Assassin P.I. (7 page)

Chapter 7

It was early when Jack headed into the office the next morning. Still feeling guilty over his harsh treatment of Angie, sleep had eluded him, leaving him out of sorts and cranky. By the time he dragged his ass out of bed and took a scalding hot shower, he was almost starting to feel human again.

He hated to admit it, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly ever since Angie had waltzed through his door. It wasn’t so much that she’d lied to him, but that she’d used him.

She was up to something. He just couldn’t figure out what. Whatever it was, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Shedding his jacket, he removed his hat, tossing it onto the desk, and rubbed the stubble on his face. He was feeling every minute of his age and his body was not recovering as quickly as he would like after the beating he’d taken the other day.

Shamus greeted him and climbed onto his shoulder. “Here comes trouble.”

“Shut up, Shamus.”

“Fuck off, Jack,” the tart bird responded but nuzzled against Jack’s face.

Jack crossed the room, opened a cabinet, and took out a bottle of aspirin.

“Here, let me,” a voice smooth as satin purred from somewhere nearby.

“Trouble’s here,” Shamus insisted then hopped off of Jack’s shoulder and onto the countertop.

Jack spun around, coming face to face with Angie. She looked just as enticing during the daytime as she did at night. She’d swapped her seductive dress and heels for a demure business suit but it did little to hide her curves. Any makeup she wore only highlighted the natural beauty of her almond-shaped eyes and lush lips.

“How did you get in?” First his office is broken into, by a dame no less, and then he doesn’t notice her sitting there waiting for him? Some private eye he was.

“You’re not the only one who knows how to pick a lock, my darling. It’s one of the many skills you taught me that I still remember, and can use to my advantage.” She took the bottle from him and opened it, coaxing two pills into her palm.

Skills indeed. Angie had a unique talent for wrapping a man around her fingers. No matter how many dolls he’d tangoed with between the sheets, he’d never been able to forget Angie. Or the skillful way she used her fingers.

Or her mouth.

Grabbing the half-filled flask from the counter, he took the pills and chased them down to calm his heart that suddenly jumped into overdrive.

“You know you shouldn’t mix pills and booze. They say it’ll kill ya.” She hopped up onto the counter, crossing her legs at the knees.

What did she care? Maintaining eye contact, he took another gulp, emptying the container. He didn’t bother to tell her the flask was filled with water. “What are you doing here?”

Walking away from her was the only way to keep a level head.

“I needed a job, and from the looks of things, you need me. Or at the very least you need a secretary.
Voila
.” She gave a flourish of the hand. “Now both our problems are solved.” She slid off the counter and followed him around the office.

“Not so fast, sweetheart. I don’t need anyone messing with my filing system, and if I recall right, you already have a job.”

“Had.” Backing down was never in her vocabulary. “I had a job. Your little stunt at the club last night got me fired.”

Shamus called out, “Take ‘em out, sweet cheeks,” continuing to repeat the mantra as he climbed his way back to his perch.

Getting Angie canned was never his intention and for that he felt bad, but it in no way overshadowed the fact that she’d lied to him.

“I told you once, I don’t need you.” But truth be told, he did. He needed her as much as he needed air to breathe. Grabbing his hat and jacket, he headed for the door.

Angie gave a little gasp. “Where you going?”

“Out.” He slipped on the jacket and dropped his hat onto his head. Hand on the doorknob, he paused. “Oh, and Ang?”

Her head jerked up.

“You’re fired.”

“Take that, sweet cheeks. You’re fired. Fired, fired, fired.”

The door slammed behind Jack.

Angie slumped into a sea
t, wincing as the door slammed shut. “Who does he think he is, ordering me around like that?”

She’d always found Jack to be a bit surly when life didn’t go his way, but he was being downright insufferable. Well, she for one wasn’t going to do a single thing he said. If he said go left, she’d go right. If he said sit, she’d stand. She was not about to let a man, any man, order her around like that. If she’d wanted to work for an ogre, she could have kept her job at the club. At least there she got the chance to dress up in sexy clothes and sing for her paycheck.

