Into the Fire (15 page)

Tom nodded. “It is.” He cleared his throat again. “However. Anyone who chooses not to participate also won’t be participating in any overseas assignments until further notice.”

Decker sat back in his chair, clearly stunned.

“In other words,” Dave clarified, “if we don’t talk to Dr. Heissman, we’ll get stuck playing red cell for the paranoia accounts, here in the States, until our hair turns gray.” He turned to the doctor as he realized what he’d just said. “No offense. Your hair is really…” He cleared his throat. “Quite striking. And…Lovely.”

“None taken,” she said easily. “And thank you.”

“Next time you beat the shit out of me?” Nash leaned forward and said down the table, to Decker. “Don’t do it in the parking lot.”

Decker just shook his head. “With all due respect, sir,” he started to say to Tom.

But Sophia cut him off. “This was my idea,” she announced. “It’s supposed to help, not make things harder.”

“Swing and a miss,” Decker shot back. He looked from Tom to the doctor and back. “So when do we start? Can we start right now? I’d like to go first, get this voluntary requirement over with.”

D
ALTON
, C
ALIFORNIA

Hannah had installed a satellite dish.

With it, she could use a phone to send and receive text messages. She also had Internet access.

Not that she ever bothered to check her e-mail.

Still, Murphy was impressed. She’d done way more over the past few months than rehab her ankle to the point where she no longer needed a cane.

She’d clearly already worked on improving her lip reading—although that was a skill she’d always possessed.

Murphy couldn’t read lips if his life depended on it.

Hannah had gotten a number of books on American Sign Language, and there were brochures on her desk for Dogs for the Deaf and a letter from her health insurance company about something called a cochlear implant that she’d be eligible for, but only after an extensive waiting period. It was proof that she was actively returning to the land of the living.

He’d said some harsh things to her that night—the last time he’d been back here…Or…Was it the last time, or had there been a visit in between then and now?

He honestly couldn’t remember. So much of the past six months was a fog, a blur, a blending of days into nights into weeks.

And yet that one night, six months ago, had moments that he remembered vividly. Hannah’s stricken face as he’d tried to unlock Patrick’s weapons case. As he’d flung hurtful words at her:
You’re already dead and buried…

The sex, however, wasn’t imprinted in his brain in such glorious high definition. Of that part of the night, he remembered only vague bits and pieces.

Hannah’s cool fingers in his hair.

The sweetness of her mouth—he’d purposely not kissed her more than that once because she’d tasted too good.

The freakish sensation of a woman’s body beneath him—soft and warm and welcoming—a body that wasn’t Angelina’s.

God, he’d wanted to die.

Murphy watched Hannah now, as he sat, pretending to read in the shade out on the cabin porch. She was in her garden, straw hat on her head, pulling weeds. Tall and strong. Invincible. Unkillable, she’d called herself once, years ago, after she’d stopped a convenience store holdup in progress. Both the store owner and the perp had been wounded, but she’d miraculously walked away unharmed.
That
time.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d died,” Murphy said, knowing full well that she couldn’t hear him.

Hannah had been rushed to the hospital not quite two weeks after Murphy had gotten out. Eight short days after Angelina’s god-awful memorial service.

The worst of Hannah’s life-threatening infection was over before he’d even found out she had been injured in a car accident in the first place. He’d been off bingeing, trying to erase his own pain, ignoring the repeated phone calls from Patrick, not realizing Hannah’s uncle was calling to tell Murphy that she lay at death’s door…

As Murph now watched, she rinsed her hands in a bucket that she’d filled with water from the garden hose.

It was weird, being with Hannah without music blasting in the background. She and Angelina, both, had believed that life not only should have a soundtrack, but that it should be played with the volume cranked.

But things could change in a heartbeat. Now Hannah’s world was silent, and Angelina was gone.

The truth of that no longer stabbed him like a bayonet to the heart. No, it was more of a constant ache these days. He no longer woke up surprised to discover that, for a few short hours while he’d slept, he’d returned to a world where Angelina laughed and danced and breathed.

