Dark of Night (35 page)

Jimmy looked up at her, his mouth grim, his eyes rimmed in red. “No,” he agreed. “I didn't. But I should've.”

“What happened?” she asked, as gently as she could.

And this time, although he didn't answer right away, he held her gaze.
And when he finally spoke, his words surprised her. “Sam told me I should say. … that I should tell you … that this is… hard for me.” He whispered the last words, but then laughed his disgust. “Christ, that's an understatement.”

“You talked to Sam about…” She couldn't keep her disbelief from her voice. It seemed so unlikely, so unlike Jimmy to talk to anyone about anything.

But he nodded. “He talked to me. At me. He told me that… I'm going to…” He choked the words out. “Lose you—”

“He's wrong,” she interrupted him. “Look at me, Jimmy. I'm right here. I'm
right
here.”

He turned away—but not before she saw the sudden sheen of tears that filled his eyes.

Tess spoke through the lump that ached in her throat. “It's okay if you don't want to tell me. It really is. But if you think our enemy knows how to hurt you, then you need to tell
some
one. Jules or … Sam. It's okay, Jimmy, if it's easier for you to talk to Sam—”

“What are the odds?” he asked.

She didn't understand. “What do you mean?”

“You risk so much, for such crazy odds,” he told her. “I look at that scar on your hand and … You reached for that gun, but… what were the odds that you'd get shot in the hand instead of in your head?”

He was talking about that awful day, just a few short months ago, that they'd both been shot when a squad of heavily armed men had surrounded them and the people they'd been guarding.

They'd been distracted right before the attack—arguing about Jimmy's refusal to talk to her, to ask for help. She'd told him that day that she could handle his silence, but what she couldn't deal with was his lies.

Yet at the same time, on a certain level—when she stepped back and looked at it objectively—she understood. When Jimmy had worked for the Agency, his job had been to lie, and to lie both well and often. His very life had depended upon it.

So it made sense that, even years after his split from that organization, he should still struggle to be forthcoming.

Tess had been telling him that, two months ago. She'd told him that she was willing to cut him some slack, but that this grace period was not
going to last forever. There would come a time—and it was fast approaching—that his lying would end their relationship.

Which was when their attackers had opened fire, hitting first Tess and then Jimmy. His injury had been far worse than hers. And he was right. She
had
been willing to risk anything to save him. So she'd reached for a gun.

She now shook her head. “They shot me in the hand because they wanted hostages—”

“But you didn't know that at the time. You could've been killed. You
should
have been killed.”

“I thought you were going to die.” She brought it down to the bottom line. “You were bleeding, you were unconscious—”

“So you thought you might as well die, too?” He honestly didn't understand.

Tess pushed herself to her feet. “I thought that I could save you,” she said. “I thought if I could just get that gun, then maybe—”

“A .22.” He interrupted her. “It was a .22-caliber handgun, and you were surrounded by… Was it one or
two
dozen men with submachine guns? Damnit, I
know
you're not an idiot, Tess—”

“We
were surrounded,” she reminded him. “And you were dying. So, yes, I took what I thought was our only chance.”

“A chance doesn't involve miraculous divine intervention,” he pointed out. “It has better odds than one in, Christ, seven
trillion!”

She knew that, yet she'd reached for that weapon anyway—and had gotten a bullet through her hand. Seconds later, she'd been knocked unconscious by a really ugly man who jammed the butt of his rifle against her head. Oh yeah, and then she was dragged off as a hostage.

Left for dead, Jimmy had roused and rallied and, even though he was bleeding badly, he'd tried to connect a severed phone line to call for help.

Not for himself, but for
her.

“I wasn't going to let you die without a fight,” she told him, her voice shaking as she moved closer, getting right in his face. “You know before … ? When I said that you should just walk out of here—if you're so intent on leaving? I was bluffing. If you'd actually gone, I would have grabbed you and tied you down. Because I am not giving up on you—on
us.
Not without a fight. To
hell
with the odds.”

