All Jacked Up (26 page)

He shrugged one shoulder. “Eventually there’ll be another car chase, or somebody will shoot at us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re an adrenaline junkie. Danger gets you all hopped up and once the danger’s over you have to work it off somehow.”

“And you were just obliging me?” she said, wondering where she found the energy to sit up. Oh yeah, anger, that’s where. “Gee, Jack, what would I do without you?”

He just stared, one eyebrow inching up while her face went hot.

“There’s nothing wrong with being self-sufficient. No disappointment, and no ego to boost afterward,” she said, refusing to be embarrassed. Okay, she was embarrassed. Her face was roughly the temperature of the sun, and it was probably red, too. But he couldn’t see that in the twilight gloom under the trees. “Men aren’t the most dependable creatures in the world.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Well . . . no.”

Jack stopped halfway to his feet, staring.

“What? I don’t complain all the time. Do I?”

“Not all the time.” There were the questions, and the second-guessing, and the outright bitching for variety. And suddenly putting up with all that crap seemed worth it.

Jack stood, a bit unsteadily, although he managed not to smile over the reason. Who’d have thought a skinny, irritating, egghead of a librarian would be so . . . he gave up. There was no way to get around it. Aubrey Sullivan was incredible at sex. No wonder she’d had all those politicians with their closet sex fetishes panting after her, a thought Jack chose not to pursue when he felt an irrational urge to throttle the first guy in a suit he came across.

A woman that inventive in the sack could ruin a guy for all other women. Not that she’d ruined him. Nope, sex was sex, and Aubrey Sullivan was still an anchor around his neck that he’d be glad to get rid of at the first opportunity.

He pulled his shirt on and got in the car. “You going to stay out there all night when there’s a nice, comfortable seat in here?”

She climbed to her feet, wobbling for a second. “Jeez, Jack, all this concern for me? Next you’ll be wanting to cuddle.”

“Don’t confuse this with one of your porn books.”

“Trust me, Jack. I would never mistake you with a hero from a romance novel.”

But she was hurt, which pissed him off. Jack waited for her to elaborate, but she was apparently done talking. Which made him even angrier. First the amazing sex and now this? Every time he thought he knew her she changed up on him, and he didn’t like it.

Worse, she knew just how confused he was. “I get it, Jack, you’re not the type to cuddle after sex. You’re the kind who puts his pants on and hightails it out the door.”

“I’m still around, aren’t I?”

“Not because you want to be.”

He went silent because there was no way to refute that without telling her she was starting to grow on him. Like a boil. It was there, it was painful, but having it sliced off didn’t really hold any attraction either.

She went around to the passenger side of the Ferrari and bent inside, digging her coat out of her backpack—and giving Jack a clean shot down her shirt. He took advantage of the scenery, shrugging when she gave him a look.

“So what’s our next step?” she asked. “It’s not like Corona sent the brain trust after us, but Danny and Carlo are going to be looking. Along with every other hit man in the state.”

“Danny and Carlo are going to be busy with the cops for a while,” he said. “The Atlanta P.D. doesn’t really have anything on them but rap sheets and suspicion. I give Danny twenty-four hours to talk his way free. If he can keep Carlo quiet.”

Aubrey couldn’t help but smile. “Carlo has some major faults, not the least of which is how he views women, but he did a pretty good job at providing comic relief. He actually tried to convince me at the bus station that they weren’t trying to kill me. Like I’d believe them and just walk out the door. They have to be the dumbest hit men ever.”

“Just the kind you deserve,” Jack answered, absently because his mind was churning, shifting the pieces he’d already put together to make room for this latest revelation, and turning the picture this way and that so he could see all the new angles. The fact that he’d hurt her feelings again escaped him.

He reclined his seat and closed his eyes. “We took out Danny and Carlo temporarily, and they took out Horace George,” probably permanently, which told Jack Horace hadn’t been working for Corona.

“What about the cops?” Aubrey asked.

“We’re well hidden enough to chance sleeping for a few hours, then we can decide what we’re going to do.” He didn’t tell her he’d already decided, that he thought he’d figured out how Corona—and how he—had gotten dragged into this. But there was still something missing. The why.

He had an idea how to answer that question, too. As long as he could get Aubrey to cooperate for the next couple of days . . . He opened one eye, found her watching him. “You’re going to be here when I wake up, right?”

“Where am I going to go, Jack? I don’t even know what state we’re in.”