Because now, even though Murphy still dreamed about his wife, he knew, even in his dreams, that she was gone.

She was gone—but he was still here. And Hannah was here, too.

As Murphy watched, she came onto the porch, dripping with perspiration, grabbing the sweating glass of iced tea he’d made for himself, and nearly draining it.

“Hey,” he said, tapping her leg with his foot to get her attention. “That’s mine.”

She smiled as she flopped back onto the porch swing. “Consider it a vegetable tax. The day you weed, I won’t drink your iced tea. So if you want to keeping eating my tomatoes—” She cut herself off and laughed. “Even I can tell that that must’ve sounded really wrong.”

After just a few weeks together, they’d fallen into an easy routine. Whoever woke up first in the morning started a pot of coffee. They’d grab a quick breakfast, then hike down to the pond and go for a swim.

That kind of PT was easier on Hannah’s ankle, but not on Murphy, who’d never counted speed-swimming as one of his strengths. He’d finally pulled out Patrick’s old fishing dinghy and rowed alongside of Hannah. Or he would run the trail around the pond while she did laps.

Lunch was catch as catch can, every man for himself.

Afternoons were for the occasional chore, but mostly for lazing around, reading or cloud watching.

They took turns making dinner. Eating was a mostly silent affair—Hannah sometimes even brought a book with her to the table, which was fine with Murphy.

Evenings were quiet, too. With no television, there was no mindless noise. Just the sounds of the falling night. They’d play a game—backgammon or Carcassonne—before settling in for more quiet reading.

Around eleven, Hannah would put down her book and stretch. That was Murphy’s cue to sign
good night
and climb the ladder to the loft.

The next day, they’d do it all over again.

One day at a time.

“What’s for dinner?” Hannah asked now. It was Murph’s turn to cook tonight.

“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s ground beef in the freezer. We could either go tacos or spaghetti and meatballs.”

“Oh, man, I love your meatballs,” Hannah said, then laughed. “Is it just me, bwee, or does everything I say come across as sexual innuendo?”

“It’s not just you,” Murphy reassured her. “I’ve been…choosing my words more carefully, too.”

Hannah finished off his iced tea, putting the glass back on the little side table with a clunk before she started untying the laces of her boots. “It gets in the way, doesn’t it? That night. But it shouldn’t.”

Typical Hannah—going pointblank with the awkward topic of conversation.

He waited until she was done kicking her boots to the porch, and pulling her socks off, too.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Murphy said when he finally got eye contact. “It doesn’t quite seem right that there shouldn’t be consequences.” He spelled out the words, forming the ASL letters with his hand, making sure she understood.

“Can I be honest with you?” she asked, and he laughed. Even more honest than she usually was?

“Go large.”

“I thought the consequences would be that you’d never come back,” Hannah admitted. “I suppose anything that
isn’t
that, is acceptable to me.”

Murphy had been afraid that the consequences were that he’d gotten her pregnant.

It was weird, but he’d been a little disappointed at first that he hadn’t. Like, that would have been a viable solution to how he was going to spend the rest of his life. Caring for and raising a child…But he’d quickly realized how unfair that would be to Hannah—who hadn’t yet met the love of
her
life.

Although, her chances of finding him—that one person in a billion—were slim to none while she was hiding her ass out here in Nowhereville.

“You should know,” Hannah told him now, her eyes a serious mix of green and blue as she held his gaze, “that in hindsight? I don’t regret what happened that night. If I could do it over again? I’d do exactly what I did. It was part of the grieving process, Murph. It was something you needed to do in order to get to this new place in your life that you…seem to have gotten to.”

Murphy shook his head, breaking the connection, looking out at the garden instead. Conversations with Hannah had always been intense, but now, with her need to keep her eyes glued to his face when he spoke…It felt extra-intimate. Which was maybe why he felt compelled to answer her honestly. “I don’t think that was the turning point.” Again, he spelled out the phrase. “I don’t know if I’ll ever reach a turning point.”

“You will,” she said. “You’ll meet someone, and…You won’t have to think,
oh, shit, sex is going to be this huge deal.
You won’t have to worry about hating her forever, and screwing up your relationship because…Well, it’s been handled.”

