ou up for a walk on the beach?” Decker asked.

Tracy looked at him as they headed west, crossing the causeway into Coronado. After Dr. Heissman had gotten out at the pizzeria, she’d reached to turn on the signal jammer, but Decker had shaken his head. Which was weird, but okay. She was, as he was fond of pointing out, “only the receptionist.” Maybe he had some secret-spy reason for wanting them to be listened in on.

Except now he was heading for the beach.

The Strand, with its miles of shoreline, comfortably uncrowded during a workday mid-afternoon, would be the perfect place to check themselves for any unwanted listening and/or tracking devices that Jo Heissman might’ve planted. And the windswept beach itself would be a good place to talk privately if they did find such a bug.

“Sure,” she answered.

They rode in silence down past the Del, and then past the part of the beach where the Navy SEALs trained—the famed obstacle course visible over the top of the privacy fence. Which prompted her to say, “It would be nice, though, if we didn’t run into anyone from Team Sixteen.”

Deck glanced at her. “Don’t worry. I happen to know that Zanella’s out of the country.”

Tracy actually gasped aloud. She heard herself do it, which was stupid. Because it was absurd to think that the story hadn’t spread. Everyone in the Troubleshooters office surely knew about her intimate encounter with Navy SEAL Petty Officer Izzy Zanella. Or at least they knew the cheap, sordid, gossipy part where she’d gotten drunk and slept with him.

“You told me once that you and he... collided, was the word you used,” Decker said to her now.

And okay. She had told him exactly that. In a phone conversation some months ago—that a mere mortal wouldn’t have remembered so accurately. “You have an impressive memory.”

He shrugged. “It’s actually pretty average.”

Or so he wanted people to believe. Which brought her to what she wanted people to believe. This was, without a doubt, her chance to set her record straight. The fact that the Agency might be listening in was a bonus. Maybe someone would write up a report and spread it throughout the SpecWar community. The heading, in bold font, would read: Tracy Shapiro Not a Total Slut. “I had revenge sex with him. With Izzy,” she clarified, when she got another of those sunglass-shaded glances.

Deck drove a little faster, as if he couldn’t wait to reach their destination. “You don’t need to expl—”

“My fiancé cheated on me,” she told him and whoever else was listening in. “ Ex-fiancé. Lyle. He always used to say believe it or not when he was making up some excuse for why he was late. Believe it or not, we had to submit the expense reports for the Fleegerwald case. It took me a few years longer than it should have, but I finally learned that that was code for Sorry I’m late, baby, but I had to stay at the office and get a blow job from one of the interns.”

Deck glanced at her again, and she knew he was well aware that Dr. Heissman had said those very words to him. Believe it or not...

Tracy, too, was automatically in the “or not” camp.

“So in order to get back at Lyle, I got loaded and had my first—and last—one-night stand,” she admitted, as he pulled into one of the beach lots. There were too many cars, so he pulled right out again and back onto the road. “I’ll freely admit that it was not my finest hour. I compounded it not just by falling in love with Izzy, who was just pretending to be nice—but by telling him that I’d fallen for him. He ran away screaming, and... It was messy, and... Humiliating. Especially when he got married, like, fifteen minutes later, to someone else.”

“To one of his teammate’s sisters.” Decker knew that factoid, too. “Word is he got her pregnant. At least you were smart enough to use protection.”

“Yay for me.” Tracy applauded, but then stopped. “Nope, it was still excruciatingly mortifying. And a crushing blow to the ego. Have you seen this girl? And she? Is a girl. She was practically wearing braces and a training bra. Okay, maybe not the training bra, but...”

“I’ve met her, but it wasn’t under the best of circumstances,” he confessed. “And yes, she did seem young.”

“The good news was that—in the entire Charlie-Foxtrot? I finally broke off my engagement with that total man-ho, Lyle.” She sighed. “The bad news is that everybody knows about my... collision with Izzy. And now they think that’s my totally slutty MO.”

“No they don’t,” he said, pulling into another lot. This one had only a few cars in it, and he headed for a distant, solitary corner.

“Yes they do,” she countered. “You do.”

