racy was breathing as hard as Decker, who stared at her. She was, no doubt, as wild-eyed as he was.

“Yes. That. It wasn’t...” Her voice came out sounding breathless and thin as she felt her face flush. “I didn’t... Your shorts were covered with blood and I was afraid.... So I looked...”

She shifted, to move back even farther from him, and her arm brushed against him—against him—and oh, dear God. That was fast. Fast and furious, so to speak.

“Sorry,” she said, even as he said it too.

“Sorry, I’m... Adrenaline can really... you know. Ramp things up.”

“Really?” The word left her mouth even as she realized that the right thing to do was to not keep talking about it, but to kiss him again.

Except he was giving her the body-language equivalent of stay back. Which meant that the real right thing to do was to turn away and count the ridiculous number of life vests Sam and Alyssa had hanging on their garage wall—as if they were prepped and ready for the next big flood.

Instead, like an idiot, she actually stupidly glanced down and...

He’d tried to pull the tail of his shirt over himself, but it hadn’t really done the trick.

“Wow,” she said—again, her mouth went off in advance of her brain, so she added, “Sorry. Sorry.” Although she wasn’t quite sure what she was doubly sorry for. Kissing him back and ramping things up? Heck, those kisses had ramped things up for her, too, although her ramped-up things weren’t as obvious as his.

His tears—if there had even been any—were long gone. His eyes now brimmed with embarrassment as he reached for his briefs—apparently preferring them on, despite their blood-soaked condition. And yes, he was actually blushing, too—a thin line of flush beneath his tan, right along his cheekbones.

“It’s, you know, physiological,” he told her. “Adrenaline kicks in and.... It, um, can be inconvenient.”

“Not for your girlfriend,” Tracy pointed out. “I mean, Good-bye, honey. Have a nice day. Hope someone tries to kill you again because last night was amazing....”

It was supposed to be a joke, but he didn’t laugh.

His briefs were stuck on his right knee, and she tried to help him, which in hindsight was a stupid thing to do, because he really didn’t want her help, especially with her own pants-free rear in his face. He said, “I got it, thanks,” in a voice that brooked no argument, which made her instantly let go.

He efficiently packed himself in, like some kind of dream male underwear model, to tightie-whities that were extra tight and no longer white.

“I can see why you were, uh, concerned,” he said as he reached down to untie his boots. “I’m a mess.”

He obviously wasn’t going to attempt to pull his blood-soaked jeans back up so Tracy said, “If you want, I can throw them into the washing machine.”

“Yes,” he said, “that would be good. Thanks. I could really use a shower.”

“There’s a wash sink out here,” Tracy said. It was surreal how polite they were being after licking the insides of each other’s mouths. “Unless you know where the key to the house is...?”

“No,” he said, “but I don’t need it. Just give me a sec.” He got his second boot off, but then took a moment, closing his eyes and holding his forehead.

“Are you all right?” Tracy asked, her concern instantly back.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yes.”

“No tunnel vision, double vision, blurred vision...?”

“I’m fine.” His words were countered when he reached up to touch the back of his head, and swore.

“Seriously, Decker,” she told him, helping him pull his jeans off his muscular calves, but keeping her distance this time, staying down by his feet. “It looks to me like you hit your head pretty hard. You’ve got to tell me—right away—if you start experiencing any symptoms of head injury. I mean, any symptoms in addition to falling out of your truck, unconscious...?”

He shook his head gingerly. “That wasn’t... I’m okay. It was...”

“Adrenaline?” she asked, as she yanked his pants free, impatient with his I’m too macho to accept the truth about a potentially fatal injury attitude. That, combined with her embarrassment over that kiss, sparked some seriously confused anger. He’d kissed her, hadn’t he? Although it was entirely possible that she had jumped him. But even if she had, he’d definitely kissed her back with enthusiasm. “Too much blood rushing to your—”

“I fainted,” he said, cutting her off, shooting her a hard look. “All right?” His blush was back—he was clearly embarrassed to have admitted that. “I’m fine. I have a very hard skull. I’ve hit my head plenty of times, much harder than this. But I lost some blood, and when I got the news about Tess and Jules... I passed out. Okay? Relief can do that.”

