Chapter 24
24
T wo hours later, a text from Leo popped up on her phone. He’d booked them another overnight rental outside Pendleton. Having camped enough in her life, one night in a car wouldn’t bother her, but she wouldn’t turn her nose up at a real bed either.
She flashed the text to Jackson. They were driving through a valley, the two-lane highway both gentle and mostly traffic-free, allowing him to glance over and read it.
“Nice guy,” Jackson said, returning his attention to the road.
“I’ll plug the address in,” she said, opening her mapping app. The route popped up, giving them an ETA of an hour and a half. With no need to visit the town of Pendleton that night, they opted to stop and eat on the way. As they climbed back into the car after consuming a tomahawk steak way too big for the two of them, a man in a cowboy hat caught her attention. She ducked behind the wheel but kept her eye on him. His rangy build reminded her of Sam—the man who’d followed her from Seattle—but she couldn’t see his face.
Then, a little girl burst out of an ice cream shop and leaped into his arms. The man scooped her up and spun her around, a big smile spread across his face. Definitely not Sam—twenty years younger and a damn sight happier-looking.
“What do you think they’re doing now?” Jackson asked as she started the car.
“Sam and Nest?” she asked, having adopted the moniker he’d given the woman. He nodded. She shook her head and shrugged. “Assuming they were the ones who murdered my father, I have a hard time believing they’re going to give up, though. Not after following me from Seattle and going to the trouble of finding the property in Eureka.”
“They haven’t followed us since, but is there any way they can find us? What about your grandfather’s property? Is it in his name?”
She shook her head. “No, it was never in his name. He has a series of shell companies set up. Eventually, it leads to the company that holds his unentailed properties, but it’s a long trail. It would take someone like Leo more than a couple of days to find. Anyone else would need weeks, maybe more.”
“Unentailed property?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, so very British. Those with titles often have lands that come with the title. It’s a lot of legal crap, but essentially, the land and properties that come with the title have to stay with the title and can’t be sold off—not without a lot of paperwork. Those are the entailed properties. Anything acquired outside of that—any personal wealth or items brought into the family by marriage—are generally unentailed and can be treated like any other private property.”
“The British are weird,” Jackson said, drawing a laugh from her.
“To be fair, most of the aristocracy around the world is weird.”
He inclined his head in agreement. “Given that it’s only been a few days, you don’t think they’ve had enough time to find the estate?”
“I want to say no, but this whole situation is…surprising. Maybe they already did the research before they killed my dad. Maybe they planned to search both locations—Eureka and Arch Cape—after killing him if they didn’t find what they were looking for.”
“But held off when they realized you might be able to lead them to it?”
She nodded slowly. “It’s a bit of a stretch since they can’t know for certain that my dad would utilize the Arch Cape estate. But they looked for us in Eureka, so maybe it’s not too big of a leap to think we’d head to my grandfather’s place at some point.”
Jackson drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, his eyes on the road as he considered her words. As she frequently found herself doing, her gaze traced the lines of his profile, occasionally lit by an oncoming car. In his T-shirt and jeans, he looked so relaxed, so easygoing. In many ways, he was, although he could switch modes in the blink of an eye—she’d seen it the night of Leo’s shooting. Still, thinking of the quiet, steady man beside her as a Special Forces soldier didn’t come easily.
“How did you get your nickname? Viper?” she asked, suddenly curious. The muscles of his chest bunched, and his fingers tightened around the wheel.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she offered. Although, everyone in the club called him Viper. If it bothered him, she knew they wouldn’t.
After a beat, he shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I’ve had the name for so long that I sort of forget about the origin—like it’s just my name now and not a representation of who I was or what I did. Does that make sense?”
She thought about it, then nodded. “I worked with a guy who everyone called ‘Papa.’ It was super weird to call him that at first—he wasn’t anyone’s dad, let alone mine. But after a while, it grew familiar enough that calling him ‘Papa’ felt the same as calling him, I don’t know, ‘Steve’.”
Jackson nodded. “It’s only a name now, but it does have an origin. I—” He hesitated. “I was the one they sent in when they needed a target handled quickly and quietly.”
He killed like a viper went unsaid. Yeah, she could see how that was a handy skill to have in Spec Ops and why he wouldn’t necessarily want to be reminded of it. He had nothing to be ashamed of, but he lived a different life now. That chapter was over.
She reached over and peeled one hand from the steering wheel. Wrapping her fingers around his, she rested them on the console between them.
“If Sam and Nest did find your grandfather’s property, they’ll likely be watching for us there, not the post office,” he said.
“Actually, the closest post office is in Cannon Beach, so we don’t need to go to the property at all,” she said, looking at the mapping app on her phone. They always stayed on the estate when she’d visited her grandfather, and she hadn’t known until just then that the small enclave didn’t have a post office.
“Even better,” Jackson said. “Although, if we continue down Highway 101 to Coos Bay, we will pass through the town.”
She typed “Coos Bay” into the app. “It’s a little longer, but there are two routes between Cannon Beach and Roxanne’s other than the one that passes through Arch Cape. More, if we want to take back roads.”
He nodded. “Let’s play it by ear. In the meantime, how about some music?”
