Into the Fire (12 page)

Still…

Hannah suspected not a day went by that Lawrence Decker didn’t think about Murphy, about Angelina.

“How often do you see Murph?” he asked her now.

“He stops in every few months or so. I have access to a cabin, in the mountains. Near Yosemite,” Hannah told them. “It’s pretty remote, so…He comes by every now and then, and he doesn’t stay long. And he’s…not doing very well. I can’t remember the last time I saw him when he wasn’t intoxicated.”

It was clear that this wasn’t what Decker had hoped to hear, but she wasn’t going to lie to the man.

“The cabin’s my uncle’s,” she told him, told Dave. The other man, the gleamingly handsome one that Murphy had referred to as James, Diego, and also Nash, had gotten up and left the room. “He owns a bunch of weapons. Hunting rifles and…Murph tried to break into the gun case last night.”

“Tried?” Dave asked. With his reading glasses and his Green Day T-shirt and his long hair worn pulled back from his tired-looking face, he looked like an escapee from Caltech, when in fact Murphy had talked about him with respect and even reverence in his voice. Lionhearted, Murphy had called the man.

“He was, um, pretty out of it,” Hannah admitted. “He even had my keys, and…” She shook her head.

Nash came back into the room, already talking. Hannah caught only a few words. “Murphy” and “locker.”

She looked sharply at Decker, hoping he’d realize…

He did. “Murphy’s gear is all still here,” he told her, writing it down for her, too.

She exhaled, hard. “Thank God. Can you change the lock?”

Decker and Dave exchanged a look.

“We could,” Dave said. “But…it’s Murphy’s stuff. If he comes back for it…”

“But at least you’ll know,” she pointed out. “This way, he’ll have to go through one of you.”

“What are you afraid he’s going to do?” Decker asked.

Hannah shook her head. Murphy had been talking crazy for months. It was hard to know, though, if it was grief and anger mixing badly with alcohol and drugs, or something else entirely…“He blames the Freedom Network and Tim Ebersole,” she told them. “For Angelina’s death.”

Murphy had talked—more than once—about going after the white supremacist group’s founder and leader, Tim Ebersole. He wanted to erase Ebersole from the face of the earth. One time he’d even asked Hannah to help take him out.

Murphy had told her that he’d never be allowed inside the Freedom Network compound because he wasn’t white. Hannah, however, could walk right in. That same night he’d driven her down to the Dalton town library, where he’d used the computers there to register her as a Freedom Network member. It was the first step, he’d told her, in infiltrating their organization.

“He gets drunk and…He wants someone to pay for his pain.” She could relate. She stood up now. “I appreciate your giving me this much of your time.”

Dave stood, too. “I’ll walk you out.”

Hannah shook both Decker and Nash’s hands.

“If Murphy comes by,” Dave asked once they were out in the hall, “or if we find out he’s been in touch with someone here at Troubleshooters, how can we reach you?”

“E-mail’s best,” she told him, digging in her pocket for the piece of paper upon which she’d written her e-mail address. She’d have to go to the library to access her e-mail account—at least until she did what Pat had been urging her to do ever since the accident. Set up a satellite dish and bring Internet access to the cabin.

“Thanks,” Dave said as she handed the slip of paper to him, giving her his card in return. “My home number’s on the back. If Murphy shows up again…I’d love to speak to him. It doesn’t matter what time it is. If you could call me…”

“I don’t have a phone,” Hannah said. “Not one that I can use.” Pat had also been trying to talk her into getting one of those TTY things, but she just wasn’t motivated. There was no one that she wanted to talk to. At least not until now.

“If you had a cell,” Dave suggested, “you could text message me.”

“Not much cell service where I am,” she said. “It’s pretty remote. But I’ll look into it.”

They were back in the lobby, puddles of his coffee still on the floor.

“Sorry about before,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said, even though it was going to be a long, sticky ride home. Hannah turned toward the door, but he stopped her, a hand on her arm. She turned back.

“This feels kind of impolite…” His eyes were apologetic. “But…How did you lose your hearing?”

“Car accident,” she told him, impressed that he’d had the nerve to ask. Most people didn’t. Still, she gave him the Cliffs Notes version. “On the job. High-speed chase.” Of a DUI perp who’d hit and run—and killed a six-year-old girl. “My leg got mangled, it got infected and…It was one of those super strains—resistant to antibiotics. I was pretty much dead, but one of my doctors tried an older drug that was known to be ototoxic. It took my hearing, but saved my life.”

“Wow,” Dave said. “You’re amazingly lucky.”

Lucky? To live in a world of total, suffocating silence?