“If I go,” he told her quietly, “it'll be because it's the only way—”

“No.” Tess cut him off. “The
only
way we're going to get through this is together. All of us. You already tried to do this alone, and you failed, Jimmy. It's time to go after these sons of bitches as a team.”

“And if we still fail … ?” he whispered.

“We won't.” She was absolute. “Not a chance.”

He took her hand, looking down at her scar, brushing it almost tenderly with his thumb. “Such crazy odds,” he said again.

“Maybe not,” Tess told him. “Alyssa's convinced we're closer to finding them than we think.” She squeezed his hand, desperate for him to believe that this battle they were fighting wasn't hopeless. “They hurt us with the John Wilsons. And yes, it was sheer luck that got us out of that motel. But we're not going to let this second chance go to waste. We're going to figure out who these people are. And then we're going to get them.”

“And live happily ever after,” he said.

“Are you mocking me?”

“Never,” he said. “No. It just seems like more crazy odds.”

Tess searched his eyes, but all she could see was resignation and despair.

“Do you love me?” she asked him.

Jimmy didn't answer right away, and when he did, his voice was a whisper. “With all my heart.”

“Then we fight,” she told him. “Together. As a team. Regardless of the odds.”

Jimmy pulled her close and kissed her. His mouth was so sweet, so familiar. As she melted into it, into him, she was aware of how long it had been since he'd kissed her like this—and since she'd kissed him back with equal passion.

God, it had been months since her desire for him hadn't been trumped by her worry over his injury and her frustration over his reticence and lies.

When he ended the kiss, the tears were back in his eyes.

“The Merchant,” he said. “The botched assassination. Whoever it was who killed that kid yesterday? I'm certain that he knows about it.”

“I'll tell Jules and Alyssa,” Tess promised.

“There's more,” Jimmy told her, but it was clear that he didn't know where or how to begin.

Tess tugged him over to the sofa, and he gingerly lowered himself down. She sat beside him, still holding his hand.

As his silence stretched on.

“I'll recap what I know,” Tess suggested quietly. “Correct me if I'm wrong, okay?”

Jimmy nodded.

“You got called to Turkey where the Merchant was visiting a church on an island,” she told him. “You were out there, alone, in position to take him out via sniper rifle, and you knew it was going to have to be done with a single shot to the head.”

It was the help he'd needed, because he spoke. “I wasn't out there alone. I was connected by radio headset to a situation room, probably deep in the Agency's main HQ.”

“What?” Tess was stunned. And indignant. That had made the op at least ten times more dangerous for him. Field operatives kept radio silence because radio waves could be intercepted—and traced.

“I was new,” he said. “Untested. They still didn't trust me.”

“Did they ever?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Jimmy told her. “I think they did. Although trust is probably the wrong … Let's just say that they got to a point where they could bank on my patterns of behavior.”

“Who was there?” she asked. “In the sitch room?”

“My contact was Doug Brendon,” he said.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

“Yup.”

This was long before Brendon was appointed head of the entire Agency.

“Jack Finch was there,” Jimmy reported. “And Doc Ryan, who ran the psych group. Oh, and the idiot who led support back then. What the fuck was his name?” He squinted to remember. “Matt Hallfield. What an asshole. We used to call him Matt-hole. He had his second in command with him—Russ Stafford.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?” Tess squinted her brain, but nothing came forth.

Jimmy shook his head. “I don't think you ever met him. He never actually said much—although it couldn't have been easy to get a word in edgewise with Matt-hole around. I think Stafford left right around the
same time that Hallfield died. Around 2001, I think. Yeah. It was right after 9/11. Although maybe he went into admin and we just never crossed paths again.”

“That's easy enough to find out.” The Agency's records were hacker-proof—unless the hacker had previously worked in the Agency's support division as a computer specialist, the way Tess had. “Ryan and Hallfield were just before my time,” Tess told him. “But people were still talking about Hallfield.”

Apparently the former head of the Agency's support team had had terminal cancer and committed suicide—which had really shaken up the entire organization. The tragedy had prompted then-director Finch to put even more emphasis on the mental health department, making psych evaluations mandatory, even for support staff.

