CONTENTS

For Ed, my own personal dog whisperer.

Just like Gladys said—you’re the best thing

that ever happened to me.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, dear reader, for your continued support of my Troubleshooters series, of which this book is the lucky thirteenth installment. (And a heads up, gang, because we’re going to try to get the fourteenth book, Dark of Night, into your hands early next spring. Watch my website www.SuzanneBrockmann.com for the deets about that!)

Thank you to the wonderful team at Ballantine Books—Jennifer Hershey, Courtney Moran, Kim Hovey, and Kate Blum—and to my agent, Steve Axelrod.

My first-draft readers snapped to it in a particularly short time frame for this book, and gave me some valuable feedback. Huge thanks to Lee Brockmann, Deede Bergeron, Scott Lutz, and Patricia McMahon, aka the Encylopedia Patricica.

Thanks, as always, to the home team—Ed, Melanie and Jason Gaffney, Eric Ruben, Fred and Lee Brockmann, the amazing Kuhlmans, Apolonia Davalos, and the two greatest Schnauzer puppies in the world—C.K. Dexter-Haven and Lil’ Joe. (And Mel, thank you for Aidan, a puppy of the human variety! He makes the world a better place with his sunshine and smiles!)

Mondo thanks to my PayPal goddess, Kathy Lague, who makes my virtual signings possible, and allows me to get hundreds of signed, personalized books into the hands of my readers. If you’re reading this in the front of Into the Fire, it’s probably too late to get a signed copy of this book via Internet order and U.S. mail. Sorry ’bout that. But I’ll be holding a virtual signing for Dark of Night in early 2009. Visit my website in January for details!

Thank you to my good friend and go-to man for research, Navy SEAL Tom Rancich, who never laughs at my silly questions. (Will a handgun that’s been submerged in used cooking oil still fire…?) Thank you, too, Tom, for your continued presence on my Internet bulletin board. (Check out the series of video interviews with Tom that I posted on YouTube. Go to www.YouTube.com and search for “Brockmann, Rancich.” Tom’s a great storyteller. You gotta hear his story of how he met himself…)

Thank you to the real-life Gail Deegan and her wonderful husband, Bill Huddleston, for their generous donation to Greater Boston PFLAG. You inspire me! I suspect you would make a truly excellent FBI team leader, Gail, if you ever decide to change careers.

And equal thanks to the real-life Lynn McCrea, who made a matching donation to GB PFLAG and gave her name to Izzy Zanella’s crazy downstairs neighbor. (Let me know if he gets too loud!)

Gail and Lynn, you both rock. The money you donated will help fund GB PFLAG’s Safe Schools program—thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you to my team of volunteers, who are standing ready for me to give the signal to hold my next reader weekend: Sue Smallwood, Erika Schutte, Gail Reddin, Dorbert Ogle, Peggy Mitchell, Heather McHugh, Jeanne Mangano, Laura Luke, Beki & Jim Keene, Stephanie Hyacinth, Suzie Bernhardt, and Elizabeth & Lee Benjamin. Any minute, guys, I promise….

Check my website at www.SuzanneBrockmann.com/appearances.htm for information about my next reader event.

As always, any mistakes I’ve made or liberties I’ve taken are completely my own.

P ART

O NE

S IX M ONTHS A GO

C HAPTER

O NE

JANUARY 2008

DALTON , CALIFORNIA

H annah Whitfield woke up alone in her bed.

Which wasn’t that unusual. In fact, this had been her only opportunity to not wake up alone for the first time in years—due to the still somewhat unbelievable fact that she’d actually had sex last night.

Hannah swept her hair out of her eyes as she reached to turn on the lamp that sat on her bedside table, trying—not as successfully—to push away her feelings of imminent dread. Her head was pounding and her ankle was on fire so she took a pull from the nearly empty bottle of Johnny W. she’d left next to her bed. Hair of the dog, was the age-old excuse. She knew better, but right now she needed the drumming pain in both her head and her ankle to back the hell off.

Last night had been far from fairy-tale-inducing material, with no impending happily-ever-after in sight. True, she’d wanted to get with this particular man ever since their very first encounter—since he’d knocked her off that Alaskan pier, a hundred years ago.

A hundred years? No. It felt more like a solid thousand since the tall, dark and handsome man with the laughing brown eyes had held out an enormous hand and helped Hannah out of the icy water. It felt like an eternity since either of them had so much as smiled. And maybe it had been. Maybe tragedy had its own rules in the time-space continuum. The year following the death of a murdered wife and best friend passed at the speed of five hundred years in normal, happy, human time, with all of the previous years of laughter and joy instantly fading to ancient-seeming, sepia-toned distant memories.

So, yeah. Last night had been grimly moonbeam- and fairy-dust-free. Once upon a time, Hannah had let herself get laid—except, no, that wasn’t quite right. She’d been the layee. It was Vinh Murphy who’d gotten laid—for the first time since Angelina had died.

Last night, like most nights these days, Hannah had been somewhat anesthetized, but she was nowhere near as shit-faced as Murph. They’d had an argument about the same old same old—the keys to his truck. Hannah had swiftly adiosed them when he’d shown up at the cabin at 0100, already wasted. That was his MO—she wouldn’t see him for months, and then he’d appear. Usually in the dead of night, flashing his headlights in the driveway, stinking of gin, his brain damn near fried from whatever else he’d ingested in his attempt to forget that his wife—the love of his life, as he called Angelina—was forever gone.

They’d argued—no, I will not give back your keys —and Murphy had tripped over the leather ottoman and fallen. He’d hit his head on the arm of the sofa, and Hannah had thought he was down for the night, so after she’d helped him up, she’d dragged him over to her bed. Her intention had been—as always—to let him sleep it off in her room here downstairs, while she pulled herself up the ladder to the mattress in the loft.

But as she’d toppled him onto her bed, her bad ankle had bent the wrong way and the sudden surge of pain had made her lose her balance. She tried to straighten up, but Murphy’d held on to her, the expression in his dark brown eyes far different from anything she’d ever seen there before.

“Hannah,” he’d said. “I’m so fucked up.” And then he’d kissed her.

Yeah, Murphy had kissed her, and she should have scrambled away, but she hadn’t. Instead, she’d pulled up her nightshirt and opened her legs for him and he’d pushed himself inside of her, which, God, had felt so good, even though she knew it was the worst kind of mistake—not just flat-out stupid but incredibly, insanely wrong for too many reasons to count.

And no, sex with Murph hadn’t been the romantic, passionate ecstasy she’d dreamed about all those years ago when he’d laughed and pulled her back onto the pier alongside Patrick’s boat, but rather a fumbled, clumsy, silent, joyless rutting. Murphy didn’t kiss her again. He just kept his eyes shut and his head down as his body strained, as Hannah clung to him, not allowing herself to wish or hope for anything—not even her own physical relief—as he filled her, as she felt his heart pounding alongside of hers. But she came right away because it had been close to forever for her, too, and he was right behind her, shuddering his release.

And then, there they were, mere seconds after it had started. In Hannah’s bed with most of their clothes still on. Bonus moron points went to both of them for failing to use protection of any kind.

It was then that Murphy started to cry—which he’d never done in front of her, not even at his toasted worst, not even at Angelina’s horror-show of a memorial service. And so Hannah had cried, too, just holding on to him.

He’d finally fallen asleep in her arms, here in her bed, but now he was gone.

A light was on in the living room.

Hannah moved as quietly as she could out of the bedroom, considering she’d misplaced her cane and…

“What are you doing ?” Her shock and volume apparently startled him and he turned, guilt on his grim face, her keys in one giant hand as he held the lock to the gun case in the other. He didn’t try to explain—he didn’t need to. He just went back to trying the next key.

It was possible Hannah was going to throw up. “What’s your plan, Murph?” she asked instead. “You gonna kill yourself—right here in my living room?”

He didn’t answer. Or maybe he did, but his back was to her as he fumbled with the key ring. He was still drunk or high or whatever he’d been when he’d first appeared at her door nearly four hours ago.

“Stop,” she said, her heart in her throat. He swayed slightly, but he didn’t even slow down. “The key’s not on there—I don’t even have a key.” It was a lie. She did have a key, even though the weapons weren’t hers. They belonged to her uncle—everything in this cabin did. A former Marine and Vietnam vet, Pat had a similar glass-fronted case at his place up in Juneau, and she had the key for that one, too. He trusted her, Pat did. Semper fi and hoo-yah and all that, even though she’d never actually been a Marine.

Murphy had, however. He knew Pat well. And he knew Hannah. Drunk or not, he didn’t need to do more than glance at her to know the truth. The key was on that ring he was holding.

“Please stop,” she said again, begging him this time.

And this time Murphy did. And he turned and looked right at her. “Why?” How am I going to live without her? He didn’t need to say the words for Hannah to know what he was thinking. God knows he’d said it enough since Angelina had died.

“Jesus, Murph.” Hannah felt her voice shake. “I lost her, too. It’s time to stop the bullshit. It’s time to start dealing—”

He turned to face her again. “Dealing? You’re gonna to talk to me about dealing, while you hide away here—”

“I’m not the one who wants to kill myself!”

“Yeah,” Murphy said, making sure she understood, speaking carefully so that his words didn’t slur together. “Because you’re already dead and buried.”

Hannah felt herself bristle and the retort was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Fuck you!”

“Tried that,” he said, his eyes filled with such hatred. It took her aback until she realized it was self-loathing that she saw there. “Didn’t help.” He turned back to the keys, but even as he tried the next one, he sank to his knees, his shoulders shaking as he began to sob.

And all of Hannah’s hurt and anger and fear morphed into near-blinding grief. “Vinh,” she said as she crossed to him.

“I wanted her,” he told her through his tears, his words even more blurred. “Not you.”

“I know,” she said, as she held on to him, rocking him, her heart breaking for him, and herself, too. “I know that.”

“I’m so sorry, Hannah…”

“Shhh,” she said. “Murph, it’s okay. I was trying to help. I thought…” She’d thought she could at least give him what he seemed to want—a chance for relief, release. Yeah, right, like it had been all about Murphy and what he’d needed. “God, I’m sorry, too.”

JANUARY 2008

SAN DIEGO , CALIFORNIA

The most beautiful woman in the world walked into the bar.

It sounded like the setup to a not-particularly-funny joke. But the bar was the Ladybug Lounge—the SEAL Team Sixteen hangout near Coronado Navy Base—and the woman…

She was incredible.

It seemed almost sacrilegious that all movement didn’t stop, that the clamor of the place didn’t cease, that the room didn’t fall into an appropriately reverent hush. Instead, a group of jarheads didn’t even look up from their game of pool, the jukebox continued blaring the YouTube-famous treadmill song from OK Go, the crowd at the corner booth burst into raucous laughter, and the bartender blended a new batch of piña coladas with an earsplitting appliance whine.

Instead, Izzy Zanella alone stopped breathing to watch as the most beautiful woman in the world let the door close behind her. His heart damn near stopped, too, as she approached the bar where he was perched on a stool, nursing a beer.

It was true that she wasn’t dressed to be noticed in a pair of cutoff shorts and a gray Colbert Nation T-shirt, flip-flops on her perfect feet. Her dark hair was pulled back into a casual ponytail, but despite that, with her heart-shaped face and flawlessly smooth skin, her Natalie Portman eyes and that mouth that he knew he’d see tonight in his dreams, she was magic personified. It seemed incredible since Izzy couldn’t remember his last girlfriend’s chin—she must’ve had one—but even this woman’s chin was freaking perfection.

Which was saying something, because for him to be looking anywhere besides her five-mile-long, suntanned, beach-bunny legs was unbelievable.

Damn. While he’d never passed up a chance to appreciate a nice pair of legs, he was pretty much in the legs-were-legs-were-legs camp.

Not anymore. He’d always thought of himself as a breast man, but now that he’d died and gone to leg heaven, he’d have to rethink that, although she had plenty of C-cup action going on, too.

Izzy could see the string-straps of a bikini—yellow and black—tied around her graceful neck. And for the first time in God knows how long, he found himself praying. Please, Yahweh, let her be lost on her way to the beach. And let him offer to show her the way so that he could see the rest of that barely there bathing suit…

As she came closer, he saw that her eyes were indeed a rich, dark, mysterious brown. Their gazes locked and…She shifted slightly to the right, away from him, putting an empty barstool between them.

Oh. Yeah.

He’d changed out of his BDUs, but he hadn’t showered—opting instead to beat his teammates over here to the Bug, to get a cold beer inside of himself as quickly as possible—his desperately needed reward after the forty-eight hours of sheer hell that had been described by the senior chief as an easy training op. Izzy still wore his olive drab, sweat-stained T-shirt—along with blue-and-white flower-patterned surfer jams that had been among the few clean pieces of laundry in his apartment day before yesterday.

Meaning, they’d been clean—day before yesterday. Before that dickweed Danny Gillman had torn out of the craphole of a parking lot over at the simulated swamp—because God and the senior chief knew that every “easy training op” needed a freaking simulated swamp—and sprayed Izzy and his unzipped sea-bag with the stankiest-smelling briny-ass mud known to mankind.

Yeah, thanks to Gillman, the most heartbreakingly beautiful woman in the world didn’t want to sit too close to Izzy at the bar.

But she did glance at him again, with trepidation on her perfect face.

Wise move, staying upwind like that. Things he should have said—perhaps with a reassuring yet appreciative, warm yet manly smile. But when his heart had stopped—somewhere back when she’d opened the Bug’s door—his vocal cords must have gotten gummed up, because all that came out was a great, big, tumbleweed-and cricket-chirping-filled silence.

Izzy accessorized it perfectly with some slack-jawed, openmouthed, glassy-eyed staring.

Of course it could have been worse. He could have stared at her whilst scratching his balls and belching.

She turned away, leaning forward slightly, elbows against the bar to catch the barkeep’s eye, which made the bottom of her T-shirt separate from the low-riding waist of her shorts. Skin was revealed. Smooth, perfect, sexy-as-hell skin that proved without a doubt that her bathing suit wasn’t a one-piece. Somehow Izzy kept himself in his seat, fighting the urge to fall to his knees and weep with joy.

“Excuse me,” she said, in a voice that was surprisingly husky and deep, yet still inspiringly musical.

“We card here,” Kevin the bartender told her, his flat rudeness making Izzy bristle.

“No,” she said. “I mean, I know. I’m not…I don’t…” She was flustered, but she took a deep breath and started again. “I’m looking for…for…a friend of mine? He’s a SEAL, with Team Sixteen…?”

A friend…

But then ol’ Kev gave her a knowing look, clearly thinking the same thing Izzy was—that she was some ditched ex, looking for one last face-to-face with a guy who’d already left her in the dust—crazy-assed mofo that he had to have been to dump her. “You’ll have to wait for your friend outside. I don’t want any trouble in here.”

She squared her shoulders, clearly preparing for battle, but Kevin dismissed her by turning away, and then, alleluia, Izzy found his voice. “What’s his name?” he asked. “Your friend.”

She eyed him warily, and he gave her what he hoped was an “I don’t bite—too hard” smile.

“I’m Izzy. I’m with Team Sixteen, too. So I probably know him. Your friend.”

“Danny,” she said as hope dawned in her eyes, as she looked Izzy over more closely, no doubt realizing that he wasn’t just some fashion-challenged homeless man, taking a break from dumpster-diving. “Gillman?”

“Gilligan?” Izzy said in surprise.

And all of the trepidation in her eyes was completely replaced by shining relief. Having her look at him like that almost knocked him over. “You know him?” she asked, way too excited considering this was Gilligan they were talking about.

Did Izzy know Dan Gillman? “Yeah,” Iz said. “Me and the fishboy, we’re…tight.” If tight meant locked in mortal combat at every possible opportunity.

And okay, that was an exaggeration. He and Gillman got along just fine out in the real world, while on military ops. Gillman respected Izzy—but he didn’t like him, and he didn’t particularly want to hang with him during playtime. Out of nearly everyone in Team Sixteen, there was no one who appreciated Izzy less during R&R than Dan “Gilligan” Gillman. And that wasn’t an exaggeration.

It was also a giant pain in the ass, since Izzy was tight with Jenk and Lopez, who were also Gillman’s two best friends in the team. More often than not, the four of them hung together. And despite Lopez and Jenk’s best efforts, Iz and Gillman had not yet learned how to get along. In fact, over the past year or so, their relationship, as it were, had gotten even more adversarial.

The girl moved closer—a dream come true—slipping onto the stool next to him. “Do you know where Danny is? I kind of need to get in touch with him, like, right away…?”

Up close, she was even more beautiful. She was also younger than Izzy’d first thought. The bartender had been right to try to card her—she wasn’t twenty-one. Probably more like twenty. She was wearing quite a bit of makeup, no doubt in an attempt to look older, which pretty much worked. But one thing that she couldn’t hide with eyeshadow and lipstick was the fact that she was both worried and enormously upset. And even a little scared.

Ah, Gillman, Gillman, Gillman, you sly dog. For months, the fishboy had been pretending he was pining away over Sophia Ghaffari, an exotically beautiful, yet somewhat mature woman—light-years out of Gillman’s league—who worked at Tommy Paoletti’s personal security company, Troubleshooters Incorporated. Sure, Danny and Sophia had gone out to dinner a time or two, but nothing had ever come of it. At least not the orgasmatronic fireworks Gillman had been hoping for.

All this time, for months now, Gillman had relentlessly been Sophia this -ing and Sophia that -ing until even Jay Lopez’s eyes had rolled back in his saintly head. And yet, apparently, Gillman had dealt with at least a portion of his despair over the fact that Sophia wouldn’t do him by spending some quality time with this extremely healthy member of Colbert Nation.

“I haven’t talked to Danny in months,” the girl continued, which immediately blew up Izzy’s theory. Which was a fairly common occurrence with him and wild speculation, and perfectly fine, because it meant that he’d just move on to salacious theory number two. “I wasn’t even sure if he was OCONUS or…”

“No, he’s Stateside,” Izzy said, and got another heavy dose of relief, crossed with a dollop of “you’re my hero” from her bottomless eyes. Damn, she had the prettiest brown eyes…

Okay, focus. What had he just learned here besides the fact that Gillman’s relationship with this girl had—allegedly—happened months ago? OCONUS. Whoever she was, she knew at least a little Navy-Speak. So…

“Are you Susan?” Izzy asked her.

Back before Sophia had appeared and eclipsed all other women on the planet and possibly on Omicron Ceti III as well, Gillman had dated a Susan. A college student at San Diego State. Lopez, who usually didn’t drool over his friends’ girlfriends, had described Susan as hhhhhot. But, he’d told Izzy with a sad sigh, she was a total SEAL groupie. Oh, and heads up, all y’all—she was completely insane, to boot.

