immy was sitting on the floor of the panic room when Tess unlocked the door.

His shirt was torn—as was one of the knees of his jeans. His lip was swollen and his cheek looked as if he were going to develop a terrible bruise.

He didn’t stand up. He didn’t even try. He just sat there, looking up at Tess, with his relief solid in his eyes. Of course, there was wariness mixed in there, too. He knew that she was angry.

No, angry was too simple a word for this emotion she was feeling.

“Where, exactly,” she asked him, miraculously able to keep her voice from shaking, “were you going to go? Barely able to walk, let alone run?”

“I can run,” he told her.

“For what?” she scoffed. “Five steps?”

“It took two Navy SEALs to get me down here.”

“Alyssa’s not a SEAL.”

“Well, she should be. She’s tougher than any SEAL I’ve ever met. She kicked my ass.”

“Thank God. And lucky for me,” Tess said sharply, “there were two people on guard, so you didn’t go... where, Jimmy?”

She knew where. She just wanted to hear him say it—that his intention was to sacrifice himself, so that this dire threat would vanish. God damn it. Her mouth trembled—she couldn’t stop it, but she pressed her lips tightly together so that it wouldn’t be as obvious.

He looked as if he might start to cry, too—but she knew better. He wouldn’t let himself. Not in here, with the lights on. Not so that she could see. He would lock everything inside, the way he always did, the way she knew he’d already done with that terrible, soul-wrenching news about the three dead innocents, all named John Wilson.

“I wanted to make sure you were safe,” he admitted, and she noted the careful wording. Not I wanted to find you.

“Which I wouldn’t have been, the moment you’d set foot outside this house and virtually announced to the world that, yes, you are still alive. Unless you were thinking you could buy my safety...”

He looked away.

“Right now they’re just guessing,” she told him, this time unable to keep her voice from shaking. “But they’re doing a damn good job. They found us, by the way, in San Diego.”

She could practically hear the sound of his surprise and fear as his head snapped up.

“Yeah,” Tess said. “The dead John Wilsons saved our lives—Jules’s and mine. Alyssa called a code red at the news and pulled us in, so we weren’t at the motel when they blew it up. Whoever the hell they are.”

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed. “Are you all right?”

Tess nodded. “Decker and Tracy were lucky, too. They got knocked around and Deck hit his head. But they’re secure. Lindsey’s going to go pick them up. We’ll work out a way to get them back here.”

“Tracy Shapiro?” he asked.

“She somehow figured out you were still alive. Deck thought it would be a good idea to contain her, so he was bringing her back here.” Tess left the door wide open as she came to sit several feet away from him, leaning back, as he was, against the wall. She gestured toward the hallway. “If you’re going to go, you should just do it now.”

His gaze flicked from her face to the door to the row of monitors that nearly covered one entire wall of the room. She glanced up at it, too. There was movement on only a few of the screens—those showing the big main living room from three different utilitarian angles.

Jules was sitting on the couch, looking as if he’d been hit by an emotional bus. He’d taken the news about the three dead John Wilsons extremely hard. He’d barely said a word to anyone in the helicopter—instead retreating to that uncommunicative, stony-faced place where so many men in the SpecWar world went, rather than deal honestly with their anger and grief.

Robin was now sitting close to him, one arm around his shoulders, his other hand on Jules’s knee, while Sam stood and Alyssa sat across from them. Alyssa was leaning forward, talking intently—the microphones weren’t on, so they couldn’t hear what she was saying. Whatever she was telling Jules, he just kept shaking his head. No.

“No one’s going to stop you,” Tess told Jimmy. “This isn’t going to work—none of it will—if we have to hold you here against your will.”

“I know that.” He nodded, unable to hold her gaze, still watching the monitors, where Robin now put both arms around Jules, who made no move to embrace him in return—locked as he was in the tough-guy land of numbness. But then, in the solid warmth of Robin’s arms, he crumpled.

Tess saw Jules’s anguished expression for only a split second before he grabbed hold of Robin and buried his face against the taller man’s neck and shoulder. But it was such an exact representation of what they all were feeling, she almost started to cry, too.

There was movement then from another monitor—Sam and Alyssa had gone into the hallway, heading purposefully toward the little room where Ash was fast asleep in his crib.

“I just...,” Jimmy started.

Tess waited. She always did. Because hope sprang eternal. And every now and then, like the other night when he talked about his dream, he actually threw her a crumb.

Except it wasn’t like that. Not really. He didn’t withhold intentionally. He was who he was, and Tess had known that going into this relationship. She knew from the start that it wasn’t going to be easy, but she’d never dreamed it would be this hard. Still, it was what it was, too. And she?

She loved this man. Completely. She told him that now. It was so simple, those three little words, and so absolute—her voice clear in the stillness of the basement room.

Jimmy stood up, and for one split second she actually thought he was going to do it—he was going to walk out the door.

But he only moved over to the panel that controlled the monitors, where he turned off the switches that shut down the cameras in the living room, granting Jules and Robin privacy.

And there he stood, just staring at the other monitors, scanning the ones that showed the quiet peacefulness of the night out along the driveway and down by the gate and the fence that surrounded this property.

“I think it’s safe to assume,” Tess told Jimmy, “that at this point? They know you’re alive. And we’ve all been marked for removal. Deck and me, at least. Probably Jules, too.”

He nodded without turning to face her, as the silence stretched on.