“We’re still in Georgia.” But they wouldn’t be for long, which he wasn’t about to tell her. She’d only freak out if she knew they were heading for Florida in the morning. All he had to do was keep the truth from her a couple more days. Just until they were at Corona’s front door.

Aubrey woke up in the morning and found Jack looking at the list of names she’d made.

“Maybe it will help you to talk it out with me,” she said. “Maybe you’re too close to it.” And maybe he was having a problem reading the list and he didn’t want to ask for help.

“No.” He stuffed the list in his pocket and fired up the car, concentrating on navigation. “We’re going to have to find someplace to eat,” he said.

“You’ve been pushing me to remember all this time and when I offer you suddenly don’t want to talk?”

“Did you remember something?”

“No.”

“Then what good is talking going to do?”

“What good is driving around aimlessly going to do?”

Jack went silent again, eyes on the road, pretending she wasn’t there.

Aubrey didn’t want to believe the worst of him, but he was acting like nothing had happened. She knew he wanted to keep his emotional distance, but why did he have to be so cold?

Unless Tom was right.

She wanted to kick herself for thinking, for even one minute, that last night had changed anything. She was falling into the trap of letting her growing feelings for Jack color reality. What she really needed to do was employ the Jack Mitchell filter.

Last night had been about sex—I’m-still-alive sex at the most—but having sex with Jack didn’t change the reason they were together. Corona still had a contract out on her life, and Jack was still trying to exonerate himself with the FBI, or get in Corona’s good graces. Or both. She couldn’t say for certain what his agenda was, but she knew one thing. While she was wasting time putting their relationship under a microscope, Jack was busy taking the bits of information they’d learned from Carlo and Danny and fitting them into the three-dimensional puzzle they were lost in. He might have trouble reading the written word, but there was nothing wrong with his mind.

“What have you figured out that you’re not telling me?” she asked.

All she got back was silence, but it was the kind of silence that answered her question. And the answer was, a lot.

“Why would it have anything to do with last night?”

Aubrey smacked herself on the forehead. “What was I thinking?”

“It’s just a mall,” Jack said. “Don’t analyze it to death.”

Jack trained his attention on the lot, looking for a parking space, not open to further questioning. But after seven days of concentrated Jack exposure, she could infer plenty.

There was no way he’d take her to a mall on a crowded Saturday, especially in a car sure to draw attention in a parking lot filled mostly with beaters and the older-model Buicks and Crown Vics preferred by the elderly. They were in Florida, after all.

And that was another thing that confused her.

She’d awakened early that morning when Jack fired up the car. She’d offered to drive, but he’d given her one of his stony stares. He hadn’t been in a talkative mood then, either. Not unusual for Jack, she’d thought, settling back into the passenger seat and letting the motion of the car lull her back to sleep.

By the time she’d rejoined the land of the living, they were on a sandy-shouldered two-lane road in a remote, countryish area. The view out the window was an endless vista of scrubby trees, broken up by an occasional house or trailer park.

They’d been in Georgia last she knew. The sun was shining in the driver’s-side window, and it was still morning. They were heading unmistakably south. There was only one state south of Georgia, and any way she thought about it, that wasn’t good. Corona was in Florida, which meant there’d be a higher concentration of his henchmen wandering around. And that meant their odds of survival had taken a steep drop when they crossed the border. So why had they crossed the border to begin with?

“You coming inside or what?” Jack asked her.

Aubrey tuned back in to the present and saw that he’d found a place to park in the main aisle that led to the mall entrance.

“Why are we here?” she asked, not getting out of the car. She really wanted to ask him the broader, geographic question, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear the answer just yet. “You’ve been avoiding public places the whole time we’ve been together.”

“True, but I don’t have to worry about you ditching me any more, right?”

She hesitated a second, not sure where he was going. Or that she wanted to commit herself. But there was nothing saying she couldn’t change her mind later. “Right.”

“And you could use some . . . things.” His eyes lifted to her hair and worked their way down. “Shampoo. Clean clothes.”

Now that he mentioned it, there was an aroma that didn’t seem to be coming from the car. Aubrey sniffed her armpit. Not perfect, but definitely not the source of the odor. “That’s not me, Jack. I’m not the only one who’s been wearing the same clothes for a few days.”

“Then this is your dream come true.”

“But what about the car? Don’t you think people will notice the car?”