As Maybe-Susan sat beside Izzy in the Bug, her eyes shifted slightly as she opened her mouth to answer what should have been a simple yes-no question. Are you Susan? According to the Body Language of Hot Babes Manual, that slight eye movement was a strong yet unconsciously made signal that an untruth was about to follow.

Gather ’round, kids—it’s storytime!

But the bartender interrupted them before she could fabricate her answer. “I’m serious, girlie. I need you outa here. Don’t make me call the bouncer.”

“Come on, Kev,” Izzy said as mildly as he could manage, considering the man was a certified dickhead. “We’re just having a conversation. She’s looking for Dan Gillman—”

“She’s underage—she can look for him outside.”

“I’m happy to go outside to talk to her, but I’m not quite done with my beer.”

“Yeah, well, ’f I turn back around and she’s not gone…” The dickhead left the threat unspoken, so of course Izzy had to respond with a silent but very clear Oh, yeah? And then what? by taking his good ol’ time finishing up his beer.

Meanwhile, M-Susan was looking from him to the Kevster and back. She was still solidly planted on her barstool, clearly intrigued, waiting to see what was going to go down next. Izzy smiled at her, and she smiled back, and his heart did a slow flip in his chest, because damn, he liked a woman with a heavy dose of rebel in her soul.

Too many of the women he’d met were rule-followers. When harshly scolded by the voice of alleged authority, they’d slink away, tails between their legs.

Either that, or they spoke a completely different language from Izzy. Oh, it sounded like American English coming out of their mouths, but nearly every word had an entirely different meaning. And most of the time, his somewhat-sideways sense of humor didn’t translate well.

This woman, however, just waited and watched, and—on a certain level—enjoyed. Which may have, in Lopez and Gillman’s book, made her completely insane.

But not to Izzy.

He took his time with his last mouthful of beer, waiting to swallow until Kevin did, in fact, turn around. At which point Izzy slowly and carefully put the glass on the bar, all the while holding the dickhead’s less-than-happy gaze.

And it was only then, when Kevin didn’t do more than stand there and glare—a silent but strongly implied then I’ll go home and bite my pillow —that Izzy took out his cell phone and lifted his ass offa that barstool. Smiling again at Maybe-Sue, he gestured with his head toward the door. “Step into my office. I’ll give Gillman a call.”

M-Susan slid off her stool, too, and led the way. Two steps out, though, she slipped on something—maybe a wet patch on the floor. Or maybe her insanity caused her to hallucinate, and she’d tripped over invisible purple poodles. Whatever the case, Izzy caught her arm to keep her from going down.

It was hard to tell what it was, exactly, that stunned him into stupidity—the sensation of her smooth skin beneath his fingers or the sweet smile of gratitude she shot him.

Either way, he didn’t feel inclined to let go, and she didn’t seem to mind. And when, as they passed the wailing jukebox, she leaned close to ask, “So you’re a SEAL, too,” Izzy knew with a tingly certainty that, as long as he didn’t do anything terrifically assholeish, odds were good that he was going to get some tonight.

“I am,” he said. “So, see, maybe you don’t need to find Gillman after all.”

SEAL groupies were women who would put out—usually in the bar parking lot—merely because a guy had gone through the ball-breaking BUD/S training and wore a trident.

And color Izzy putridly shallow, but right at this moment, considering he filled the criteria quite nicely, he just couldn’t see the problem with that. He himself wasn’t particularly interested in finding out whether Maybe-Susan had had a puppy growing up, or what classes she was taking this semester, or what she wanted to do when she finished school. As long as they were both consenting adults…

“If you can’t be, with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with…” Izzy hummed the melody just under his breath as he opened the door and followed the most beautiful woman in the world out of the Bug.

A LIFETIME AGO …

SUMMER 1993

BARTLET , MONTANA

“Hey, you! Scholarship girl!”

Hannah put her head down and kept walking along the gravel road to the mess hall, but the girls from the Sunflower group, led by the insufferable Brianna Parker, ran and quickly caught up.

They surrounded her—eight other fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, including Bree, who’d been coming to this camp since she was seven, whose father donated liberally to the scholarship fund, which allowed so-called underprivileged girls like Hannah to spend two weeks in the company of Bree and her equally rich-bitch, entitled friends.

It was only day two, and Hannah desperately wanted to go home.

Carolyn Ronston and one of the multitude of Megans moved right in front of Hannah, forcing her to either push past them or stop.

So Hannah stopped, looking around at eight angry faces. One of them, a girl named something ridiculous like Petunia, was in tears. Whatever was up, it wasn’t going to be good.

She sighed. Are we happy campers yet?

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” another of the Megans asked—or maybe it was the just plain Meg, who had a note from home that allowed her to break camp rules by wearing makeup to cover her acne. How the gallon of mascara and eyeliner that she wore did that, Hannah wasn’t exactly sure.

She didn’t need to answer. Bree did it for her. “It’s lunchtime,” she said. “Careful she doesn’t trample you in her haste to stuff her face.” She turned to Hannah. “You should really wait and let the paying customers go first.”

Carolyn was onboard for that. “They should really make these girls work. I mean, what are they learning here, anyway?”

“Actually,” Hannah said, “I’ve already learned not to write a prizewinning essay ever again.” And to keep her Uncle Patrick away from Ms. Julio, the high school guidance counselor. They’d ganged up on her with this totally absurd idea that she needed to spend more time around women and girls—as in two weeks here at Camp Bitchfest. Which also conveniently would get Hannah out of Pat’s house just long enough for him to charm Nancy Julio out of her designer jeans and into his bed and then, unceremoniously, dump her.

Which wasn’t going to bode well for Hannah’s junior and senior years. Because what she was really learning here, was that girls—at least the ones she’d met here—didn’t play fair or have a strong sense of honor or respect for their peers.

Backstabbing and trash-talking and rumor-spreading and revenge-seeking seemed to be the order of the day.

If Ms. Julio was anything like Brianna or her friends, she was going to react to Pat’s dumping her by taking her anger and hurt out on Hannah.

“Give it back,” Petunia sobbed now. “You have to give it back.”

But first? Hannah was going to have to get through today.

“Give what back?” she asked the smaller girl.

Carolyn got in her face. “Don’t play dumb,” she said. “We know you took it. Meghan-with-an-H saw you walking in the woods past Tooney’s tent.”

Tooney was the nickname for Petunia? Really?

“I’ve walked past a lot of tents today,” Hannah admitted. She’d gotten lost, and spent quite some time trying to find her own tent—not that she was going to tell them that.

“Just give it back.” Carolyn pushed her hard—her hands against Hannah’s shoulders, which very well might have knocked her over, had Hannah not seen it coming and braced for it. She brought her own arms up and out, breaking Carolyn’s hold on her and causing the older girl to retreat.

But only temporarily.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hannah insisted. They were drawing a crowd. She could see some of the girls from her cluster—the Daffodils—not that any of them came forward to offer support against the mighty, ultra-popular Sunflowers.

She caught a glimpse of her bunkmate, Lacey, who quickly hid behind a group of other girls—what a surprise.

Yeah. Swell. Hannah was totally on her own.

“As if you really don’t know, we’re talking about Tooney’s bracelet,” Bree spat out, in a tone that dripped with you moron.

“I didn’t take anyone’s bracelet,” Hannah said.

“Prove it.” Carolyn again invaded Hannah’s personal space, reaching for the front pocket of Hannah’s jeans.

What the hell…? Hannah knocked her hand away. “Get away from me!”

“Empty your pockets!” Carolyn came at her again.

“Get your hands off me!” Hannah couldn’t retreat because three or four mouth-breathing Megans were penning her in. She didn’t want to hit Carolyn—it was one thing to break a hold, another entirely to plant a right hook in the older girl’s face.

She was focused so intently on Carolyn, that she didn’t notice when one of the other girls—possibly Meghan-with-an-H—stuck out a foot and tripped Hannah.

She went down into the dust, onto her elbow—ouch—taking off a layer of skin.

Which was when Carolyn kicked her.

She caught Hannah hard in the ribs, knocking the air from her lungs.

Enough was enough.

Gasping for air, Hannah grabbed Carolyn’s foot. Twisting, in a move that she’d learned back when she was seven from Pat and his Marine buddies, she brought Carolyn down into the dirt with her.

Which surprised the hell out of everyone—especially Carolyn, who wasn’t used to her victims fighting back.

And once the fight became a fight and not a one-sided beating, Carolyn did what most bullies did. She ran away.

Hannah scrambled to her feet, panting. She pushed her disheveled hair back from her face as she scanned the group of Sunflowers. “Who’s next?” she said and they all took a solid step back.

“Tooney, you total space cadet, is this what you’re looking for?”

It was the girl named Angelina. Taller even than Hannah, but with long dark hair, and the body of a twenty-year-old, Angelina wore makeup without a note from home. When Hannah had first arrived, she’d mistaken her for one of the college-age counselors. But one of her Daffodil bunkmates had corrected her.

Angelina, apparently, was the daughter of a rap music producer named BadAss T. She was a Sunflower and even more popular than Brianna, despite the fact that this was only her second year at camp.

Something shiny and gold dangled now off of one of Angelina’s well-manicured fingers.

Petunia grabbed it. “Ohmigod! Where did you find it?”

“It was right on your bunk,” Angelina informed the smaller girl, then turning to include Bree in her admonishment. “Next time look with your eyes open before calling someone a liar and a thief. My daddy’s killed men for less.” She turned to the crowd. “What are you looking at? Show’s over. Get gone.”

Hannah, too, faded back, hoping to slip away now that the attention was off of her. She was almost to the showerhouse door when Angelina caught up to her.

“Yo, Raging Bull, what’s the rush?”

Hannah didn’t slow down. She opened the heavy door and went into the cool dimness of the bathroom, catching sight of herself in the mirrors over the sink. Most of her hair had fallen out of her ponytail and it hung in strings around her dirty face. Her T-shirt was a mess, too, streaked with dirt where Carolyn had kicked her. And her elbow…

It was bleeding and raw. Washing that out was going to hurt, big time. Hannah got right to it, washing her hands first, and then her face, then twisting to get her elbow under the cold water faucet.

“Aren’t you even going to thank me?”

Hannah looked up into the mirror, at Angelina, who had followed her inside.

“For what?” Hannah asked.

“Ah, so she does have a voice,” Angelina said, flipping her long, dark hair over her shoulder. “I thought maybe you were, you know, deaf or something.”

“Mute,” Hannah corrected her. “It’s mute when you can’t speak.”

“Whatever.” She crossed her arms, settling back against the sink. “I saved your ass, girlfriend.”

Argh, the soap stung. Hannah gritted her teeth, unwilling to make a sound in front of Miss Sunflower Homegirl 1993. Unless Angelina left, she was going to have to go into one of the toilet stalls to survey the damage done to her side when Carolyn kicked her.

“My ass didn’t need saving,” Hannah said coolly, when the pain numbed out and she could finally speak. “I was doing just fine by myself.”

“Yeah? Where do you think Carolyn went running to? She was getting a counselor. Fighting is a capital offense around here, you know.”

Hannah straightened up, reaching for a paper towel to blot her arm. “As opposed to stealing your cluster-mates’ jewelry, which is what? A competitive sport?”

“I didn’t steal anything,” Angelina was affronted. “I found it—”

“Bullshit.” Hannah turned to look at her. “We both know you took ‘Tooney’s’ bracelet, so cut the crap. What I can’t figure out is why give it back.”

Angelina laughed. “Because it’s only day two, and I’m already bored out of my mind with Bree and her Valley Girl clones. Because you’re different. You’re interesting. You fight like you’re from the ‘hood—”

“Oh, please.” Hannah cut her off. “That’s more bullshit. You’re not from the ‘hood any more than I am. Any more than freaking Brianna is. Seriously? BadAss T?”

Angelina was standing there, as if trying to decide what crap to hurl at Hannah next.

She finally laughed. Shrugged. “Most of these girls only listen to country. Toby Keith—kill me now. They’re too afraid to admit they’ve never heard of BadAss T.”

“So you just keep on lying to them.”

“They like it. When I told them I was working on an album of my own, they practically French-kissed me. Even Bree, who hates that I’m more popular than she is.” She looked at Hannah critically. “I think you’ve still got some dirt by your eyebrow…”

Hannah turned back to the mirror. Yeah, she’d definitely missed a spot.

“Did you really write a prizewinning essay?” Angelina asked.

“Yup.” Hannah wet the paper towel. She’d won, although she probably would’ve won even if she’d written five pages of nonsense. She was here because all of her friends at school were boys. Because she lived in a household with four men. Because Ms. Julio had convinced Patrick that two weeks at this camp would make her more well-rounded, which was their way of saying “less of a tomboy,” as if there was something wrong with that.

“A brainiac, huh?” Angelina said.

“Yeah,” Hannah said, shooting her a look. “I’m a real genius. My prize was this two-week jail sentence.” She gave up and just scooped water into her hands, wetting her entire face again.

Angelina waited until Hannah turned the water back off, holding out more paper towels for her. “It’s not that bad here. Well, aside from the fact that everyone sucks.”

“Maybe I can convince them that my father’s a producer, too,” Hannah said as she dried her face. “White Chocolate, aka Comb-over Q.”

Angelina laughed. “Or we can spread rumors that the essay contest you won was open to all the girls in juvie cellblocks A, B, and C. That’ll gain you some respect.”

Hannah rolled her eyes as she laughed, too.

“It’s gotta be better than the truth,” Angelina urged her. She was quiet for a moment, then added, “My mother works for Bree Parker’s father. Cleaning his office.”

Hannah must have reacted, because Angelina continued, “Yeah. I’m here on scholarship because Mr. Parker wants to screw me. At least he did before he found out I’m his daughter’s age. I’m still not exactly sure if his sending me here, two years running, is out of genuine guilt for grabbing my tits when I was fourteen, or if it’s some kind of hush-me payoff.” She settled back against the sink. “Or maybe I’m his mistress in training. Maybe he’s just waiting for me to get old enough to squeeze without jail time. How well do you think that truth will go over with Queen Bree?”

Hannah just shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“I made up the whole BadAss T thing last year,” Angelina said, “when I saw how Bree and her alleged friends welcomed the other scholarship girls.” She paused. “So do you have a partner yet for this afternoon’s sailing class?”

Hannah looked at her. “What do you think?” At breakfast, Lacey had loudly announced she was partnering with a girl from the Daisy cluster, leaving Hannah odd man out.

“You want to…?” Angelina motioned between the two of them.

“With you.” Hannah didn’t voice it as a question, but Angelina answered it anyway.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have any jewelry worth stealing,” Hannah said.

Angelina laughed.

“I wasn’t kidding,” Hannah said. “I’m not going to partner with a thief.”

“I never keep it,” Angelina defended herself. “The things I take. Someone always goes home early, and I hide it all in their bunk. We find it and…Everyone gets everything back.”

“So…what?” Hannah said. “You take it because…you like it when they start a witch hunt and blame innocent people?”

“I take it,” Angelina said, hand on her hip, heavy on the attitude, “because they flaunt it in the faces of the girls who don’t have their kind of money. I take it because it gives us something to talk about. And I take it because they expect me to have expensive jewelry, and I can say that it’s gone missing, too, okay?”

“Except you don’t get yours back,” Hannah pointed out.

“Last year that worked out to be kind of a bonus,” she admitted. “Everyone figured that Deedee—the girl who went home early—kept my necklace and anklet, on account of, you know, BadAss T’s Grammy win? So Bree and her friends all chipped in and bought me a replacement. A diamond pendant.”

“So you conned them,” Hannah interpreted.

“It was a gift,” Angelina argued. “I had no idea they were going to do it. Who am I to turn down something like that?”

“They’ll catch on if you do it again this year,” Hannah told her.

“They’ll only catch on,” Angelina countered, crossing her arms, “if you tell them.”

“Then they’ll catch on,” Hannah said. “Because if something else goes missing, I will tell them.”

And there they stood, staring each other down.

Angelina broke first, laughing. “Yo, Nobody Girl. Don’t you get the fact that if you walk into lunch with me, they’ll ask you to be a Sunflower?”

Hannah laughed her disgust as she went into one of the stalls to make sure she wasn’t bleeding beneath her shirt from Carolyn’s kick. “Why, in God’s name, would I ever want that?”

“Wow,” Angelina said, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her ever before.

“Good point.”

C HAPTER

T WO

JANUARY 2008

SAN DIEGO , CALIFORNIA

I t was going to be a lovely evening.

The sky had gone into glorious sunset mode after a day that had been unseasonably warm for January. But now the air was cooler and there was a nice breeze. It was perfect weather for riding in his truck with the windows down. And for going back to his apartment to screw his brains out.

Izzy stood in the Ladybug parking lot with an honestly earned tired-on after forty-eight hours of hard physical training. It hadn’t all been fun and games, but he damn well preferred it to sitting behind a desk and filling out endless paperwork.

He was good and exhausted, he was beyond hungry, and he was more than ready to break his current record-long streak of not getting laid.

“I kind of do,” Maybe-Susan told him earnestly, and at first he didn’t know what she was talking about, his thoughts had gone in so many different directions, most of them leading to his extremely optimistic dick. But she clarified. “Need to find Danny.”

Not the best news, but in the grand scheme of things, it was no real biggie. Izzy would be there, a shoulder to cry on, after Danny blew her off. He searched through the contact list on his cell, landing on Gillman’s number. He pushed talk and handed her his phone.

She squinted at it, puzzled until she saw that it was ringing Gillman, Dan, at which point she put it to her ear. “You do know him. Oh, my God…”

She must’ve gone straight to Gilligan’s voicemail, because her recently shored up levels of shining hope took a serious dive south. She abruptly hung up, chewing on her lip, frowning slightly.

She was gorgeous when she frowned, too. She looked like someone, probably some movie star, but Izzy just couldn’t place where or when he’d seen her. Probably during some in-flight movie on some recent freaking-endless transatlantic trek.

“You don’t want to leave a message?” Izzy asked her.

She met his eyes only briefly as she shook her head. “I need to talk to him. If I leave a message…”

“You’re afraid he won’t call back,” Izzy guessed.

“No,” she said, certain. “I know he will. I just…need to talk to him first. Before…”

“Before what?” Izzy asked, but again she just shook her head.

He took the phone from her. Redialed. Left a message, for her. “Gillman, it’s Zanella. Call me when you get this. It’s important.”

