6
“What’s the name again?” The hotel receptionist glanced up inquiringly over her computer screen after a long series of clickety-clacking on a keyboard which looked to Jack like it had been constructed in 1979.
Hell, the entire hotel looked like a throwback to the 1970s, Jack thought as he drummed his fingertips on the Formica reception counter-top and sighed loudly. He was very close to pointing out to the receptionist that Jill had already said her name and you shouldn’t be a fucking hotel receptionist if you can’t remember a guest’s name for more than three damn seconds.
“Hennessy,” came Jill’s sweetly patient response that seemed perfectly timed to pre-empt Jack’s impatient retort. “Jill Hennessy.”
“Hennessy . . . Hennessy . . . ah, here we go.” The receptionist tapped and clicked, then glanced up with a smile. “We’ve got you up on the third floor. Queen-sized bed.”
Jill leaned on the reception counter and shook her head firmly. “Two double-beds, actually. I reserved a room with two double-beds.”
The receptionist blinked twice, shot a curious glance at Jack, then blinked again and flashed an apologetic smile in Jill’s direction. “Oh, well, you see, the hotel is booked solid for the Carmine wedding. Your reservation said one person, and since there were some guests who needed rooms with the extra beds and you hadn’t checked in yet, we swapped you out so that all our guests can be comfortable.”
“Well, swap me back in, please,” said Jill curtly, her sweet patience stretched to the extreme. “Two double-beds is what I reserved, and that’s what I expect, thank you.”
Jill’s cheeks reddened as Jack leaned coolly on the high reception counter. His earlier impatience had evaporated, and he grinned in Jill’s general direction, wondered if he should tell her that it wasn’t the hotel’s fault, that this was how Darkwater missions played out, that fate was going to seal the deal without Jack even needing to use his considerable skills to get Jill into bed.
Fate was going to do it for him.
“Well, there is one other guest who made the same request as you,” said the receptionist slowly. “Two double-beds, even though the reservation is for one person. She checked in earlier this evening, and I think she’s already headed out to the Carmine Estate for tonight’s event. But perhaps tomorrow morning I can inquire if she’d be willing to swap rooms with you guys?” The receptionist gasped suddenly, looking past them towards the front door. “Oh, wait, here she is right now! Perfect! We can ask her if she’s all right with switching rooms.”
Jack and Jill both turned towards the swishing glass doors of the hotel’s main entrance. A tall slender woman in a black skirt-suit, black stockings, and black leather knee-high boots strode into the hotel lobby. She glanced over in their direction as she walked towards the elevators, her gaunt face expressionless, pale eyes unreadable. The receptionist was about to call out, but then the black-suited woman stopped abruptly, frowning as she dug into her jacket-pocket and slid out a small black phone. The woman held it to her ear, speaking in hushed monosyllables that even a professional Delta-trained eavesdropper like Jack couldn’t make out.
“You can send up a folding-bed, right?” Jack said instinctively as he watched the woman speak softly into that phone which looked suspiciously like a burner. He kept his voice low and calm, flicking a meaningful gaze at Jill before smiling warmly at the receptionist. “That should be fine. We won’t be spending much time in the room anyway. No need to ask about swapping rooms. We’re good.”
“What? No, she’s right here, Jack. Why don’t we just—” Jill started to say before Jack shut her up by grabbing her hand beneath the reception counter and squeezing hard enough to made her flinch and glare up at him. “Jack, what are you—”
Jill was cut off for a second time, this time by the black-suited woman, who’d pocketed her phone and was now standing at the far end of the reception counter.
“There should be a package for me,” said the woman sharply to the receptionist. “Kay Steffen.” She cast a businesslike glance at Jill. “Excuse me for cutting in line. I’m in a hurry.”
Jill nodded. The receptionist hurried to the back room, where Jack could see a shelf with a few packages neatly lined up. He noted that the receptionist grabbed a brown sealed envelope which had a sticky-note on it that said STEFFEN-421.
