ARLY THURSDAY MORNING

Calling the Troubleshooters staff was a two-step process.

Step one was a phone call to a potentially non-secure line.

The message, whether delivered to an answering machine, voice mail, or an actual human, contained code that would give the operative the heads-up that a) the situation was urgent and their response was needed immediately (9-1-1); b) the return phone call should be made on a secure line (call when you get to Grandma’s); and c) the situation was dire enough that said operative should get him-or herself, and his or her family if applicable, to immediate safety (red alert); and d) if available, they should come in (we need help).

Tracy had written a brief script that included all of those phrases, and had left messages, not just across the country, but around the world. “Hi, PJ, this is Tracy, with a 9-1-1 red alert. Auntie had a little accident and we need your help. Please call when you get to Grandma’s.”

Tom currently had forty-three operatives on staff, most of whom were part-time employees. Many of them lived overseas. There were only about twenty who operated, full-time, out of either the San Diego or Sarasota offices.

Of course, the roster grew considerably if all of the SEALs, both officers and enlisted, who’d given up a day or even a week off to “do Tommy a favor” were added to that list.

But Decker was working that military angle, making phone call after phone call to the Coronado Navy Base from his desk.

Lindsey was fielding the incoming calls and breaking the news that Nash wasn’t dead.

By three A.M., Tracy was done, and she knocked on Decker’s half-open door. She could see him at his desk, still on the phone, but he waved her in.

She’d brought him another cup of coffee, and as she came forward to set it on his desk, he reached out and, with a touch of a single button on his keyboard, he wiped his computer screen clean.

“Thank you, sir,” he said into his phone, nodding his thanks for the coffee. “I’ll have Commander Paoletti give you a call as soon as... Yes, sir. I will, sir.” The phone rattled as he tossed it back into its cradle and he exhaled hard, running both of his hands down his face. “I don’t know how Tommy does this. He calls in favors all the time. It’s like walking a tightrope—how much ass-kissing is too much, because you don’t want to do that, but God forbid you don’t pucker up enough.”

“Well, I think it’s relative,” Tracy said as she sat in one of the chairs positioned in front of his desk. “Whose ass it is you’re kissing? I mean, it makes sense that, same way there are some asses that you want to kiss completely non-figuratively, there’re also bound to be some people for whom you can pony up the right amount of respect and figurative smooches, so that it’s not really ass-kissing, per se.”

He laughed. “I must be tired, because that just made sense.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Damn straight it made sense. I was serious.”

“The people whose asses I want to kiss,” he told her, “both figuratively and literally, are few and far between.”

Zing. There it was, that electric current between them, as Decker told her very clearly, with his eyes and with the implication in his silence, that Tracy was on his short list.

That silence stretched on, so she filled it. “Do you always watch porn when you talk on the phone?”

“Porn.” He was surprised, and he laughed again as he realized she was referring to his screen wipe. “No, honey, that wasn’t porn.”

“I know,” she said. “I just like making you smile.”

It was clear that he didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. He did, however, look at the door—as if he wished she’d shut it. Or maybe as if he wished she hadn’t come in.

“There’s not a lot to smile about right now,” he finally said.

“Was that Nash’s list you were looking at?” Tracy asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t see it.”

“I wasn’t asking to,” she said. “I was just... Are you... all right?”

Decker nodded. “Thank you for asking,” he said. “But yes, I’m fine.” She thought he was going to leave it there, but to her surprise, he didn’t. “I’ve been living in this... crazy world a long time. There’s not much out there that can still shock me. Besides, I knew a lot of this—I’d figured most of it out. I mean, Jim would disappear for a few days. Or even longer. Then I’d watch the news on TV, and... Two plus two is usually four.”

“Still,” she said. “It must be strange to have it all verified.”

He smiled at that. “What’s strange is seeing it in print. You live in this world for long enough, and you stop leaving a paper trail—for anything. And here’s this lengthy document with all this information that.... I keep wanting to hit delete.” He shook his head. “You should’ve seen me after my first in-country assignment for Troubleshooters. I’m supposed to write up an expense report, right? Only I’ve shredded all my receipts. I went on autopilot and... Tommy paid me back, on faith.” He changed the subject. “How’s your arm?”

“It’s fine,” she said. “How’s yours?”

“Fine.”

“I’ve got the weirdest buzzing in my ears.”

He nodded. “Residual ringing from the blast,” he said. “Plus fatigue. It’s been a long day. You should...” He stopped himself from saying it, and laughed.

So she said it for him. But first she reached behind her and pushed the door shut. It closed with a very loud click.

“I should take a break,” she said. “You should, too. Wanna get naked? Or should we just sit and talk, and then both go entertain ourselves individually, in our respective bathrooms?”

This time, when he laughed, the weariness on his face dissolved. The heat in his eyes also softened into amusement and a different kind of warmth. “You do say exactly what you’re thinking, don’t you.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

Decker shook his head. “Absolutely nothing.”

