Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Someone was sleeping in the hallway outside my apartment door Wednesday night when I finally got home, exhausted from four days of trying to juggle work, family, and heist preparations with the crew in the warehouse.
“Did it ever occur to you to wait until I’m home and then call and ask if you can come over like a normal person?” I stepped over Jack’s prone body to unlock my door.
“I was worried you’d say no.”
“That’s exactly what I would have said.” Sometimes Jack reminded me of my younger brothers when they were naughty but too cute to be punished.
“But now we’re both here so we can talk.” He gave me a hopeful smile. “Can I come in?”
“Are you a vampire? Will you be physically unable to come in unless I invite you?”
“No, but I won’t come in if you don’t want me.”
“Honestly,” I said. “I don’t know what I want. I’m exhausted and starving. I was going to just order a pizza and chill.”
“I already ordered a pizza from Skip. It should be here in a few minutes.”
“Double mushroom and pepperoni?”
“Yes.”
“Extra cheese?”
“Yes.”
“Side of cheesy bread and a bottle of Sprite?”
“Yes and yes.”
“What about dessert?”
“They’re bringing a dozen donuts from your favorite place on Franklin Street.”
How could I say no? I was weak. I was a total foodie. And I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I moved to the side. “You may come in. We need to debrief before tomorrow anyway.”
Jack walked in and shrugged off his leather jacket. He was wearing a black T-shirt that hugged every hard ripple of his muscular body. So sexy. Sweat beaded on my forehead and trickled down my back. Had I left the heat on? Was the window closed? Why was I wearing so many clothes?
“What do you want to talk about?” I took off my jacket and tossed it beside my purse on the nearest table. It was just a jacket. People didn’t wear jackets indoors. No other clothes were going to be removed.
“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” he said. “Talk is the best therapy for stress.”
“I’ll deal with my stress in my usual way,” I said. “It involves watching romantic comedies with Chloe while eating Chinese food and ice cream, but not at the same time. Any other topics you want to discuss?”
“Anil can’t be trusted anymore.” He followed me to the kitchen. “He’s in Clare’s thrall.”
“Thrall? What is this? The eighteenth century?” I pulled two pops out of the fridge and handed one to him. My pinkie may have extended slightly to brush over his knuckles, or that zing of electricity that shot through my veins may have been caused by a faulty fridge wire. Either way, the resulting rush of heat was exacerbated by the excess-clothing situation.
“She seduced him,” Jack said, flexing his hand. “She’ll turn him against us. I think we should cut him loose.”
“I think you’re underestimating him. He surprised us once before. Maybe he’ll do it again.”
“Not when Clare is involved. She can be very persuasive.” Jack made his way into my living room and settled on the couch, feet up on my coffee table. I lifted an eyebrow in warning. He put them down.
“You’re not helping your cause if you came over here for more than talking.” I settled beside him. “I don’t want to hear again about how Clare handcuffed you to her bed during a romantic Nile cruise so she could have her way with you in some naughty sex game before stealing something out from under your nose or whatever.”
Jack grinned. “The only fun part of that encounter was when I threw her overboard.”
Now, that caught my interest. “Really?”
“I picked the lock on the handcuffs when she wasn’t looking.”
“Were you naked?”
Jack took a long sip of his pop. “She drugged my wine and broke into my room after I went to sleep.”
“Why wasn’t she looking at you while you were picking the lock? I’ve seen you naked and I had no desire to look away.” Okay. Maybe I was flirting a bit. But it was his fault for showing up looking all gorgeous when I was at my weakest, having had very little sleep or food over the last few insanely busy days.
He gave me a slow, seductive smile. “She was looking for something I’d retrieved that she wanted.”
“I still wouldn’t have looked away,” I said. “Even if it was a $200 million diamond.”
Jack laughed, and for a moment it was like old times. “I escaped, grabbed her, and tossed her over the balcony. She almost drowned.”
“An opportunity missed,” I mused.
“Unfortunately, someone saw me, and I was arrested and put in prison.”
“But you got out.”
“Clearly.”
“So, she was lying about that,” I said. “Was she lying about you and her?”
“There is no me and her except for an ill-considered few months in the very, very distant past. There is only me and you.” He pulled me into a straddle across his lap and put his arms around me. I could feel my tension ease. It felt right in Jack’s arms. Like coming home.
“That feels nice,” I whispered. “It’s been a rough week so far. I haven’t had a chance to catch my breath. We went from wondering how to get into the Hearst mansion to a shanked-nephew celebration of life falling in our laps twelve hours later, and I had to hit the ground running. I still can’t believe it.”
“It was an incredible coincidence.” Jack nuzzled my neck. “Almost too incredible.”
“I thought so, too, but how could Simone arrange for someone to be shanked in a prison in New York? She has no understanding of the real world of normal people. I don’t think she understands that our lives are truly at risk. But something just feels off.”
Jack pulled away, twisting his lips to the side, considering. I liked that little quirk of his lips when he was thinking hard. It let me know that he was serious about the conversation. “I know someone who used to be at Sing Sing,” he said finally. “We could ask him about Peter’s nephew’s murder. He might still have contacts there who could tell us what happened. That kind of thing occurs all the time in prison, so it might just be a fortuitous turn of events, but in any event, it would put your mind at ease.”
“You said ‘we’…” I hesitated, not overly keen to meet Jack’s criminal contact. “Is he…safe?”
“He was a guard,” Jack said, laughing. “Not a prisoner. He’s working at Cook County Jail now, but he should be getting off his shift in about an hour. I can offer to buy him a few drinks in exchange for some information.”
“I don’t know…maybe I’m just overthinking things. It’s late. We have the heist slash celebration of life tomorrow. I need to be at my best.”