Filing away that room number for no particular reason other than habit and perhaps instinct, Jack studied the gaunt-faced woman who’d addressed Jill politely enough but was ignoring Jack in a way that unsettled him. Jack was accustomed to women pretending to ignore him because they were self-conscious, either intimidated or attracted, often a mix of both. But this woman—Kay Steffen—seemed genuinely indifferent to Jack’s presence, like perhaps she’d blocked men out of her life so completely that they barely registered as living creatures worthy of attention.
Kay Steffen took the envelope and tucked it under her arm. She thanked the receptionist, nodded curtly at Jill, then turned and walked briskly towards the elevators. A moment later she was gone.
Jack said nothing as the receptionist finished checking Jill into the room and slid over two hotel room keycards. Jill made no further comment about the room-swapping deal which Jack had nixed, but her body-language most certainly had a lot to say. She thanked the receptionist, grabbed her plastic-covered blue dress from where she’d hung it on the raised handle of her black roller bag, then strode towards the elevators without so much as a glance in Jack’s direction.
Jack shrugged at the receptionist, let out an exaggerated sigh, snatched up the shopping bag of clothes he’d picked up from a Burlington Coat Factory on the way, then bounded towards the elevator and grabbed the doors before they closed on him.
“Are we having our first fight?” he said with a grin as he got into the elevator with Jill and the doors slid shut and the elevator jolted to a start. “Shit, does that mean I really have to sleep on that folding bed? Those things aren’t built in my size.”
“Well, your ego is most certainly built in your size,” Jill muttered while staring at the dull brushed-steel elevator doors. “Extra-large.”
Jack chuckled, took a breath, then sighed. “All right, look, I made an executive decision to nix the room-swap. Don’t want to attract too much attention, stand out in any way. And we’d definitely stand out by getting into a discussion about swapping rooms because we don’t want to share a bed. We’re supposed to be a couple, Jill. Besides, that woman wouldn’t have agreed to switching rooms anyway.”
“How do you know she wouldn’t have agreed?” Jill turned to him, her eyes open wide, mouth open wider. “Oh, right, I forgot. You’re an expert in the female psyche. My bad.”
Jack groaned as the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors slid open. He placed his palm on the sensor to hold the doors while Jill rolled her suitcase out into the carpeted corridor. He strolled down the empty hallway behind Jill, letting his gaze fall on her behind, doing it so unconsciously that he didn’t realize he’d been staring at her gorgeously round ass moving beneath her long wool sweater until his gloriously big cock moved beneath the crotch of his suddenly-tight button-fly jeans.
Jack lengthened his stride as Jill got to their room. She slid the keycard into the door, then pushed the door open and stormed inside, letting the door swing shut on Jack like she was trying to make a point. He slammed his palm flat against the door before it closed, pushing it open with more force than he’d intended.
The door flew open all the way, jamming the rubber stopper against the inside wall with a thud that reminded Jack of those two silenced bullets hitting that poor gas station attendant thud-thud.
“Sorry,” Jack said, closing the door softly when he saw Jill jump from the sound of the impact.
Jill glanced at the closed door, which was steel-reinforced fire-proof metal that would probably stop a bullet—perfect for a mafia-frequented hotel. Then she glanced at the bed, turning her face away from Jack, perhaps to hide the flash of panic that streaked across her cheeks.
“Hey, listen,” Jack said gently when he remembered that this woman was at the tail end of what had to have been the wildest day of her entire life. Sometimes it was easy to forget that most civilians would go their whole lives without seeing a dead body that had just been shot and was still bleeding. And then Jack had scared her half to death with the attempted carjacking. Oh, right, and on top of all that he’d thrown in that macho swagger, made all those jokes about sharing a bed when it was absolutely fucking inappropriate to push it that far with a woman who must still be reeling in shock.
Shock not just from the day’s events.
But from the day’s decisions.
One of which Jill had to be rethinking right now.
And one which maybe Jack should also be rethinking, shouldn’t he?
Now suddenly Jack felt himself reeling in shock. Not from the action or its aftermath, but from the sickening realization that he’d fallen into a trap some of the recently-hitched Darkwater guys—Hogan and Fox in particular—had warned him about.