“I didn’t always,” she told him. “Say what I mean. I know you think self-help books are stupid, but I’ve learned a lot from them, like, how do you expect someone to know what you want if you talk in code? Like it’s up to them to go and find a secret decoder ring?”

“I don’t think all self-help books are stupid,” he said.

“I started to listen to some of the things I said to people—mostly men,” Tracy told him, “and I know I sometimes—often—take ten minutes to say something I could say in four seconds, and I’m working on that, too. But I noticed that I’m pretty good at communicating, except when it comes to things that are really important, and then I screw it up because I don’t come right out and say what I want. So in case I haven’t made it clear yet? I want you. Not just to have sex with, although for the sake of full disclosure, I will, without hesitation, choose sex in any position imaginable over playing gin rummy right now. Although gin rummy would be fun for those times when I wear you out.”

She truly did love making him laugh. But she loved it even more when he surrendered and let himself look at her with that smoldering fire in his eyes.

“Please note I’m keeping your desk between us,” Tracy continued. “I’ve sensed a certain... volatile element when we’re in close proximity. And yet...” She reached out her hand, sliding it across the cluttered surface of his desk. “I can’t seem... to stop myself from...”

Holding her gaze, he reached out and interlaced her fingers with his. But then he looked down at their hands on his desk, and he turned her arm over, so he could examine the cuts and scratches she’d gotten from trying to break into Jo Heissman’s kitchen.

“I’m so sorry about this,” he murmured as he brushed his thumb gently across her wrist.

“I’m not,” she said. “I was trying to save you. It was silly, I know, but... I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.”

And there they sat, just holding hands, as Decker’s fatigue once again hardened his face into an expression that was oddly part wistful and part grim.

His hand was warm and large, with big, blunt fingers that were tough and callused. He was holding on to her only loosely, and she ran her own fingers between his and across his broad palm, loving the contact, as innocent and sweet as it was. It wasn’t hard to imagine, though, what it would be like for him to touch her in far less innocent places with those big hands.

He sighed, and Tracy knew he was trying to figure out what to say, and how to say it, so she reluctantly let him go. He didn’t try to hold on to her, which wasn’t a surprise.

She sat back in her chair and just looked at him as he sighed for a second time. So she said it for him.

“I know that you can’t do this,” she told him quietly. “Not here, not like this. I know it’s so far outside of your comfort zone that... I wouldn’t do that to you, Deck. I’m just teasing when I...” She shook her head. “It’s just another game. You know, pretending that we might actually get busy in here.”

He nodded. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m only halfway through Nash’s list and—”

“I know,” she told him. “And it really is okay.” She forced a smile, tried to lighten what she was saying. “It was very motivating, though. It will continue to be motivating. Let’s figure out who we’re up against, take them out as quickly as humanly possible—and then have dinner. At my place. Without the dinner. Unless you want to lick it from my naked body. Because that would totally work for me.”

Decker laughed. He closed his eyes and shook his head, and when he looked at her, it was—again—with that soul-melting heat. “You’re hurting me,” he said.

“Honey”—she purposely used his standard term of endearment for any and all women—“it cuts both ways. And please note that when I said I understood and that it was okay? I didn’t say I’d stop teasing you,” she told him. “But only when the door’s closed and no one else can hear.” She stood up to open it, but first leaned slightly across his desk and lowered her voice. “Do let me know, though, if your comfort zone starts... expanding.”

He laughed again, and she couldn’t help herself. She reached out and lightly touched his face, her fingers sliding against the smooth warmth of his skin, then rasping against his growth of beard. “This is outrageously sexy,” she said as she caressed his chin, “but for that dinner thing...? I think I’ll make you shave.”

Decker laughed again, but he was definitely sounding choked—which was nice—as she turned and opened the door.

And got back to business. “We should meet with Lindsey,” she told him briskly. A glance at the clock on Deck’s desk told her that they’d taken that full ten minutes—it just hadn’t been as satisfying as she’d imagined, back when she’d first confused the pretending with reality. Back before she hadn’t given much thought to exactly how noisy it would get inside of Decker’s head if they actually did have sex, here in his office. “We need to coordinate who’s arriving where, when.” She stuck her head into the hall and raised her voice. “Hey, Linds? You got a sec?”

“Hey, where’ve you been?”

As Dave sat down on the edge of the bed, Sophia pushed her hair back out of her face.

“Surreal-land,” he said as he looked at her. The light was on in the bathroom, the door open a crack. Nobody was supposed to look good in fluorescent light, but Sophia did. She looked soft and warm and still half-asleep. “I’m kinda still there.”

She thought he was still freaked out by the news of her pregnancy. “I’m sorry that I blindsided you—”

“No,” Dave said. “Soph, this is... I just got off the phone with James Nash.”

Sophia looked at him and as he looked back at her, she woke up. She sat up. “What? How?”

