ecker didn’t want her to ride with him.

Tracy sat in the backseat of Navy SEAL Jay Lopez’s unassuming little hybrid car and tried to be invisible as they followed Decker through a vaguely industrial part of the city, where he was intending to ditch his poor battered truck.

He’d told Lindsey and Lopez that he didn’t want to leave it in Sam and Alyssa’s garage. It was entirely possible, even though they’d swept the vehicle carefully, that Jo Heissman had left behind some kind of tracking device.

It would have to be something cutting-edge, that didn’t yet register on standard bug-sweeping equipment. But technology frequently played leap frog. Tracy had learned about that when, as Troubleshooters’ field equipment supervisor, she’d come across a purchase order for new equipment—a mere two weeks after they’d received brand-new state-of-the-art bug sweepers. She’d thought it was an error, and had brought it to the boss’s attention. But Tom had explained that, over those scant few weeks, there’d been a technology bump in which their new equipment had become instantly obsolete.

The tech world moved at lightning speed. Someone would invent a new, undetectable tracking device, Tom had explained, and everyone else would work feverishly on a way to detect it. Once they did, it wouldn’t be long before someone else invented a newer, undetectable device—and on and on it went.

So, yes, it was not just possible but entirely likely that Dr. Heissman had slipped a tracking device into Deck’s truck. How else could they have been followed to the Seaside Heights Motor Lodge?

Except something wasn’t right about that. The timing. It seemed wrong. If the bad guys had followed Deck and Tracy to the motel, when exactly did they have time to plant that bomb?

She and Decker had sat in his truck in the parking lot for several minutes, it was true. But she for one hadn’t seen any movement in the motel courtyard.

Although, it was possible that whoever planted the bomb had gone around the back. It was possible the bomb could have been planted outside of the building. Surely forensics or explosion experts could tell that sort of thing.

Tracy wished Decker were there so she could ask him about that.

Yeah. That was why she wished Decker were there. Right.

Except the backseat of this little car was not designed for people who were more than three and a half feet tall. She was sharing it, too, with a pizza box. Apparently Jay Lopez had been sitting down to dinner when Lindsey had called, looking for backup. The box was, alas, empty. Her stomach growled, and she dug through her handbag for a PowerBar and came up empty-handed.

“Mark’s OCONUS again,” Lindsey said from the front seat.

Tracy realized that she wasn’t talking to Lopez, who of course, would have already been aware of the fact that Lindsey’s SEAL husband was out of the country.

“He was supposed to be back tomorrow,” Lindsey continued, “but... Looks like they’re keeping ’em around awhile longer.”

“Iraq?” Tracy asked, focusing on her friend. It was a good way to avoid obsessing over the way Decker hadn’t been able to look at her when she’d come—showered and fully dressed—into the garage. He’d given her zero eye contact as he’d briskly announced that she should go with Lindsey and Lopez, and that he was taking his truck.

“Nope. Afghanistan,” Lindsey reported.

“I was hoping you’d say Germany,” Tracy said.

“I wish.” Lindsey sighed. “It’s bad over there.”

“He’s going to be okay,” Tracy told her friend. “Mark’s good at what he does.”

Lindsey shifted in her seat to better face Tracy. “So... You want to tell me what’s going on with the bomb at the motel and the back window of Deck’s truck shot out?”

Tracy sighed. “I can’t. Not without Decker’s permission.” And okay. The word made her blush, even though Lindsey and Lopez couldn’t possibly know what had gone on in that bathroom before they’d arrived.

Did I say you could talk? Here in the quiet of Lopez’s car it seemed absurd not only that those words had come out of her mouth, but that Decker had been on board enough to obey her.

Holy crap, he was one nicely put together man. No doubt about it, Lawrence Decker was the reason God had invented nakedness. And even thoughTracy’s experience with living, breathing, in-the-flesh naked men was seriously limited, she’d seen a statue or two in her time, as well as more than a few male bodies on film—that is, if you could call the adult-cable-channel porn Lyle used to watch “film.” Deck put them all to shame, with the kind of hardmuscles that a man couldn’t get from merely going to the gym.

“Then... you want to tell me what’s going on with you and Deck?” Lindsey asked.