She gave him a smile, but it was significantly more wan than the ones she’d delivered inside the Bug.

Izzy ended the call, then shuffled through his list and dialed Jay Lopez. “I got a friend who might be able to track Gillman down,” he told her. Chances were strong that Lopez would either be with Gillman or know where he was.

Lopez picked up on the first ring. “Izzy. Sorry, man. I meant to tell you, I’m not heading over to the Bug tonight.”

“You did, I know, I’m cool,” Izzy reassured him. “I’m actually looking for Gillman. Is he with you, bro?”

“No, Danny headed out, about two hours ago,” Lopez informed Izzy. “He caught a flight to Vegas. Some kind of family emergency.”

“What’s going on?” Izzy asked. M-Susan was watching him, her eyes again showing some hope mixed in with her anxiety. He shook his head, no, and now that new hope faded some, too, and she was back to lip chewing.

Which looked like fun. You need any help with that, sweetheart?

“I don’t know,” Lopez’s voice in Izzy’s ear broke into his little fantasy. “He got a phone call from his mother, and then…he was gone. Tore out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell.”

And didn’t Izzy know that. So okay. Maybe the mud-in-his-face thing hadn’t been entirely intentional.

“Do me a favor, Jay,” Iz said now, “and call him. Let him know that…” What? He gazed at Maybe-Susan, who was biting a fingernail now, which made her look about twelve. “Just tell him to call me, ASAP.”

“Will do.”

Izzy hung up his cell phone. “Lopez said Gillman went home, to Vegas, for a few days.”

She laughed at that, even as tears filled her eyes. “Of course he did.” She immediately steeled herself so that she didn’t cry—so much for Izzy being a strong shoulder. In fact, she flat-out turned away from him, surreptitiously wiping her eyes as she pretended to look out toward the setting sun. She breathed and focused—damn, watching her was like watching a home movie of himself as a kid. Never show your fear. Never let ’em know they’ve won. Deny that you’re bleeding, even when your blood is dripping on the kitchen linoleum.

It was as if she were bracing for a catastrophe that was yet to come. Izzy knew that particular feeling well.

“I don’t know what went down between you and Gillman,” Izzy started. “But—”

She cut him off. “Look, I’m in trouble,” she admitted, as she turned back to him, squaring her shoulders and assuming what he was starting to think of as her default fighter’s stance. “My wallet, my bag—all my stuff—was…stolen.”

Okay, so that was a lie. Izzy took a mental step back, settling in to hear her out—but more as an audience member instead of someone with an emotional connection—really just ready to enjoy the upcoming dramatic performance.

But then she recanted, choking out what had to be the truth.

“I don’t know if it was stolen intentionally—it might have been. But, see, I got ditched. By my asshole of a boyfriend. All my stuff was in the car and he just…left me. I was in the bathroom. In a Krispy Kreme. When I came out…”

It was that grim little detail—Krispy Kreme—that convinced Izzy. Jesus Christ. The humiliation factor here was so high. No way could she be making this shit up.

She continued, her voice thick with her misery: “I hitched down here from LA because I thought maybe Danny might…”

She paused, her eyes averted, and Izzy waited. Of course, maybe she was merely a brilliant actor. A con artist who knew, just from glancing at him, that he would buy her story if she told him she’d been dumped at a Krispy Kreme rather than, say, a Home Depot.

Intermission over, she took a deep breath, and started Act Two, her eyes still fixed on the cracked and potholed tarmac. “I have no money and no place to stay.”

And here it came. Can I borrow some cash? Just a few hundred dollars to tide me over. I’ll pay you back…

“Is there any chance,” she asked, forcing herself to look up and meet his gaze, “I can stay with you until Danny gets back?”

Whoa.

Izzy was more than merely surprised. He was taken aback. This woman—girl really—was a total stranger. And even more importantly, he was a stranger to her. A large, strong, dangerous-looking, malodorous stranger.

Yeah, he’d fantasized about her coming home with him and doing the naked Macarena, but he’d imagined that discussion happening in more of a heated moment—your place or mine? —after Danny’d told her it was Sophia or the monastery for him, and that he was taking his vows tomorrow. Izzy’d pictured it happening after she’d cried herself dry in his sympathetic arms, and he’d given her some comforting kisses that turned—unexpectedly, natch—to pure fire.

Why that should have made a difference to him was absurd, but it did.

Izzy realized that his stunned silence was stretching on. And on. It no doubt was seeming to last forever for Maybe-Susan, too, who must’ve truly been at her wits’ end to ask if she could come home with him, said total stranger grande.

Either that, or she was a freaking idiot—Blanche DuBois reincarnated. Ah have always relahd on the kahndness of strangahs…

Or she really was a con artist, looking to gain access to his apartment, where, while he was sleeping, she would rob him blind. Or she’d take pictures of him in bed with her boyfriend, so they could blackmail him by threatening to post the photos on the Internet.

Note to self: Don’t fall asleep tonight.

But before he could make the “Yuh” sound to say yes, you can sleep on my couch—at least for tonight, because he really didn’t have anything in his apartment worth stealing and lack of sleep was well worth the potential prize of her moving off his couch and into his bed, she upped the ante.

“Rumor has it, I give good head.” She smiled, but something shifted in her eyes, just slightly, and the effect was disarming. For someone so young and pretty, she suddenly looked tired—battle-worn—like she was twenty going on fifty.

She took a step toward him, and Izzy took a step back, which was kind of stupid, like what? Did he really think she was going to fellate him right in the middle of the parking lot?

Except, damn, he was depraved, because her offer had gone in through his ears, been processed by his brain, and sent straight to his dick, solidifying the father of all woodies that was lurking behind his zipper. And okay, maybe he was being harder on himself than he had to be, because, to be honest, the kind of Louisville Slugger he was packing was pretty standard MO for him after an adrenaline-filled op—even when that op was just training. He’d had the damn thing—or at least its little brother—before she’d walked into the Bug.

Izzy opened his mouth and “I need a shower” came out, which was a dumbass thing to say, because there was this implication that after he showered, she’d…

Yeah. Like it was helping him to stand here thinking about that.

“Look, I hate to be a buzzkill,” Izzy forced himself to tell her. “But I gotta be honest. It creeps me out when there’s this implied exchange of goods and services—yeah, you can stay with me tonight, but in order to surf my couch you’ve got to…you know. Blow me. That’s not cool. I mean, yeah, it would be cool in another dimension where God was a fourteen-year-old but…” He scratched the back of his head. “I’m not even figuring in the mystery factor. You never did quite tell me your name.”

She didn’t hesitate this time. “It’s Brittney.”

“Really,” Izzy said.

She looked away. “Of course not. You’re friends with Danny. If I tell you who I am, you’ll tell him.”

“Actually,” Izzy said. “Me and Gillman—we’re not really friends. I work with him, yeah, but…He pretty much hates my guts. So, see, I kinda lied, too.” He held out his hand to her. “Let’s start over, okay? I’m Irving Zanella. People call me Izzy, from my initials—I.Z. Izzy, get it? Because, you know, Irving? Damn. I’m pretty sure my parents hated me. At the very least they wanted me to die a virgin.”

She managed a brief laugh as she shook his hand, and his heart did another flip, because she really floated his boat. And not just because she allegedly gave good head. He liked her. Extremely. Crazy or not. Warnings from Lopez and Gillman be damned. Before this night ended, at the very least, Izzy was going to walk away with her phone number. And he was going to call her again.

Probably tomorrow.

He’d invite her to go skydiving. And if he were lucky, he’d be able to keep up.

But maybe—and he still had a shot here—he’d get her into bed with him tonight. But he didn’t want it to happen because she was desperate, but rather because she’d discovered that she truly wanted to be there.

“And you are…?” he prompted her.

Her smile faded. “I have no ID. Even if I do tell you, why should you believe me?” She looked searchingly into his eyes, shivering slightly in the breeze off the ocean.

That sassy Rumor has it, I give good head, had been an act of desperation—Izzy was at least ninety-eight percent sure of that now. The sun was nearly gone, casting long shadows across the parking lot. The air was cooling fast, and soon it would be dark. She had no money, no jacket, no place to go…

“Try me,” Izzy told her.

He watched as she thought about trusting him. He watched as she realized that she didn’t have much of a choice. And then he saw her surrender.

But he didn’t see the massive clusterfuck that was coming when she opened her mouth, not until she uttered words that riveted him to the ragged tarmac.

“I’m Eden,” she said. “Gillman.”

Holy shit.

Izzy must not have registered any response at all, because she added, “Danny’s sister?”

Holy, holy shit.

That was who she’d reminded him of—Gilligan, not some movie starlet. Danny, too, was gleamingly good-looking, with his dark hair and brown eyes. In fact, he could see bits of Danny in Eden’s eyes, and around her chin and her mouth.

Sweet Jesus, don’t think about her mouth and that implied offer she’d made to…

“Eden, huh?” he said, because he had to say something. Gillman had two sisters, one of whom was married with kids. But his little sister—Eden—had just graduated—barely—from high school. She was the troublemaker. The problem child. The black sheep of Gillman’s otherwise perfect, golden-spoon and trust-fund encrusted family.

“Damn,” Izzy said. “Are you even eighteen?”

She was looking at him now with the same trepidation she’d had in her eyes when she’d first glanced in his direction, back in the Bug. “Please don’t tell Danny that I—”

“Relax.” Izzy took out his cell phone. “Just…Look, why don’t you give me your parents’ phone number in Vegas, so I can—”

Disappointment—and anger—flared in her eyes. “I knew it.”

“Whoa!” Izzy blocked her route, even though she had limited options. Marching out of that parking lot would leave her alone and cold on a dark street. “Lopez told me your brother went home for a family emergency,” he said to Eden. “I’ll call and ask for him. I won’t say you’re with me, I won’t speak to your parents. Just Dan. Okay?”

She stared at Izzy.

“Okay?” he said again.

“I can’t go back there,” she said.

“No one’s saying that you should,” Izzy pointed out. “But you wanted to talk to Dan, and he’s there, so…”

She didn’t seem convinced.

“Am I right in assuming that you’re the family emergency?” he asked.

“I’m always the family emergency,” she answered, pissed off. “It’s pretty much been a full-time job since I turned twelve.”

Izzy laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“I’ve been gone for three months,” Eden told him. “I’ve been e-mailing my mother—she knows I’m safe.” She caught herself, shivering again as the breeze kicked up. “Was safe.”

“You’re safe,” Izzy told Gillman’s little sister, as his hopes and dreams of nailing her shriveled and died a painful death.

She folded her arms across her chest, sheer attitude in human form. “Probably what happened is Greg, my stepfather, found out about the e-mail. He probably thought he could trace it and find me—which he couldn’t. I’m not an idiot. But Mom probably panicked and called Danny because she was afraid when Greg went after me, I’d fight back.” She laughed—defiance mixed with despair. “I’m not sure who she’s more worried will get hurt—him or me. Probably him.”

“If you’re eighteen, he can’t touch you—if he does, you can press charges,” Izzy pointed out.

Eden nodded. “And then there’s that. I can press charges.” She paused. “Tomorrow.”

“You’re only seventeen,” he said in a burst of disbelief, and she nodded. Flipping great. Not that seventeen wasn’t the age of consent in California. It was. But damn, a man had to draw a line somewhere, and his had always been twenty. Okay, depending on extreme circumstances, nineteen and a half.

“Until midnight,” she told him, and tears suddenly welled in her eyes. “Happy birthday to me, huh?”

Ditched in a Krispy Kreme by some scumball, a day before her birthday, with her wicked stepfather hot on her heels, ready to lock her in the basement. It was like a master class in the unfairness of life, a bitch-slap from the powers of the universe.

“You must be hungry,” Izzy said, and she looked up, having—once again—successfully blinked back her tears. Dang it, this girl was tough.

She nodded. “I haven’t slept in a while, either,” she admitted.

As she held his gaze, Izzy’s heart started its gymnastics routine again, and he had to look away. Gillman’s little sister, he reminded himself. Seven-fucking-teen. What the hell was he going to do if the fishboy didn’t call back before morning? Viable options swirled through his head, dangerously mixing with the no-longer viable ones he’d been considering mere moments earlier.

He’d open a bottle of wine, and they’d share it out on his deck while they also shared secrets. She’d soon feel comfortable enough around him to let herself weep from the pain of being abandoned, after which they’d have sex, right on his lounge chair.

“I’m kind of at your mercy,” Eden told him now.

Shit.

She waited, just watching him.

She was hungry. He could cook her that steak he had in his fridge. After dinner, he’d get her set up on the couch, careful to keep his distance. But he’d awaken in the night, hearing her crying as if her heart were breaking, and he’d go to her and just hold her. And after the storm of tears had passed, he’d make her laugh.

After which she’d kiss him and his head would explode and they’d have sex, right on his couch.

Shit. Shit.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Izzy finally told her. “We’ll drive through Mickey D’s, get you something fast to eat. I need to go home, take a quick shower, and find something to wear that doesn’t smell like ass. I’ll grab a sweatshirt that you can borrow, too. Then we’ll find someplace for you to stay tonight that isn’t with me—maybe Jenk and Lindsey’s. They, uh, have a couch that’s more comfortable than mine.

“And then, after midnight, if Danny hasn’t called by then, we’ll call him at your mom’s house,” Izzy continued. “You’ll be eighteen and no one will make you do anything that you don’t want to do. Does that sound like a plan?”

Gratitude shone in Eden Gillman’s eyes as she nodded. “Thank you.”

God damn, she was gorgeous and yeah, a little crazy, and more than a little wild. Aside from the too-young thing, she was Izzy’s idea of perfection, and the kicker was that he was pretty sure she liked him, too. She thought he was her hero. A flipping knight in shining armor.

He was some hero. Yeah, he was going to call his buddy Jenk and see if he and his wife Lindsey wouldn’t mind if Dan Gillman’s little sister spent the night, but it didn’t have squat to do with the comfort-factor of Izzy’s sofa.

No, it was all about the removal of temptation. A total temptation-ectomy, that’s what he was looking to perform. Because gallant and brave Sir Izzy was a frakking coward. He was afraid, nay, terrified down to his very scumbag of a soul, that even though this girl was Gillman’s sister, he would not be able to keep his hands off of her. Especially not when the clock struck twelve and she magically turned into an eighteen-year-old.

Even though, prior to tonight, his line had always been twenty.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Izzy said.

And with that, the most beautiful woman in the world crossed the parking lot and climbed into the cab of his truck.

SMALLWOOD , KANSAS

“Loading dock,” Decker said, and it was clear he was talking to Dave, not Nash. Dave knew that Deck and Nash could read each other’s minds. They didn’t need spoken language.

The AmLux Headquarters loading dock was dimly lit, and indeed, the perfect entry point into the building. It wasn’t heavily guarded either—a lone sentry, bundled up against the cold, sat at a table near the freight elevators.

The guard’s presence was a glitch—albeit a small one—in Troubleshooters Incorporated’s red-cell attack plan.

TS Inc. was the top personal security firm in the U.S.—no, make that the world. They—and Dave Malkoff, Lawrence Decker, and James Nash were three of the firm’s top operatives—provided security to people who needed to venture into some of the most dangerous places on the planet.

They also provided security-testing to “paranoia accounts” like tonight’s client, AmLux, whose CEO was convinced that, even though their corporate headquarters was smack in the middle of America’s heartland, they were a potential terrorist target.

Which was why Dave had followed Decker and Nash silently around the side of the AmLux building, slipping past a series of ready-and-waiting guards. They were bright-eyed and aware that tonight they would be tested, but not so bright-eyed and aware as to have spotted Dave, Deck, and Nash.

Being red cell meant that during tonight’s op, the trio of men from TS Inc. would play the part of the terrorists. They were the bad guys, and their job was to break into AmLux, access the corporation’s computers—both to steal their “secrets” and to take out their entire system—and then plant a series of bombs that would bring down the building.

Not that they’d actually do any of that, despite Decker’s displeasure at being given this assignment in the first place. Fucking waste of time were his exact words, and Dave could relate. But the money AmLux was paying for tonight’s cakewalk was not insignificant.

So the bombs they’d plant would be pretend, and as for the computers—they’d simply put a very small bug in their system that would read, “You’ve been compromised!” Dave had recorded the audiotrack for the message, and he’d done his best to sound like the relentlessly cheerful AOL guy who announced the presence of e-mail. He was pretty good at mimicking voices.

And that was probably going to be his sole contribution to this op. Yeah, yeah, when they got to the CEO’s office, Dave would break into the computer and plant the bug. But either Decker or Nash could have done it just as easily.

And yet Tommy Paoletti, the commanding officer of Troubleshooters Inc., had assigned all three of them to this job. Theirs was not to question why, but instead to do or mock-die.

Except no way were they going to mock-die, up against this team of total amateurs.

As they now watched from the shadows of the loading dock, the lone guard checked in with the main gate, using his cell phone to do so. “Henderson here.” His voice carried clearly over to them. “All clear.”

Decker and Nash exchanged another look over the bags of gear they’d silently carried in, and Dave whispered what they were thinking. “No password or code.”

No radio, either. But surely this guard had a panic button to alert the rest of his security team to trouble. Without a panic button, anyone trying to break in would be able to walk up to him and take him out before he finished dialing his phone for backup. That was pretty gosh-darn stupid.

“Panic button’s over on the wall,” Nash pointed out. Tall, dark, and strikingly movie-star handsome to Decker’s average height, average hair color, and blandly nondescript face, the two men didn’t just look mismatched. They were mismatched.

Average-looking Larry Decker had been a chief in the mighty U.S. Navy SEALs. James Nash, however, didn’t merely not have a military background—he didn’t have a background, period. His entire past had been magically erased from his official file, although Dave suspected that he’d done jail time and hadn’t always played for the good guys. Which made him perfect for red-cell type assignments like the one they were currently on.

Personality, background, education—Decker and Nash couldn’t have been more different. And yet they were close in a way that Dave—a former CIA loner—had never been close to anyone. The two men were more than friends—they were teammates. And they’d been so for years, having been partners at the clandestine and mysteriously unnamed “Agency” before coming to work for Troubleshooters Incorporated.

“Speed or finesse?” Decker asked Nash now as all three men crouched in the shadows.

Nash just laughed—and moved.

Apparently, speed it was.

“Stay with the gear,” Deck ordered Dave. It was a more respectful step up from the “Stay put,” Dave would’ve gotten from the man even just a few short months ago. Deck had gotten injured in a car accident, and Dave—despite his own broken wrist—had carried him through a blizzard to safety. He’d earned Deck’s respect that day, but despite that, they still weren’t quite friends.

