Keep No Secrets (20 page)

"I told you. I don't want to have to tell

—"

"Yeah, Claire, I know."

He scans the restaurant, making sure he recognizes no one, scouting for the most inconspicuous spot. After removing his overcoat, he rolls up his shirtsleeves. He sits down at the chosen table, and her eyes are drawn to his exposed forearms, the honey-colored hair on them. When he lifts the menu, she reaches over and slaps it onto the table. Startled, he looks up at her.

"Did you tell her you kissed me?"

"What?"

"You said you told Claire everything."

She shrugs as if it's the most basic of questions. In her opinion, it is. "Did you tell her you kissed me in the underpass?"

A muscle twitches in his neck and she wants to touch it. She knows underneath the shirt and the trousers his entire body is tense from her question. She feels a selfish satisfaction at her ability to do this to him, but whatever pain she inflicts on him she suffers, too. She feels a craving so strong it hurts.

Defiantly, he picks up the menu again and stares at the words in front of him. "I didn't kiss you. You kissed me."

She picks up her own menu. "I'll take that as a no."

After they place their orders, Jack asks for the letters. He's worried that during the drive here, he became too soft, too friendly. He wants to remind her of the purpose of their get-together.

She pulls a plastic bag from her purse and hands it over. The letters, envelopes and all, are inside. To avoid leaving prints, he puts on his gloves before taking them out. All three are addressed to

"Jennifer Dodson" at her Lafayette Square home; all were forwarded to her brother's condo in Chicago. None have a return address, though he didn't expect them to. All are postmarked "St. Louis"

with a 63130 zip code.
The University City
area
, he thinks.

"I gave him power of attorney for everything," she says. "He had my mail forwarded."

Jack already knows this. It was why they'd searched for her at Brian's house first. The sender must have assumed Jenny remained in contact with her brother.

"I'd like to get copies made before I drop you back at the motel." He checks the dates of the postmarks and opens the oldest one first.

The message, typed on a plain piece of copy paper, reads, WE HAVEN'T

FORGOTTEN YOU.

He looks over the top of the letter at her. She motions to the other envelopes.

"Keep reading."

The second message arrived a week later. This time, the message was created from letters cut from a magazine. He almost laughs. The craftsmanship

certainly doesn't seem like the work of professionals. But when he reads the message, he feels sick.

FOUR DOWN, TWO MORE TO

GO.

Four being her mother, father, sister and . . .
who
? Two being Jenny and Brian?

Without a word, he slips the last letter from its home. His hands tremble as he unfolds it. The waitress interrupts with the food. She sets a salad and bowl of soup in front of Jenny. Jack remembers Jenny as an enthusiastic eater; she never counted calories like so many other women he knew. He loved that about her.

The small meal surprises him.

The waitress places his cheeseburger and fries on the table. Unless the third letter is more heartening—and he doubts that—he won't be able to eat.

The last message, to his surprise, is handwritten in pencil. The author has become bold.

WE ASKED HER TO PAY UP TO

PROTECT YOU AND YOUR

BROTHER. SHE DIDN'T. SHE DIED.

WILL YOU BE NEXT? OR SHOULD

IT BE YOUR BROTHER?

A fist claws at the inside of his gut. If someone tried to extort Maxine and murdered her when she didn't accede to the demands, then an innocent man has spent the last four years on death row.

Thanks to my testimony
.

He grabs the envelope and looks at the postmark date. It was posted a little over three weeks ago.

"And this is the last one?"

She nods. He wishes he'd listened to her that very first night in the tunnel.

Almost a week has passed since then and she's been all alone in an unprotected motel room.

"Can Brian contact you somehow, to let you know if others have arrived?"

Again, she nods.

"Why didn't you show these to me when we drove to Hannibal? Why have you let so much time pass? You're a sitting duck. Who's to say they haven't followed you? Who's to say they aren't watching us right now? What do—?"

