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anyone on his list makes you at all uneasy—”
    “I don't care who's on the list,” Jimmy interrupted, “as long as it includes Dave Malkoff.”
    But Decker was already shaking his head.
    “Why?” Jimmy asked. “Deck, I have two friends on this entire planet. You and Dave. And Dave thinks I'm dead. He also happens to be one of the smartest operatives we know.”
    Decker's smile was gone—he was back to his usual grim.
    Tess leaned forward to take Jimmy's hand, but it wasn't just to calm him down. She had something to tell him, and he could tell from her face that it wasn't going to be good news.
    “Oh, shit,” Jimmy said, looking from Tess to Deck and back again. “What happened to Dave?”
    “No, no,” Tess quickly reassured him. “He's fine. He's just …”
    “Sophia happened to Dave,” Decker told him, and the words didn't make sense.
    “Dave and Sophia hooked up,” Tess translated, and Jimmy realized that the concern he'd seen on her face had been for Decker, who'd had some kind of twisted thing for Sophia for years now. Fool that he was, he'd never acted on it. And now, apparently, Dave had intervened. Jimmy's disappointment for Deck was curiously mixed with a sense of “you go, boy” for old Dave. Dave and Sophia. Holy Mother of God.
    “It happened the night that, you know …,” Tess continued, but hedidn't know until she added, “The hostage rescue outside of Sacramento … ?”
    “Are you kidding me?” Jimmy asked.
    She shook her head. Not kidding. “They've been hot and heavy ever since.”
    “Wait a minute.” He needed her to clarify. “Are you telling me that the night that I
died,
Dave and Sophia decide to skip the grieving and fuck like bunnies?”
    Tess winced at his verb choice, glancing quickly at Decker, who was shaking his head.
    “Sorry.” Jimmy realized what he'd just said. “I just thought that, you know, Dave would be a
little
upset. Sophia, too. Christ.”
    “People deal with grief in all kinds of ways,” Tess reminded him. “And I'm also sure that Sophia knew …”
    She didn't finish her sentence. She didn't have to.
    What Sophia had known was that her last hope of starting something with Decker had died with Jimmy Nash. Sophia had believed—as had the rest of their friends and co-workers—that with Nash out of the picture, Deck would insert himself into Tess's life, dick first.
    And everyone also believed that, without Nash and all of his bullshit around to distract her, Tess would instantly recognize how terrific Decker was, and how perfectly suited they were for each other.
    And Jimmy's fiancée and his best friend would get married and live happily ever after, leaving Sophia out in the cold. Jimmy, too—but his cold would be the six-feet-under kind.
    “Look, I'm … happy for her,” Decker said now, about Sophia— proving what a Boy Scout he was. Because he meant what he'd said. “I'm happy for Dave, too. He's wanted this for a long time.” He cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable with this entire discussion, because at the bottom of it lay a truth they all studiously worked overtime to avoid mentioning: that Decker had, once upon a time, had feelings for Tess.
    “Seeing them together is… This whole thing is …” Deck shook his head and started again. “It's harder than I thought.”
    Jimmy knew his friend wasn't talking merely about seeing Sophia with Dave. Decker was talking about being seen in public with Tess, pretending that he and his dead best friend's fiancée had turned to one another for comfort.
That
was what was harder to do than Deck had thought.
    No shit, Sherlock.
    And Jimmy would've wagered the entire contents of his bank account that Sophia's watching Decker pretending—yeah, right—to want to be romantically involved with Tess was at least partially responsible for her propulsion into Dave Malkoff's waiting arms.
    But wait. The festival of jealousy didn't stop there.
    Jimmy was guilty of having a carnival-load of it