Chapter Three #2
“I’m Clara.” She extended her hand to shake his.
“I heard what you did for my brother, and I’m incredibly grateful.
We’re offering a significant financial reward for anyone who assists in the capture of this woman who has been stalking our family, but after what you did today—well, of course we would like to offer you something in thanks, too.
” Jack’s job was so beyond fucked at this point that he briefly considered asking for enough money to leave the country and live comfortably somewhere with no extradition treaty—but a breath after that thought, the one promise he still clung to caught up with him.
He had bills to pay, expensive ones. Someone here in the States who counted on him.
“I’m grateful,” Jack answered carefully. He took Clara’s offered hand and shook.
Her handshake was firm, her look piercing.
“I like to think anyone would have done what I did today,” Jack continued. “I didn’t know who Cale was until his security team rushed out.”
She released his hand and stepped back, that analytical gaze sweeping him up and down. “Of course,” she said. “Of course. A generous sentiment, Mr. . . . they told me AJ, but no last name.”
“Reed,” Jack supplied.
“Mr. Reed,” Clara said. “I would like to leave you with my card—my direct number, where my assistant will be able to help you if you can think of anything we can do to thank you. And if you would like—”
The door opened before she could finish, a man who looked like a carbon copy of Cale Jacobson stepping through.
For fuck’s sake.
There were only three Jacobson siblings, and now Jack had met them all.
He had his mask up, sure, and he could change the rest—his clothes, his hair, his car, even his eye color with the right pair of contact lenses—but there was nothing that could change the fact that they had all seen him now, talked to him.
“Didn’t Cale tell them all not to tell you?” the man asked.
“Carson,” Clara said icily. “Good to see you, too.”
Jack glanced back and forth between them. There was no friction between the siblings, at least not publicly—not since Carson’s failed bid a few years back to gain more control of the company, a rift they appeared to have resolved.
Clara nodded crisply to Jack and handed him her card. “Reach out if there’s anything we can do,” she said.
That cold gaze swept her brother next, and then she was gone.
Carson—who had the same soft jawline as his brother, the same mousy brown hair, the same blue eyes—rolled his eyes openly.
“That’s why you never tell the eldest daughter when there’s been an emergency,” he said, and laughed as if he and Jack were just bar buddies in on the same joke.
“Anyway, you’re the man of the hour, aren’t you?
The hero the whole building’s talking about?
I’m Carson, Cale’s brother. Very grateful and all that. ”
“AJ,” Jack told him. “Pleasure.”
After today he was disposing of every ID that said AJ or Aaron James on it. Every fake bank statement and any last shred of paperwork. AJ Reed needed to be gone, the next name and identity assumed.
“We don’t want to keep you, of course,” Carson said. “We’re all here prepping for some shareholder meetings and other boring shit, so when Cale got himself involved in another kerfuffle, I wanted to meet the guy who saved him.”
Carson met Jack’s eyes, the expression colder than Jack had anticipated. Just like his sister.
Jack heard the undercurrents—he had never been good at parsing that kind of communication, but this steely note beneath Carson’s words was too clear to miss.
There was trouble in the Jacobson Health paradise, something that ran deeper than one rogue woman with a red dress and bloody knuckles and a grudge.
“I appreciate that you wanted to thank me,” Jack said. “But I have a meeting I’m already late for, so if there’s nothing else—”
Carson stepped back, opened the door. “Of course,” he said. “Did my guys get your number? They might have follow-up questions. The police are already talking to my brother, and if we can pass your number to them for whatever they need—”
He said it questioningly, but not like no was a real option.
Jack forced back his sigh and supplied an old phone number before he finally made his escape, passing a few security guards in the hallway who, thankfully, made no further move to stop him.
Sirens outside were wailing, a team of police cars outside the Jacobson Health building, and Jack set a quick pace to his car. Damn Ava to hell for all this—and damn her recklessness, too.
He bent down when he reached his car. She’d eaten a damn chocolate and left the wrapper on the ground next to his car while she’d keyed his rental. This woman either had no idea the kind of trouble she could be in for this, or she had nothing left to lose.
By the expression on her face when she’d left the café, Jack guessed it was the latter.
But it also meant she would be easier to find—and he needed, more than anything, to find her.
He didn’t realize until he was inside the car what she had stolen from him. She was an amateur, a hothead. She was out for personal revenge, not the kind of meticulous shit he had come to be known for in the niche industry he inhabited. She—
Had stolen his fucking notebook.
He cursed roundly before he shifted his car into drive, pounding his fist against the steering wheel.
She had smashed everything. She had teased him in that café and broken his focus.
And she had stolen the notebook where he had recorded, in shorthand, everything about Cale Jacobson’s daily schedule.
He had even written the best time to find him:
Tomorrow. Friday. Seven a.m.
Before Cale even got to order his daily green juice.
Jack had decided before to spare Tasha the bullshit of having to take one more order from her most pretentious and least-likely-to-tip guest. It was stupid to decide that for personal reasons, and it was foolish to write it in a notebook.
Still, he had always thought of it as more secure than tracking all the information on a device that could be hacked or stolen, data too easy to steal no matter how good the VPN or cloud encryption.
But now it was gone.
He could not come back to this place, either, and it had been the optimal place to finish the job.
There was nothing meticulous about this now. He was going to fucking kill Ava.