A Kept Man (23 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His face twisted with raw fury, the look so terrifying her heart
stopped at the thought of what he was about to do.

She never had to find out. Caleb took the opening and ran with it. He
leapt forward, grabbing for the gun with one hand, delivering a sharp
blow to Thomason’s wrist with the other. With a howl, the other
man eased his grip on the gun. He didn’t let go entirely, and
as soon as Caleb’s hand closed over the weapon, Thomason
tightened his grasp. Jess’s heart jumped as both men scuffled
for the gun, landing blows with their free hands. She braced for a
shot.

It never came. Caleb finally managed to wrest the gun away from
Thomason. He used it to deliver a blow to the back of the other man’s
head. Thomason went down in a heap.

For a long moment, Jess and Caleb just stood there, Caleb breathing
heavily, Jess finally taking a breath. Slowly, he shoved the gun in
his waistband and turned to face her.

They looked at each other in silence. He didn’t seem to know
quite what to say. She knew the feeling. So much had happened in the
last thirty minutes her thoughts and emotions were a tangled jumble
she couldn’t even begin to process them. He’d probably
saved both their lives. “Thank you” didn’t quite
seem to cover it. But after everything he’d done, after all the
lies, giving him even that small bit of gratitude was more than she
could manage.

He opened his mouth to speak. Suddenly she couldn’t even stand
to look at him anymore. She had to get away.

She turned toward the room’s other exit. “There are some
handcuffs upstairs. I’ll get them.”

“There are handcuffs upstairs?”

She shrugged. “This is Felicity’s house,” she said
by way of explanation. That just about said it all. But then, he
didn’t really know Felicity at all, did he? That was all part
of his lies. “Watch him.”

“Jess—”

She didn’t stay to hear what he was about to say. She wasn’t
interested.

The handcuffs were in a drawer in the guest bathroom, of all places.
In anyone else’s house that would have seemed odd. Jess hadn’t
blinked when she’d found them the first time. She didn’t
blink now when she grabbed them and went back downstairs.

Thomason was still out cold. She mutely handed over the cuffs for
Caleb to secure the man.

“I’ll call the police,” she said, starting to turn
away again.

Caleb snapped the cuffs over Thomason’s wrists. “Jess,
wait—”

“No.” She strode from the room.

He followed her into the hallway, remaining in the doorway so he
could keep an eye on Thomason. “Jess, we should talk.”

“I don’t have anything to say, and you don’t have
anything I’m interested in hearing.”

“I really am sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Well, that just makes everything okay, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t. I know that—”

“Good, then we’re in agreement.” She started to
pick up the phone.

“But I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want things
to end like this—”

She slammed down the phone and whirled to face him. “You must
think I’m the biggest idiot in the world. I might not have
given you any reason to think otherwise in the last week, but don’t
think I’m so stupid that I don’t know what you’re
doing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s the damned emerald. You heard what Thomason said,
and you still think I know where it is. That’s what this is
about, right?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Tell me you don’t care about the emerald.”

She saw the uncertainty flicker across his face and knew he couldn’t
say it. It looked like she’d finally found the issue he
couldn’t lie about.

When he spoke, he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “The
emerald means a great deal to the da Silvas. It’s been in their
family for over a century.”

“And I suppose you’re investigating out of the goodness
of your heart and you don’t stand to make a huge commission off
of this. Pull the other one.”

“The insurance company will pay me well if I recover the
emerald. That’s not why I do it.”

“Right. Still trying to catch the bad guys the way you couldn’t
catch the ones who stole everything from your father. I get it. I’m
just not interested.”

She lifted the phone again. He crossed the distance and grabbed her
wrist. “Jess—”

She ripped her arm out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me. You
don’t have that right. Not anymore. You never did.”

He held his hands up and stepped back, the frustration evident on his
face. “Fine. I’m sorry. But I’m not letting this go
until you hear me out—”

Finally she couldn’t stand to hear another word. “Bar
Fabiana in Rio. That’s where you’ll find the emerald.”