He told her, all of it, the whole long story that Nash has given him over the phone, and she cried, and okay, he even cried a little, too. But then he told her that Nash, Alyssa, Jules Cassidy, and Decker all believed that the knife attack and subsequent framing of Dave for Barney Delarow’s murder had nothing to do with Anise Turiano, and everything to do with Nash.

“It was a test,” Dave said, “to see if I knew whether Nash was really dead or still alive. The apparent thought being that if I knew Nash was alive, I would’ve contacted him after being attacked. Santucci, by the way? Nash’s name before he became Nash.”

“Oh, my God,” Sophia breathed.

“Nash said he wanted to tell me,” Dave told her, “right from the start, but...” He cleared his throat and said it. “Decker wanted distance. From me. And you.”

She nodded and, unable to hold his gaze, looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. “Please, can we not have a fight about Decker right now?”

“He’s at the Troubleshooters office,” Dave told her. “He wants us to come there. He says we’ll be safer, and I agree. We should pack up and go. As soon as Tom gets back, if you’re up for it.” Their boss had gone to make sure his family was safe. After he brought Kelly and Charlie to the office, he would be back to help Ken escort Dave and Sophia over there.

“Are you up for it?” she asked. “Did you sleep? Because I know you’re not going to sleep once you get to the office.”

“I’m fine,” he said, and stood up to get his things from the bathroom.

But Sophia stopped him with a hand on his arm. “We probably won’t have a chance to talk after we get over there, and I know I said some things before that hurt you—”

“You don’t have to explain,” he said.

“But I do—”

“No,” he said, gently shaking her free and turning on the light on the bedside table. His cell phone was there, plugged into the base of the lamp, and he unplugged it and slipped it into his pocket. “I know I said that I’d change, that I’d be whoever, whatever you want me to be, but that’s insane. And stupid. You know me. You know me. I’m the same man I’ve always been. And you either want me or you don’t. You either love me or you don’t. I can’t make you love me—”

“But you did,” she said. She’d followed him to the edge of the bed, and knelt there, pillow in her lap. “Somehow, you did. That night in Sacramento, I told myself I was having sex with a friend. A dear friend, who loved me. That was what I wanted. To be loved. But then you kissed me, and... God, Dave. And I thought, okay, maybe it was just because I hadn’t had sex in a long time, and I pretended for a while that it was just about that—the sex. And I convinced myself that you were exactly what I needed because you were safe, because you would never, ever leave me—and even if you did, it would be okay because I didn’t love you the same way I loved Dimitri.”

Dave stood there, wishing he were sitting down, unwilling to press his hand against his side because then she’d know he was hurting, as he waited for her to finish. God, he was too tired and in too much pain to cry.

“I know this,” he said quietly, “I know. I don’t expect you to love me the way you loved Dimitri. Or even Decker. I would never assume that you—”

“But I do,” she said. “You’re not listening to me. I do love you. I love you more than I ever loved Dimitri, more than I ever loved Decker, because I wasn’t friends with either of them, Dave. Not the way I am with you.”

He struggled to understand—as well as to stay standing.

“You’re my best friend,” Sophia told him, and he focused on her face, on that gracefully shaped mouth that he loved to see curving up into a smile, “and you’re my lover—you’re my everything, including the father of my child. You’re my life, Dave. And when I saw you in that parking lot, and you were bleeding and I thought that I might lose you, it scared me to death. Because I wasn’t supposed to care. I wasn’t supposed to love you that much.” The tears that she’d been fighting escaped, flowing down her face, as she whispered, “But I do. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I do.”

“Wow,” Dave heard himself say, as if from a million miles away. “This is a really, really good dream.”

And the world went black.

Tracy slept on Decker’s couch.

He’d turned off the overhead light when she’d first dozed off, then spread a blanket over her when she went into a deeper REM cycle.

He sat now, in the circle of light thrown from his desk lamp, listening to her quiet, steady breathing, working his way through the list of black op assignments that Nash had done in the name of the Agency and the United States of America.

It was unlikely he was going to find anything. It was probably Tess who held the key.

Because, along with names, locations, and a brief description of the assignment, Nash had also marked the dates of those ops during which, even if he hadn’t been overtly attacked, he’d barely escaped with his life.

The first time had been just shortly after Tess and Nash announced their engagement to be married.

It was probably pathetic that Decker remembered that date so clearly. But the news had left him—while happy for Nash—feeling oddly depressed. He’d indulged and bought himself a new truck. So yeah. He remembered the date.

And was it a coincidence that Nash’s first attack had come so closely on the heels of his engagement to Tess? Deck didn’t think so. He thought it was far more likely that Tess, with her years of working at the Agency as support staff, knew something that, combined with Nash’s knowledge—gained from crawling through Agency mud—was enough to make their enemy sweat.

Which didn’t mean Decker didn’t finish going over that list with a fine-tooth comb. He did, and then he went through it again.

When he finished that second time, the office was silent.

Lindsey was probably napping.

