Against The Wall (24 page)

Tanner probably owed her some answers, if only to say thank you for the incredible sex. “I hurt my family when I landed in prison. I don’t want to hurt them anymore. They don’t need me showing up now after all this time.” every cell alive and scream“atay b

“What makes you think that?” Her eyebrows quirked up in question.

“Davis is a small town. A lot of gossip. I embarrassed my parents when I got convicted. My mom doesn’t need me coming back now and starting up all the gossips again. I wouldn’t do that to her or my sisters.”

“What about your father? You haven’t mentioned him. How does he feel?” The girl was a pit bull when it came to wanting information.

He remembered his dad going through his first bout of cancer, telling him how Tanner would be the man of the house, how he’d have to take care of his mother and sisters if he died. His dad had survived that go-round, but not the next. Instead of graduating college with a degree, Tanner had gotten himself arrested and thrown in jail, so that when his father had died, he hadn’t been any good to his mother and sisters. He’d been stuck in the pen.

“He died while I was in prison.”

Jess lifted up on her elbow and stared down at him. “Oh, Tanner. I’m sorry.” Her face had a look of horror mixed with concern. “That must have been so hard.”

The hardest news he’d ever heard. Worse than the judge’s sentencing at his trial.

“But that’s even more of a reason to go home. Your family needs you.”

Tanner shook his head. “They don’t need me. They’ve been living without me for this long, they don’t need me.”

“That’s ridiculous. Of course they need—”

“Jess!” She flinched, but didn’t move away from him. Damn, he hadn’t meant to do that. “Look,” he said, after taking a deep breath. “I haven’t had contact with them since I went in, okay? They don’t want me around, I can guarantee it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “No contact?” She shook her head. “Didn’t they write to you? Or visit you?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer as she sat up. “How could they do that to you? I can’t believe they’d just—”

“Slow down.” Tanner pulled her back down next to him where he had her soft skin at his fingertips. “They didn’t do anything. In the beginning they tried to visit, but I wouldn’t see them. I didn’t open their letters either.”

“Why? Why would you do that?” she asked softly, searching his eyes.

Did it matter if he told her? He’d kept his feelings buried so deep for so long he wasn’t sure he could even talk about this. “I was ashamed, all right. Embarrassed. No one in the family tree had ever been arrested, much less be convicted of a felony and do time. I couldn’t face them. I didn’t deserve them. I blew it.”

“Oh, Tanner. I’m sorry. But you didn’t blow it. You got railroaded. You can’t ignore your family because of something that happened to you. Because of something you had no control over.,” she whispered aroundatay b”

Tanner forced a smile. “I blew it by hanging with the wrong crowd. Alex Juneau was not your average college student.” Instead of living on ramen noodles and peanut butter like the rest of their buddies, Alex ate steak and drove a convertible. Thinking about Alex only brought up the anger and resentment, and those two emotions had kicked Tanner’s ass enough already.

He eased Jess beneath him and trailed his lips to her ear. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“But—”

He silenced her with a kiss. “Shh.” Then he made her forget about everything but him.

____________

Jess woke with a start, her eyes opened wide as her heart thundered in her chest.

A dream. She’d been having a dream. More like a nightmare. She’d seen her family bloody and bruised and she’d been running, trying to get to them, but no matter how hard she’d tried, her legs had felt like bricks. No matter how close she’d gotten, they’d stayed out of her range. Blake had been calling her names from their childhood. Screaming at her. Teasing her.

She took a steadying breath, became of aware of Tanner holding her closely, their bodies skin to skin, her back to his front. She’d never met a guy who touched as much as he did. Her past boyfriends had been happy to sleep in their own zip code after sex, whether it be on the other side of bed or literally a different zip code.

Not Tanner. He touched, kept her close. He made her feel protected when her life seemed to be crumbling around her.

He’d opened up to her too. Let her see a little into his world, into his family. She wanted to know more. Wanted to know about his mother and sisters. Wanted to know if he was the oldest, youngest or in between. She wanted to know the man he was before prison.

