“Coffee?” she asked.
“Thanks. Black will do.”
“Have a seat.” She waved him to a chair and disappeared into the kitchen.
Jack looked out the window instead. It, too, was high up, of course. From what he’d seen, only their door was vulnerable to intrusion.
But why would anyone want to intrude? Why had someone tried to abduct Megan after smoking her and the others out of the office? Why had someone tried to push him off the train and tampered with his gas meter?
Jack had only one answer, and he didn’t like it.
“So they want us dead,” he said to Megan when she brought in a mug of steaming coffee for him. “Because we know exactly what?”
“We saw that man do something that made Cahill appear dead. No one we know has been able to identify him, but we would if we spotted him,” Megan said.
“Except we saw her alive not a half hour later.”
“We have this on video,” Megan said. “True, his body blocks sight of what he did to Cahill to make her fall and remain still for so long, but we have a pretty clear look at his face and him holding a gun.” She touched his arm. “You have evidence he shot at us.”
“I have evidence that I was hurt.” Jack covered the place on his bicep where Megan’s fingers had grazed, as though he could hold that gentleness to him. “No proof it was any particular kind of weapon.”
“It’s just giving me a particular kind of headache.” Megan rubbed her temples. “Or maybe I’m just tired.”
“And hungry.” Amber pulled her phone from her pocket. “Pizza will be here in two minutes. Do we make the delivery person bring it to us?”
“I’ll get it.” Jack thought the long walk down and back up again would do him good, maybe finish the job of making his brain work since the caffeine hadn’t yet jolted it into action.
He smelled the rich tang of tomato sauce, spicy sausage and melted cheese in a thick, buttery crust the instant he opened the building door. The box was large and relatively heavy, and he ran it back upstairs, happy when he wasn’t winded at the top. The slight lightheadedness of running up three flights of steps on a nearly empty stomach, while smelling some of the best aromas he knew, gave him a clarity he’d been seeking all day.
“The answer’s clear.” He set the pizza box on the table. “I need to retrace our steps from last night, starting at the tree.”
“And what if they are there waiting for us?” Megan asked.
“If we don’t draw them out,” Jack said, “we’ll be running looking over our shoulders until they stop us.” He cleared his throat. “Until they succeed in killing us.”
NINE
Megan and Amber took a rideshare to the home of one of their coworkers. She lived in the northwest part of the city, a lovely neighborhood near a forest preserve, where many of the city’s police lived. Melissa—Mel to those who knew better—was the daughter of two cops but had chosen the PI route instead of going to the academy herself. If anyone was capable of ensuring Amber and Tess weren’t assaulted because of their closeness to Megan, that person was Mel. She lived in the same one-and-a-half-story home she’d lived in all her life, now too big for one person with her parents retired and moved south, and her younger sister married and in the suburbs.
“But what about you?” Mel asked Megan.
“I can take care of myself.” She glanced at Amber. “I’m sorry if that offends your independence, but you’d have a harder time getting away from someone who meant you harm.”
Amber bowed her head. “Or seeing him coming until he’s too close for running to do me any good. The best I can hope for is that Tess would lick him to death.”
The ridiculous suggestion made them all laugh.
“Be careful.” Mel’s gray-green eyes darkened with concern.
“I don’t think this bad guy is the only thing she has to be careful of.” Amber grinned. “Jack sounds pretty attractive.”
Mel raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yeah, sure, he’s good-looking.” Megan knew she had put on the “guess I noticed” attitude a little too strongly.
Mel and Amber laughed.
Megan hefted her messenger bag over her shoulder. “I need to get going.”
“Is your cell phone charged fully?” Amber asked.
“Do you have bullets?” Mel added.
“Yes, and no.” Megan opened the front door. “I never carry a gun. You know that.”
“What’s the point in having a carry license—”
Megan slipped outside before Mel finished her sentence.
The argument was old and tired. Mel didn’t see the point in not being armed. Megan didn’t see the point in being armed. Megan had always used the excuse that her cases weren’t anything one got killed over.
First time for everything.
She could go without some firsts—like getting chased down by a murderer. Or would-be murderer.
And she and Jack thought they could find out who it was before he killed them.
She had always believed herself good at her job. She had ferreted out some amazingly small details that had solved cases—a wife who swore her husband was hiding money from her, a missing sixteen-year-old girl, even a lost piece of jewelry once upon a time. She had no idea how to go about seeking a man who seemed to want her dead, a man the cops didn’t believe was the same person who had perpetrated all the crimes.
And she had no idea why Jack thought he would have the right skills, either. He might be a super accountant, but dealing with deep records and balancing reconciliation were highly different animals. Actually, one was an animal and the other, the one with which Jack was the most familiar, was concrete numbers that didn’t change their symbolism, just their values when added, subtracted or divided.
Maybe he had learned a thing or two from his cop uncle. Or maybe his father had been a cop, too. She had no idea. She knew very little about him. Yet she trusted him enough to meet him in the evening in a potentially dangerous situation.