“Adrenaline and blood loss and relief,” she countered, methodically emptying his pockets onto the floor, then carrying his jeans to the washing machine. She threw them in and turned the dial to a heavy-duty wash cycle, small load. Hah. This man was giant when it came to loads. She rinsed her hands in the water that poured into the machine. “You’ve got your medical issues all figured out. Great. I’m happy you’re convinced you’re okay—that your fainting wasn’t a big deal. As long as you tell me—immediately—if you start experiencing any other symptoms of head injury.”

He laughed as she shook her hands as dry as she could before opening an overhead cabinet where she found a bottle of laundry soap. She didn’t bother measuring it, she just eyeballed it as she poured it in on top of water that was turning an upsetting shade of pink.

“Not a big deal?” he asked. “Believe me, I’d prefer a fractured skull over having to admit that I fainted like some little old lady.” He exhaled his disgust, and as she turned back to look at him, she saw that he’d pushed himself to his feet, but then crouched back down, all the way to his hands and knees. “Fuck.”

“Well, that’s just stupid,” Tracy said, dropping the lid of the machine with a metallic boing and hurrying back to him. “You’d rather be in a coma?”

“I’m okay,” he said, waving her off.

So she stepped back, but stayed close enough to catch him if she needed to. “And you didn’t faint like any little old lady that I’ve ever met. I mean, how would you know anyway? You fainted. I was there, and you did it the same way you do everything. With a truckload of testosterone.” He still hadn’t moved. His head was down, his eyes closed, so she inched even closer. “Will you please let me help you?”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t—I’m trying hard not to puke.”

“Oh. My. God. And that’s not a symptom?” she asked, kneeling beside him. “Of, like, what? Concussion? Or yes, even a fractured skull! Maybe you got your freaking wish! Haven’t you read The Secret?”

Decker opened his eyes and looked directly at her. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He laughed in her face. “Yeah, I’ve read The Secret—or enough of it to know it’s crap. Like I really wished myself here, with a gunshot wound. That’s the stupidest shit I ever heard.”

“Well, I wished Tess and Jules alive,” she retorted. “I believed it with all my heart—so how stupid is it now?” She felt tears spring into her eyes. God, no, don’t let her cry again—not over this.

“Then you better stop believing that I have a concussion,” he shot back at her. He rested his forehead on the garage floor. “Jesus, I’m gonna be sick.”

Tracy looked around—there was a collection of brightly colored sand toys in a mesh bag, hanging near a pair of skimboards. She went to it, quickly unhooked the bag, and pulled out a yellow plastic pail in the shape of SpongeBob SquarePants and brought it back to Decker.

“Here,” she said, crouching beside him and putting the pail on the floor next to his head. She took his arm. “Come on. Sit up. Or do you want to lie back down again?”

She pushed his hair from his face, feeling to see if his forehead was warm. There was no way he could’ve gotten an infection from that gunshot wound so quickly, was there?

But she knew from working at Troubleshooters that operatives going into the field always brought antibiotics with them in case of injury, specifically to avoid infection. Maybe it did happen fast. Bullets had to be horrendously dirty, and one of them had cut that furrow in Decker’s arm.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “It doesn’t work,” he said, and at first she didn’t follow, but then she realized he was still talking about The Secret. “Because I keep wishing—Jesus—that you’ll just please, please stop touching me.”

Tracy pulled her hand back so fast she almost smacked herself in the face with it. “I’m just trying to help,” she said, as her stinging hurt morphed into indignant anger. “God, you’re arrogant. Do you honestly think I’m here going, Oh, goody, he thinks he might throw up. I think I’ll kiss him again. Yum. You suck and you’re stupidly closed-minded, too. Because you didn’t read far enough in the book,” she informed him. “You have to think about the thing you want to have happen. If you put it in a negative form, if you focus on what you don’t want, it not only doesn’t work, but it gives you the exact opposite of what you really do want. You can’t say, like, I don’t want it to rain, I don’t want it to rain. Because the universe doesn’t hear the don’t. It just hears want rain. You have to say, I want the sun to shine.”

