by Maureen Tan
RUN JANE RUN. Copyright © 1999 by Maureen Tan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1999 by Mysterious Press.
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CONTENTS
SUMMER
Chapter 1
AUTUMN
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
WINTER
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
SPRING
Chapter 29
Also by Maureen Tan
AKA Jane
To the eight of us who roamed childhood together—
Maureen, Mike, Pat, Shawn, Therese, Tom,
Mary, and Martin.
To Laura and Susanna, who are far too young
to be so clever.
To Peter, who is wonderful.
To my children and grandchildren. Ditto.
And to my readers. Thank you
SUMMER
1
Summertime in Savannah.
Alex and I strolled along River Street, dressed in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, blending with the crowd of tourists and locals moving lazily along the river walk, enjoying the night life and the evening breeze.
Near Abercorn Street, a woman’s voice, deep and sultry, drifted from the open doors of the Bayou Cafe. We paused in our walk, lingered nearby, stood side by side as we looked out over the Savannah River, our elbows on the railing, our bare arms touching. The sad, soft sounds of the blues filled the silence between us with a tale of love gone wrong.
“Who’s Brian?” Alex asked.
The question, quietly spoken, shocked me.
How did he know about Brian?
I kept my expression bland, the pattern of my breathing unchanged, and looked at him, wondering if he had tried to catch me off guard. He was a skilled interrogator, capable of such a strategy.
Light from a nearby street lamp betrayed the color staining his lean cheeks, revealed only embarrassment. No cunning. He was my lover, not my adversary.
It had been a long time since I’d had a lover.
Ignoring the ache that accompanied any thought of Brian, I said: “He was someone I knew a long time ago. Why?”
Alex’s dark eyes darted away from mine, focused on a slow-moving barge. He rubbed the fine white scar that angled above his right eyebrow.
I’d lived with him for five months, shared his bed for four, knew the gesture well. Something was bothering him. I gave him time to work it through, to pursue his line of questioning. Or not. As I waited, I rested my eyes on his face and was struck again by how attractive he was. A storybook hero. Tall, dark, handsome. Intelligent, caring, funny. Trusting. Naive. A streetwise cop and twelve years my senior, yet sometimes he reminded me of a child.
Alex met my eyes.
“Just a minute ago, you called me Brian. You’ve done it before.”
That horrified me. In Savannah, with Alex, my carelessness might cause distress. Elsewhere, it was potentially deadly. I wasted a moment questioning the wisdom of my schizophrenic existence, then resolved to be more careful and focused on the immediate problem.
If I chose not to tell Alex about Brian, he wouldn’t press me. Our relationship was on my terms, here and now, my work and my past irrelevant. Alex had accepted that. Since we’d been together, I’d returned to England twice to participate in two short, unremarkable, and necessary operations. One returned a terrorist to prison. The other uncovered a security breach. Each time, I’d returned to Savannah, but offered no details. And Alex had asked for none.
But now he wondered about Brian. My fault. It was best to satisfy his curiosity. Best to end it. There would be no harm in telling Alex the truth, except that I was unwilling to share this most private part of my past. I chose the next words carefully, gave him a different truth.
“Brian was my colleague. He died.”
Died because of me. That truth I kept to myself, too.
Alex put an arm around my shoulders.
“You miss him.”
A statement. No more questions. No resentment.
Suddenly, there was something else I wanted Alex to know.
When Brian died, I had been certain I would never love again. I was wrong.
But the impulse felt dangerous, so I said nothing.
AUTUMN
2
Twenty minutes had passed since I’d received the phone call.
Twenty minutes. Like a sleeper caught in a nightmare, I couldn’t move fast enough. No matter that I drove with a terrible disregard for traffic signs and speed limits. It still took me twenty minutes. A lifetime.
The emergency room was crowded with men and women wearing indigo blue uniforms. They stood apart from the hospital staff, murmuring to one another in hushed voices, their hands moving over their utility belts, lightly touching leather holsters, walkie-talkies, and polished nightsticks as if they were charms to ward off violence and death.
Conversation stopped when they saw me.
I paused in the doorway, searching familiar faces for some sense of the news to come. I saw only shock edged with fear.
They saw a slim, hazel-eyed woman with curly honey-brown hair who hadn’t taken time to change from cutoff blue jeans and a sloppy T-shirt. But if they saw in my face a mirror of their own emotions, it was because I allowed it. Pretty lady authors, even ones who write hard-boiled detective novels, are supposed to show their feelings.
“How is he?” I asked no one in particular.
Suddenly, no one would meet my eyes. Bodies shifted, clearing a path between me and a large, uniformed black man at the opposite end of the room. He sat in a chair beside closed double doors marked Hospital Personnel Only. His face was buried in his hands.