Or she was in the lobby with Jo Heissman, who had actually wept at the news that Nash was alive. They’d put her to work making a list of all of the Agency operatives she knew who worked for the black ops division during her own tenure there.

At the very least, it was keeping her busy.

In a few hours, Lopez was going to be relieved by two other SEALs from Team Sixteen—the result of Decker’s epic ass-kissing. Cosmo Richter would take over his babysitting duties, while Bill Silverman prowled the perimeter of the office building.

Despite all of Tracy’s SOS messages, no one else was scheduled to arrive until late morning, at best.

Ric Alvarado, the head of the Florida office, and his wife Annie had flown in to run security for Robin Cassidy while the actor was on set. When the news came down about the motel blast and the three dead John Wilsons, they’d tossed Robin onto a helo and flown his ass back to safety.

When Tracy called, Ric and Annie had been halfway to the safe house themselves, via van. Instead of turning around, they were continuing on to their destination. Both Alyssa and Jules wanted them out there, Tracy had reported. “It frees them up to come down here, if they need to.”

“Frees who up?” Decker had asked.

“Not Jimmy,” Tracy had assured him. They’d all agreed that Nash should remain at the safe house. “Everyone’s on the same page about that. At least everyone but Jimmy.”

Deck’s smile was tight. “I bet.”

“Jones is in Atlanta,” Lindsey had reported. “With Martell Griffin. They’re catching the next flight out here.” She checked the list she was carrying. “The rest of the Florida contingent is already on the red-eye. Ric anticipated needing them. They’ll head for the safe house, too, which’ll free up Sam and even Tess.”

“No,” Deck said. “I want Tess with Nash. Please tell Alyssa. And Jules. That’s important. Nash won’t stay put unless she’s there.”

“Will do,” Lindsey said.

“How about you?” Tracy asked. “Did your ass-kissing give you anything other than a pair of SEALs and some badly chapped lips?”

Decker smiled. “Nice.”

“Thank you.”

“It did, actually,” Decker told them. “I called in all the favors that I could. We’ll have most of the SWCC team back here, but not until early afternoon. I tried, but I couldn’t talk Commander Koehl into rescheduling their morning training op. But I did manage to convince him to let us keep Lopez for a while longer.” He looked at Lindsey. “Mark—and the rest of Team Sixteen—won’t be back until the end of the month.”

Lindsey tried her best not to get tense. “Is there a problem I should know about?” she asked.

“Not that I know of,” Deck said. “Koehl sounded pissed about the delay, but not too pissed.”

“I’m going to bank on my faith in you, boss,” Lindsey said. “I’m going to trust that you will tell me if there is a real problem, okay?”

“Count on it,” Decker promised quietly.

“So is that it?” Lindsey asked. “Cosmo, Silverman, Lopez, and a bunch of SWCC-boys?”

“We’ll get Gillman, too—at about the same time we get the men from the Special Boat Squadron,” Deck corrected her. “Until then it looks like we’re in wait mode.”

Lindsey nodded as she headed for the door. “I’ll tell Lopez not to go anywhere.”

“Take a break, while you’re at it.”

“With all due respect,” Lindsey said, “you’re looking like you could use a break first. I’m good for a few more hours. And I know Lopez is—”

“Lopez is off his game,” Decker told her. “He didn’t see me drive up.”

“Really.” Lindsey frowned. “I’ll make sure he takes a nap when Cosmo gets here. But like you said, we’re in wait mode. So with all due respect—”

“I have more reading to do,” Decker said, careful to not look at Tracy.

Lindsey nodded. “If you say so, Chief. I hope you’ll reconsider, though. I know I don’t have to remind you that you’ve had a recent gunshot wound. And the fact is, all hell could break loose in the very near future, so—”

“Thank you.” He dismissed her.

And with that, she was gone, closing the door—tightly—behind her.

Decker turned to look at Tracy, and they just sat there for a long moment, in silence.

Then she stood up. “I’ll get out of your way, too.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Please? Stay. Just... Keep me company?”

Tracy didn’t hesitate. She also didn’t try, in the slightest, to make it be about sex. Because she knew that it wasn’t. “Of course,” she said.

But now she stirred, and Decker looked over to find her awake and watching him from his couch.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said. “The blanket fairy made a special delivery while I was sleeping.”

Deck smiled at her. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that.”

“I’d like to see you in sparkly wings.” She stretched beneath the blanket. “I think I’ll add that to my list of things I’m going to make you do. It’s about number twenty below shaving, though, which goes right above making you lick me all over.”

“Making me,” he said, through a throat that was suddenly tight. “Why do you suppose that’s so appealing. To me?”