“So Finch and Hallfield and Brendon and the others are talking in your ear,” Tess prompted Jimmy, who'd fallen silent again.

“Yeah,” he said. “They were watching images—both from satellites and from a minicam I was wired with.” He met her eyes. “That was the last time I did a job like that. After that, I managed to break the equipment that they gave me when they sent me out. Eventually, they just stopped giving it to me. But I was too green at the time to … I should've…”

“So they're watching, too,” Tess encouraged him, interrupting his recriminations, “as the Merchant comes out of the church.”

Jimmy nodded. “He's got these kids surrounding him—no big surprise there. Their heads come up to his waist—which is strategic.”

Tess knew what he meant. Body armor—at least the kind most readily available back in the early 1990s—ended roughly at the waist. Really paranoid people might also wear protective shorts, but at the time, it would've been a two-piece ensemble. A sniper trying to take out a body armor–protected target had a shot at getting the job done by aiming for the juncture at the waist, and hoping there was a muffin-top induced gap.

“There's another kid,” Jimmy continued, closing his eyes, “maybe a little younger than the others. He's sitting on this bastard's shoulders, pretty much wrapped around his head. And I can't do it, Tess. I can't take the shot, not at that range, with the weapon that I had. Any bullet I fired would go through the man's head and blast a hole in that kid, too. So I reported that.”

She braced for what she knew was coming.

“But the order comes down, direct from Finch.
Do it anyway”
Jimmy whispered. “And then Hallfield comes on. And he tells me it's okay. His team has identified the kid as being the son of Fariq al-Qasim, one of the Merchant's top henchmen. And I look through my scope at this little boy, and he's smiling and laughing, like he's enjoying the ride, and I … I can't do it. Time's running out, the target's got maybe ten more seconds before he reaches the safety of his car. And Brendon comes back on, and he's cursing and screaming
—Do it, God damn it!
And he tells me if I don't, all of those children will die, because he's going to order an airstrike on that vehicle. And I'm a fucking idiot, because I believed him. So I shoot, but I aim for the man's chest, because maybe he's not wearing any body armor at all, you know? I hit him—it's a clear shot, nowhere near any of the kids, and he falls, and I'm out of there. I'm gone.”

But the Merchant
had
been wearing body armor. He'd survived the attack.

“The threat of the airstrike was just a bluff,” Jimmy said quietly. “I didn't know it then, but no way were we going to risk photos of dead children in every newspaper in the country—and around the world. That was back when the press wasn't entirely run by corporations, when we still cared about shit like that, when public opinion polls mattered. So no harm, no foul—except because I took the shot instead of calling off the mission and fading into the mountains? The motherfucker knew that we'd tried for him. And two days later, he blows up Fariq al-Qasim's son's school bus, as if to say
Fuck you. See how strong I am, and how weak you are?
Thirty-one children died, including the one whose life I was unable— unwilling—to take.”

“You aren't weak,” Tess argued.

“The kid was going to die anyway,” Jimmy told her. “If I could go back, have a do-over, I'd take the shot and kill the kid. Save thirty others. Plus all the other people that motherfucker killed in terrorist attacks between then and the time he really was deleted.”

“You didn't know that back then,” Tess told him. “You didn't see numbers. You saw a little boy.”

“A seven-year-old boy,” Jimmy said. “And now another seven-year-old boy is dead because of me.”

“No.” She was absolute. “He's dead because there are people out there who are evil, who know that if you're still alive, you have the power to
bring them down. And I agree,” she added. “Whoever killed the John Wilsons knew that you were unable to cross that line all those years ago and intentionally kill al-Qasim's son.”

They also no doubt knew that Jimmy had agonized over the choice that he'd made, after he'd found out about that bus. Tess frowned. Wait a minute.

“Who handled your psych evaluations?” she asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “I didn't have psych evaluations back then,” he told her. “Not really. I mean, I did on paper. Dr. Ryan signed off on the reports. But nobody wasted any time on me.”

She stared at him. “You're not kidding, are you?”

He smiled tightly at her disbelief. “I think they liked me—exactly the way they'd found me. Why change perfection, you know?”