Chapter 9
Razorback swore colorfully as the Jeep carrying Jackie and Selena drove out of sight. “How the hell are we supposed to protect her when she insists on going off alone?”
“Technically, she’s with her neighbor,” said Sloan.
“You know what I mean, dickhead.”
“She’s been pissed at you since yesterday on the beach. What the hell did you say to her?”
“Nothing. We were just talking.”
Sloan walked back toward the house, calling over his shoulder, “You said something.”
At least Jackie’s impromptu outing gave them the time they needed to search the Pedazo de Cielo, trying to find out why she was attacked and who was after her.
They split up, Razorback upstairs and Sloan down, combing through closets, drawers, and boxes as morning turned to afternoon, finally meeting to search Jackie’s bedroom together.
It was small, with just enough room for a queen-sized bed beside a flowered sofa and one long, low dresser.
A small television hung on the wall, and Razorback imagined this little room was her sanctuary away from her guests and her little girl.
He picked up a silver box, found it was full of earrings, and put it back. He opened each drawer, with plain clothes neatly organized into tidy piles, and wondered if every part of her life was so perfectly organized.
Sloan opened the top drawer of the dresser. “Whoa, hold your horses. I found the sexy underwear box.” He held up a strappy lace thong. “Oh, will you look at that tiny triangle of fabric.”
“Put that down.”
Sloan picked up an even lacier bra, holding it to his chest and shaking his shoulders. “Look, it’s the spy who loved me.”
“Asshole. Put that shit away.” He tried not to imagine Jackie wearing that thing, his mind already fitting it to her body.
Sloan pulled out a corset and held it to his torso. “Now, this is Senator Mason all day.”
Razorback laughed in spite of himself, Senator Mason having just dealt with a very public cross-dressing scandal. “Who wore it better?”
“Oh, I did,” said Sloan. “The Democratic convention is going to be a clusterfuck now that Waller and Mason are both out of the running.”
Razorback grunted. “Don’t talk to me about politics.”
“Why the hell not? I’m not asking your opinion or starting a debate. I’m asking if you saw what happened—”
“Shut the fuck up, Dvorak.”
“It’s entertaining, watching a whole bunch of nobodies try to wrestle their way to the top.”
Razorback turned to him. “Do you know what shut up means?”
“I’m choosing to ignore your moody bitch ass and make reasonably social conversation.”
“Politics are not social. They’re antisocial. The only way political conversations go well is if you think the exact same shit I think, and frankly the chance of that happening is pretty slim.”
Sloan raised a fist over his head. “Better pensions for the military.”
Razorback couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “Hell yeah.”
“See? We’re the same.” Sloan winked and cut into another box.
Razorback pulled a flat plastic container out from under the bed. “Romance novels. There must be a hundred of them. Why do women read this shit?”
“I don’t know. Give me a good serial killer any day of the week.”
“Seriously.” He slid the box back under the bed and lifted the mattress. Nothing.
“Old-school accounting books,” said Sloan. He pulled one out and flipped through it. “For the resort.”
Razorback cocked his head, thinking back to the website he’d seen for this place when they booked this trip. It was outdated and poorly done, technologically bereft, without online booking or even a simple email contact given. Just a phone number.
Why would someone shun modern technology that could make life so much easier?
“You checked out the downstairs,” said Razorback. “Did you see an office of some sort?”
“A room with a desk and a bunch of boxes. That’s it.”
“What about a computer or fax machine?”
“No.”
“Printer?”
“No. Strange, now that you mention it.”
“She sent us an email. How did she do that?”
“Probably a cell phone. She could be a technophobe, you know. Or she could be hiding something she doesn’t trust to a computer system or the cloud.” Sloan opened a cigar box. “Whoa, hello there, Mr. Smith & Wesson.” The old revolver was tarnished and worn.
“What, Wesson doesn’t get his own mister?”
“I find a fucking gun and you correct my grammar?”
“Technically, it’s a personal title.”
“Suck my dick.”
Razorback lifted the weapon. “Not loaded.” He smelled it. “Hasn’t been fired recently. I wonder if Jackie would still have those bruises if it had.”
“Ah, you’re a Republican. You’re right. We shouldn’t talk politics.”
Truth be told, he was an independent—choosing to vote for whomever he felt was the best candidate for each position—but he kept his mouth shut just so Sloan would leave him be.
He replaced the gun. “So, we’ve got nothing.
We went through the whole upstairs and there’s nothing to give us a clue about the real reason Jackie Desjardins was attacked. ”
“All we learned is she’s a gun-toting technophobe with pretty underpants.”
Razorback’s mind flashed to Jackie in the tiny thong and nothing else.
“You’re smiling,” said Sloan, pointing at him. “You like her.”
“Shut up.” He gestured to the hallway. “Did you go through that closet over there?”
“Not yet.”
Razorback opened it. It was narrow, with shelves from floor to ceiling stuffed full of random cleaning supplies.