“You use The Secret to control the weather?” he said, painfully pushing himself into a sitting position. She practically had to sit on her hands not to reach to help him. “Honey, if you can do that, you definitely need to ask Tommy for a raise.”

She made a sound of exasperation as he made sure that his overshirt covered his still-obvious symptom of too much adrenaline. “That was just an example,” she said. “A simple one. Easy to understand—even for those of us who are blockheads. It wasn’t supposed to—”

“How about if I don’t just wish it or think it?” he cut her off. “How about I actually say it? No fricking secret, just right on the table. Don’t. Touch me. I’m human, okay? And it’s too much for me right now. I shouldn’t have kissed you, it was wrong, and if I could, God damn it, I’d take it back.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just sat there as the washing machine finally finished filling with water and the wash cycle kicked on.

“And Jesus, please. Don’t look at me like that,” he added, saying again, more quietly this time, “It’s too much.”

Tracy nodded as she looked away. She pushed herself back to her feet, hyper-aware that she was wearing only a pair of thong panties with a tank top that was now dirty and torn. She tried to keep her front to him as she went to the back of the truck, where she had two “massively huge” suitcases of clothes. She opened the truck bed’s hard plastic cover, unzipped one of her bags, and found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. But then she pulled out a second T-shirt, because after she washed up in the sink, she was going to need to use something to dry herself off.

She’d brought soap—organic and chemical-free—and she dug for that, too, because the alternative was to use Sam and Alyssa’s laundry detergent, which would dry her skin. Last thing she needed was a rash that wasn’t figurative.

“I’m not looking at you,” she informed Decker as she marched past him to the sink, carrying her clean clothes, careful not to hold them against her. She had streaks of his blood pretty much all over her, mixed in with some of her own, too. Her elbow was a mess. “Now it’s up to you to not look at me while I wash up and get dressed.”

“I’ll get the door open so you can use the shower in the house,” he said, back on his hands and knees. He was pretending he was in that position on purpose, as he searched through the rubble of items she’d removed from his pants pockets, looking for God knows what.

“Yeah, well, I kind of need it to happen in this lifetime,” she said, turning on the water in the sink and waiting for it to warm up, “so I’m just going to—”

“Okay,” Decker cut her off, removing several small metal tools from a small leather packet. “All right. You win. Help me. Over to the stairs so I can get the freaking door open. We’ll get inside, we’ll both get cleaned up. I can do this.”

She set her clean clothes down atop the dryer as he made it all the way to his feet. He spread his legs in an attempt not to sway, but she wasn’t fooled.

“I win?” she asked as she stalked over to him and looped his arm around her shoulders, putting her own arm around his trim and annoyingly attractive waist. “I’m sorry. The blast from the bomb that nearly killed us must still be interfering with my ability to hear clearly, because I could’ve sworn I just heard you say that I win. What exactly do I win? Besides this fabulous chance to look at you and touch you without being frantically warded off by the sign of the cross?”

They made it over to the stairs and up them, but none of it was easy for him, considering his current shade of green. He inserted the little metal instrument into the lock, and...

The door didn’t open.

Decker swore under his breath. “Hold still,” he ordered.

“I’m not the one who’s about to fall on his head,” she retorted. “Again.” But she tried to brace him more absolutely, which unfortunately required more physical contact. She put her left leg around behind him, so that he was standing on the step between her feet.

Between her legs.

Don’t think that. Don’t go there. He wanted to take back that mistake of a kiss, and Tracy now believed—absolutely—that even if they got into the house, even if the people who’d set the bomb and shot Decker surrendered to the authorities, even if the planets aligned and choirs of angels sang their blessing, that she and this man were never, not in a million years ever, going to finish what they’d started.