It was only when she mentally started gathering herself up—to go upstairs and put some food in her too-empty stomach, to rinse off the dirt from the road—that Jimmy spoke.

“I can’t imagine... how fucked up you’ve got to be,” he said haltingly, with his back still to Tess, “to intentionally hit a kid.”

At first his words didn’t make sense. Her first thought was that Jimmy had somehow hurt little Ashton in his struggle with Sam and Alyssa. But then he turned to face her, and she realized from the look in his eyes that he was using the verb to hit as a synonym for to delete. Which was the accepted Agency euphemism for to kill.

As if hitting a kid wasn’t bad enough in the common-usage sense of the word.

“The seven-year-old John Wilson,” she realized. Was he really talking to her about this?

Jimmy nodded. “You’ve got to be... beyond evil... A psychopath. Two John Wilsons would have done the trick. Two would have caught our attention. The third, the child... That was... beyond twisted. It was sick.”

“This isn’t your fault,” she said. “You understand that, right? If you really had died, they would’ve gone after the doctor who signed your death certificate. They would have found him and tortured him and killed him, too.”

“They know how to hurt me,” he spoke over her. “Whoever they are, they know things about me, about—” He stopped, but it wasn’t to fall into one of his excruciatingly long silences. It was to start over. “It was right after I started working for the Agency. Before I was partnered with Decker. Before I even met him. Way before 9/11. It was a black op and I was in the field. Right place, right time—and I was tapped to delete a terrorist we’d been hunting for years. The Merchant. You know him.”

It wasn’t a question, but Tess nodded. Everyone in the counterterrorist community knew of the man known as the Merchant. He’d been ruthless in the attacks he’d planned against the West. He was notorious for bombing schools and hospitals. He’d also expanded upon the concept of the human shield—always surrounding himself with children. He didn’t climb into a truck or SUV unless it was packed with kids.

Sure, most of them were there because their parents were his supporters, but that didn’t make the idea of using a surgical strike to take out his vehicle any less unpleasant.

Jimmy painfully, carefully lowered himself down again on the floor. “Our intel came from a reliable source. We knew the Merchant was in Turkey, in a little town in the mountains near Armenia. I was... nearby. In range. It was purely coincidental, but... I was in place.”

Tess knew what was coming. “Oh, God, Jimmy.”

He glanced at her only briefly, his face twisted in a grimace. “I fucking hate thinking about this shit. What’s done is done, and I can’t change it.”

Intentionally hit a kid, he’d said. “Whatever you did,” she told him, “it wasn’t the same as—”

“It was worse,” he told her, his eyes dark with self-loathing. “What I did was worse. I was set up to take the shot. I had maybe forty seconds while the target walked along a footbridge—it was the only way in or out of this church that was on an island, surrounded on all sides by a river. I knew he’d be wearing body armor, and I knew he’d have children with him, so I’m ready to take a head shot, which is hard enough for me under normal conditions.”

Tess nodded. She knew that much about him, at least. The sniper rifle had never been Jimmy’s weapon of choice.

His silence stretched on as he stared at the floor between his feet, his gaze unfocused, his mind both miles and years away. God only knew what he was really seeing, thinking, feeling....

Tess tried to bring him back, tried to help. “I know you didn’t kill him.” The Merchant hadn’t been taken out until August of 2000—ironically, it was Alyssa Locke who’d fired the sniper shot that had ended his miserable life.

Jimmy looked up at her, his mouth grim, his eyes rimmed in red. “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t. But I should’ve.”

“What happened?” she asked, as gently as she could.

And this time, although he didn’t answer right away, he held her gaze. And when he finally spoke, his words surprised her. “Sam told me I should say.... that I should tell you... that this is... hard for me.” He whispered the last words, but then laughed his disgust. “Christ, that’s an understatement.”

“You talked to Sam about...” She couldn’t keep her disbelief from her voice. It seemed so unlikely, so unlike Jimmy to talk to anyone about anything.

But he nodded. “He talked to me. At me. He told me that... I’m going to...” He choked the words out. “Lose you—”

“He’s wrong,” she interrupted him. “Look at me, Jimmy. I’m right here. I’m right here.”

He turned away—but not before she saw the sudden sheen of tears that filled his eyes.

Tess spoke through the lump that ached in her throat. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. It really is. But if you think our enemy knows how to hurt you, then you need to tell someone. Jules or... Sam. It’s okay, Jimmy, if it’s easier for you to talk to Sam—”

“What are the odds?” he asked.

She didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“You risk so much, for such crazy odds,” he told her. “I look at that scar on your hand and... You reached for that gun, but... what were the odds that you’d get shot in the hand instead of in your head?”

He was talking about that awful day, just a few short months ago, that they’d both been shot when a squad of heavily armed men had surrounded them and the people they’d been guarding.

They’d been distracted right before the attack—arguing about Jimmy’s refusal to talk to her, to ask for help. She’d told him that day that she could handle his silence, but what she couldn’t deal with was his lies.

Yet at the same time, on a certain level—when she stepped back and looked at it objectively—she understood. When Jimmy had worked for the Agency, his job had been to lie, and to lie both well and often. His very life had depended upon it.

So it made sense that, even years after his split from that organization, he should still struggle to be forthcoming.

Tess had been telling him that, two months ago. She’d told him that she was willing to cut him some slack, but that this grace period was not going to last forever. There would come a time—and it was fast approaching—that his lying would end their relationship.

