Chapter Thirty-One
Jack should have put an end to this a long time ago. He’d known that, hadn’t he?
But he’d been tricked by those fire-bright hazel eyes, just as thoroughly as he’d been tricked by his client. Carson.
Ava swerved the car, nearly running Jack off the road, but he had expected that. He slowed the motorcycle, gun still in his hand—and then fired.
There was an ear-shattering pop and then a hiss as the bullet went through one of her tires, and then she spun uncontrollably.
His stomach sank, despite himself.
If it were anyone else, he would have shot through the window, and he would not have missed. But he couldn’t, not even now. Not even when she’d let him spill his guts about Jay and then turned around and set the cops on him and left him behind.
Her car spun slowly off the road and down into the grassy ditch, coming to rest at the base of the trees.
Jack slowed the motorcycle, too, glancing up to make sure there were no security drones visible overhead. A man approaching Cale Jacobson’s home with a gun drawn was unlikely to be received well.
Ava staggered out of the car, gasping for breath and reaching for her bag—and probably his gun, still stowed inside. “You fucker,” she snarled. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Jack held the gun out, advanced calmly. “We’re going together, Ava,” he said coldly.
She stepped forward, her jaw set. Her hands were the only thing that betrayed her—they were trembling.
“Do it, then,” she said.
When Jack didn’t move his finger to the trigger, she laughed.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why wait?”
He didn’t have an answer for her.
“You sold me out,” Jack said. He hated how vulnerable he still sounded. He wanted to know why, almost as much as he wanted to be above begging for answers.
Ava laughed again, the sound so hard and sharp he barely recognized it. She opened her mouth to respond, but the sound of another vehicle approaching stopped them both.
Jack shoved his gun back into its holster beneath his suit jacket. “Follow my lead,” he hissed.
“Literally never again,” Ava told him. “Go fuck yourself, O’Sullivan.”
A black SUV with tinted windows approached, slowing to a stop. Inside were four armed men—a security team, likely from the gate up ahead, who had heard the pop of Jack’s gun.
A few men stepped out, the driver remaining inside.
The first security guard surveyed them both. “Can we help you folks?”
“Just had a tire blowout,” Ava told them. “I’m so sorry, it’s totally on me. I thought the ‘low pressure’ light was more of a . . . worry-about-in-six-months thing, you know? Not a now problem.”
Over the last few weeks together, Jack had learned to read her tones, her expressions, her moods, fairly well—but there was nothing he could divine from her now. Just still waters, running deeper than he’d ever realized.
Just like that day in the fucking café.
She was good at this. Better than he was.
“We’re just—” Jack began.
“What are you doing all the way out here? The road ends just up ahead,” the security guard told him. The men with him were standing with hands resting on their guns, the warning clear.
Jack opened his mouth to come up with a lie, but once again Ava Cavalcante was the faster liar.
“We’re on the guest list,” she said. “For Mr. Jacobson’s party?”
Well, fuck.
Jack was going to have to shoot his way out for sure now. Fucking Ava.
The security guard looked as if he were more likely to believe Ava if she said the sky was green, but he tilted his head, considering her before asking:
“Name?”
“Ms. Jacobson invited us,” Ava continued. Her tone was bright, but with a hard note running beneath. “Clara? This is AJ Reed, my husband. He saved Cale Jacobson’s life a few weeks back.”
That day stood out so clearly.
Rain on the café windows. Red dress, scraped knuckles, sadness in her eyes. There one minute, gone the next.
He’d fallen for it all.
The security guard stepped back, spoke into the piece he wore, words unintelligible. When he turned back to them, there was surprise on his face. “Welcome, Mr. Reed,” he said. “And your name, Ms.—”
“O’Sullivan,” Ava said smoothly. “I kept my name when we got married. I’m a modern woman.”
Nobody ever knew what to make of Ava, least of all this security guard, but he somehow—miraculously—stepped back. For a moment Jack had worried the guard would recognize her—but the wig, the makeup, the dress and blazer, all of it was impeccably done.
“We’ll have a tow get your car,” the security guard told her. “Do you want to ride in the back with us, Mrs. O’Sullivan?”
Hearing his name attached to her this way was making Jack lose his shit, just a little. Anger and longing wrapped together so tightly he couldn’t untangle any of it.
“I’ll take the motorcycle,” she said airily. “My husband is probably tired of riding anyway.”
“We’ll go together,” Jack said, fixing her with a look.
She masked the shiver at his tone, but he saw it anyway.
