Chapter Twenty-One
You came for me.
Ava’s words haunted him through the long drive north later that day, to the little cottage rental he’d secured for them.
They haunted him that night, and the next after that when they were lying low and avoiding talking about the fact that they’d fucked and weren’t sure what to do next, and the night after that, and he worried, as he pored over yet another incomplete map of Cale Jacobson’s compound, that they’d haunt him forever.
They haunted him when he watched the news reports around Ava only grow, instead of fade, when he dove into more research and found she’d been married, once. Widowed.
They haunted him when she avoided his eyes, and when she met them.
They haunted him, because they were the same words Jack’s husband had said the day he died. The only words, when Jack found him. The last words Jack would ever hear, and they weren’t even true, because while Jack had come for his husband, he hadn’t come in time.
Now Ava was reclined on the couch in their small living room, staring at her phone, and Jack had the printed map in his hand, turning it absentmindedly.
“I don’t want to be here forever,” Ava told him.
She’d told him that every day they’d been here.
Jack grunted. “You know why we’re here.”
“You look extra murder-y,” Ava told him. “Though you’ve looked like that all day.”
Jack’s client had been hard to pacify this week, too, asking many too-pointed questions about the delay and the fact that he’d been dodging their request to add Ava to his hit list. “Ava. I need to focus.”
“Jack. I need to get started on the murder.” She was mocking his tone—he knew she must be.
Most shifts in tone were harder for Jack to read, something that had been hard to navigate in his relationship with Jay, even, but certainly with the world around him.
He had not been good at predicting when someone’s friendliness shifted to sourness or when kindness had burned away into irritation, and it had always cost him.
But Ava, somehow, made sure he knew exactly where he stood with her.
It was both a blessing and a curse.
“If we could just get into the phone, which you said you could—”
“To be fair, I only said that because you were thinking of betraying me,” Ava said, cutting Jack off. “It was, like, a freebie lie. Because it was for a good reason.”
“That’s not how that works.”
“Are you a hit man or a self-help coach? Anyway, I know you’re thinking of going into that little town—Gable?
Mable? Maple? Oooh, I want pancakes. I want to come with you to the store, Jack.
” Ava swung her legs over the edge of the couch and dropped her feet onto the floor with a thump.
“I pinkie promise not to talk to any cops.”
Jack sighed. This was nonnegotiable, not that that would slow down Ava’s impulse to argue with him about it.
“For the hundredth time,” he said. “No, Ava. You’re staying here, out of sight.
Aerial footage could pick you up. There are drone cameras so far away that you’d never see, and they’d be able to pick up your face.
There are talkative townspeople. There are nosy local cops.
There are extra patrols, because people are starting to look at you like—”
Like she was some folk hero. There were dozens of social media videos full of people saying things like Actually, she was with me helping me and my cousin move or So I actually know this girl, she was with me doing our makeup and she totally has an alibi, a joke Jack’d had to google to understand.
And there were more, too, videos talking about the inequities in Jacobson’s company, videos criticizing the Jacobson family—Cale in particular—for shutting down any public negative feedback or calls for reform for years now.
There were headlines calling Ava an impulsive, deranged woman.
And there were headlines, fewer but still there, wondering why people loved her so much.
“What are they starting to say? I know TikTok likes me,” Ava told him, running her fingers through her dense curls.
“They’re calling me a hero. I think they just think I look hot in the red dress, though, and TikTok is, like, one hundred percent just thirst trap videos these days.
I think it used to have more library content?
But now it’s just Pedro Pascal and that one singer the gays love, even though I’m gay and don’t get the appeal—”
Jack had to look away, because the sight of her running her hand through her hair like that made him want to do the same, but rougher. The thought made his cock twitch.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Jack said instead, wrestling for control of himself.
They hadn’t fucked since that impulsive moment at the motel, and Jack needed to keep it that way, keep himself clear of distractions.
“Attention is a bad thing, even if it’s positive attention.
And no, TikTok is only one hundred percent thirst trap videos on your algorithm.
That’s about you and how you scroll, not about the app. ”
“Damn, are you defending TikTok?”
“Did you hear the important part?” Jack asked, exasperation seeping into his tone. “About not attracting attention?”
