“I’m not complaining,” he told her firmly.
She smiled and he noticed the sparkle of tears in her eyes. “I know that you’re not complaining. You never do. When you helped put all of the baby’s furniture together, it was fun because you never complained about any of it, even though you were up until midnight, cursing up a blue streak at all of the parts.”
“Yeah, but I won,” he protested. “The furniture is all put together and the walls are painted, exactly how you wanted them. And it looks great!”
Sighing, she blinked rapidly, not wanting to cry any more. “You did win. Jayce, one. Furniture, zero!” she teased, then hiccupped when the laugh turned to a sob. “But you need to move on with your life. I’ve tied you down for too long. I know that you’re restless. I know that you haven’t been on a business trip for the past eight months.”
“I don’t need to go, Jessa,” he assured her. “I have perfectly trained employees with exceptional abilities.’
“Yes, but you loved your job. Now…it’s more drudgery than fun for you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if I’d use that term.”
She leaned forward, taking his hands. “Jayce, I’m releasing you. I promise that I’ll be fine.” She rubbed her belly. “I’ve done everything on my own for too many years. I’ll be fine in the future too. And besides, you’re going to be right next door. So if I need something, I’ll call you.”
“This is where we go back to being just friends?” he asked.
She forced her lips into a smile as she nodded. “I think that would be best, don’t you?”
She held very still, praying that he’d tell her no. That it wouldn’t be the best thing to go back to being friends! She wanted him to tell her that he wanted more. That he wanted to make thing work and that…
She was living in a fantasy world.
“Fine,” he said, but instead of walking out the door, he walked around the coffee table, kneeling down in front of her and taking her hand. “You have to promise me one thing, Jessa.”
“What’s that?” she asked, struggling to keep it together. Jayce didn’t deserve a sobbing, begging female on his hands. She’d agreed to the terms ahead of time. She couldn’t renege on the deal now. She had to let him go.
“Promise me that you’ll let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”
“I will,” she promised. “I know where you live.”
He didn’t laugh. Instead, he looked at her with those green eyes and Jessa stared at him, memorizing the way his hands felt, the look in his eyes and that stubble along his jawline. He was so painfully handsome.
She had to be strong herself. She had to let him live his own life.
“Okay then,” he sighed. “I’ll go.” He stood up and walked to the front door but, as his hand rested on the knob, he looked back at her. “Anything, Jessa! You call me.”
Jessa nodded, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to speak. Emotion was choking her now. Her voice wouldn’t work and so she had to nod her assurance.
“Good.” A moment later, he was gone.
Jessa saw him walk across her lawn, heading to his own house. It took all of her strength and self-control to keep herself from bursting into tears. Remembering how he could hear things that normal people shouldn’t be able to hear, she waited and waited. When she knew that he was in his beautiful Victorian with the door closed, only then did she curl up into a ball, her sobs almost choking her.
Jayce stared at the empty house. Silent. Cold. Empty.
Taking a deep breath, he looked around. “Fine,” he said to the empty house. “Done. Over. She’s moved on.” Looking out through the back windows to the lake, he continued to take several deep breaths, trying to calm the rage that simmered in his chest. When he had himself back under control, he looked around. “Time to get those cabinets sanded,” he announced. He didn’t like the silence of his house. He preferred the laughter and teasing from Jessa at the end of the day.
“Stop moping around,” he admonished himself.
And with that, he walked deeper into the house. Along the way, he grabbed a crystal vase that Jabril had given him about a year ago. With a powerful arm, he threw the crystal vase against the wall, muttering several curses under his breath as the crystal shattered, spewing shards everywhere.
His cell phone ringing pulled his attention away from another item that would shatter against that wall. “What?” he snapped.
“We’ve got him!” Oz announced.
Jayce had no idea what his brother was talking about. The only person he wanted to get was Jessa and she’d just broken up with him. “You got who?”
“Thwacker!” Oz replied.
Jayce didn’t give a damn. He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “Tell me.”
Oz detailed the intel they’d received about thirty minutes ago. It wasn’t just information about where Thwacker had been. The person the military had captured had information on where Thwacker was going to be. That was huge!
“You have contacts over in Malaysia, right?” Oz demanded. “Don’t you know that guy that has the building on the corner? That’s only five hundred feet away from the target.” Oz waited as Jayce tried to get his mind in gear. Malaysia. That would take him out of the country and hours away from Jessa. He didn’t want to go, but as he swung around, looking towards her house, he changed his mind. “Yeah. I know the guy. Not just him, but I know all of the gangs around that corner. If anything is going down, they’ll tell me. I beat them at poker every few years.”
“Good. Ryker has some contacts and I’ll coordinate with the units that will back us up.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Make it five.”
Jayce ended the call without another word. Perfect timing, he thought. Getting away from Jessa would keep him from walking over there and begging her to stay with him. That was just pathetic. But he was there. He was ready to beg.
Instead, he grabbed his keys and walked out of the house, pressing the buttons that would secure his home for an extended period of time.