Which was when their attackers had opened fire, hitting first Tess and then Jimmy. His injury had been far worse than hers. And he was right. She had been willing to risk anything to save him. So she’d reached for a gun.

She now shook her head. “They shot me in the hand because they wanted hostages—”

“But you didn’t know that at the time. You could’ve been killed. You should have been killed.”

“I thought you were going to die.” She brought it down to the bottom line. “You were bleeding, you were unconscious—”

“So you thought you might as well die, too?” He honestly didn’t understand.

Tess pushed herself to her feet. “I thought that I could save you,” she said. “I thought if I could just get that gun, then maybe—”

“A.22.” He interrupted her. “It was a.22-caliber handgun, and you were surrounded by... Was it one or two dozen men with submachine guns? Damnit, I know you’re not an idiot, Tess—”

“We were surrounded,” she reminded him. “And you were dying. So, yes, I took what I thought was our only chance.”

“A chance doesn’t involve miraculous divine intervention,” he pointed out. “It has better odds than one in, Christ, seven trillion!”

She knew that, yet she’d reached for that weapon anyway—and had gotten a bullet through her hand. Seconds later, she’d been knocked unconscious by a really ugly man who jammed the butt of his rifle against her head. Oh yeah, and then she was dragged off as a hostage.

Left for dead, Jimmy had roused and rallied and, even though he was bleeding badly, he’d tried to connect a severed phone line to call for help.

Not for himself, but for her.

“I wasn’t going to let you die without a fight,” she told him, her voice shaking as she moved closer, getting right in his face. “You know before...? When I said that you should just walk out of here—if you’re so intent on leaving? I was bluffing. If you’d actually gone, I would have grabbed you and tied you down. Because I am not giving up on you—on us. Not without a fight. To hell with the odds.”

“If I go,” he told her quietly, “it’ll be because it’s the only way—”

“No.” Tess cut him off. “The only way we’re going to get through this is together. All of us. You already tried to do this alone, and you failed, Jimmy. It’s time to go after these sons of bitches as a team.”

“And if we still fail...?” he whispered.

“We won’t.” She was absolute. “Not a chance.”

He took her hand, looking down at her scar, brushing it almost tenderly with his thumb. “Such crazy odds,” he said again.

“Maybe not,” Tess told him. “Alyssa’s convinced we’re closer to finding them than we think.” She squeezed his hand, desperate for him to believe that this battle they were fighting wasn’t hopeless. “They hurt us with the John Wilsons. And yes, it was sheer luck that got us out of that motel. But we’re not going to let this second chance go to waste. We’re going to figure out who these people are. And then we’re going to get them.”

“And live happily ever after,” he said.

“Are you mocking me?”

“Never,” he said. “No. It just seems like more crazy odds.”

Tess searched his eyes, but all she could see was resignation and despair.

“Do you love me?” she asked him.

Jimmy didn’t answer right away, and when he did, his voice was a whisper. “With all my heart.”

“Then we fight,” she told him. “Together. As a team. Regardless of the odds.”

Jimmy pulled her close and kissed her. His mouth was so sweet, so familiar. As she melted into it, into him, she was aware of how long it had been since he’d kissed her like this—and since she’d kissed him back with equal passion.

God, it had been months since her desire for him hadn’t been trumped by her worry over his injury and her frustration over his reticence and lies.

When he ended the kiss, the tears were back in his eyes.

“The Merchant,” he said. “The botched assassination. Whoever it was who killed that kid yesterday? I’m certain that he knows about it.”

“I’ll tell Jules and Alyssa,” Tess promised.

“There’s more,” Jimmy told her, but it was clear that he didn’t know where or how to begin.

Tess tugged him over to the sofa, and he gingerly lowered himself down. She sat beside him, still holding his hand.

As his silence stretched on.

“I’ll recap what I know,” Tess suggested quietly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, okay?”

Jimmy nodded.

“You got called to Turkey where the Merchant was visiting a church on an island,” she told him. “You were out there, alone, in position to take him out via sniper rifle, and you knew it was going to have to be done with a single shot to the head.”

It was the help he’d needed, because he spoke. “I wasn’t out there alone. I was connected by radio headset to a situation room, probably deep in the Agency’s main HQ.”

“What?” Tess was stunned. And indignant. That had made the op at least ten times more dangerous for him. Field operatives kept radio silence because radio waves could be intercepted—and traced.

“I was new,” he said. “Untested. They still didn’t trust me.”

“Did they ever?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Jimmy told her. “I think they did. Although trust is probably the wrong... Let’s just say that they got to a point where they could bank on my patterns of behavior.”

“Who was there?” she asked. “In the sitch room?”

“My contact was Doug Brendon,” he said.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

“Yup.”

This was long before Brendon was appointed head of the entire Agency.

“Jack Finch was there,” Jimmy reported. “And Doc Ryan, who ran the psych group. Oh, and the idiot who led support back then. What the fuck was his name?” He squinted to remember. “Matt Hallfield. What an asshole. We used to call him Matt-hole. He had his second in command with him—Russ Stafford.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?” Tess squinted her brain, but nothing came forth.

Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t think you ever met him. He never actually said much—although it couldn’t have been easy to get a word in edgewise with Matt-hole around. I think Stafford left right around the same time that Hallfield died. Around 2001, I think. Yeah. It was right after 9/11. Although maybe he went into admin and we just never crossed paths again.”

