by Alicia Scott
Jack’s jaw tightened, a muscle spasm visible in his cheek. He finally looked at her, then flicked his gaze toward his partner. “Not here. Not now,” he warned quietly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Please excuse me for embarrassing you. I’ve never been semiarrested by a man who’d just invited me to dinner and a night of endless passion. I imagine I have to work on my protocol.”
“Josie…” His voice trailed off. For one moment, his eyes darkened. He looked angry. He looked frustrated. He looked betrayed. Then he shook his head and his face shuttered once more. “Please come with us, Ms. Reynolds.”
His fingers folded around her elbow. His eyes were blank, his grip impersonal. And then she understood how totally he’d withdrawn from her. Her throat thickened. Her eyes filled with tears, and it took her a moment to breathe through the knot in her chest.
“Damn you, Jack Stryker,” she cursed him thickly. “Damn you.”
He simply pulled her down the hall, Stone falling in on her other side. The ceiling was high above them, the shadows long. Their footsteps rang hollowly, making her feel even more alone. She kept her head up proudly and she blinked the tears away. She would not give them that kind of satisfaction, not even when they opened the door of the squad car and guided her into the back seat.
She wondered if this was how her father had felt when they led him away. And she wished she’d never met Jack Stryker.
* * *
Stone Richardson spared another sharp glance over at his partner. Jack Stryker sat perfectly straight in the front of the squad car. His knees were together, his hands at his side, and his gaze locked straight ahead. No emotion or expression had crossed his face for the last three hours, not since Stone had opened a small package addressed to himself and found inside every detail of Josie Reynolds’s life. A typed, unsigned note had been clipped to the front.
Dear Detective:
Jo Reynolds is not who she appears to be. Olivia found out the truth, look what happened to her.
Sincerely,
Someone Who Knows Better
Stone had quickly scanned the materials, then given them to Jack to read before sending the whole package to the lab to be analyzed for fingerprints. He hadn’t understood why his partner had become so cold and remote until they went to pick up Josie. So Jack had spent the night with their number one murder suspect.
God, what a mess. And how totally unlike Straight Arrow Stryker.
“You should’ve let me handle it,” he said under his breath to Jack. Josie wasn’t paying any attention to them. Separated by bulletproof glass, she was hunched next to the locked back door, staring out the window and looking as miserable as Jack.
“I wanted to handle it.”
“You could get into a lot of trouble for this.”
“She wasn’t the number one suspect last night.”
“Dammit, Jack, play iceman with someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do. You’re involved with her. It’s obvious you care. You should’ve let me handle it.”
Jack turned to him at last. “I wanted to handle it. She shouldn’t have been confronted by a stranger.”
Stone grimaced and shook his head. “Stryker, one of these days, I’ll have to teach you about women, because otherwise your sense of honor is going to get you killed.”
Stone pulled into Josie’s neighborhood. Two other squad cars were there. The warrant listed the whole house, garage and car as fair game. They had four officers to help search, with him and Jack overseeing the operation. It would probably take a few hours. Depending on what they found, they might have probable cause to get a new search warrant for Josie’s office.
Stone pulled into the driveway, not bothering to get Josie from the back, but leaving her for his partner to handle. Once on the front porch, a pale and dry-eyed Josie stood quietly while Jack retrieved the door keys from her purse and opened it for all the officers.
“Why don’t you take Ms. Reynolds into the kitchen,” Stone told Jack brusquely.
“One of the other—”
“Why don’t you take Ms. Reynolds into the kitchen?” Stone smiled more tightly. The search would start in the living room, then the bedroom, where personal items were more likely to be found. The kitchen would be the only place to give Jack and Josie the privacy he was sure they needed.
After a moment, Jack conceded with the smallest tilt of his head.
“Stubborn ass,” Stone muttered. He started barking orders, and as Jack led Josie away, the rest of them got to work.
* * *
“Can I at least get a glass of water?” Josie asked at last. She stood in the middle of her own kitchen, uncuffed but feeling very much a prisoner. She didn’t want to be alone with this man. She never wanted to look at him again.