“Nothing’s going on,” Tracy started to say, but changed it to a simple, “No.” Lindsey, after all, wasn’t an idiot. Naked plus naked equaled something, not nothing. “Not in front of Lopez. No offense, Jay.”

“I’m not listening,” he said.

“And you didn’t see me naked either, right?” Tracy asked.

“Sorry, no,” he said. “I definitely saw you naked.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I have an appreciation of fine art, and I recognize what an honor it was to be one of a rare few who’ve been granted a private viewing of one of God’s own masterpieces.”

Tracy stared at him. “How could you possibly be friends with Izzy Zanella? That was... Thank you.” Rare few, he’d said, which was both respectful and sweet, despite the Tracy-is-a-slut rumors that were surely swirling in the SpecWar community.

“He’s hitting on you,” Lindsey reported. “You may not recognize it, because he’s so polite, but this is Jay’s way of saying, Yo, hot mama. Consider yourself warned.”

“You decide that Chief Decker’s too old or grumpy for you,” Lopez told Tracy with a smile that could have melted butter, “you know where to find me.”

And okay. He probably looked really good naked, too. And he was closer to her own age than Deck was. And he was about a billion times less grim and bottled up.

Friend of Izzy Zanella went into the con column though, along with what was, Tracy realized, a total deal-breaker. He was Not Lawrence Decker.

God, when had that happened? They hadn’t had sex—not even close. Well, all right, maybe a little close. But still. Deck had kissed her—once. One time. She’d grabbed his junk, okay, and then ordered him around a little bit. They’d both gotten naked and stared at each other a whole lot.

He’d also told her what had happened between Sophia and him—and why he’d been so utterly unable and unwilling to bring their rather odd, strained relationship to the next level.

And yeah. There it was. That was what had happened. Decker’s confession had been the emotional equivalent of full-penetration sex. The intimacy hadn’t been physical, but that didn’t make it any less powerful and, well, intimate. In fact, everything they’d said and done over the past few hours—including almost dying—felt far more intimate than any sexual act Tracy had ever performed with her rather pathetic line-up of exes.

And God help her, true to her pattern, she was well on her way to falling for Deck. All she could think about was getting him alone again—so she could spend about four hundred more hours gazing into his crazy-beautiful eyes.

And yes, okay, she also wanted to hook up with him. Badly enough to chase him down the street, if need be.

Which, ironically, she was pretty much doing, since Lopez was currently following Decker’s truck. Although, right this second, both truck and car had stopped at a railroad crossing, where lights were flashing and flimsy wooden barriers were coming down.

“What the...?” Lopez hit his horn.

“What is he doing?” Lindsey asked, disbelief in her voice.

Tracy sat forward to see Decker pull his truck into the oncoming lane, and—avoiding the barriers—gun it, tires squealing, across the tracks.

“Hold on!” Lopez shouted as he yanked the wheel hard left to follow, but the train was nearly on top of them. He hit the brakes as Tracy screamed, and they skidded to a stop on the non-Decker side of the tracks.

“Are you insane?” Lindsey shouted as the train roared past, hardly more than a foot from the front of the car.

“SEAL,” Lopez said with a shrug.

Lindsey turned to Tracy. “Where is he going?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Decker still didn’t have a functioning phone—they couldn’t even call him to ask.

“You don’t know.” Lindsey clearly didn’t believe her.

Tracy shook her head, fighting a rush of tears.

“You have no idea why he would want to lose us?” Lindsey persisted as the train kept on coming. It was a freight, with no end in sight. “Because that’s what that crazy psycho just did. He freaking lost us.”

“Maybe he didn’t realize how close the train was,” Tracy said, but she didn’t need the disbelieving looks that either Lindsey or Lopez sent her from the front seat to recognize how stupid that sounded.

“After the train passes,” Lopez said, “and the gates go back up? Decker is not going to be waiting for us.”

“I know,” Tracy said. Had he really been in that much of a hurry to get away from her? Or...

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

“Alyssa told me to get you and Decker to the helo pickup point.” Lindsey was as pissed as Tracy had ever seen her. “She doesn’t want to tell me the details about what’s going on? That’s fine. The assignment’s easy enough. Oh, but be sure to bring Lopez, she says, just in case, because apparently someone tried to blow both Decker and Tracy to Kingdom Come at some sleazoid motel in the suck-ass part of town. And for the record, I really don’t want to know why you were going there.”