She somehow knew that he was dead serious, and her flirty tone instantly evaporated. “Why should it matter?” she asked quietly, seriously. “If you like it, Deck, you like it. Why should there be a wrong way or a right way to have sex? And if there is, who gets to define right? The Pope? Your mother? My mother—kill me now? As long as everyone’s a consenting adult—that should really be the only rule. If I say yes, and you say yes...?” She laughed. “We’re not talking about having sex on the front lawn. We’re being private. If we’re someplace safe and we’ve closed and locked our door...? Let’s please not bring my mother—or anyone else’s mother or father—into the bedroom with us.”

Tracy wasn’t done. “Because what feels good is subjective. Telling someone how to have sex is as absurd as telling them what kind of ice cream they should like best, when there’s a world of flavors out there.” She sat up. “I know you don’t like to talk about Emily, but I find myself wondering what it was that she said or did to you—”

“It wasn’t her fault,” Deck interrupted. “She said nothing. She didn’t... know. We never talked about... sex.”

Tracy was surprised. “Never? Like, not even, Hey, hon, you want to do that thing where you do that thing...?”

“We didn’t really talk about... anything,” he admitted. “And then when Andy died, she tried for a while to... But... I just pushed her farther away.”

“Andy,” Tracy said. “Your friend who was killed in the Khobar Towers attack.”

Decker nodded.

“Was he a SEAL?”

“Air Force. Pilot. He flew F-15s.”

“Huh,” she said. “How did an enlisted SEAL manage to become friends with an Air Force officer?”

“Past life,” he told her, but it was clear that she didn’t understand. Probably because that expression was just something Andy used to say. This is my buddy Larry. We were friends in our past life, pre-ROTC. So he explained. “We were tight since fifth grade. Andy Klein was the funniest kid in Ms. Bergeron’s class at Oakmont Elementary.”

“That’s amazing you stayed friends all that time.”

“Doubly amazing,” he concurred, “since I was a Navy brat. That was the longest we ever lived anywhere. My dad was stationed in Korea and my mother didn’t want to go, so...” He shrugged. “We lived with my grandmother in Jersey, for three glorious years. And no, I’m not being sarcastic. It was great not to move every six months. And even when we did move—summer after seventh grade—we still visited regularly. Andy and Caroline—he had a twin. They lived across the street from my gram, so... I spent a lot of summers with them both. Right up through high school graduation.”

“Are you still friends with Caroline?” Tracy asked.

Deck laughed. Figured she’d pick up on his mention of Caro. “Not so much, no. Andy always thought I’d marry her, but... After he died, I couldn’t look her in the eye.” He looked Tracy in the eye and confessed, “And that was before I slept with her and then didn’t call her for about two years.”

She winced. “Ouch.”

“It was not my finest hour.”

“I meant ouch for you,” Tracy told him. “Because you lost her, too.”

They sat for a moment, just gazing at each other, and then Tracy asked, “How come you couldn’t look her in the eye?”

It was time to change the subject. This was where, the few times Deck had actually spoken to anyone about Andy’s death, he’d led the conversation elsewhere. But as he looked back at Tracy, as he looked into her warm and sympathetic eyes, he found himself saying words that he’d never before uttered. “He was still alive when I got to the hospital at the airbase.”

She blinked. And leaned forward slightly. “Andy was? But I thought you went there to bring his body home.”

“That’s what I told everyone,” Deck admitted, having to whisper because he’d never before said any of this aloud. “A mutual friend, a captain, was a doctor there, and she called me. She knew Andy wasn’t going to live. His wife, Becca, had just miscarried and she couldn’t travel—the captain knew that and so she called me.”

“Oh, my God,” Tracy said. “Oh, Deck...”

“When I saw Andy, I...” He couldn’t look at her so he looked at the wall, the floor, the wood grain of his desktop. “The injuries and burns he sustained were...”

“He must’ve been in terrible pain,” she murmured. “Burns can be—”

“Agony,” he agreed, losing himself for a moment in the warmth of her eyes. But then he looked away again, unable to tell her that most of Andy’s legs had been gone, as well as his hands. He’d sat with his friend, but there’d been nothing to hold on to, so he’d put his hand on top of Andy’s head, where somehow, miraculously, he hadn’t been burned.

“The doctor told me he wouldn’t last the night, but... I stayed with him for seventy-three hours. I talked to him. And I promised him—he insisted—that I’d tell his mother and Becca and Caro that he’d died right away. The captain backdated Andy’s death certificate, and I made up some bullshit story about how he was missing, but then someone thought they saw him, but then they finally found his body in the rubble and... I brought him home and we buried him, and everyone cried and hugged each other and nodded and said, At least he didn’t suffer. And I nodded, too.

“And Emily knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell her,” Deck continued quietly. “No, that’s not fair to her. I could’ve, but I didn’t. Instead, I let it get between us and drive us even farther apart.”

“She should have tackled you to the ground.” Tracy was determined to defend him. “I would have. I would have made you tell me.”

He looked at her, sitting there, with her hair disheveled and her hopeful T-shirt twisted around her, the top button of her jeans undone, as if she’d tried to get more comfortable while under the cover of the blanket. Her chin was up as she gazed at him, as if she expected him to challenge her statement.