Right. Kind of the way Murphy was lucky to have lived through the attack that had killed Angelina.

But Dave was serious. He was standing there, looking at her as if he truly believed she was…

Lucky.

“You know, when I was overseas with Murphy,” he told her, “he kept something that he called his ‘worst-case scenario’ bag.” He was carrying a note pad and he thoughtfully wrote the phrase out for her, making sure she understood. “You know, weapons, a little C4…? He hid it away, in case he was ever left high and dry. I’m not sure he’d do the same thing here in the States, but…”

“Last night he was either too out of it to remember where he put it,” Hannah concluded, “or he doesn’t have one in California.”

“Or,” Dave said, “he didn’t really want to get that weapon out of your uncle’s gun case.”

“Or,” Hannah countered, “he wanted to use it right then and there.”

On himself. She didn’t have to finish the sentence. She could see Dave’s understanding in the sadness in his eyes.

“If Murphy really wants a weapon,” he told her, “he won’t just try. He’ll get one. You and I…we’re the ones who can try. To stop him. But…” He shook his head. “Ultimately? It’s up to Murphy.”

“Nice seeing you, Dave,” Hannah said, leaning heavily onto her cane as she pulled open the door and went out into the coolness of the early evening.

P
ART
T
WO

P
RESENT
D
AY

C
HAPTER
S
IX

J
ULY
2008
D
ALTON
, C
ALIFORNIA

I
t was a Wednesday in early July—the day that Murphy reappeared in Hannah’s yard.

It was half past noon, and as she straightened up from weeding the green beans in her garden, she jumped, startled to find him standing there, just a few feet away from her.

“Sorry,” he said as she gaped. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

She almost didn’t recognize him in the sunlight. She shaded her eyes against the glare from the too-blue sky and…

It was definitely Murph, a bright red gym bag at his feet. He must’ve walked up the hill, and quite possibly all the way out here from Dalton. His truck was nowhere in sight.

He’d lost quite a bit of weight in the months since she’d last seen him, but that only meant he was extra-large instead of extra-extra. His leanness was apparent mostly in his face. His cheekbones stood out, accentuated by cheeks that were no longer boyishly soft.

She’d always thought he was a good-looking man, with his cafe-au-lait skin and dark brown eyes—eyes that revealed his part-Vietnamese heritage with their exotically graceful shape. His mouth and nose came directly from his African-American father, fitting his face perfectly, especially those full lips that—once upon a time—had been quick to curl up in a smile.

Murph had been out of the Marines for years, but he still wore his hair regulation short. Wavy and black, Hannah knew firsthand that it was soft to the touch.

Yeah, she’d always thought he was handsome, but now other people would agree.

Further scrutiny revealed that his clothes—jeans and a black T-shirt—were clean. He was wearing sunglasses but he took them off so she could see his eyes. They were clear. He was sober.

For now, anyway.

He was also waiting for her to say something. Anything. So Hannah pulled off her work gloves and, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her arm, she stepped over the chicken-wire fence she’d built to keep the rabbits at bay. “You must be Dalton’s new Avon lady.”

Murphy laughed. It was a terrible joke, but he actually laughed, even though it was over too soon. “Hannah,” he started.

She held her hand out to him. Cut him off. “It’s good to see you, Vinh.”

He took her hand, engulfing it in both of his, and as she looked up at him, she saw his remorse, his regrets, his apology, his embarrassment. He opened his mouth, but she looked away. “Don’t,” she said. “Let’s just…let the past be the past. Shit happens, you know? Especially when Johnny W.’s involved. He’s a sonuvabitch.”

Murphy squeezed her hand, waiting until she looked back up at him.

“I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome,” he said.

Her heart clenched. “You’re always welcome here,” she told him. “Always.”

He was scrutinizing her as carefully as she’d looked at him, taking in her recent haircut, no doubt noting the toned muscles in her shoulders and arms, the way her cargo pants hung loose around her trim waist. Yeah, she’d spent the past few months getting back in shape, too, storing her cane in the bathroom closet. She still limped when she got tired, and her ankle hurt like a bitch when she tried to run, but…

“So where’ve you been?” she asked him, pulling her hand free, walking backward so she could watch him as they headed toward the cabin.

“Juneau,” he said. At least that’s what she thought he’d said. But…

“Excuse me?”

“I went up to Juneau, Alaska,” he told her. “This time of year…I thought you’d be up there, helping Patrick find whales to show to the tourists.”

She stopped short. “No, Pat’s getting married. Didn’t I tell you?” She had, but apparently it had been one of those nights Murphy had wiped from his memory. “He’s selling his boat and…He’s in Arizona with his fiancée, Debbie. So I’m here in California all summer again.” Like last year. “Hence the garden.” She still didn’t quite believe what he’d just told her. “You really went to Juneau. To look for
me
?”

