Deadly Pursuit (35 page)

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 could do this.

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.”

“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 already. 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:

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.

Jack was dead and he hadn’t even told her good-bye.

Jack, just like everyone else in her entire life, had left her.

“Amara,” Billy Bob began gently.

The room spun and Amara slid off the bed to the floor, where she screamed and screamed and screamed.

Kareem sipped from his fizzing flute of Krug, watching his guests and experiencing the kind of satisfaction he hadn’t felt since this nightmare began.

It was just a small and late dinner party with a handful of people because a big blowout tonight would be tacky and Kareem was all about class and taste. That was why he’d brought out the Krug, which he’d been saving for a celebration. A moment like this needed expensive wine.

What did he have?

An acquittal, with his whole life in front of him.

Jackson Parker dead at the hands of Hector’s shooter
and in a zippered bag on his way to the coroner’s office, with a bullet in his chest and a tag on his big toe; and, best of all, a fresh chance with his wife.