Without Jack around, the office was almost quiet, save for the occasional swear word uttered by Shamus. When she’d been here the other night, the office had been bathed in a golden glow from the lit lamps, giving the place a homey, lived in vibe. Now in the cold daylight, the office struck her as cluttered and disorganized. Piles of files had been dropped on the ground, rather than filed away appropriately.

Might as well clean while I’m here
, she thought.

“Where does Jack keep his files, Shamus?” Angie scanned the small space for a filing cabinet, but found none. She stood and walked around to the front of the desk. “Maybe the bottom drawer?”

Shamus cocked his colorful head in response but remained silent. He hopped up onto the desktop and eyed her suspiciously, watching her every move as her fingers walked over the marred wood.

“Why am I talking to a dumb bird?” she muttered and gave the bottom drawer a tug. Nothing. Didn’t even budge. Did he always keep his desk on lock down? What was he trying to hide?

A new thought occurred. In all the chaos of the morning, she’d almost forgotten about the pen. The voice-activated recording device only had a few hours of battery life. If she could retrieve it, she could download the file and hopefully catch Jack confessing to the crime. It might not be admissible in court, but it could be enough to convince the FBI to reopen Trevor’s case.

“Where is it?” She dropped to her knees. When she’d been here last time, she’d dropped the device on the floor and kicked it under the desk. But now, the floor was bare, except for the files Jack kept there. Finding nothing tucked in the crevices of the files, she stood and scanned the desk, spotting the cup of pens.

“You know,” she said for the benefit of the listening device, “Jack’s not all bad. I may hate him for killing Trevor, but he was a good man once. He saved my life.” Thinking about how they first met would only lead to a dark place in her memory, tears, and a weakened resolve to find justice for Trevor’s murder. This wasn’t the time or place for a trip down memory lane.

Instead, she turned her attention to finding her pen amongst a slew of ordinary ballpoint pens. While she examined each pen, Shamus nipped at her fingers.

“Knock it off, Shamus, or I’ll . . .”

Her heart slammed against her chest. There was the pen, the one which had hopefully recorded Jack freaking out and confessing to murder. She only hoped it worked. If it didn’t, her entire plan would unravel, leaving her with nothing but a hole in her heart and zilch to show for it.

After roaming the streets for a bit, Jack
decided to head back to the office. If he was lucky Angie would have taken the hint and cleared out. Sure, he’d miss her legs, her lips, her money, but he wouldn’t miss the trouble that came with them.

As it turned out, he was anything but lucky these days.

Angie was still there, stubbornly planted behind a desk,
his desk
, twirling a pen between her fingers.

He grabbed Angie by the hand and tugged her out of the chair. The pen clattered onto the desk. “You’re coming with me.”

There was only one way to get rid of a dame like her. Finish the job.

“Let go of me.” She jerked her hand free and stopped, refusing to follow. “I don’t appreciate being manhandled.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t appreciate you hiring yourself on as my damned secretary, or assistant, Gal Friday, or whatever title you gave yourself. And another thing?” He grabbed her again and dragged her toward the doorway.

She gave a little yelp in protest and snatched her purse from the countertop as they passed by.

One way or another, he was getting her ass to leave the office.

They squared off, her dark eyes flashing in anger.

Jack took his voice down a notch and relaxed his stance. “I don’t like being lied to.”

He didn’t intend to hurt her, either physically or with his words, but when her lashes lowered, he knew his words had cut to the quick. Around her, he always seemed to say the wrong thing. Placing a hand at the small of her back, he took her by the elbow, more gently this time, guiding her out the door and toward his beat-up sedan. He opened the passenger door for her. “Get in.”

Angie recovered, her defenses back firmly in place. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t budge.

What was it about this woman that set his teeth on edge? Exasperated, Jack rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine. Please.”