“Where are your glasses?” He sounded as if he were talking to someone he barely knew, much less liked.
“Upper right cupboard. Afraid that’s where I stash all my assault weapons?”
He wordlessly pulled down a glass, ran cold water in the faucet and filled the glass. He handed it out to her. She shook her head.
“There’s bottled water in the fridge.”
Not batting an eye, he dumped out the tap water, opened the refrigerator and refilled the glass. This time, he set it down on the counter, probably so he wouldn’t have to risk brushing her fingers.
“You are such a bastard,” she said at last. She was having to blink back tears again.
He pulled out a chair and sat. He locked his gaze on the far wall, and her blood boiled over.
“So that’s it? I get the silent treatment now? At least I fight fair, Stryker. At least I say what’s on my mind. You make the queen of England seem loose-lipped and wild.”
“You’re not as open as you pretend.” His voice carried an edge. Fool that she was, she went after it.
“Yes, I am, Stryker. I’m exactly who I say I am. And when I said I was willing to take things one step at a time, I meant it. I meant I’d give you the benefit of the doubt. I meant I’d spend my afternoon looking forward to our evening together. I meant I honestly wanted to see you again and…and make more microwave popcorn!”
“And tell me lies, Josie? Lie in bed with me and tell me more lies?” He looked right at her and his blue eyes burned black.
“I never lied,” she retorted immediately.
“Dammit, how can you say that? You told me your parents were perfect together. You spun golden stories of their incredible love and the tragedy of losing them both to an accident. An accident? Your father went to jail for murdering your mother. What kind of accident was that? And what kind of example of incredible love?”
“He didn’t kill her.”
“He didn’t kill her? Funny, twelve jurors seemed to think differently.”
“Oh? Why don’t you ask a defense lawyer just how smart twelve jurors can be. My father didn’t do it, Stryker. I know. I found her body.”
He stuttered. His eyes narrowed, but she didn’t look away. She furiously blinked away more tears, hating the thickness of her voice and the unbearably tight feeling in her chest. She wasn’t a stranger to standing alone. She was a helluva lot tougher than Jack Stryker would ever understand. He could toy with her, he could hurt her, but she had no intention of ever letting him see her cry.
“Maybe you ought to start at the beginning, Josie. Maybe you ought to tell me what you should’ve told me last night.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“Bull—”
“I did not lie to you, Jack Stryker. Now, are you going to shut up and listen, or are you going to continue to doubt me because that’s what you do best?”
His jaw tightened dangerously. “God, Josie,” he muttered through clenched teeth at last, “you could drive a Buddhist to murder.”
“Thanks, it’s a gift.” She leaned back against the counter, crossed her arms over her chest and trapped him with her hot, angry gaze. “All right. I’ll go through this once, that’s it. Because, frankly, it’s my
family’s business, not yours and not Grand Springs’s.”
“I think a lot of taxpayers would disagree with that—”
“Well, Olivia didn’t. She considered it my business.”
“So Olivia did find out.”
“Of course she found out, Jack. I told her.”
“What?”
“This would go a lot smoother if you would stop interrupting. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that nine-tenths of good police work was being a good listener?”
He scowled. She smiled sweetly, but it didn’t meet her eyes. She felt amazingly raw and amazingly brittle.
“My father, Stan Reynolds, loved my mother, Rose, just like I told you. And she loved him. My father wasn’t perfect, but he had a good heart. He was just…he was a dreamer. He wanted to make it big, he wanted to build a castle in the sky for my mother. He hadn’t the skills, but he thought he had the cleverness. He was a con man, all right? He was a warm, foolish, petty con man who wouldn’t have hurt a flea—”
“Just bilk old women out of their retirements.”
“Are you telling this story, or am I? No, my father never ‘bilked old ladies.’ Part of being a good con artist is never taking anyone for more than they can afford to lose. If you take too much, the financial burden forces them to go to the police in order to recover the money. If you only take their ‘extra,’ well…most times they’re too embarrassed by their own lack of judgment to report anything.”