Jack peered through the windows, checked the mirrors. “Doesn’t seem to be drawing any attention. But maybe you’re right. Maybe we should find some place less crowded.”

Jack, telling her she was right? Now she was really suspicious. “Okay, what’s going on? You don’t take chances.”

“I thought you’d appreciate a chance to get cleaned up.”

“And you don’t do anything nice for me, so why the sudden concern for my welfare?”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

“No, we’re here now.” And she had a feeling she wasn’t going to find out why if she let him hustle her away, so she hurtled herself out of the car. “I could use some clean underwear. And a shower to go along with them.”

Jack angled out of the driver’s seat and looked at her over the roof. “We’ll find a hotel later.”

“Hotel?” Aubrey had to brace her hands on the top of the car because the thought of an actual bed with clean sheets and an actual bathroom made her dizzy. And the certainty that Jack was up to something sobered her right back up. “What’s going on, Jack? It’s been nothing but duck and cover since Washington, and suddenly it’s malls and hotels? In case you’ve forgotten, Florida is Corona’s home turf. And Danny and Carlo are still out there . . .

“And you want them to find us.” She came around the car, fists on hips. “Are you nuts? They tried to kill you. I was there, remember?”

“I don’t plan on giving them another shot at me.”

“Then why are you making yourself a target? I mean, they don’t want to kill me . . . Oh, no,” she backed off, “you’re using me as bait.”

“Relax. Like you said, they don’t want to kill you.”

“Carlo does.”

“Okay, but Danny’s in charge, so you’re safe.”

“Until they get whatever it is they want from me. Then I’ll be dead, too.”

“It won’t come to that. This time I’ll be the one holding the gun, and I’ll be the one asking the questions.”

“Sounds great in theory, but dangling me under Carlo’s nose like a carrot to a jackass isn’t such a great an idea. Especially since they don’t give a darn if they kill you, and if they kill you, they’ll capture me, and then it will only be a matter of time until they kill me.”

“You have so little faith in me,” Jack said.

“And it’s taken me a week to get that much.”

“Don’t you want to know what this is all about?” Jack asked, keeping his voice low but clearly at the end of his patience. “We can only keep running for so long before we’re either out of real estate or in it. The only way to end this is to find out what Corona wants and figure out a way to end it without dying.”

Aubrey kicked at a loose chunk of asphalt, weighing the options in her mind. “I wouldn’t mind torturing Carlo,” she said after a moment.

“It won’t take torture to get information out of Carlo. Just let him get a look at that thong, or a good sniff, and he’d blurt out missile codes if he had them.”

“I’d rather wrap the thong around his neck.”

“He’d probably enjoy that, too.”

Aubrey laughed softly, falling into step with Jack. “How about thumbscrews?”

“It’s a little addictive, isn’t it? Solving your problems with violence.”

“Taking the time to think things through isn’t exactly your style, either, Jack.” They were inside now, and Aubrey stopped and turned in a slow circle, then closed her eyes, taking in the smells and sounds of a crowded mall.

“Praying to the gods of shopping?” Jack asked.

“Looking for a store that sells thumbscrews.”

“Why don’t you check the backpack. You probably have enough junk in there to build me a suit of armor.”

Aubrey dropped the backpack onto a nearby bench. She probably should have left it in the car, but it had come to feel like a good luck charm. Not that their luck had been all that great, or the stuff in the backpack had been a lot of help, but it was her last link to her old life. As long as she still had it, she could believe there’d be a way for her to go home.

Jack wouldn’t understand any of that. Jack saw it only as an object—and a useless one at that. “I guess you’re entitled to your sarcasm,” she said to him. “The backpack didn’t quite work out the way I hoped.”

“Your average household junk drawer doesn’t offer a lot of protection against guns and motor vehicle assault.”

She sighed. “I guess I should get rid of it.”

“You never know.” Jack hefted the pack and handed it to her.

“Aren’t we just full of surprises today.” Aubrey took it from him, wondering if it was just a gesture on his part, or if she should add it to the list of suspicious stuff he’d done that day. Except she couldn’t see any way her backpack could possibly figure into the thing with Corona.

And at the moment she had an entire mall to explore. With Jack. That could be torture.

Or it could be fun.

There was the obvious stuff, Victoria’s Secret, where Jack was only too happy to hold lingerie while she deliberated. Really happy. Jack liked the lingerie, and it turned out the saleswomen liked Jack.