“Jo Heissman,” Tracy said. “Oh, shit.”

But Lindsey was on a full-blown rant and didn’t hear her. “But okay, it really is fine,” she continued, “because I’m down with need to know. I respect that. But what would’ve been nice to have been told is that Decker, despite a bullet wound in his freaking arm, won’t particularly want to go to the helo pickup point. A little warning that we’d have to strong-arm Chief Crazy Pants would’ve been helpful.”

Lopez, however, had been paying attention. “Joe who?”

“Josephine Heissman,” Tracy said again, as the freight train’s caboose sped past—and sure enough, with the sudden unobstructed view across the tracks, Decker’s truck wasn’t anywhere in sight. No doubt about it, he was long gone. “That’s where Decker went. Probably to her house.”

Lindsey blinked at her. “Dr. Heissman?” she asked. “The shrink?”

“She lives out on Coronado,” Tracy told them, as she unzipped her computer bag and opened her laptop. Since Jo was a former Troubleshooters employee, Tracy still had her personal information—including her home address—in the company database. “Go,” she ordered Lopez as she looked up the address. “Drive. West. Hurry. Because if Decker did go to her house? He may well have gone to follow through on a threat he made—to kill her.”

Dr. Heissman was sitting in her living room. She was curled up, one foot tucked beneath her, in an oversized, overstuffed chair, reading a paperback novel.

She didn’t hear Decker come in, and he stood there for quite a few minutes before she noticed him—she was that engrossed.

It was as if she’d prepared for him—or someone—to pay her a visit. The drapes were closed, shades were drawn—no one could see into the house from the street.

She’d changed out of her business clothes, into pink sweatpants and a T-shirt, and her hair was up in a ponytail.

Pink. Huh. It still surprised him that she would wear that girlishly pale color.

Her feet were bare, and she’d poured herself a glass of wine, which sat with her cell phone on the end table beside her, ignored, as she was clearly caught up in her book. The only sound was that of her turning pages—and the quiet ticking of the clock on the mantel of her fireplace.

Her home was nice. It was one of those antique cottages that peppered the area—built shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The architectural style was called Arts and Crafts—and the only reason Decker knew that was because SEAL Team Sixteen’s Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok’s house was from the same quaint era. Although the senior’d preserved the original rich, dark woodwork in his house. The doctor’s had long been painted over, which was a shame.

Her walls were soothing—tans and beiges and a shade of mustard that was surprisingly nice, with occasional splashes of color from abstract modern artwork: not his favorite, by a long shot. He was a landscape man. Give him a good seashore. Sand dunes. A sailboat on the horizon. But a splotch of colors, arranged in a vaguely sexual scramble? Maybe he was fucked up, but when he looked at art like that, he rarely saw anything besides female genitals and the occasional scrotum. Or he saw absolutely nothing at all—which was somehow worse. It was as if everyone in the world was laughing at a joke that he didn’t get. And that made him uncomfortable—like it was additional proof that there was something seriously wrong with him.

Besides, if he was going to think about uncomfortable things, he might as well take a well-measured moment and acknowledge the fact that he wished, with all of his frozen and jaded heart, that Lindsey and Lopez had shown up at Starrett’s just a few minutes later than they had.

The truth of the matter was that he’d wanted Tracy to touch him again, as they stood together in that shower.

Although, if she had touched him, then he’d probably be standing here wishing that Lindsey and Lopez had shown up twenty minutes later and... Bottom line was that Deck knew that even if he’d fucked her, he’d be standing here now wishing he’d had the chance to fuck her again. Of course, if he’d fucked her twice, he’d want a month with her, and then a year, and then an entire goddamn decade....

Jesus, he could use a solid decade with Tracy’s fire and life and laughter—and yes, particularly her there’s nothing wrong with you, Sparky, anything-goes attitude toward sex.

But really, and far more reasonably than wishing for a full decade, he would’ve gladly taken just a few more minutes of her looking at him like she was going to enjoy eating him alive.

If there was something wrong with him? It was wrong with her, too, and... There was absolutely nothing wrong with her. Absolutely nothing.

Except for the fact they worked for the same company, that she was just a little too young, and that he didn’t have enough room in his life for a full-time, high-maintenance girlfriend. And anything he started with Tracy would be full-time and highest maintenance, he did not doubt that.

