“Jump, Amara,” he roared, holding his arms out to catch her and break her fall.
She had her head stuck out the window and nodded. Raising one foot to climb over, she was almost out when she screamed.
Jack’s heart stopped dead.
A shadow of a figure moved behind her and suddenly she disappeared, yanked back away from the window. Jesus. No.
“Amara,” he screamed. “Amara!”
Nothing.
No. He wasn’t going to let that woman go. No, no, NO.
And if she was going to die tonight, he was damn sure going to die with her.
Wheeling around in his panic, he spotted the tree and its beautiful, beautiful branches.
Climb, motherfucker.
He climbed.
Scraping his already torn legs, he gripped the rough trunk with his bare toes and shimmied for all he was worth. Then the ledge was under his fingertips again and he was vaulting back inside the burning house.
He wasn’t prepared for the scene:
Amara and another dark figure in black, struggling. Amara screaming and raising her hand—what the hell was she holding?—high overhead. Amara lowering her arm with a slash. The man’s horrified and disoriented surprise as she buried her knitting needles in the side of his neck, near the shoulder.
One stunned moment passed. The man teetered, wide-eyed and stunned, not quite sure what’d happened to him. Then he lunged for her again.
Uh-uh. Not on my watch. Jack grabbed his gun from behind his back, steadied his hand, aimed and fired.
This latest killer grimaced and dropped, hard, leaving a sobbing and hysterical Amara to collapse into Jack’s waiting arms.
“Honey?”
Dwayne Barber stretched and yawned that first jaw-cracking yawn of the morning, the one that always felt so good and got the day started just right. That, and sex, which was why he’d woken up. His morning erection was the size of the oak in the front yard and if they were quick about it, he wouldn’t have to jerk himself off in the shower right before he left for work.
Where was that woman? “Honey?”
No answer.
But … oh, yeah, there was a thread of light seeping out from under the bathroom door. She was definitely in the bathroom. Again. Clearly some digestive issues were going on there. He’d have to ask her about it later. For now, he slipped out of bed, tiptoed across the cold floor and tapped on the door.
It was ajar.
“Honey?”
The silence was becoming a little weird when the smell saturated his nostrils with the slamming force of a poorly executed dive into the deep end.
It was a catalogue of the most disgusting stenches in the world: shit, vomit and urine, all layered together.
Jesus—no. Please, no.
The finality of it registered before the sight did.
Marian. His beautiful wife. Lying on the floor in puddles of her own filth, a bottle of prescription pills at the tips of her outstretched fingers.
“Amara,” Jack said.
Amara couldn’t bring herself to look at him, so she stared out the window instead. They were at their third hotel together, where the agents had smuggled them after they’d all nearly been killed. Sammy had been badly burned and Amara and Jack had jointly killed a man. Another hotel. Funny, huh? A hotel was where she and Jack had begun their short-lived non-relationship.
Would they also end it in one? This one?
She tried not to hear the agents moving around in the other room, getting ready to take Jack to court to finish his testimony and let him watch the rest of the trial. She tried to pretend she’d see Jack later, but the stark terror in her gut and the silent knowledge in her heart said otherwise.
“Amara,” he said again. “It’s time.”
Time. Yeah. Okay. She could do this.
It took more strength than she’d known she had to turn around and face him and then more again to muster up a quarter smile. She wouldn’t tell him. What would she say? I think you’re going to die today, so be sure to drive safe, you hear?
He had on that awful bulletproof vest over his clothes and she tried to let that be some comfort, but it wasn’t. She almost wanted to tell him to take it off and be comfortable. A bulletproof vest wasn’t going to stop Kareem Gregory. If she’d learned anything since this whole misbegotten adventure began, it was that. How many times already had Jack dodged Death? Three—no, four. Death would only be denied for so long.
Their gazes held across the distance of the room and he hovered just inside the doorway as though he felt, like she did, that getting too close right now wasn’t the brightest idea in the world. He had no smile for her, reminding her of the days back at the Twelfth Street Diner, and his dark eyes were filled with darker emotions that she couldn’t read.
Did he feel it, too, this overwhelming sense of impending doom?
“I don’t want you to go,” she told him.
“It’s time.”
“I still don’t want you to go.”
“I have to.”
Yeah. She knew that. Not that the knowing made the understanding any easier.
“You’ll be careful, right?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded, as satisfied as she could be under the circumstances because that was all she could ask for. Neediness wasn’t her thing, or at least it hadn’t been until she laid eyes on Jack, but there was one thing she needed to know.
“If we’d met … I don’t know … in a bar or at a wedding or at the bookstore … do you ever think about that?”
“Not much.” A flicker of amusement lit his eyes. “Just a hundred times a day.”
Laughter tried to bubble up from her throat but it jammed with the repressed tears already trapped there until she felt the burn of both. “Is—is there anything you’d have done differently?”