“I assure you, I don’t.”

“Lawrence,” she said, imitating Dr. Heissman’s evenly modulated voice, “unlike some people, I can tell when you’re lying.”

He laughed as he put the truck into park and killed the engine. “Nice. You’re wrong, I’m not lying, but that was very nice.”

Tracy got out of the truck and stood, waiting, as he used the sweeper to check the vehicle, inside and out. And then he came toward her, his apology darn near dripping from him.

She held out her arms and spread her legs—in the classic Leonardo da Vinci pose that every air traveler had assumed at one time or another. He waved the wand slowly over her, being thorough as always.

And she felt herself start to sweat.

The sun was out, sure. And the day was fairly warm, despite the breeze off the ocean. But it was the fact that Decker was tracing the contours of her body with that device, careful not to touch her, that was really heating her up.

She knew, without a doubt, that he would not slip and touch her—and somehow that made it even worse.

“Can I just state for the record—” she started.

“No.” He cut her off.

She turned to look at him in exasperation. “You have no idea what I was going to say.”

“Yeah,” he said, hunkering down to carefully run the wand over and around her sandals and feet. “I do. But let’s not go there, okay? I’m having a tough enough day as it is.”

“Go where?” she said, and then gasped as he stood up and, in one fluid motion, stepped—hard—into her personal space. So hard that she was pressed completely against him—stomach, hips, thighs—held in place by his hand at the curve of her waist, arm wrapped around her.

He was solid and warm and—holy Christmas—aroused enough for her to know it. There was no missing that fact—not a chance in heaven. He was sweating excessively, too. A trickle traveled down past his left ear and dripped with a plop onto her arm. His mouth was mere inches from hers, but she still couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses. “Here,” he said, his voice raspy. “Let’s not go here.”

He released her as abruptly as he’d grabbed her, and she almost lost her balance. He immediately turned the device back on, rechecking where he’d held himself against her.

“Why not?” The words spilled out of Tracy before she could stop them. And then, since she’d already jumped into the deep end, she added, “If that was supposed to scare me off, well, sorry, but it pretty much did the opposite. I mean, hello...”

He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound as he thrust the sweeper into her hands and assumed the stance, turning his back to her. “Didn’t you just get through telling me that Zanella was allegedly your first and last one-night stand? Let’s keep it that way.”

“Allegedly?” She whacked him between the shoulder blades with the wand.

“Ow! What the hell?!”

“That’s an insulting thing to say to someone who’s just shared something painful with you. Allegedly. God.” She was affronted. “There was nothing alleged about it. Of course, you only said that so I’d get mad at you and back off, because you, Lawrence, are a coward.”

“Honey, trust me, I’m no coward. I’m just sane.” He laughed, muttering as if to himself, “Most of the fucking time, anyway.”

She moved around to skim the wand down his front, but he caught her wrist, and took it from her. “I got it from here, thanks.”

She glared at him as she pointedly rubbed her wrist.

“I didn’t hurt you,” he told her. “So stop with the drama.”

“I’m the drama queen?” she said, lacing her voice with heavy disbelief. “I’m not the one who just rubbed myself against you, and then acted as if it was... awful.”

He laughed. “Awful. Yeah. If you don’t like me calling you a little girl, then you really need to stop pretending to be one.”

“Okay,” she said. “Non sequitur.”

He shut off the sweeper and shoved it rather violently back behind the seat of the truck. “You know goddamn well that awful wasn’t even close to what I was thinking and to pretend otherwise is beneath you. So knock it the hell off.”

Tracy had to argue. “I didn’t say I thought that you thought it was awful. I said you were acting as if—”

“Enough,” he said. “Jesus Christ, no wonder Zanella ran screaming!”

Even as the words left Decker’s lips, he regretted saying them. Even before he’d finished his sentence, he wished he could hit pause and rewind, and take it back.

It was as if he’d reached out and snuffed the fire that lit Tracy from within as she argued with him.

