Chapter Twenty-Five
Jack took a breath when he stepped back into the mugginess of the spring day.
Spring here hadn’t always felt this stiflingly warm.
It had been years since he had talked about Jay, but now that he had, it was like the floodgates had opened.
He had forgotten, almost, that he’d been on this side of the country before—he’d vacationed here with Jay, back when they were young and hopeful and saved up their money for long weekends in beautiful places.
Jack had been many beautiful places now, but only for the work he did, which was a grim realization. For a moment, he thought about what it would be like to see those beautiful places—but with Ava at his side. Sighing, he pulled his phone from his pocket.
Updates, now.
That text was an hour old.
Another, thirty minutes ago:
I’ll pull the plug on this. I’ll go to the FBI.
And a third, as he looked down at his phone:
This needs to wrap up ASAP.
Jack ran a hand over his fake beard. Ava was right. It was a strange texture, definitely not real hair. Maybe some plastic substitute, despite its generally convincing appearance. I have a new plan, Jack responded to his client.
The money had been so, so good. And established in his work or not, Jack still had bills to pay.
Updates. Now. There are helicopters sweeping the Willamette. I’ve seen the news about the person, or people, who attempted to complete our shared goal.
Oh, this client was on the verge. Jack could read the frantic tone.
I’ve got it handled, he responded. The secondary piece of this job can temporarily be an asset.
No. Eliminate.
Jack’s stomach twisted. This was dangerously close to being explicit about what they were doing over text, something he never did.
Call me, he typed.
Less than thirty seconds later, his phone rang.
At the other end of the line, a man’s deep voice, slightly garbled by some kind of masking technology—one that Jack also used through an app he downloaded every time he got a new burner phone—sounded.
“You have five minutes.”
“Asset is a distraction,” Jack said. “Better alive and out of custody for now. Any attention will be focused primarily on containing and stopping her. This will allow other objectives to remain on target and proceed as planned.”
Speaking in guarded, nonspecific ways in writing was always Jack’s biggest worry, but wiretaps were a real threat, too—and some clients found ways to sneakily record phone conversations.
Any client smart enough to use an app or other technology to obscure their voice was going to be smart enough to record their conversation if Jack gave them the opportunity.
There was nothing for a moment but the sound of the person breathing on the other end, the sound twisting and crackling through Jack’s phone.
“That’s unacceptable,” they said finally. “This is time sensitive, and we’ve had an endless series of delays.”
Jack rarely asked clients why they wanted a person gone when they hired him.
It wasn’t his business, and he took jobs without usually caring much why.
Many times it was because a person had cheated.
Other times it was because someone had hurt a family member.
But the shared grudge this group of clients had was new. And possibly dangerous.
“I can accelerate the timeline,” Jack said. “But you knew when you hired me that this kind of work was difficult, and something high profile like this can take time.”
A long pause.
“How accelerated?”
“Done by Sunday,” Jack said.
The person at the other end breathed out heavily. “Fine,” they said.
“One more thing,” Jack said. “You have a collective of people with the goal of the chief deliverable. For the additional deliverable, you’ll send half up front. Can your collective manage that?”
There was a fierce, bright-eyed woman in the hostel room who Jack couldn’t, wouldn’t, let down. And if he wanted them both to get safely away, he’d need more money than he had.
There was another long stretch of silence.
“The payment’s not a problem,” the client said finally.
“You’ll have your deliverables this weekend,” Jack said shortly, and hung up.
The money hit his accounts within moments.
And that, that was the part that smelled foul to him.
If Ava had hired him, he’d believe her when she said she wanted Cale Jacobson dead, because he had hurt someone she loved.
It wouldn’t be hard to believe that Cale had hurt people, either.
Nobody got where Cale was in life without a trail of pain and victimization behind him.
But Ava also wouldn’t have been able to scrape up the kind of capital in a year, or five years, or maybe even longer than that, that this client had just dropped into Jack’s account in the space of fifteen minutes.