He paused, hesitating for so long she began to feel foolish and felt the color rise across her cheeks. Brilliant, Amara. What’d you expect him to say? That he’d’ve dropped to one knee and proposed on the spot the second he saw you? Now she’d embarrassed him and the only thing that remained was for him to weasel out of answering at all or come up with a lame-o answer that didn’t hurt her feelings too much.
Yeah, sure, Amara—I’d’ve asked for your number so I could text you.
Something like that.
“I’d’ve walked up to you and told you that I can’t breathe when I look at you. And then I’d’ve hustled you out of wherever we were and had you flat on your back with your thighs around my waist in fifteen minutes or less. That’s what I’d’ve done.”
Jesus. The man didn’t play around, did he?
The answer surprised her, and the look on his face when he said it devastated her. There was no humor or smarm, no attempts to avoid her gaze or hurry out of the room before she asked something worse. Only the blazing intensity of a man who meant both what he said and what he didn’t say.
“Come here.”
He held out a hand and she edged around the bed to slide her palm against his cool one, still careful not to come too close. He respected the distance but reeled her close enough to rest his lips against her forehead, kissing her and holding her hand and wrist in both of his.
They stood like that for a long time, until one of the agents—Amara didn’t bother looking around to see who—walked by with a discreet cough. “We need to go, Parker.”
Jack nodded.
Amara stared down at their intertwined hands through the hot tears she’d sworn she wouldn’t let fall. “You won’t leave for good without telling me goodbye, will you?”
“No,” he whispered.
“This isn’t it, is it?”
“No,” he said again, and she heard the blocked emotion in his voice.
Okay. Deep breath, girl. Take a deep breath.
If this wasn’t good-bye, then she could let him go and she could fight back all the screaming demons telling her that this was good-bye whether they knew it or not.
She looked up and smiled into his face, which was blurred from her tears. “I’ll see you later, then.”
“I’ll see you later.”
Kerry Randolph stood at the Kentucky side of the Purple People Bridge over the Ohio River and stared at the skyline. Cincinnati. His city. He’d grown up here and gone wrong here and now he wanted to take another look from the bridge he’d just trekked half a mile across.
Purple People Bridge. How stupid was that?
It was a pretty bridge, though, and a pretty city, even under today’s cold gray skies.
From here he could see all the familiar landmarks: Paul Brown Stadium, where he’d watched the Bengals lose more games than he could count and kept going back for more, the Underground Railroad Freedom Center and Great American Ball Park, where he could keep one eye on the Reds while eating the best cheesy nachos in the world.
The cell phone in his hand weighed him down and he thought about chucking it into the river. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? And satisfying even if it wouldn’t solve a damn thing. He looked at the lighted display, as if that would help him decide, but inspiration did not strike.
Thoughts jockeyed for position in his mind.
Like how he’d tried to do something with his life but was now little better than Kareem. Like Yogi, and how he’d been shot in the back of his head for an imagined wrong against the man he’d faithfully served for years. Like this city he loved and whether he’d ever see it again if he did what he was thinking of doing.
Like Kira. Always Kira.
Last, he thought about how nice it would be if, for once, he managed to look himself in the face when he shaved at the mirror.
That last thought decided him.
Taking a deep breath, he dialed.
“Brady.”
Another deep breath. “It’s me. I know where the warehouse is.”
An exasperated sigh, and then, “And I’ve got four pairs of balls.”
Kerry kept quiet, waited.
Brady’s voice, rapid-fire now with excitement, came back on the line. “Are you shitting me—?”
“No.”
“—because I spent yesterday getting a search warrant and tossing a warehouse that didn’t have anything in it but warehouse, so I don’t have time—”
“He took me there this morning,” Kerry said. “He’s got two hundred kilos of horse.”
“Where is it?”
This was it. The part where Kerry either fished or cut bait. He could hang up now, toss his phone in the river and later claim it had all been a mistake.
Or he could man up, grow a pair at this late stage of his life and do the right thing.
Taking a last minute to linger in the first half of his life, the half spent in plain view, he looked across at the city he loved and said good-bye because soon he’d never see it again.
“Not so fast,” he told Brady. “I want immunity. And I want to go into WITSEC.”
“Has the jury reached a verdict?”
“We have, your honor.”
The moment had all the hushed-silence drama of a TV movie of the week. Jack shifted on the balls of his feet, waiting, his nerves stretched to the snapping point. On either side of him stood the two agents who’d escorted him to court for the second half of his testimony. The plan was for them to hear the verdict and leave. Immediately. Normally he wouldn’t have stayed, but he needed to be here and see how this whole fuck fest turned out.
The jury had come back way too quickly.
Reading juries was like reading tea leaves while blindfolded, but Jack had this one nailed. They looked too upbeat for a group about to send a man back to federal prison, which could only mean one thing: Kareem Gregory was about to walk.
He knew it too. Up at the defendant’s table, the motherfucker stood with his lawyer and tried to look humble, but from where he stood in the gallery, Jack could see the smug smile hovering just beneath the surface. Maybe Gregory felt the daggers Jack was staring into his back, because he glanced over his shoulder, caught his gaze and held it.