Which was probably as much Dave’s fault as Decker’s. Although truth be told, Deck had gotten even less chatty and even more grim after his release from the hospital. Dave couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the man laugh.

Out on the loading dock, the security guard didn’t see either Decker or Nash coming—Dave barely saw it go down himself. One moment the poor guy was doing the Times crossword, the next he was on the concrete floor, his cheek pressed against the dirt and grit, his mouth already gagged as Nash bound his hands behind his back.

Dave winced at Nash’s less-than-gentle handling. This was, after all, just an exercise.

Decker, meanwhile, had possession of the guard’s cell phone, searching through the list of outgoing calls. “Check-in’s every five minutes,” he announced as Nash dragged Henderson back toward Dave and the shadows.

Where Nash scared the shit out of the man as he opened his switchblade with the cold sound of metal against metal. “Here’s where I slit your throat,” he said over the man’s alarmed noises.

“Not really,” Dave interjected, giving Nash a chiding look.

“Relax, Malkoff. He knew I was kidding.” Nash made the knife vanish, instead slapping an “I’m dead,” sticker on the guard’s forehead. He grabbed the bags of gear and humped them over toward Decker.

The guard was looking up at Dave, lots of white still showing in his eyes. He made noise that sounded like an indignant, You didn’t have to kill me.

“Yeah, Henderson, we kinda did,” Dave told him mildly. “We’re ruthless terrorists. If we left you alive, you might have been able to signal for help.” So Nash had dragged him back here and “killed” him. Hidden behind the forklift, Henderson’s “blood” wouldn’t be seen right away from someone just glancing in at the loading dock.

Ruthless terrorists weren’t the only ones who knew that, at times, dead was the only guarantee of silence and mission success. Dave didn’t want to think about how often they’d all done something similar in a real world situation—only without the cute sticker. And he would be willing to bet that Nash, James Nash, had done it more times than he could count.

“You’re dead. If you move,” Dave gave Henderson the standard warning, “or raise an alarm, the outcome of this exercise will be compromised. We’ll need to reschedule, AmLux will be out tens of thousands of dollars, and you will no longer be employed. Do you understand?”

The guard nodded. He was sullen, but he’d gotten the message.

“Dave.” Decker had already overridden the freight elevator’s security system, and the monstrous thing was open and ready, the two former partners waiting impatiently inside.

Dave ran to catch up and as the door closed behind them, Nash glanced at his watch. “Three minutes fifteen to check in.” Again Nash and Deck exchanged an information-laden look.

“Do we bluff or blow?” Dave asked as the elevator rose, trying not to feel like excess baggage. Why was he here?

Apparently Decker was thinking the exact same thing—except about himself.

“Blow,” he said shortly. “Why make it harder for ourselves? They’re afraid of terrorists, let’s suicide-bomber up.”

Prior to 9/11, security teams had assumed that anyone interested in breaking into a facility wouldn’t do so unless it was possible for them also to get back out. Suicide bombers, however, needed only to get in.

“Bluff and blow.” Nash took the guard’s cell phone from Deck, handing it to Dave. “Buy us more time, Malkoff. Make ’em think you’re Henderson.”

The elevator doors opened onto a floor that was dimly lit. As if in unspoken agreement, Nash went left and Decker went right.

Leaving Dave, as usual, standing alone.

He opened Henderson’s phone and dialed.

A LIFETIME AGO …

JANUARY 2001

FRESNO , CALIFORNIA

Murphy’s spirits lifted as he pulled into the apartment parking lot and saw Hannah’s familiar little car, with its bumper sticker that announced A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE .

He parked near her car, and was up the stairs and…

Han opened the door before he rang the bell—she must’ve been watching for him.

“I’m so sorry about your dad,” she said, then, God, she was in his arms—a curious mix of softness and strength. “I wanted to come, but I couldn’t get the time off and—”

“I know. It’s okay,” Murphy told her, closing his eyes as he breathed in the familiar scent of her laundry detergent or shampoo or whatever it was that made Hannah always smell so good—so clean and fresh. “He’s been gone a long time, so…It was okay, Han.”

“I should have been there,” she insisted, holding him even more tightly.

He smelled her before he saw her—Angelina—a whiff of exotic perfume in the air or maybe on Hannah, from an earlier embrace. He opened his eyes, still hugging Han, and there she was, lingering in the doorway to Hannah’s little living room.

Angelina Esparza, of whom Hannah had so often spoken. Han’s best friend for going on eight years now.

Murph’s heart didn’t stop, and choirs of angels didn’t break into heavenly song.

Yeah, the woman was unbelievably gorgeous—dark to Hannah’s pale; long, thick, straight dark hair to Han’s boyishly short waves. She was curvier than Hannah, too. More buxom, and unafraid to wear formfitting tops with low-cut necklines that featured her extremely, extremely impressive cleavage.

Unlike Hannah, she wore jewelry—large hoop earrings, a necklace, bangles on her wrists—and makeup. Not a lot. Just enough to tweak her naturally beautiful features into something truly amazing.

She was watching him as he hugged Hannah, and as their gazes met, she smiled. “You must be the one and only Murphy.”

“Which makes you the one and only Angelina.”

Her smile broadened. “I guess you’ve heard a lot about me, too.”

Hannah pulled back to look at him, and under the force of her scrutiny, Murph turned his attention back to her.

She was more upset about missing his father’s funeral than he’d been about the fact that his father had finally needed a funeral—which seemed wrong. And, of course, being Han, she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“It’s okay, Vinh,” she said. “That you’re all right. It’s okay if you’re not…Whatever you’re feeling is absolutely okay.”

“It was a relief,” he admitted. Man, that sounded awful. He glanced back at Angelina. “My father had Alzheimer’s.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “Hannah told me. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

He’d grieved and mourned for the seemingly endless years it had taken the disease to finally steal the part of his father’s mind that kept him alive. For most of that time, the old man had had absolutely no idea who Murphy was—his only son. His only child.

Murphy had shared his pain with Hannah, leaning on her more than once through these last few awful years, spending his summers crewing on her uncle Patrick’s whale-watching boat in the icy waters of Alaska’s Inside Passage.

“It’s okay to feel relieved,” Hannah told him now, her eyes filled with her compassion and sympathy, “that he’s finally at peace.”

“Yeah,” Murphy said, ruffling her hair. “I know. It’s just…”

“Weird,” she said, understanding. “That he finally gets a eulogy. After all this time…”

Murph had told her years ago that it didn’t seem fair. His father was gone. His body still moved and needed care, but the man inside wasn’t ever coming back. Yet none of his friends had the chance to gather together and remember a life well lived.

At Hannah’s urging, he’d written about his father and e-mailed it to all of the old man’s Marine buddies. He’d even sent his little essay to family—relatives who still kept their distance because they hadn’t approved of Malcolm Murphy’s Vietnamese wife.

Most of them didn’t respond, although his cousin Nola had reached out to him. “Nola and Ricco were at the funeral,” he told Hannah now.

She squeezed his hand. “I’m glad. How are they?”

“Good,” he said. “They’re good. It was…It was nice to see them.” He turned to Angelina, because it was time to shake off this too-somber mood he’d brought into Han’s apartment with him. “Angelina. I was starting to think you were a figment of Han’s crazed imagination.”

“Sometimes I think I might be,” she said with a smile. It was hard to believe she was only Hannah’s age—what were they? Just a year out of college. Little Hannah. Sweet, young Hannah, Patrick’s niece—as Murph had trained himself to think of her.

She’d gotten a job as a uniformed beat cop with the Fresno police department—why she hadn’t applied for a position up in Juneau, he couldn’t figure out. Of course, Angelina was in LA, and these days Murph floated between San Diego and Sacramento.

“Vinh Murphy, Angelina Esparza,” Hannah went through the formality. “About time you two met.” She turned to Murphy. “You missed dinner. I’m sorry we didn’t wait—”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Traffic around the airport—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re forgiven. Funeral. Free pass. But if you need food, bwee, you’ll have to forage for leftovers in the fridge. Don’t you dare drink all the beer before I get back. I gotta grab my bag.”

“What?” Murphy said. “Where…?”

“She’s got an extra shift,” Angelina explained as Hannah vanished into her bedroom. “It’s a rookie thing.”

“Diaz called in sick,” Hannah called from the other room. “And it’s not a full shift, just a special assignment. Traffic control after a high school basketball game. I’ll be back in a few hours, unless the losing team does something stupid.” She came back down the hall, duffle in her hand. “Angel, show him where the leftovers are, will you?” She stopped in front of Murphy. “Sorry to have to run out on you like this.”

“Go,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Angelina can tell me her side of all the stories you’ve told me about her through the years.” He turned to Angelina. “Whose idea was it, really? To put Metamucil into that mean girl’s lemonade on the night of the cookout with the boys’ camp? What was her name? Brianna something.”

“Brianna Parker, the bitch,” Hannah and Angelina unisoned, then laughed.

“That was me,” Angelina volunteered. “We both had a crush on the same lifeguard. Bobby Contini. I actually thought I had a chance with him.”

“You were, after all,” Hannah said, “the daughter of the famous BadAss T.” Laughing, she shouldered her bag. “I gotta go.”

“We’ll be here,” Angelina said and Hannah shut the door behind her.

And there they were. Still standing in Han’s little foyer.

“So,” Angelina said. “Let’s get you some dinner.” She led the way into the kitchen—as if he needed a tour guide—and started getting out a plate and utensils.

“I can do it,” Murphy said, opening the refrigerator. “You don’t need to. I know where everything is.”

“You must visit Hannah a lot.” She leaned back against the counter.

“I travel a lot,” Murphy told her as he pried open the lid of what looked like some truly excellent meatloaf. “So, yeah. I usually crash on her couch every few weeks or so.”

“Très diplomatique.” Angelina gave him a golf clap. “Answering my unspoken question—are you sleeping with her—with such tact and grace.”

He laughed as he added some mashed potatoes and green beans to his plate. “We’re just friends,” he said. He put the plate into the microwave and dialed up a few minutes of heat before turning back to Angelina. “Didn’t Han tell you that?”

“She did, but…She has her secrets,” Angelina told him. “I was just wondering if you were one of them.”

“She thinks of me like a big brother,” he said.

“And when you’re crashed on her couch,” Angelina asked, “you never lie awake thinking…maybe you’d be more comfortable in her bed?”

“Never,” Murphy cheerfully lied.

“Do you actually fit on the couch?”

“Trust me,” he said. “I’m a Marine. I can sleep anywhere.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Angelina asked.

“Negative,” Murphy said as the microwave beeped.

“Boyfriend?”

He shot her a look. “Ditto.” He took his plate out, burning his fingers and letting it rattle onto the counter. “Ow!”

Angelina turned on the sink faucet, and he put both hands under the cold water. “You wanna hook up?”

“Come again?” Murphy turned off the water, turned to look at her.

“Hook up,” she repeated. “It’s what we younguns say when we want to have hot monkey sex.”

He laughed. She was too funny. “I know what hook up means, little girl.”

“It was kind of a yes/no question,” Angelina pointed out, obviously trying hard not to smile back at him. “Big man.”

“No,” he said. “Thank you. But, no.”

He pushed his plate over to the breakfast counter, where Hannah had a pair of bar stools. He slid onto one, but Angelina didn’t move—she just leaned against the counter, her smile slipping free as she watched him. Hot damn, she was beyond gorgeous. Hot monkey sex…

“Hannah told me you…sometimes say outrageous things,” Murphy told her.

Her smile broadened, and her perfect white teeth flashed as her eyes sparkled. “Oh, come on. That wasn’t particularly outrageous. It is the twenty-first century. Women are allowed to make the first move.”

The meatloaf tasted even better than it smelled. “What would you have done if I’d’ve said yes?”

“Total win/win situation here,” she said. “You say no, I find out you really are this pillar of honor that Han made you out to be. You say yes, I get to have sex with a guy I’ve pretty much wanted to do since Hannah first described him.”

Murphy laughed. “Right.”

She laughed, too. “I’m serious.”

He got up, took a beer out of the fridge. “Hannah said you rarely were. You know, serious.”

“Hannah said the very same thing about you, hot stuff,” Angelina countered. She didn’t back away as he opened the bottle and tossed the cap into the garbage. She smelled incredibly good.

“She also said I’d probably fall in love with you at first sight.” He took a slug as he went back to his seat.

“How’s that going?” she asked.

He shook his head in mock dismay. “Sadly, she was wrong.”

“Most guys need to see me naked,” Angelina pointed out. “She probably meant you’d fall in love with me at the first sight of me naked. With that in mind, the offer of hot monkey sex stands.” She glanced at her watch. “For the next…ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes,” he said on a laugh. “Does that include the actual having of the hot monkey sex, or is that just my window of opportunity to change my mind?”

“One would hope,” she said sternly, “that true hot monkey sex would take the better part of an hour.”

Murphy laughed again. “While I appreciate the repeated offer, I don’t need to see you naked,” he said. “The reason I didn’t fall in love with you at first sight is because I’ve been in love with you for, wow, it must be four years now. Pretty much since Hannah told me about you. The magnificent Angelina.” He toasted her with his beer. “Even more magnificent in the flesh.”

“And yet,” she pointed out, “you say no to hot monkey sex.”

“It’s a pure and chaste kind of love,” he told her, digging in to the potatoes.

“Spoken like a true pillar of honor.”

“Assuming pillars can speak.”

Angelina slid onto the stool next to him. “I know you were…only joking, but…” Up close, her eyes were almost unbearably dark brown—the kind of eyes into which a man could lose himself forever. She was speaking softly, practically whispering and he found himself leaning closer. “That’s exactly what it feels like. Like I’ve known you forever and…Like I’ve loved you for even longer. I’m going to marry you, Vinh.” She reached up and touched him, her fingers cool on the back of his neck. “I’ve been waiting for you, all my life.”

She was serious. Everything up to this point had been flirtatious, outrageous fun. But now she was serious, and, with his heart beating double-time, Murphy didn’t feel the need to mock her about the fact that all her life was a mere twenty-three years. She was serious, and she leaned in and kissed him and—

Murphy awoke with a start and for a moment, he didn’t know where he was.

A cabin.

He was on the hard wooden floor of a cabin. Weak morning light filtered in through a window, illuminating the rustic beams that supported the roof. He could see the stone chimney of a fireplace. The light from that window reflected on the gleaming glass of a gun case, keys in its lock.

It was Patrick’s cabin—although Murphy wasn’t sure if he was in Dalton or Juneau.

What he did know was that he wasn’t alone. Angelina was nestled, warm and solid against him, curled up tightly. They must’ve had too much to drink. She would laugh when he told her he’d dreamed, so vividly, about the night they’d met, about their first kiss—so sweet and hot and…

Angelina stirred. “Murph?”

But it wasn’t Angelina, it was Hannah and…

No. God, no .

But try as he might to stay here in this place where Angelina could well be in the next room, his memories of the past few years came crashing down around him.

Angelina was dead.

Dead and gone.

He was in Dalton, where Hannah was living these days after her own hellish tragedy. He’d come here, not to see her, but to get one of Patrick’s handguns. To put it in his mouth and…

The brightening dawn sparkled and danced on the glass of that gun case, taunting him.

End it. Now.

Jesus Christ, what had he been thinking? Hadn’t he already damaged Hannah enough for one night? For one lifetime …

Murphy scrambled to his feet—his head a near-solid block of pain. Somehow Hannah had fallen back to sleep.

Somehow? She wasn’t sleeping, she’d passed out—just like he had—courtesy of her drug of choice, which was whatever top-shelf booze she found in Pat’s voluminous liquor cabinet.

Staggering only slightly, Murphy put a pillow from the sofa beneath her head and she didn’t even stir.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her, even though she couldn’t possibly hear him.

He took a blanket from the couch and spread it over her, then went out the door.

C HAPTER

T HREE

JANUARY 2008

SAN DIEGO , CALIFORNIA

E den Gillman was crying as if her heart was breaking.

She was trying to be quiet, but her muffled sobs woke Izzy from the restless state of semi-sleep that he’d finally fallen into.

He lay there in the darkness of his bedroom, listening to her, knowing that the dead last thing he should do was get out of bed and go into the living room, where she was sleeping on his sofa.

Yeah, genius that he was, he’d had it all figured out. Gillman’s little sister could have a sleepover at Jenk and Lindsey’s. It was the perfect solution to the dilemma created by his relentless hard-on for this girl.

Girl, girl, girl. Yeah, it was well after midnight, but now, instead of being a seventeen-year-old girl, she was an eighteen -year-old girl.

His fatal error had been in underestimating the effect of a double cheeseburger on a girl—girl!—who hadn’t eaten or slept in close to forty-eight hours.

He’d only taken three minutes in the shower. Okay, maybe four and a half. But when Izzy’d come out the bathroom, fully dressed and ready to load Eden back into his truck—his plan was to make that phone call to Jenk and Lindsey from the safety of the road—she’d been completely unconscious, on his couch.

He paced back and forth in front of the damn thing, once, twice, thirty times, but she didn’t arouse. In sleep, she was much as she was while awake—angelically ferocious. She was curled tightly into herself, hugging the sweatshirt he’d given her as if it were a lifeline.

He tried calling Gillman’s cell again, but again, the dickhead didn’t pick up.

Izzy had fixed himself dinner then, cooking that steak he’d had marinating in the fridge, hoping the smell of food would wake Eden.

It hadn’t.

He’d washed up. Hell, he’d cleaned his entire kitchen. He even scrubbed the freaking floor.

Zero movement from the couch.

He called Mark Jenkins then, aware that it was getting late and that Jenk—like Izzy—had also been out on the training op. Like Izzy, he had to be tired, too. Jenk’s wife Lindsey had answered the phone and it was beyond obvious that they were already in bed.

Not necessarily sleeping.

“No, Zanella,” Lindsey said in lieu of a traditional greeting, like hello or even what-the-fuck do you want? “Whatever you’re calling for…Thank you, but no.”

“Really?” Izzy asked her. “Because I have this lottery ticket and I think I just won twenty million dollars that I’d love to share with you, but if you don’t w—”

“This is the sound,” Lindsey said, “of me not laughing. If there’s a point to this phone call, get to it quick, Z-man, so that I can tell you that I love you, say no, and then hang up the phone.”

“Gilligan’s little sister, Eden, came into the Bug, looking for him,” Izzy got to it. “Her boyfriend ditched her in a Krispy Kreme in LA. She’s got nothing. No money, no clothes—”

“No clothes ?” That caught Lindsey’s attention.

