Into the Storm (6 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WO

I
t happened in the office lobby. In the reception area, right under the curious eyes of TS Inc’s new receptionist.

Sophia and Decker.

Face-to-face for the first time in what had to be months.

Dave Malkoff stood awkwardly off to the side, certain that the last thing they needed was an audience for this, but unwilling to desert Sophia.

“How are you?” Decker had to clear his throat before the words came out.

“Fine.” She managed a smile. “You look…like you’re doing well.”

Decker, in fact, looked like shit. He looked like
tired
shit. Of course, to Dave, he always looked both like shit and bone tired, which probably translated to
doing well.
For him, anyway.

“Yeah,” Deck said to Sophia. “Thanks. You, too. You look…fit.”

Fit?
Fit
? Sophia was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful women ever to walk the planet. With her long blond hair and porcelain complexion, she was ethereal in her beauty, like some half-fairy, half-human sprite, created when a moonbeam mixed with lightning and magically came to life.

Okay, so maybe Dave had watched
LOTR
one too many times, but really, the best Decker could come up with was
fit
?

Unbelievable.

It was Sophia’s turn to clear her throat. Dave’s heart ached for her. Why did Decker have to make this so hard? “You’re here because you’re helping Tom with the, um…”

“Training op for Team Sixteen,” Deck finished for her. “Yeah, that’s, uh, it’s a good opportunity for all of us, you know, the operatives here, to do some training, too. We don’t want to get soft.”

Amazing words to be spoken by this particular man. If there was one word that no one would ever use to describe Decker, it was
soft.
He was, in fact, relentlessly hard beneath that unassuming appearance. And his ferocious intensity, as he threw himself into his work as one of the top civilian counterterrorist team leaders in the country, made him seem not just hard, but razor-sharp, too. If someone got too close to him, they would risk getting cut.

Yet, here was Sophia, with her heart plainly on her sleeve, wanting nothing more than to be close to Decker.

The insensitive prick.

“Or softer than some of us already are,” Decker amended.

His words were probably supposed to be a joke. At least Dave thought they were intended that way. But he didn’t feel the urge to join Sophia in forcing a laugh as Decker glanced around the room, his gaze landing on Dave, as if he were a living example of the downhill slide they were all experiencing. “Hey, Dave. Nice to see you.”

There was nothing to do but shake Decker’s hand. “Deck.”

“Have you heard anything from Murphy?” Decker asked.

Dave shook his head. “No.” Murph had nearly been killed by a sniper, on a bodyguard assignment in Hollywood nearly a year ago. His wife had died in the same incident. Like everyone else in the TS Inc office, Decker was haunted by it. “He’s dropped off the map.”

Decker nodded grimly, as if he’d expected as much. He turned back to Sophia. “When are you leaving for Phoenix?” he asked her, his meaning clear.
Since I’m going to be in town for the next few weeks, it’s your turn to disappear.

Sophia didn’t say it. Dave could see from her expression that she wasn’t going to say it. So he said it for her. “She’s not going to Phoenix. She’s helping out with the training op.”

Sophia put her hand on his arm. Her fingers were cold, despite the day’s heat. “Dave,” she murmured, ready, as usual to back down.

And Dave lost his temper. “What?” he said to her. “You’re just gonna go to Phoenix?”

“It’s not that big a deal,” she told him.

“Yeah?” he said, as mad at her as he was at Decker, the selfish coward. “That’s not what it sounded like when I heard you talking to Lindsey about it. It actually sounded as if you thought this op might be fun. Tell me this, Sophia, when was the last time you had fun?”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she was looking at Decker and apologizing. Again.

“
You
want to make a guess at when she last had fun?” Dave interrupted, stepping between them, getting into Decker’s face. “No? I will, then. I’ll guess it’s been at least a coupla years, probably not since her husband was murdered in front of her—is that about right, Soph?”

Tracy, the new receptionist tried to intervene. “Would anyone like some coffee?”