“This thing with the names is a mindfuck,” Hogan had warned Jack the night of Ice and Indy’s wedding reception at the Wagner house in Upstate New York, after most of the guests were gone and it was just the Darkwater crew. The other guys were inside the house messing with Ice, who was trying to kick them out so he could take his new bride to their wedding suite on the third floor. Jack had found himself out on the back porch, cornered by Hogan and Fox, who’d been part of the not-so-joking teasing that had gone down earlier that night about Jack being next. “The name thing is hard to comprehend even for the Darkwater guys like us who’ve been hitched,” Hogan had said. “At times it feels meaningful and symbolic. But other times you simply can’t take it seriously, can’t accept that it’s anything more than coincidence with a bit of nudging from Benson’s psychological compulsion to recruit guys in alphabetical order.”
“But whatever you believe—and trust me, brother, you will go back and forth between belief and disbelief—it’s a hell of a mindfuck,” Fox had added with enough seriousness that Jack knew this wasn’t just more ribbing. “Because now you’ve got the letter J stuck in your mind, and so your subconscious will begin looking for women with J names. It’s like that psychological experiment where they tell people to count the red cars on the highway, and suddenly it seems like there are way more red cars than you’ve ever noticed—that every second car is now red!”
“And then suddenly you’re trapped in that mental limbo.” Hogan had rubbed his clean-shaved jaw, taken a long swig from his beer bottle, swallowing and then shaking his head. “Where you wonder if you’re playing a mind-trick on yourself or if there really is something to Benson’s fate-and-destiny stuff.”
“Well, I’m not worried,” Jack had replied with far more cool confidence than he felt right now looking at that queen-sized bed which felt surreally symbolic, mesmerizingly meaningful. “I’ve already worked my way through the entire alphabet forwards and backwards in my hound-dog life. Which means Benson’s streak is already broken. Otherwise I’d be married to a Jessica or Jennifer or Josie or Jane by now. And I’ve never even come close, boys. No way this big swinging dick is ever going to be satisfied with one pussy forever. I’m just not wired that way.”
Though maybe I’m being rewired, Jack thought as he stared dumbly at the big empty bed covered in a blue-green flowery bedspread that made his head spin. Rewired just from being around this woman, just from being close to her. If it’s a trick, it’s not just a mind trick.
Because I feel it in my body in a way I never have with a woman.
Hell, it’s not just a body trick either, Jack thought. It’s an everything trick, like everything changed the moment I took that exit off the highway and chose to leave my bike there to take a piss.
Is this how fate stacks the deck?
Is this how destiny deals the cards?
But how the hell do I play this hand?
Do I fold my cards or go all-in?
Jack rubbed his eyes, tried to shake off the strangely overwhelming sense of being dragged into something, pulled by something irresistible and immense, something vast and powerful. A tidal wave, a spinning whirlpool, a . . . a vortex? Hell, what the hell did that even mean? Had being around Benson and the Darkwater guys already brainwashed him?
Maybe, Jack thought. And if so, what’s the right move to get un-brainwashed? Do I walk away right now? Hell, maybe I do walk away.
Except Jack couldn’t walk away. Not just because of the Darkwater mission and Diego Vargas and that mystery contact. But also because Jill had her own mission, and she was going to need his protection whether she understood it or not, wanted it or not. Which meant that it no longer mattered if Jack was thinking himself into a trap because of Jill’s name.
He was already trapped.
“This room is a death-trap,” Jack muttered as he swept his Delta-trained gaze around the hotel room, noting the bars on the outside of the solitary window which overlooked the hotel’s parking lot. He glanced down at the lot, was about to draw the curtains closed, then stopped when he saw Kay Steffen getting into a black BMW SUV. She pulled the door closed, then started the car and drove off in the direction of the Carmine Estate.
“What does that mean?” Jill was staring ashen-faced at Jack when he closed the curtains and turned back to her. “A death trap?”