“You okay?” His husky voice whispered in her ear. She’d woken him up.

She nodded. “Bad dream.” It was still dark out and Jess avoided the clock again. She’d rather not know how little sleep she’d had all night.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head. Didn’t want to think about her family bloody or bruised, or dead. She could barely remember the last time she spoke to them with the exception of that horrible phone call from the other night. Her memory seemed fuzzy since this whole thing started. Her time frame had gone to hell. Minutes had turned into hours and into days but she didn’t how many had passed. She’d barely slept, barely eaten…

“What are you thinking about?” Tanner gave her a small squeeze, his warm hand on her bare hip. When she didn’t immediately answer, he lifted on his elbow and pressed her shoulder back so she had to look up at him.

“I keep hearing their voices from that phone call.” He nodded as if he understood who she meant. “The way,” she whisperedOG" they sounded…” She couldn’t describe it.

“What?” Tanner asked. “You’ve got a funny look in your eye.”

“I’m just thinking about what Blake called me.” Tanner lifted curious brows and she clarified. “He called me Smelly Feet. He hasn’t called me that since we were tiny.” He hadn’t been the only one to call her a name from her distant past. “Eric called me Junior. That was weird too.”

Tanner smiled, the gesture softened his face, put lines around his mouth. “Junior? Is there a story behind that?”

“Mom still hadn’t married Dad when I was born, but they were seeing each other. He’d been proposing for months, but Mom kept saying no. She didn’t want him to marry her for a baby, she wanted him to marry her because he loved her. Which he did. Mom was just too stubborn to see it. Anyway, Dad wanted the baby to keep the first name tradition in his family and said the least Mom could do if she wouldn’t marry him was to give him that courtesy. So they named me after Dad. Well, kind of,” she explained. “His name is Jessie, but everyone calls him Jay for short. Everyone’s always called me Jess.

“Anyway, Eric used to tease me and call me Junior because I was named after Dad and he wasn’t.”

“Junior sounds better than Smelly Feet. Where’d that one come from?” Tanner stroked his fingers through her hair and the sensation zipped along her nerves with devastating effect. It seemed incongruous for him to be so gentle when everything about him screamed hard, tough and knocked around.

“Mom had taken us all out one day and when we got back in the car, I took my shoes off. I hadn’t worn socks and the stink hit fast and hard.” Jess grimaced at the memory. “The boys were all little and kids are so damn honest…there is and was no diplomacy when it comes to little boys telling their sister she has stinky feet.”

Tanner chuckled. “How old were you? I’d think it wouldn’t bother you.”

Jess had to think back. “The boys were really little and I had to help Mom a lot to keep them all corralled. “I was eleven. Fifteen years ago.”

“Fifteen years ago,” Tanner repeated. His face changed. His smile disappeared. “Didn’t your mother say something about fifteen years?”

Queasiness blossomed in Jess’s stomach and she sat up. “Yes. She did.” Jess recalled her mom’s words specifically. “She said it felt like she hadn’t seen me in fifteen years.”

“Did your brother call you Junior when he was that young?” Tanner asked, sitting up next to her.

“He did. He was six and he was a pain in the ass. His best friend was named after his father so he understood the concept. He was mad for a long time that he wasn’t named Jessie, since he was the boy.”

“Okay…so let’s think back to the whole phone call,” Tanner said. “Did anything else stand out as weird?” every cell ali

Chapter Eighteen

Tanner watched Jess’s fingers fly over the keyboard. Outside, streaks of early morning sunlight broke the horizon and started a new day. At least this one seemed off to a better start than the last few. Clearly Jess had a plan and Tanner let her work in peace. Bending low over her shoulder accomplished two things. First, he could watch what she was doing, and second, he could smell her. Yeah, he’d spent the night with her, but he wasn’t nearly satisfied. If anything he wanted her more. Something told him he’d just tapped into her sexuality and he wanted to keep exploring. See exactly what they could do together with a little more practice, a little more time.