"Jack, stop. No one has followed me, okay? If they knew where I was, they would have just sent the letters directly to Brian's place, right?"

Not necessarily
. "Why didn't you show me these the other day?"

"You want the truth?"

The question reminds him of the one Claire posed when he asked if she trusted him. Why does everyone think he's afraid of the truth? He's made a career of getting to the truth.

"I wanted your help only if you
wanted
to help me. I didn't want you to help me simply because you were afraid
not
to."

Why
is
he helping her? He wants to know the truth—about Jenny, about Alex

—but is it something more?

He thinks back to the last time he was at Jenny's house in Lafayette Square, the last time he saw her before she ran. He remembers how they fought in the

kitchen; they'd both begun to crack under the pressure of their secret about to be exposed. How, without him even

realizing it, she forced him to make a choice between her and Claire before the choice was forced on him. He thought he'd chosen Claire. He wonders now if somehow he'd already chosen Jenny by deciding to go home with her.

"You knew I'd help you," he says quietly. "No matter what."

"I believed so. But I needed to be sure it was for the right reasons."

"Did I pass your test?"

She smiles sadly. "With flying colors."

After an unsuccessful attempt to convince her to find a safer place to stay, he takes her back to the motel. This time, he doesn't simply drop her off in front.

Instead, he accompanies her to the door and makes her wait there while he checks the small space for evidence of intruders.

It's silly, but it makes him feel better to do it.

"We dodged a bullet today," he says when they trade places at the threshold.

It's as if they pre-choreographed their moves to ensure they won't be in the room at the same time.

She nods; she understands he's

referring to the trooper. "Maybe I should go back to Chicago. You have the letters now. There's no need for me to stay, right?" She removes her coat, releasing the scent again. "It won't be good for either of us if someone discovers I'm here."

The panic he felt in the car returns. He should be skeptical. He should ask her why she came in the first place. Why didn't she simply call him? Why didn't she simply mail copies of the letters to him? And the letters themselves are odd, too. Who would threaten someone to collect an almost three-decade old debt?

But just then, he doesn't care about the answers to these riddles. He only cares that she might disappear again.

His phone vibrates against his chest.

He knows from the ringtone that it's Claire, and he senses Jenny recognizes it, too, from the drive to Hannibal.

"You'd better get that," she says lightly.

"We'll talk later."

She begins to close the door, but he stops it with his hand. Her expression turns intense, suddenly expectant. Does she think he might be about to finally come in, to step into the room with her and lock the door behind them? He lowers his eyes. Whether he feels guilt for having misled her, or ashamed to think she might see straight into the darkest corners of his heart, he doesn't know.

"What does it mean?" he asks.

"What does
what
mean?"

"The name. Ayanna. What does it mean?"

She won't answer unless he meets her stare. When he does, it feels like looking into the sun. He needs to look away, but she won't answer if he does. And he needs to know.

"Innocent."

Jenny carefully locks the deadbolt and slips the chain into its slot. She tosses her purse and coat onto the nearest bed and then peeks out the drapes to watch him drive away. Despite what she told him, she lives in fear of being followed, of the writer coming to make good on his threats.

After retrieving a large manila

envelope from her suitcase, she sits on the opposite bed. She fingers the envelope, putting off the moment. As many times as she's looked at the contents, it's still hard.

With trembling hands she lifts the flap.

The contents are slim: a handwritten note, a typed, three-page report stapled behind it, and several glossy, five by seven, color photos.

She doesn't reread the note or the report. She doesn't need to. She

practically has them memorized. But the old pictures draw her back again and again. Always the pictures.

Jack sitting on the hood of her car in the parking garage, alone, waiting for her.

The two of them standing next to the car, facing each other, her hands in his.

The two of them climbing into the car.

She drove, he was the passenger. They look as if they're the two unhappiest people in the world.
How ironic
.

The two of them at her front door as she unlocks it.