But he agreed with her. “Yeah, I think you probably would’ve.”

And then, after getting him to confess, Tracy would’ve completely rocked his world with the kind of physical sex that was meant to exhaust—to wear out and wear down. At which point she also would have convinced him beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was not just okay but necessary for a man to cry over the painful, horrible death of his best friend in the entire fucking world.

“I keep thinking the hell with it,” Decker whispered now, as he looked at Tracy sitting there, looking back at him with such love in her eyes. “I keep thinking, if I die tomorrow, which will I remember more fondly, in those last seconds of my life? The fact that I had some unbreakable rule about appropriate behavior in the office? Or the fact that I jettisoned my rule and took the best ten-minute break in the history of the world?”

Tracy laughed her surprise as she realized he’d changed the subject. “Wow, talk about pressure.”

“Come here and kiss me,” Decker ordered her. His voice sounded like someone else’s to his own ears. “If you just kiss me for ten minutes, it’ll rate.”

But she didn’t move. “What if you live?” she asked him quietly. “Tomorrow?”

It was a damn good question.

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” he admitted. “About the fact that I’d actually like, very much, to, well, live. Which sounds crazy, because most people generally want to? But it’s been a long time since I’ve given a shit.”

It was hard to see her face completely clearly in the dimness—his circle of light didn’t extend out to where she was sitting. But he was pretty sure that there was a sudden sheen of tears in her eyes.

Which, for some reason, didn’t scare him. It had always scared him when Emily cried.

But Tracy didn’t cry. She cleared her throat, and said, “Then maybe, since you do give a shit, it’s not entirely inappropriate if we actually, you know...” Her voice trailed off, and Decker waited, curious to see what her word choice would be. If they had sex, fucked, made love...? He knew, with a flash of clarity, which words he would have used.

But she didn’t finish her sentence. She started over.

“Maybe it’s not breaking the rule. Maybe it’s just discarding an old rule and creating a new one.” She paused. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone?”

He had to smile at that, considering the magnitude of the secret he’d just told her. “I promise.”

“Not even Nash?”

He pretended to think about it. “Okay, not even Nash.”

That made her smile, as he’d hoped it would. “Don’t be a jerk.” She took a deep breath and said, “I once saw Tom and Kelly come out of the supply closet. The one right outside the conference room?”

Her upward inflection at the end of her statement implied that she wanted some sort of response, so he said, “I’m not sure this is something I want to know.”

“It is,” Tracy insisted. “Try not to be a prude for a second, will you?”

“I’m not a prude.”

“Shh,” she said, “we can argue about that in a minute. Listen to what I’m saying, okay? I was collating a report. I was in there—in the conference room—for at least forty minutes. I was facing the door, but I didn’t see them go into that closet. Which means they were in there for more than forty minutes. And they were not counting rubber bands.”

“I don’t know,” Deck said. “I go in there myself, sometimes, just to count rubber bands. We have somewhere around four hundred thousand. It takes at least three hours to count ’em all.”

Tracy laughed as she threw one of the couch pillows at him. “Fine,” she said. “Be a jerk. But for the record? Sam and Alyssa have sex in Alyssa’s office all the time, too.”

“I don’t want to know that,” he said, but then asked, “How exactly do you know that?”

She looked at him, and imitated Sam’s Texas drawl, “Tracy, hold all of Lys’s calls. We’re having an important lunch meetin’.” She rolled her eyes. “Hello. Obvious. And when she was pregnant? He used to pretend he was giving her a massage during lunch. Her back is actin’ up—Tracy, hold her calls. There was definitely massaging going on. Sam just left out the part where there was a happy ending for everyone.”

“Tom and Kelly, Sam and Alyssa,” Decker pointed out. “They’re married.”

“To someone they work with.”

“Kelly doesn’t work here,” he countered.

“Yeah, right,” Tracy scoffed. “Tell her that, when one of the operatives needs a house call from a doctor in the middle of the night. Look me in the eye and tell me she’s never treated you in a pinch.”

Decker looked her in the eye, but then shook his head. “Can’t.”

And there they sat, again, in silence.

“Can I just say something more?” Tracy asked. “Because it’s important to me that you understand I’m not looking for sex for the sake of sex. Although the sex would be incredibly great. I know that. But I also know that I’m... reckless, when it comes to relationships. And I know that you said—and maybe this was just something you said but you didn’t mean—that you didn’t want a one-night stand—”

“I don’t,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “That’s good. I also know that you’ve got this kind of weird, deep connection to Sophia”—he opened his mouth to speak, but she silenced him—“shush, let me finish.”

Decker gestured, Go on.

“I know she’s with Dave right now, but that’s just right now,” she said earnestly. “And of course, there’s Emily, whom you still talk about with a certain wistfulness. She clearly meant a lot to you.”

He shook his head. Wistfulness? Was she kidding?