The news was full of speculation about Ava—her life, her motives, how she’d escaped capture so far—but it was also rife with speculation about the investigation into insider trading Cale was facing.
Was this an investor—or group of investors—with deep pockets and deeper resentment for Cale’s cost to their bottom line?
Jack shoved his phone in his pocket and went back inside, dread building in his gut. There was too much here that he didn’t understand, and he couldn’t both keep Ava safe and carry this job across the finish line.
Ava was asleep, sprawled across one of the twin beds, her curls falling across the pillow. She was naked—because of course she was.
Jack padlocked the door, an extra layer of security that was habitual to him in places like hostels, double-checked the windows were locked, and then lowered the blinds again before climbing in beside Ava.
He would barely fit in a twin bed alone—his feet went past the end of the bed as it was—but the thought of being in the other one, not touching her, was somehow unbearable.
She sighed and curled against him.
He lay there, staring at the wall, while she sprawled across him. Like she’d trust him with anything.
It had been a long time since something like this mattered to him—but this, Ava’s trust in him, might just break Jack’s heart.
Jack woke before Ava. He texted her that he’d be back with food and then unlocked the padlock before slipping out the door.
When he returned, it was with takeout from a small Chinese restaurant down the street from the hostel.
He brought six different entrées, because they’d both worn themselves out fucking and running for their lives and fucking again.
And then a double order of cream cheese wontons, because that seemed like something Ava would eat in large quantities.
And then he’d stopped at the corner store and bought whipped cream in a can and strawberries, because if Ava had to go a day without strawberries, she lost her shit a little bit.
And also because he could probably find creative places on Ava’s body to lick that whipped cream off.
Ava was on her phone when he entered, scrolling the news with a furrowed brow.
“What did I say about getting a new phone and ditching this one?” Jack asked, snatching it out of her hand and replacing it with the biggest strawberry in the package. “Doomscrolling is bad for you, too. Especially right before bed.”
Ava sat up and glared back at Jack indignantly. “Who says I’m going to bed anytime soon? And I don’t want to ditch my phone—oooh, strawberry.”
She devoured most of the package, all the chicken fried rice (both containers), and the entirety of the cream cheese wontons before looking up at him a little guiltily. “Do you have your own order of wontons?” she asked.
“Not a cream cheese guy,” Jack said.
“That’s absurd,” Ava told him. “And a red flag. Everyone likes cream cheese.”
“Is the cream cheese thing more of a red flag than my chosen profession?” he asked, digging into a container of spicy noodles.
Ava poked him with one of her chopsticks. “You’re sassy,” she said. “Thanks for food. Is now a good time to talk about our plan? Because now that you basically forced me to talk about my feelings and take a nap, I have some ideas.”
The feelings had been her idea to share, but who was Jack to argue with her about it? Besides, he’d wanted that, too.
Jack nodded. “Shoot,” he said.
“Bad use of the word shoot,” Ava told him.
“But I digress. Okay, if the gala is this weekend, I’d never get in without looking the part.
And if I wear a wig, do my makeup right, and have a nice dress, I might actually have a chance.
You know how it is—a white woman in a dress that says she comes from money, and people don’t ask that many questions. ”
“I’ll wear a suit—I saw one down the street that I can rent—so we’ll look the part as much as we need,” Jack said. “But first we have to figure out how we’re getting in. This guest list will be exclusive, and security will be on high alert.”
Ava had many ideas—from calling Ms. Rae and asking for help to having Jack call Clara Jacobson and ask for an invite to the gala as thanks for saving her brother’s life—but Jack’s phone buzzed, interrupting her.
Confirm that you got the additional payment, his client texted.
Confirmed, Jack responded.
And confirm she won’t be a problem after this weekend. Secondary objective must be eliminated.
Anger flashed through Jack. He had done this himself, reduced the people he killed to this cold, detached language. But seeing them talk about Ava this way . . . he wished the client was in the room with him.
Still, he did what he had to. He texted back:
Confirmed.