“Yeah.” Murphy nodded.

“That’s one freaking expensive apology, bwee,” Hannah told him. “I mean, shit, Murph, flowers would’ve worked. You know, with a note—
sorry about accidentally having sex with you and then crying about it like a little girl.
”

He laughed again. Twice in one visit—a miracle. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that.”

“We weren’t,” she told him, “but then you went to
Juneau
and…It wasn’t
that
horrific, you know. The sex. I actually came, which isn’t exactly my MO. It’s doubly great, because now I can cross
have an orgasm with someone besides myself
off this decade’s to-do list. I was toying with making the date a personal annual holiday, but—”

“Hannah, God, I’m so sorry.” Great, instead of making him laugh, she’d pushed him into apology mode. She really didn’t mind talking about what had happened but she absolutely didn’t want him to beat himself up over it, turning their conversation into a raging blamefest.

“It didn’t mean anything,” Hannah reassured him. “It just…happened.”

Murphy shook his head. “It meant a lot,” he argued. “And it never
would
have happened if Angelina was still alive. It meant she was gone. It meant that, on some level, I was acknowledging that she was gone.”

He was gritting his teeth, the muscle jumping in the side of his jaw.

If Hannah were braver, she would have touched him, just a hand on his arm. Instead, because now, forevermore, she wouldn’t be able to touch this man without remembering the feeling of his body inside of her, she tucked her hands safely away, wrapping her arms around herself. She gently told him, “She
is
gone.”

“I know,” Murph said. “I knew it that night and…I’m sorry about…I wasn’t thinking about anyone but myself. I was, um, in a truly dark place.”

Hannah nodded. “No shit.”

Murphy looked out over the garden, his eyes tracking a butterfly that flitted across the verdant lushness that she’d coaxed from the soil.

“So where are you now, Murph?” she asked.

He smiled, very slightly. “I’m not here to steal one of Patrick’s rifles, if that’s what you’re asking.”

That was good to know. She waited, sure he had more to say. And he did.

“I’m taking life one day at a time,” Murphy told her. “Just…moment to moment. I’m still alive, you know? Maybe it’s random that…I lived and she didn’t. But it happened, and…I’m here.”

Hannah’s heart was in her throat. “You’re here,” she said around it. “And I’m happy to have your company. You’re welcome to stay for as long as you like.”

Murphy briefly met her eyes as he nodded. “I was hoping I could crash in your loft for…I don’t know, maybe a month or two? If that’s okay with you.”

“Of course,” she told this man who’d married her best friend back when Hannah hadn’t truly understood the meaning of the word
tragedy,
“it’s very okay with me.”

S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

The apartment was trashed.

The sofa and draperies had been slashed, other furniture smashed and overturned. Drawers and cabinets had been emptied onto the floor, bookshelves tipped.

It wasn’t a burglary, even though someone had taken pains to make it appear so. The TV and stereo equipment were piled in the middle of the room, as if ready to be carried out, along with Tess’s computer equipment, a blender, and…Two pairs of Jimmy Nash’s shoes…?

“They’re Italian. Gucci,” Tracy said from where she was trying to jam the stuffing back into the sofa, as she saw Decker frowning at them. “Figure seven hundred dollars a pair.”

“Jesus. Really?” He blinked at the Troubleshooters’ receptionist, who had thrown a sweatshirt on over pajamas. Her pants were covered with little cartoon pictures of dogs in sunglasses surfboarding, and her feet were bare. “What are you doing here?”

“I live in the building,” she said. “Remember? I helped Tess and Jim find this apartment.”

Something stirred in the back of Decker’s memory. Nash, with his arm around Tess, her eyes sparkling as she smiled up at him.
We’re looking for a new place. Something that’s ours this time…

“But you weren’t at the housewarming party.” Decker also remembered that.

“Yeah, I was,” Tracy told him. “I came late, you left early. Your loss—we got a poker game going that went on until dawn.”

“I think I probably lost less by leaving early,” he told her.

“Maybe,” she said, “but you missed the fun.”

Fun. Huh.

Her hair was back in a ponytail, and there were remnants of a hastily removed mudpack on her astonishingly pretty face—a face she now twisted into a grimace. “I know, I know, I missed a spot. I was kind of in a hurry to get down here. When Tess called, she sounded out of it. I think she hit her head pretty hard. You know, when they knocked her down?”

Decker’s stomach lurched. “She’s hurt?”

