Chapter Three
Jack surveyed his rental car—a black Volvo he’d paid for in cash—with a deep sigh.
How had he been so stupid? How had he missed so much?
“Hey!” Cale shouted behind him, still surrounded by his security guards. “Stop that man. Stop him! I need to thank him.”
Jack winced but turned, adjusting his mask slightly. A nervous habit, fiddling with the one thing that so often protected him from surveillance cameras.
“Why’d you leave?” Cale was huffing down the alley behind him, out of breath.
“Sir, we should really—” One of his security guards, a large man with gray speckled in his dark-brown hair and a handgun strapped to his waist, reached out to pull Cale back.
Cale waved him off. “I want to meet the hero who saved me,” he said. “A real man of the people.”
Jack wasn’t sure either of them knew what a real man of the people was, but it certainly wasn’t him. It was hard to look at Cale without imagining the moment when he finished his job. One shot.
Always one.
Some clients requested custom messaging—these customers certainly had—but Jack had always refused that. The less personal a job was to him, the better.
“I’m AJ.” Jack nodded to him. “And I didn’t save you. Your guards had that under control. I just saw an upset woman and thought I could help.”
“What’s your last name?” The security guard had no pretense of politeness, and Jack respected him for it. Politeness was a luxury in that line of work.
Cale held out his hand. “Maybe I should make you my head of security,” he joked, missing the look on his guard’s face when he did. “AJ, huh? You wouldn’t believe how many people want to hurt me or my family.”
Jack could actually put an exact number to that. Seventeen. Well, seventeen who had pooled their money to take out a hit on him, though Jack was sure countless more would have if they could afford someone like him.
“Damn, that sounds awful. Sorry you’re going through that,” Jack said woodenly. “I’m glad you have a good team with you.”
It grated at him like an itch he couldn’t scratch, to have this man standing in front of him and to know, to know in his bones that the hit would be impossible to get away with from here—maybe even impossible to carry out at all. But he had the man in front of him.
Cale laughed, oblivious to the threat his life had been under from Ava—and, more importantly, was under from Jack. Jack’s palms itched to wrap around the pale, pretentious throat.
“Are you from around here? Staying close by? I’ll have my team send a thank-you from me.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t need your thanks,” he said. “Really, it’s all right.”
He had a job.
He’d been so close.
One day away from finishing it.
And that woman in the red dress had ruined it all.
“It’s no trouble.” Cale still had that jovial smile, bouncing back quickly from the multiple blows to his face—though his eye was still swollen, and one of his many guards was attempting to hold an ice pack to it. “My family likes to know who our friends are.”
Jack shrugged. “I would have done the same for anyone,” he said. “It’s all right. Really.”
“Sir, we have to get you out of here,” Cale’s head of security repeated, his icy gaze taking in every inch of Jack. “We’ll coordinate with local law enforcement to find the woman. Do you know where we should start?”
“I don’t,” Jack answered. “Never met her before today.”
At this, Cale shivered. For all his smiling, the thought of this woman seemed to bring him discomfort.
“Ava Cavalcante,” he said. “She blames me for—oh, you know. The usual.” He waved his hand, dismissing whatever concerns Ava had with one flick of his wrist. “It doesn’t matter what.
There are many bitter people in the world.
But she’s left me dozens of threats. Sent letters.
Called my assistants. She even mailed me a—what was it called? A glitter bomb?”
Jack suppressed a smirk. “A glitter bomb?”
“That was her first threat,” Cale confided. One of the guards was trying to usher him away now, but Cale was still talking, still grinning at Jack as if they were old friends.
It was amazing, his lack of a sense of personal safety. Or maybe he relied so wholly on these guards that he didn’t need to think about that particular part himself.
“Then, of course, I got a restraining order and the police charged her with stalking and harassment,” Cale continued.
It was a goddamn miracle nobody had popped this man yet. Jack put one hand in the pocket of his slacks and tilted his head, considering the other man.
“For glitter?” Jack said finally, when it was clear that Cale required his participation in the story.