He froze. “What?”

“Fabiana Campos, the woman who owns the club, used to be a
dancer. I showed you her picture. She’s the only person I ever
heard Trevor call an old bird. She has some of her old costumes on
display, including one with a huge headpiece encrusted with fake
jewels. If I had to guess, that’s probably where Trevor hid
the emerald, replacing one of the fake jewels.”

Caleb immediately picked up her trail of thought. “He knew he’d
been caught on the surveillance system and it was only a matter of
time before the police came after him. He couldn’t be caught
with the jewel on him and he wasn’t going to give it to
Thomason. He had to hide it.”

“What better place than in plain sight?”

“Brilliant. No one would suspect one of the fake jewels would
be real.”

“And Trevor was right. Fabiana wouldn’t let anyone get
near that headpiece. I don’t know how he managed to sneak it in
there, but then, he was a professional thief. You might want to make
sure you have a warrant before you try retrieving it. Fabiana will
just as soon slice your hand off if you try touching the damn thing.”

“Thank you,” he said softly. “The da Silvas will be
relieved.”

“Good. I’ve given you what you want. Now leave me alone.”

“That’s not what I want. I want you.”

The words sent pain shafting through her. “Well, you can’t
have me.”

A sudden pounding on the front door made them both jump.

“Who is it?” Caleb called.

“The police. We’ve had a report of a disturbance.”

Relieved, Jess took a step toward the door. Caleb motioned her back.
“Let me get it. Just in case it’s not really them.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course. Why should anyone be who they
claim to be at this point?”

Shooting her a look, Caleb moved to the door. Two armed officers
stood on the other side, hands poised over their weapons.

“We got a call about a man with a gun,” one of them said.

Jess stepped forward. “How did you know? We didn’t even
call it in yet.”

“Your neighbor called 911. He said he spotted the silhouette of
a man with a gun through the window.”

It took her a second to make the connection. “Was his name Dan
Riker?”

The officer consulted his notes. “That’s it. You know
him?”

“We met the other day.”

“You’re lucky to have a neighbor watching out for you.”

“Yes,
lucky
.” She had another word for it, but she
was hardly going to argue with the man. “He’s in here,
officers. We got the gun away from him.”

The policemen followed them into the living room. “Where is the
weapon now?”

“I have it.” Caleb carefully handed it over.

The two officers slowly surveyed the scene, their eyebrows lifting
simultaneously. Jess tried to imagine it from their perspective.
Thomason lying on the floor unconscious, hands behind his back,
wearing Felicity’s hot pink handcuffs. It had to look odd.

Then again, this was Hollywood. This was probably routine for them.

“One of you want to explain what happened here?” one of
the officers asked.

Caleb was looking at her, and she couldn’t stand it. She just
wanted to get away from him. “Gladly. But first, I could really
use some water or something from the kitchen. Is that okay?”

The officers exchanged a look. The taller of the two nodded. “Officer
Morris will go with you and take your statement while I stay here
with your friend.”

“He’s not my friend,” she said without thinking.

Both officers’ eyebrows soared even higher.

“I’m sorry,” the tall one said. “What exactly
is the nature of your relationship?”

Oh boy. Where to start?

Caleb merely stared at her, an open appeal in his eyes. She couldn’t
accommodate it. All she wanted was to hurt him the way she hurt. That
was all she could feel, the pain burning deep inside. She’d
thought she’d felt pain before, but she’d never felt
this. This was pain. Nothing and no one had ever managed to hurt her
the way he had.

“We don’t have one,” she said, looking straight
into his eyes as she said it. “I don’t know him. I don’t
know him at all.”

She saw the pain that flickered across his face, but she felt no
satisfaction.

Finally she couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. It hurt too
much. Lifting her head, she turned her back to the men and strode
from the room, leaving the officer to follow.

