. She lowered her voice. “You really need to fix your shirt.”

He looked down. “Ah, shit.”

“No one noticed,” she said, following him to his office door. “Well, except me and Jo. And Lindsey.”

He laughed as he went inside. “Only everyone in the room.” He picked up his phone, nodding a dismissal. “Commander. I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but our situation’s escalated....”

Tracy closed his office door and headed back to the conference room, where Jo had already gathered up her things.

And okay. This was going to be awkward.

Jo knew it, too. It was there in her Mona Lisa therapist smile.

So Tracy went point-blank as she led the way down the hall. “Peter Olivetti. Michael Peterson. Did he call you my princess, too?”

“Queen,” Jo said. “My Queen, or My Liege. My Lady. In retrospect, it’s astonishingly unappealing. Like a renaissance fair gone horribly wrong.”

“He smelled good,” Tracy said. “And he listened.”

“He did do that,” Jo agreed. “All that charisma, all of his focus...” She paused. “And then there was the fact that he looked the way he looked.”

Tracy nodded as she turned on one of the standing lamps in the Troubleshooters lobby. At the time, Michael had seemed unbelievably well put together. Of course, that was before she’d seen Decker naked. “I wonder if anything he said was true. I mean, I know he doesn’t really teach first grade. Although what does that say about me, that I found that so attractive?”

Jo sat down on the leather sofa where she’d been camped out earlier. “It says that you like the idea of a man who has a strong calling—a connection to his work. Because, let’s face it. People, particularly men, don’t become teachers for the money. You’re also of an age where you’re seeking to fulfill your biological imperative, so a man who likes children would be particularly attractive to you. There’s nothing wrong with that.” She paused. “In the same way, it makes sense that you’d be drawn to someone older, someone you perceive to be steady. Someone you might think is ready to settle down. Or maybe even just settle.”

She was talking now about Decker. “No,” Tracy said firmly. “No, thank you. I’m definitely not interested in your opinion about—”

“He’s an incredibly complicated man.”

“And one who would be understandably upset to find anyone indulging in office gossip about him,” Tracy countered, even though she’d done it herself in the past.

“I’m merely offering advice,” Jo said. “Things have changed radically in the past hour. You do know it’s possible that Dave Malkoff will be recovered, not rescued.”

A living person was rescued, a dead body was recovered. As awful as it seemed, it was certainly a possibility. At this point, they didn’t even know if Dave was still alive.

“If Dave is dead,” Jo pointed out, “Lawrence Decker’s connection to Sophia Ghaffari—”

“Do you honestly think,” Tracy asked emphatically, “that if Dave is dead, I’ll be concerned with more than the awful, dreadful, horrible fact that Dave is dead?”

“Oh, God, no...”

Tracy looked up to see Sophia, her face totally white, and—dear Lord—her clothes stained with the dark red of drying blood, standing by the main entrance. It was obvious that she’d just come in and had heard only the end of Tracy’s sentence, and even though Tracy said, “No!” she crumpled to the floor.

Lopez was there, thank goodness, and he caught Sophia and lowered her to the carpeting. He, too, looked devastated. “Dr. Malkoff is dead?” he asked.

“No,” Tracy said again, “Well, we don’t know. I was just... Shoot! Decker!” She forsook the intercom system and went with what was the standard here at Troubleshooters Incorporated—the interoffice bellow. “Lindsey! Deck! We need you in the lobby, now!”

Jules arrived to find the Troubleshooters office in an uproar.

Decker was channeling his inner caveman as he moved Sophia in a he-man cradle carry from the floor to the lobby sofa.

It was hard to tell with everyone talking at once, but apparently Tracy had told Sophia that Dave was dead, when in fact Dave’s status remained only missing.

Tracy looked stricken—it was clear that, whatever she’d told Sophia, her intent had not been even remotely malicious.

But the emotional energy that got consumed was enormous as Sophia finally roused and, finding out the truth, burst into tears of relief. After more noise and apologies all around, Lindsey helped her up and into the locker room, because—just to make everything even more horrible—Sophia was still dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing when Navy SEAL Chief Ken Karmody had been gunned down in that hotel elevator.

Tracy stood, as if to help Lindsey with Sophia, but Decker stopped her. “Don’t. You’ve done enough.”

To Jules’s surprise, the receptionist got in his face. “That’s not fair. She walked in on a what-if conversation I was having with Dr. Heissman, and she completely misunderstood. She’s my friend, Deck. May I please go and help her find something to change into? She’s not going to fit into anything Lindsey has in her locker, and I’ve got two suitcases full of clothes.”

Decker nodded. “Go,” he said. It was only then that he turned to Jules.

“Hey, Deck,” Jules said. “How’s it going?”

“Where the fuck is Alyssa?” Decker was apparently eager to relinquish command.

