Chapter Eighteen
Jack hadn’t lost track of time like this in years. But Ava’s mouth made that perfect round, red O, and her knees hit the motel carpet with the softest thump, and her hands were on his thighs, and the way she looked swallowing for him was—
Well, it was fucking celestial.
And that was how he lost hours, time slipping away until it was dark out, hours evaporating like water before he really returned to himself.
He was sprawled out on the bed, Ava tucked against the crook of his arm despite her earlier insistence that they would not be cuddling.
“We should rest,” Jack said, turning over and looking at the clock. It was past ten now. “Are you still hungry?”
“I’m always hungry,” Ava said. “Do you have any chocolate?”
He had bought the family-size pack of Dove dark chocolates, just for her. He’d just have to make sure she didn’t bring any along the next time they left the motel, leaving a trail behind her that anyone could follow.
And he wouldn’t think too hard about what any of this meant. Couldn’t think about the hit on Ava, either—about how he was going to handle his client, about why they would want Ava.
Whatever he decided to do, they would need to lie low for a few days. When he told Ava they would need a few days to regroup, she closed her eyes and leaned more heavily on his arm.
“I want that motherfucker dead sooner than that,” she said. “But I won’t say no to a few more days like this.”
Because she thought she would die doing this. She was single-minded in her intention to kill Cale Jacobson, though not in the cold, detached way Jack was—she was all fire, pain and heat and longing bundled into one petite woman with a perfect mouth and eyes he kept getting lost in.
“We can’t stay here, though,” Jack said. “And we need to make sure nobody sees us, gets to know us, talks to us. Even this far away from the city, people are looking. Cale’s people and the police. You even made the local news.”
He could still do this—dig into his client, find out more about why they needed Ava dead, or if he couldn’t find that, then some leverage to keep them off his case about killing her. Keep Ava with him until Cale was dead. Keep it all under control.
He could, of course, take the money and kill Ava Cavalcante.
Ava lifted her head and looked at him. “I did?”
“Don’t sound so happy about that,” Jack told her firmly.
This was bad news. Many people thought they wanted their fifteen minutes of fame, until it happened—and Ava certainly didn’t need that, not when the man she was after was as high profile and fucking rich as Cale Jacobson.
“This isn’t good, Ava. Everyone is looking for you. ”
“They wouldn’t be,” Ava said, her tone icing over, “if it wasn’t him. If it was you or me or anyone else who was being attacked or harassed. They wouldn’t care. There wouldn’t be news, or a widespread manhunt, or anything else. Why does he get to be treated differently?”
That fury was back in her voice, the thing that usually stayed stuck at the edges, buried under the flirtiness and sassiness and refusal to take things seriously.
Jack shrugged as he pushed himself up off the bed. “That’s the way it’s always been,” he said. “But regardless of why, that’s the way it is. That’s the reality we’re working with. So we’ll leave early tomorrow—”
“You lost me at ‘early,’” Ava cut in. “No earlier than ten a.m., tops. Eleven if you keep talking my ear off like this. Besides, you said we had to lie low. So why not lie low here?”
Jack had never talked anyone’s ear off, and certainly not Ava’s, making her words even more ludicrous, but Jack just pressed on bravely.
“We’ll stay somewhere else, another town farther out of the city.
” He also wanted to scope out the location of the gala, see how close they could get before encountering obstacles, and then plan his way around whatever obstacles they found.
Of course, once he found his way in, he could just leave Ava behind, which might be the least messy solution, all things considered. “We’ll pay with the cash I have left—”
“What do you mean, the cash you have left? Can’t you get more? Doesn’t popping people for money make you, like, rich rich?” Ava made finger guns with her hands, mouthing pop pop as she did.
“It’s not that simple, and it’s not that easy,” Jack said. “Part of flying under the radar means not withdrawing huge sums of cash at one time. Part of it also requires different banks, different names, different transactions over time.”
