She felt silly for the way her eyes widened and her stomach sucked in when her gaze snapped to him. Crossing her arms over herself and looking away until the microwave chimed, she put a teabag in the cup and set it in front of him. He took the string in the tips of his long fingers and bobbed the bag in the water.
“Milk?”
“No, thank you.”
Good. I don’t have any milk. She stopped keeping milk in the house after the fifth or sixth carton went sour. Franklin drank milk like water and she kept it in the house of out habit for a few months after his death.
Her ring itched.
Jennifer pulled out a chair and sat down, folding her hands neatly on the table. Jacob’s hands were huge compared to hers. Delicate and rough at the same time, and his left hand had bendy breaks in the fingers.
Curiosity got the best of her. “Were you in an accident?”
“Yes.” He flexed his fingers. “It’s wasn’t as bad as all that. Miss Katzenberg-“
“Call me Jennifer,” she said.
“Only if you promise to call me Jacob.”
“Jacob,” she said.
“Jennifer, you have to do something about Elliot. How often does he harass you like that?”
She shrugged. “It’s been a while. A year or so. I thought that he was bored with me, and maybe he’d stop.”
Jennifer took her wedding band and twisted it around her finger, feeling the metal rub against her skin. Why was she telling him this?
“My husband was his brother. His younger brother. He could never stand that Franklin ‘won’ me.”
“It’s not your fault.”
She wanted to say something, but she felt like she’d swallowed a mouthful of sand. She was sure everyone in town knew what happened, but only two people had ever told her it wasn’t her fault, Rachel and her sister, Katie. Jennifer’s own mother told her it was her fault.
Jacob smiled as his eyes traced over the curve of her jaw, locking on her eyes before following the path of her shoulders down her arms.
Her heart sped up when she realized he was probably picturing the curves of her body under the baggy blouse. The more intense the feeling grew, the heavier her wedding band became. Jacob was an exceptionally attractive man, and he admired her as if she was an attractive woman.
“I suppose I should get going. It’s a school night, after all.”
Concealing her disappointment was a challenge. “Oh,” she said.
What are you doing? You just met.
He drank the remaining tea, and set the cup on the table. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Don’t go yet!
Why did she want him to stay? She looked around the drab kitchen and wondered what the hell she was doing by inviting him into her house like this. He was already moving.
She nodded as he stood up. Jennifer stumbled over her feet to get to the door and opened it for him. She opened it for him and when he began to step out her arm shot out and she grabbed his wrist. He turned, his eyebrows climbing in surprise.
“I’m sorry I blew you off at lunch. I didn’t mean to be rude, I-”
“It wasn’t rude. You had a lot on your mind.”
Yes, like you. “It was rude. I’d like to make up for it. I’d like to see you.”
“I wasn’t planning to take a sick day.” He smirked.
You know what I mean.
“I mean… see you.” Jennifer mentally damned her thick tongue. Couldn’t an English teacher be more eloquent? “Socially, I mean.”
He turned back to face her stepped back up onto the threshold. He was so damned tall, she had to look up to meet his gaze. She still held his wrist. When she let go, her hand flopped to her side and she had no idea what to do with it.
She stared at his lips while licking her own. He looked away.
“We’ll make plans,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yes,” she said.
He walked down to the car. The rain fizzled out, and the sun peeked from behind the retreating clouds. Jacob waved before sliding into the driver’s seat. The car rumbled to life and he pulled away, leaving her staring after him.
What did you just do? What on Earth possessed her to ask him out? She twisted her ring on her finger and stared out the window. She glanced over and saw the honeymoon picture staring back at her. Her ring dug into her skin.
“I like him” she said, to no one in particular.
She moved away so she couldn’t see the picture, or it couldn’t see her. Her hands shook.
You’re being stupid. He does one nice thing for you, and you’re ready to fall into his arms.
It wasn’t one nice thing. He all but risked his life for her. No one ever tried to defend her from Elliot. No one but Franklin, and Franklin was gone.
