Ruthless

by Lisa Jackson

  “What does that have to do with my question?”

  Kimberly tossed her hair away from her face and thought long and hard. For years she’d heard the rumors about Robert, but never would believe he was as horrible as he’d been painted. “Maybe I’m incredibly naïve, but I lived with the man. I won’t dispute he walks a thin line with the law, and he’s probably even bent it on occasion. But I can’t believe he’s a part of anything as sinister as the mob.”

  Jake scowled. “You’re right on one count. You are incredibly naïve.”

  She bit at the inside of her lip. “Well, it’s hard to think that the man you married . . .” She shuddered.

  “Go on.”

  “As I said, I don’t know what all he’s involved in, but he did change about the time of that police investigation.”

  “Change? How?”

  She couldn’t really explain it. “He grew more secretive, and some of his business acquaintances changed.”

  Jake was staring at her so hard that his gaze seemed to cut through to her soul. She rubbed her fingers together nervously.

  “What acquaintances?” he asked so quietly she barely heard the question.

  “I didn’t know them, never really met them, but I got the feeling . . .” She lifted her eyes to his. “That Robert’s business interests had shifted. Maybe it was all in my mind, but, I swear, he changed.”

  Jake rubbed his chin. “You never heard any new names?”

  “No—he didn’t confide in me.”

  The seconds ticked by, and Jake didn’t take his eyes off her. The fire popping and the hum of the furnace provided the only sounds.

  “You know, Kimberly, if we could prove Fisher is a part of something—anything—illegal, it’ll weaken his case considerably.”

  “I know.”

  He touched her lightly on the arm. “Would you be willing to testify against him?”

  She remembered the cold fury in Robert’s eyes that afternoon. Taking a bracing breath, she nodded. “I would, but believe me, I don’t know anything.”

  “Just think about it.” Then, as if dismissing the subject, he waved and glanced at his watch. “It’s late. I’d better shove off.” Standing, he returned his chair to the table. “I’ll call you next week after I’ve talked with Kesler. There’s a chance he and I can work something out that you and Robert will both agree to.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He flashed a cocky smile as they started down the hall to the living room. He grabbed his coat off the back of the couch. “You never know until you try.”

  She shook her head. “Obviously you haven’t come up against Robert.”

  His features tightened almost imperceptibly. “There’s always a way,” he said calmly, his voice turning strangely dangerous as he slipped his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. “I’ll call you next week.”

  As he opened the door, a rush of damp air filled the room, billowing the curtains and causing the dying flames within the grate to leap brilliantly. Running quickly down the steps, Jake disappeared into the night. A few seconds later, the interior light of his Bronco flickered, and Kimberly watched him slide easily behind the steering wheel.

  She shut the front door and wondered why the house seemed so suddenly empty without him. “Don’t be a fool,” she said, but smiled nonetheless.

  In the kitchen she poured herself a fresh cup of hot tea and had just sat down with a magazine when the phone rang. Smiling, she picked it up on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Hi!” Diane Welby’s voice sounded over the wire.

  Kimberly glanced out the window. “Well, how’s the bride-to-be? Cold feet yet?”

  “Never! In fact I’m not even nervous.”

  “Sure.”

  From the window, she could see the shimmering dark streets. Beneath the street lamp, she noticed a man lingering, drawing deeply on his cigarette as he gazed steadily at her house. Her heart began to pound.

  Diane was saying, “I just called to see how things were going with Jake. He’s taking your case, right?”

  “Why—oh, yeah, he is.”

  “Good.”

  Kimberly snapped off the kitchen light so that she could watch the man, but it was too dark to see his features. He was tall, wore a raincoat and hat—nothing out of the ordinary. She thought about confiding in Diane, but what could she say? It wasn’t against the law to smoke on the street corner.

  “And are you two getting along?”

  The man on the street started walking away, around the corner and out of her line of vision.

  “Kimberly?” Diane said, bringing Kimberly’s focus back to the conversation.