Jessa watched as Jayce ran out of the house, a look on his handsome features that told her that he was already moving on. He had a bag in his hands and a determined look in his green eyes, even though she couldn’t see the color from here.
How many times during their time together had she stood at this window, watching him leave only to have him stop and turn around, look up at her and walk over to her front door, and kiss her until she was aching for him to do more!
Not this time. He was gone and she still stood at the window, staring at the dust as it settled against the road as her heart ached to have his arms around her just one more time.
Jessa walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of milk, forcing herself to drink it. She couldn’t make dinner. So instead, she walked up the stairs and curled up on her bed, pulling the pillow that Jayce had always used close, needing to smell him. And then she cried. Cried for what she could never have, for the dreams of heaven ripped mercilessly out of her grasp.
Chapter 19
Jayce ignored the sweat trickling down his forehead and back, closing his eyes as he listened. There! The sound was barely there but he heard the crunch. The footsteps were getting closer. Closer. It was about one hundred degrees in this closed up, abandoned house. Add in the famous tropical humidity that was ever-present in Malaysia and it was closer to a hundred and twenty degrees. But his sources had told him that Thwacker was here. And Jayce had found evidence of someone hiding out in this rat hole.
Another footstep. Breathing. And something else, something that wasn’t completely definable. There was an energy that a human body emits, a sensation or…hell, Jayce didn’t know what it was, he just knew that he could sense it. As the person got closer, and closer, the sensation intensified.
Opening his eyes, he oriented himself again and…twisted around, slamming into the middle of the person walking through the doorway. He heard an oomph!
But Jayce didn’t stop. With another twist, he whirled around and knocked the person sideways.
There was a little more of a pathetic effort to resist, but Jayce was furious and had enough excess energy that he wasn’t messing around. Within seconds of the man walking through the doorway, Jayce had him pinned down. Moments later, the plastic handcuffs were on him.
Flipping the man over, he ripped off the mask of the man that he and his team had been tracking for the last two years.
Grabbing the man by the front of his disgusting, sweat stained jacket, he growled, “Why?!”
That’s when Jayce saw him. For the first time, the international terrorist that everyone had dubbed Thwacker, because he disappeared into the night after every act of violence. But…this man looked like he’d been tortured. Half of this person’s face had been ravaged as if someone had poured acid over him.
“Because you dogs deserved it!” the man spat furiously.
Jayce rolled his eyes, irritated by the usual lines. “Fine. Be an idiot,” and Jayce pulled the man up to a standing position. “I got him,” he muttered into his radio. A moment later, the room swarmed with personnel. All of them dressed in flak jackets and helmets, armed to the teeth.
Jayce looked around. His initial thought was gratitude that the monster they’d been tracking for so long actually looked like a monster. Many times, the bad guys looked like an ordinary person. Someone you could pass by on the street and not even notice.
That’s when it hit him. The guy they’d been tracking…he traveled easily from one country to another. If he looked like this, he would have been spotted a long time ago. Security personnel in various countries and airports would have noticed him. Prejudices would have been applied, this man questioned more thoroughly.
He knew. Jayce wasn’t sure how. Maybe it was his spidey sense going off or his nose hairs tingling. But he just knew.
“Get out! Everyone out! The building is going to blow!”
There was a stunned silence for perhaps one second. Then all the security personnel, police officers, military personnel and Ryker made a beeline for the exits. Jayce didn’t stop either. He tossed the guy with the messed up face over his shoulder and ran. He was the last one out of the building, but he didn’t stop, running as fast and as far as he could. It didn’t matter where he went, as long as it was away from that building.
He’d made it just out of the blast zone when the explosion happened. One moment, he was running. The next moment, shards of bricks and concrete were flying past him. Only by the grace of God did none of those chunks of debris hit him.
He almost tossed the monster down onto the ground. He saw another police officer and yelled, “Watch this man! Don’t let him get away!”
And then he was running back into the fray. Ryker right at his heels, both barely able to hear as the ringing in their ears overtook everything. Oz had been in one of the buildings across the street, supervising the operation. He fell in step with them, all three looking around.
“He’s close!” Jayce growled furiously.
“He would want to see the destruction,” Oz agreed.
Ryker nodded. The three of them turned slowly, each of them watching out for suspicious activities, such as someone running down the street with a gun or machete, or something equally out of place. Or it might be something simpler, perhaps a person standing alone, watching the chaos.
Ryker saw him first. “Three o’clock,” he announced, turning so that he was facing the opposite direction. “Third floor up, two from the left.”
Jayce turned to face their two o’clock, pretending to look at something else. Oz did the same, but looking in the opposite direction. That’s when they spotted him. It wasn’t a figure, but a movement. A shadow. But that was all they needed.
“Head out,” Oz ordered.
All three men went in different directions, none of them heading towards the building in question. They wouldn’t go directly there. Instead, each of them would circle around and approach from different angles until they converged on the room in question. Jayce thought to head up to the top of the building and come down from the top, thinking that Thwacker wouldn’t be expecting that.