“I didn’t hate you forever,” he said.

“You hated me for six months,” Hannah pointed out, and he turned to look at her again. She was serious. “Which was pretty close to forever, for me.”

And there they sat, just gazing at each other.

I’m so sorry.
Murphy signed it. It was one of the first things he’d learned.

“Hey,” she said. “You came back. For which I am extremely grateful. You’re my best friend, Murph.” She laughed, rolling her eyes. “Right now, you’re my only friend. I’ve pretty much pushed everyone else away. And maybe that’s what really happened that night. Maybe I was trying to run you off for good.”

“You were trying to help,” he corrected her.

“Two twisted birds with one large stone,” she said. “It can be a dark, crazy place inside my head at times. Especially when Johnny W. comes to the party.” She smiled. “I know you’ve noticed that I’ve rescinded his open-house invitation.”

Murphy nodded. He’d been here going on two weeks now, and not only had he noticed that Hannah hadn’t taken a drink once, but that Patrick’s liquor cabinet was filled with canned goods. She was keeping the cabin dry.

He carefully folded down the top corner of the page of his book, marking his place. “The person I really hated was myself,” he admitted. “The damage done that night was…Man, I hated that I hurt you.”

“Well, you can cross me off your list of worries,” Hannah said. “I came through the ordeal just fine. In fact, it kind of…pushed me to do some things I’d been putting off. And as for the sex…” She shrugged. “Yeah, we’re friends, but I’d be lying if I told you I’d never wondered what it would be like. You and me. I think it’s human nature, you know? You’re male, I’m female. You’ve got tab A, I’ve got slot B—hmmm, I wonder what
that
would be like? It definitely crossed my mind a time or two, and…now I know.”

Murphy had to laugh. “I thought only guys thought like that.”

“Nope,” Hannah said. “Dude, I’d wanted to get with you for years.”

Murphy laughed. And everyone had always thought that, between the two best friends, Angelina had been the outrageous one.

“And I’m not expecting you to say something similar back,” Hannah told him. “That’s always so awkward. You know, like you’re fifteen and the first guy you French kiss goes
I love you,
and then looks at you like,
well?
And you’re like,
Um, Billy? I really just wanted to see what the fuss was all about.
Of course, you end up saying
I love you, too,
because you’re too much of a coward. Don’t be a coward, okay?”

Murphy just shook his head and laughed as she took his empty glass and headed into the coolness of the cabin.

He followed her, but he knew better than to answer while her back was to him. Which, right now, was completely intentional. She did that every now and then. He was starting to think of it as her own version of a hit and run.

But the truth was, he’d definitely thought about sex with Hannah. In fact, he’d thought about it a lot, before she’d introduced him to Angelina.

After that, he’d thought about it only occasionally. But it was along the same
never gonna happen
fantasy lines as his occasional thoughts of sex with Jennifer Garner or Charisma Carpenter.

Except it
had
happened. And he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t spent a significant amount of time these past few weeks, thinking about it happening again.

Problem was, he wanted to do it again, but at the same time, he desperately, absolutely didn’t.

And if Murphy were Hannah, he’d just announce this odd paradox of feelings. He’d say,
It’s like my body is done with the grieving, but my heart and mind are still miles behind.
He had no idea what he’d feel, how he’d react, and he
would not
put Hannah through that again.

She was rummaging in the open refrigerator, her back still pointedly toward him, so Murphy sat down at her laptop computer and jumped online and…Holy God.

“Han.”

Of course she didn’t hear him.

He took one of the crumpled balls of paper they kept around for exactly this reason, and launched it into the corner of the room that was the kitchen. It bounced off the freezer door, and she looked up.

Come here,
Murphy signed.
Look.

She closed the fridge door and came, leaning down to look over his shoulder at the computer screen.

Her e-mail inbox had nearly a dozen new messages. All from dmalkoff at tsinc dot com.

Need your help,
read several of the subject headers. The others said
Hannah, are you there?
and
Trying to contact you
and
STILL trying to contact you…