“And now I find out about Caroline—”

He couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “She and her husband just had their second daughter.”

“Okay,” Tracy said. “I’ll put her in the nothing lasts forever column with Sophia. As opposed to Jo Heissman, who’s here in the could be fun column with me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, laughing. “Jo Heissman would not be fun.” Of course, that hadn’t been what he was thinking just yesterday—Jesus, was that really less than twenty-four hours ago? It had been a long, long day.

“My point is,” Tracy told him, “that I know I’m not the only woman in your life—and these are just the women I know about. Tess. I didn’t think of Tess.”

“Please don’t,” Deck said.

“My point,” she said again, because apparently she hadn’t yet made it, “is that there’s a world of options between one night and, you know, the illusion of forever. Shades of gray,” she told him. “We could go into this believing that we’re going to just be together until we’re not together anymore. It doesn’t have to be the beginning and the end, Deck. It doesn’t have to be perfection. It could just be what it is.”

He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move—because he was trying to find the words to tell her that, whatever this was, it felt big, and that scared him. Although now it scared him even more to think that it might not feel as big to her.

“Your turn to talk,” she said. “I mean, I could keep babbling if you want, but I’d rather know what you think. About that.”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that we’ve covered it all. We could live, I could die—I’m not going to let you die. That’s not an option. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m not in love with Sophia, and if I never see Emily again it would be too soon. I’m over-caffeinated, my arm hurts, my back stings, I’m pretty sure I smell bad, and all I can think about is how much I want to kiss you. Probably because I know damn well that if I do kiss you, we’re not going to stop there. And I am going to kiss you, I’m definitely going to kiss you and yeah, that scares me—a lot—because I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you. Right now. Right here. To hell with right or wrong. To hell with everything except me and you. What do you think? About that?”

Tracy stared at him, her eyes wide, for several long, silent seconds. But then she stood up. In three long strides, she was locking the door. As she turned to face him, she said, “I think, Game on.”

Decker kissed her.

Tracy didn’t see him move, but somehow he was around his desk—maybe he’d gone up and over the top—and he’d slammed himself against her and was, God, yes, kissing her.

It was crazy and breathtaking—like a dream that suddenly went from her weeding her garden in the placid late-summer sunlight, to full-power, heart-pounding, gonna-come-any-second-now intercourse.

Except they still had their clothes on—and God, she wanted them off.

But she loved kissing this man too much to stop. He kissed her as if he owned her, as if he would never, ever let her go. She loved the feel of him, too, so solid—both his chest, which she was plastered against, and his back, which she’d wrapped her arms around because being plastered against him wasn’t enough. She wanted to be even closer.

His hands weren’t gentle as he touched her, as he tried to pull her closer, too, as he pushed the solidness of his thigh between her legs as if he wanted to crawl inside of her.

She wanted that, too. Desperately.

Condom. She wanted to stop kissing him just for the nanoseconds necessary to tell him that she’d pocketed some condoms from the equipment locker—they were allegedly used to protect the more sensitive weapon muzzles from rain and water—and yet at the same time, she didn’t want to stop kissing him.

Her desire to not stop won out—until she realized he had her shirt half off. She stopped kissing him then, to help him pull it over her head, and while she was doing that, he unfastened her bra.

“Shh,” he said, “shhh!” and she realized that she was laughing, but she couldn’t stop. She was giddy and she tried to unfasten both her pants and his at the same time, but gave up when he kissed her again, his hand on her breast, hot and so possessive.

He hiked her up so that she was sitting on his desk, and she pulled free from his mouth in alarm—but she didn’t knock anything off, which was good, because Lindsey and Lopez would’ve come running at the clatter. She realized then, as he pushed her back, as he yanked her jeans down her legs, that she hadn’t knocked anything off his desk because he’d cleared it completely, probably while she’d been sleeping.

He’d shaved, too, Tracy realized with a jolt.

This wasn’t some spur-of-the moment, impetuous decision he’d made as the result of fatigue and caffeine and hormones gone awry. He’d cleared off his desk and he’d shaved—he’d planned to be right here, right now—because he’d made up his mind that this was what he wanted.

She was what he wanted.

Tracy grabbed for the back pocket of her jeans just in time, just before they were out of her reach—and pulled free the foil-wrapped accordion line of condoms that she’d snagged from the closet for exactly this purpose.

But Decker had gotten some of his own—and he’d not only managed to unfasten his pants while he’d undressed her, but he was almost done covering himself, too.

For several seconds, time seemed to hang as she looked at him, as he gazed back at her as she lay there, naked and sprawled across his desk, propped up on her elbows, hair wild around her shoulders, legs spread as she waited for him.

He still had most of his clothes on, but he took off his shirt, since it got in the way, leaving him bare-chested with his jeans unzipped.

The devil in her made her stop him before he took that last step toward her. “Wait,” she said. “This is a big deal for me. I mean, you’re not green.”