A hand vacuum cleaner. A mop bucket. A clear plastic bag full of spray sunscreen, another of tiny individually wrapped soaps.
He pulled a box off a high shelf. It was addressed to Jackie, its postmark faded and illegible.
He set it on the ground and opened it, flipping through old photo albums and binders.
One was full of genealogy information, photocopies of handwritten census sheets, birth certificates, and black-and-white photographs.
A color wedding picture of Jackie in a strapless white gown fell from the pages, her smile radiant with the promise of good things to come.
His own marriage had been the same. Two kids barely old enough to rent an apartment, promising to love each other until the day they died.
Such bullshit.
He went back to the album. It was full of pictures of people he didn’t recognize.
After turning the final page, he opened a pocket built into the back cover and pulled out several more pictures.
There was the groom, handsome enough, with straight dark hair and light skin, one arm around Jackie’s back.
Razorback frowned, mentally comparing Jackie’s husband to the much darker Selena.
Perhaps the girl was adopted, but she resembled Jackie too much for that to be very likely.
Could the girl have been the product of an affair or a relationship after her marriage collapsed? Perhaps the reason it had fallen apart.
Sloan joined him in the hallway. “What’d you find?”
Razorback tucked a handful of three-by-five images back into the pocket. “Wedding pictures.”
The other man took the album from his hands and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
“What are you doing?” demanded Razorback.
“Dropping the kids at the pool. Going to see a man about a horse. Building a log cabin. Want me to go on?”
Razorback shook his head. “I don’t think you can.”
“Taking the Browns to the Super Bowl. Letting the dogs out. Releasing the Kraken. Holy shit!”
“You all right in there?”
“Do you know who this is? Did you look at these pictures?”
“I’m guessing he’s her husband.”
“Jesus Christ, you live under a rock. Did you look at the— Hang on.” The toilet flushed and a moment later, Sloan opened the door.
Razorback winced. “Wash your damn hands.”
Sloan sighed but went back to do it, then opened the album. “There. That guy. That’s Douglas McGrath, the senator.”
Razorback shrugged. He didn’t give a shit about politics or the smarmy bastards jockeying for control of the government. “Okay.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“The news is bullshit. I watch football. Man TV.”
“Which means Jackie is Jacqueline McGrath.”
Razorback raised his eyebrows. “Is that supposed to sound familiar?”
Sloan closed his eyes and shook his head. “Unbelievable. Don’t you remember the senator’s wife who drove her Mercedes off a cliff into the ocean a few years back? They never found the body? It was all over the tabloids for weeks.”
That one rang a bell, though Razorback hadn’t paid much attention to the story. He was too busy fighting insurgents and saving lives. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Jackie Desjardins is the wife of this Senator McGrath guy, and everyone thinks she’s dead.”
“Holy shit.”
Sloan nodded. “But wait, it gets better.” He held up the photo of the bride and groom, his finger covering Jackie.
“Now that Waller’s had a stroke and the world knows Mason likes to wear girls’ underpants, this guy’s the prime candidate to be the Democrat nominee for the president of the United States.
Down to him and one other dude. We won’t even know who they choose until the convention, because they’re both virtually unknown and so close in the polls. ”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. And his wife is hanging out in Mexico, playing dead. What the fuck?”
“I don’t know, but it was her death—or her presumed death, I should say—that got McGrath reelected as governor of California in a landslide. Pity vote. The guy should’ve been out on his ass.”
He plucked the picture out of Sloan’s hand. “I never heard of him.”
“You and two hundred million other people.”
Razorback frowned. “When’s the national convention?”
Sloan counted on his fingers. “Six days.”
“She’s been MIA for how long?”
Sloan shrugged. “Gotta be six, seven years, at least.”
“And how long has Doug McGrath been a contender for the presidential nomination?”
“Like, a week.”
“And now she has a target on her back. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Maybe he tried to kill her. Dateline did a thing on the accident. There were two sets of tire tracks on the shoulder of the road. Paint transfer on her car. Dents, though the experts didn’t agree on whether they were from the impact with the water or a collision with a car.”
“No. When someone tries to kill you, you go to the police, not Mexico.” Razorback shook his head. “We’re missing too many pieces, but her attack has to be related to her husband somehow.”
“Maybe she knows something that could ruin his chances.”
“Maybe. Get Mac on the line. He needs to know about this, pronto.”
Sloan took off down the hall while Razorback stared at the picture of the newlyweds in his hand, gently touching Jackie’s cheek.
“Did he hurt you?” He clenched his jaw, his biceps going rigid with the need to defend.
He barely even knew this woman, but he already liked her more than he should.
She was good, and he didn’t often think anyone was good.
If she’d decided to hide herself in Mexico for years on end, she must have had a damn good reason. But what could possibly be that bad? His gut said the answer had something to do with Selena. She was the missing piece, the open-ended question.
He needed to find out who had fathered the girl. Maybe it would be a dead end, or maybe it was the key. He only hoped he could persuade Jackie to tell him.