“Yeah,” Ava said. “But it is a good thing, right? If people start talking about billionaires like Cale. If people start noticing the way men like him can get away with anything. If . . . if it gives people hope that things can be different. That billionaires aren’t untouchable. That we aren’t powerless.”
Jack stared at her. She was confusing, and she was mesmerizing, and she held on to hope even when it didn’t make sense. Because from here, it still looked like they were pretty fucking powerless.
“What will it take to get you to lie low for a few more days?” Jack asked.
Ava hesitated, a grin spreading across her face.
Her eyes sparked, sending warmth through Jack until he dropped her gaze.
“A thong,” Ava answered, holding up one finger. “A decent breakfast. And—” She paused again, grinning wickedly. “You have to teach me your murder skills. Though I’m still disappointed I won’t get to use the cool backstory I invented when we go into town.”
Jack stood, brushing his hands against his thighs. Cale Jacobson’s mansion could wait, at least for now. He was getting nowhere with it, anyway, and the gala was drawing closer. “My murder skills?”
“Yeah, the pew-pew. The punchy-punch. The—”
“Things have names, Ava,” Jack said wearily.
“I know,” Ava told him. “You’re very easy to annoy. So you’ll teach me?”
Jack’s phone buzzed insistently. He jumped—he was losing his edge, jumping over the buzz of his phone. But he couldn’t talk to the client who wanted Ava dead and look at her brilliant hazel eyes as he did it. “I need to take this.”
He stepped outside.
The voice on the other end, as it had been during all communication he’d had with them so far, was garbled. “I need an update.”
“The gala,” Jack told them tightly. “Still the most logical next step.”
“I want to talk about her.”
Jack froze.
Ava was at the window to the cottage, dressed in a Walmart T-shirt that said live laugh loaf with a corgi on the front. It was small on her, just a little, accentuating the curve of her body.
“I told you,” Jack said, “she’s not part of the deal.”
“She needs to be. This is imperative. As imperative as—” The client hesitated, maybe searching for the right words. They were good at this, almost as good as Jack was, good at making the words so vague they couldn’t be used as evidence. “As imperative as our original objective. Maybe more.”
“Why?” Jack blurted it out before he could call the word back.
Why Ava? Why now?
If Jack’s client had been honest with him—and that was always a big if in a line of work where his clients were hiring him for murder—then they were a small collective of people who had been hurt by Cale Jacobson. Ava, then, should be an ally.
The internet certainly thought so. There were even, as Ava had proudly showed him, video edits of her grainy CCTV image to songs like “Solidarity Forever” and a popular new Taylor Swift song Jack had somehow never heard.
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Just breathing, harsh and distorted.
“While she’s in the picture,” the client answered finally, “the focus will be on her. Not him. That doesn’t . . . align with our objectives.”
Alarm bells had gone off for Jack from the very beginning of this job, not least because of how good the client was at this. But the precision of their language, the addition of Ava to this job . . . Jack needed to know more.
“I need more time,” Jack said. “And I need more insurance.”
Silence.
Ava rapped on the window, holding her hands up to him and mouthing What the hell? through the glass.
“What kind of insurance?” The gravelly voice at the other end was quieter. Careful.
“I’m sure our priorities are aligned, but—”
“A generous sentiment,” the client interrupted him. “We’d like to see—”
“I need a way out.” Jack cut them off. Too clear, too direct.
“A way out,” the client repeated.
“Yes,” Jack said. “A rented helicopter, or a boat headed south. Something.”
“We can arrange that. The night of the gala.” The response was immediate, clipped.
This client had no concern about coming up with money, then—for an escape plan, for a higher fee. For any of it.
“And the woman will be part of it?” the client prompted.
“After completion of the primary objective,” Jack said, and then he hung up.
When he went back inside, Ava’s eyes swept him up and down. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said. “What the hell was that?”
“An important phone call.”
“No shit.”
Jack couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at her and imagine pulling the trigger. Couldn’t look at her and imagine her without that light in her eyes, that bold, impossible light.
“If you want me to trust you, then you have to fucking trust me.” Ava’s words were sharp.
She was right. Of course she was right.