Isn’t that a funny coincidence? He just happens to show up at the right time. He knew my name. He’s probably some kind of stalker. Then there’s those scars, and his hand. Accident? What kind of accident? Where did he learn to fight like that?
“Shut up,” she muttered.
After a shower, sleep almost took her a few times, but she chased it away. Jennifer sat upright on the beach towel she spread on the bed for a while and stared at the ceiling, before she put an old oversized Sentinels jersey that hung halfway to her knees, and a pair of thick padded socks with little grippers on the bottom.
Jennifer piled a stack of pillows behind her and rested her tablet on her folded legs. She opened the web browser app to find a cheap refurbished laptop to replace the one Elliot destroyed. She could probably afford a new one, if she wanted. She sighed. She could definitely afford a new one.
You don’t need a new computer. A used one will work just fine.
Habit opened the bridge memorial web site instead. A picture of the monument built by the old bridge footing filled the screen with its list of names. Dread churned through her as she scanned the list for the thousandth time.
Her last name stood out among the others when she reached the K section. Franklin Katzenberg.
Three other names hovered a few lines above: Eric, Catherine, and Candice Kane.
Jennifer gasped and her hand clapped over her mouth. Jacob’s sister was named Candy Kane. She looked at the date of birth and did a quick mental calculation. She was twelve when she died.
“Oh God,” she breathed.
5.
The wipers flicked back and forth, throwing sheets of rain off the windshield. The rain tapered to a drizzle when he pulled away from Jennifer’s house, but picked back up again as he drove. Jacob’s twisted hand choked the steering wheel, sending shooters of pain through his forearm as if the boot heel still ground on it.
He passed the memorial at the footing of the old bridge, and stared straight ahead until the Aston Martin took the turn onto Hill Road with authority. He worked the shifter and focused on keeping the car on the road until he reached the top of the hill.
Jacob’s assistant waited inside the converted carriage house that served as a garage. Faisal opened the car door, and as Jacob stepped out, his assistant looked inside and sighed at the wet marks on the seats and floor.
“I’ll have that water taken care of, sir.”
“Whatever,” he said. Worrying about the car left a sour taste in his mouth. “How’s the work going?”
“We’re at ninety percent.”
“I need completion by the weekend.”
Why the rush? You’re not having guests. You can’t seriously be considering taking her up on her offer.
Entertaining the idea of taking her out was something he didn’t have time for. He’d have to let Jennifer down gently. Getting close to anyone would paint a target on their back.
She wasn’t supposed to be here.
Jacob scanned the perimeter. Every rock and tree could hide an enemy.
The workmen set up the main floor and bedrooms, the last unfinished parts of the house. A pair of carpenters worked on the built-in shelving for his library while another team dra
gged the huge refrigerator into the kitchen. Booted feet stomped upstairs as workmen rolled out carpeting, wrestled heavy antiques into place, and slapped fresh paint on the walls.
Lacking doors, the cabinetry frames in the bare bones kitchen resembled a wooden honeycomb. The steel door in the corner would appear as a common pantry when all the cabinets and appliances were in place. Now the quarter inch thick door with its four deadbolts and steel reinforcements stuck out like a sore thumb.
Faisal jogged down the newly built stairs, and Jacob followed after locking the door from the inside. The basement was half as big as the house. A desk and computers were just past the bottom of the stairs. Next to that were the filing cabinets that housed paper records, photocopies of microfilm, and anything else too precious to trust to electronic storage. He kept a cot at the far end. The bedroom upstairs was for show.
A vault in the corner served as his gun safe. Weighing six tons and almost ten feet wide by eight feet tall, a crane had to bear it into the house. Exercise equipment lined the opposite wall: mats, two heavy bags, speed bags, squat racks, the works.