She trusted him because comments he’d made, the way he treated his sister and others whom he met, told her they shared the same values, the same beliefs. His confidence without arrogance told her he was trustworthy. She prided herself on her ability to make accurate judgments about people within a few hours of meeting them. She had honed the ability. It helped in the execution of her job.
She wouldn’t have a job if she didn’t put this matter to rest. The agency couldn’t continue with its agents being threatened or hurt. No way would Megan be responsible for the harm to others. Gary’s bout of smoke inhalation and mild concussion was bad enough.
Megan exited the bus at the train station and caught the next L to downtown. They were meeting in the Loop, the area of downtown surrounded by the L tracks overhead, the heart of the city. Two of the lines moved underground there, so Jack and Megan could meet out in the open, within sight of security guards and service agents for the transit authority. The worst part for Megan was the tunnel between one train line and another. The hour was early enough that shoppers and those coming into town for dinner or the theater filled the space, yet crowds almost felt worse than being alone. Following someone without them noticing was much harder in open spaces or sparsely populated areas.
She slithered close to the wall so she only had to keep watch on one side with an occasional look back. People had been shot in the tunnel during the rush hour. They had been stabbed, too. Mostly over drug deals gone wrong or some kind of gang violence. Getting away with it, melting back into the crowd was easy. A run up a flight of steps and the perpetrator disappeared onto the street, through a building with more than one entrance and exit, or down an alley and into another L station.
By the time she reached the platform for the train going back into Lincoln Park, Megan’s heart was racing, her stomach knotting. She spotted danger in every
woman with blond hair or man with thick eyebrows.
“I’m the hunter, not the hunted,” she told herself, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until people began to stare at her and give her a wide birth. Since this let her know if anyone got too close, she repeated the words out loud again.
By the time she reached Jack, she was close to laughing.
“I’m glad you think this job is amusing.” He sounded grumpy, but his blue eyes twinkled. “Can I get in on the joke?”
“Sure. Later. Ready to turn into a sardine on the next train?”
They crossed the platform with thousands of others, allowed two trains to pass before one approached that was only halfway full—at least empty enough they found seats side by side.
Seats so small and close together her shoulder kept bumping into Jack’s arm. His left, fortunately. He still seemed to favor his right one, holding it a little stiffly, despite assuring her it was just fine.
“So tell me what you were laughing about,” Jack said after they rode together in silence for at least five minutes.
She took a deep breath. Above the aroma of someone’s take-home dinner set on the bench beside her, Megan caught a whiff of Jack’s scent. Something clean and refreshing, a kind of minty scent, but not peppermint or anything so strong. She feared she still smelled of smoke, having changed her clothes, but not having had the time to wash her hair since being in the office. The smell wasn’t pleasant like wood smoke. It was a chemical sting. Would tugging her hair into a messy knot make the stench less noticeable, or worse?
“You were saying?” Jack prompted.
She told him. He laughed, then turned serious.
“Have you thought much about what we’re going to do first?”
“Walk from where I parked my car the second time to Cahill’s house,” Megan said.
“What do you think we’ll find?”
She shrugged. “Bullet casings? People who might have seen or heard something from inside their apartments?”
“If you do that,” Jack said, “I’ll go look behind the Cahill house.”
“Alone?”
“I’d rather do it alone than drag you into it.”
“Like you’re more qualified than I am.” She snorted.
The train drew into a station, and the car emptied. Jack stretched his long legs into the aisle, tapping his toes on the opposite seat before drawing his legs in again and resting his elbows on his knees. “I am more qualified.” He looked at the gritty floor. “I used to be a cop.”
* * *
He had known her for not quite a day, and already he was telling her something he hadn’t told a new acquaintance since... Well, since one had to be a new acquaintance not to know. She was just too comfortable to be around.
At the moment, a quick glance at her face told him she wasn’t comfortable at all. She looked taut enough to knock down with a breath. He might have been mistaken but he believed she moved away from him a few inches.
“How long?” she demanded. “I mean, when? I mean... Is you not being one any longer the reason why you and your uncle—never mind. None of my business.” She raised her hands as though erecting a barrier between them.
“I don’t know. Maybe it is your business.” Jack straightened and prepared to exit at the next station.
He waited for Megan to go ahead of him, then followed her down the platform to the escalator. Her back was stiff, her ponytail practically bristling. He grinned. Even when he knew what they were doing was likely to get them nowhere but into trouble—the dangerous kind—she made him smile.
She had a right to be angry with him, he supposed. She knew more about Grace than she did about him. Yet she seemed to trust him.
Probably for the same reasons he trusted her—they shared values. The ones they cared about came first.
At the top of the escalator, they stopped at a coffee shop and grabbed coffee by silent agreement, then sat in the chilly evening air with the electronics store glowing like a space station on one side and endless traffic on the other. They could watch everyone going by yet be secure from anyone trying to harm them. No one would, with those huge, plate glass windows lit up beside them.