Never say never was a popular adage at Troubleshooters Inc., but right now never gonna happen was written all over Decker’s every move, his every bit of body language, his every expression on his not-particularly-handsome-yet-still-gorgeous face. Which was his loss.

Unfortunately, it was Tracy’s loss, too.

She tried to steady him even more by clinging to the door frame with her left hand—there was no banister—and she finally gave up and just wrapped her right arm around his waist, her front pressed solidly against his back. “I’ve got you,” she said. “Just concentrate on the lock. You can do this with your eyes closed. We both know that.”

In the past, she’d witnessed him getting past far more difficult locks—like the one on her motel room door, on that near-deadly training mission in New Hampshire, back when she’d first started working for Troubleshooters. Tracy had been in the shower, and he’d let himself into the room she was sharing with Sophia. He’d been looking for clothes to bring to the tiny blond woman who’d fallen into some kind of pond, out in below-freezing weather.

For Decker, it always came back to Sophia. It was good to remember that, especially while experiencing this kind of warm and sweaty full-body contact. God, he was ripped—the six-pack beneath her hand was hard-muscled and tight and sexy as hell.

So Tracy told him, “I sent an e-mail to Alyssa, letting her know that you won’t be able to pick up Dave and Sophia at the airport.”

“Damn it,” he swore. “I forgot about them.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t.”

He glanced back at her, over his shoulder—his eyes a flash of color in his grimly pale face. “It’s not okay.”

“Yeah, Deck, you know what? It actually is.” She exhaled her disgust. “Didn’t you just finish telling me that you’re human? Well, congratulations, you really are. Fortunately, you’re not alone tonight. I’m here to help you, and I did. Thank you, Tracy. Why, you’re welcome, Deck.”

The muscles in his entire body strained and tightened even more as he did something with that little metal lockpick. And, yes! The door finally popped open.

“See?” Tracy said. “I knew you could do it.”

“Don’t tell me you visualized it, because I won’t be able to keep from throwing up.”

“Fine,” she sniffed. “I won’t tell you, then.”

The security alarm started to beep its warning. They had only a short time—maybe thirty seconds—to input the code before it started to wail.

Decker moved to go into the house, but Tracy stopped him. “Let me. I’m moving faster.” She made sure, though, that he was steady before she let go of him and slipped through the door into Sam and Alyssa’s shadow-filled kitchen.

“Code’s the same as for the garage.” Decker started to recite the numbers, but she cut him off.

“I remember it.” The alarm control box was identical to the one that provided electronic security at the office. Tracy punched in the code, and the light stopped flashing, and turned from red to green.

They were in.

“Did Alyssa e-mail you back?” Decker asked, holding on to both sides of the frame as he came through the door, as Tracy quickly checked to make sure all the blinds were down before she tried the various light switches and found one that lit the kitchen.

There was a set of hooks holding raincoats—slickers—in a little mud-room that led directly to the backyard. She took one and covered her backside, tying it by the long, yellow arms around her waist as she answered him. “Not yet. Not that I know of.”

He still looked as if keeling over were an option, and she reached for him—but apparently he’d used up all his asking-for-help cards. He was back to waving her off as he sat down heavily at the kitchen table. “I’m okay.”

She quickly went into the garage and got both her computer and her clean clothes. She set her laptop down on the counter and shook her head as Decker looked at her.

“Still no response from anyone. And by the way, if you’re dizzy from loss of blood instead of oh, say, a fractured skull,” she pointed out, “it’ll help if you have a cookie and some orange juice—you know, like when you go to the bloodmobile?”

“I don’t give blood,” he told her. “Too many inoculations from trips overseas.”

“Well, I do,” she said, as she searched through the kitchen cabinets, “and they give you a cookie and some juice if you feel like you’re going to faint.”

“I really don’t want a cookie,” Decker said. “Or juice.”