Jesus, who the hell ever argued with him? No one did—not besides Nash. Which was the reason that, despite their differences in personality and background, the two men were friends. Every-fucking-one else treated Deck as if he were some kind of demigod—with so much respect and even awe that it was impossible to have a relationship that wasn’t mentor and trainee, teacher and student, or—Jesus help him—god and worshipful subject.

Every-fucking-one—except Tracy Shapiro. Who had the balls to argue with him, damn near constantly.

“I’m sorry,” he said now. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes you did,” she said, and the vulnerable hurt in her eyes made him inwardly let out a string of the foulest language he knew—with himself as the well-deserving recipient. “It’s um... Well, it’s not okay, because it, you know, was pretty mean. But... it’s what you think and... It’s good to know what people—men—think about you.”

With all of her attitude stripped away, she looked tired and defeated, and he wanted to put it back—that light and life in her eyes.

“It’s not what I think,” he said quietly.

“Usually I don’t find out,” she told him, “until it’s too late.”

“What I think,” he said, “is that Zanella’s an asshole.”

But Tracy was shaking her head. “I really can tell when you’re lying, okay? At least some of the time. Like now. So, let’s just leave our... non-relationship, for lack of a better term, exactly where it is. With an acknowledgment that the sex would be great, and that... everything that wasn’t sex would suck. Is that fair enough for you?”

Decker couldn’t do it. “I disagree,” he said. “I enjoy your company very much, so...”

She was looking at him as if he were a moron. “I just pitched you a softball,” she implored him. “How hard, exactly, would it have been to say, Yes, Tracy, sex with you would be great, which would make me feel better. Cheap and shallow, yes, but better. And then we could get into your truck and do whatever we have to do so that we can meet up with Tess.”

“I like you too much,” he admitted. “And the sex would be great. But I’m the one who screws up everything that isn’t sex, so... It’s not an option—you and me—as appealing as it sometimes—” he corrected himself “—frequently seems.”

“Great.” She was disgusted. “Now you have to go and be nice.”

“I’m not nice,” he told her. “I don’t know why people think I am.”

Tracy went around to the passenger side and opened the door to the truck. “Maybe it’s because you keep yourself locked away from the rest of the world. Or up on a pedestal. Out of reach. People have to squint to see you, so most of them see you the way they want you to be. God knows I’ve been guilty of that myself.”

Decker stood in the gravel of the parking lot as she climbed in and slammed the door behind her.

And then, when he didn’t move right away, she reached over and hit the horn.

Which would have made him laugh, if he wasn’t so pissed off—at himself, at Tracy, at Jo Heissman, at whoever those fuckers were who wanted Nash dead.

He climbed in behind the wheel. “Look, Tracy—”

“Shh,” she said. “Don’t talk. Unless it’s to tell me where we’re going.”

Decker sighed. “Kinko’s,” he said as he put the truck into gear. “To use their computers to check my free-mail account.”

“We don’t have to go to Kinko’s,” Tracy told him, trying to be business-as-usual, but still obviously subdued and hurt by his verbal bludgeon. “I’ve got my laptop and one of those anywhere Internet jacks. If you want, I can get online right here.”

Jules knew, as soon as he heard Alyssa’s voice on the phone, that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

“Are you still in the van?” she said, instead of Hello, when he answered the call.

“No, we’ve reached our destination,” he told her, purposely being vague despite the secure line. “We’re waiting for contact.” He glanced at his watch. Decker should have been here by now. “What’s going on? Is everyone all right?”

Tess looked over at that. She was sitting on the other motel room bed, ankles crossed, surfing through the cable stations with the sound muted.

“Everyone here is fine,” Alyssa said, and he repeated that for Tess’s benefit.

“I’m putting you on speaker. Who’s not there who’s not fine?” Jules asked Alyssa, and sure enough, she hesitated, which told him volumes.

“The person I’m waiting for is late,” Jules reported. “Is that—”

“No.” Alyssa was absolute. “Deck’s fine—at least as far as I know.”

He made a noise that was at least part protest, and she added, “We’re scrambling the hell out of this call. It’s secure; we can talk openly. This isn’t about Decker.” She paused. “Jules, Max called and...”

What was it that was so difficult for her to tell him?

