Live and Let Love (7 page)

Jack had installed hidden cameras around the Villa so he could keep tabs on Kennett
without having to constantly tail him. He’d been surreptitiously watching Kennett
on the feed on his video watch since the bastard arrived at the party. He didn’t like
the way the guy had his hands all over Willow. Jack was sure that was to provoke him,
a test to see if Con was really Jack and would out himself over Willow. Other than
that, Kennett was a bore.

Jack had also been skillfully avoiding Willow, who was definitely seeking Con out.
That woman could be persistent when she wanted to be. At this point, Jack didn’t know
who he should be more jealous of—Shane or himself as Con? He’d obviously made an impression
on her earlier. Must be his new plastic surgery–provided good looks.

While it was flattering that Willow found Con so attractive, how could she just forget
the real him, Jack, so easily?

This was a disaster of a mission and it was messing with his mind. He felt like he
was developing split personality disorder. He didn’t even know how to refer to himself.

He’d thought he was going to be the cat in this game, so why did he suddenly feel
like the mouse? Kennett was openly suspicious of Con and rightly so. Any newcomer
posed a threat, but one who bore a slight similarity to Jack? Any operative would
use caution, and the Rooster was no dumb ass.

And then to make matters even worse, someone kept stuffing the ballot box with votes
for Con. Jack did not want to compete in a country line dance-off, even if it would
impress Willow.

Every time Jack passed by the voting, he had to buy more tickets so he could un-vote
for himself. At this rate, he was going to go broke. He’d already run through most
of his petty cash. Emmett would have his head for wasting Agency funds when he turned
in his expense report for reimbursement.

Terrorists and torturers should take notes from charity fund-raiser organizers. Under
the social pressure of supporting a worthy cause, there was absolutely no way even
the cruelest of bad guys could resist buying tickets. It was either that or make a
fool out of himself.

Lettie, the man-starved Town Grump Jack had met earlier, grabbed Kennett, peeling
him off from Willow to bend his ear. Kennett was running neck and neck with Jack in
the voting. Jack had the feeling Lettie was Kennett’s biggest fan. There was some
small justice in the world.

Willow seized her opportunity for freedom, wrenching herself free of Kennett’s grip.
Jack had to hold down a smile.

He excused himself from the group he was mingling with and circled out the back door,
avoiding Willow, just in time to lurk in the shadows and spy on Kennett. Lurking in
the shadows wasn’t so bad. Jack was used to lurking and striking.

He made a bet with himself about how long it would take Kennett to extricate himself
from Lettie, who droned on about some local drivel and made eyes at the Rooster, telling
how much she was looking forward to seeing him dance.

Men in this town didn’t like to dance. Which was why the women found this year’s charity
event so amusing. And the men were all trying to vote for someone else to face the
humiliation.

It took Kennett a full five minutes to escape from Lettie. Jack timed it.

Not bad. He had to give his enemy a little credit.

Jack had a feeling Kennett would have loved to kill the official grump if ever given
half a chance. Having escaped, he made his way to a six-foot-tall metal sculpture
of a rooster Aldo had installed at the edge of the parking lot. Jack couldn’t see
the appeal, for the obvious reason that he hated roosters, but Aldo loved them and
had half a dozen of the sculptures throughout the property.

Kennett stooped to pick up a rock. The lighting was romantic and dim, mostly candlelight,
with some residual light streaming from the windows of the surrounding building. But
Jack’s eyes were sharp and adjusted quickly to the dark. He had a sniper’s eyes. He
saw Kennett drop a rock from his pocket onto the metal base of the rooster as he scooped
up a new one and tossed it into the surrounding field, acting as if he were releasing
pent-up frustration from having to talk with the grump.

The old fake-rock drop trick.

Jack grinned. That might be the oldest trick in the spy book, but it was still damn
effective. There was no way to do electronic surveillance on a hard drop. An old-fashioned
paper drop was the safest way to avoid detection.

He wondered whether Kennett had a contact at the party. More likely, one would be
by after the party to pick up the drop. But not before Jack intercepted the data.

It appeared he had rattled someone’s coop.