Aubrey didn’t like that very much, so she took him to the department store and parked herself in a comfy chair while the salesclerk “helped” Jack try on clothes. The clerk didn’t come sailing out of the dressing room headfirst. He bustled out in a tizzy, but he was unharmed. And Jack actually wound up with a change of clothes. All black. Jack didn’t object when she spent an hour searching for just the right pair of jeans, and took another half hour to decide which white T-shirt she wanted.

Jack was being no fun at all.

They stopped for refreshments in the food court. Aubrey opted for orange juice and a pretzel. Jack went with an energy drink, heavy on the caffeine, making up for lost sleep. He ate his pretzel in two bites and chugged his drink while standing against a handy wall. Aubrey parked on a bench next to him and took her time, wondering where Jack was getting all the patience from.

An old lady tottered over and sat down between her and Jack, dropping her bags on the floor and heaving a sigh. “It’s hell getting old,” she said to Aubrey. “I’d tell you to avoid it, but the alternative doesn’t sound like much fun either.”

“I may not have a choice.”

“I’m sorry, dear. Are you sick?”

“It’s not my health.” Aubrey glanced up at Jack. “It’s the company I keep.”

The old woman looked at Jack, too. “Is it the sex?” she whispered. “He’s wearing you out, right? If I had a boyfriend like that . . .” She waggled her eyebrows.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

There was blank surprise on her face. “What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s not me, it’s him . . .” Aubrey could feel the woman staring at her, waiting for an explanation. “He likes older women,” she whispered, aware of Jack hanging on every word, even though he looked like he’d forgotten she was alive. “Much older women.”

“Really?” The old lady sat up, smoothing a wrinkle out of her dress and giving Jack a sideways look that would have been classified as coquettish in 1940. In the twenty-first century it was downright frightening. “How about buying a gal a cup of coffee,” she said to him, with a smile that went along with the look.

Jack stared at Aubrey for a couple seconds, then he bent down and whispered in the old woman’s ear.

She giggled, collected her bags, and headed off into the food court.

“What did you say to her?”

“I sent her to the coffee place. The old guy working there was more her style.”

Aubrey caught herself staring, bemused. She didn’t know what had softened him up, but she didn’t think it was just the sex. Because she wanted to think it was more than the sex. She tried to remind herself that he was only being nice so she’d cooperate with his new plan, but she was having trouble believing it.

So he was using her as bait, she said to herself. He could’ve staked her out in downtown Miami and waited for the first hit man to come along, but he’d chosen to go to the mall because he knew it would make her happy. And he was explaining things to her without the insults—okay, he hadn’t told her everything, but he’d begun to include her and with guys like Jack it took time. He’d been patient and funny and tolerant all day. And he was kind to old ladies. “You know, Jack,” she said, “you might turn out to be nice guy if you’re not careful.”

“It’s a good thing I’m always careful then, isn’t it?”

“You get wounded a lot for a guy who’s careful,” she teased. “I guess that’s an occupational hazard, though.”

“Only when you’re around.” But he was grinning at her when he said it.

Aubrey dragged him to a couple more stores but it seemed like she was doing it more for the sake of being thorough than anything else. She’d given up trying to have fun at his expense, and now she was standing in the middle of the mall, hands on her hips, the look on her face saying
my work here is done
.

“Looks like you’re all set,” Jack said.

Aubrey peeked in her bags. “Yep. Shampoo, soap, clean clothes for both of us.”

The clean clothes for her included five pairs of plain French-cut cotton panties, no strings, no thongs, no lace. Victoria’s Secret had really let him down there, but thinking about them made Jack hot anyway, so he put them out of his mind.

“Since we’ve been through the entire place,” she continued, “and we’ve exhausted our hopes for medieval torture devices, I guess that means we’re done.”

She was all bright-eyed and chipper, which should have counteracted the effects of the panties. But they were standing in front of a bookstore and Jack had the irrational urge to find that Katra Whatsis thing, open it to any page, and say, “I’ll take that.”

He started walking instead, a lot more slowly than usual.

“Jack?” Aubrey skipped up beside him, took one look at his face and settled in, her own expression sobering. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“I guess the thought of clean clothes isn’t as exciting for you as it is for me.”

He was happy about the clean clothes, but it was a clean mind he could really use about now. Sex with Aubrey Sullivan ought to be no big deal. At best it should have settled the issue once and for all. When it came to women, Jack was a been there, done her kind of guy.