“Sarge,” someone said. “Jane’s here.”
Detective Sergeant Tommy Grayson raised his head, his hands folding around themselves in a gesture that looked like prayer. Blood, nearly dried, dulled the smooth skin of his arms, stained his hands a rusty brown, smeared raggedly beneath his right eye and across a cheekbone.
Alex’s blood.
Before Tommy could stand, I slipped into the chair beside him, wrapped my hands around his big wrists and gave them a gentle shake.
“How is he?”
He shook his head.
“I’ve called Joey. She should be here soon.”
Joey was Alex’s younger sister. Tommy would not have called her unless—
An aggressive female voice interrupted my thoughts.
“Sergeant Grayson. We heard that Chief Callaghan’s been shot. Tell us what happened.”
I looked up. Reporte
rs and camera crews were crowding in through the entrance, jostling with one another for position. A young woman wearing the insignia of a trainee was trying to block their way.
Tommy sighed so quietly that I doubted anyone else heard.
“Let ’em be, Jamison. They’re just doing their job.”
He stood, confronted the cameras.
The lights on the minicams blazed to life.
“I’ll give you a statement, folks. Then I’m going to ask that you move outside.”
Tommy straightened his shoulders, delivered the information as if it were a routine report. As if his best friend had not just been shot. He chose his words carefully and delivered them precisely. Even his deep Southern drawl, so much like Alex’s, lent no warmth to the statement.
“At approximately eight forty-five this evening, Chief Callaghan was the victim of a drive-by shooting that took place in front of the Calvary Baptist Temple on Water Street. No suspects have been apprehen—”
“Hasn’t Callaghan been working with rival gangs in that area?” cut in one of the television reporters. Before Tommy could answer, another reporter asked, “Was the attack random or was Callaghan the target?”
“We have no reason to believe that this incident was gang-related. As to whether the attack on Chief Callaghan was deliberate, it is too early in our investigation to determine that or to speculate as to the cause of the attack.”
“How is Alex?”
The question came from the pudgy, balding crime beat reporter from the Savannah Morning News. He was a frequent visitor to the squad room. In his voice, I heard sympathy.
“He’s in surgery.” Tommy looked away from the reporters before adding, “We’ll keep you posted.”
He turned his back on the cameras.
Jamison ushered the reporters from the room.
Tommy sat back down beside me, leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and stared down at his hands.
“The shooter was parked, waiting.” His voice was toneless, as if he was filling in each line of a police report. “We’d just come out of the church. I heard a car start, then heard shots . . .”
I didn’t care about the details. I wanted to shake him, to shout at him, to make him tell me, now, about Alex. Instead, I sat quietly.
“I dove for cover, drew my weapon as the suspect vehicle accelerated past us. The car sped around the corner.”
I knew what he was doing, had often done it myself. The trick was to ignore the pain, to focus on the details.
“It headed east on Lincoln, toward the highway. A late-model Ford Taurus. Dark blue or black. Four-door. No lights.”
Tommy’s voice faltered. His Adam’s apple moved as his neck tensed. He gulped, struggling to control his emotions, trying—and failing—to remain detached.
He hadn’t my training. He didn’t need it. For him, Vietnam was decades in the past, and Savannah wasn’t a particularly dangerous town. He didn’t expect those he loved to die violently.
I did.
Sooner or later, everyone I loved—
I dismissed the thought. Alex was still alive.
Tommy took a deep breath and began speaking again.
“I didn’t get a license number. Didn’t see how many were inside. Couldn’t get a clear shot.”
He began rubbing at the dried blood on his left palm with his right thumb.
“Alex hit the ground behind me. So at first I didn’t realize . . .”
He noticed what his hands were doing and curled them into tight fists.
“I thought, ‘Thank God he wore his vest.’ Then I looked closer. The bullet’d gone right through. I called for assistance, then I tried to stop the bleeding. Pressed my hand against the wound. Alex was conscious. He tried to laugh. Told me they lied to us in boot camp. ‘See, Tommy,’ he said, ‘Marines do bleed.’”
Tommy lifted his head. His eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“I rode in the ambulance with him. The hospital was five minutes away. Only five minutes, I kept telling him. You lasted a goddamn fucking week in the jungles of ’Nam, and you were hurt worse than this. So you hang on, man. You hang on.
“His heart stopped as we pulled into the driveway. They rushed him inside, and I’ve been waiting . . .”
He shifted his attention back to his hands, unclenched his fists.
His nails had cut crimson crescent moons into his palms.
3
Just hours past his discharge from Candler Hospital, just a week away from almost dying, and Alex lay on the sofa in the living room. His head and shoulders were propped on pillows. His face was drawn and pale.