Max Bhagat was Jules’s boss—and Alyssa’s former boss—who worked out of the FBI’s D.C. office. At one point, before Sam had gotten his shit together, Jules had been convinced that Alyssa and Max would be perfect together—romantically. He was wrong—that was before he understood that heartfelt imperfection was often better than logically perceived perfection.

“Max noticed,” Alyssa told Jules as he gritted his teeth and waited for the virtual grand piano to drop on his recently highlighted head, “what he thought was a familiar name in a bizarre triple homicide case that came across his desk.”

“Oh, crap,” Jules said. Familiar name and bizarre triple homicide were two phrases he’d hoped never to hear in the same sentence.

“Sam wants me to make sure you understand that this isn’t your fault,” Alyssa said.

“Just tell me what’s going on,” Jules demanded, trying to quell the sick feeling in his stomach that came from knowing that his best friends were neither alarmists nor melodramatic. Whatever this was about, it was going to be bad.

“All three of the murders took place yesterday and last night,” she informed him, crisp and businesslike as she conveyed the facts. “One in Annapolis, Maryland; one in Cincinnati, Ohio; and one in some little two-stoplight town called Biskin’s River, Georgia. MO is identical—double-pop to the head. Ballistic tests haven’t come back, but I’ve already checked the miles and airline flight times, and it’s within the realm of possibility that the perp is the same person. It would’ve required some work to make all the flights, but... It’s definitely do-able. Biskin’s River’s about a two-hour drive outside of Atlanta.”

Tess had sat up on the edge of the bed as she listened, her pretty face somber, her eyes filled with questions as she gazed at Jules.

“Who are the victims?” Jules asked as he saw a reflection of his own guarded wariness and brace-for-it anxiety in Tess’s eyes. “Will you please just tell me? Come on, do it like a Band-Aid—rip it off.”

“The victims were all named John Wilson,” Alyssa said.

What? John Who?

“Oh, my God,” Tess breathed, and as Jules looked at her, he saw horror in her eyes. “Dr. John Wilson...”

And Jules remembered. Tess had helped him build an entire intricately detailed life for one extremely fictional John Wilson, the physician who’d “signed” Jim Nash’s death certificate.

“I don’t know how or why Max remembered Dr. Wilson’s name,” Alyssa continued, “but he did, and...”

“What the fuck?” Jules said. He’d purposely made their make-believe Dr. Wilson an older man, on the cusp of retirement, gotten him a passport and sent him “safely” overseas with his equally fictional wife.

“The three John Wilsons who were killed weren’t doctors,” Alyssa told him. “They were just civilians.”

Jesus God, he was going to be sick, but he could tell from her voice that she hadn’t told him the worst of it, though what could be worse than knowing that, two months ago, by choosing two common-enough American names—John and Wilson—entirely on a whim because he and Robin had recently rewatched Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Jules had condemned three innocent men to death.

“Jules,” Alyssa said, all of the precise former-military-officer gone from her voice. Her words were thick with compassion. “One of the John Wilsons... He was only seven years old.”

Jules closed his eyes. “Oh, dear God,” he whispered.

“Alyssa, please, don’t tell Jimmy,” Tess implored. “Not until I get back. I need to be there—”

“Yeah,” Alyssa said, regret heavy in her tone. “I’m afraid that horse has already left the barn. He walked in—rolled in, actually—on a conversation I was having with Sam and... Tess, I’m sorry, but we had to put him into lockdown.”

“Oh, no,” Tess said.

“Jules, you and Tess need to get out of there, ASAP.”

“What kind of monsters would do something like this?” Jules asked. “Who are these people?” He stood up on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. “God damn it, how many John Wilsons are there in this country? We need to issue some kind of warning, give them protection—”

“That’s pretty standard in a case like this,” Alyssa said. “Murders linked by a common name? Max told me they’ve already been in touch with all of the John Wilsons who file taxes—”

“Children don’t file taxes,” Jules pointed out.

“There’ll be a press release issued. They’ll get the story on the news.”

“That’s not good enough,” Jules said. “We have to—”

“No.” She was definite. “It’s important that we let the FBI handle this. You need to stay far away from it. Don’t even call Max—you’re supposed to be on vacation. Communicate with him through me. This is another message that we’ve been sent—let’s not react without thinking this through.”