She thought about putting on an acoustic mellow playlist as they eased into the night, but in the end, decided they could use a little bubblegum nineties pop in their lives. By the time they pulled into their rental—a simple cabin on a larger ranch—they were both belting out Christina Aguilera and dancing in their seats.
They tumbled into the one-room cabin and quickly fell into bed, the mood in the car carrying over. Later, when she lay curled with her back to Jackson’s side, she realized she’d not laughed or smiled so much in bed with anyone ever. She hadn’t laughed or smiled so much lately, period. She’d never been the carefree, dance-in-the-rain kind of person. Not even when she sometimes secretly wanted to be. And Jackson’s life hadn’t lent itself to that either. But between them, it felt right and, despite the circumstances, easier.
As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered if that’s what life would be like with Jackson—responsible and steady, but with spontaneous dance parties thrown in. Her lips curved in the memory of a smile. She hoped so.
Ten minutes after eight the next morning, they were back on the road, heading west, with one more death certificate: Harold Cox, aged fifty-four. He died of an embolism in Los Angeles two years prior. Lina took a picture of the certificate and sent it to Leo.
They spent the next hour and a half chatting about life, places they wanted to visit, whether they preferred summer over winter, hiking over skiing—all the small things that on their own are meaningless but the sum of which make a person. She learned about everyone in the club. Fifteen Falcons in total, all of them former military, and all of them, for their own reasons, involved and invested in the work they did to help those in abusive relationships. She’d met several, both over the phone and in person at Rita’s, but she looked forward to meeting them all when they returned to California to retrieve the final item from Murphys.
In an abstract way, the thought of meeting essentially all of Jackson’s family should make her nervous. But as she examined her feelings, poking gently at them, testing them, nervousness wasn’t anywhere in the picture.
Conversation petered out as they approached the coast, each focused on staying vigilant. Four cars trailed behind, but as the last several miles was a two-lane highway—and the main road between Portland and the coast—that wasn’t unexpected.
Reaching the intersection with Highway 101, they turned left toward Cannon Beach. Two of the cars behind them turned right and headed north toward Astoria while the other two stayed behind them. One was a minivan with two women inside and visibly filled with boxes. The other—a newer Lexus behind the minivan—appeared to be driven by an older gentleman.
They picked up three more cars on the short stretch to the Cannon Beach post office, but again, it was to be expected along the scenic and popular coastal road.
“Anything sticking out?” she asked, her eyes on her side mirror.
“A Mercedes convertible, a small SUV, and a Ford truck have joined us. A different truck than the one from Eureka,” Jackson answered.
The tension in her chest eased. She hadn’t truly anticipated any problems—not since they realized they wouldn’t need to go to her grandfather’s property. But suspicion lived in her DNA.
They reached the outside of town, and they’d need to make a decision soon. “Extra precautions?” she suggested.
Jackson nodded and made a right turn onto a side street four streets before the turn to the post office. He wound his way through town, and as they crept closer to their destination, both kept their eyes on the road behind them. In the middle of the week, outside peak season, only a few people wandered the streets or browsed the shops, making it easier to confirm no one followed them. On the other hand, if Sam or Nest knew what car to look for—as unlikely as that was—they’d be easy to find in the small town.
They couldn’t control that, though, so with a nod, she gave Jackson the go-ahead to make the stop.
“You go in,” he said after pulling into a spot. “I’ll keep watch out here.”
It took only five minutes to find the right box and, as anticipated, a single envelope waited for her. Glancing around to ensure no one paid her any attention, she slid the predicted certificate out, took a picture without reading it, and sent it to Leo.
When she exited the building, she found Jackson leaning against the back of the car, arms and ankles crossed, sunglasses covering his eyes, and a deceptively casual bent to his posture.
“Everything all right?” she asked, joining him.
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“You’re not convinced.”
He hesitated. “My gut is telling me to stay vigilant, but that could be because of you.”
She arched an eyebrow.
He shrugged, again an underlying tension in the casual gesture. “You have my protective instincts in high gear. I’m well aware that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, so don’t get defensive, but it is what it is.”
“I imagine those instincts kept you safe more than once,” she replied as she mentally parsed his words.
“They have,” he agreed. “But I can’t tell if I’m being unreasonably hypervigilant because you’re at stake or if there’s a legit risk.”
She didn’t demean his feelings by dismissing them or arguing with him. Instead, she leaned against the car beside him, letting her head fall back and the sun warm her face. She understood his concern; situations involving intense emotions often clouded reason. Objectively, she knew that. What she’d never considered, though, was that she would be the cause of those emotions—that someone, other than her mother, would care enough about her that those feelings could override reason.
His simple statement—made with no doubt, embarrassment, or fanfare—told her exactly what she meant to him. She wouldn’t attribute the L-word to what coursed between them, but only because she, unlike him, was a bit of a coward.
“How about lunch before we head south?” she asked.
His head turned toward her, his dark eyes hidden behind his glasses. A beat passed. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “There’s a brewpub around the corner; will that work?”
She nodded, sliding her hand under his elbow, forcing him to uncross his arms. Twining her fingers with his, she gave his hand a gentle squeeze.
“Lead the way,” she said. “I could do with a good IPA.”