Jack smiled. “Sorry, just habit to scope out a room for all available exits. There’s only one way in and out of this room. Special Forces guys call that a death-trap.”
“Oh, well, that’s reassuring,” Jill said, glancing at the window, then towards the door leading to the bathroom. “Are we expecting to be trapped in here fighting to the death?”
Jack shrugged, flashed a teasing smile that perhaps had a slight edge. “Depends on whether you pull off your mission. Bobby Carmine might not exactly be thrilled if his wedding gets cancelled after all the guests have arrived.” He rubbed the back of his head as it occurred to him that Jill’s mission could be far more dangerous than Darkwater’s mission to figure out who Diego was talking to at the Carmine Estate. “You do realize that your plan isn’t going to work, right? I mean, yeah, talk to your friend by all means, Jill. But I can’t imagine there’s anything you can say to stop her from going through with a wedding this close to the ceremony.”
Jill shrugged back at him. She placed her suitcase on the bedspread, unzipped it and began to unpack. She said nothing, her lips clamped shut, the lower one jutting out slightly with a stubbornness that Jack hoped wasn’t clouding her judgement. He studied her in silence, then blinked and exhaled sharply.
“Jill?”
“Yes?” She didn’t look up, continued to unpack her things, placing some folded garments carefully in the closet, unfolding some other outfits and hanging them up. It looked like she’d planned an outfit for each event. The blue dress was just the finale to her plan. A plan that perhaps Jill hadn’t been completely forthcoming about. “What?”
Jack rubbed his jaw, glancing at the blue dress in its dry-cleaner plastic. “You didn’t expect to convince Nina before the actual wedding ceremony, did you? You planned to attend all the events. You’ve got something else up your sleeve. Something you haven’t told me yet.”
Jill still wouldn’t look at him. “So you’re not just an expert in the female psyche but also a mind-reader?”
“Doesn’t take a mind-reader to put the pieces together.” Jack folded his arms over his chest, glanced at the blue dress again, then shook his head and sighed. “You were never expecting to convince Nina to break it off before the wedding. You were going to play along at the cocktail party tonight and the brunch tomorrow. You know that no reasonable woman is going to cancel her wedding to a millionaire after all the guests have arrived and the preparations are made. If you tried to argue with Nina on the first night, you’d be kicked out of the mansion immediately and you damn well know it. If she’s already uninvited you and cut off contact, then I bet Bobby Carmine knows that you’re against the wedding. It’s going to be hard enough to talk your way into the cocktail party, let alone the actual wedding. So you’re going to use the first two days to make up with Nina and Bobby so you can be certain of being welcomed at the Sunday ceremony. And that’s when you’re going to strike, isn’t it, Jill?”
Jill’s lower lip was an unmistakably stubborn pout now. She finished unpacking and zipped up her empty bag with a sharpness that told Jack he was on the right track, that there was more to this woman than he’d figured, that he’d underestimated how audacious her plan really was.
And how dangerous.
“This isn’t an intervention,” Jack said, his eyes widening with a mix of admiration and alarm. “It’s an ambush. Your plan was to make sure you were allowed to attend the wedding ceremony, and then you were going to spring the ambush.” He thought a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Shit, are you going to object to the wedding? When the priest asks if anyone objects to this union, you’re going to stand up and say something, aren’t you? The priest will have to stop the proceedings to hear your objection. That’s it, right? You’re going to screw up the ceremony in front of all the guests? What are you going to say? That Bobby cheated on Nina or something? Maybe with . . . with you? Oh, hell, is that it? You’re going to let Nina hate you forever just so you can save her from a marriage that you think is bad for her? Jill, answer me, damn it!”
Jill yanked the empty suitcase off the bedspread, placed it upright beside the closet, then grabbed a red-leather satchel with what Jack figured was her toiletries. She pulled open the bathroom door, walked inside and slammed it shut without confirming or denying any of Jack’s speculations and accusations.
“Holy shit, I’m right!” Jack strode to the bathroom door, leaned against it, shaking his head in disbelief. He rapped his knuckles against the door. “Jill, you lied to me. You said you weren’t planning to do anything dramatic and crazy. Hell, I need to know exactly what you’re planning. You cannot fucking blindside me. This is now bigger than just your friend Nina.”