“Well, and you couldn’t have withdrawn enough before the start of this?” Ava threw up her hands.
“Ava.”
“Jack.”
“Do you have any cash?”
“No, I have a mission I don’t plan to walk away from, remember?” Ava’s laugh was hard. “I have maxed-out credit cards and a free checking account that’s been overdrawn for weeks. You wanted to kick me off the team for the whole this-is-my-end-of-the-road shit, if I recall correctly.”
“I don’t want to kick you off anything,” Jack said. “But, Ava, there is no team. We just currently have goals that are aligned. So we’re working together on those goals.”
“Like fucking me hard and spanking me harder,” Ava said. She stretched, arching her back a little as she did.
Jack swallowed hard. She was impossible. And blindingly, brutally bold. The way she just came out and said it—
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, like that. But you know what I’m saying.
We both need to kill the same person, you for personal reasons and me because this is my job.
I don’t want you treating this like a mission that ends you, because that recklessness puts us both in danger, and I don’t want you to be the reason I get caught. ”
“Right,” Ava said. She sat up abruptly, pressing a hand to her bruised ribs as she did but suppressing the wince that must have tempted her. “And nothing matters to you more than your own damn safety. Living long enough that you can continue making money off shit like this.”
Jack sighed and sat up, too. “Exactly,” he said, though it wasn’t true, or at least not the whole truth. “So we should talk about what comes next.”
He stood and grabbed the bag of chocolates from the drawer he’d stowed it in, opened it, and handed her one.
“I start with at least three of those,” Ava said, holding her palm out for more. “You need to know how this works.”
“And you don’t bring any when we gather intel or go to this party,” Jack said.
“There are so many rules,” Ava said. “How would you punish me if I disobeyed? Would you tie me up to do it?” She held out her wrists, eyes sparking at him.
“Take this seriously,” Jack said. His headache had arrived in full force, the weight of the what-to-do-with-Ava question so heavy on him that he could hardly see a path forward.
“I’ll take it seriously when I’m dead,” Ava returned. “All right, whatever. Carry on with all the rules.”
If she didn’t treat this with more seriousness and less recklessness, then that was going to be sooner rather than later. Jack’s hand tightened into a fist.
“We’ll leave early tomorrow, find a different motel in a different town, and lie low for—oh, at least until next weekend.
Then I’ll make a few visits to some leads of my own, and we’ll monitor Cale’s schedule for any changes.
The plan is still the party at the end of the month, but we need to solidify our way in, because this party will have ridiculous security no matter what—and it’ll be tighter now that you’ve made a public attempt on his life. ”
“I want to be the one.”
Jack paused, his body stilling at the weight of the seriousness in her voice. He stared back at her.
Ava had three wrappers balled up in her hand, the chocolates long gone. Her eyes were sharp and . . . haunted. “I want it to be me,” she repeated. “I want him to know that I’m the reason he dies.”
There was a whole collective of people who were going to be the reason Cale Jacobson died, but that was beyond the scope of what Ava needed to know.
“Ava,” Jack said softly. “You haven’t killed anybody. And you’re angry at him, I can see that, but—”
“I’ll do it,” Ava said. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do along the way, but you have to let me do that part.”
When Jack hesitated, she swung her legs off the end of the bed and stood, squaring her shoulders as she looked up at him. It would be easier to just lie. To tell Ava that, sure, she could be the one to kill him. That they would make it there together after all, that they were a team.
“Promise me,” she said. “Promise me I’ll be the one to kill him.”
The moment stretched out between them like a cord about to snap, all of it flashing in front of Jack—Ava darting out the café door, Ava dragged away at the club, Ava hurt on the warehouse floor, Ava on her knees in front of him. Ava, Ava, Ava.
“I don’t know if I can give you that,” Jack said softly. “When it comes down to it—”
“Then when it comes down to it,” Ava said, those fierce eyes locked on his, “I’ll do whatever I fucking have to.”
And that, Jack O’Sullivan knew, was exactly the problem.