With an upper body strength honed by Ryker’s insane obstacle course and years of hardcore weight lifting and training, Jayce hoisted himself up to the drainpipe, then pressing his back against the wall of the adjacent building as his hands and feet braced against the main building, he climbed up to the roof. Looking around, he found the rooftop entrance and yanked it open, grateful that the lock wasn’t secure. He knew how to open just about any lock, but that would have taken time. Time better spent sneaking up on the asshole who had planted a bomb in the marketplace a month ago in Algiers. The asshole who had tried to blow up twenty police officers, plus Jayce’s brother and his best friend just ten minutes ago.
No way was this asshole getting away this time.
Jayce glanced out one of the windows and spotted Ryker sneaking up from the left side. “I’m in,” he whispered into his microphone.
“Roger that,” Oz muttered.
“Going silent,” he said.
There was no response to that as the two other men slowly moved into position, ready to assist. Jayce heard someone inside the room in question. He heard locks snapping. Lids closing. Shuffling. The man was carrying something heavy, dragging it across the room.
Jayce stood just on the other side of the door and pressed his mic twice, the signal that he was in place. He heard two clicks, then two more. Everyone was ready. Another click from him and…he kicked the door open, the wood splintering away from the hinges. A tall, thin man spun around, surprise on his soft features as he backed up, holding his arms out in front of him. “You!” the man spat.
Jayce didn’t bother to respond. He simply pulled back and…slammed his fist into the man’s face. The guy was out cold before he hit the floor.
Oz and Ryker stepped into the room, and stood over the prone man.
“That looks more like a man who would do something like this,” Ryker said.
Oz nodded. “The guy in the other building was too easy. Too straightforward.”
Jayce bent down, snapping plastic ties around this guy’s hands and feet. “Yeah, too straightforward, but we all almost died in that building.”
The other two grunted. They carried the terrorist out of the building, handing him over to the police. Jayce recognized the look on the officers’ faces. They were furious. Their suspect was not going to fare well in jail tonight. The police in this area didn’t take well to almost being blown up.
Jayce rubbed a hand over his face as he boarded the jet three days later. He would have left sooner, but the police in Malaysia asked for help in tying all of the pieces together. Oz, Ryker, and Jayce stayed behind, finding additional evidence, financial and physical, that tied their suspect to the bombing, plus others in the past. All of which ensured that they had the right man. No point in jailing someone only to find that the real perpetrator was still out and about, wreaking havoc on the world.
“Take us home, Jimmy,” Oz said to their pilot as he clapped the man on the back.
“We’ll have a tailwind,” Jimmy announced. “Should be an easy flight.”
Jayce moved to the back of the plane, thinking that nothing had been easy lately. Because he knew that he didn’t have Jessa to come home to. Jessa. Just thinking her name made his body ache to talk to her. Hold her. Laugh with her. He wanted to hear about her book. He wanted to feel their child in her belly.
Oz and Ryker sat down across from Jayce, identically expectant looks on their faces.
“What?” he snapped, not wanting to hear anything his brother or friend had to say. He wanted to be alone. Alone to wallow in his misery because Jessa was too damn independent.
“What’s going on?”
Jayce rolled his eyes and stretched his legs out. He loved having a set of private jets. It made air travel a hell of a lot more comfortable and convenient.
“First, you guys were irritated that I was smiling. Now that I’m no longer smiling, you’re angry about that. Make up your minds.”
Oz glanced at Ryker, then back at Jayce. “Just talk to us. Your mood the past few days has been beyond angry.”
Ryker leaned his elbows on the teak table. “You look…defeated.”
Jayce stared out the window, but there wasn’t much to see. It was night time and, even if it wasn’t, there’d be a layer of clouds underneath the plane.
“I did something stupid,” he admitted.
“Yeah, well, that’s a given,” Oz commented, causing Ryker to chuckle.
Jayce gave his brother an evil look, then turned back to look out the dark window. “I fell in love with the wrong woman.”
Oz was silent. So was Ryker. He looked at them and knew that they understood. Maybe they’d even figured that part out. “She’s about to have a baby.” There! That startled them. “My baby.” He shook his head. “Our baby. She’s about to have our baby.”
“When is the baby due?”
Jayce checked his watch, and did some mental calculations. “In about ten days,” he said.
“Wow!” Oz exclaimed. “Are you seriously telling me that you’re about to be a dad in less than two weeks and you’re just telling us now?”
Ryker didn’t say anything. He simply leaned over the table and punched Jayce in the arm. Hard!
Jayce didn’t argue. He should have told them. Oz was his brother and Ryker was like a brother. They were his family. Plus Carly. And Charlotte now. And Bethany, his little niece. “How’s Bethany doing?” Jayce asked, referring to Oz’s six month old daughter.
Oz’s face transformed. Gone was the anger and shock, replaced by absolute adoration. “She’s doing great. Charlotte sent me pictures and videos every day so I didn’t miss anything.”
His Baby Deal (The Diamond Club Book 6) Page 12