Jacob pulled off his polo shirt and tossed it out of the way before holding out his hands. Faisal applied the wraps, and then Jacob pounded the heavy bag with his fists. Slight and barely more than a boy, Faisal braced himself against the swinging bag.
“You seem angry, sir,” Faisal said.
“I am angry.”
“Why?”
“She’s still here.”
Faisal leaned around the bag. “Why would that make you angry?”
“I thought she’d be remarried by now,” he said. Faisal’s loafers skid on the mat from the force of his punch. “I can’t believe she’s still in this awful place. She’s not supposed to be here.”
“Sir, if I may,” Faisal said. “Is it not for the better? You spoke of her before.”
“You may not,” Jacob said, and sighed. “Katzenberg was trying to force her into his car.”
“Which one, sir?”
“The son. Elliot.”
“Alone?”
“No. He had the bigger Carlyle with him. Grayson.” Jacob jabbed at the bag. “I could’ve taken them.”
“I know,” Faisal said.
“I wanted to kill him. He hurt her.”
“You have a plan for that.”
Panting, Jacob stepped back from the bag. Fire spread in his chest as walked to the squat racks. He changed into an old pair of sweats, and Faisal helped him load the bar. The boy struggled to move the big forty-five pound plates, but Jacob didn’t interfere until he attached enough weight required for a warm up set. One set down, and Faisal immediately loaded more weight. It took a few more to build up enough pressure to squeeze all the unwanted thoughts out.
“She’s not supposed to be here,” Jacob repeated.
The barbell ground on his neck. Fully loaded, the barbell weighed twice as much as a grown man. The last repetition was a shaking, muscle-grinding struggle that ended with the solid clang of steel on steel when the weight settled into the rack.
“I’m getting too close. She asked me out.”
“Where?”
He shook his ponytail loose..“I don’t know. Technically she made a date to make a date with me.”
Faisal quietly laughed.
Jacob eyed him. “Not funny.”
Jacob went back to the weights. When he racked the bar again he set his hands on his hips and breathed, getting his wind back before he spoke. “Where are we on the Freedom of Information Act requests on the bridge repairs?”
“Nothing yet,” Faisal said.
“How are the lawyers doing with the shell companies?”
“It’s slow going. There are a number of limited liability companies, all belonging to one another.”
He shrugged. Jacob ran his fingers through his hair and flexed his left hand. Everywhere he looked, dead ends.
Jacob racked the weight for the final time and headed to the next rack to begin overhead presses. Faisal followed, patiently observing Jacob’s exercises. The weight pressed hard against his bare palms. Gloves were a crutch. Better to toughen the skin, the way his dad did. Dad’s hands were rawhide.
His left hand throbbed. He saw Jennifer again, floating gracefully through her dingy little kitchen, offering him milk she didn’t have.
“What would you do?” Jacob said.
Faisal shrugged. “That is not my place, sir.”
“Yes, it is. I’m asking you, what would you do?”
Faisal shrugged. “I just work here.”
Jacob looked at him at sighed.
“That’s not funny. I’m going to find a way to let her down,” he said. “I can’t involve her in this. When it starts, I don’t want her anywhere near it.”
Jacob sat on a bench, and flexed his throbbing hand. Jennifer stepped out of a dream that morning. If it hadn’t been for the cop, he might’ve killed Elliot right there. Tendons stretched in his shaking left hand, and the scars from the skin grafts covering the reconstructed bones formed an intricate map.
Nine months they held him; first in a stinking hospital bed where the old man tended his wounds. Then they put him in a room and started with the cuts. Remembering a book describing how a Vietnam prisoner of war made it through by playing a new golf course in his mind every day helped him through it.
Jacob survived what they did to his body by making a fortress of his mind. It had walls of stone and steel, but the real protection lay within. One wing of his mind palace was his house. The aging carpeting under his bare feet. The battered table in the kitchen. A whole wall of pictures behind the living room couch
The upstairs was perfectly recreated, too. The office his mother and father shared, their desks nestled side by side. His bedroom, and Candy’s, across the hall. The door was ajar. The frilly pink sheets were rumpled, warmed by slanting rays of light from the window and strewn with the debris of a pre-teen girl’s life. Dolls on the one hand, sparkly makeup on the other.