Although the fact that he was more than likely going to die in the near future countered all of those arguments—at least it did if he were thinking selfishly. It added to them if he was thinking about Tracy, who’d be left behind to bury him.

That was something he never wanted to lay on anyone, having buried his share of friends. Damn, but thinking about that made his battered head ache.

It was then that he must have sighed—heavily enough to make Jo Heissman look up. She saw him and gasped, leaping to her feet and knocking over that long-stemmed glass of wine.

Decker didn’t move. He just dispassionately watched it go down—a dark red splash of liquid on the pale-colored rug.

She put her book spine up on the arm of her chair, her voice an accusation. “You startled me.” It was clear she was on the verge of bustling into the kitchen to get a towel to blot at the spill, so he shifted slightly to block her.

“Leave it,” he said, and she stopped and looked at him. Really looked this time.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, perceptive as always.

“You honestly don’t know?”

She shook her head, her eyes narrowing as she noticed the bandage on his arm. “You’ve been hurt. Are you all right?”

“You and your friends...” He gave his performance everything he had in him, calling up every ounce of pain he’d felt on that hellish ride from the motel to Starrett’s—before Tracy had found the text messages that proved that there was, indeed, a God. Or that there truly was power to The Secret. Still, it didn’t take much effort to bring it back—the emptiness, the despair, the howling, impotent, yet still-vicious rage. He couldn’t do more than whisper. “You and your friends killed Tess.”

Jo Heissman’s reaction to his words was physical. She blanched as she took a step backwards, actually lurching and nearly falling down. “Oh, merciful God,” she said as she caught herself and sank into her chair. “Oh, no. Oh, Deck, I’m so, so sorry.”

Her concern and distress—and surprise—were genuine. But then he saw it dawn in her eyes—the realization that he blamed her and that he’d come there to follow through on that threat he’d made two months ago. He saw her glance toward her cell phone, saw her look at her front door. He saw her weigh her options—call for help, run....

Instead, she chose surrender as she stayed where she was and clasped her shaking hands together in her lap. “Well, I guess it’s now or never as far as your trusting me. Which I know that you don’t. But I do. I trust you.”

He took her phone off the table, and pocketed it. “Did they tell you to plant a tracking device in my truck?”

“No! I didn’t—I wouldn’t. I would have told you. Lawrence, please, sit down and talk to me.”

He shook his head. “I’m not really in the mood for a therapy session right now, thanks.”

She apparently didn’t care, because she pushed on. “Not only do I trust you, but I also have faith in you. I know you’re distressed, and you have every right to be, but you’re not a killer—as much as you’d like other people to believe that you are.”

“You’re wrong,” he said, which was stupid, because he knew that she was trying to engage him. What he needed to do was keep his mouth shut, unholster his sidearm, and scare her into silence. Last thing he needed was her crawling around inside of his head—and maybe bumping into Tracy while she was in there.

No, wait. It wasn’t Tracy, it was Nash that he was worried the doctor would find out about.

Tracy—Jesus. What was he doing, thinking about her right now?

“No, I’m not,” Dr. Heissman was saying. “You’ve killed. I understand that. You’re a soldier in a bloody and awful war. Of course you’ve taken lives. But not like this. Never an... execution.” She met his eyes with a gaze that was steady and absolute, despite her trembling hands. “Not without sufficient proof—and as angry as I know you are, you don’t have that. You can’t—because the proof you need doesn’t exist. And even if you somehow had enough... circumstantial evidence to convince yourself... Well, you didn’t kill the man who was directly responsible for Jim Nash’s death. You brought him in alive.”

Decker wanted to applaud—she was playing both the shrink and logic cards with perfection. “I’m not the same man I was back then,” he said, which was, oddly enough, a truth.

“No,” she agreed, “you’re not. You’re still plenty angry, yes, I can see that. And rightfully so. I know how much you loved them—both Jim and Tess. God, I’m so sorry. But... your anger is different. It’s... You’re different than you were in our therapy sessions. I can see it in you. You’re at peace. Somehow. It’s...” She shook her head. “You are different. And you’re lying about... something.” Her voice caught. “God, please tell me you’re lying to me about Tess.”

She was just guessing. She had to be. She’d told him earlier that day that she had trouble reading him, that she couldn’t tell when he was lying. And yet...