“Besides what she’s got on,” Izzy explained. “She’s not, like, naked.” Christ, don’t think about Eden Gillman naked…. Shit, too late. Hecleared his throat. “I was hoping she could sleep on your couch tonight. I don’t think it’s appropriate for her to stay here with me.”

Silence.

“Linds? You still there?”

“Who are you and what have you done with Izzy Zanella?” she finally said.

“Go on,” he said. “Mock me. The one time I’m being serious and trying to do the right thing.” He lowered his voice in case his talking on the phone had awakened Eden. “She’s gorgeous and she’s funny and she’s too young and she’s too young and sweet Jesus, she’s too freaking young, okay? Oh, yeah, and here’s a recipe for disaster: She’s Gillman’s sister. And I like her. Too much. So can I please, please bring her over so that she can sleep on your couch instead of mine?”

“Wow,” she said. “Of course you can.”

“Bless you.”

Izzy could hear the murmur of Jenk’s voice in the background, no doubt wondering WTF Lindsey was doing, of-course-you-can -ing Izzy when any and all responses to a request made when they were already in bed should have been a resounding no.

“Hang on,” Lindsey told Izzy, then covered the mouthpiece of the phone as she no doubt explained the sitch to her adorable yet height-challenged husband.

“Remind him of that time I saved his life,” Izzy suggested, but then Jenkins himself came onto the phone.

“Eden Gillman ?” he asked.

“Yup,” Izzy said.

“She’s alone with you, in your apartment.”

“She is.”

“Are you out of your freaking mind?”

“That’s the point,” Izzy said. “I’m not. Hence this SOS. You gonna help me out here, man, or are you going to leave me with my dick in this extremely uncomfortable vise?” Although, he suspected that there was no such thing as a comfortable vise when one’s dick was involved.

Jenk sighed heavily. “Bring her over,” he said.

“Thank you,” Izzy said.

“Can you just…maybe take your time getting here?” Jenkins asked.

“No problem. Eden’s out cold on my couch.” Izzy checked his watch. “I’ll let her sleep for another hour. That work for you, Romeo?”

“See you then,” Jenk said, and hung up the phone.

Apparently, it worked for him. Lucky little bastard.

But an hour came and went, and Eden didn’t wake up.

When Izzy tried to talk to her, she just burrowed her way deeper into the couch.

Part of his problem came from his unwillingness to touch her. Yeah, sure, he could have gathered her up and carried her to his truck—but first he’d have to touch her. And he couldn’t bring himself to do that with her shirt all up and twisted around her and…

Nipple! Holy shit!

Izzy quickly put a blanket over Eden and her lovely wandering nipple, paced the room a few hundred more times and then called Jenk and Lindsey back. “She won’t wake up.”

“Is she all right?” Jenkins asked, no doubt speaking softly because Lindsey had fallen asleep.

“Yeah, I think she’s just exhausted,” Izzy said, before it occurred to him to say, I don’t know. Do you think you can get Lopez to come over to check her out?

Even though all Navy SEALs had some degree of medical training, Jay Lopez was a hospital corpsman. And once Lopez was here—albeit under false pretenses—Izzy would no longer be alone in his apartment with Eden Freakin’ Gillman.

“I know this is asking a lot,” Izzy said instead, “but could you and Lindsey maybe come over? You can have my bed. I’ll go back to your place and crash on your—”

“Zanella.” Jenk cut him off. “Just go into your bedroom and close the door. Go to sleep. If you’re even half as tired as I am—”

“Yeah, see, that’s just it,” Izzy said. “I’m not. I didn’t spend the last hour perfecting my technique of Palm Tree in High Wind from page seventy-five of the Kama Sutra, with my incredibly sexy wife.”

“Go to sleep,” Jenk said again. “If Eden wakes up—which she probably won’t before morning—call us then, okay? If you need to. Which you won’t, because she won’t wake up, all right?”

“What happened to are you out of your freaking mind ?” Izzy asked. “Gillman’s gonna—”

“I’ll tell him you went above and beyond, trying to find a place for her to stay that wasn’t your apartment,” Jenk promised. “He’ll be cool with that. I’ll make sure of it. He’ll thank you.”

Gillman would thank him—as a trio of pigs singing “Lean on Me” in perfect harmony flew past Izzy’s apartment window.

He hung up the phone and called Lopez. Who didn’t answer. “Fuck you,” Izzy left a cheery message on his voice mail. “I know you’re awake, Jay-Lo. It’s barely 2100 hours. Danny’s sister Eden is here and I fucking need a fucking chaperone. Call me back, douchebag.”

But Lopez never called, so Izzy finally went to bed because Jenk was right and Eden didn’t wake up.

But she was awake now. With her big brown eyes and her gorgeous legs and that errant nipple. Crying in his living room.

Izzy’s alarm clock said it was just after oh three hundred as he swung his legs out of bed. Just to go to the bathroom. He moved quietly out of his room and down the hall. He quietly took a leak and quietly flushed—and realized that there was no such thing as a quiet flush.

Sure enough, when he came back out of the bathroom, Eden was silent.

Izzy stood there for a moment, in the doorway to the living room. He should have gone back into his room and shut and locked the door. Instead, he proved that his older brothers were right. He was unbelievably stupid. He spoke into the darkness, asking her, “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, a small voice from the shadows.

Fine? “I…kinda don’t believe you,” Izzy told her.

“Well, duh,” she said, shifting to sit up on his couch. “Because I’m lying. I mean, God, nobody’s really fine. Are you all right? I’m fine. It’s like going to church and saying the responses to the prayer. It’s automatic—and meaningless. A stupid ritual.”

“I, uh, pretty much meant it,” Izzy pointed out. “You know, when I asked. You.”

“No,” she said. “Okay? No, I’m not all right. What could possibly be all right about my stupid boyfriend ditching me, and me being stupid enough to wait there, at that stupid doughnut shop, praying that he’d come back, even though I knew he was gone for good.”

A-ha. Eden had reached the anger phase of her heartbreak. Over the coming days and weeks it would cycle around—despair, sorrow, pointless what-if-ing, self-recrimination, emptiness, equally pointless hope-for-a-reconciliation, and yes, scalding anger. Shake well and repeat. Over and over.

“I knew he was a total asshole,” Eden continued, her voice shaking, “and I must be one, too, because I love him. Loved him. I don’t love him anymore, how could I still love him after what he did?” The self-recrimination mixed with sorrow and body-slammed the anger to the mat, and she started to cry again. Big time, with body-shaking sobs. But the anger wasn’t gone without a fight. “I hate him, God, I hate him—I should hate him, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Izzy said, because she seemed to want a response.

“I must be a total idiot, because he played me, right from the start, because I still can’t believe he left me there like that, like, something must’ve happened, he must be hurt or bleeding or dead because he said that he loved me. He said I was the one, only I know he’s not dead because some girls who work for Richie came into the Krispy Kreme and they told me Jerry was working for him again, too, even though he promised me that he wouldn’t go back, and they said he already has a new girlfriend, so apparently I wasn’t the one. And all I could think was thank God he’s not dead. I’m such an idiot…”

Jerry was, no doubt, Eden’s douchebag of a former boyfriend. Richie was…apparently some local LA lowlife?

During Eden’s tirade, Izzy had gone back into the bathroom to get a spare role of toilet paper because the box of tissues on the back of his toilet had been empty for about three years. He stood there now, right in front of her, holding that TP ineffectually, able to see her a little more clearly in the light from the streetlamp that shone in through the front window. Tough-as-nails Eden Gillman had buried her face in her hands and was crying her heart out.

“Hey,” he said, at a loss as to what to say, what to do. He set the roll of TP on the arm of the couch as he crouched down next to her. “He’s an asshole. Jerry is. You have every right to feel betrayed and hurt. And upset. And sad. He definitely played you, Eden, and that’s definitely…sad. But don’t put that on yourself. That’s his shit. He’s the idiot. Yeah, you missed the clues—if there even were any. Some guys are skilled and…It takes a while to, you know, recognize exactly who deserves your, you know, time.”

Listen to him. Izzy Zanella, counselor for hot teen girls. Jesus save him. This was one of those nights that made him wish he kept a scrapbook. This would be a ten-pager, for sure. Scumbag that he was, he’d devote an entire special section to that nipple that was now securely covered by the blanket.

Christ, he had to give himself double scumbag points for thinking about that while she sat there, sobbing away.

He focused. “You know, it’s good to cry,” he told her because she was fighting her tears again, trying to force herself to stop, pulling a length of paper from the roll and using it to wipe her shiny face and blow her runny nose. “Everyone needs to do it every now and then. Get all the hurt and shit out of your system. Just…go for it. Flush Jerry and Richie and all their crap away.”

She turned to look at him, with big, dark, wounded eyes in a face that was pale in the dimness. “Do you cry?” she asked.

“Well, no,” Izzy said. “Because I’m a guy and…Yo, Powderpuff, don’t be such a pushover, believing everything that comes out of everyone’s mouth. Of course I cry. I’m human, and humans cry. That’s the way it works. Anyone who tells you that they don’t cry is a liar. We get the big brains, and the emotional shit comes standard. And yeah, okay, maybe I try to work it so that I don’t cry in public—I know you’re on that train with me. But you’re not in public right now. You’re in my living room, which is private.”

A little too private, especially considering he was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts.

And yeah, now she’d noted that factoid, too, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the scar on his chest as well. It was ragged and still angry-looking—even after all this time. It was a real chick-repellent, which was why, more often than not, he kept his T-shirt on.

“That must’ve hurt,” she said, which surprised him. Most people looked but then looked away. Pretended it wasn’t there. Nothing to see, move it along…

Izzy nodded, trying not to feel self-conscious as she continued to look at him. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I tried to stop a bullet with my chest, only my superpowers weren’t working, so I kinda got shot. Hurt like a mother, if you want to know the truth. Did I cry? Hell, no. Not one tear. But I cried a shitload when I found out a friend of mine died, in that same…event. So…”

Eden met his eyes in the dimness, and Jesus H. Christ, there was that spark again. Izzy tried to look away. And failed. “He was a good man. Frank,” he told her quietly. “He deserved to be mourned, so yes, I cried.”

“Jerry doesn’t deserve it,” Eden told him vehemently, as her tears started up again. “He deserves…He’s never touching me again. Never.”

“Good plan.”

She pulled off another length of toilet paper and forcefully blew her nose. “I hate that I can’t stop crying about him.”

“You’re not crying about him,” Izzy told her. “You’re crying for you. For…lost innocence.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lost innocence? Get real. I lost my innocence when I was fourteen. Theresa Franklin’s older brother took me for a ride in his car. Of course, I didn’t exactly say no, so…”

Holy shit. “I’m not talking sex,” Izzy said. “I’m talking about…you know, love. You said Jerry told you that you were the one. And you know, maybe, in that moment when he said it? Maybe he meant it. But you believe in something different. Something bigger and…better. Something that I think most people don’t believe exists. They give up on it, you know? After they’ve lived through too many Jerries of their own.”

She was listening to him, watching him with those luminous, tear-filled eyes, and he was unable to stop himself from reaching out and pushing her sleep-tangled hair from her face.

“But see, here’s the thing,” he told her, gently using his fingers to comb out her hair. “It does exist. I’ve seen it, Eden. It’s rare, but it’s out there. So, I’m a believer, too. People like you and me, though? We’ve got to learn to stay away from the people who don’t believe in it, so they don’t rip our hearts in two.”

She closed her eyes, and the tears that welled there ran unchecked down her cheeks, and Izzy shifted closer.

He caught himself and shifted back, because, damn, that was a bad idea. He forced himself to pull his hand back, too. “It takes work. Constant training,” he said, desperately searching for a way to lighten things up, as she opened her eyes and pulled more toilet paper from the roll to wipe her face. “Because even when you get the real deal, you don’t just float along, like, on some perfect, golden river. Like, you know, All you need is love, ” he sang. “Works in theory. But in reality, if the guy you love isn’t Gandhi or Jesus?” He sang again: “All you need is love and a hefty bank account and maybe even a partial lobotomy, yat da dah-dat dah…”

That got him a watery smile. “You have a good voice.”

“I also play a mean guitar,” he told her. “But, shh, don’t tell your brother. He doesn’t know.”

“Why not?” she asked, blowing her nose again.

Izzy shrugged. “No one I work with knows. It’s just…It was the path I didn’t take. I haven’t taken my guitar out of the closet in years.”

“That’s too bad,” Eden said.

“Yeah,” Izzy agreed. “But I don’t have much time, and…” He shrugged again.

And there they sat, just looking at each other.

“That felt nice,” Eden finally said. “What you were doing. If I somehow made you think I wanted you to stop—”

“Actually,” Izzy told her, “I wanted me to stop, because, um, I kind of like you, and the last thing you need is—”

“I like you, too,” she whispered, and oh damn, the look in her eyes was unmistakable.

“You’re probably…feeling vulnerable.” Izzy couldn’t seem to work the muscles in his body that would allow him to push himself to his feet and walk away, but at least his mouth was functional. “And lonely and really, really …”

She kissed him.

She just leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.

She was both salty and sweet, soft and firm, and Izzy had to clench every cell in his body to keep from kissing her back the way he wanted to.

He could have been anybody—anyone besides Jerry, that is. Izzy tried to focus on that. Yeah, maybe Eden liked him, but this was entirely about payback. She wanted to screw Jerry, figuratively—by screwing, literally, someone who wasn’t Jerry.

He doubted it was that clear-cut-and-dried inside of Eden’s own head. It was, no doubt, mixed with a need for an exorcism of sorts. By using Izzy, she would drive the ghost of Jerry away.

Or maybe this girl who’d had her first sexual encounter when she was freaking fourteen simply didn’t know how to be friends with a guy without getting naked.

No doubt about it, it was past time to stand up, to walk away. Time to lock himself in his bedroom. To call Jenkins and scream, Help me, for the love of God, someone help me!

Instead, Izzy sat there, on the carpet in front of his couch, and let himself get kissed. He heard himself groan as Eden licked his lips, as she deepened the kiss, her sweet tongue inside of his mouth, and then she was in his arms, in his lap, wrapping herself around him, and God damn, he was so fucked. He knew what this was about, he knew it wasn’t real, and he knew that he shouldn’t be doing it for so many reasons, yet he ignited anyway, kissing her back hungrily, filling his hands with the softness of the skin beneath her shirt.

Game over. He’d lost—so to speak. Of course, on the other hand, it was also true that he’d really, really, really won.

“Please,” she breathed between soul-sucking kisses, her body soft and supple against him, as his exploring fingers found that perfect nipple he’d glimpsed earlier. “Please…”

It was more than clear what she was after—with her legs wrapped around his waist, she was rubbing herself against the hard length of him, reaching—sweet Jay-sus—between them to grab his dick—right through his shorts—and press him more precisely where she wanted him.

She moved to unfasten her shorts, and Izzy had enough brain cells still firing to recognize what a terrible, horrible, no-good idea that was. Dry humping Gillman’s little sister was one thing. Full penetration sex would send him to an entirely different, much deeper level of hell.

So he rolled her up and onto the couch, pinning her onto her back as he moved between her legs, as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. With reluctance, he let go of that nipple he’d found and reached between them, sliding his hand up the paradise-perfect smoothness of her thigh, up the leg of her shorts. He hooked his fingers beneath the edge of her bathing suit and…

Money.

No, what he’d found was better than any paycheck he’d ever received.

She was mindblowingly soft and wet and she’d gasped, too, inside of his mouth, at the contact, then shifted to push his fingers more deeply within her.

She wasn’t done trying to take off her shorts, though. “Let me—”

“Shhh,” Izzy said, capturing her mouth again as he continued to explore. His reach and movement were both limited, but…Yeah, there it was. Ah, God, he wanted in. And she wanted him, too, but…Not him. She didn’t really want him.

She was trying to guide his dick along the same route his hand had taken—which wasn’t going to work, but damn, he liked that she was willing to try. And yeah, if she kept touching him like that, even through his shorts, he was going to…

He shifted his hand, only slightly, but his move made for a bull’s-eye, and Eden exploded. She just went right over the edge.

And Izzy went, too. Right in his boxers. Gahhhhhhd. …

He lay there then, on top of her, catching his breath, as she tried to catch hers, as well.

But then he realized that her ragged breathing wasn’t going to end anytime soon. She was crying again.

No doubt because payback sex never really worked to make anyone feel better. It was designed to hurt the payee, but the payer usually got slammed in the process.

As for the payer’s partner…?

He was the one who usually walked away unscathed. Yet Izzy was lying there, wondering how the fuck had he let this get so totally out of control, and feeling not just uncomfortably damp, but extremely scathed.

Beating a hasty retreat to the bathroom seemed like a smart option—but it meant deserting Eden, who had gone full circle and was back to despair.

So Izzy lifted himself off of her and gathered her into his arms so that she was spooned against him, there on the couch. “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “It’s going to be okay…”

Although, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how.

SMALLWOOD , KANSAS

Dave woke up early, the morning after the AmLux invasion. He hadn’t brought workout gear because the hotel out here in this timewarp back to 1981 didn’t have a health club. Truth was, it barely had beds. It did have what the proprietor called a continental breakfast starting at 0600—provided “continental” meant stale pastries and coffee that smelled as if it had been brewed with insecticide.

He beat the hotel staff to the alcove where the food was being served, waiting while two very slow-moving elderly women unwrapped what looked like bagels and croissants. Looked like but were not—a fact Dave had learned the hard way during yesterday’s morning meal. They were, in fact, faux versions—food-like, but not quite food. The bread that granny one and granny two put out for toast was slightly more real, so Dave popped two slices into the toaster.

He was standing there, caught up in making a massive decision—peanut butter or strawberry jam—when Nash came through the hotel’s front doors.

“Hey,” Dave called to him, and Nash stopped short, clearly surprised and a little put-off at seeing him there.

“Hey.” Nash glanced at the elevators, as if gauging his escape, but then came toward Dave—or maybe just toward the coffee. “You’re up early.”

“My room doesn’t have a bed,” Dave informed the taller man, who poured himself a cup. “It has a bowl that’s bed-shaped. My back’s already spasming, so…”

“I hear you,” Nash said. He looked tired, and even slightly pale, his jacket still zipped up tight despite the hotel lobby’s heat. And yet he still managed to look like a movie star. “I don’t sleep well without Tess.”

It was more likely that Nash didn’t sleep, period without Tess Bailey, his fiancée.

“Is there something going on that I need to know about?” Dave asked.

Nash didn’t stop reaching for a lid for his coffee cup. He didn’t telegraph anything at all. No guilt, no nothing. His smile was completely natural as he glanced at Dave. “That’s the problem with you former CIA types. You see spooks and monsters in every shadow.”

