Run From Fear (33 page)

“What?” Talia snapped to attention. “Did you find something?”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “We’ve been going through Margaret’s finances and Toni just pulled a whole batch of accounts we didn’t know about before.”

He motioned her over and Talia scooted her chair close enough to see the screen. It was all a blur of numbers and codes she couldn’t make sense of.

“Jesus, they have money hidden everywhere,” Jack said. “The Caymans, Belize, Panama, for Christ’s sake. Most of it hasn’t been touched, but in the past several weeks there have been several transfers from this account,” he said, indicating with his finger a string of transactions that showed nearly a hundred thousand dollars moving out of the account in the space of a week.

“Any way to figure out where it’s going?”

“Not yet.” Jack sighed. “But don’t worry. The money always leads somewhere. If Margaret is somehow connected, we’ll figure out who she’s working with soon enough.”

Talia nodded and tried to take comfort, have faith that all of this would eventually lead them to the bad guys.

And Jack would no longer have a reason to be by her side 24-7.

“What happens then?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

Jack’s fingers froze on the keyboard and his ice-blue gaze locked on hers, steady and unwavering.

He didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. “I guess you’ll have to decide what you want from me once you don’t need me around to protect you anymore.”

Talia swallowed hard. No, she wouldn’t need him around to keep her safe, but she was afraid she already needed him in her life on a much deeper, fundamental level. “What about you, Jack? What do you want?”

He flipped his computer closed and placed it on the floor next to him. He covered her hands where they were twisted together in her lap, a little half smile pulling at his lips. “I want the same thing I’ve always wanted. For you to want me the way I want you.”

Heat flooded her cheeks and she dropped her gaze at the intensity of his stare. “I think we’ve already established that,” she said, her face and body getting hotter by the second as her mind flashed on all of the ways she’d shown Jack in the past few days that her passion for him matched his for her.

“I’m not just talking about sex, Talia.”

She looked up at the sudden note of intensity in his
voice. It was matched by the look in his eyes, burning icy hot with desire and conviction and something else she wasn’t quite ready to put a name on even though she was pretty sure it was mirrored in her own gaze.

“I want everything.”

I want everything.

Jack’s words echoed through her brain later that night as she struggled to keep pace with the uncharacteristically heavy Tuesday night crowd at Suzette’s.

Everything.
What did that even mean?

She hadn’t had a chance to explore that bombshell since shortly after Jack made the declaration, the door opened and Rosie and her classmates came spilling out, alternately exclaiming that they kicked the exam’s ass or groaning that the exam had kicked theirs.

From there they’d followed Rosie to the coffeehouse for a study group and then it was time to head to the restaurant for work, with no real chance to dissect that comment and have any kind of meaningful discussion about their relationship going forward.

Relationship. Commitment. Giving someone a say in her life. For the first time in two years the idea of opening herself up, giving part of herself over and trusting it in someone’s care, didn’t send her into a panic.

Because it was Jack, she thought as she put sugar and mint into a cocktail shaker and muddled them together for a customer’s mojito. She snuck a glance at him. He’d taken up his usual post at one end of the bar, his gaze constantly sweeping the crowd.

It no longer made her uncomfortable to have him here, watching her every move and those of everyone around here.

Now it made her feel safe, cared for.

She handed over the mojito with a smile and gave Jack a quick signal that she needed to go to the storage room to restock. He gave her a curt nod and started to follow.

“You have to stay with her,” she said, indicating Rosie, who was sitting at a table in a far corner with Gene the physics TA, who had generously agreed to meet Rosie at the restaurant tonight for a last-minute cram session before her physics final tomorrow.

Jack’s mouth pulled into a grim line, and the man waiting next to him took one look at his harsh expression and took a startled step back. It wasn’t like anything was likely to happen, but Talia made the trip to the storage room in record time, knowing Jack would sweat every second he didn’t have her in view.

As she rounded the corner back to the bar, she saw Susie and Jack in what was obviously a tense discussion.

“Seriously, you need to tone it down a notch,” Susie was saying.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack said impatiently as he looked over Susie’s head so he could keep Rosie in sight.

“I’ve had several customers ask me about you this week, wondering if there’s a problem.”

Talia’s stomach sank and the bottle of vodka gained about twenty pounds in her hand. The knot in her stomach grew worse as her gaze snagged on Susie, the irritation and exasperation unmistakable. Pitching her voice low, Susie said, “It’s one thing for him to hang out like another
customer, but standing at the end of the bar like you’re waiting for someone to make a move—”

“Which is exactly what I’m doing—” Jack snapped.

“Well, thanks to you, people are scared to go to the bathroom,” she said, indicating the hallway behind him.

“Sorry,” Talia said. “He needs to see me and Rosie too.”

“Right, and she and her study partner are taking up a table that could be used for paying customers.”