It took him a second to understand what she meant, but by then she’d reached between them and taken hold of him—holy God, he put George to shame—both wrapping her fingers around the whole wonderful, solid, living length of him, and rubbing him against her because even though she’d told him to do just that, she couldn’t wait.

He was laughing now, too—she was the one telling him to “Shh!” as she pushed him just a little bit inside of her—and it felt so good—using him as she used George, to touch herself in... exactly... the right... place.

“Tracy,” he breathed, his eyes hot, his mouth still wet from those long, deep kisses they’d just shared, and although he grabbed her wrist, he didn’t pull her hand away from him, so she didn’t stop what she was doing.

“I just want to...” Her voice came out sounding breathless as she pushed him even farther inside of her.

He wasn’t laughing anymore as he said, “Honey, I gotta...”

“Oh, yeah,” she said as he reached for her, his hands hot on her bare skin even as she locked her legs around his waist. He claimed her mouth again—the man could kiss—as he pulled her hips toward him and filled her with him—with all of him.

“Hunh,” he exhaled, as she said, “Ohh,” even as she pushed him deeper, still deeper.

She loved the way he was holding her, loved the way he was kissing her, his talented tongue filling her mouth, and she really loved the way he was moving, with her, against her, driving himself inside of her, as if he could not and would never get enough of her.

She came much too soon, exploding as she clenched her teeth around the sounds she wanted to make as she tried to be quiet. It was just as good, because I love you, God, I love you, was back there, in her throat, and if they’d been in her bedroom or even in her kitchen—she wanted to do this again, on her kitchen table; and okay, to be honest she wanted to do this on every table on the entire planet—she could well have said it, sung it, screamed it aloud.

Instead she swallowed the words as she felt him, too, buck and rock against her as he came and came and please, God, let it be the greatest sex ever in his entire life so that he wouldn’t...

Run.

Screaming.

Tracy couldn’t help herself, she started to cry, because there was no way that this man, this incredible, amazing, wonderful, brilliant, funny, sexy-as-hell man could ever, in a million years, love someone as average as she was.

“Hey,” he breathed in her ear. He was breathing hard and she could feel his arms, his entire body shaking as he held her there, still held her close, their bodies still joined. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m right here,” she whispered back.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He was actually worried—he pulled back to look at her, to look into her eyes. Which, of course, meant that he saw that she was crying.

She made herself laugh, willing her tears to dry up as she wiped her eyes. “I’m just...” She shook her head as she pushed slightly against him, which made him pull back, pull away, pull out.

Leaving her feeling cold and vulnerable. And a little too naked.

“Seriously,” he said as she slipped off his desk and began searching for her underwear. It took him far less time to discard the condom and fasten his pants. “You’re going to stop with the honesty?” he continued. “You’re going to stop saying exactly what you’re thinking, now?”

Tracy couldn’t find her panties, so she pulled on her jeans without them as she answered, “You’re not going to like what I’m thinking.”

Decker stood there, looking at her. Without his shirt, and despite the bandage around his arm—or maybe because of it—he looked like he was ready to pose for some kind of super-sexy, rough-and-tumble Men of the SpecWar Community beefcake calendar. Except for the consternation on his face. “Try me.”

She couldn’t find her bra or her shirt, so she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders—the one that he’d brought her while she was sleeping—and she sat down wearily on the couch. “I lied,” she said, “about not wanting forever.” She closed her eyes. “I do the same thing with every new guy. I have sex, and I fall in love, only this time I fell in love with you before we had sex, and I don’t know, I thought maybe that meant when we did have sex, I would have some sort of clarity, I guess, about what I really wanted, but all I want is you. And right now? Forever doesn’t seem long enough.” She laughed—to hide the fact that she was crying again. “Commence the running and screaming. Join the club and move to Maine.”

She felt him sit down next to her, heard him sigh. “Tracy,” he said. “For the record? Whatever I do, screaming or not, I seem to end up running, full speed, toward you.”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?” She looked at him. He was so tired, he looked as if he were having trouble focusing his eyes.

Still, he managed to smile at her. “Just a confirmation that the universe doesn’t seem to recognize don’t.”

Tracy laughed—for real this time.

But then his smile faded as he reached over and took her hand. “I don’t just want,” he told her. “I want you. I got clarity.” He paused. “Good word. Clarity. It’s a good thing to have, too. I recommend it. Along with a nap. Which now I really need.”

She looked at him. “Are you telling me that...? I mean, the you-want-me part, I get, but...”

Decker kissed her, and his mouth was so soft. “Sleep,” he said. “As in must. Now. Me. Please, may I share your couch and blanket?”

Tracy nodded.

“Thanks, honey,” he said, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back so that they were both lying on the couch.

“Mmmm,” he said as he realized she’d never found her bra and shirt, as he discovered and covered her bare breasts with the warmth of his hands. “This is a bonus.” He nuzzled her neck. “You always smell so good... so sweet....”

And with that, he fell soundly asleep.