“How convenient.”
“I’m not saying it was right, Jack. God knows my mother pleaded with him to go straight. For a while, he would try, wanting to make her happy. But my father didn’t have any formal education or training. He only qualified for low-paying jobs like salesman or bartender. The work was boring, the pay not great, and Stan…Stan had too many dreams. Sooner or later, he’d hatch some great scheme, quit his job and get back in the game. Yes, he often involved me to give him credibility. Who could doubt a big, teddy-bear-looking man with a little girl?” She paused, shrugging, but then added softly, “He used to tell me, ‘People need rainbows to chase, darlin’. They need to believe in that pot-o-gold, and you and me, we’re just the little leprechauns helping them spin their dreams.’
“Of course, my mother always found out. Generally, when the police came to the house to question my father. God, it hurt her. She would stand in the kitchen, shaking his big shoulders as if he were a little child. ‘How can I love you so much?’ she’d cry, ‘when you break my heart so often?’”
Josie’s throat grew too tight. She took a deep breath so she could continue. “The scams were always small stuff. Sometimes they didn’t have enough proof to prosecute. Sometimes he’d be found guilty and serve small time, or community service. He’d go straight for a bit. Life would settle down. He really loved my mother very much. He just kept thinking she deserved so much more than a little rental in a little community.”
“So he’d go back to scamming people.” Jack’s voice was hard.
“Yes,” she said bluntly. “He would.”
“And you would help him.”
“I was a kid. He was my father. Of course I helped him.”
“And now you control the town’s money.”
She stiffened, the blow cutting her deeper than she would’ve thought possible. She understood strength now. Strength was remaining standing against the counter and staring a man like Jack Stryker in the eye.
“Yes, Jack. And now I’m town treasurer. And as you should know from talking to all the people you’ve talked to, I’m really damn good at my job and I take it seriously. I’m sure you did a couple of things when you were ten that you wouldn’t do as a cop now. Oh, wait, I take that back. You’re Straight Arrow Stryker. You’ve never made a mistake. Too bad your brother isn’t here, maybe he would understand.”
Jack went pale. She’d struck back unconsciously, but she’d struck deep. He’d hurt her. She’d hurt him. Suddenly, the ugliness of it all wearied her. She couldn’t look at him anymore. She bled on the inside, and she just wanted to find a nice, dark place where she could curl up and lick her wounds. They had had only one night of closeness together, but she had liked it. The knowledge she’d never have it again salted the pain.
“Shall I continue?” she whispered.
“Might as well.”
“Yeah, might as well.” Her gaze went out the window. The sun was beginning to set, and the distant sky had turned gold and bloodred. “One day when I was twelve, my father confided in me that he had the scam to end all scams. This one would be the ultimate pot of gold. We’d retire afterward and build my mother a beautiful house. We would never want for anything. We would always be happy. I just had to come around with him a few days. He would help me make up the schoolwork later. Oh, and I absolutely, positively, should not tell my mom.
“I’d been around the block a few times by now. I listened to him describe the scheme that had been pitched to him by a man named Frank Gucci, and I recognized that it was a traditional Ponzi scam. We would approach people to invest and, as we got new investors, use their money to pay dividends to the first wave of investors, increasing credibility and thus gaining an even larger third wave of investors.”
“You pay out dividends,” Jack filled in, “while pocketing the serious investments. Everyone thinks it’s legitimate because they are seeing some returns, while you get rich off the continual influx of money.”
“Yes. Dad had played around with something like it before, but on a very small scale. Now he was talking of asking for investments in the tens of thousands of dollars. This guy Frank had dreamed it all up, setting up the shell as an investment fund in small-cap companies. It was a piece of cake. They just needed Dad as the front man, to actually approach potential investors. He was very charming and benign, not a sinister bone in his body. Women loved him.”