  “Oh, yes. Well, we got off to a pretty rough start,” she admitted, still looking out the window as she filled Diane in on the particulars. “. . . He just left about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Good, good. I’m not kidding about the fact that he’s the best.”

  “Best or not, he wasn’t all that crazy about representing me,” Kimberly said, shifting the phone to her other ear. “But he won’t say why.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and finally she heard Diane let out her breath. “Jake had a difficult time a few years back. A messy divorce.”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “Did he?” Diane sounded delighted.

  “He didn’t go into it much.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Diane said, but didn’t elaborate.

  There was a click on the line, and Diane muttered, “I’ve got another call. I just wanted to know everything’s okay and that you’ll be coming to the wedding.”

  “I’ll be there,” Kimberly promised. “See you then.” She hung up and stared out the window. But other than the normal evening traffic, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “You’re losing it, Bennett,” she told herself as she snapped the shade shut. “Definitely losing it.”

  Nonetheless, she looked in on Lindsay again, double-checked the deadbolts and window latching and knew she wouldn’t get much sleep.

  * * *

  Jake paid little attention to the speed limit. Putting his Bronco through its paces, he steered through the puddled streets of Sellwood, across the Willamette River and on to Lake Oswego. His house, a bungalow that had once been a cabin retreat for wealthy Portlanders in the early nineteen hundreds, was located on the south side of the lake.

  The drive home took twenty minutes, but Jake didn’t remember any of it. His thoughts hadn’t strayed from Kimberly.

  In the driveway, he braked to a gravel-spinning stop and switched off the engine. Rain continued to beat on the roof as the cooling engine ticked in counterpoint. Jake stared through the blurred windshield and wrestled with his conscience.

  Inwardly he sensed that Kimberly Bennett was a woman with whom he could enjoy a lasting relationship. But now, because he’d agreed to see her professionally, she was, at least in the broadest sense of the word, his client. And she’d been married to the man who Jake was sure had been responsible for Daniel’s death. Getting involved with Kimberly would only spell trouble.

  And then there was her daughter—cute as a button, but Jake didn’t want to get too close. Nope, he had enough pain to last him a lifetime, and if he could help Kimberly out and put Fisher away at the same time, that’s all he could ask for. So, why couldn’t he forget her?

  His fingers curled over the steering wheel, and he had to beat down the urge to drive back to her home and offer to take her out. Or to bed, he silently added, furious with himself for a physical attraction that was so damn compelling he couldn’t think straight.

  “Get real,” he muttered to himself as he climbed out of his car and slammed the door shut. Lupus, his white shepherd, barked loudly. Tail whipping at a furious tempo, Lupus leapt from beneath the dirty branches of a rhododendron. Jake bent down and scratched the old dog’s wet ears. But his mind hadn’t left Kimberly.

  Starting an affair was out of the question, he told himself for the hundredth time as he
headed to the door. He couldn’t see her socially, and there was no point in even thinking about it. She was his client, Robert Fisher’s ex, and that was that.

  Why, then, he wondered, kicking angrily at a stone in his path, was making love to her lodged so firmly in his mind?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Two nights later Jake stood and stretched. His back ached from sitting at the desk in his living room, where he’d been reading everything he could on the most current custody cases.

  Lupus, curled on the rug near the window, growled low in his throat. His snow-white hair bristled at the sound of footsteps on the porch.

  “Relax,” Jake chided the dog as he opened the door. “It’s only Ron.”

  Ron Koski grinned, displaying slightly yellowed teeth. “Only Ron? Tough crowd, especially after what I went through for you.” He wiped his ratty old Nikes on the mat and stepped inside. A draft of cold winter air seeped in with him. “As a matter of fact, you owe me a beer. It’s definitely Miller time.”

  “You’re on.”

  Lupus curled up beside the fire, and Ron took a chair at the small table in Jake’s dining alcove.

  “So, you got something on Fisher?” Jake called over his shoulder as he wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and yanked out two bottles.