“If you kill me while I’m driving,” Jack whispered in her ear as she mounted the motorcycle behind him, “we’ll both die, and you still won’t get to kill Cale.”
He almost called her Boss, the old nickname rising to the surface. He caught it just in time as he handed her the second helmet.
“I’ll kill you after,” Ava said, shoving it onto her head. “Don’t worry, O’Sullivan. You don’t get to get off this easily.”
The mansion rose out of the trees, long windows on each floor, and a pristine garden rising to the left of the building, wrapping around toward the back, where Jack knew there would be a pool, tennis courts, and, beyond that, a driving range.
They were early for the gala by a few hours, but security escorted them to the front entrance.
Jack had to ditch his gun, and Ava had to ditch hers, somehow, before they entered. More security milled around the entrance, and he had no idea what Ava had done to get them on this list—how she had found Clara’s number. How she had scored this invite.
Ava had held on to him rigidly the whole way here, her arms tight around his middle.
It was a far cry from just yesterday, when she had reached for him, when she melted into his touch.
Jack parked the motorcycle, offering his key to the valet who approached them. He reached out instinctively for Ava, and she took his hand as she dismounted.
Their eyes locked, and then she yanked her hand away.
“Would you wait just in here, please?” a security guard asked them.
The entryway was sleekly modern, a line of gold sculptures extending down the hallway.
Jack sat down on a bench, easing his gun out of his jacket before depositing it into a potted plant.
“What did you do?” he hissed at Ava.
“You had Clara Jacobson’s card in your wallet,” she answered.
She’d sat down next to him but was looking straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact.
“And I remembered that you met them, that first day. So I called and said I was your assistant, and could we have an invite to their party, for you and your wife?”
Jack stared at her, dumbfounded. “That was incredibly fucking risky,” he hissed. “What the fuck?”
“Well, it worked,” Ava said. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
Her auburn hair was tucked beneath a black wig. Her makeup was striking. She hadn’t been recognized, not yet.
But Ava was striking, and heads turned wherever she went, so it was only a matter of time, probably moments, before someone recognized her despite the perfunctory disguise.
“We could have just gone together,” Jack said acidly. “We had a plan. I included you at every step, I did everything you wanted, I—”
I told you everything.
And you left me behind.
Ava’s eyes met him. “Everything?” she asked.
The click of heels on marble interrupted them.
Clara was coming down the hall in their direction.
She was wearing a business skirt that went to her knees, and a blazer that had probably been personally tailored to her. She held her phone in one manicured hand and was walking toward them in her high heels with purpose.
“Mr. Reed,” she said as she approached. “I was so delighted to hear from you. This must be—”
Her eyes widened as she reached them.
Ava was on her feet, her smile polite but deadly. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you know who I am. I’m here to see your brother, actually. No, don’t call for them.”
Clara’s eyes had flicked to the security guards, but at Ava’s command, she froze.
Still, there were at least half a dozen guards near the door, and Ava would be dead before she reached Cale. This was a stupid fucking idea.
“I—”
“You’d be dead before you screamed,” Ava said conversationally. She lifted the lapel of the black blazer she wore over her dress, revealing the gun—Jack’s gun—she carried. “And at this point, I don’t care which Jacobson sibling I take. Let’s take a walk together, somewhere quiet. Just you and I.”
Clara’s eyes flicked to Jack, as if expecting him to help, and then understanding settled in her expression. He had been only tangentially connected to Ava that first day when he’d dragged her off Cale. It had been easy to play himself off as an unrelated stranger who had done a good deed.
“Ava,” he said.
“Just you and I,” Ava said. “Or I’ll kill you right here, Clara.”
She would, and Jack hoped for all their sakes that Clara knew it. Because Ava Cavalcante didn’t care whether the only shot she fired was her last. She didn’t care about any of that, just like she’d never cared about Jack.
“Of—of course,” Clara said. She smiled, the expression only a little wobbly, at a few staff members who walked by them, unaware. “This way, then.”
Jack stood, shrugging off his shock.
“Stay,” Ava told him.
“Ava—” Jack tried one last time.
“Why does it matter?” Ava’s gaze settled on him, those hazel eyes he could never look away from. “You already got paid for killing me, didn’t you? What do you care if I finish this first?”
And then Ava was walking away with Clara, who kept nervously looking around her—though she dismissed a security guard who looked at them with a wave of her hand.
Jack was royally fucked, but the realization had finally, finally caught up with him.
Ava hadn’t betrayed him for no reason, after all. And now she was about to take on the Jacobson family. Alone.