“Go back to your desk,” Dave snarled at her, and she backed off, wide-eyed.

Sophia was tugging on his arm again. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting angry for you,” Dave told her. “Since you can’t seem to get angry for yourself.”

“But I’m not angry.” She was, however, mortified. “If this is your idea of help, stop, because I really don’t need it!”

But he couldn’t stop. “Yes, you do. Because you
should
be angry. You wanted to be part of this op. I heard you talking about it—You said you were going to play the part of a crazy commando-wannabe chick, dressed in high-fashion camouflage. I heard you laughing.” He turned back to Decker. “I heard her
laughing.
” Sophia never laughed—not really. Sure, she made this laughterlike noise and moved her face into a smile. She was really good at it. It sounded realistic, but Dave knew better. It wasn’t genuine laughter. Except this time it had been. “And then you appeared, and whammo, she’s going to Phoenix. Because you’re not man enough to deal with your mistakes!”

Okay, that last part came out a little too loud. Heads were being poked out of doors.

But Dave still wasn’t done. “Maybe you think I’m
soft,
because I was never a Navy SEAL. Maybe I
am
soft. But maybe I don’t give a damn what you think. Not anymore.”

Tom Paoletti came all the way into the lobby. Probably because Tracy had finally done something right and called him on his intercom. “How about we finish this in my office?” he said.

“Thank you, sir, but no. I’m done.” Dave couldn’t look at Sophia because the expression on her face would have broken his heart. “Go to Phoenix,” he told her. “Have a nice trip.”

Tracy was still watching them, her eyes wide. “I’ll take that coffee now,” he said, as he went into his office and slammed the door.

Izzy loved dropping by the Troubleshooters Incorporated office. There was always some crazy shit going on.

“May I help you?” The hot babe with the coffeepot and the mile-long legs had finally spotted him lurking here by the front door, as Tommy Paoletti ushered a former frog named Decker and the incredibly sexy Sophia Ghaffari into his office.

Tommy was saying something about clearing this up, but really, what was to clear up? The situation was obvious to anyone with eyes. Decker—the lucky bastard—had, at some point in the past, thrown Sophia a bang. She, the way most women did, had wanted a Re-Lay-Tion-Ship. Deckaroonie had activated his super-Y chromosome, exfiltrated pronto, and now, whenever they did an eyeball to eyeball, awkwardness ensued.

Meanwhile, crazy Dave Malkoff, who spent a lot of time pretending to be fair Sophia’s friend when what he
really
wanted was to get in her panties, was jealous. Hence the meltdown Izzy had just witnessed.

Case closed.

Izzy turned his attention to a far more fascinating mystery. Could Miss Legs here help him?

She was like something out of a music video. Collagen lips—just slightly done to be enticingly pouty, a body that could hypnotize when in motion. She had gorgeous hair, long and shiny and kind of reddish brown, and eyes that were almost as big and blue as the Little Mermaid’s.

Please, Heavenly Father, let her be able to help him.

She was checking out his BDUs, checking
him
out beneath his BDUs. The smile she gave him was beautiful. It was laced with a palpable amount of
hello, and who might you be?
Which, in Izzy’s vast experience with hot babes, whether wielding coffeepots or not, usually led to another kind of smile—the kind that accompanied the sound of his zipper being pulled south.

Not immediately, of course. After a certain number of days. Or, if he was really lucky, hours. Depending on the proximity of copious amounts of alcohol.

“Are you one of Tom’s SEALs?” she asked.

“Good guess,” he said. “Yeah. I’m Izzy.”

“Izzy,” she repeated, like she liked the way his name felt, rolling around in her mouth. “Tom’s in a meeting. Would you like something? Coffee? While you wait?”

“I’m good, thanks, and actually, I’m not here to see Tommy.”

She set the coffeepot down, settled herself into the chair behind her reception desk, and smiled up at him. “Do you just drop in, randomly? Not that I mind. It’s raining Navy SEALs—alleluia.”

