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versa.”
    O-kay. Decker didn’t dare look at Nash.
And vice versa.
He didn’t want to begin to speculate about the subtext of
that
message.
    Tess broke the silence. “Well, I sure know how to stop a conversation cold, don’t I? My comment was inappropriate, and I’m sorry, but it really annoys me when people are judged on their appearance.”
    “Dave Malkoff is a freak because he’s a freak,” Nash told her in that completely calm voice he used when he was hiding an emotional reaction. “He’s book smart, but if someone didn’t remind him to go home, he’d starve to death in his office. The fact that he looks like a geek is secondary to—”
    “It can’t be Dave,” Paoletti interrupted the discussion. “
Or
Murphy. So we might as well get that idea off the table. They’re already en route to Kazabek. They’re out of the loop. They both spent significant time in K-stan before the borders were closed—I have no way of knowing what kind of cover they already have in place. I apologize for not having that information.” He looked at Nash, and he didn’t look entirely happy. “It’ll have to be you.”
    Decker was watching Tess. She kept her face carefully blank.
    Nash was noticeably silent again, too.
    “Is that going to work?” Decker asked them both.
    “If Tess is going, in order for her to be safe, it’ll have to work,” Nash said. He even managed to smile. “Won’t it?”
    “I can make anything work,” Tess agreed. “Particularly for the short term.”
    “Good,” Paoletti, standing up. “Figure out a cover story. Chief, with me in my office. Now.”
             
    Tess sat at the receptionist’s desk in the outer office of Troubleshooters Incorporated, flipping through the packet of information on Kazbekistan that Tom Paoletti had emailed to her, waiting for Jimmy Nash to come out of the bathroom.
    She’d already read it twice. And she’d done extra extensive research on the country, downloading info from the State Department and other Web sites for savvy travelers onto her laptop. She’d studied it all on the flight to San Diego.
    She couldn’t believe how quickly this had happened. She’d called Tom Paoletti on the rumor that he was looking for people. He’d actually answered his own phone, they’d had a conversation, and she’d faxed over her resume. He’d called her ten minutes later to tell her he had a job he wanted her to consider and that there was a plane ticket waiting for her at Dulles so they could meet face-to-face.
    At the time, he hadn’t mentioned Lawrence Decker or Diego “My name’s Jimmy” Nash.
    And here came Nash now, his carefully polite smile—more suitable for strangers than people who had been naked together—perfectly in place.
    This entire assignment had the potential to be one giant, embarrassing ball of pain. For both of them.
    But particularly for her.
    “I didn’t know you were going to be here,” she said point-blank. It seemed a far better route to take than avoidance. Ignoring the anvil that was hurtling down from the sky could only work for a limited time. And she didn’t want him to think she’d followed him here.
    Especially since she’d already given away the fact that she’d gone looking for him, at least electronically, by asking about Mexico. Boy, for a Mensa member, she could be a total imbecile. She felt the need to explain that further. “I had no idea you and Decker were leaving the Agency. I was worried when you dropped off the map, so I checked around and found out . . . It wasn’t because I wanted anything else from you.”
    “I know,” Nash said. She couldn’t tell if he was lying. “I also know you’ve wanted to go into the field for a long time, so . . .”
    “Here I am,” she said.
    “Yeah. Here you are.” He sat down across the wide expanse of the desk from her. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”
    Tess rolled her eyes. “No, you’re not. You’re sorry that you’re forced to work with me