“That’s easy enough to find out.” The Agency’s records were hacker-proof—unless the hacker had previously worked in the Agency’s support division as a computer specialist, the way Tess had. “Ryan and Hallfield were just before my time,” Tess told him. “But people were still talking about Hallfield.”

Apparently the former head of the Agency’s support team had had terminal cancer and committed suicide—which had really shaken up the entire organization. The tragedy had prompted then-director Finch to put even more emphasis on the mental health department, making psych evaluations mandatory, even for support staff.

“So Finch and Hallfield and Brendon and the others are talking in your ear,” Tess prompted Jimmy, who’d fallen silent again.

“Yeah,” he said. “They were watching images—both from satellites and from a minicam I was wired with.” He met her eyes. “That was the last time I did a job like that. After that, I managed to break the equipment that they gave me when they sent me out. Eventually, they just stopped giving it to me. But I was too green at the time to... I should’ve...”

“So they’re watching, too,” Tess encouraged him, interrupting his recriminations, “as the Merchant comes out of the church.”

Jimmy nodded. “He’s got these kids surrounding him—no big surprise there. Their heads come up to his waist—which is strategic.”

Tess knew what he meant. Body armor—at least the kind most readily available back in the early 1990s—ended roughly at the waist. Really paranoid people might also wear protective shorts, but at the time, it would’ve been a two-piece ensemble. A sniper trying to take out a body armor–protected target had a shot at getting the job done by aiming for the juncture at the waist, and hoping there was a muffin-top induced gap.

“There’s another kid,” Jimmy continued, closing his eyes, “maybe a little younger than the others. He’s sitting on this bastard’s shoulders, pretty much wrapped around his head. And I can’t do it, Tess. I can’t take the shot, not at that range, with the weapon that I had. Any bullet I fired would go through the man’s head and blast a hole in that kid, too. So I reported that.”

She braced for what she knew was coming.

“But the order comes down, direct from Finch. Do it anyway,” Jimmy whispered. “And then Hallfield comes on. And he tells me it’s okay. His team has identified the kid as being the son of Fariq al-Qasim, one of the Merchant’s top henchmen. And I look through my scope at this little boy, and he’s smiling and laughing, like he’s enjoying the ride, and I... I can’t do it. Time’s running out, the target’s got maybe ten more seconds before he reaches the safety of his car. And Brendon comes back on, and he’s cursing and screaming—Do it, God damn it! And he tells me if I don’t, all of those children will die, because he’s going to order an airstrike on that vehicle. And I’m a fucking idiot, because I believed him. So I shoot, but I aim for the man’s chest, because maybe he’s not wearing any body armor at all, you know? I hit him—it’s a clear shot, nowhere near any of the kids, and he falls, and I’m out of there. I’m gone.”

But the Merchant had been wearing body armor. He’d survived the attack.

“The threat of the airstrike was just a bluff,” Jimmy said quietly. “I didn’t know it then, but no way were we going to risk photos of dead children in every newspaper in the country—and around the world. That was back when the press wasn’t entirely run by corporations, when we still cared about shit like that, when public opinion polls mattered. So no harm, no foul—except because I took the shot instead of calling off the mission and fading into the mountains? The motherfucker knew that we’d tried for him. And two days later, he blows up Fariq al-Qasim’s son’s school bus, as if to say Fuck you. See how strong I am, and how weak you are? Thirty-one children died, including the one whose life I was unable—unwilling—to take.”

“You aren’t weak,” Tess argued.

“The kid was going to die anyway,” Jimmy told her. “If I could go back, have a do-over, I’d take the shot and kill the kid. Save thirty others. Plus all the other people that motherfucker killed in terrorist attacks between then and the time he really was deleted.”

“You didn’t know that back then,” Tess told him. “You didn’t see numbers. You saw a little boy.”

“A seven-year-old boy,” Jimmy said. “And now another seven-year-old boy is dead because of me.”

“No.” She was absolute. “He’s dead because there are people out there who are evil, who know that if you’re still alive, you have the power to bring them down. And I agree,” she added. “Whoever killed the John Wilsons knew that you were unable to cross that line all those years ago and intentionally kill al-Qasim’s son.”

They also no doubt knew that Jimmy had agonized over the choice that he’d made, after he’d found out about that bus. Tess frowned. Wait a minute.

“Who handled your psych evaluations?” she asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “I didn’t have psych evaluations back then,” he told her. “Not really. I mean, I did on paper. Dr. Ryan signed off on the reports. But nobody wasted any time on me.”

She stared at him. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

He smiled tightly at her disbelief. “I think they liked me—exactly the way they’d found me. Why change perfection, you know?”

“So you never sat down with—”

“Nope. There was this one time, when an outside mental health organization came in, and Ryan’s office cribbed me the answers for the written test. Told me what to say in the interview, too. I kept it in my repertoire—kind of like Christmas carols. You dust ’em off and sing a rousing chorus once a year.”

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Finch and Brendon—”

“Weren’t interested in my mental health,” Jimmy finished for her. “I don’t think they expected me to live long enough to need it. I don’t think they wanted me to live long enough to....”

“Do you think they’re behind—”

“Finch is dead,” he told her. “And Brendon... He just wasn’t that smart.”

“He was smart enough to become head of the entire Agency.”

“He was a political appointee,” Jimmy pointed out.

Right. “What happened to Dr. Ryan?” Tess asked. “Didn’t he have a heart attack, right in his office? He didn’t come back from that, did he?”

“No. He died, I don’t know, maybe a few months later?”