“Spill,” Megan said.
“I went to two years of college, then entered the academy. Police academy. My uncle got me onto the force right away, and I started work when I was barely twenty-one.” Jack hid his emotions over the time period behind an expressionless tone and coffee steam. “I lasted six months. I was in a good neighborhood, so didn’t see much violence. Catching kids doing drugs, traffic tickets. I was bored to death, frankly. So my uncle decided to send me out with an experienced officer on a domestic violence call. He shouldn’t have. But he wanted me to see real work and the good we could do in fraught circumstances.”
He sipped and scanned the square, watched people getting on and off buses, and admired a fancy sports car cruising to the corner—anything to avoid watching Megan’s face.
“It didn’t go well?” she prompted.
“You could say so.” He barked a humorless laugh. “It was a nice high-rise building. Not the sort of place one expects screaming fights and violence. But the husband had lost his job and was out of his head drunk. My temporary partner tried to calm him down.” Jack swallowed. “And got stabbed with the neck of a broken bottle.”
Megan gasped, her face whitening. “Did he... Is he okay?”
“Eventually. I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say his career was over, and so was mine. I couldn’t imagine putting myself through that kind of a scene again. I thought if I’d been more experienced, I would have known what to do. But I was useless, and my uncle was demoted for sending me out instead of the man’s regular partner. They all looked at me like it was my fault.”
“So you left.”
“I left and went back to school.”
“Yet you want to be an FBI agent?” Megan looked confused.
“An accountant for the FBI, possibly the most boring, stable job in the whole agency. I won’t be in the field. I’ll be safe so Grace doesn’t have to worry about me coming home at night.”
Megan drew a design with her thumbnail on the side of her cup, concentrating as though she created an important work of art in the thermoplastic, before she raised her head and asked, “So what were you doing in that tree with me last night?”
“It was supposed to be harmless observation,” Jack began, then realized he should tell her the entire truth. “And your boss sent me there to look after you.”
Even before he finished speaking, Megan had shoved back her chair so hard it slammed into an empty table behind her. “Gary would never do that to me. He knows I’m capable of taking care of myself. And why would he send you anyway?”
Ignoring the number of people staring at them, Jack rose and carried his empty cup to the trash. Megan’s running shoes thudded behind him. He didn’t glance back at her.
“Are you walking away?” she demanded.
“I’m a coward. I’m getting out of the line of fire.” He tried to lighten the mood.
And failed.
Megan’s cup arced past him for a perfect shot into the trash receptacle. “Jack Luskie, talk to me.” Her voice was quiet now.
He thought quiet might be dangerous with her.
He faced her. “I knew who you were and where to find you.”
“You did.” She sighed. “You knew way too much about my case for my liking at the time.” She set her hands on her hips. “But how did Gary know about you?”
“Cahill’s company told him they’d hired me to go over their accounts to look for where the embezzlement happened and how.”
“But why wouldn’t Gary trust me?” She blinked, and a droplet of water sparkled on her cheek.
Jack caught it on the pad of his thumb. “You’ll have to ask him.”
&nbs
p; Women’s tears didn’t bother Jack, as in he didn’t want to run from them. What bothered him was the depth of hurt Megan’s single tear displayed. He understood. He had been betrayed by someone he respected, too.
“If it’s any consolation,” Jack told her in a quiet voice, “I think Gary was wrong. I think you would have done just fine last night if you’d been on your own.”
“I wouldn’t have fallen out of the tree on my own,” she shot back.
Jack laughed. “You’re probably right. Should we get to work now before everyone’s tucked in for the night?”
She nodded and headed for the corner.
Once they had reached the other side of the busy intersection and headed into a quieter, more residential area, Megan asked, “Do you think risking our safety doing this will do any good?”
“I have no idea. I just know we can’t sit back and wait for one of us to get killed before we can feel safe going about our business.”
“Don’t you think Cahill and whoever is working with her will give up on us and move on someplace safe? I mean, they stole a great deal of money. Surely they’re better off in Grand Cayman or something.”
“You’d think.” Jack scanned the side street they were about to turn onto. It was the street where Megan had parked her car the second time. “But some people don’t like leaving loose ends.”
“Like witnesses.”
“Like witnesses.”
But they looked for witnesses of any kind they could find. On a Saturday night, people thronged the sidewalks. Even the side streets held their share of groups off to dinner or other entertainment. They tried to catch people walking out of buildings past which he and Megan had run the night before, presuming those people lived in the area and might have been at home.
A few remembered hearing gunfire. Like sensible city dwellers, they ignored the ruckus and stayed away from the windows. No one had seen anything, not Jack and Megan running, not anyone chasing them. No one had seen someone stealing Megan’s car or even hearing the alarm go off.
Exposing a Killer Page 10