“Thinking this through?” Jules couldn’t keep himself from shouting. “My God, Alyssa—I’m going to be thinking this through for the entire rest of my life!”

“You’re upset,” she said. “I know that. You have every right to be. I’m upset, too. I know what you’re thinking and feeling and it’s awful and it’s not your fault, but I know you think it is, and I’m so, so sorry, but right now you and Tess must get back into the van. Quietly. Quickly. Just take your things and go.”

“Jesus, I underestimated them,” Jules said.

“We all did,” Alyssa agreed. “You’re not alone in that.”

“Yeah, but I’m in charge,” he countered. “I’m responsible for—”

“Right now, you’re responsible for getting yourself and Tess to safety,” she cut him off, that Navy-Lieutenant edge back in her voice. “Jules, I need you to recognize that you’re probably not thinking clearly here. I need you to step down and let me make the decisions right now. Just temporarily, until we regroup.”

Jules laughed. “You think I’m not thinking clearly? I’m thinking a little too clearly—”

“And I’m telling you, sir, that I know that you’re not—that you can’t be,” she interrupted him again. “I need you to trust me.”

It was the sir that got to him. Alyssa never sir’ed him unless she was dead serious.

“I trust you,” he said on an exhale.

“Then put me in charge.”

“You’re in charge.”

“Good,” she said. “Now follow my orders, and get yourself and Tess into the van, because you are in danger. This message was directed at you, Jules. Whoever they are, they know you were on the scene when Jim Nash died—”

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Robin—”

“I’ve already called him in,” Alyssa told him. “I was having trouble reaching you, so I anticipated—”

“It’s fine,” Jules said. “Just tell me he’s safe.”

“He’s safe. Ric and Annie are with him. They’ve arranged for helicopter transport—the goal is to get all of you back here as quickly as possible. They’re going to call in with a rendezvous point. You’re going to head back in with Robin and Tess, while Ric and Annie bring the van—”

“Robin starts filming tomorrow,” Jules said, and as the words left his lips he realized how inane they were.

“No, he’s not going to do that.” Alyssa was patient with him. “It’s not safe. I’m making the code red call, Jules. This is no longer your choice, it’s mine. We’re using the back-in-rehab cover.”

“Oh, crap, no,” Jules said. They’d created a Plan B, before embarking on this dangerous mission, that would allow them to pull Robin—a recovering alcoholic—off the movie set and get him to safety, by pretending that he needed to go back into rehab. The story was going to be all over the TV entertainment “news,” as well as the Internet—it was probably already posted on TMZ.com.

“Robin was completely on board,” Alyssa told him. “He’s worried about you and Tess. He wants you to get in the van and get out of there. So do it. Get into the van.”

Tess was already gathering their things—packing up the book that she’d brought and tying her sweatshirt around her waist by its sleeves.

“Jules,” Alyssa said again. “This is all you have to do right now, okay?

One step at a time. Just get in the van and get Tess and yourself to safety.”

“What about Decker?” Jules asked.

“I’ll keep trying to contact him,” Alyssa said. “He’ll work out a way to get in touch with Dave and Sophia.”

Jules exhaled, hard. “Jesus, Lys,” he said. “Seven years old... Haley’s almost seven.” Haley Starrett, Sam’s daughter from his first disastrous marriage, was funny and sweet and smart, and God, someone had delivered a double-pop to a seven-year-old’s head.

“I know,” Alyssa said quietly. “Get back here, Jules. The people who did this are running scared. Which means they’ve probably already made a mistake. We’re going to find them, we’re going to track them down, and when we do?” Her voice turned hard as steel. “We’re going to put them down like the rabid dogs that they are.”

The flight to LAX was full, which was frustrating because it meant that they probably wouldn’t talk.

Not that Dave was ready to say anything—in fact, Sophia could tell he was relieved that they’d had absolutely zero privacy since she’d slammed her way out of the interrogation room at the morgue.

