Flashpoint Read Online Free PDF Page A

scoop them off the roof.
    “We need to keep our eyes open—it’s been a few minutes since I cleared this area,” Nash told them, and just like that, Deck knew.
    Something ugly had gone down when Nash cleared the roof of any potential shooters.
    Decker would never know what had happened. He and Nash didn’t talk about things like that. Sure, Deck could try to bring it up, but the most he’d hear was “Yeah, I had a little trouble. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”
    Except Decker wasn’t buying that anymore. Yes, without a doubt, his partner could handle any form of violence thrown at him and come out on top, or at least alive. But that was significantly different from the psychological
handling
that was required in this business. It was how Nash was handling the aftermath of violence that was worrying him.
    “Here we go,” Nash said, firing another smile at Tess. The helo was out there. Deck could hear its thrumming approach. “Stay close.”
    Nash met Deck’s eyes, and Deck nodded, his weapon drawn, too. They kicked open the door.
    There was no one up there, no resistance. They were inside the helo and heading quickly out of the area in a matter of seconds.
    It was impossible to talk over the noise from the blades, but as Decker watched, Nash leaned in to Tess, speaking directly into her ear.
    She laughed, then moved even closer to say something back to him.
    His turn again, and to whatever he’d said, she had no immediate response. There was a significant amount of eye contact though, particularly when Nash reached out and finished buttoning up that shirt he’d given her.
    Maybe Nash would talk to Tess tonight—tell her the things he couldn’t put into words and say to Decker.
    Or maybe he’d simply use her for sex until the scent of death wasn’t so strong in his nostrils anymore, until he thought he’d “handled” whatever it was that he’d had to do tonight to save Decker’s life.
    Tess was watching Deck from across that helo cabin, and he made himself smile at her, hoping that she was using Nash as completely as Nash was using her, wishing she could read his mind and heed his unspoken warning.
    But maybe she could, because she glanced at Nash, looked back at Decker, and made something of a face and a little shrug. Like,
Yeah, I know exactly what I’ve gotten myself into, but really, can you blame me . . . ?”
    No, he couldn’t. He just wished . . .
    Decker wished Nash would take Tess home and talk to her about what had happened out on the roof tonight, instead of nailing her.
    Although he knew damn well that his motives for wishing that weren’t entirely pure.

C HAPTER
T WO
    T WO MONTHS LATER
A GENCY HQ, W ASHINGTON , D.C.
    Tess hung up the phone.
    She couldn’t believe it.
    Brian Underwood didn’t even have the balls to call her into his office and tell her the news to her face. He’d left a lousy
message
on her voice mail.
    “Yeah, Bailey, it’s Brian. Sorry to make this a phone call, but it’s twenty-two hundred”—military speak for ten at night. Underwood had never been in the Armed Forces, but he liked people to think that he had—“and this memo just crossed my desk. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow and I didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle, especially since I know you’ve been waiting on this info for a coupla weeks. Long story short, they turned you down for that field position. But hey, that doesn’t mean you can’t apply again in six months. There’s always next time, right? And in the meantime, your work with support is of vital importance. . . .”
    If they hadn’t accepted her this time, when there were still two additional positions that needed filling ASAP, Tess knew she was never going to leave the support office. She would still be here when she was sixty-five, like Mrs. O’Reilly, four cubicles down. And while she could, indeed, appreciate the vital importance of her work, this was not the job she wanted—and it wasn’t the job she’d