Dave took the plunge and spread strawberry jam on his toast. “Yeah, well, I saw you leaving the hotel last night around 0200.”

Nash laughed with a flash of his perfect, white teeth. “See what I mean? I got up at sunrise, Malkoff. I went to take a walk because I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know who you thought you saw, but it wasn’t me.”

With his coffee in his hand, Nash turned toward the elevator.

And Dave realized that he’d just been conned by a master. He reached out and caught Nash by the arm—the arm that he’d kept close to his body throughout their entire conversation, elbow pressed against his side…

“Ow—Christ!”

Sure enough, Dave’s hand came away smeared with Nash’s blood.

As one of the breakfast grannies toddled out of the kitchen, Dave grabbed Nash by the jacket and hustled him over to the elevator. It wasn’t until they were safely inside, the door closed behind them that Dave dared to look at Nash. “Maybe we should try this again. Is there something going on that I need to know about?”

Nash let his head thump back against the grimy, once-elegant wall, no longer trying to hide from Dave the fact that he was in some serious pain. “No,” he said quietly. “There’s something going on that you can’t know about. Decker can’t either.”

“How about Tess?” Dave couldn’t peel Nash’s jacket back from him—not here. The elevator probably still had security cameras in place.

Nash shook his head. “Especially not Tess. I’m okay. Really. It’s just a ding.”

“Just a ding.” Dave had once heard Nash describe a stab wound from a KA-BAR knife as “just a ding.”

“Yeah.” The elevator opened on the third floor—Nash’s floor—and Dave helped him out and over to his room, taking his cup of coffee from him. Nash’s key card was smeared with blood, and he wiped it on his pants before pushing it into the slot. “I’m here, I’m okay, and now I need you to walk away.”

“I’m sure you think you’re okay,” Dave agreed. “But either I come in with you, or I go get Deck.”

Nash no doubt would have stood there and argued, but another of the hotel’s patrons came out of his room at the end of the hall, briefcase in hand, ready to start his day here in the land of corn.

Dave pushed Nash inside a room that was a mirror opposite of his own, but identical in every other way. Desk by the window. Absurdly uncomfortable plaid easy-chair with atrociously matching ottoman. Big mirror on the wall across from a king-sized bed-bowl—that was still neatly made up.

So okay, not identical in every other way…

The door closed with a thunk behind them, as Nash looked from Dave to the bed and back. “Busted,” he said.

“Yeah,” Dave said wryly as he put Nash’s coffee cup down on the desk. “You didn’t sleep in here last night. That’s my big clue that something’s going on. First aid kit?”

It wasn’t just a ding, because Nash gave in, far too quickly. “In the front zipper section of my duffle,” he directed Dave as he winced his way out of his jacket.

“Dear God,” Dave said. The entire side of Nash’s shirt was bright red with blood.

“Relax,” Nash said. “The bullet was spent.”

Bullet? “You were shot ?” Dave clarified.

Nash unbuttoned his shirt as he went into the bathroom, leaning toward the mirror to examine what looked like an angry entry wound, just above his right hip. “It hurts,” he announced, “but it’s just a .22.”

“Oh, good.” Dave brought him that first aid kit. “Because if it were a .45, you’d probably be dead. What the hell happened, James?”

Nash met his eyes in the mirror as he thoroughly washed his hands. With his dark hair tousled and his leading-man chin sporting GQ -quality stubble, even with fatigue and pain lining his face, he looked like he should have been on some Hollywood producer’s short list of candidates to play the next James Bond. “Nothing happened. I was in my room all night.”

Dave gazed steadily at this man—this very, very dangerous man—that he couldn’t quite call friend. “I know you don’t like me—”

“I like you fine,” Nash told him as he fished through the kit, finding and opening a pill bottle—antibiotics. He took one out, washing it down with tequila from a bottle that was sitting out on the bathroom counter. He dug back in the kit, then unwrapped what looked like a medical version of pliers. “I used to not like you, but you kinda grew on me. Especially after you saved Decker’s life.”

“Ah,” Dave said, as Nash shifted to sit on the sink counter, so he could clearly see his bullet wound in the mirror. Was he really intending to remove that bullet himself? Although Nash was right about it being spent.

Fortunately, Nash had been at the very far end of the range of the handgun that this bullet had been fired from, which was why it hadn’t blasted a hole through him. Instead, most of its energy “spent,” it had lodged in the fleshy part of his side. It was close to the surface and would be easy to remove.

Relatively easy to remove—compared to a bullet that wasn’t spent.

Significantly harder, compared to a splinter.

“I didn’t realize we’d, um, moved into a new phase in our relationship,” Dave continued. “I mean, you don’t really know me, so—”

“I know you well enough,” Nash told him. “Enough to know that you wish you were me. Or Decker. Probably Decker more than me, right?”

There was no point in answering that. Nash was just baiting him, trying to make Dave be the one who was flustered and defensive.

Except Dave wasn’t the one with a bullet wound after being—mysteriously—out all night.

Nash winced as he pulled back the raw flesh from around that entry wound, trying to widen the angry-looking hole, and succeeding only in making it bleed more. “If you were Decker, you’d sweep Sophia off her feet.”

Keep Sophia out of this. Dave clenched his teeth around the words. No point in responding to the fact that Nash had leaped on Dave’s button with both feet. At the same time, he glanced at his watch. It was nearly 0630, which was a personal record. He’d actually gone almost twenty minutes without thinking about the ethereally beautiful blond woman who thought of Dave as her best friend.

Yeah, Dave and Sophia were tight—in a purely platonic way. Tight enough so that Sophia had often used him as a sounding board, to discuss the fact that she was hung up on Lawrence Decker, who relentlessly kept her at arm’s length.

But Nash wasn’t done with his attempt to piss Dave off. “Or maybe you’d settle for being me. You could give Tess to Decker and then sweep Sophia off her feet.”

In the world according to Nash, Decker had a thing for Nash’s fiancée. And yes, there was a time when Dave, too, had suspected Deck had feelings for Tess, but that was long past. These days, Decker seemed to be made of stone. If he felt anything for anyone, he hid it well. And as for Nash…

“Believe me,” Dave told Nash evenly, “I have no desire to be you.”

“Really,” Nash countered. “With Sophia in your bed, and Decker as your new best friend…? You’d all live happily ever after. Well, except for Tess, who for some reason really does love me. Arrrgh.” He’d tried and failed to get the bullet with that tool, and let loose a string of curses.

“And yet,” Dave pointed out as he took the surgical instrument from Nash—it would be much easier for him to get the bullet out from this angle, “when you’re not home with Tess, you stay out all night—doing something dangerous that gets you shot.”

“And yet, I do,” Nash agreed, as Dave clenched his teeth and went for it. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!”

The bullet clattered in the sink, and, cursing a blue streak, Nash swiftly washed out the wound with antiseptic soap that Dave knew had to sting like hell. He then pressed a clean hand towel against his side to stanch the fresh flow of blood, his face tight and pale.

Dave washed his hands off in the tub, scrubbing his nails clean. “You need stitches. Old buddy old pal.”

“Yeah,” Nash agreed, moving to sit on the closed commode—another sign that he was in worse pain than he was letting on. He grabbed the tequila bottle, took another long slug. “But I’m good. I can—”

“That was a statement,” Dave pointed out. “Not a question or a request. Either I can help you with the stitches or Decker can.”

“Then go get him,” Nash said hotly, even as Dave unwrapped a sterile needle and thread. “Because I am not going to have you holding this over me for the rest of my life. But when you do go get him? Be ready for him to die. What he doesn’t know is keeping him alive. Do you understand?”

“No,” Dave said as he crouched next to Nash and began stitching him up, as he wasn’t particularly careful to not make it hurt.

“Ouch! Ow! Shit! ”

“I don’t understand. Not at all,” Dave said. “You’ve got plenty of friends—”

“Who can’t fix this,” Nash told him through clenched teeth. “They can’t, but they’ll try, and then they’ll die, too.”

“Too?” Dave asked, as he tied off the thread.

Nash just shook his head, his face clenched with pain that was only partly from the wound in his side. He closed his eyes as Dave bandaged him, far more gently this time. “Dave. Please. I’m asking you to…Christ, I’m asking you to help me, okay?”

“No, you’re not.” Bandage secure, Dave washed his hands again. “In fact, you’re asking me to not help you.” He took the bottle from Nash’s hands. “And speaking of not helping —”

“Careful, I feel myself slipping back to actively not liking you.”

Dave put the bottle on the counter and pulled Nash up and into the other room. Still holding tightly to the bigger man, he yanked the cover from the bed, and knocked some of the multitude of pillows to the floor. “Our flight home’s not until noon. I’ll take your key and come back and wake you at nine-thirty.”

“Thank you,” Nash said, as he sank back into the bed. “Malkoff…”

“This never happened. I wasn’t here. You didn’t go anywhere. I got it,” Dave reassured him. “But if you ever change your mind…”

Nash shook his head and closed his eyes.

Dave let himself out of the room, closing the door tightly behind him.

DALTON , CALIFORNIA

Hannah woke up on the living room floor, a pillow from the couch beneath her head, the fleece blanket she used when she read late into the night draped over her.

The house was still. Empty.

She sat up fast and the blood rushed out of her head, which was already feeling fragile from all the Johnny Walker she’d had last night—even before Murphy had arrived.

But falling over was not an option, and Hannah pushed herself to her feet. God. The sunlight streaming in the window was too bright and cheery, and she squinted against the sensation of knives to her brain as she looked out at the driveway.

Murphy’d either found his keys or he’d hot-wired his truck. Either way it was gone—and he was, too.

Apprehensive, Hannah turned to her uncle’s gun case, her head throbbing and her bad ankle shaky and weaker than usual. The glass door was locked, and she moved toward it as quickly as she could, counting…

They were all there. She counted again. Three hunting rifles and two sidearms. One big-ass shotgun to complete the collection.

Murph hadn’t taken a weapon with him when he’d left—which didn’t mean he still didn’t intend to hurt himself. A man could do a lot of damage behind the wheel of a pickup truck.

He hadn’t left a note, but that was his MO. He’d appear and disappear. It was nothing new.

The sex, however, had been shockingly new. But it was a mistake that they’d both acknowledged and apologized for. It wouldn’t happen again.

Yeah, it wouldn’t happen again, because this time? Hannah seriously doubted that Vinh Murphy was ever coming back.

Last night, Hannah had lost him as a friend—as absolutely as she’d lost Angelina to a gunman’s bullet all those years ago.

She didn’t have a phone that she could use, let alone a cell—not that it would work up here—so she couldn’t even text message him. With no Internet access, e-mail wasn’t an option, either. Unless she went into Dalton, the nearest little town—twenty-five miles away and little was a generous description—to use the computer at the public library…

Head throbbing so badly it was making her eyes water—yeah, that was why tears were running down her face—Hannah stripped the sheets from her bed and stuffed them into her washing machine.

The last of the Johnny Walker was still open on her bedside table. Instead of putting the top back on, she took the bottle with her into the bathroom and poured it down the sink.

And then she climbed into the shower, to get cleaned up for one of her rare forays back to civilization.

SAN DIEGO , CALIFORNIA

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

Eden woke up with a start, and then a flood of alarm as she realized someone’s arms—someone significantly bigger than Jerry—were wrapped tightly around her.

She fought to get free, and whoever he was released her almost immediately and she rolled off the edge of the bed and onto the floor.

Couch—it was a couch that she’d been sleeping on, pressed tightly up against the SEAL whose nickname was Izzy. She remembered it now.

All of it.

Dear Lord.

He loomed over her, concern on his face as he tried to help her up.

Whoa, he was jacked. Standing next to him, her dirtwad of an ex-boyfriend, Jerry, would have looked anemic. Even Danny would look skinny, which was saying something. Izzy was built kind of like the Rock, hard muscled and lean, only bigger. His bare chest was marked by a scar that looked even more angry in the daylight. I tried to stop a bullet with my chest, only my superpowers weren’t working, so I kinda got shot.

God. Eden couldn’t imagine being able to joke about something like that. Yet Izzy had a joke or a flip comment about nearly everything.

And while he wasn’t handsome, not by a long shot, not like Jerry or even her brother, both of whom were prettier than she was, there was something about Irving Zanella’s quick smile. There was something, too, that gleamed in his dark eyes—amusement or intelligence or probably both—that made him good-looking. Charismatic. That was the word for him.

He had crazy charisma.

He was also crazy attracted to her. Eden had been around the block enough times to recognize that look in a man’s eyes. Not that there weren’t other obvious signals for her to read. Izzy was wearing only boxer shorts, after all. He realized it, too, and quickly sat down on the couch.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice thick from sleep.

“Hi.” Great, she was blushing as she tried to rearrange her shirt and her shorts. Her bathing suit top was completely twisted, the two triangles of fabric practically beneath her arms. She turned slightly away from him and…

Bang bang bang!

They both jumped—Izzy to his feet again.

“Zanella! Open the door! I know you’re home—I know Eden’s in there, too!”

Oh crap, it was her brother. Eden turned to Izzy. “You spoke to Danny?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I swear, I…Oh, fuck me.” He met her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry, I…This is my fault. I called both Jenk and Lopez last night. I didn’t want to be alone with you, because…well, hello. Look what we did.” He shook his head. “What I did. It was all my fault. I took advantage of you, you know that, right?”

“Zanella! I swear to God, I’m going to kick down this door!”

“Hold on, asshole,” Izzy shouted. “I’ll be right there.” He looked back at Eden. “You ready for this?” he asked her. “Because if you’re not, I’ll stall him. You can go into the bathroom—shower if you want. I’ll go out with Danny and get bagels or something for breakfast. Bring ’em back…”

Eden looked into his eyes as the buzzer rang again. He was serious. “You didn’t take advantage of me,” she told him, as she once again started to cry. God, God, was she ever going to stop? She reached for the roll of toilet paper he’d so gallantly brought her last night. “I took advantage of you. I thought it would help, but…”

“Yeah, well,” he said as he headed for his bedroom. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m more than a few years older than you. I’ve been around long enough to know what was going on inside your head—and to know that what we did last night absolutely wasn’t going to help.”

He peeled off his boxers before he’d even gotten out of her line of sight and…Wow. Nice…tattoo. Eden quickly turned around, afraid that he’d catch her staring, suddenly aware that up to this point, nearly all of the men in her life had been mere boys.

“I’m the bad guy here,” Izzy said, coming back out, wearing a pair of cargo shorts, yanking a T-shirt down over his messy hair. “Okay?”

Eden opened her mouth to argue, but outside, the last of Danny’s patience evaporated. Bang bang bang!

“I just want to get this over with,” she told Izzy. “If that’s okay with you.”

Izzy nodded, forcing a smile that softened the hard planes and angles of his face and made him look both younger and almost handsome. Almost. “It’s your call,” he told her. “But…maybe you should go into the bathroom while I get the door. I’ll make sure he’s alone, while you get, you know, cleaned up.”

Crap, she hadn’t even thought that Danny might not have come here alone. Her mother was the last person on earth she wanted to see right now. No, strike that. Greg, her wicked stepfather, won that honor. “Thanks,” she said, heading for the bathroom.

“Hey, Eden.”

She stopped and looked back at Izzy.

“Jerry’s a tool,” he told her. “Totally. I know, because I’m…kinda one, too. It’s that old takes-one-to-know-one thing.” He paused, looking down at the floor, and when he looked back up, his eyes were serious, yet somehow softer, too. “You can do way better than the both of us.”

Izzy turned toward the front door before she could respond, and she ran into the bathroom as he let her brother inside. She locked the bathroom door behind her, heart pounding, uncertain as to exactly what her response to Izzy should have been.

You can do better was classic asshole guy-speak. In her experience, it meant last night was so great that I could imagine us hooking up again, and yeah, even making it something of a regular thing, but I’m afraid that’ll make you read more into it than there is, so even though I want to do you again, I’m going to end it now while we’re both clear that what we shared was just a one-night stand.

Message received. Loud and clear.

One glance at herself in the bathroom mirror, and Eden knew why Izzy had sent her in here.

She was disheveled, with her hair all crazy around her face, and she hadn’t quite managed to cover her boobs completely with her bathing suit top.

And her eyes were filled nearly to overflowing with tears.

“I can do better,” she said into the mirror, but the bedraggled and mournful-looking girl looking back at her didn’t seem convinced.

There was only one way to tame her hair when it got like this.

Eden turned on Izzy’s shower, stripped out of the clothes she’d worn now for going on three days straight and stepped under the still-cold spray.

This all still seemed surreal, like she’d go back out into the living room to discover that Jerry had come looking for her. He’d be there with Danny, and he’d get down on his knees and beg her to forgive him.

“Screw you and anyone who looks like you,” Eden practiced saying as the water blasted down on her head. Because some things, although eventually forgiven, should never be forgotten.

Like coming out of that ladies’ room to find both the doughnut shop and the parking lot empty. At first she’d been bewildered. The usually busy street had been deserted, too, not even the taillights of Jerry’s ancient Mustang fading in the distance, the traffic light on the corner switching from green to red and back again, as if regulating a parade of ghost cars.

She’d stood there, with her cell phone still in her purse—which was on the floor of the front seat of Jerry’s car—and the truth had crashed down around her. Jerry had somehow found out about that night that Richie’d come over. He’d probably gone to Richie to confront him—and had ended up believing whatever bullshit Richie had told him. Jerry hadn’t even bothered to get Eden’s side of the story—not that he’d believe her. He’d simply ditched her. At a Krispy Kreme.

Eden hadn’t cried at the time—she’d been too numb.

And then she’d gotten scared. Maybe Jerry hadn’t believed Richie. Maybe he’d got into a fight with the older man and gotten jumped by Richie’s squad of thugs. Maybe Jerry was injured or, God no, dead.

She’d gone inside and sat at a table by the window until long after dawn, praying that Jerry would come back for her, with his quicksilver smile and his infectious laughter, saying, “TCB, baby. TCB.”

For as long as she’d known him, Jerry was always taking care of business, looking to get rich quick, which in the past had meant working for people who skated around the letter of the law. But after last month’s close call with the police, he’d promised Eden to stay on the straight and narrow. To stay away from Richie for good.

With his extreme hottie-factor, Eden had thought Jerry had a serious chance of becoming a movie star. That was why she’d followed him from Vegas to LA in the first place—with the intention of learning how to be his makeup artist.

They were going to get an apartment of their own—not just housesit for Jerry’s brother, who was in Iraq. They were maybe even going to get married.