“She and Sam are outside, doing a perimeter check with Cosmo and Silverman,” Jules reported. They were looking, in particular, at the security cameras that surrounded the building, because Lopez believed the system had been compromised. They’d brought in an expert to look at it—Tess—but Jules wasn’t going to mention that here, with all the extra ears in the lobby. “Dr. Heissman, nice to see you, ma’am.” He nodded at the woman, then turned back to Deck. “Do we have a description yet, of the men in the elevator?”

Lopez spoke up. “Chief Karmody’s still in surgery, and Sophia didn’t see much. From what I understand from her recall of the attack, she was covered in the chief’s blood, so Dr. Malkoff starting shouting about how she was shot, too. I think he believed the gunmen were intending to kill her. He actually hit her—knocked her out so she would appear to be dead. They grabbed him, and ran.”

“Dave knocked Sophia out?” Decker repeated. “Jesus.”

“It saved her life,” Lopez said somberly. “Oh, and Chief?” He handed Decker a pair of envelopes that looked like they’d been through a war zone. They were crumpled and stained with blood. “Karmody has these in his pocket. Best guess is he was holding on to them for Dr. Malkoff.”

One of them had Decker’s name on it. The other had been opened, and it looked as if it were... Yes, it was Dave’s will. Crap.

As Decker opened the second one, Jules could see even from several feet away, that like the first, Dave had handwritten it in his nearly illegible scrawl.

As he watched, Decker skimmed it, flipping the page over and...

“Oh, Jesus,” Deck said. He glanced up at both Jules and Lopez as he jammed it back into the envelope, and pocketed it. “It’s personal.”

Jules cleared his throat. “I’m going to have to ask you to—”

“Yeah,” Deck said shortly. “I know. I’ll let Alyssa see it. If she feels it’s necessary to share it with you... That’ll be up to her.”

Jules nodded. Worked for him. “I’ve got some information that falls into the bad-news department,” he said. “Can we go into your office or...”—he glanced again at Dr. Heissman, who was sitting quietly off to the side—“somewhere else we can shut the door?”

“I’ll hang here,” Lopez volunteered.

“My office,” Decker said, leading the way.

He was silent as they went down the hall, silent as he led the way into his office.

Jules closed the door behind him. The small room had a lived-in smell—common among law enforcement and counterterrorist specialists, who didn’t exactly keep bankers’ hours.

Jules couldn’t count how many times in the course of his career he’d slept in his clothes in his office—on the couch or sometimes even on the floor. You’d sleep, you’d eat, you’d sweat, you’d change your shirt, maybe wash up in the sink if you felt you could take a few minutes’ break.

But mostly you just sat there and got more and more ripe.

Except the gym locker fragrance in here had a soupçon of something lovely mixed in. Perfume.

And sure enough, as Jules looked around, he could see that the somewhat Neanderthalish Decker had been sharing his cave, so to speak.

A sweater was on the floor along with some notepads filled with loopy handwriting, a blanket was on the sofa, and a pair of high-heeled sandals had been kicked under one of the chairs.

Huh. And Deck’s desk was curiously, absolutely clear.

And—oh, ding—something small and white and silky and just the right size to be a style of underwear that absolutely would never fit Decker peeked out from behind a throw pillow that had landed on the floor in the far corner of the room.

Well, you go, D-Dawg.

Jules worked to keep his expression neutral, instead of wide-eyed and openmouthed in amazement. Tracy—and it had to be Tracy. Those shoes did not belong to Jo Heissman or Jay Lopez. And, yes, Tracy was pretty dang cute, but probably the dead-last person in San Diego Jules would have ever imagined hooking up with someone as grim and perpetually, quietly angry as Decker.

Except, this fiasco with Dave aside, Decker currently didn’t seem to be quite as angry. Way to go, Tracy.

“What have you got?” Deck asked as he sat behind his clutter-free desk. “An address from the plate numbers on Tracy’s picture of Michael Peterson would be nice.”

Jules sat in one of the chairs instead of on the sofa, where, despite the clear desk, the aura of a recent happy-fun-time lingered. “Yeah, a friend of a friend in San Diego PD. I pulled some favors and she ran the plates, completely on the lowdown. We got a name—Karen Michaelson—and an address. An empty apartment in Spring Valley. I got Yashi and Deb out here—both on their own time—seeing if they can’t track her down.”

“Michaelson, huh?” Decker shook his head. “Girlfriend? Wife?”

Jules shrugged. “No idea. But in the event that she is? I’m going to want to show her those photos of our man Peter-slash-Michael doing the naked thang with the doc.”

Decker nodded. He clearly understood that jealousy was often right up there among the possibilities when it came to making a family member of a suspect spill the proverbial beans. “Dr. Heissman’s been cooperative, so let’s be careful not to let those pictures get distributed too widely.”

“Of course,” Jules said.