  “I don’t know if you’d call it ‘something.’ You know how slippery Fisher is.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Probably better than most people, he thought, twisting off the caps and thinking of Daniel.

  Returning to the dining alcove, he found Ron with one foot propped on another chair and a thick file spread on the table. “Here’s what I got on Fisher,” he said, accepting the offered bottle with a grin. “Mostly news clippings, a couple of police reports I managed to get from Brecken and some information from the surveillance job I did on him a few years ago.”

  “I remember.” Jake pulled up a chair and eyed neatly typed reports, yellowed newspaper articles and snapshots. Robert Fisher always seemed to photograph well. A large man with thick, jet-black hair, intelligent brown eyes and a heavy-boned face, he cut an imposing figure—even in yellowed black-and-white clippings. Jake skimmed the report on Daniel’s suicide, and his stomach tightened. Daniel had been an investigator for the Portland police. He’d been assigned to the narcotics detail and had eventually followed a lead to Robert Fisher.

  From what Jake learned later, Daniel had hoped to make a huge drug bust and expose Fisher, but it hadn’t worked out. Daniel had been found dead, from what appeared to be a self-inflicted overdose. Several kilos of cocaine, stolen from the police department’s evidence warehouse, had been found at his apartment along with a typed suicide note.

  The ensuing scandal had rocked the very foundation of the police department.

  Jake stared at the copy of the note included in Ron’s file, and hot rage burned in his gut. Daniel was clean. He’d never used drugs in his life. His body was clean—no needle marks. On top of all that, he wouldn’t have taken his own life.

  There had been an investigation, of course, but it had been short and inconclusive and swept under the rug with the rest of the dirt that couldn’t be explained.

  Jake had never bought the suicide theory. It just didn’t wash.

  Ron ran a hand through his short blonde hair. “There’s no reason to dredge all this up again. It’s over, man.”

  “Maybe not.” Jake flipped through the first few reports, his eyes scanned the sheets.

  “What’re you on to?”

  “Nothing as sordid as all this,” he replied, disgusted at the pile of dead ends that should have led to Fisher. “It’s a custody case. Fisher’s daughter.”

  “What about her?”

  “He’s making noise about wanting custody. His ex-wife doesn’t like the idea.”

  “Don’t blame her.” He finished his beer, then took a final drag of his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray. “Fisher doesn’t seem like the fatherly type,” he said in a cloud of blue smoke.

  “He wasn’t. But for some reason he’s changed his mind.”

  “Can he do that?”

  Jake’s mouth turned into a thin, determined line. “Not if I can help it,” he said, sifting through the documents. The opportunity to thwart Robert Fisher was a stroke of luck, and the chance to help Kimberly made it all the more tantalizing.

  He started to smile at the thought of her. Though he barely knew her, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind for the past couple of days.

  “So, what’s she like?” Ron asked, lighting another cigarette and letting it burn neglected in the ashtray.

  “Who?”

  “Fisher’s ex.” Ron’s eyebrows elevated a fraction. “Young? Beautiful? Built?”

  Jake’s gut tightened. “I suppose,” he evaded, refusing to think about Kimberly with the likes of Robert Fisher.

  “Probably took him to the cleaners—if that’s possible.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not sure about that.” Her car and some of her clothes were expensive, her house was little more than a cottage, vintage 1920 or so. And the documents he’d seen indicated she hadn’t stiffed Fisher for half of his vast property holdings or alimony. It appeared as if Kimberly had wanted out of the marriage—period. Unless she had a Swiss bank account or a stock portfolio hidden away somewhere, she seemed relatively middle-class.

  Jake rolled his sleeves over his forearms, aware that he’d been lost in thought, and Ron was staring at him curiously. “She seems to think that Fisher was clean until Daniel started poking around.”

  “No way.” Koski narrowed his eyes a fraction. “But it does seem that until then, he wasn’t in quite so deep. It’s been since Dan’s death that Fisher’s risen in the organization.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  Koski thought. “My guess is that someone killed Daniel and Fisher owed some big favors to keep his name out of it.” He glanced sharply at his friend. “I doubt that Fisher did the dirty work. He likes to keep his hands clean.”