“No, it isn’t.” The door opened suddenly, Jill’s brown hair loose and wild. “Not for me it isn’t.” She shook her head firmly, gazed defiantly into Jack’s eyes. “Look, I agreed to get you into the wedding events, and I’ll keep my word. You do what you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do. If you have a problem with that, make sure you get your stuff done before the wedding ceremony on Sunday. Actually, it’s probably best if you aren’t there as my date on Sunday—because if you are, you’ll need to go along with the act and get all pissed off when I make the big reveal. Much better if you’re a no-show on Sunday, because then it’ll look like we broke up on Saturday night when you found out I’m a slut who fucked her best friend’s fiancé the night before the wedding.” She blinked twice, raised both eyebrows, nodded firmly. “Perfect. It’s settled.”
“Like hell it is!” Jack rubbed his eyes, shook his head, exhaled hard, and looked up. “Listen, you don’t know what kind of people you’re messing with, Jill. You can’t embarrass a mafia family in public and expect that they’ll just let you walk away.”
“What are they going to do, shoot me in front of three hundred guests?” Jill snorted. “Make me disappear like in some hokey mafia movie from the 1970s?”
Jack rubbed his jaw. “This isn’t an episode from a fucking daytime soap, Jill. No, you’re not going to get gunned down at the wedding ceremony, but they’re not going to just let it slide. Best case they’ll escort you out of the hall and let the wedding proceed. Worst case could be a lot worse.” He sighed. ”You better hope for the best case, which won”t accomplish anything except get you kicked out of the wedding. Because that objection crap is just an outdated formality, isn’t it?”
Jill blinked, doing her best to keep her composure and hide the fear that Jack sensed was bubbling beneath her foolish bravery. “Normally, yes, it is a formality that nobody takes seriously. But I bet these Italian mafia families like to pretend to be devout Catholics. They’re going to have a real priest and all that, follow all the traditions to the letter even though they’re all going to hell.” She took a breath, exhaled hard, wetting her lips and swallowing. “Anyway, all I need is for Nina to believe that Bobby and I slept together. She’ll hate me, but she’ll hate Bobby more. I just have to convince Nina.”
“Then convince her in private before Sunday,” Jack said.
Jill shook her head. “Nina won’t believe me. She knows I’m not the type to sleep around with anyone—certainly not Bobby Carmine the night before she marries him. She won’t believe me if I tell her tonight or tomorrow.”
Jack frowned. “Well, if she won’t believe you on Friday or Saturday, what makes you think she’ll suddenly believe you on Sunday?”
Jill gulped now, blinked twice, unable to look Jack in the eyes. “Because . . . because it’ll be true by Sunday,” she said softly. “I’ll make sure it’s true by Sunday.”
Jack’s heart stopped for a full three beats, then started hammering hard enough that his entire body was pounding like a group of drummers going wild. “Wait, what?” He swallowed thickly as the realization almost made his head explode with a possessive rage that was unjustified but undeniable, unstoppable, uncontrollable. “No. You are not planning to actually do it. It’s one thing to make it up and try to get Nina to believe the lie. Another thing entirely to actually do it. And you are not doing it. Absolutely fucking not. No way in hell, Jill. I won’t allow it.”
“Excuse me?” Jill cocked her head to the left. “Since when do I need your permission to . . . to do anything, really?”
“Since now,” Jack growled, taking a step towards her, then forcing himself to stop, to control this sudden fire that was burning far too hot, the flame of possession raging in a way that totally blindsided him, was an unknown emotion when it came to Jack’s one-and-done routine with the faceless women whose names he couldn’t even remember now, perhaps never even knew, like this one name had erased every other name in his little black book, painting his entire history red with the brush of possession. “Since now, Jill.”
Jill stared like she didn’t understand. Jack wasn’t sure he understood either. But there was no denying what he felt, no escaping what every part of his body screamed in unison, every twitching muscle, every strained sinew, every aching breath, every throbbing heartbeat.