She closed her eyes as the plane took off, as gravity punched her back in her seat—she hated flying, she always had, but today her stomach roiled and she had to grit her teeth against the nausea.

But then Dave reached over and took her hand, lacing their fingers together, giving her a squeeze of reassurance. She knew she must’ve felt like ice to him, because he surrounded her hand with both of his, trying to warm her.

She kept her eyes closed against the sudden rush of tears.

She wanted, so badly, to go home.

No, what she wanted was to go back in time to Sunday morning. She wanted to put her fingers into her ears so that she wouldn’t hear Dave tell her that Maureen had called. She wanted to not go to Boston, not see her father, not get that crazy phone call from Dave while she stood in the hospital lobby...

And not take that unwelcome step back into a world filled with violence and death. She’d had enough of both—she’d realized it with a jolt in the hospital—during the first thirtysomething years of her life.

And it wasn’t death like her father’s impending demise with which she had the problem. His passing was natural. It was part of the circle of life, and he was more than ready to move on.

The nurse had told Sophia that she wouldn’t be surprised if he died within the next few days—especially now that he’d seen her, his only daughter. Especially now that she’d given him the forgiveness that he’d wanted for so long.

Her granting that forgiveness had further lightened her own soul, too.

For twenty minutes. She’d felt absolutely great about where she was in her life, and where she was going—for the twenty minutes from the time that she’d left her father’s bedside, until she’d run out of the hospital to find Dave, soaked and bleeding in the parking lot.

There’d been so much blood.

And the truth was that she hadn’t stepped back into a violence-filled world. The truth was that, by working at Troubleshooters Incorporated, she had never really left it.

Dave spoke softly, his voice low so that the woman sitting beside her, in the aisle seat, wouldn’t overhear. “I’m so sorry.”

Too often, when people said they were sorry, they didn’t mean it. Dave, however, was completely sincere. Sophia didn’t doubt that. She never had.

“What if we leave?” she asked quietly, too. She opened her eyes to look at him. “What if we just... go somewhere. Far away. Out of the country. We can hide.”

He was silent for a long time, just gazing at her. And she realized, as she looked back at him, that she had absolutely no clue what he was thinking right now—or how he would respond. A muscle was jumping in the side of his face as he clenched his jaw. The Dave she could read so well had been replaced by this expressionless near-stranger.

He finally spoke. “Forever?” he asked her.

Sophia nodded, searching for the man who was so good at making her laugh, but not finding him in these somber eyes. “If we have to, yes.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said quietly. “And even if you did, I would never do that to you. Take you away from your friends, your job, your entire life?”

“I don’t care,” she insisted.

“Yeah,” he said, “you do. And even if we did it, Soph, even if we ran? We’d spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders and—” He broke off, shaking his head. “No.” His eyes got even harder, his face and his voice now stony, too. “This has to end. It’s going to end.”

“How?” she asked him, a flood of tears rushing to her eyes. “With you dying? Because I don’t want it to end that way.”

“It won’t,” he whispered. He never could stand to see her cry.

“You can’t promise that,” she accused him.

And he nodded his agreement, his mouth a grim line. “I know.”

I want my Dave—the real Dave—back, she was tempted to say, but the woman sitting next to her had taken off the earphones to her iPod. The plane had reached what seemed to be cruising altitude, and the need for Sophia to cling so desperately to Dave’s hands had passed.

So she let him go.

Just as she let go of her fantasies. Because this was the real Dave—this tight-jawed operative sitting beside her now. The truth of the matter was that this man had been one of the CIA’s top field agents long before she’d met him.

And for the past few months, she’d just been playing at normal. For the past few months, she’d been fooling herself. She’d wanted a home and a family—not another grave to tend. And the really stupid part? It was that she’d seen Dave in action, plenty of times. He’d helped save her life more than once through the years—including that very first night they’d made love.

But the fact that he was comfortable not just toting a submachine gun but also using it had somehow always seemed the exception rather than the rule. Yes, he regularly went out on overseas assignments, but to Sophia, he’d always seemed so much more at home sitting in an office, at a computer.