“You’re doing it again,” Tracy pointed out as she found a box of cookies—chocolate chips—and a jar of organic apple-pomegranate juice. She tried to open the lid of the juice, but it was stuck. “Remember, the universe doesn’t hear don’t.”

He made it all the way over to the counter and reached to take the jar out of her hands. “I don’t want any juice,” he said quietly. “Go take a shower.”

She looked at him. “Careful. You’re awfully close. I might touch you.”

“I’m sorry I... said what I said,” he apologized—even as he put some additional distance between them. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not my fault, what?” she countered, as she opened the package of chocolate chips. “That I make you feel something—other than miserable?”

He just stood there looking at her.

So she held out a cookie. “Sorry it’s not a scone.”

Tom Paoletti met them at the airport.

Tom, not Decker.

Dave saw him standing there before Sophia did—he was at the bottom of the escalator in the baggage claim area. His arms were crossed and his legs were spread in that fucking obnoxious Navy SEAL stance that Dave had come both to hate and to love—equally passionately. Sometimes it seemed as if everyone he knew at TS Inc. had at one time been a Navy SEAL. Or else they were currently a Navy SEAL.

Everyone except for him.

Which pissed him off because he knew that, in their eyes, it made him subpar.

And at the same time, as infuriatingly cocky as SEALs could be, he loved having them around, watching his six, as they called it.

They could never call anything what it really was—watching his back—when there was a way to say it with either military or nautical jargon. Tom himself was the least obnoxious of the bunch, and he still called the bathroom the head and the floor the deck. Walls were bulkheads and terrorists were tangos and Dave knew from experience that if his boss was in a room with another SEAL, the NavySpeak would fly.

“Paoletti dead ahead,” he murmured to Sophia, who still looked exhausted despite the fact that she’d slept seemingly soundly, almost to the very moment the plane touched down here in California.

“I thought Decker was meeting us,” she said.

Dave nodded, unable to look at her, for fear his sudden wave of jealousy was evident on his face. Fucking Decker. “Yeah, I thought so, too,” he said—far more tightly than he’d intended.

Her patience was fraying, because she exhaled her obvious disgust with him. “I didn’t say that I hoped he was meeting us,” she countered, “only that I thought he was. God, Dave.”

Tom was approaching so he couldn’t respond with, God, Dave what? or explain that she’d misinterpreted his unhappiness as being somehow linked to Decker, and yes, okay, it was, but only to some degree. The rest of it had to do with Tom—and why their boss himself had chosen to meet them at the airport, rather than sending someone else.

Someone lower down the chain of command.

“Where’s your wheelchair, Malkoff?” Tom asked, stepping forward to take Dave’s bag off his shoulder. Normally easygoing, the taller man wasn’t bothering to hide his displeasure.

“I don’t need one, sir,” Dave answered. “And obviously you didn’t think I needed one, either, or you’d’ve been standing in front of the elevators.”

“I was,” Tom informed him, pointing over Sophia’s shoulder. “You’ve been out of the hospital, what is it? Ten hours?”

“I’m fine,” Dave lied, as he turned and...

Yes, all right. Tom had had a clean shot of the lift from where he’d been standing.

Sophia answered the boss’s question, “Nine and a half hours. I’m sorry, sir,” she added. “I tried to talk him into using a wheelchair, but... I have to confess that I didn’t try very hard. It’s been a long couple of days and one can only keep hitting one’s head against a wall for a limited amount of time.”

“But I’m fine,” Dave argued, “and we’d’ve had to wait for them to bring the chair.”

Tom had turned his attention to Sophia, no doubt taking note of the lines around her mouth and the haunted look in her eyes. It used to be her standard affect—that gone to hell and not quite sure she was back yet expression—and Dave hated that he’d been the one to cause its reappearance.

“You okay?” Tom asked as he took her bag, too, and she nodded. Forced a smile. “How’s your father?”

“Doing his best,” she said, “to make amends before he—Oh my God, Dave!”