“When was that?” she asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “Honestly? I tried to stay as far from Ryan’s department as possible.”

It wouldn’t be hard to find out that date. “It just seems weird,” she said, “that almost everyone in a leadership position in that situation room is now dead.”

“I have no clue what happened to Russ Stafford.”

“I wonder if he went down into the black ops sector.”

“No.” Jimmy dismissed the idea. “I would have seen him there.”

Tess had to look away, because that one little sentence held so much information. Jimmy had performed so many black ops for the Agency, he’d known everyone in black ops support.

“I think,” she said carefully, “that you should make a list of everyone you came into contact with at the Agency. And as many as you can remember of the ops that you performed.”

“I’ve done that,” he said. “I gave it to Cassidy.”

“You already... wow.” She was surprised. “You did it while I was... in San Diego?”

Something flickered in his eyes, and he opened his mouth, and she knew with a heart-aching sense of dread that the next thing he said to her was going to be a lie. But then he closed his eyes and exhaled, hard, and said, “Please don’t be mad. But I made the lists back when I was in the hospital.”

“What?” she said. “When?”

“Whenever you went to shower, or get coffee,” he admitted, an apology in his eyes.

“I’m not mad,” she said. And she wasn’t. The wobble in her voice was from her relief—and disbelief—that he’d actually told her the truth. “I’m a little confused. You could barely hold a pen. I could’ve helped.”

“I didn’t want you to,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want you to see it. The ops list. I didn’t want...” He shook his head. “I told Cassidy that I thought it would upset you, but the truth is, I didn’t want you to find out all the really awful shit I’ve done.”

“I’ve seen your Agency files,” she reminded him.

“This is different. Black ops...”

“Jimmy.” She squeezed the words out past her heart, which was again lodged securely in her throat. “You know me better than that.”

“But I could see it,” he confessed, “in Cassidy’s eyes. He looked at the list, and then he looked at me differently.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if he had a terrible headache. “I don’t want you to look at me like that.”

“I won’t.”

“You might.”

“But if I don’t see the list,” she gently pointed out, “won’t you always wonder?”

Jimmy looked at her then. “I’d rather wonder with you, than know without you.”

“You’re going to have to trust me,” Tess told him, and there they sat.

“Is it okay,” he finally asked, “if I show you the list in the morning?”

Tess nodded. “Yeah.” It had been a long day—for both of them. And if Jimmy were going to continue to heal, he needed to get his rest. She, however, still had work to do.

“I love you,” she reminded him as she got to her feet, as she held out a hand to help him up, too. “I’m not going to love you any less tomorrow.”

Jimmy nodded, but she could tell from his eyes that, although he desperately wanted to, he didn’t believe her.

“Sorry it’s not a scone.”

Decker stood in Sam Starrett’s kitchen, on legs that were still way too unsteady, staring at Tracy Shapiro, who’d just offered him a cookie.

No, offer was too gentle a word. She was forcing the fucking thing on him. And damn it, he watched himself reach out and take it from her hand. His fingers brushed against hers by accident—or maybe not—and he wanted...

He wanted to kiss her again, and not stop this time. He wanted to back her up against the cabinets and lift her onto the counter and spread her long, gorgeous legs. He wasn’t quite tall enough, and he’d have to stand on his toes as he pushed himself inside of her, as he made her come.

Himself, too. This wasn’t complete altruism he was feeling here.

Feeling.

Yeah.

She was right when she’d said that she was making him feel something other than his usual misery. He’d been far from miserable while he was kissing her.

It was only afterwards that he’d been fully submerged in a steaming pit of despair.

But Jesus, she was beautiful, even with her hair a mess and her face smudged with dirt and blood. With her classically beautiful, almost perfectly proportioned features, with those big expressive eyes and her flawlessly perfect skin, she was a knockout—and that was before looking southward at her stammer-inducing, brain-freezing, incredibly female curves. Her breast had nearly overflowed his hand—and he had big hands.

He’d also liked the force with which she’d kissed him back—as if she’d seen his bet and raised him the limit, as if she were ready and willing to escalate from that not-very-gentle kiss to full body-slamming, heart-stoppingly rough-and-tumble sex in a single heartbeat.

The woman had no fear—which was a real problem, since Deck too often scared the shit out of himself. If she didn’t stop him, then who the hell would?

And the really stupid thing? It was that if his jeans hadn’t already been down around his knees, he wouldn’t have stopped kissing her. Which would have ultimately resulted in his jeans getting pulled down to his knees as she straddled him and he slammed himself inside of her.

Yeah, if he hadn’t gotten injured and bled all over his clothes, she’d be fucking him blind right now, on the cold concrete floor of their coworkers’ garage.

So, no. He didn’t want a goddamned cookie.

He put it down on the kitchen counter, and Tracy opened her mouth to protest, of course.

Decker spoke over her. “You need to wash out that elbow,” he told her—and she bent her arm and tried to see it, which never worked, but gave him a better look at the scrape. It was a real mess, with ground-in dirt that would hurt like a bitch to clean. “Why don’t you shower, and after you’re dressed, I’ll help you with it.”

“You’ve got a scrape on your back that’s way worse than this,” she countered.

“I doubt it,” he said. His shoulders felt rug-burned and raw, true, but there’d be no pieces of dirt to pick from his skin because his shirt was intact. He didn’t have to see it to know that.