Sweet Jesus, she was practically waving semaphore flags at him. He could probably close this deal with two beers, maybe three. Tops. Except for one potential problem. Praying he was wrong, he asked, “Are you Tracy Shapiro?”

Dimples appeared. Damn, he loved dimples. “I am.”

And just like that, all of his hopes and dreams crashed and burned around him. “I’m a friend of Jenk’s,” he told her. “I’m meeting him here. I’m a few minutes early.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. A friend of…?”

“Jenkins?” Izzy said, but she still looked at him blankly.

Alrighty then. This did not bode well for Mark’s so-called impending romantic relationship with this woman. The way Eminem had described it, he and Tracy were practically engaged. Talk about wishful thinking.

Still, Jenk had invoked the girlfriend rule. It was not something that could be broken. At least not without bloodshed and loss of friendship.

“Mark?” Izzy tried.

“Oh,
Mark,
” she said, laughing at herself. She had a terrific laugh, low and musical. “Right. Jenk. Jenkins. Duh. Ginny—his sister, she’s Ginny Genaro now—we were best friends in high school.”

“No kidding.” If he were attempting to move this to the next level, Izzy would have perched on the edge of her desk. But screw it, just because he now knew there would be no next level didn’t mean he couldn’t be comfortable. He perched. “So, you’ve known Mark since he was a kid, huh?”

Her body language was an anthropology exercise. One moment she was sitting back in her chair, completely open. If she’d wanted to be any more inviting, she’d have been on her back, knees apart. But then she shifted, crossing her arms, closing. Another shift, and she was open again. Then closed. Then open. If Izzy was reading her right, she was a good girl who burned to be bad.

Why, oh why did God hate him so?

“We used to call him Weeble,” Tracy told him. “You know, like, weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down?”

Of course, maybe it was Jenk that God hated.

“Yeah,” Izzy said. “I remember weebles, and…You know what, Tracy? That old nickname is probably something that Mark wouldn’t appreciate your spreading around. I mean, it’s perfect blackmail material, so if I were you, I’d save it for the exact right moment.”

She laughed again, catching her lower lip between her teeth as she gazed up at him. “Do you want me to find Mark for you?” Damn, she was gorgeous.

Izzy made himself stand. Move back. “Nah, I’m okay to wait. I’ll just let you get back to work.” The phone had started ringing.

“Are you sure I can’t…get you anything?” Chin in her hand, she watched him as he crossed the room, toward the leather sofas in the waiting area.

“I’m good,” he said again.

“I bet you are,” she said, but then actually looked embarrassed or even shy. She may have blushed.

Mother of God.

There was no woman on earth who could make him regret saving a teammate’s life. But at this moment, this one came pretty damn close.

Sophia was going to kill Dave.

She would have done it already, but he’d so completely surprised her. She hadn’t thought he was capable of losing his temper. She’d never imagined he’d say the things he’d said right up in Decker’s face like that. Like he was ready to bring it out into the street.

It would have been funny, if it weren’t so horribly unfunny.

As she sat down in Tom’s office, Decker sat beside her, looking virtually identical to the last time Sophia had seen him. It was possible he was even wearing the exact same T-shirt. Gray with maroon ribbing at the very edges of the sleeves and around the neck.

He was not a big man—he was probably a perfect size medium. He was not particularly good-looking, either, with his average brown hair and unremarkably brown eyes. His face was pleasant enough, with a chin he kept always carefully shaved and comfortable crow’s-feet around his eyes. Nothing wrong with the way he looked, that was for sure. He was just…Decker. Steady. Reliable. Quiet.

Until life got dangerous. And then there was nothing average or even remotely medium about him.

He sat silently now as their boss chose his words carefully.

“I’m sure you’re aware I have no rules for my employees regarding personal relationships,” Tom told them. “But this tension between the two of you is starting to get old.”