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Lloyd Howard—had been fabricated without the help of any kind of government protection program. Decker and Cassidy agreed that it was important to hide the fact that Jimmy was alive from any and all government agencies.
    Because at this point? They were pretty sure that the very nasty men who wanted Jimmy dead had access to government records—even those labeled top secret.
    They were pretty sure that the bad men they had to take down—in order for Jimmy to very literally get his life back—worked for the mysterious and clandestine no-name Agency's black ops sector.
    They were pretty sure about that because, at one time, Jimmy Nash had worked for the Agency's black ops sector, too.
    “Good morning.”
    Tess smiled as she looked up from her book. “Hey,” she greetedDecker, who came to the end of the bed and actually reached out and held on to Jimmy's left foot.
    “You ready to blow this popsicle stand?” he asked Jimmy.
    Who laughed and then winced at the surge of pain. “Yeah. I wish.” He held up his arm, IV tubes still attached. “I'm still attached to the mother ship.”
    Before the words were out of his mouth, Deck turned to the door, where one of the nurses—Paula, buxom and jolly, a proud new grandmother—came bustling in. She shut off the drip, and almost before Jimmy could blink, she'd extracted the needle from the back of his hand.
    “This goes back in, Mr. Howard,” she warned Jimmy sternly, which was countered by the permanent twinkle in her lively brown eyes, “at the least little sign of dehydration. You want to go home? You'll push fluids. Do it right, we'll release you tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow?” Tess spoke for him, disbelief in her voice.
    Decker was grinning. “Blood test came back clear.”
    “But …” Tess was still concerned.
    “It'll be easier for him to rehab off-site,” Deck told her, not saying more than that, since Paula was still in the room. It wouldn't just be easier, it'd be safer. For all of them.
    Truth of the matter was, as safe as he'd been made by the news of his “death,” Jimmy still worried every time Decker or Tess left his room. He knew he was safe, and they were, too—when they were with him. But the only way he'd ever be fully convinced that the threat was completely gone, would be for him to identify and track down the men who'd threatened and then tried to kill him.
    Right now he knew barely nothing. Several vague clues. An e-mail address that he'd already tried to track, that had gotten him nowhere. A shirt that he'd worn on one of the days they'd tried to eliminate him—stained not only with his own blood, but with the blood of the man who'd tried to take him out. The vaguest of descriptions of that man, who'd attacked him in the darkness of a moonless night.
    Jimmy hadn't gotten a visual, just a sense of the man's size: average height and weight, medium build.
    Which narrowed his search down to, oh, about a quarter of the world's population.
    A DNA test on the shirt could provide far more specific answers, but itwould also tip his enemy off as to his current still-alive status. Decker and Cassidy had agreed about that. Their plan was to wait to do that test until Jimmy and Tess were out of this hospital and ensconced in an even safer place. Which was looking to be tomorrow. Saints be praised.
    “Don't worry,” Deck was reassuring Tess. “We'll get him back up to speed in no time.”
    “He'll be getting into trouble before you know it,” the nurse reassured Tess, then turned to give Jimmy a mock evil eye, “if he pushes fluids.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Jimmy said as she left the room, as Decker made certain that the door was tightly shut behind her.
    “Are you
sure …,
” Tess started.
    “The infection's gone,” Decker told her. “He's healing nicely. It's time.” He turned to Jimmy. “Cassidy wants to bring in additional security for the move to the safe house. He's going to give me a list of names. I want you both to go through it. If