Tracy, of course, was indignant. “It is,” she informed him. “It’s—”

“Why,” he interrupted her, “is everything always an argument or a contest with you?”

She made a sound of exasperation and total disgust, and he realized he should have kept a count of how many times, today alone, he’d provoked that particular noise from her. It was probably well into double digits.

“Since when is informing you of a fact an argument?” she asked. “As for contest? You win. Okay? I concede any and all contests. Congratulations—you’re the biggest idiot in the room.”

She pushed her hair back from her face, and left behind a streak of soot above her eyebrow.

Soot?

Jesus.

He’d had no idea they’d been that close to the smoke and flames from the explosion, and he had to hang on to the counter as relief flooded him again. He was incredibly lucky that they weren’t both dead. Doubly lucky, considering someone had been lying in wait for them with a sniper rifle.

“Are you all right?” Concern softened Tracy’s eyes as she reached for him. But she didn’t make contact—she didn’t let herself.

Which was simultaneously a blessing and a shame.

“I’m fine,” he said.

His nausea had evened out quite a bit once they’d gotten inside the house. He was feeling less as if he were going to hurl any second—although now that the ringing in his ears was fading and the dizziness was departing, he felt every stinging scrape and battered bruise. His arm was throbbing in unison with his heartbeat. Among other things.

“I really don’t want to leave you alone out here,” she said. “Why don’t we find the bathroom. You can shower while I’m in there. The bathroom,” she added quickly. “Not the shower. You get to shower alone. Unless you need help...”

Her words inspired images of her head tipped back as water cascaded down her face, her throat, her magnificent breasts as she helped him as only a naked woman in his shower could....

“Not that kind of help,” she chastised him. “Even I’m not pathetic enough to suggest that we... God.”

“I knew what you meant,” he defended himself. “You’re there if I fall down. Which I’m not going to do.”

“If you knew what I meant, then you shouldn’t have been thinking—”

“You can’t possibly know what I was thinking,” he interrupted.

Tracy exhaled her disgust. “Oh, please. You’re a man. What is that statistic? Men think about sex something like four thousand times a minute. You were thinking it. I could see that you were thinking it.”

“Is four thousand times a minute even possible—”

“It’s the equivalent of constantly,” Tracy shot back. “Even for someone who’s as much of a prude as you are.”

“I’m a prude,” he repeated. “Yet I think about sex constantly?”

“That’s usually how it works,” she told him. “You’re so bottled up, your head’s going to explode.”

“Your analysis of me”—he was incredulous—“comes from what? The fact that I haven’t tried to fuck you by now?”

She flinched at his harshness, but didn’t back down. “No,” she retorted, and took a breath, about to launch into what was sure to be an infuriating counterattack.

“It’s called restraint,” he shot at her before she could begin. “You should try it sometime.”

It made her sputter, and say, “I had no idea restraint was a synonym for cowardice.”

Oh, no. No.

“You know, you kissed me,” she continued.

“You took off my pants.” The words came out of his mouth before he could stop. He knew, damn well, that her intent hadn’t been at all salacious.

But she blushed, even as she defended herself. “To make sure you weren’t going to die! Do me a favor? If I’m ever lying on the ground, unconscious and covered in blood? Undress me. I’d rather not die simply to protect your pious and distorted sense of decorum.”

“I won’t have to undress you,” he told her. “You barely wear any clothes as it is.”

“Oh!” she said. “My! God! You just proved my point. You sound like my grandfather! My pants are wrapped around your wounded arm—in case you didn’t notice.”

“I’m not talking about your lack of pants,” he pointed out, aware as hell that he, too, wasn’t wearing any. “I’m talking about...”

“The way I dress when I’ve got pants on,” she finished for him. “I know. Which makes you a misogynist as well as a prude. Women didn’t dress that way when your Oma was young. No, Opa, they did. Oma just didn’t have any boobs after spending four years on rations in London—and giving most of her share of the food to Uncle Paul.”

“The jeans you were wearing last night were not your grandmother’s.” Why was he arguing? There was no way he could win this.

“Why can’t you just admit that you’re hot for me, and stop blaming me for it, like it’s something I intentionally did—like I chose to be born with big-boob genes. It’s not like I’ve been doing stripper aerobics or... or pole dancing in front of you. Last time I looked in the mirror, the neckline of my shirt wasn’t cut down to my navel. I’m covered completely. Or maybe you think because I actually have breasts instead of mosquito-bite boobs like the women you see on TV, I should wear a burka.”

“I don’t think you should wear a burka,” he said, reeling slightly from the idea of Tracy doing stripper aerobics. Talk about incentive to go to the gym. “You’re overreacting.”

“No.” She got in his face. “Overreacting is what jerk men do if women don’t wear a bra that’s padded enough. Forget comfort. I have to make sure my bra doesn’t let even the slightest hint of nipple show—”

Nipple. She actually said the word nipple, and Decker had to work to keep his gaze from moving below her neck. He found himself, instead, watching her mouth.

“—because some stupid man will think I’m giving him some kind of body-language green light,” she continued, “when in truth I’m just cold.”

The lipstick she’d had on earlier was gone. It was likely that he’d kissed it off her, but the truth was, she didn’t need it. Her lips were smooth and pink and full.

“You so want to kiss me again,” she accused him.

Deck jerked his gaze back up to her eyes, and for a moment, they stood there in silence, just looking at each other. He didn’t breathe—he couldn’t breathe.