Except Jerry’s promises had been nothing more than lies. You’re the one, you’re my sweet garden of Eden…

She helped herself to some of Izzy’s shampoo, lathering up her hair. It smelled good. Like he did. Well, not so much like he’d smelled when she’d first met him, in the bar. But last night, when he’d sat with her, stroking her hair, his hand so gentle…

You can do better.

Donnell and Jessilyn—two girls who worked the street off and on for Richie—had come into the Krispy Kreme in the morning, still dressed from the evening before. They told her that Jerry wasn’t dead—and Eden had actually been relieved. But then they’d told her that he was back on Richie’s payroll, hanging out at his gated estate, with—and this one had really hurt—his brand new girlfriend Tiffany.

Jerry already had a new girlfriend named Tiffany.

Eden had known then that he wasn’t ever coming back. He’d chosen Richie and his so-called easy money over her. But she didn’t cry—no way would she give Jerry the satisfaction of hearing that she’d broken down in the Krispy Kreme. It was bad enough that he’d find out she’d still been waiting there, hours after he’d left her.

While they were talking, Donnell had gotten a phone call from a client who needed an emergency massage—yeah, right—down in Laguna Beach. It was on the way to San Diego, so Eden had hitched a ride, borrowing Donnell’s cell phone to make a few long-distance calls of her own, putting into place a plan B she’d been considering back before Jerry first bounced into her life.

It had taken her the entire rest of the day to hitch a ride from Laguna—using her thumb this time—out to Coronado. Then she’d walked to the Ladybug Lounge, where she knew her brother Danny often went after hours.

Not that she thought he’d be happy to see her or anything.

As Eden turned off the shower and stepped out of the tub, she could hear the rumble of male voices from the living room. Danny—staccato, higher pitched with anger. Izzy—lower and slower, then suddenly crazy loud: “Show your sister some respect, asshole! You get the fuck out of here if you’re going to talk about her like that!”

Oh, God. Self-proclaimed tool that Izzy was, he was also one of the nicest guys she’d ever met. He was certainly the nicest guy that she’d ever slept with. And now, because of her, he was going to mix it up with her brother. Who, for all his Boy Scout attitude, for all of his honors and medals and awards, didn’t fight fair.

Eden pulled her clothes on over her still-damp body, and jerked open the bathroom door.

Sure enough, Danny and Izzy were facing off across his coffee table, bristling at each other like a pair of dogs, ready to go for each other’s throats.

“Don’t you dare!” she said.

They both turned and looked at her and she realized that she probably wouldn’t have recognized her brother if they’d passed on the street.

His hair was longer than he’d ever worn it, and he had a full mustache and a scruffy beard. Which meant he’d probably been spending a lot of time recently in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fact that he hadn’t shaved upon his return to CONUS meant he was probably scheduled—soon—to go back.

Her chest clenched and her anger deflated because the truth was that, despite the fact that they’d never gotten along, she loved and admired her older brother. Unfortunately, he couldn’t say the same about her.

And sure enough, as Danny gazed back at her, he radiated impatience and disgust and frustration, letting her know that, once again, she had completely screwed up his day.

No, make that his week, month, probably even year.

“Eden. Jesus Christ. Do you have any idea how worried everyone has been?”

“Hi, Danny,” she said, chin high, voice steady. And the Oscar goes to Eden Gillman. “Nice to see you, too.”

C HAPTER

F OUR

A LIFETIME AGO …

JANUARY 2001

FRESNO , CALIFORNIA

Hannah was drunk.

Murphy could tell, from the way she was sitting at her kitchen table. And if her posture hadn’t given it away, the array of empty beer bottles in front of her certainly would’ve provided the necessary clue.

“Hey,” she said, turning to greet him.

“Hey.”

“Angelina borrowed my car and went to the grocery store,” Hannah told him. “She’s going to make dinner. I was kind of out of everything.” She laughed. “Except beer. Which I’m also now out of.”

“Ah,” Murphy said.

“It’s okay.” Hannah kicked a chair back from the table for him with one of her big clunky boots. She still dressed like she lived in Alaska—cargo pants with legs that zipped off into shorts, boots, tank top. “She told me what happened last night—not like it’s a big surprise.”

“It kind of was to me,” he admitted as he sat down. “I didn’t come here, expecting…” He shook his head. “She’s, um, really something. I just…um…”

“It’s okay, you know that? Right?” Hannah said.

“Is it?” Murphy asked.

She nodded. “Absolutely.” But she was unable to hold his gaze, and started peeling the label from her beer bottle. “I love you, man. You know that. I’m happy that…you’re happy. I am.”

“It’s not like we’re getting married,” Murphy pointed out. “It’s just…She’s great, and…”

“You wanted to do her,” Hannah finished for him. “You and the entire male population of California. Do you know besides the two years she went to camp in Montana, she’s never traveled out of state? I’ve been trying, for years, to get her to come to Juneau.”

“I’ll get her to come,” Murph said.

Hannah looked at him. “Heh-heh,” she said à la Beavis and Butthead, and he cracked up.

“Mind out of the gutter, Whitfield. God.” It was possible that he was blushing. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. I was just kidding.” She turned to face him. “Honestly, bwee, I know she comes on strong, but she’s…She really hasn’t been with that many guys. Don’t mess with her if you’re not serious. Except you’ve already messed with her, so…”

“Actually, I haven’t,” Murphy said. “I mean, yeah, we kissed last night, but…I would never…In your apartment…?”

“Really?” Hannah said.

Murph nodded. “Han. Come on. How long have you known me?”

Hannah laughed and finished off her beer. “She made it sound as if…” She put her bottle down. “Do you know she once got the girls at camp to give her a necklace with a diamond pendant? It’s not stealing, she told me, if you get them to give it to you.” She laughed again. “Freaking amazing.”

Murphy wasn’t sure what she was trying to tell him. “If you don’t want me to see her—”

“You’ll have to blindfold yourself, because she’s pulling up right now.”

Sure enough, Murphy, too, could hear the unmistakable sound of Hannah’s car’s near-death-rattle.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “And you know it.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said. “But who am I to tell you what to do?”

“You’re my best friend,” he told her. “Say the word, and I’ll walk away.”

“From the first woman in, like, fifty years that you’ve been even remotely interested in?” she countered.

“Fifty years is kind of an exaggeration,” Murphy pointed out. He was barely thirty.

“She’s completely into you,” Hannah told him. “Totally, absolutely into you. And from what she told me, the attraction is mutual.”

“She’s an extremely beautiful woman,” Murphy agreed.

“And she’s intelligent and fun to be with,” Hannah added.

“I just always thought,” Murphy started, but then stopped.

“That the perfect little blond Republican chick from West Wing —”

“Ainsley,” Murphy supplied the name.

“Right. That she’s going to knock on your door wearing an apron and nothing else?” Hannah scoffed at him. “Don’t be a fool. Perfection is relative, by the way.”

Murphy shook his head. “I don’t see you going out with that guy Mike.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Oh, good, let’s make this be about me.”

“I’m just saying.”

“One of the many—might I add another many —reasons I haven’t gone out with Mike,” Hannah told him tartly, “is because I happen to be in love with someone else.” She looked aghast, as if she’d just let slip a state secret. “Just forget it, Murph—”

But Murphy had to push. “Diaz?” Last night, Angelina had told him she thought Hannah might be interested in one of the younger cops she worked with.

Hannah looked surprised. “Who? No.” She laughed. “Can I just say Ew ? I mean, nice guy, but…Ew.”

“So, who?”

She rolled her eyes and gave him a rather obvious lie. “This…guy from college. So just…don’t ask.”

Murphy didn’t believe her, and selected the least likely candidate from all of her college friends. “You mean Bennie, Bernie—what was his name?”

Hannah laughed. “Yeah. It’s Bernie. Okay? I’m pathetically in love with a guy who thought lighting his farts was more entertaining than watching the Aurora Borealis. Woe is me.”

Murphy laughed, too, pushing all of her empty beer bottles into a line on the table. “That is pretty woeful,” he agreed.

She got serious. “Let it go,” she said quietly.

He nodded. And changed the subject only marginally. “How come I didn’t know about this?” he asked.

“Because I don’t share everything with you,” she told him.

“Yes, you do.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t. For example, I didn’t tell you that I’ve got, like, a period from hell. Like, change my pad every hour, with menstrual cramps that make me want to curl up on the floor in a fetal position.”

“Point and match,” Murphy said.

“It’s why I’m drinking all this beer,” she pushed it. “It actually helps the cramps. Not so much with the massive bleeding though.”

“Great,” he said. “I get it. Thanks.”

She leaned across the table, toward him. “Murph, do you like her?”

She was talking about Angelina.

“I do,” he admitted. “Very much. I just…I don’t want to screw things up between us, you know? You and me. I mean, if it doesn’t work out…”

“What if it does?” Hannah said, her eyes such a striking mix of green and blue as she gazed at him with such conviction. “What if all you need to do to be wildly happy is just take that chance, that risk?”

And Murphy did it. He took that chance, and he leaned forward, his hand under Hannah’s chin and…

He kissed her.

Her mouth was soft and so sweet and she tasted not of beer, but of Johnny Walker and then, God, he was pulling her down, on top of him, rolling over, her legs wrapped around him and he fumbled with his pants and then—

Murphy opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the overcast grayness of the morning sky. He was in the back of his truck and the air was cold, but he’d burrowed beneath some old blankets that he’d thrown back there.

A dream. It was only a dream. About Hannah, not Angelina, which was different, but still made him cry.

It hadn’t happened that way—the way that he’d dreamed it. He hadn’t kissed Hannah, not ever. Not once in all of the years he’d known her, in all the years they’d been friends.

Not until earlier tonight.

Murphy searched beneath the blankets for the bottle of Bacardi 151 that he kept for precisely this type of emergency—when he found himself excessively cognizant.

He fumbled in his jacket, too, for the pill bottle he carried there, shaking two of the little rounded tablets into his hand. He washed them down with the rum, and sure enough, in a very short amount of time, his world faded back to black.

JANUARY 2008

SAN DIEGO , CALIFORNIA

There was a woman standing in the Troubleshooters office waiting room.

She was either military or law enforcement—Decker guessed it right away, first from her short hairstyle and then from her posture. Former military or law enforcement, he quickly realized. She was leaning on a cane.

Her manner of standing also screamed I don’t want to be here, which was often the case with clients, particularly when they first walked in.

This woman was younger than most people who sought help from Troubleshooters Incorporated—maybe in her late twenties—and tall. About as tall as Deck was, which made her tall for a woman, but not particularly tall for a man. She was solidly built, too, but not as solid as he was. He, however, wasn’t built quite as poetically—a fact that was apparent despite this woman’s efforts to keep her inspiring curves concealed. She was wearing a loose T-shirt and cargo pants, running shoes on her feet.

Not that she was doing much running these days. Not with that cane.

Tracy, the firm’s receptionist, had gone out to dinner with some of the other women in the office, and she’d left a sign on her desk saying Back At 1830. It was Thursday—the one night a week they kept evening hours.

As Decker approached the young woman, she was looking at her watch, checking to see what time it was, and apparently didn’t hear him coming.

So he spoke up. “May I help you?”

She turned away without answering, leaning heavily on her cane as she headed for the door.

Okay, so that was odd. “Are you looking for Tracy?” Decker tried. And again, nothing. She didn’t even look up.

In fact, she would’ve just walked out the door, if Dave Malkoff hadn’t picked that exact moment to rush in and nearly knock her over, dumping his Coffee Coolatta down the front of her shirt.

“Shit! Sorry! Sorry !” he said, catching her and taking the situation securely from bad to worse, as he attempted to wipe his coffee slushee from her chest. “I didn’t see you there and—”

“Dave,” Decker said sharply.

“Oh! God!” Dave realized what he was doing and went from embarrassed to mortified. “I’m so, so sorry…”

She had come to life. “I’m sorry,” she said over him, shaking clumps of frozen coffee from her sneaker, even as she folded one arm across her upper body in self-defense. “My fault. I’m not moving too quickly these days. Do you work here?”

Dave was on the verge of blushing himself into spontaneous combustion. He, too, had been slimed profusely, and he tried to wipe his hands even as he surveyed the damage done not just to the two of them, but also to the floor and even the walls. “I do,” he said, with the additional grimace of a man who knew he was going to be using a mop in the very near future. But then he focused his full attention back on the client. “I’m really sorry—”

“It’s all right,” she cut him off. “Do you know where I can find Lawrence Decker?”

And now, as Deck watched, Dave ricocheted into an even weirder dimension, because there Decker was, standing right there, behind her, in the waiting room. Which was where this young woman had come from. He looked at Deck questioningly, even as he answered her. “You haven’t met Decker…?”

He pointed, and she turned, looking at Decker, and Dave kept on talking. “Do you want to get cleaned up? We have a locker room in the back. I’ll scrounge up a T-shirt and maybe some shorts that—”

“I’m Hannah Whitfield.” She spoke right over Dave, holding out her hand to Decker, but then pulling it back as she realized she was sticky. “I’m sorry, is there maybe someplace I can get cleaned up?”

Deck looked over her shoulder at Dave, who’d stopped talking and was looking as perplexed as Deck was feeling. They were both jet-lagged from the flight home from the AmLux job, true, but this was just plain bizarre.

Hannah turned to look at Dave, too. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Were you still speaking?”

And Decker got it. Big eureka. Hannah Whitfield was deaf. She lip-read, but if someone spoke to her when her back was turned—the way he had when he’d first spotted her by the receptionist desk—she would have no clue that he was talking to her. Or that he was even there.

Decker moved to stand next to Dave, because how freaking hard did that have to be—standing between the two of them, unsure who was going to speak next, looking back and forth as if she were playing monkey in the middle.

“Thanks,” she said. “Most people don’t…” She was actually embarrassed. And sincerely grateful. “Thanks.”

And now Dave had it figured out, too. “Oh,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m…kind of hearing impaired.”

“We’ve got a locker room in the back,” Decker told her again, and yeah, she was definitely watching his mouth move, which was extremely odd. It gave off a hint of sex, or at least a whiff of potential sexual attraction. Which was doubly strange since he’d short-circuited that part of his brain years ago.

Hannah Whitfield wasn’t particularly pretty, but then again, she wasn’t not, with those steady eyes that were a curious mix of blue and green, and the winsome freckles that spilled across her cheeks and nose. And of course, Decker had always appreciated women who wore their hair short. He loved the vulnerable gracefulness of a slender female neck.

“I’ve got a clean T-shirt in my locker.” Dave, too, spoke clearly and slowly.

“Thanks, but I just need to rinse my hands,” she said.

“It’s down this way.” Decker turned to face her, walking backward as he led her past the individual offices. “Can I get you anything? A coffee or…?”

“No, thanks,” she said. “If I get thirsty, I’ll just suck on my shirt.”

Decker laughed—she did, too, but just briefly. Whatever had brought her here was a source of tension. He could relate. These days, working here was a source of tension, too.

“I’m so sorry,” Dave said, from behind her.

“Dave says he’s sorry,” Deck told her, stopping in front of the ladies’ room door. “Take your time. We’ll be in the conference room directly across the hall.” He pointed.

“Thanks,” she said, with another smile that made him realize he was standing there smiling foolishly at her.

As the door closed behind her Dave said, “Tess Bailey.”

Tess? What? Where?

Dave no doubt caught Deck’s massive confusion, because he paused on his way into the men’s. “Hannah reminds me of Tess,” he explained. “It’s more than just the short hair and freckles. It’s something about her manner. Like, she’s bullshit-free. What you see is what you get. A lot like Tess.”

Tess Bailey was TS Inc.’s top com-spesh—computer specialist. She was also Jimmy Nash’s fiancée. She’d gone out to dinner with some of the other women in the office, clearly upset with Nash when he’d insisted on leaving immediately for an assignment in Arizona, without taking any downtime after the AmLux job.

“I don’t really see it,” Decker lied.

“That’s right, you weren’t at the wedding,” Dave said and for one crazy second, Deck thought he’d finally lost his mind.

Tess and Nash hadn’t even set a date for their wedding yet. Had they? Jesus, Deck hadn’t been socializing with anyone at all lately, going from assignment to assignment himself, without so much as a fifteen-minute stop at the local watering hole, just to grab a beer.

Still, Nash was his second in command, and a good friend. No way would Decker miss his wedding.

“Murphy’s wedding,” Dave supplied the missing info.

Murphy’s?

“No,” Deck said. “I wasn’t there.” He’d been in Kazbekistan on a security detail. What the hell did former Troubleshooters operative Vinh Murphy’s wedding have to do with—

“That’s where I met Hannah before,” Dave told him. “I knew she looked familiar. She was a friend of, um, you know, Angelina’s.”

Angelina Murphy. Gunned down in the street during what was supposed to be an easy Troubleshooters assignment, protecting a Hollywood producer.

Deck had been the team leader of that goatfuck. Murphy had been badly injured and in intensive care himself, when Decker had gone to the hospital to break the news to him that his beloved wife hadn’t survived her brain surgery.

Jesus, that look in Murphy’s eyes when he’d realized Angelina was dead—it still haunted Decker’s dreams. Part of Murph had died along with her. And part of Decker had died that day, too. Even now, after all these years, his stomach clenched and his blood ran cold through his veins, just thinking about it. Any thaw that he might’ve imagined from Hannah’s sweet smile was instantly gone.

“I remember thinking then that Hannah reminded me of Tess,” Dave prattled on. “They even wore a similar style dress and—”

“Get cleaned up,” Decker ordered tersely, “and meet me in the conference room.”

Why Hannah Whitfield—friend of Murphy’s murdered wife Angelina—had come here today, Deck couldn’t begin to guess. But one thing he knew for sure? Whatever it was that brought her here, it was going to make his evening truly suck.

It was extremely odd—sitting here in Greene’s Grill, having dinner with Lindsey Jenkins, Tess Bailey, and Tracy Shapiro.

Although, it was hard to say exactly what was most odd. Being back in San Diego after so many months away, or having a meal with someone who wasn’t Dave Malkoff.

Sophia had stayed closely in touch with Lindsey while she was gone. The tiny Asian American woman was, without a doubt, the closest female friend that Sophia had ever had. A former detective with the LAPD, Lindsey’s petite stature was deceptive. She was one of Troubleshooters’ most skilled operators, and she could take a much bigger man to the mat, every time.

She was married to a Navy SEAL named Mark who was, in Sophia’s opinion, Lindsey’s perfect match. Which didn’t mean that Sophia wasn’t envious of her friend’s happiness. She was. But it was a good kind of envy. It was inspirational. It helped Sophia define what she wanted in a relationship, which was a change from her standard, which was knowing what she didn’t want.