The fortress had other wings he could visit in his mind. In the very center was a woman. The grief etched the image into his memory and never faded. In a bath robe and pajamas, the angel’s feet bled and left pale red tracks in the snow as she ran to the abyss.
Jacob was seventeen years old when he saw Miss K for the first time and he instantly knew she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Every day he would go to remedial English in Miss Garrison’s room and Miss K would be standing outside, leaning on the lockers, watching the students in the hall with a new teacher’s enthusiasm for the rules and for authority.
He memorized everything about her, from the way she always itched her left ankle with the toe of her sneaker to how she would blow loose strands of hair out of her eyes.
She was perfect. Long, graceful legs with muscles like steel cables, flat stomach, there was even something about her shoulders that he liked, and then there was her hair. She had gorgeous hair, rich and silky.
His chest twisted when he first noticed she was wearing a wedding band. A little voice in his mind chided him for even thinking a woman like her would ever take an interest in him.
Jacob was no stranger to the female body. Breathless explorations with his first girlfriend and the wonders of the Internet left him well acquainted with the female form, but he would have traded all of that for a flash of desire in her stormy eyes, soft auburn hair sliding through his fingers. It was an impossible dream. She was so far out of his league that they weren’t even in leagues.
The night the bridge fell, the school cop dragged her back from the brink and held her down until she regained her senses. The same man dragged Jacob back as he tried to climb down to reach his sister.
Then reality hit. He couldn’t feel the cold anymore by the time he sat shivering and soaked from melted snow in a waiting room. Calvin Carlyle came to tell him they were all dead. His mother, father, and sister would never come home.
His mind snapped to the present. “You can go,” he said to
Faisal.
When he was alone, he stood and charged at the heavy bag, disregarding the pain in his hand. The bag swung hard, creaking on its anchor in the ceiling joist. He hit it again and again, each blow punctuating the images flashing in his mind. He spun on his foot and drove his heel into the bag in a savage roundhouse that swung the bag almost to the ceiling before crashing back down and nearly sent him sprawling.
Something bothered him about that morning. He’d seen signs of psychological trauma before. The way something from the past could well up like sewage from a storm drain and stain the present moment, crowding out all other thought. It was in Jennifer’s eyes.
Elliot grabbed her hair on purpose. He knew it would trigger her. Jacob was too tired to hit the bag anymore. Furious energy melted into cold, ragged fatigue. He drifted over to his desk, sat down, and rested his forehead on his palms. He needed to focus to see the bigger picture.
Jacob took an old micro tape recorder from the top drawer. He kept the message by forwarding it from phone to phone, before finally recording it a few days before he was deployed. His thumb pushed down the red play button and he drew his hand back and listened to his sister’s voice.
“Hey, Jake,” she teased in her girlish voice, “I hope you had a good time with your stupid video game. I made sure Mom and Dad took me to Olive Garden just like always. I didn’t buy you anything for Christmas. I hope you’re happy.”
His mother said something. His sister’s phone didn’t pick up the words, just a faint hint of her voice.
“Mom says to hang up. We’re almost home.”
6.
Shearing rock and twisted steel shrieked. Debris crashed into the river and sank. The noise came from the boards under her feet, and from the walls. The kitchen television blared until the speakers distorted and the little grilles blew out of their plastic frames in a shower of sparks.
A driving rainstorm sent a muddy wave through the street. Jennifer clutched the old sliding doors between the kitchen and living room.
The world shook and red, blue, and amber flashed in the window as the sirens wailed. The freezing wet floor stung her bare feet. The world turned under her until she fell on her side with a grunt. Dread clenched in her chest like a fist of frozen stone grasping her heart.
Hawk Page 65