She didn’t look back.

Chapter
Seventeen

In an unexpected way, the trip had its desired effect: it cured
Jess’s writer’s block. She dove back into the book as a
way to avoid thinking about Charlie, and found the words came far
more easily than before.

She left California without telling anyone where she was going,
partly because she didn’t know where that was, mostly because
she didn’t want to talk to anyone. She knew Felicity would find
out what had happened and no doubt be anxious to speak with her, but
she wasn’t up to rehashing everything with her godmother. She
sent her a brief note instead, along with ones to Miranda, Suzanne,
her parents and Lorne, telling them she’d be incommunicado for
a while, not wanting to risk getting any of them on the phone.

She finally holed up in a ratty motel room in the middle of Arizona
where there was nothing to do but write. She worked round-the-clock,
and was astonished to find herself finished a full five days early.
That gave her plenty of time to polish. She emailed the manuscript to
Lorne two days before it was due.

He called her the morning after she sent it. “I stayed up all
night reading it.”

“Was it good?” Jess asked, more than a little nervous.

“Good? It’s fabulous! No, it’s better than that,
especially with the new ending. Now that the truth has come out about
that mess in Brazil, the book ends on a much more satisfying note.
The way you discuss it really adds a whole new dimension to the
story. That whole section on trusting people and how even those who
are in the business of investigating are sometimes unable to see
what’s in front of them is brilliant. It can’t have been
easy to write. I’m guessing you really had to do some
soul-searching to talk about some of it.”

She smiled grimly. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Hey, if there’s more there, save it. You might get
another book out of it. Unless you’re going back to reporting?”

The question stopped her cold. She honestly hadn’t thought
about what she was going to do next. The last few weeks had been so
devoted to finishing the book that there hadn’t been time for
anything else. Now that she was done, the rest of her life stretched
out before her. With the truth out, there likely were more
opportunities available to her than there had been a mere month
before. The only question was what it was she wanted to do.

“I honestly don’t know,” she told Lorne.

“No worries. You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.
Right now, take it easy and give yourself a pat on the back for a job
well done. The book’s going to be huge.”

She knew Lorne well enough to distinguish between his fake enthusiasm
and genuine zeal. He wasn’t just stroking the ego of an anxious
writer. He believed in the book. For the first time in a long while,
she breathed a little easier. She was still smiling when she hung up
the phone.

Then she turned and looked around the tiny motel room that had been
her base of operations for the last few weeks. She’d been using
the book to hide behind for the last few weeks while she avoided
thinking about other things. She couldn’t do it any longer.

There was nothing left to do but go home.

IT WASN’T UNTIL she was sliding her key in the door that Jess
remembered the condition she’d left her apartment in when she’d
left for LA. She’d been in such a hurry, desperate to flee the
walls that had been closing in on her, that she hadn’t cleaned
up, hadn’t done the dishes, hadn’t done any of the things
she usually would have before leaving for a trip.

With a grimace, she started creating a list in her head of all the
things she had to do. Kicking the door shut behind her, she stepped
into the living room, her eyes automatically sweeping the space.

And there, sitting in a chair facing the entryway, was Charlie.

Somehow she couldn’t even manage to be surprised. Of course he
would be here. Of course he would be in her apartment before her.

Of course he would look even better than he had in her most vivid
dreams…

Of course.

She came to an abrupt stop just inside the room and simply stared at
him.

He sat casually, hands resting on the arms of the plush chair, one
ankle propped up on the opposite knee. He looked different somehow,
and it took her a moment to figure out what it was—the clothes.
He was wearing more clothes than she’d ever seen him in before.
A slim-fitting dress shirt that was open at the neck, revealing a
tantalizing hint of tanned skin. Black dress slacks. Fashionable
shoes she suspected couldn’t have been cheap. He was no longer
the California beach bum, but a dashing, sophisticated man of the
world.