She paused only momentarily and when he didn’t respond, when he didn’t so much as blink, she kept talking. Her words of reason were her only available defense, and she wielded them expertly. “I know you want to see the blackmail photos before you make any decisions in terms of... what you intend to do with me.”

“Nah,” he said, “I really don’t. I’m just going to shoot you. At the very least it’ll shut you the hell up.”

She was no idiot, so she lowered her head and finally kept her mouth shut as he crossed the room and sat down on her leather sofa. It was nice. Distressed and soft, it was the yellow-brown color of a well-worn pair of cowboy boots. “But okay, you’re right. I’m lying. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to shoot you. At least not tonight. And Tess isn’t really dead.”

Her head came up, her eyes wide. “Thank God. Is she”—her gaze flicked to the bandage on his arm—“all right?”

“Yeah. They did try to kill her, though,” he told her. “Your friends tried to take all of us out with a bomb. I got a little shot in the aftermath, but everyone’s fine.”

“A little shot...?” she said.

“It happens.”

“Whoever did that—they’re not my friends.” She didn’t bother accusing him of being an asshole for telling her that Tess was dead. She knew damn well why he’d done it—to try to see what she knew, if anything, about the attempted hit.

What she knew was jackshit, and he actually believed her when she’d said she hadn’t planted a tracking device. It still didn’t mean she wasn’t in league with whoever had set that bomb—although he was starting to believe that less and less.

“Don’t get too excited,” Decker warned her. “I might decide to kill you anyway, just because you piss me off.”

“How could you joke about... any of this?” She cut herself off. “Don’t bother answering that. I do understand how difficult this must be, and in order to cope, it’s natural to—”

“I’m not joking,” he said. “Where are those photos?”

She stood up, and he did, too.

“Stay in your seat, please,” he said. “Just tell me where I can find them.”

Dr. Heissman nodded. “On the kitchen table,” she said, as she slowly sat back down in her chair. “I was expecting you to ask for them. I had them ready—to send to you, if that was what you wanted.”

Yeah, like he was going to give her the mailing address for the safe house. Dream on.

She watched as he went into the dining area and through the open door into her little kitchen. The cottage was so small, she could see him clearly from where she sat—and vice versa. She had one of those old-fashioned refrigerators with the rounded top and front, and a gas stove that had a griddle in the middle. It was cozy, like he’d stepped into a time warp back to his Grandma Lillian’s kitchen in New Jersey—with everything neat and tidy, and with its homey and simple white curtains covering both the window over the sink and the panes of glass in the back door.

A small, two-seat table was over against the wall, and on it lay one of those cardboard USPS priority mailers, with his name already printed in block letters on the front. It was unsealed, and he looked in to find another envelope—plain, brown, and taped shut. He pulled it out.

“I was hoping,” she said, her voice faltering for the first time, which made him glance up to see that she’d gone another shade paler, “that you wouldn’t have to look at them while I was here.”

“Sorry,” he said as he tore open the envelope and dumped the photos—half a dozen eight-by-ten glossies—onto the table. “You’re not going anywhere. I’ve recently acquired this strange new attachment to not dying.”

In the other room, Jo Heissman silently sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.

The first few photos were pretty traditional blackmail shots. In them she was having missionary-position sex with a dark-haired young man, his tattooed ass gleaming. He covered most of the doctor’s body as she lay on a bed in an opulent hotel room. Her face was clearly visible, though—there was no question it was her. And that she was enjoying herself thoroughly.

Deck spread the others out on the table and... Hello, Dr. Heissman. And okay, he’d be pale and blushing, too, if he knew she were looking at similar photos of him, taken during what should have been private moments.

Oddly enough, the pictures did absolutely nothing for him. Or to him. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d wanted to get with this woman less than he did right now. That was kind of weird. He flipped through the photos again.

In all six of the shots, her face was in sharp focus.

Not so much for her lover, though. In fact... “None of these photos show your boyfriend’s face.”

“Is that unusual?” she asked from her chair in the living room, her voice tight. “I’ve never been blackmailed before, so...”

“It goes along with my theory,” Deck told her. “That your boyfriend here helped set up the blackmail. That it was insurance—part of the Agency plan to keep former employees compliant. Glad to see you used condoms, because if that’s the case, your boyfriend was far from exclusive—he was running the same scam on other women, although definitely not in your department, and probably not even in the Agency’s D.C. branch. What did he tell you his name was again?”