Talia bit the insides of her cheeks. It wasn’t Susie’s fault that any of this was happening. “Do you want us to go? I would hate for the business to be affected because of me.”

Susie and Jack exchanged a long look that Talia couldn’t decipher but made her uneasy just the same. Then Susie took a slightly panicked look at the crowd growing at the bar. “God, no, not tonight anyway,” she said, and sent Jack another sharp look. “But seriously, Jack, you look like you’re about to kick the crap out of someone if they make one wrong move.”

Susie wasn’t far off in her assessment. Something was up tonight, something he couldn’t put his finger on. But from the moment they’d left the house earlier this evening and headed to the restaurant, Jack couldn’t shake the tight, tingly feeling between his shoulders.

Call it intuition, a sixth sense, whatever you want, but shit was about to go down. It was just a question of when and how. He was on high alert, trying to keep tabs on everyone in the restaurant and bar. But it was nearly impossible with a crowd this size and the dim lighting and constant movement.

He itched to get Talia out of there but knew there was no way she’d go for it. No way would she leave Susie in a lurch short-staffed on what turned out to be a busier-than-usual night. Plus, it was only eight-thirty and she was already on track to double her usual amount of tips, and she’d made a big production this morning about paying him another installment on what she thought she owed him.

If she had any clue the amount of money he had waiting for him to tap, she’d see what a ridiculous drop in the bucket the two hundred dollars she’d given him was. But ever since Saturday night—ever since they’d slept together—she’d been making an even bigger deal about paying him back. Making it clear that the sex was in no way, shape, or form to be seen as payback for anything he’d done for her.

It was kind of silly, considering if Jack had his way, eventually they’d make their relationship more permanent in the what’s-mine-is-yours-and-what’s-yours-is-mine category. But for now, he’d indulge in her need to reassure him that any favors she granted, sexual or otherwise, were 100 percent freely given.

He scanned the crowd again and felt someone jostle his side. He looked down and met the startled face of an older woman in her late fifties.

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to get to the ladies’ room,” she said, backing up a step.

Susie’s admonishment in his mind, he did his best to soften his expression. “Of course, I’m sorry,” he said, stepping aside and gesturing with his arm for her to continue.

His focus went back to the bar. The customers seated on the tall stools along the bar and those sitting at the
small tables didn’t appear to pose a viable threat. Mostly couples in their late thirties, a couple of small groups, and a few tables full of women on a girls’ night out. And Rosie, of course, tucked into a corner with physics genius Gene going over her lecture notes for her exam tomorrow.

He rocked back on his heels and kept his hands folded in front of him, struggling against the urge to twitch. He hated this, this every-nerve-on-alert, skin-too-small-for-his body feeling. More than that, he hated the impotence that came with dealing with an enemy he hadn’t yet identified.

Jack was a man of action, always had been. Identify the target and go after it. But this asshole—this coward—who had targeted Talia just kept lobbing his little bombs and scurrying back to his hole. Eventually he would fuck up and they’d get a bead on him, but Jack was slowly going crazy from the wait.

It gave him the best excuse in the world to stay close to her, but that wasn’t enough of a perk for him to tolerate any threat to the woman he loved. He took a deep breath and flexed his fingers. They’d get the guy eventually—failure wasn’t an option. For now he had to dig deep, stay vigilant, and be ready to spring when the opportunity arose.

He watched as Talia walked over to Rosie and Gene’s table and saw her mouth move. She turned back toward the bar and was heading in his direction when he heard the blast. Everyone jumped and screamed at the muffled boom that came from the parking lot adjacent to the restaurant.

The chaos was instantaneous as people jumped from tables and ran to see what was happening. “Call 911!”
Jack yelled as he pushed through the crowd to the window that overlooked the parking lot. Through the glass, he could hear the din of dozens of car alarms going off, and there in the center was the cause.

A small sedan—maybe a Honda or a Toyota, it was hard to tell with the flames coming out of the windows—had been hit with an explosion large enough to blow out the windows and set the car on fire.

This was it. The shit that he’d known was going to go down. He turned to find her, and in that second, the restaurant’s fire alarm went off. He yelled Talia’s name, barely able to hear himself over the din. Desperate to escape a drenching from the sprinklers spraying down from the ceiling, dozens of customers surged for the front door.

Working against the tide of customers, Jack looked desperately through the crowd and saw that Rosario’s table was empty. He spotted her by the door, Gene at her side as he tried to protect her from the jostling crowd and move her to the door. Jack gave her a quick wave and turned back toward the direction of the bar.

Talia had disappeared.

Talia followed Susie’s lead and tried to caution people to slow down and be patient as they moved to the front door. She tried to signal several people to the exit in the back, and finally a large enough chunk broke off in that direction to ease some of the congestion moving toward the front.