“I brought my motorcycle and an extra helmet…”
A smile tugged at the corners of my lips. I loved riding on Jack’s motorcycle. I loved the freedom, the speed, the wind in my face…“First we have pizza and donuts,” I said. “Then we go and meet your friend.”
An hour later we pulled up in front of the Iron Cell, a bar just off East Pershing Road in Bronzeville. Pressed tight against Jack’s back, with my arms around his waist and nothing to think about but the world rushing by, I could have stayed on his bike forever.
The scents of old beer and fried food wafted through the door as we walked past the flickering neon sign and down the stairs. Inside, the bar was a symphony of sounds: the clink of glasses, the low hum of conversation, the occasional burst of laughter, and the catchy rhythm of “Sweet Home Alabama” playing over the tinny speakers.
We found Jack’s contact, George Mendez, hunched over a half-empty pint in a dark corner near the dartboard. He was a mountain of a man, his broad shoulders a testament to years spent maintaining order in the jail.
Jack introduced me as a friend, and we chatted about George’s work both as a corrections officer and as a former soldier until our drinks arrived. The conversation shifted to stories about the past punctuated by coded phrases and veiled references to their shared history. I sipped my drink, listening quietly as I tried to piece together their relationship. George was at least twenty years older than Jack, but they’d clearly worked together several times, although what a professional thief and a prison guard could have in common, I didn’t know.
“Jack’s had a lot of lady friends.” George’s eyes twinkled with mischief as he turned his attention back to me. “Never met one like you.”
“What do you mean ‘like me’?”
Jack’s face remained impassive, but his eyes hardened slightly. “We’re here on business, George.”
George’s smile faded, replaced by a stern, no-nonsense expression. “Cut the chatter, is that it? Well, let’s get down to it, then.”
Jack pushed an envelope across the table. “What did you find out?”
“I’ve still got a few contacts back in Sing Sing.” George finished the last sip of his beer. “They said your boy was targeted. It was a mob hit.”
“Mob?” I leaned forward. “Which mob? The New York five families or the Chicago Outfit?”
“New York,” he said. “The other crime families—Chicago, Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio—don’t usually operate in their territory.”
I looked over at Jack. “I guess you were right. It was just a coincidence.”
“Unless…” George tapped his empty glass and jerked his head in the direction of the bar.
Puzzled, I frowned. “Unless what?”
“I’ll get us a fresh round of drinks.” Jack grabbed the empty glasses and left the table.
“You drive a hard bargain,” I said to George.
“Corrections doesn’t pay very well.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. “I make most of my money on these side gigs.”
“This is a side gig? Sharing information about what’s going on in prison?”
“You’d better believe it.” George tucked the envelope into his jacket. “Everyone wants to know what’s going on inside. Friends, family, rival gangs, the DA, lawyers, cops…you name it.”
“I never even imagined there was a business in prison information.”
“And I never imagined I’d ever see Jack with a girl like you.” He leaned forward, giving me a whiff of his beer breath. “What are you doing with him, honey? You’re not his type.”
For some reason his assertion rankled. “We’re friends.”
“You’re not his friend,” George said. “You’re something else entirely, and I can’t quite figure you out. You’ve made him go soft, and in the business he’s in, soft isn’t always a good thing.”
“Are you trying to scare me?” I folded my arms. “Because it’s not working.”
“I’m saying that I’ve known Jack a long time and he’s never been with a woman long enough to bring her to meet me. I’m saying you look like a nice girl from a nice suburban family, and you’ve probably got yourself a nice job and maybe a pretty apartment in a safe area of the city. You don’t belong in Jack’s world, and he doesn’t belong in yours. My advice is to get out while you can.”
I glared at him with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. “You think you know everything about me, but I’m not a nice girl. I’ve done bad things. I’ve been arrested, handcuffed, and interrogated in the police station as an accessory to crime. I’ve broken laws. I’ve been threatened, kidnapped, tied up, and I was an active participant in a high-speed car chase. I know who Jack is. I have a good idea about what he does. And I can make my own decision about whether we’re good together or not, which, by the way, we are, subject to smoothing out a few wrinkles.”
George chuckled. “So, you’re saying that what you see isn’t what you get. You’re no lightweight.”
“Damn right.” I would have pounded the table with my fist for effect, but Jack returned at that moment with two pints of beer and a fancy cocktail with an umbrella and two cherries.
“What were you two talking about?”
George raised his glass in a toast. “Just getting to know the Bonnie to your Clyde.”
“You had something else to tell us,” I reminded him. “You said organized crime families wouldn’t carry out a hit in another crime family’s territory unless…”
“Unless someone owed someone a favor, and even then, the hit would have to be carried out by someone local—in this case, someone from the New York mob.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “And no one would ever know who was behind it? I mean, I guess the guards would know who shanked him…”
“Not if they were paid to look the other way. The way the mob operates, you never know who is pulling the strings.”
George and Jack shared a few stories about a job they’d had in Rio while I mulled over the new information. I couldn’t see any connection between Tony Angelini and Peter’s nephew, and by the time George had finished his drink and said his farewells, I’d decided we’d just been lucky.
“What were you and George talking about when I was getting the drinks?” Jack asked as we put on our helmets outside.
“He said I wasn’t your type. You would hurt me. A nice girl like me shouldn’t be with a bad boy like you. And that you hid many secrets.”
“He’s right.”
“I’m not your type?”
“I didn’t think I had a type,” Jack said softly. “Now I know it’s because I’ve been waiting for you.”
My cheeks heated and I looked away. I didn’t know how to react to his sweet but unexpected words. Jack was the type of man who kept his secrets close and his emotions even closer. But then so did I.