“Peter,” she said. “Olivetti. I’m sorry, I just can’t wrap my mind around it. He dated my daughter for... it was at least two months. That seems like such a huge investment of time.”

“He dated her in order to meet you,” Decker pointed out. “Two months is nothing for this kind of long con. Did he tell you he traveled for work—was he frequently out of town?”

“More often than not.” She nodded. “I’m a fool.”

“No,” he said. “Just human. He’s... certainly attractive enough, and... I’m sure he made a point to be everything you wanted him to be.”

“Sometimes I think it’s worse to deal with you when you’re being nice,” she said.

He had to laugh. Tracy had said almost exactly that earlier. “As opposed to when I’m threatening to kill you? That’s a little twisted—that you like that better, Doc.”

“I’m human, remember?” she said. “A little twisted comes with the territory.”

“Do you have any photographs of Olivetti featuring his face?” Deck asked.

“I do,” she said. “On my computer. May I?”

She gestured to a corner of the dining room where she’d tucked a small desk. Upon it was a laptop, plugged into a modem.

“Please,” he said. Their manners were impeccable, even though there probably wasn’t a chapter in any etiquette book on “How to Converse with Your Former Therapist While Holding Blackmail Photos of Her with Her Legs Spread.” Please and thank you, however, had universal appeal. He left the photos out on the kitchen table as he joined her in the dining room.

“They’re from the same trip to New York,” she told him as she slipped into the chair. She manipulated the mouse and accessed her pictures file as he moved to look over her shoulder—making sure she wasn’t taking the opportunity to e-mail anyone who might want to kill him.

“We took one of those Circle Line Cruises,” she continued, glancing up at him. “I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty again, and...” She frowned, and rearranged the contents of the folder so that it was a list instead of icons. She scanned it. “That’s funny.”

“File’s gone, huh?” He’d expected as much.

“It was here,” Jo said, clicking back to her pictures file, “in my vacations folder. But there were others. He sent me a download of himself when he went to San Antonio—outside of the Alamo.” She accessed a file called “Downloads,” which was neatly organized in subfolders, one of which was labeled Friends. She clicked on it and... “That’s gone, too.” She looked up at Decker. “Son of a bitch.”

Olivetti—or whatever his name really was—had erased himself from her computer. “Any hard-copy photos?” Deck asked, expecting the answer he got.

“No. Son of a bitch.”

“How about any kind of backup? A flashdrive or—”

“No,” she said. “Not for the photos. I mean, yes, for important ones. My kids, my parents, but... Peter wasn’t exactly a keeper.”

Bang, bang, bang!

Shit—someone was hammering on the front door.

They both jumped. Dr. H. leaped to her feet and then flinched, and Decker realized that he’d drawn his sidearm even as he’d grabbed her arm. He pushed her farther into the corner, out of line of the door.

“Pizza delivery!” came a male voice as whoever was out there found the buzzer and leaned on it. Enhhhhhhhhhhh.

Decker looked at Jo, who shook her head. She hadn’t ordered pizza.

But then the person at the door lowered their voice. “Chief. It’s Lopez. Pretend you don’t know me when you open the door. There’s no sign of surveillance, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.” He raised his voice again. “Angelo’s Pizza!”

“Who’s Lopez?” Dr. Heissman asked, her eyes wide.

“A friend,” Decker told her. Somehow he and Lindsey and Tracy had followed him here. Somehow? Yeah, right. Tracy Shapiro was too fricking smart for her own good.

“Come on, Chief, open up,” Lopez was back to whispering. “I know you’re in there. Nothing good is going to come from hurting the doctor—”

What the fuck had Tracy told him?

But as Deck headed toward the door, the sound of shattering glass came from the kitchen.

This was not good. This was very, very not good. That was the sound of one of the panes of glass in the back door being broken—end result being that whoever was out there could reach in and release the deadbolt and lock.

Like Lopez, Decker had seen no sign of surveillance when he’d pulled up. But he’d purposely parked out front—with hopes that whoever had followed him and Tracy to the Seaside Heights motel would likewise follow him here and strike again. At which point, his plan was to charge the attack. It was one surefire way to find out who was attacking.