The two women had talked on the phone nearly every day, even when their time zones were wildly out of sync.

But Sophia’s contact with Tracy, the Troubleshooters’ receptionist, had primarily been when she’d called in to the office. Tracy was usually too busy to say more than a quick hello before connecting her to the boss or his second in command. And Sophia’s contact with Tess Bailey had been even less frequent.

She considered Tess, Troubleshooters’ top computer specialist, to be more of a casual acquaintance. They’d been through hell together, years earlier, but hadn’t quite been able to translate that into an honest friendship when back in the real world.

As a matter of fact, Sophia’s dinner tonight was supposed to be only with Tracy and Lindsey. But Tess’s fiancé, Jim Nash, had insisted that he personally handle a problem with a client in Arizona, and despite having been out on a red cell assignment for the past three days, he was catching an immediate flight to Tucson.

Nash had kissed Tess hello and good-bye, and she grimly prepared to spend the evening in her office, attempting to catch up on paperwork.

Sophia had looked at Lindsey, who’d nodded her agreement. They couldn’t not invite Tess to come out with them.

So here Tess was—albeit quiet and moody.

Not that being quiet was a bad thing, with talkative Tracy at the table.

Tracy and Lindsey had obviously been spending time together over the past few months. In fact—miracle of miracles—some of Lindsey’s tomboy was rubbing off.

Clotheshorse Tracy was actually wearing a T-shirt and jeans. And yes, okay, the jeans were from Lucky, and the T-shirt was silk, but still. And the sandals she wore on her feet, showing off her brightly painted toenails, had only the tiniest nub of a heel.

She looked good. Happy and relaxed. And still as completely enamored of her job as Troubleshooters’ Lieutenant Uhura—as she herself referred to her position. Hailing frequencies open, Captain!

It wasn’t that long ago that nearly all of the operatives and support staff had rolled their eyes at Tracy’s ineptness. Now they weren’t sure exactly what they’d do without her.

She was upbeat and chatty and bright.

And okay, maybe—at times—a little too chatty, but there were certainly worse things.

And Sophia could relate. She could do a mean mindless babble herself when she was feeling off-balance or ill at ease.

“So I’m in the coffee room—thank you,” Tracy said, as the waiter brought their salads, “and there’s like, a guy under the table, plugging something in to the outlet down there by the wall. And I look down, and he’s on his hands and knees, you know, backing out, and it’s like, hello! It was, you know, the faded jeans thing…?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lindsey said. “Levi Strauss is my God.”

Sophia laughed her agreement. Most of the men in the Troubleshooters offices—both in San Diego and in Florida—were particularly talented when it came to wearing faded blue jeans.

Tracy continued, “And I’m thinking That’s not Decker, who ranks, like, top three greatest butts in the universe—” She cut herself off. “That’s just a fact. I’m not trying to, you know…” She shook her head, her blue eyes earnest as she leaned over and reassured Sophia, “I know you have dibs on him.”

Sophia laughed. “Dibs?” She shot a look at Lindsey, who was shaking her head in a silent Not me, I didn’t say a word …“I don’t have dibs on anyone. I don’t…dib.”

Tess, whose fiancé was Decker’s XO and best friend, seemed fascinated by the little dish of dressing that had come on her salad’s side.

“Then maybe he has dibs on you. Whatever.” Tracy was determined to finish up her story. “So it’s not Deck, and I can tell it’s not Sam or Jim—not enough leg length—or even the new guy, Ric—” She interrupted herself to ask Sophia, “Have you met Ric?”

“In Florida,” Sophia said. “Yes.”

“Be still. My heart,” Tracy said, hand on her chest.

“Have you met Ric’s wife?” Tess came alive to ask tartly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tracy brushed the thought away. “Annie. She’s very nice. No one’s doing any shoplifting here. I’m just looking, respectfully, from a distance. Isn’t this girls’ night out? Isn’t that why we didn’t invite any of the guys to dinner? So that we could talk about them?”

“I suck at being a girl,” Lindsey admitted around a mouthful of arugula. “Aside from the blue jean appreciation thing.”

“So it’s not Ric and it’s not even Tom,” Tracy continued with her story. “And I’m taking my sweet time getting my coffee, because there’s no one else there, and Mr. Blue Jeans can’t see me, so I can ogle away without getting caught, only who am I ogling?” She looked from Lindsey to Tess to Sophia, with a huge eureka in her eyes. “Dave. Malkoff. Yes, that’s right, ladies. David Malkoff has been quietly getting back into shape and he is now officially eye candy.” She speared a grape-tomato with her fork. “And I have a theory about that. I think he got in shape because he had a crush on Paulette.”

“The new UPS driver,” Tess told Sophia.

“Although he only went out with her twice,” Tracy reported.

“Dave went out with the UPS driver?” A UPS driver named Paulette ? Sophia looked at Lindsey for confirmation. Dave hadn’t mentioned anyone named Paulette to her, not even in passing. And she’d spoken to him on the phone possibly more often than she’d talked to Lindsey.

“Maybe it was three times,” Tracy mused. “I think she might’ve dumped him. It’s hard to imagine it happening the other way around.”

“I don’t know,” Tess said. “You know that old saying: Still waters run deep? Dave’s pretty deep.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Tracy said. “Come to think of it…It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a guy like Dave was totally, mindblowingly great in bed. Ooh, we should give him a makeover. There’s a nice-looking man under that Jerry Garcia hair. With the right cut, and T-shirts that actually fit him instead of—”

“This conversation is making me a little uncomfortable,” Sophia said, her words softened by her inability to keep a straight face. She could just picture Dave, out shopping with Tracy. Dear God, as Dave would say. “He’s my best friend.”

“He needs to lose the dorky reading glasses,” Tracy proclaimed. “He looks like my Great-Uncle Ivan, which is not a good thing. He should get regular glasses—progressive lenses. They would actually bring balance to him. He’s got that long face—”

“Has it occurred to you that Dave uses his appearance to blend in?” Sophia asked. “Because he wants to be ignored?”

Tracy blinked at her, then smiled. “Then someone needs to tell him not to wear those jeans anymore.”

Sophia put down her fork. Tracy wasn’t kidding—at least not entirely. The receptionist actually found Dave attractive.

“Sophia’ll tell him.” There was laughter dancing in Lindsey’s dark eyes as she turned to Sophia. “You can also ask him for us: Is he great in bed and did he heartlessly dump Paulette the UPS lady after getting into her pants. Inquiring minds need to know.”

Of course, Tracy found most men attractive. She liked men. All men. Genuinely. In all shapes and sizes. It made kind of odd sense that, after noticing the UPS driver noticing Dave, Tracy should notice him, too.

And maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Tracy to take him under her generous wing. Dave could use a good haircut.

What he couldn’t use, however, was a broken heart. And Sophia just couldn’t see a potential relationship with beautiful, vibrant, vaguely superficial Tracy ending any other way.

“At the very least,” Tracy told Sophia, “ask him to do a slow turn for you so you can check out his buns.” She smiled. “From a respectful distance, of course.”

Sophia had to laugh. “If you want to know the truth, I think Dave would appreciate the fact that we’ve spent the entire salad course of our dinner discussing his backside.” She couldn’t quite believe it herself. “So after you discovered those were Dave’s jeans…” she started.

Tracy lifted one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Are you suggesting there could be something between me and Dave Malkoff?” She shook her head. “I’m trying to move beyond Looks great in jeans as the sole attribute I look for in a new boyfriend.”

“But Dave has brains,” Tess pointed out.

“Says the woman who’s engaged to a man who looks like a movie star,” Lindsey teased.

“I wouldn’t be marrying Jimmy if he weren’t as smart as he is handsome,” Tess defended herself.

“Have you set a date?” Sophia asked, and Tess’s smile instantly became stiff. Shoot. Stupid question.

Tess shook her head and forced another smile. “Not yet.”

Lindsey saved the day by changing the subject. “Speaking of new boyfriends, Trace,” she said, as the waiter took away their salad plates. “How’d it go with the new guy?”

Tracy had a new guy? “I’ve missed a lot by being away,” Sophia said. Tracy and some new guy, Tess and Nash’s latest failure to yet again set a date for their wedding, Dave and the UPS lady…

Sophia had seen her—Paulette—this morning. She was pretty, with dark hair, and a lushly generous bosom, sparkling eyes, and a musical laugh. She looked kind of like Tracy, as a matter of fact. And she pretty much made Sophia feel like a pale, washed out, silent, and repressed wilting daffodil.

“His name’s Michael,” Tracy announced, “and he’s a first-grade teacher in Spring Valley. I met him at the rock climbing gym. He’s adorable and…We’re incredibly compatible. We love the same movies, the same bands, the same food. It’s like we’re twins separated at birth, except that would be icky, since I kind of, um, invited him back to my place. Last night.”

Lindsey was surprised. “You just met this guy!”

“I’ve known him for longer than you knew Mark when you and he first, you know,” Tracy defended herself. “Got busy.”

“Yeah,” Lindsey said. “That was stupid, too.”

Tess raised her hand. “Vice president of that club.”

“I mean, not in hindsight,” Lindsey added, “because it all worked out, but…I was lucky.”

“I was lucky, too,” Sophia said, “when I met Dimitri.”

All three women turned to look at her in surprise.

“My husband,” Sophia told Tracy.

“I know,” she said. “You just…” She glanced at Lindsey and Tess. “You never talk about him. Ever.”

“He was perfect,” Sophia said. “A lot like you described Michael. At first, I didn’t believe he was for real. And he wasn’t. Not totally. He didn’t really like red wine, or…Well. It took him a while to admit that he didn’t love everything I loved. But he wasn’t lying about being in love with me, which was pretty instantaneous when we first met. For both of us. So…it can happen. And I’m glad, now, that I didn’t wait a single minute.”

Tracy, Lindsey and Tess were silent.

Way to kill a dinner conversation—by talking about her dead husband.

The waiter, of course, delivered their meals, placing heaping plates of food in front of them.

“Bon appétit,” he said.

But there they sat. Not eating.

Lindsey reached across the table and took Sophia’s hand. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you to lose him.”

“It was a nightmare,” Sophia said. Literally. She took a deep breath. “I think this is why I don’t talk about him because it’s…too hard to process, you know? I know you worry about Mark, when he goes to Afghanistan or Iraq…” She looked across the table at Tess, who clearly worried about Jim Nash all of the time.

“We’re grown-ups,” Lindsey said. “We can deal.”

“You should be able to talk about him,” Tracy spoke up. “Just because he’s gone now…It doesn’t mean he didn’t exist, that you don’t think about him, that he isn’t still important to you.” She reached over and took Sophia’s other hand. “You can talk about Dimitri with me. Any time.”

“How did you meet him?” Tess asked quietly.

Sophia looked from Tess to Lindsey to Tracy. They sat there, watching her, waiting patiently, their dinners forgotten. They truly wanted to know.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “It was my birthday,” she said. “And I took a trip to Greece…”

Dave Malkoff realized that he’d spoken the magic word that never failed to ratchet Decker up to puckerfactor five thousand.

Murphy.

“You should probably know,” Dave told Decker as he came out of the men’s and into the conference room, after pulling on a less sugar-coated T-shirt, “that at the wedding? Hannah got up and sang with the band.” Which explained why she spoke so clearly. She hadn’t been born deaf. She’d had her hearing up until just a few years ago. “If I remember correctly, she was a cop. Somewhere up near Fresno, I think.”

Deck shook his head. “Shit.”

“It’s possible,” Dave said, “that she’s here looking for employment. If you want, I can talk to her. I’ll tell her you had an appointment—”

“No.”

“You don’t owe her anything.”

“Yeah,” Decker said, “but I do owe Murphy.”

“Sorry that took so long.” Hannah came into the room, her hair damp. “I had some whipped cream in my…” She pointed to her curls as she looked around the room, at the big conference table, the plush chairs. She sat down on the very edge of the one closest to the door. “This really isn’t necessary. I’m only here to see if you’ve heard from Vinh Murphy lately. See if he’d…maybe come by here. I’m, um, a friend of his and…”

“We know,” Dave told her. “I remember you from the wedding.”

Hannah looked at him. “Oh, I’m sorry, I…” She shook her head.

He helped her out. Most people tended not to remember him, which had been a huge asset when he’d worked for the CIA. It wasn’t quite as useful when in conversation with attractive women. “Dave Malkoff.” He wrote his name out for her on the notepad that Deck had put on the table for that very purpose. “We talked about how you’d introduced Murph to Angelina…which is something you probably told everybody at the reception, so…you wouldn’t necessarily remember telling it to me.”

“I did tell that story a lot that day,” Hannah agreed. “It’s…nice to see you again,” she rather obviously lied.

“I haven’t seen Murphy in years.” Dave got to the point. “Zero contact with Murphy,” he wrote it down for her. He looked at Deck.

“Same here,” Decker said. “Nothing—not since he left the hospital.”

Hannah didn’t look disappointed—just resigned. “Does he still keep a weapons locker here?”

“He does.” Deck nodded. “Yes.”

“Would he be able to access it without anyone knowing?” she asked. “I mean, could he have come here and gotten his gear…?”

“Unlikely,” Decker told her, writing that down and underlining it for emphasis. “Both the main and secondary locks—and the access codes to the security system—they’re changed regularly. He’d have to get past all those levels of security in order to access his locker.”

“Of course, this is Murphy we’re talking about,” Dave pointed out.

“Someone would know he’d been in there,” Decker countered. “Which isn’t an impossibility. Murphy had—has—plenty of friends here.”

“That was my next question,” Hannah said. “Can we check with the rest of your staff?” She fished in her pocket for a piece of paper. “I made a list of the people he’s talked about,” she explained, flattening the paper out on the table in front of her. She read aloud. “Decker—that’s you, someone named Nash, Tess, Dave.” She looked up at him, nodding, “Lindsey, Diego, James, Tom, Cosmo, Sophia…”

Decker waited until she looked back up at him to say, “The Tom on your list is Tom Paoletti. He’s Troubleshooters’ CEO—and CO. Commanding Officer. He’s out of town this week, along with his second in command, Alyssa Locke and her XO, Sam, or I’d take you in to meet them. You know, Murph was one of the first operatives Tom hired, right after he opened for business. Murphy and then Dave.”

Dave nodded. “I didn’t work with Murphy all that often,” he told Hannah. “But the few times I did…He had a joie de vivre that was…” Irrepressible, he was going to say. Instead he cleared his throat and pointed to her list. “James Nash is on your list three times.” He wrote on the pad, James = Nash = Diego—same person. “Not that he’s Latino or anything. He’s just…pretentious.”

“I heard that,” Nash said from the hall. He leaned into the room as Hannah used her teeth to uncap a pen she’d taken from her pocket, making notes on her list.

Of course, she hadn’t heard him, so Decker tapped the table in front of her to get her attention. “Nash,” he said, pointing behind her at the man. She turned to look at him, her eyes widening slightly as women’s eyes often did when they first looked at Nash.

Deck spoke to him. “I thought you left.”

“Flight got cancelled,” he reported. “Next one’s not until ten-thirty. What’s up? Did I hear you talking about Vinh Murphy?”

Decker quickly filled him in.

Dave knew Nash’s side had to be hurting like hell, but he hid it completely—God forbid Decker find out that he’d been shot while out doing God knows what. The man’s luck was holding, because he was on his way to an assignment which would keep him away from Tess for another three days. At which point his injury would be healed enough to be able to pass it off as something less alarming than a bullet wound.

Although, knowing Tess, it was likely she wouldn’t be fooled.

“Have you heard anything from Murph lately?” Deck asked Nash now.

“I haven’t,” Nash reported, with an apologetic smile to Hannah. “I’m sorry.”

“Will you check with Tess?” Decker asked as Nash, too, took a seat at the table.

“I’ll text her, right now.” Nash got out his cell phone.

“She’s having dinner with Lindsey,” Decker pointed out. “Check with her, as well.”

“Sophia’s with them, too,” Dave said.

Decker nodded. “That’s right. She’s, um, also here today. She’s primarily support staff,” he told Hannah, “but she and Murph were friends.”

Sophia was, indeed, “um, also here today.” Dave, for one, had not missed the fact that her car was out in the office parking lot. She spent the bulk of her time out of the office, visiting various clients, racking up frequent flyer miles. Slim and blond and elegantly, regally, fabulously attractive, a savvy businessperson and top-notch deal negotiator, Sophia acted as the public face of Troubleshooters Incorporated.

She’d done some training as a field operative, and had even gone out on some real missions, but she’d realized—she’d told Dave over one of their frequent lunches at his desk—that it didn’t make sense not to take advantage of her strengths. She’d never be more than average as an operative, but let her walk into a business meeting?

She would totally kick ass.

Plus, her stepping into that role freed up Tom and Alyssa, allowing both Troubleshooters’ CO and XO to take advantage of their strengths.

It was a win-win.

Except it meant, more often than not these days, that Sophia was away from the San Diego office.

And now Dave ate his lunch alone.

As did Decker most days.

The two of them could’ve started a “The Office Just Isn’t the Same Without Sophia” support group—although Dave suspected that they didn’t quite share the same emotions regarding her absence. Decker appeared to experience some relief when she wasn’t around. Dave just flat-out missed her.

Of course, she called often, because she missed Dave, too. He was, after all, her good pal.

Yeah, she missed their lunches—sitting around talking about her relentless crush on…Who else?

Decker.

Life could really suck.

Except who was Dave to complain? He still had his hearing. And he still had Sophia for a friend, as screwed up as that relationship might be.

“Neither Tess, Lindsey, nor Sophia have seen Murphy since, uh, he left town,” Nash reported, having just text messaged them at dinner. “Tracy never met him. When they get back from dinner, we’ll show her his picture. That way if he does show up…”

Dave read Hannah’s list upside-down. “Cosmo Richter’s still active duty,” he said. “He’s a Navy SEAL with Sixteen—Tom’s old team. He hasn’t worked with us since…” Angelina died. He used Nash’s euphemism instead. “Since Murphy left town.”

“But Richter’s got a key,” Decker said. “And access to the alarm codes. Quite a few of Tommy’s SEALs do. We’ll follow up on that.”

“Can we check Murph’s locker and see if he’s been here?” Hannah asked.

Deck sat back in his chair. “Why do you think he has? When did you see him last?”

She didn’t answer right away as she looked around the table from Deck to Nash to Dave. And then she dropped one hell of a bomb. “He was at my cabin last night,” she admitted.