Her eyebrow rose and her arms crossed tightly. Damn stubborn woman.

He tried again, dredging up his inner gentleman. “Will you please get in the car?”

She waited a beat longer than she needed to, making her point without saying a word, before stepping off the curb and into his car.

Outside, there was a bite to the winter air, despite the fact that the sun was shining. Inside the car, the temperature between them plummeted another ten degrees, give or take. They didn’t speak until they were nearing the outskirts of town, which was fine with him. Jack hated idle chitchat, especially coming from the mouth of a known liar, someone who had used him to get what she wanted.

“Where are we going?”

Should he tell her the truth? If he did, would she fling herself out of a moving vehicle?

“To a meeting with your beloved in-laws, darling. Do they know your marriage to Trevor was a sham? That this was all a scheme you two cooked up to get money?”

She winced.

Bullseye. In the end, it always came down to pure and simple greed and lust.

“No.” She hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe.”  

Lapsing into silence again, Angie stared out the window, presumably stewing in the mess she’d made, while Jack navigated the twists and turns.

When Angie did speak again, her voice had lost its usual conviction. “You were gone. Trevor was there. I believed him when he said he loved me.”

Jack kept his eyes trained on the road ahead, mouth shut, feeling the tension in her body, the sorrow in her voice. An instinctive surge of protectiveness welled up in him at the thought of a heartbroken Angie.

“In the end, it turned out Trevor only wanted to use me to get back at his parents after they cut him off and froze his accounts.”

He waited for her to continue. Offering commentary, reminding her of the deceitful part she’d played wouldn’t be anything more than self-serving. Didn’t mean it wouldn’t feel good for a split second, though.

“His parents knew about his drug habit and that he’d quit college. Marrying me, I guess, seemed like an easy way to piss them off. So we faked a quickie wedding with the understanding that when the time was right . . .” She turned, staring out the window again.

“You’d get a fake divorce with a fat payoff to keep silent.” He sounded harsher than he’d intended, but to her credit, Angie didn’t even flinch.

“Something like that.”

Jack took her hand and gave it a light squeeze. “Trevor was a fool.”

Any further conversation was postponed as Glenwood Park, where the rich and famous lay their multi-million-dollar heads, loomed up ahead. A place Jack had always imagined would be filled with the stench of greed and the decay of human decency as all morality was slowly leeched away by an all-consuming yearning for fame. Instead, his olfactory senses were assaulted by the fragrant scent of the dozen or so honeysuckle shrubs lining the main thoroughfare of the famous gated community.

Beside him, Angie gripped the armrest, her eyes focused on the road ahead. The Angie Jack knew oozed confidence, never backing down from any challenge. He hadn’t seen her so quiet and withdrawn, so paralyzed with fear, not since the first day they met years ago.

He slowed to check the street numbers.

“Up ahead on the right. The gaudy mini-mansion with the gargoyles and pillars.”

Pulling in where she’d pointed, he announced their arrival at the gate and followed the brick path, noting the perfectly manicured lawn surrounding a modest pond and cascading waterfall. He parked in the middle of the circular driveway close to the massive front door.

Impressive.

He had half a mind to force Angie to face down her former fake in-laws, to confess her deceit, admit all the gruesome lies, but that would be far more cruel to the parents who grieved the loss of their son. No, it might be better to let her steep in her own self-loathing for the time being.

“Why don’t you stay in the car?” he suggested. “It’s nothing I can’t handle on my own.”

She nodded, lost in her own thoughts. A second later, her hand shot out and touched his arm.

“Jack, wait. We didn’t . . . I mean, we never . . . I didn’t sleep with Trevor. I just thought you should know.”

Whatever motives Angie had for sharing the information, it didn’t ease his torment, only made it worse. What was he supposed to feel? Happy that he’d screwed her up so badly that she couldn’t even bring herself to have sex with another man, a man she supposedly loved? Or was he supposed to applaud her self-restraint?