As soon as Kennett moved out of sight, Jack swooped in and retrieved the plastic stone.
He pocketed the drop rock, walked casually to the men’s room in the kitchen building,
where he locked himself in a stall and used his lock-picking skills to open the rock.
Inside it, he found a coded message. He snapped a picture of it with his cell phone
camera and sent it to the tech gurus and decrypting staff at Langley. Within minutes
he received a text instructing him how to alter the message to feed RIOT bad intel.

Rooster, you are going to be in deep shit now,
Jack thought, trying not to grin as he made the alterations.

He replaced the message and pocketed the rock.

On his way out of the men’s room, he got lucky. Kennett had his back to Jack and had
set his drink down on the counter next to him as he made a point while talking to
another grower near the punch bowl. Even better, Kennett was drinking apple gold punch,
a warm, spiced cider laced with dark rum. Perfect.

Magic had always said sleight of hand was a highly convenient skill to have. And she
was right. As the hour of the competition grew close, Lettie and her minions had been
keeping an eye on all the possible contestants in case someone decided to bolt. Inconvenient,
but it didn’t slow Jack down. He always had something up his sleeve. In this case,
it was his extra-strength homebrew XTC. He used the skills he’d learned at Magic’s
side during his rehab and slipped a dose big enough to sedate a horse into Kennett’s
drink. Why skimp?

Sometimes, you can’t take the prankster out of the spy. Jack had to cover his tracks
so when big, strong,
highly resistant to alcohol
Kennett went down after consuming only a glass or two of spiked punch no one would
be suspicious. Aldo’s cousin refilling the punch wouldn’t give anyone reason for suspicion.

He grabbed a jug of cider that he’d filled with Everclear earlier and spiked the punch.
Before the party he’d left empty Everclear bottles where they would eventually be
found. He was hoping no one would ever catch the prankster and suspicion would be
cast elsewhere. Like to a local. Hey, it was almost trick-or-treat time. Everclear
in the punch was more fun than toilet-papering apple orchards.

Jack made his way back to the tasting building for the contest, dropping the rock
where Kennett had originally placed it.

“Con!” Inside the building, Aldo flagged Jack down and waved him over. “Just minutes
to go until they announce the unfortunate fellows who have to dance. You’re trailing
by just a few votes. But I have your back,
cugino.
I’ve been telling everyone who tries to vote for me to vote for you instead.” Aldo
let out a boom of a laugh and slapped Jack on the back. “Brilliant, eh?”

“My many un-heartfelt thanks. With family like you, who needs enemies?” Jack was only
half-teasing. He had plenty of those already. If he completed his mission successfully,
very soon he’d have one less. That made him smile.

“Eh! It’s the least I can do. If you can’t embarrass
la famiglia
for a good cause, life isn’t worth living! Besides, you should show off. The ladies
want to see it. We men don’t care for dancing. But the ladies love a man who can dance.”
Aldo gave him another friendly, familial pat. “The family honor is in your hands now.”

Damn.
Now he’d have to buy more tickets so he could get himself out of having to dance.

*   *   *

Willow’s pulse raced as Aldo pulled Con into the tasting room for the big reveal of
which unlucky five men had won, or lost, depending upon perspective, the vote and
would have to dance off against one another. Shane came into the building behind him,
carrying a cup of warm apple gold punch. He slid in beside her.

“You’re just in time,” she said to him. “I was beginning to worry. You’re in second
place right now, just below Bob. I’m glad you didn’t run out on us.”

“I thought about it. But Lettie has people keeping tabs on me and guards posted at
all the doors and escape routes. There’s no way she’s letting any of the victims bolt.”
He lifted his glass of punch and downed half. “For fortification and to cast away
inhibitions.”

Willow clutched twenty dollars’ worth of tickets. One second before the stroke of
eight, she was going to cast them for Con so he didn’t have time to un-vote them.

She’d been unable to connect with him all evening. She had the feeling he’d been doing
some evasive action and avoiding her. But that wasn’t the main reason for her failure.
No, the blame for that was 190 pounds of muscle named Shane who’d spent the majority
of the evening either right at her side, eavesdropping on any conversation she had
(he thought he was being sneaky, but she knew what he was up to), or, and this may
have just been her imagination, watching her to see if she was watching Con. Yes,
that was crazy. She really couldn’t figure it out. Shane had only left her for a few
minutes all evening. Once to go to the bathroom. And just now to get a cup of cider.