He could see his desire reflected in her beautiful eyes. It was more than just sexual attraction and heat, it was a wistful longing for something more, an awareness that their seemingly constant bickering—and his too-harsh words—kept them both from having to acknowledge the truth. Which was that he liked her—more with each passing hour.

More, even, because she’d called him on the fact that he wanted, again, to kiss her.

So he answered honestly. “Yes. I do. But I won’t. Again, it’s called restraint.”

He took advantage of the fact that he’d surprised her with the truth, and beat a retreat from the kitchen. It was definitely time to put even more space between them, so he headed down the hall, looking for the goddamn bathroom.

But Tracy followed him—the arms of that ridiculous yellow rain slicker that she’d tied around her waist flapping about the tops of her thighs. “Oh, good,” she said. “Run away. You just proved my point.”

The first bathroom he found was only a half—no shower—so he kept going, taking the stairs to the second floor, jarring his injured arm with each stupid step.

Tracy, meanwhile, felt the need to continue talking at him. “I’m going to say it again: What you call restraint is cowardice. And it’s not just sex you run from, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s intimacy.”

And there was the bathroom, on the right, door open, tile floor, large walk-in shower stall.

“I’ve seen you run away from conversations with Jimmy Nash,” Tracy continued “He’s supposed to be your best friend—”

“Men don’t have best friends,” Decker said, as he flipped on the light and pulled back the shower curtain with a screeee. “Only little girls do.” As the words left his mouth, he knew they would serve to incite her further—which was probably why he’d said it.

“Oh,” she said, attitude practically steaming from her ears as he turned on the water to let it heat. “Nice. But wrong. Again. People have friends—and some of those friends become special. You can mock it all you want, but Nash loves you. And whether you man up to it or not, I know that you love him. You’re willing to die for him. Would it really kill you to have a meaningful conversation with him?”

A linen closet held a stack of neatly folded towels. He took out two, putting them on the counter of the sink before turning back to Tracy. “You know nothing about my friendship with Nash.”

“I’ve known you both for years now,” she countered, hands on her hips. “I know enough.”

“He’s been ‘dead’ for two months,” Decker found himself responding, despite the fact that he knew—knew—that engaging in this conversation wasn’t going to lead to anything good. “You have no idea how many or what kind of conversations I’ve had with him—”

“I would bet a million dollars,” Tracy proclaimed, “that not one of those conversations started with you going, How are you feeling about this being-dead thing? Or I’m freaked out by having to put my hands all over your fiancée, and it’s particularly difficult to deal with, since Sophia’s—”

“Jesus,” Decker said, looking toward the ceiling.

“—hooked up with Dave.”

Something snapped. He felt it go, in his forehead, right over his left eye. “I am not in love with her,” he said. “I have never been in love with her. I had sex with her. One time. A hundred fucking years ago, on the other side of the world. It was abusive. And wrong. She was afraid of me, and I knew it, and I let her go down on me because I told myself that she had information I needed, and that it was life or death that I find out what she knew, but what I really wanted was a blow job, and it didn’t fucking matter whose mouth it was. Is that all right with you?”

Tracy stood there—he’d silenced her at last—as the water finally turned hot and started steaming up the bathroom mirror.

But then she blinked. And said, “Men turn into idiots when sex is involved. I mean, how was she supposed to give you any information when she’s using her mouth to—”

“Why is it you always feel compelled to comment?” Decker asked, his voice actually cracking. “I didn’t say, She gave me a blow job, please discuss.”

“Well, what did you think I would do after you tell me something like that?” Tracy looked at him as if he were mentally defective. “Run away? Or faint, like... like an old lady? A blow job! Oh, no! I’ve met a lot of men in my life, Sparky, and I’m pretty certain nearly all of them have, at one time or another, been the recipient of a blow job, given to them by a person with whom they didn’t end up living happily ever after. Two of them I’m absolutely certain about, having participated in the blow job in question. Although I think I prefer the phrase hummer. It sounds more fun—less like work. Blow job, you know.”

Decker just stared at her.

“I was right,” she told him. “You are a total prude. Is this really what you’ve been making such a big deal about for all these years?”

He didn’t answer her—he couldn’t.

And being Tracy, she couldn’t shut up. “How do you reconcile your boatloads of guilt with the fact that Sophia has seemed—for years—to be desperate to get with you again? You know, I know her. Not well, but well enough. She’s not crazy. Okay, she’s maybe a little damaged, but really, who isn’t?”

And still he just stood there, with the water pounding down behind him, gurgling down the shower’s drain. Tracy took a tentative step closer, and he couldn’t back away—there was nowhere to go in the little room. Besides, the anger in her eyes had changed to something softer and warmer. Compassion. And genuine concern.

“Is your guilt from the fact that you liked it?” she asked. “You should give yourself a break. You were single. She was willing and, rumor has it, it can feel pretty good.”

Willing? “You have no idea what Sophia’s been through.”

“I kinda do,” Tracy said. “She’s talked to me about the months that she was a prisoner in Padsha Bashir’s palace. I’ve seen her scars. She’s let it go, she’s moved on. You know, I actually think that one of the hardest things for her has been the fact that you haven’t—let it go.”

“So, what are you saying?” Decker asked, his voice rough, even to his own ears. “I should transform myself into someone I’m not? I should change who I am and what I feel—just to make Sophia’s life easier? Jesus, if I wasn’t going to do it for Em—”

“No,” she countered. “Letting go isn’t the same as—”

“I don’t love Sophia,” he said again. “I didn’t even like her—not at first. But, yes, I really liked the sex. Way too much, considering that she tried to kill me while she—”

He shut his mouth on the truth that had almost escaped—the fact that he had never climaxed the way he had that night long ago, not before and certainly not after.