A small gasp sounded in her throat and Tanner blinked his focus onto the screen instead of her exposed collarbone. “What?” he asked.

“Facinetti had a sister and she had a house in Santa Monica,” Jess said. She’d pulled up an obituary on the screen. “Sarah Facinetti, thirty-eight, of Santa Monica, died of cancer. This is from 2007. Her only surviving family member was her brother Paul from Las Vegas.”

Jess glanced at Tanner with hope widening her eyes.

“You think Facinetti’s making his home base at his sister’s house,” Tanner said.

“It’s a place to start. I just need to find the address.”

Tanner spun the chair around and crouched in front of her. “Slow down. Let’s say you find the house? What then? Are you going to go to the police?”

She shook her head and Tanner kept going. “Or do you plan to go in on your own? You need to think this through, Jess.”

“I can’t go to the police. If Facinetti finds out, then he’ll kill them. I have to go. I have a plan. Mostly.”

He hated the
mostly
part. “What’s your plan?”

“Facinetti has a lot of pull. A lot of money. Enough money to hire someone who can either find Maurice’s passwords or hack into his accounts. Chances are he can access Maurice’s money as long as he has his computer. I’ll offer to trade my family for the computer. And me.”

No, he couldn’t have heard that right. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me.” Her steely gaze turned desperate. “I don’t have a choice, Tanner. I have to do something. I’m the one that got them into this and I’m the one that has every cell alive and screamckatlistened to get them out.”

“What makes you think he’ll even go for this?” Tanner asked.

“Because, it’s all about the money.” Jess pushed the chair back and stood up, putting distance between them as she crossed to the window. “Honestly, I don’t know that he will go for it. I just know he wants his money and if he wants any chance to retrieve it, he’ll do what I say.”

She sounded so damn unsure and Tanner felt for her. Moving closer, he pulled her against his chest and wrapped her in his arms. She didn’t resist. She sunk into his body as if she belonged there. As if they’d been made for each other. It seemed odd how such a simple gesture could mean so much, how the feel of her could settle him the way nothing ever had.

Suddenly, Jess launched herself away from him. “I’ve got an idea!” Back at her father’s desk, she flipped through the Rolodex, picked up the phone and punched some numbers.

“Is this Troy Mills?” she asked. She blushed and looked at the wall clock across the room. “Sorry. I didn’t realize how early it is. My name is Jess St. John. I’m—” She listened and nodded. “Yes, Jay’s daughter. I know my timing is bad, but I really need your help. Could you find an address in Santa Monica for a Sarah or Paul Facinetti?” She explained how Sarah had died and Paul may have sold the house. She asked him to look into it as quickly and quietly as possible. Jess hung up the phone and met Tanner’s gaze triumphantly.

“Want to tell me who that was?” Tanner asked before Jess got a word out.

“Troy Mills. He’s a private investigator. My dad uses him when he needs information. He said he’d get back to me with an address this morning.” She bolted out of the room and Tanner followed.

“Where’re you going, now?” he said, jogging up the stairs behind her.

“Shower. I want to be ready to go when he calls back.”

“Sounds good to me.” Seemed like the perfect time to conserve water.

____________

“What was I supposed to do?” Anger laced Terry’s question as she stared at Jay. Lack of sleep and fried nerves made them all testy. “Let him just kiss me in front of you and the boys and not fight back? You know me better than that, Jay.”

How many times had they gone back and forth on this subject since yesterday? “You didn’t have to maim the guy, Ter. He’s going to be out for blood the next time he sees you.”

“Let him try.”

Jay rolled his eyes. Terry’s attitude had always been twice her size. “Just be smart is all I’m saying. To get out of this we have to be smart and stay alive.”

The boys all sat in their spots, pretending not to listen when they obviously heard every word. Jay and Terry never fought in front of the kids. ,” she whisperedK4atay bWell, almost never. They’d made a pact at the very beginning to be a united front as parents and to avoid arguments when the kids were around. But they were no longer kids and Jay refused to keep his opinion to himself with something this important.