“What else?” Decker, perceptive as always, asked. “You said bad news.”

“Yeah.” Jules sighed. “When the lab report on the knife Liam Smith used to stab Dave came back, it sat on CIA Special Agent Bill Connell’s desk. He was supposed to notify both Dave and the hospital, but he says it allegedly slipped through the cracks. Guy’s a total dick, by the way, and if Dave dies, I’m going to make sure he’s looked at for negligent homicide. I may do it anyway—throw an attempted in there. Motherfucker.”

“Bill Connell,” Decker repeated.

Jules nodded as he watched Deck store the name in his permanent memory banks. Bill didn’t know it yet, but should anything happen to Dave? The man was totally fucked. “Bottom line, the weapon was a biological nightmare. The amount of bacteria was... Well, knives are rarely antiseptic, but this one?” He shook his head.

“It was intentional,” Decker said. It wasn’t quite a question, but Jules answered it anyway.

“Had to be,” Jules agreed. “The other knife on the scene contained normal trace amounts of ick and germs. Alyssa has a copy of both lab reports, if you want to see them.”

“I do,” Deck said.

“It’s a hard copy. Don’t spill your coffee on it. We’re not sending anything via e-mail that’s not completely scrambled,” Jules said, “and there wasn’t time to fix this document. Speaking of there wasn’t time, we brought Tess back with us, to check out Tracy’s computer.”

Decker was not pleased. “What the fuck?”

It was clearly a rhetorical question, but Jules tried to answer it anyway. “There was no way we could risk bringing that computer to the safe house, and it may hold some answers.”

“And you think Nash is just gonna sit still while—”

“Yes,” Jules said. “He is. He’s walking, but not without a cane. He’s in no condition to jump onto the roof of a speeding train, or whatever it is you former Agency operatives do to catch your suspects. And he knows it.”

As an agent with the FBI, Jules usually did a lot of math in the course of an investigation. And then he drove to the address of the suspect in a really nice car, put on a bulletproof vest, and followed the SWAT team inside. It wasn’t every day that he was actually the one to kick in the door. Of course, having done it more than once, he could understand the appeal.

He could also understand how excruciating it would be, to be injured and forced onto the sidelines while his life partner took incredible risks.

But the words Tess said to Nash had apparently resonated. They were a team. Not just Tess and Nash, but all of them. They were in this thing together. And wasn’t that the truth?

“I gotta call him,” Deck said.

“I’m sure he’s not sleeping,” Jules again agreed.

Decker brought himself back to the issue at hand. “Theories on the knife?” he asked.

“I’m thinking our bad guys were shaking the tree, seeing what fell out. They target Dave—known to be a friend of Jim Nash, with the hope that, after being attacked, Dave would either run to Nash, or Nash would reach out to Dave. But if nothing happened within a certain time frame, even if Dave went underground, by using that extra-dirty knife, they could pretty much bank on him resurfacing for a return trip to the hospital. Which is where he needs to be, by the way. Intravenous antibiotics. As soon as possible.”

“You think they’re going to contact us?” Deck asked. “Attempt a trade? Dave for Nash?”

“Nash thinks it’s more likely that they’ll try enhanced interrogation first. Gosh, that sounds almost lovely, doesn’t it. Enhanced.”

Decker swore. “Dave doesn’t know where Nash is. Torturing him won’t... Shit.”

“He wouldn’t tell ’em even if he did know,” Jules said. “He’s Dave. So. What do we do, Chief? Do we tell Sophia about the knife or...?”

“We tell her,” Decker said, nodding grimly. “I tell her.”

Jules nodded, too. “That’s not going to be much fun. If you want, I’ll—”

“No.”

Jules sighed. “All right.” He stood up. Looked at the door. Looked back. “Chief, do you think of me as a friend?”

“Yes, I do,” Decker answered, no hesitation.

“I’m having a hard time with the murdered seven-year-old,” Jules confessed. “When we find the guys responsible, I’m going to kill them. I thought you should know that. I don’t give a fuck if it’s the head of the Agency or the Queen of England. No quarter, no mercy. They are fucking dead.”

Decker nodded. “I hear you.”

“And when it’s all said and done? I’m probably going to need a new job,” Jules told him. “If my marriage is recognized in California after November... I may be knocking on your door.”

“You’re welcome here,” Decker reassured him. “Always.”

“Thank you,” Jules said. “So. In the spirit of our excellent friendship? You definitely need a few tips on how to 24/7 it in your office. One, air freshener. Two, put your shit back on your desk, so that you and everyone else in the office can pretend you weren’t using the surface for non-work-related activities. Three, there’s no such thing as an underwear elf. Even when it goes missing, it’s somewhere in the room. So make sure you find it.” He pointed to the corner.

“Oh, hell,” Jules heard Decker say as he firmly shut the door behind him.