Of course, she
was
watching Con. With a very appreciative eye. But if she’d learned anything from living
with Jack, it was how to conduct a covert operation. She’d been careful to be clandestine.
She didn’t think she’d given Shane any reason to be jealous. But she was probably
about to blow all that when she spent her tickets on Con.

Shane’s reactions and behavior around her puzzled Willow. He persisted in pursuing
her, and yet there wasn’t any sexual chemistry between them. None on her part and
only halfhearted, feigned attraction on his. As odd as it sounded, it was almost as
if he was acting a part.

Maybe Shane was trying to force himself to move on from Crystal’s death by latching
onto Willow. Maybe he thought their similar backgrounds of loss made them compatible.
But it was a lost cause.

Willow was highly intuitive. And she knew chemistry when she saw it and, more important,
when she felt it. There was no reason for Shane to be jealous and care whether she
spoke with Con or not. And yet something about the way Shane acted, almost as if he
was looking for her to make a move of some kind on Aldo’s cousin, made her back off
and go underground.

During her, she hoped, clandestine surveillance of Con she’d noticed a couple of interesting
things. One, she’d seen him by one of Aldo’s metal roosters pocketing a rock. For
luck? Con didn’t seem like the rock-hound type. And two, no matter how much the ladies
wanted to watch him strut his stuff, he didn’t want to dance. He kept trying to buy
his way out of it. So, of course, she was going to make certain he danced until he
dropped. And it wasn’t the ladies’ need for eye candy that motivated her.

You could tell a lot about a person by how good- or bad-naturedly they reacted under
pressure or to a situation they found embarrassing. And how they took being ribbed.
She’d know by how Con handled himself in the competition whether he was a man worth
getting to know better. Or whether he’d never measure up to Jack.

Shane stood next to her, rocking on the balls of his feet nervously.

“You’re right. Lettie’s going to make you dance,” she said to him, teasing. “I don’t
think she dreamed up this competition just to get back at Bob for last year. I think
she just wants to see you shake your booty.”

He shook his head, looking decidedly unappreciative of Lettie’s desires. He pointed
to Willow’s tickets. “And you’re planning to buy me out of this?”

She eyed him doubtfully. “Do you really think I can outspend Lettie? She’s the wealthiest
person here.” Willow grinned. “Sorry, but I think you’re in.”

Con came into the building with Aldo. As they walked past her, an old, familiar feeling
washed over her—the prickly glow and sense of danger that used to surround Jack. The
hairs on her arms stood up, fueled by her earlier sense of foreboding. If she’d had
a pinch of salt, she would have thrown it over her shoulder just then.

Instead, she studied Con. He was everything Willow liked in a man—broad shoulders,
wavy dark hair, and a confident stance. She could see why he was Shiloh’s old-man
crush, though he was anything but old. Probably not a day over thirty-five. Jack’s
age, if he’d lived.

Dressed in a soft black V-neck sweater that practically screamed to be stroked as
it strained across his shoulders, cashmere probably, casual mahogany-brown slacks
rolled to the ankles, secured with a black-and-white-patterned belt, supple leather
black shoes, sans socks, he looked very much in his prime. And way too sophisticated
and city slick for Orchard Bluff. The opposite of the way Jack dressed. He wouldn’t
have been caught dead in such a totally metro outfit. But somehow, on Con, it worked.

A large digital timer was counting down the final minutes until eight. With two minutes
to go, Lettie went to the podium at the head of the room, banged a gavel, grabbed
a cordless mic, and called the room to order. “All right, citizens of Orchard Bluff,
the hour of reckoning is almost upon us. Bob White, this is payback for that diabolical
bench-building challenge last year.” She pointed over her back.

Behind her stood a large whiteboard with a tally of the votes. Bob White was in first
place, Shane in second, two other local men in places three and four, and Con was
in fifth by just five votes.