And there they stood, in that bathroom, his half-confession sitting there, awkwardly, between them. He could feel his face heat with his embarrassment, and he didn’t dare look into Tracy’s eyes. He didn’t want to see the growing awareness as she realized exactly what he’d just told her.

And he had told her—even though he’d stopped himself. But Tracy was extremely smart. She was going to figure it out.

“Just wait outside,” he said quietly. “Please. I’ll shower first—”

“There’s nothing wrong with rough sex,” she said. “You know that, right? I’ve only kissed you once, and I’m pretty sure that if we were going to get it on? You’d eat me alive. I mean, as opposed to slowly licking me all over with the very tip of your tongue. Which... could really work, too.”

Decker laughed. At least he meant to laugh, but it came out as more of an “Unh.” As if someone had punched him in the stomach and air escaped.

“It makes sense—sort of—that you would feel an... elevated sense of... urgency from a... perceived threat,” she told him.

“It wasn’t perceived,” he found himself telling her. “She tried to shoot me.”

“While she was...?” Tracy ingested that information. “And you... got off on it. Okay, that’s... maybe a little weird. But, hey. Only a little. Normal is a very wide spectrum. And maybe it wasn’t the threat of violence that revved you up. Maybe it was Sophia.”

“I hardly knew her, and I didn’t trust her,” Decker pointed out.

“As obviously you shouldn’t have,” Tracy agreed. “But she’s very pretty.”

“It wasn’t the threat of violence. It was violence.”

“The violence toward you, you mean, right? I mean, you’re not, like, into—”

“Yes,” he said. “Violence toward me. Jesus. I’m not that fucked up. Please, just let me take a shower—”

“So maybe your ultimate perfect girlfriend is a cross between a librarian and Kato from The Pink Panther,” Tracy surmised. “Out in public, she’s all buttoned-to-the-neck and proper. But at home, she’s jumping out at you, dressed like a dominatrix in leather and stilettos, shaking out her hair and taking off her glasses as she takes you to the ground and pins you down and...”

Jesus.

“That’s actually kind of hot,” she mused.

She was serious. The heat she was speaking of was evident in her eyes and time hung, for a very odd moment, as he looked back at her. He knew she was thinking about being dressed all in leather and pinning him to the floor, her arm jammed up under his chin, pressure on his throat, as she unfastened his pants with her other hand and...

Yeah. It was outrageously hot. He could overpower her in a heartbeat—but he wouldn’t.

He looked away first.

“I’m thinking Emily might’ve had a problem with the role-playing, though,” Tracy added. “I’m thinking she leaned a little too much—in reality—toward the stereotypical-librarian end of the fantasy. Was this, maybe, one of the things she wanted to change about you?”

Decker shook his head. “I’m not talking about her—or about this.”

She ignored him and kept right on talking about it. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” she told him. “Everyone’s into something. These days bondage and discipline is practically mainstream.”

“I’m not into—” Decker stopped himself. “Just because I...” He shook his head. “I’ve never...”

“Maybe you should,” she said. “You know. Experiment.”

He looked at her.

She looked back.

He could picture her, dressed only in high heels, as she lit, one by one, all of the candles in her bedroom, as he lay naked and prone on her bed, his hands tied to her bed frame with silk scarves.

“I’m not having sex with you,” Decker said again, but this time the words seemed less forceful and certain. This time they rang with doubt. Because, Jesus. Tracy knew the truth—or at least part of it—and she wasn’t running away. “You work for me.”

“No, actually, I work for Tom Paoletti.”

“But you take orders from me, too.”

“So what? Sam takes orders from Alyssa. Big deal. Besides, it sounds like what you want is someone to give you orders. I think I might be really good at that.”

Holy shit.

And Jesus, were they really talking about this? Some of what he’d just told Tracy were things he’d never admitted before, not to anyone. He’d barely even admitted them to himself.

“It makes sense now,” she told him, and the electric heat in her eyes changed to the more even warmth of compassion, “that you would keep your distance from Sophia. She probably doesn’t share many of those kinds of fantasies. And even if she once did, she probably doesn’t anymore. And if you did let yourself fall in love with her? You’d be right back where you were with Emily. Trying to be someone that you’re not. Like you said—having to be so careful—”

“Why don’t you shower first,” Decker said. She blocked his path to the door, but he moved toward her, intending to lift her, bodily, out of his way, if need be.

But she backed out into the hall with him, talking as she went. “And that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that whenever you’re with her, you probably feel like a deviant, even though everything she endured is apples to your oranges. Sophia wasn’t a willing participant. You’re looking for someone who is.”

She stopped moving, so he did, too, and they just stood there.

“I’m not looking for anyone,” Deck told her, but God, he was lying. And when she started moving toward him, try as he might, he couldn’t back away from her.

So he stayed where he was as she got closer. And closer.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Tracy said again. “Except for the fact that your inner prude has been shouting at you for years, telling you that you’re screwed up. You’ve got to bring the logical part of your brain into the mix. Because how can there be a right or a wrong way to have sex? I mean, psycho-killers aside, there’s just not. The only question that you need to be worried about is Honey, do you like it when I do that? If the answer’s yes, game on.”