But his intention had been to do it without Tracy as a potential target. It made him sweat—knowing that she was currently out there, with Lindsey, no doubt waiting in Lopez’s car.

“Go into the bathroom,” Decker ordered, pushing Jo down the hall as he dug her cell phone out of his pocket and thrust it at her. “Lock the door. Call 9-1-1.”

He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed him. He ran to the front door as he took out his backup weapon—a.22 that he’d taken from the lockup in his truck and tucked into the back of his pants before breaking into the doctor’s house. He flung the door open and tossed the.22 to Lopez, who dropped the pizza box in order to catch it. “I need backup, now!”

Lopez was on Deck’s heels as he charged the kitchen, prepared to shoot the motherfucker who was breaking in, if need be. He could identify the body after the fact.

But whoever was out there was astonishingly inept when it came to breaking and entering. Sure enough, shards of glass glittered on the kitchen’s tile floor. And if that weren’t proof enough of an attempted illegal entry, a hand was reaching through the broken panel of glass, gingerly feeling for the lock.

“Don’t move!” Deck shouted as he knocked aside the hand and... “Oh, shit!”

That was Tracy’s hand. It was Tracy who was on the other side of the kitchen door. Decker realized it a mere fraction of a second too late. He’d already yanked open the door, and the momentum pulled her into the kitchen, knocking her onto her knees right on the broken glass, her arm still caught in the window panel.

“Stand down,” he ordered Lopez, who immediately backed off.

“Ow,” she said. “Ow!”

Her arm had been forced down onto the glass that edged the broken window, scraping her badly enough to draw blood.

“Goddamnit,” Deck said as he helped untangle her from the door, cutting himself in his attempt to keep her from getting cut again. “What the hell were you doing?”

“Is she all right?” Tracy asked, ignoring the fact that blood was dripping down her fingers and onto the floor. She pushed herself to her feet, brushing the glass from the knees of her jeans. “Ow! Decker, where’s Jo Heissman?”

“She’s right here,” Lopez reported. “She’s all right.”

“Oh, thank God,” Tracy breathed.

“I was calling 9-1-1, but I’m on hold. Should I hang up?” the doctor asked, as Decker caught Tracy’s injured arm and tried to look at it.

“Ow!”

“Yes,” Decker told Dr. Heissman, adding, “Sorry,” to Tracy.

“Everything all right in here?” Lindsey came in through the still-open front door, her sidearm at ready.

“Get that door closed,” Decker ordered as he pulled Tracy toward the sink. “Lindsey, relieve Dr. Heissman of her cell phone. Take her upstairs and help her pack a bag. We’re going to move her someplace more secure. Lopez. Do what you can to get this mess on the floor cleaned up. And let’s call someone to come board up the broken window.”

“I’m on it, Chief.”

“Ooh!” Tracy drew in her breath in a hiss. She looked at her uninjured hand. “I think I’ve got...”

Decker looked closely. Sure enough, she had a nasty splinter of glass lodged in her palm, just below her thumb. “Hold still.” He was able to grab hold of it and pull it out, but not without—“Fuck!”—sticking himself with the damn thing.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Next time use your brain,” Deck told her brusquely as he ran the water in the sink and held her arm under the flow. He had to wash off the blood in order to get a better look at her collection of cuts and scrapes. God damn it, he’d done this to her. “Never brush yourself off with your hand when you’ve got broken glass on you. But you won’t have to remember that if you apply the never rule to breaking into someone’s house. You suck at it, by the way.”

The worst of her scrapes looked to be only superficial, thank God, because she’d taken the time to carefully clear out most of the jagged edges of glass left in the panel before she’d reached through. None of her cuts were deep enough to require stitches. Still, it no doubt hurt like hell. It hurt him just to look at it.

Decker became aware of the fact that he was touching her—her hand, her arm—as she shifted slightly, toward him. She pressed the entire length of her leg against his in a move that was deliberate. Had to be. No way could that’ve been accidental. Particularly since she kept it there.

Funny how it was suddenly hard for him to breathe.

“You suck for running away,” she murmured, glancing up at him.

“Yeah,” he said, just as quietly, his gaze carefully focused on her arm. He did not, however, move. He could have shifted to the right and put some space between them, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to. “I know.” He reached for the soap and pumped himself a small handful. “This is going to sting.”