Joey Callaghan stood nearby, looking down at the brother who had raised her. Although sixteen years separated them and their coloring was very different, the family resemblance was unmistakable. Straightforward dark eyes. High cheekbones. Narrow noses. Stubborn chins.
Joey wore a lime-colored linen dress and matching high heels. A silk scarf swirled with lime and blue was draped around her shoulders. She was blonde, petite, sophisticated. And furious.
I stood by the closed French doors, looking out on a heat-baked day in late September, silently cursing the timing that had brought me into the room at exactly the wrong moment.
“It’s about time you thought of someone besides yourself, Alexander Patrick Callaghan,” she was saying. “There are other people involved here. People who care about you. It’s about time you figured out something to do in this life that doesn’t keep getting you shot.”
She paused, arched an eyebrow at me as if I might have something to add.
I didn’t.
She frowned, refocused on Alex.
“Be reasonable,” he said. “I’ve been on the force for more than twenty years. I’ve only been shot this once.”
His weak, scratchy voice added worry to her expression, acid to her tone. She held up two fingers tipped with sculpted shell-pink nails.
“Twice. I was there. In the emergency room. Both times.”
“Now you can hardly count ol’ man Caruthers. He didn’t really shoot me. I was just standing in the wrong place when he threw down that shotgun.”
She stamped her foot, clearly annoyed.
“Shot is shot. Not only that, you’ve been stabbed, beaten up, and run over. Now someone’s trying to kill you.”
He shook his head.
“There’s no way of knowing that for sure. Sure, the shooter might have been trying to kill me. Or he might have been after a cop. Any cop. Or maybe the shot was fired into the crowd, and I was just the unlucky one. In any event, there’s no need to worry. We’ll catch the perp. I promise.”
“Let someone else catch him!”
Alex made a placating gesture with his hands, tried to sit up, and flinched as wounded flesh, broken ribs protested. He lay back on the cushions and tried not to groan. He didn’t succeed.
At the sound, Joey’s face went nearly as pale as his. She stood, hands clenched at her sides, tears welling in her eyes, body trembling, undoubtedly exhausted by the strain of the past week. But she wasn’t finished.
“I’m asking you to resign. To go away for a while. Somewhere safe. England, maybe. With Jane.”
He didn’t even glance my way. I would have been surprised if he had. Our relationship was not the issue.
“I’m sorry, Pumpkin. This is my job. I won’t run away. Not even for you.”
His tone and the set of his jaw abruptly brought to mind another situation, another man. I turned my head, stared blindly at the lush greenery beyond the verandah, recalling a darkened bedroom, remembering that I’d been reading in my favorite chair and that Brian had been watching me from our bed. He was on his stomach, his chin propped on his hands, his face in shadow.
“Jane, let’s have a baby.”
I’d stared at him, startled by the idea. Yet, I could imagine it. I could imagine a wonderfully mundane life for the three of us, a life where a crisis might be a burned dinner or a bumped head or a lost toy. Then
I glanced at the report on my lap. Brian’s analysis. His proposal. A complex undercover operation in which he would be a key player. He was deliberately endangering his life. Again.
“What about Rome?” I’d asked.
“I have to go. I owe it to Mac. But then, my love, I’ll retire.”
I’d believed him. I’d begun making plans for our future.
Foolish.
I opened my eyes, looked at Alex and Joey.
She sat on the edge of the sofa, her face buried in her hands, sobbing. Alex stroked her arm, murmured words intended to comfort, and promised her that everything would be all right.
Words and promises just like Brian’s.
A single bullet could turn promises into lies.
I fought the impulse to mourn someone who was still alive. One deep breath, then another, and I dismissed the tears. Suddenly, I found myself wanting nothing more than to hurry to the shooting range behind the house, load a clip into my Walther, and take careful aim at a human-sized target. A faceless silhouette. I would pull the trigger. Again and again and again.
I looked down at my twitching trigger finger, at my empty right hand. I, too, was trembling. I was as exhausted as Joey and probably as irrational.
I told myself to get a grip and went to the kitchen to fix us all some lunch.
* * *
Weeks passed.
Tommy and Alex created a list of Alex’s enemies. Methodically, the SPD located them, eliminated them as suspects, and narrowed the list.
Alex healed. One by one, he reassigned the cops who protected the house and protected him.
* * *
I kept alert, turned down an assignment, and fought boredom.
I worked out with Alex, maintaining my fitness, rebuilding his.
And I wrote.
My novels, penned under the name Max Murdock, were doing well. Pair o’ Jax and Jax and Diamonds were newly released in paperback. Jax of Hearts would soon be out in hardcover. Jax Wild was being considered for a made-for-TV movie. A new manuscript was due to the publisher in a year and, besides that, I needed the distraction.