She’s yours, came the message from somewhere inside him, from everywhere inside him. She’s yours.
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Jill stammered, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, then taking a step backwards into the bathroom. “I don’t understand, Jack.”
“Yeah, you do,” Jack whispered, his jaw so tight he could barely speak, his head buzzing so loud he couldn’t even hear his own damn voice. “You do understand, Jill. You understand that you’re mine. You’re mine, Jill. You’re fucking mine!”
The words rumbled out of Jack like the possessive growl of an alpha beast. He took another step forward, his fists clenching by his sides as Jill stared wide-eyed like a mouse frozen by the venomous gaze of a viper about to strike.
Jack swallowed thickly, trying to blink away the raw need that had been brought to a head by the unimaginable prospect of this woman giving herself to another man. He wasn’t sure if he was losing his mind, if this Darkwater bullshit had tweaked something in his brain, if he’d been primed to believe that the woman was the mission just because it seemed to have been the mission for nine other Darkwater men, including Jack’s older brother.
Jack knew he wasn’t thinking clearly, but he took another step towards Jill, shaking his head slowly, his green-eyed gaze locked on her wide-eyed stare, his shadow falling across her as he advanced like he couldn’t hold himself back, couldn’t stop the urge to possess, the obsession to own.
“Jack, what does that mean?” Jill’s voice was low and husky, her cheeks flushed with confused arousal, her eyes wide with fearful excitement. “I don’t understand what that means. What does it . . .”
Jill’s voice trailed off into silence. She backed all the way into the bathroom as Jack advanced on her slow but deliberate, his gaze locked on hers, his senses a swirling mess of madness, the kind of madness he’d never learned to control because he’d never wanted a woman like he wanted Jill, not just physically but completely, like he wanted not just her body but her mind, not just her sex but her soul.
Not just now but forever.
Then suddenly Jack felt his phone buzzing angrily in his jacket pocket. He blinked twice, his gaze still focused on Jill standing inside the bathroom, her body half-shielded by the open door, her wide-eyed stare now settled to a steady gaze of watchful curiosity, like a part of her wanted to kick that door shut but another part of her wanted to leave it half-open, see if he’d step across that threshold, enter her private chamber and stake his claim, back up those possessive words with decisive action.
Now Jack felt the decision loom before him like two paths in the road, the forked tongue of the great serpent licking at him, hissing that he needed to choose his mission, decide whether this was temptation or truth, falsity or fate, deception or destiny.
The phone kept buzzing like an angry bee, and Jack felt himself reach into his jacket pocket and slide out the insistently interrupting instrument. He tore his gaze away from Jill’s eyes that flashed with an alluring mix of insecurity and invitation, swinging between fear and flirtation, oscillating between trust and trepidation, like an unconscious part of her feminine was testing Jack to see if he was a predator or a protector, if she was to be his prey or his princess, if he was the kind of man who destroyed his possessions or kept them safe forever.
Jack already knew the answer to that eternal question which every woman silently asked with every subtle smile, every graceful glance, every hidden heartbeat. But he also knew Jill wasn’t ready for the answer yet, wasn’t prepared for the way fate unfolded its plan, the way destiny dealt the cards. So he blinked himself away from the moment, looked down at his phone, read the series of messages from Darkwater HQ.
And was immediately pulled back into the real world with a suddenness that felt like a punch to the face.
“Our mystery target’s phone popped back online twenty minutes ago,” Keller’s message said. “Paige traced it to the Winchester Hotel. Now she says it’s moving towards the Carmine Estate.”
Jack blinked rapidly, his mind whipping back to Kay Steffen. She’d gotten a call about twenty minutes ago on a small black phone that looked like a burner. And he’d just seen her drive away from the Winchester Hotel parking lot towards the Carmine Estate.
Coincidence?
Was there even such a thing on a Darkwater mission?
Jack acknowledged the message with a thumbs-up, slid the phone back into his pocket, then glanced up towards the bathroom door.
It was closed.