Then he winked.
Something went off inside Jack’s head, a lightning flash of rage that had him in motion before he could even register what he was doing. All he knew was that it was long past time for that piece of shit to stop taking up space on the planet, and if the judicial system wouldn’t take care of him, then Jack would.
With a low growl, he took two steps to edge past the agent on his left and into the aisle, but they each caught an arm and held him back. He jerked free, seething, and reminded himself that Kareem’s time would come.
Up at the bench, the judge read the various counts and charges and blah-blah-blah, finally getting to the piece of information they’d all been waiting for:
“Not guilty.”
No.
The protesting voice inside Jack was quiet compared to the controlled pandemonium erupting all around him. On Kareem’s side of the courtroom, people shouted and laughed and received stern warnings about decorum from the judge, as if they cared about that now that their boy had just walked. On the fed side: lots of long faces and dark mutterings among the U.S. attorneys. Inside Jack: utter disbelief.
No.
He had not sacrificed his life and career for this moment. This moment was supposed to be about justice, about avenging his murdered mother and putting a drug-dealing killer behind bars. It wasn’t about that sorry-ass bitch getting away with one more thing in his accursed life.
Jack blinked and stared at the flash of movement and colors all around him, seeing nothing, understanding nothing.
He thought about Mom. He thought about Amara being shot. He thought about the fire last night and how they all could easily have been killed because of that one man’s vendetta. He thought about the life he’d given up and the one he’d never have, one with Amara in it, and children … a home … comfort … safety. Everything had been for nothing.
No.
Once again, his feet started moving with no conscious thought on his part. His babysitters tried to stop him, but he shook them off and shoved his way through the crowd surrounding that walking, talking, breathing piece of shit.
And then they were face to face, staring at each other, with Jack flanked by his sputtering and unhappy escorts who probably wanted to wring his neck for such an egregious breach of the procedures put in place for his safety.
Jack didn’t care.
They stared at each other, he and Kareem. Jack choked back his rage as the man’s triumphant smile widened, as though the only thing that could make this wonderful moment better was sharing it with his favorite DEA agent.
Sticking out his hand, Jack smiled, too.
Surprise widened Kareem’s eyes, but he was a player through and through, always ready for a game. He took Jack’s hand in his firm grip and Jack grabbed his shoulder with his free left hand, pulling him in hard to murmur in his ear.
“We’ll get you in the end, motherfucker.”
Kareem tsked. “Don’t hate the player, man. Hate the game. You remember what I told you, don’t you, Jack?”
“You remember this: I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
Kareem pulled back to look Jack in the eye with that flat gaze of his that was blacker than the heart of hell. “You’ve already done the last thing you’ll ever do, Jack.”
Chapter 31
“This way, Parker.”
The escorts on either side steered Jack down the steps into the narrow alley behind the federal courthouse, which was good because Jack was too numb to manage any personal navigation himself. The night air was so cold and harsh that he could almost feel his pores shrink and his blood turn to ice. The vest on top of his coat weighed him down more than his disappointment already did, pressing his shoulders and reminding him—as if he needed any reminders—that he would never be safe while Kareem Gregory lived.
His days were numbered, and for all he knew he’d hit the big zero alr
eady. Now that the trial was over, he and Amara would go their separate ways and never see each other again. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day at the outside.
She’d return to Mount Adams, safe and free, thank God. But he’d never lay eyes on her again and the few precious days they’d had together weren’t enough. His mouth soured with the vile bitterness of it. Weren’t. Fucking. Enough.
Trudging down the alley toward the idling SUV that would take them back to the hotel, he thought of all the things he’d’ve said to her in another life, if he’d had one:
You’re mine.
I claim you. I want you. I need you.
I love you.
Let’s make a baby together. Tonight. Now.
All things he’d never get to say and she never needed to know. What was the point in telling her? He was selfish, but he wasn’t that selfish and he wouldn’t whisper words to her that could make her hope or tie her to him. Even he wouldn’t be that much of a bastard.
They had tonight, though and—
A flash of movement above them snagged his peripheral vision.
Ah, shit.
He looked up, but there was nothing on top of the building but black on top of black layered with black. The men on either side of him apparently noticed nothing because they never broke stride. And they were almost at the SUV.
Pulse kicking and pounding, in his throat, temples, chest and ears, Jack stepped up his pace. This was going to happen one day but, Lord, not tonight. Please, not tonight. Not before he saw Amara a last time.
He scanned the alley, looking … looking … and that was when he saw it.
There. On his chest. A red pinpoint ball of light that shouldn’t be there.
Stark terror froze the breath in his lungs and his feet in their tracks.
No. Not tonight, God. He’d promised her he’d say good-bye.
“Amara,” he whispered.
Amara sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, knowing.
She knew before one of the agent’s cell phones rang in the next room and she heard their hushed, urgent murmurings. She knew before the knock on the open bedroom door disturbed her thoughts. She knew before she looked up and saw the quiet sorrow on Billy Bob’s shadowed face.
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