She was looking at him in horror, and he looked down and realized that he’d bled through both his bandage and his shirt. “I must’ve pulled some stitches getting my bag from the overhead rack,” he said as he drew his jacket closed. “It’s nothing.” He hoped. It hurt—more than it should have.

“I’ve got a car at the curb,” Tom informed them. “Let’s go. We can do a damage assessment in the car. If you’ve got checked luggage, I suggest we don’t wait for it—”

“We don’t,” Sophia said tersely as she put her arm around Dave’s waist—as if he needed her support. And God help him, maybe he did. Ow.

“Where’s Decker?” he asked Tom as they moved swiftly—as swiftly as he could manage—toward the door.

“He’s been delayed.”

“What’s going on?” Dave asked.

“I don’t know,” Tom reported as the glass doors to the passenger pickup area opened with a snick. “I got a call from Alyssa, asking me to meet your plane. She said it was urgent. She told me about your attack, told me that the plan was to set you up in a secure hotel room—make sure you’re safe.” He glanced at Dave again. “She specifically said to make sure both of you are safe.”

“That’s a very good idea,” Sophia said.

Dave knew that now was not the right time to disagree. Besides, he needed about twenty hours of injury-healing sleep—which wasn’t going to happen without his complete faith in the fact that Sophia was secure and protected. So he’d go wherever Tom was taking them, and he’d sleep, and when the time came to leave, to hunt down and neutralize the threat, he’d leave—knowing Sophia was in capable hands.

But... great. Dave’s heart sank as he saw that one of Tom’s SEAL friends—a chief by the name of Ken Karmody—was behind the wheel of the car that was waiting for them.

And it was quite a car. Instead of Tom’s usual SUV, he’d brought one of the low, sleek, black sedans that were used by the company to pick up high-profile clients.

Dave had realized that there would be a driver—since Tom had been waiting for them inside—but he’d hoped their boss had brought along one of the other Troubleshooters operatives: Lindsey or PJ or, hell, even Tracy Shapiro.

While he appreciated Chief Karmody’s particular skill set—SEALs were quite the talented drivers—Dave wasn’t happy about having him for an audience. The conversation that he knew was coming was going to be hard enough.

Tom was going to ask for Dave’s resignation. Dave didn’t blame him. Anise Turiano’s unsolved murder had raised its ugly head, and the whispers about Dave were going to start up again. Tom didn’t need that. He’d worked hard establishing Troubleshooters’ pristine reputation, and would—rightly—not want this ugliness to tarnish it.

“The Card was over for a cookout when Alyssa called,” Tom explained as he tossed their bags into the trunk. Ken’s nickname was WildCard, which of course got shortened even further. What was it with SEALs and nicknames?

Sophia helped Dave into the backseat, and climbed in after him.

Tom got in, and “The Card” put the car in gear and moved them, swiftly and steadily, into the stream of traffic heading out of the airport. “I’ve filled him in on the situation,” Tom continued. “He’s done short-term assignments for Troubleshooters before—he knows how to be discreet.”

“Sorry to pull you—both of you—from the party,” Dave said.

“It’s nice to see you, Ken,” Sophia chimed in, even as she opened Dave’s jacket and pulled up his shirt to look at his bandaged wound.

The SEAL glanced into the rearview mirror, at Sophia and then Dave, before nodding. “Always glad to help Tommy. It was either me or the senior, and since Teri’s about to pop...”

“How is Teri?” Sophia continued the small talk, as she peeled the adhesive part of the bandage from Dave’s side. He gritted his teeth. “We must be getting close to her due date.”

“Yeah, it was three days ago,” Kenny reported. “The senior’s about to have an aneurism. It’s kinda fun to watch.”

Tom’s good friends, Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok and his wife, Teri, were having a baby. They were one of many couples who were expecting—in fact, the entire SoCal SpecWar community was having something of a baby boom these days.

“Teri’s going in for daily checkups,” Ken continued. “But everyone’s healthy, so no one’s too worried. It’s a watch-and-wait thing.”

“That’s wonderful,” Sophia said, and she meant it. And yet there was a wistfulness in her words that Dave knew he wasn’t imagining. “How’s Savannah?”