“She walked in on them doing this.” Tracy gestured to the vandalism around them. “You think these jerks were going to say
excuse me
?” Her indignation faded quickly to solemnity. “She’s lucky they ran away. Really, it could have been so much worse.”

Decker couldn’t breathe. “Is she…?”

“In the kitchen,” Tracy said. “With Dave.”

“Excuse me.” He headed for the kitchen, but Tracy stopped him. She actually body-blocked him.

“Deck, wait. Where’s Jim?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Great,” Tracy said with a sigh. “I was afraid of that. Tess told me that Jimmy told
her
that he was going out on assignment—with you.”

As Dave swept up the kitchen floor, Tess sat at her kitchen table, holding an icepack to the back of her head, toying with several pieces of what had once been a little porcelain cow.

Every dish and glass in her kitchen had been smashed, the rest of her apartment was destroyed, she had a welt on the back of her head the size of an egg, yet it was the destruction of one little cow that made tears fill her eyes.

“It was a present from Jimmy,” Tess told Dave. “It’s stupid, I know. This could have been so much worse. If they’d had guns, or if Jim had come home to find them instead of me…They’d be dead right now. He would’ve…”

Dave cleared his throat. “Tess.”

“I know,” she said, pushing the pieces of cow away from her. “They wouldn’t’ve been here—the men who did this—if Jimmy hadn’t been out of town. This is…some sort of message to him. I know that. I’m not stupid.”

Understatement of the year. Tess Bailey was unbelievably intelligent. She was Troubleshooters’ top computer specialist and a true techno-geek. But she wasn’t just book smart, she came equipped with plenty of midwestern farmgirl common sense, too.

And with her freckles and short, curly hair, with her sweet, round face, she looked far more like a soccer mom than a kickass field operative. And the least likely woman in the world to be James Nash’s fiancée.

“No one thinks you’re stupid,” Dave reassured her.

Decker was standing in the doorway that led to the living room. Tess hadn’t seen him yet, and as he met Dave’s eyes, he briefly shook his head.

Perfect. James Nash was AWOL. Again.

“Do you have any idea why someone would want to deliver this kind of message to James?” Dave quietly asked Tess, since it seemed clear that Decker wasn’t ready yet to announce his presence.

She laughed her despair. “Like he ever talks to me?” Her eyes filled with tears again, and she bent her head over that broken cow. When she spoke again, her voice was low. “Something’s been wrong for a really long time. He disappears. He’s just…gone. At first I thought maybe it was…someone else. Another woman. I mean, this fidelity thing is still pretty new for him. But when I asked him about it…” She had to stop.

Good old pointblank Tess. Falling in love with her must’ve been the most terrifying thing that James Nash had ever done in his long, complicated life.

“He denied it,” she said. “But he wouldn’t tell me where he goes or…He said,
You gotta do what you gotta do,
as if I were going to walk out the door.” She laughed again, again disparagingly. “I almost did, but…He wouldn’t look at me. Like, he was waiting for me to leave so he could cry. So I didn’t. Leave. I told him that I trusted him to keep the promise he made me. And things got…a little better. For a while. But now…He’s drinking again.”

“I know,” Dave said.

She looked up at him, surprise in her eyes. “Thanks so much for telling me.”

“I knew you knew,” he said. “And, for the record? The way he can just stop, whenever he wants…? I don’t think he’s an alcoholic. I just think he’s trying to drown out the noise in his head.”

“I don’t think I would mind so much,” Tess admitted, “if when he drank he’d at least talk to me. But no. When he drinks, he shuts down even more. All he’ll say is how much he loves me. Apparently, I’m everything to him. Not that you’d know it through his actions.” She shook her head in disgust. “I think he stays away because he gets hurt, doing whatever he’s doing. Whatever’s going on, it’s dangerous, but he won’t tell me
any
thing. He just…shows up, with all of his stupid
dings.
Sometimes I could swear he’s been stitching up his own bullet wounds.”

Dave didn’t look up, sifting through the rubble to pick up an unbroken plate. Oops, no. It, too, was cracked.

“Is it possible,” Tess asked, “that he and Decker are still working for the Agency?”

Dave shook his head no, as he straightened back up. “Yeah, I suppose there’s a very slim chance, but…My guess would be that if someone from James’s past is coming back to smack him with something like this”—he gestured to the mess—“it dates from…before his years with the Agency.”

“Possibly from his time in prison,” Tess said. “I know about that. You don’t have to tiptoe around it. It’s just…I also know that some of his Agency assignments were…pretty unkosher.”

Dave glanced again at Decker, who visibly steeled himself and stepped into the kitchen.

“If he’s still working for the Agency,” Decker said, “he hasn’t talked about it with me.”