Her sitting on the steps of her back porch in the middle of the night, her bare legs extended beyond the roof, drenched from the rain.

Jack sitting on her neighbor's front stoop the next morning, looking even more distraught than the night before.

Jack still sitting there as she leaves, as she ignores him. It was so hard, what she did to him that morning. He had fallen asleep holding her, but when he woke, she pretended, in the cruelest move of her life, that it meant nothing. That he meant nothing. She wonders, would everything have ended differently if she hadn't turned on him? She doesn't think so. She was wrong to let him in that night, but she knows she did the right thing when she pushed him away.

She sets everything on the bed and gazes around the room. So why is she back? His life is difficult enough without her interference. She couldn't have predicted Celeste's allegations, but nevertheless, they've been made and the timing couldn't have been worse.

As if to answer her own thought, she grabs her purse and pulls out a small envelope like the others she handed him but with a more recent postmark. She unfolds the fourth letter, the one she didn't show him, the one that brought her back.

WE KNOW THE TRUTH.

When she left town four years ago, she had decided to get out of his way, his life, so he'd have a chance to repair his marriage and keep his family together.

She blamed Maxine for what happened to her own family, and she was determined not to follow in her footsteps any more than she already had.

Even when she began receiving the letters, she didn't consider involving Jack.

Why would she? They had nothing to do with him. They frightened her, she'd be lying if she claimed they didn't, but she can live with her own fear. She always has.

But this message—this threat, she's certain it's a threat—rises to a whole new level. Like the others, it has to potential to destroy her, but it could also destroy him, too. She can't let that happen.

If he must find out the truth, she must be the one to tell him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"CLOSE THE DOOR behind you," Jack says when Dog Jefferson pokes his head in Jack's office later that afternoon. He waves him in.

In Jack's opinion, Malik "Dog"

Jefferson is the best investigator in the DA's office. He's not the oldest or most experienced, but he's the most persistent, and his energy could power the lights at Busch Stadium. He grew up fatherless across the river in East St. Louis, but when a purse-snatcher stabbed and killed his mother, Dog came to Missouri to live with his older sister Lakeisha in Hyde Park. He was only sixteen.

When the police gave up looking for the assailant—Dog insisted they never really tried—he found his mission. Five months later, after skipping too much school to secretly work the case, he marched into the police station and delivered the evidence needed to make the arrest. He never returned to school.

Jack didn't know any of this when Lakeisha, who worked in the DA's office Victim Services unit, asked him to give her little brother a job to keep him off the streets. The murder, and subsequent arrest and conviction, had happened in Illinois several years back and garnered only minimal attention from the media.

Only when Dog sauntered into Jack's office with a Cardinals cap on his head and a chip on his shoulder did Jack hear the story. By this time, Lakeisha's little brother wasn't so little. He was twenty years old and at least two inches taller than Jack's six feet. When Jack asked him why he'd dropped out of school, the kid spent the next forty-five minutes intricately explaining about his mother's murder and his discovery of the

assailant's identity. Jack was impressed by his resourcefulness. He saw the pride behind the simmering anger and knew the kid was at a crossroads.

"Get your GED and I'll hire you as an apprentice investigator," Jack told him.

Sure that Jack was putting him off, Dog uttered an expletive and left the office in a huff.

He came back six months later,

diploma in hand and a smart-ass look on his face that dared Jack to keep his promise. Jack put him to work that day under the tutelage of his best investigative team. He's been fiercely loyal to Jack ever since.

Now, Dog drapes his long, slim body in one of the chairs in front of the desk, one leg over the armrest. Three years later, he still wears the same baseball cap.

A chewed toothpick dangles from his mouth. His casual, streetwise demeanor belies his meteoric rise to become one of the office's top investigators. Now Dog spends much of his time mentoring others.

"What's up, Boss?"

Jack stares at him, thinking. "I need a favor." His stomach flips in protest.

"Anything."

"It's . . . personal."