As Ken told Sophia about his own wife, Dave recalled hearing through the grapevine—possibly from Sophia herself—that Teri Wolchonok had had at least one miscarriage. As had Sophia, back when she was married to Dimitri.

No doubt about it, life could certainly suck a giant cosmic ass.

“We might need to stop at a hospital,” Sophia said, and Dave realized that she was frowning as she looked at his stitches. “Sir, I’m going to need you to look at this.”

Dave pulled his shirt up even higher so he could see what had caused her alarm. As he’d suspected, he’d pulled several of the stitches, and it was oozing blood. And yes, it looked a little inflamed. “It’s not that bad. We’re not stopping. We can’t.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she told him.

Tom had turned to look over his shoulder at them, squinting to see Dave’s injury. “Did they give him antibiotics?”

Sophia nodded, as she looked at Dave. “Are you taking them?”

“Yes, I am,” he said as he looked at Tom. “Sir, this is probably a good time to let you know that I intend to have a letter of resignation on your desk—as soon as I find some paper and a pen.”

Sophia was now looking at him as if he’d crapped on the floor of the Oval Office.

Tom, however, surprised him by shaking his head. “That’s not necessary.”

“We both know that it is,” Dave countered. “You don’t actually think I’d let both your and Troubleshooters’ good names be tarnished by—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Dave,” Tom cut him off. “I’m standing behind you. We had this conversation when I hired you. Nothing’s changed.”

“Are you kidding? Everything’s changed,” Dave argued. At his interview, years ago, they had had a completely open conversation about why he’d left the CIA, and Dave had expressed concern about the fledgling personal security firm’s reputation. But Tom had had a serious manpower shortage, and had hired him anyway. “You’re no longer shorthanded. You don’t need—”

“I didn’t hire you because I was shorthanded,” Tom cut him off. “I hired you because I trust you. Like I said, nothing’s changed.”

The emotion that hit Dave lodged squarely in the center of his chest. It joined forces with his fatigue and made him ache. If he’d been alone, he would’ve curled into a ball and wept. But he wasn’t alone.

“With all due respect, sir”—Dave had to work to get the words out evenly—“you need to reconsider. This could get ugly and—ow!”

Sophia was applying a new bandage—she had supplies in her purse—with too much force. “I’m pretty sure Dave gave me a letter of resignation today, too.” She looked at him, her anger simmering in her eyes. “That’s what that was, right? You actually got me to say I don’t know what we’re doing here, which is a precursor to I need some time to think, which leads to This isn’t working out, which is what you wanted me to say, isn’t it?” She didn’t give him time to respond. She just yanked his shirt down over the fresh bandage and turned to Tom. “Did Dave go out on an overseas assignment for you last week?”

Ah, hell. “Soph,” Dave started. “I told you it’s irrelevant—”

“Shh,” she spoke over him. “I’m asking Tom.”

“I went overseas,” Dave told her, “yes. But no, it wasn’t for Tom, okay?”

“So he requested some days off,” Sophia persisted, talking directly to their boss, purposely not looking at or acknowledging Dave. “Did he tell you where he was going?”

“Sir,” Dave reminded him, “I told you my plans in confidence.”

“And I told you,” Tom countered evenly, “that I wouldn’t lie if Sophia—or anyone—asked me about your trip. That’s always been my policy.” He nodded to her. “Yes, he did tell me.”

“Please,” Dave begged, because her next question was going to be more direct. “Sir. This is the last thing she needs right now—”

“What Sophia needs,” his boss came back, about as sharply as Dave had ever heard him speak to anyone, “is for you pack of imbeciles to stop treating her like damaged goods, and respect her enough to let her make her own decisions about what it is that she does or doesn’t need.”

Beside him, Sophia actually started to applaud. “Thank you so much, sir,” she said.

Behind the wheel, WildCard started to laugh, like the SEAL asshole that he was.