“Ow!” she said.

Decker looked at her in disbelief and laughed. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

“It’s the anticipation,” she said. “It’s killing me. Just do it already, will you?”

He did, rubbing the soap as gently as he could into her arm. She made that sound again—air drawn in between her teeth—and he murmured, “Sorry.”

“No, it’s good,” she said. “It means it’s getting clean, right?”

“I think it just means that it hurts.”

“Well, I like to think it means it’s getting clean, so don’t stop.”

Wash me. And don’t stop until I tell you to....

Decker froze, but only for the merest fraction of a second, as an echo of her words reverberated in his head.

She felt his hesitation and looked up at him, a question in her eyes. A question and the answer—it was clear that she knew exactly what he was thinking. And yes. There it was again. That oxygen-sucked-out-of-the-room sensation.

He changed the subject—to the next volatile topic.

“Did you really think I’d hurt her?” he found himself asking. “Dr. Heissman?”

Tracy answered honestly. “I didn’t know what to think,” she admitted. “I mean, I came here ready to... I don’t know. Talk you off the ledge. If I had to. You were so angry with her, in the Starbucks, I just...”

“Much of what I do and say... It’s an act,” he told her.

“I know that,” she said. “And I’m usually pretty good at telling the difference, but... I think I was afraid that we’d, I don’t know, maybe... opened some doors.”

She was talking about what had gone down between them in Starrett’s upstairs bathroom. Silly him, for assuming that she wouldn’t bring it up.

“You seemed a little—” She stopped herself. Corrected herself. “You seemed extremely freaked out. And I know I mocked you for it, but I do know that you’re not a coward, so—”

“Maybe I am,” Decker whispered. “You scare me to death.”

It was obviously not what she’d expected him to say, and she laughed, but then jumped and turned to look as, over by the door, Lopez loudly cleared his throat. He was using a dustpan to sweep up the glass.

“Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure you knew I was in here,” the SEAL said, as Decker finally finished rinsing the soap from Tracy’s arm and turned off the water.

“You’re not interrupting anything.” Deck stepped back from her—and instantly missed her softness and warmth.

It was pretty remarkable. He’d always considered himself to be a man with relatively few needs. Some of the other Troubleshooters operatives often bitched and moaned about their hotel accommodations or other travel inconveniences. But Decker rarely gave a flying shit. He needed clothes to cover him, and food to eat, and a safe place to sleep—what kind of bed and whether or not it was or wasn’t firm enough just didn’t play into it.

It had always seemed ridiculous to him, but for the first time, he understood why people complained. Because as impractical as it was, the idea of going through his day with Tracy glued, soft and warm, to his side—or maybe sitting on his lap—was remarkably appealing. It would, without a doubt, improve his quality of life on a scale that he’d never before imagined possible.

And it wasn’t even about sex, it was about physical contact. Connection. Jesus, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone—anyone—had so much as touched him, let alone given him a hug.

He reached to pull several sheets off a roll of paper towels and used them to blot both water and blood from Tracy’s arm—and as an excuse to touch her again.

She knew it, too, and she shifted closer, so that her shoulder brushed his. She looked up at him, and their gazes caught and held.

And held...

“As long as I have your attention, Chief,” Lopez said, dumping the glass into the trash. “Looks like there’re some photos on the table that, uh, might want to get put away?”

What? Oh, shit. “Yeah,” Decker said, letting go of Tracy, fast, and turning toward the table in question. “Thanks. Sorry, that you, um...”

“I’m not complaining,” Lopez said. “It’s just a little... Okay. A lot unusual. I guess maybe it’s just my day to see everyone I know naked.”

“Oh, my God,” Tracy said as she looked to see what he was talking about. Her mouth dropped open as Deck quickly scooped up the pictures and grabbed the envelope. “Decker, wait.”

But he covered the photos, lowered his voice. “I think it’s safe to say that the doctor’s being blackmailed. You don’t need to see these.”

“I figured that’s what that was,” Lopez said. “Sorry—they were hard not to notice.”

“Please.” Tracy reached out and caught Deck’s arm. “I’m not trying to be cute or freaky or... This has nothing to do with me and you, and me wanting to...” She closed her eyes, exhaled, and started over. “May I please see that top picture again? Because those tattoos....? I think that might be my ex, Michael.”