But he hadn’t resigned from his job with the CIA by choice—he’d left under a cloud of suspicion and shame. He’d told her as much, months ago, but until now, she hadn’t given any thought to what that really meant—and how it surely had affected him.

With his hair a mess, bleary-eyed from doing research on his computer, coffee mug in hand, slightly overweight and out of shape, dressed down in cargo shorts and a T-shirt touting the name of some ancient rock band—his favorite was The Ramones—he’d often kept his desk between himself and the rest of the world. But that hadn’t been the real Dave—Sophia knew this now. That had been a slapped-down, heartbroken, eating-too-much-chocolate-to-make-himself-feel-better, subdued version of David Malkoff, CIA operative extraordinaire.

And the hard truth was that one of the main reasons Sophia had chosen him—and moving their relationship from friends to lovers had been her choice—was because she wanted to feel safe. Because she didn’t want extraordinary.

“I don’t know what we’re doing here,” she said to him now, regardless of the iPod woman’s astonishingly overt curiosity. “If you won’t talk to me....”

Dave nodded, as if he’d been waiting for her to say those very words. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and again, it was clear that he was sincere. He was extremely sorry.

It was then that the flight attendant came by, selling snacks and drinks. They both shook their heads, but the attendant stayed in the aisle to serve the iPod lady a coffee.

Until the cart was gone, they sat in a somewhat awkward silence.

Sophia finally broke it. “I get that you don’t want to talk to me,” she said. “Will you talk to Decker or—” She stopped herself. Gave a laugh that came out sounding far more like a sob. “I was actually going to say Jimmy Nash. I must be more exhausted than I thought.”

There was a flash of real pain mixed with the sympathy in Dave’s eyes. “I forget that he’s gone sometimes, too.” He exhaled hard. “I wish I could talk to him. We were closer than most people think.”

She nodded, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “I know. He told me—more than once—how much he admired you.” She was silent for a moment—they both were; he’d turned slightly away—and then she said, “I understand why you wouldn’t be eager to talk to Deck....”

Her voice trailed off because Dave turned to look at her, and tears were shining in his eyes. “Life can be tough,” he whispered, “and we don’t always get what we want. God knows Tess and Nash didn’t. And I know you didn’t—with your father and mother and... with Dimitri’s murder.”

She didn’t argue—she couldn’t.

“We’re both so tired,” he continued as he pushed up the armrest that was between them, making sure it was securely out of the way. He turned off the overhead lights and pulled down the window shade. “Can we just table this discussion for now? Please? Just come here. You’re freezing.”

He put his arm around her and pulled her close so she was as comfortable as possible, with her head on his shoulder. Then he put a blanket around them both. Taking care of her—as always.

“If you want, we can fight about this more tomorrow,” he said wearily. “But close your eyes and rest for now, okay?”

She was chilled, and he was so warm. So Dave. So much so that she almost started to cry. Instead she pulled his head down and kissed him.

To hell with the curious iPod lady.

He hadn’t shaved while in the hospital, and his chin rasped against her as he hesitated only slightly before accepting her kiss, just as he always did. He returned it as something longer, deeper, hotter—again, as he always did.

And when he finally pulled back, she was breathless and dizzy. And as surprised by it as she always was.

“I’m going to make things right,” he whispered. “Whatever happens, you’re going to be safe, I promise you that.”

He kissed her again, and she knew in that instant what her real problem was. She’d gotten into this relationship with Dave, thinking that she was settling for someone nice enough. Someone who loved her and would never hurt her. Someone who would be a good husband and a loving father to her children as they sailed through life on an easy, even keel.

Her problem really wasn’t that there were mysteries unsolved, questions unanswered—that seemingly transparent Dave did, in fact, have secrets that he kept from her, from everybody.

Her real problem was that, after all the sorrow and loss in her life, she desperately didn’t want to be in a relationship with someone she absolutely couldn’t bear to live without.

And yet here she was, with the same fear she’d felt last night, as she’d followed Dave into the hospital, welling up in her throat whenever she so much as thought about his putting himself in danger.

Don’t leave me, she’d said.

Never, he’d answered, but she’d learned, the hard way, that that was a promise no one could keep.