“Why is this so important to you?” Dave had to ask her. “Because at this point, when you find out where I went—”

“It’s important,” she shot back at him, “because I’d like to know how many other people are going to try to kill you this week!”

“Ah, Soph...” She wasn’t kidding. She was terribly upset with him—and had been since the attack—and he couldn’t really blame her. He exhaled hard. “It wasn’t that kind of... It was... intelligence, okay? I was gathering intelligence. It wasn’t dangerous.” He caught himself in what was a rather intense understatement, especially when Tom helped him out by pointedly clearing his throat. “It wasn’t the kind of dangerous that could possibly follow me home. And”—he finished his earlier thought—“when you find out where I went? It’s going to be tremendously anticlimactic and actually kind of funny.”

“Good,” she fired back, “because right now I’ve got your blood under my fingernails again, and I could use a good laugh.”

Ah, God.

“He went to Kazabek,” WildCard told her, shrugging as he met Dave’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t make you any promises and, even sitting up here? This conversation is excruciating. I’m just speeding things along.”

Dave was incredulous as he turned to Tom, who was sighing heavily and shaking his head at the younger SEAL. “You told Karmody...?”

“Yeah,” WildCard said, “he told me. You can say that your trip was irrelevant and assume it had absolutely nothing to do with your taking a knife to the gut in Boston. But Tommy’s not about to assume anything—which is why he runs TS Inc., while you work for him.”

Dave could feel Sophia staring at him in stunned horror. “I’m not laughing,” she whispered.

Yeah, he couldn’t help but notice that.

“You went to Kazabek?” she continued, getting louder as she went on. “By choice?”

“Yes,” he copped to it. “I did. And it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with Anise Turiano.”

“Unless whoever you pissed off over in K-stan is using the Turiano thing to smack you down, after you did whatever you did to piss ’em off,” WildCard suggested helpfully from the front seat.

“I didn’t piss anyone off,” Dave said, as Sophia stared at him as if she couldn’t recognize him and was trying to figure out where on earth they’d previously met.

“That you know of,” WildCard interjected, which was when Dave lost it.

“Will you shut the fuck up?!”

“I’m pretty sure he said what we were all thinking,” Tom turned around to say, that edge back in his usually mild voice. “Before I brought the chief into a potentially dangerous situation, I had to be upfront with him about all possible threats, and face it, Malkoff, we don’t know enough about this situation to assume anything. You know as well as I do that when we take on a case—”

“This isn’t a case,” Dave interrupted him. “You’re not taking on anything other than providing protection for Sophia.”

“And you,” Tom countered. “I want to know who might try to kick down your hotel room door. I want to know all theories, all possibilities. I want to hear about your crazy cousin who hasn’t spoken to you since your grandmother died and left you her favorite rocking chair. You don’t get to assume anything when we’re standing between you and the bullets, and you damn well know it.”

“I am not a client,” Dave said hotly, “and you’re not going to be protecting me. I’ll stay far away from you, so that—”

“Intelligence,” Sophia interrupted, repeating the word he’d used. “You went back to Kazabek because of... me?”

Her words stopped the argument dead, as both Tom and the SEAL chief tried to become invisible in the front seat.

Dave didn’t answer her—he couldn’t figure out how to explain without saying things that he knew she wouldn’t want said in front of an audience. But as another mile sped by, he knew she was capable of waiting forever for his answer, so he finally said, “I thought it would be easier—for you. To talk about some of the abuse that you lived through. I thought if I knew... If I could find out what happened to you, then... So, I...”

“Oh, my God,” Sophia breathed, her eyes filled with horror. “I was wrong. What I said to you before. My secrets could have gotten you killed.”

“No,” he said, even though everyone in the car knew that he was lying. “Soph, no. I was never in danger.”

“This could be my fault,” she whispered, stricken. “One of Bashir’s nephews, looking for payback...”

“No, Sophia—”

“You don’t know that,” she said. “Oh, my God. Ken, please, pull over! Please! Right now! I’m going to be sick!”