“It was a threat,” Cale said. “Anyway, as soon as she was released, she went straight back to harassing me.” He leaned past one particularly burly guard and patted Jack’s shoulder.
Jack refrained from drawing his weapon and completing the job, but just barely. He kept pristine physical and emotional boundaries. He kept meticulous care of his clothing and belongings. He did not want those boundaries crossed by anyone, but certainly not by a mark he intended to kill.
“I think your security team wants you inside,” Jack said mildly. “Good luck, man. I hope you don’t run into her again.”
“Please come in,” the first security guard said, his gaze steely where it landed on Jack. “I insist.” His hand rested lightly on his sidearm, a threat if you were paying attention. An assertion of control if nothing else.
Jack’s stomach sank. He could, of course, force the matter—insist that he wanted to leave, or even fight his way out, if it came to that.
But that would raise every alarm, and any slim chance he had of still completing this hit relied on Cale Jacobson’s team not being on the alert.
This security guard in particular was clearly well trained, analytical enough to see beyond a surface-level threat.
Jack was going to kill Ava for this.
“Sure,” he said resignedly. “But like I said, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to be helpful.”
“I don’t need your help,” Cale insisted loudly. “I want to thank you!” He was clutching his bleeding nose and leaning on one of his security guards now.
Jack should have abandoned this job before he’d ever agreed to it—he’d known it was risky, even if he hadn’t anticipated having a face-to-face with the mark and his entire security team before he carried it out.
But Jack had bills to pay, a promise to keep.
And the money for this had been too good to pass up.
“It really is all right,” Jack said, but they were already leading him inside.
“I’m Cale, by the way,” Cale told him as one of the guards opened the door for both of them. “Cale Jacobson. I own”—he gestured again, a motion that could have encompassed everything from the building they were entering to the security team to Jack himself—“all this.”
“He knows who you are,” the security guard said evenly, his gaze scanning Jack up and down again. “Mind if we pat you down? Obviously we have some pretty high-profile people in this building.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Cale said. “Give it up, Davis.”
“Devin,” the security guard said. “And sir, I really think—”
“Davis or Devin or Derek”—Cale gave another dismissive wave—“can you call for medical, please? And get my brother down here. He’s going to want to know all about this. But avoid Clara? She’ll just bitch me out.”
Devin nodded tightly, his jaw set in a way that Jack recognized.
The entrance opened into a long hallway leading to a private elevator, where Jack reluctantly stepped inside.
They reached the top floor, where a team of EMS were already waiting for him.
In a world where everyone else waited for the care they needed, Cale Jacobson’s bloody nose was treated immediately.
If Jack had the time and energy to be angry about it, he would have been. But as it was, he was in deep, deep shit. “I have another appointment soon,” he said to Cale. “I don’t mean to be rude—”
“We won’t keep you,” Cale promised in that booming voice that Jack could imagine commanding boardrooms. Cale looked at Jack again as the EMS team started asking him questions, with that gaze that never really seemed to see Jack, or anyone around him.
“Just join us briefly? My brother will be up momentarily.”
The EMS team and Cale split off into a nearby office, and the security team flanked Jack, faces immovable.
They clearly had orders from Devin, not Cale, and Jack was sticking around.
They led him into another large corner office with wraparound windows that showed off downtown Portland, and gestured to a chair that probably cost more than most people made in a month.
“Mr. Jacobson will be back momentarily,” one of the remaining security guards told him.
Jack settled into the chair uneasily. He needed out of here, and fast. If his client knew he was this close, this visible to the Jacobson family, they’d pull the plug on this, and rightfully so—and probably turn him in to the cops, which was something most people who hired someone like Jack thought about at least once.
The door opened a moment later, a tall, willowy woman entering. She had showy blond hair, perfectly manicured nails in a subtle, soft mauve, and her immaculately tailored suit said money.
Jack stood. Of all the fucking people he could have encountered today, direct contact with a second Jacobson was quite possibly the worst. It was not in Jack’s best interest to be seen by Cale’s entire family—because when this was over, when Cale was dead, every second of his final days would be picked apart to find a suspect.
It was better, always, to be invisible from beginning to end of the job.