She had to close her eyes. She loved her father dearly, but that didn’t mean she approved of him. And yet the memories hurt, because she saw his laugh and his smile and the times he’d sneaked her oatmeal cookies. Her happiest times had been on his knee, and then everything had blown apart.
“To make a long story short, I told my mother what was going on. I was scared for him. The other stuff had been small and the risk small. This was the big league, with millions of dollars at stake, but also the potential to go to federal prison for wire and interstate mail fraud—”
“Among other things,” Jack said dryly.
“Exactly. So I told, and two days later when I returned home, I found my mother’s dead body at the foot of the stairs. Moments later, my father walked in. If…if you could’ve seen the look in his eyes, Jack. So much horror. So much pain. I’ll never forget that look.” Her voice grew soft. “I’ll never forget what I did to my parents.”
Her gaze swung to him slowly. “They killed her, Jack. Frank and his friends were afraid she’d go to the police, and this wasn’t small-time stuff. They killed her because I told, and my father cradled her head on his lap and begged her to come back to life for him, not to leave him. He begged her to stay….”
I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.
She blinked back the tears. It didn’t help. “My…my, uh, father left. We both knew the police would arrest him. He had a rap sheet. He was always questioned for the local crimes, regardless of involvement or not. So he left and I sat there until the police arrived.”
“But they caught him,” Jack filled in. “They arrested him, anyway.”
“Eight months later,” she said. “He just walked into police headquarters and said, ‘I think you want me for murder.’ He didn’t look like Stan anymore. He was old and worn and so thin his clothes hung on him. They booked him for murdering my mother immediately and he didn’t fight it. When I was finally allowed to visit him in jail, he told me not to worry about anything. It was his fault my mother had died, his fault because he should’ve gone straight as he’d always promised her. He told me I’d be better off without him.
&nbs
p; “I begged him to fight the charges, of course. I told him we could live together, just him and me. We’d be all right. He just kept shaking his head. He went to prison. I was sent to live with the Brattles.
“Six months later, I saw the news report on the discovery of a body. A man named Frank Gucci had been pulled out of a pond. He’d been shot to death. He had a reputation for money laundering and racketeering.”
She looked at Jack squarely. “My father would never tell me, but I believe to this day that he shot Frank Gucci. He’d gotten justice his own way, but at a huge price. My father wasn’t meant to be a murderer, Jack. When my mother died, something inside him gave up. He’d done what he felt he’d had to do, but it hadn’t made anything right. He died shortly after in prison. He didn’t eat. He didn’t fight. He just withered away.
“So yes, my parents loved each other. Yes, they died when I was twelve, because when my mother died, she took my father with her. Yes, it was accidental, because my father never would’ve done anything to intentionally harm my mother. And no, it has nothing to do with my job or respectability or character now. My father was a con man, Jack, but not me. My father shot a man. Not me. I grew up hard. I learned right from wrong by watching it play out in front of my eyes. I paid my way through college, I passed the CPA exam. And I moved to Grand Springs, where I have been one hell of a city treasurer, and Olivia Stuart became a second mother to me. I told her the truth about my past six months into this job, just in case she had doubts. She told me we all make mistakes, but we all learn and move on. She certainly didn’t feel it was an issue. She believed in me.”
Her tone very clearly implied that this made Olivia Stuart superior to Jack Stryker. He was quiet for a moment. His expression was turbulent. Abruptly, he dragged his hand through his hair.
“I don’t know,” he said curtly. “You do spin a good story.”
“Oh, yes, that’s what I like to do, Stryker. Mess with your mind.”
“Well, you’re doing one hell of a job at it.” He looked at her fiercely. “Dammit, Josie, I did enjoy last night. I did mean it when I said I wanted to see you again. I went to work this afternoon, and even Stone said he’d never seen me smile so much. Then suddenly he’s shoving this stack of papers under my nose, and I’m reading about how the woman I spent the night with had a con man for a father who murdered her mother. For God’s sake, Josie, I’d just heard you tell me how in love they were with each other. How do you think that made me feel?”