  Jake’s chest grew tight, and his mind wandered back to dangerous territory. “Doesn’t matter,” he said without much conviction. “Daniel’s dead.”

  “And now you’re helping out Fisher’s wife.”

  “Ex,” Jake reminded him. “There’s a big difference.”

  Ron shrugged. “Have you met the kid?”

  Jake nodded. “Five-year-old girl.”

  “Too bad she’s caught up in all this.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said, thinking of Lindsay’s laughing blue eyes and pixieish expression. She was beguiling, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t about to get too close to Robert Fisher’s child. Nor his ex-wife. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Let’s get to work.”

  “Some of us already have been,” Ron said with a good-natured chuckle. “You know, when I talked to Brecken at the department, I got the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything.”

  “He’s supposed to be discreet.”

  Ron drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. “No, it was more than that,” he said. “I think he was being evasive.”

  Jake’s head snapped up. “Meaning?”

  Ron grinned. “I’ve known Brecken a long time. When he clams up, something’s going down. And I’ll bet you it has to do with our friend here.” He tapped a thick finger on the picture of Robert. “Ten to one, the police are on to him again.”

  “You think he’s about to be nabbed?”

  “Nah.” Ron stubbed out his cigarette. “I bet the police think they’re going to nail him again. There’s a big difference.”

  Amen, Jake thought. Scowling, he sorted the information into stacks. It would take days to sift through everything, but he’d take the time. He owed it to himself and to Daniel. And to Kimberly, he told himself, surprised at the turn in his thoughts.

  * * *

  “You may kiss the bride!” The preacher’s words rang happily through the little chapel.

  From the back pew Kimberly swallowed the lump in her throat. Sh
e watched Scott Donaldson lift the ivory-colored veil, uncovering Diane’s flushed face. Diane’s eyes were bright and blue, her cheeks rosy as she tilted her head back. Scott entwined his fingers in her blond, wreath-covered hair and lowered his head, taking her lips possessively with his.

  A whisper of approval swept through the tiny chapel, and teary-eyed guests smiled.

  Kimberly felt close to tears herself. It was obvious these people loved each other—Diane, nearly angelic in ivory silk, and Scott, tall and lean in his black tuxedo.

  Jake sat at the far end of the pew in the back. He looked the part of the courtroom attorney in his stiff white shirt and dark tie.

  His gaze shifted, and his steely eyes clashed with hers.

  Then he smiled—a lazy, off-center grin that caused her heart to beat double-time.

  The organist pounded on the keys, and the bridal march filled the chapel. The bride and groom strolled from the pulpit down a long wine-colored carpet and through the exterior doors. The guests followed suit.

  Outside, mist gathered in the cool air, clinging to the blackened branches of the bare oak and maple trees that flanked the church.

  Diane and Scott received guests on the chapel steps. Kimberly stood in line, waiting, and saw Jake, detached from the crowd, hands in his pockets, on the brick path leading to an ancient cemetery. He was studying her intensely, not bothering to hide the fact that he was staring. One cocky black brow rising in expectation as she moved closer. Kimberly met his gaze, forcing a thin smile and hoped to God that her accelerated pulse wasn’t visible in the hollow of her throat.

  Storm clouds gathered overhead, and the wind picked up, catching in her skirt. Kimberly barely noticed, her attention was solely on Jake.

  Suddenly she felt Diane’s hand on hers and forced her gaze back to the laughing eyes of her friend. “Congratulations,” Kimberly whispered, hugging her. “It was a wonderful ceremony.”

  “Can you forgive me for bailing out on you?” Diane teased.

  “No, but I’ve learned to live with that.” Kimberly felt her cheeks dimple. “But if there’s any way I can talk you and Scott into staying . . .”

  The groom, overhearing her, laughed. “Not a prayer.”