Bear Claw Bodyguard (16 page)

Feeling smaller and weaker than she had in years, maybe ever, she did as she was told, then flinched when he whipped the elastic cord around her wrists and then
latched the curved ends together. “It’s too tight,” she said, voice breaking. “My hands are going numb.”

“I don’t give a… Damn it.” He loosened the cord one turn and refastened it. Then he leaned in and gave her a thorough but impersonal pat-down, finding nothing because she was wearing borrowed clothes and had her own stuff in her knapsack back at the lab. Grimacing, he shot her a narrow-eyed glare. “Remember, you do anything to draw attention, and you’re going to be responsible for the deaths of anyone who comes after you.”

She nodded miserably, and then screamed involuntarily when he slammed the trunk. The noise was very loud, very final, and it left her alone in the darkness knowing one thing for certain: unless she thought fast and managed to do something to save herself, she wasn’t ever going to get a chance to tell Jack that she was sorry for what she’d said to Chondra, and that she hadn’t meant it. She had been scared of her feelings, scared of what they might mean and what kind of trouble they could get her into.

Now, though, she knew what it felt like to be really, truly scared for her life. And it was very different from the way he made her feel…so different, in fact, that she thought he might make her feel something other than fear, after all. She wasn’t ready to give it a name yet, but as the vehicle bumped its way down from the elevated parking area and the mayor accelerated away, taking her God only knew where, she whispered deep in her heart,
Please, Jack, trust me. Trust us. And please don’t think I left without saying goodbye.

On his way back to the task force’s war room after his run-in with Tori, Jack got waylaid by two guys with legit questions about the vehicles and arms he’d seen at the encampment, and two others who could have answered their own damn questions if they’d just read the transcripts of his and Tori’s debriefings. Finally free of them, and without having caused major bloodshed, he decided on a detour to the vending machines. Like a soda was going to fix things.

But as he passed a cracked-open door, a voice called, “Hey, Jack. Got a second?”

He had turned with a snarl before it registered: Tucker’s door, Tucker’s voice. He exhaled and made an effort to smooth out as he strode through the door.

Tucker must have seen his first reaction, though, because he waved to the visitor’s chair. “Sit. Talk to me.” And when Jack made an “it’s nothing” gesture, he pointed to the chair. “I said sit. The last time you got this wound tight, my witness ended up in the E.R. Not your fault directly, granted, but I know you. If you’d been on your game, that guy never would have gone down.”

“Hell.” Jack sat. “Yeah, you’re right about that.” At Tucker’s surprised look, he shrugged. “You told me to
use my time in the woods to do some thinking. Mission accomplished. I won’t be doing Ray any favors by going off half-cocked or screwing up perfectly good police work, and I’m sure as hell not interested in helping out the members of the Shadow Militia by giving their eventual lawyers something to work with on getting them off.” He nodded. “I’m good. I’m solid. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Tucker regarded him for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy that. So what was the snarl for? Someone hassling you?”

Jack intended to brush him off with a vague reference to the two idiots who had decided to waste time tracking him down and quizzing him rather than reading the damn transcript—or, hell, asking someone who had read it. Somehow, though, the words got all turned around in his brain, and what he wound up saying was, “How is it that two rational, intelligent adults could have entire conversations where they end up agreeing with each other, but it later turns out that they thought they agreed to two completely different things?”

Tucker blinked. Then the corner of his mouth twitched. “Welcome to the world of adult relationships.”

“I’m being serious here.”

“So am I.” Glancing at the framed photo of his wife and daughter, as if wary on some level that they could hear him, he said, “Look, men and women are wired differently, so sometimes they’re just not going to process the same information in the same way. Add in some preconceptions and the basic human desire to get our own way if it isn’t going to hurt anyone else, and you’ve got the potential to do some major talking past each other.”

Jack frowned and shook his head. “Kayla and I never did that.”

“Or else you did and neither of you ever figured it out. Which might be part of why it didn’t work. You weren’t pushing hard enough to get to the bottom of things.”

“We…” Jack’s brain stuttered to a halt. “What?”

“I take it you and Tori had a fight?” Tucker shrugged. “Well, fights happen in every relationship, sometimes more so when you’re off to a quick start like the two of you seem to be.”

Still trying to catch up with Tucker’s offhand comment about him and Kayla, Jack said, “Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know. For starters, we’re not in a relationship, which was news to me.” Without really meaning to, he gave his boss a five-minute rundown of his and Tori’s interactions, which to him had been a romance, to her a good time. He kept it tame, knowing that Tucker would fill in the blanks as needed, and ended with, “I don’t know, maybe she’s right. Why make ourselves crazy trying to make it work?”

Tucker just shot him this smug Cheshire cat grin and said, “Because when it works, it’s the best damn thing in the universe.” He tapped the picture frame. “I wasn’t looking for this when I came here, but I found it, and I worked for it and made the changes I needed to make. We both did, and I’m damned grateful for that—for them—every single day. Alyssa made my life better and the baby made us a family. That’s the golden ring, Jack, at least it turned out to be for me. And I think it’s even more that way for you. You’re a domesticated kind of guy, a family man. You deserve that…but it’s not going to just show up on your doorstep, and it might not even show up when, how and looking like you want it to.” Tucker paused and
looked from the photo back to Jack. “I don’t know if she’s the one for you, buddy, but she’s sure as hell the most interesting candidate since I’ve known you. You’re fired up like I’ve never seen you before, and that’s not just the way the case is breaking. It’s her, and the two of you together. There’s something there, and I think you should ask yourself whether, if you let her go now, you’re going to kick yourself bloody later.”

Head spinning, Jack said, “You’re saying I should…what? Offer to go with her? Try to talk her into staying here? Do the long-distance thing?”

“None of that matters really until you’re sure she’s the one and vice versa. And I predict that when you’ve gotten to know her a bit better, and you’re sure she’s it for you, then the other stuff isn’t going to seem nearly so important. This isn’t real estate, Jack, with all the ‘location, location, location’ crap. This is romance, and it’s about the two of you and whether you care enough about each other to make it work.”

“But the things she said to her friend…”

“Could have been Tori’s way of saying she didn’t want to talk about it…or maybe she wants to mean it because of the way she’s been living her life. Because from the looks of you two together this morning, you’re probably not the only one who’s doing some reevaluating and not finding it all that comfortable a process.” Tucker paused, then grinned. “But like I said, when it’s right, it’s so damn worth it.” And this time when he went for his drawer, he bypassed the antacids and went for an energy bar instead, as if to say
It’s the job that runs me ragged; being a husband and father is the good part.

“You know,” Jack said reflectively after a moment, “I
think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say about anything ever.” When Tucker’s eyes kindled, he held up a hand. “And no, that’s not all I got out of it. I got a hell of a lot out of it, in fact, so thanks. I appreciate it.”

“And you’re going to go back down and talk to her?”

Jack glanced in the direction of the vending machines and the task force’s war room, then the opposite way, to the stairs leading down. “Yeah, I’m going to try, anyway. The whole talking past each other thing has me a little on edge.”

“Mars. Venus. It happens. If this thing is going to happen between you two, you’ll work it out. If not, well, it’s good exercise for the next time around.”

When Jack’s gut tightened at how casually Tucker was throwing around the idea of a “next time,” he was forced to admit—inwardly, at least—that he was already a fair ways down the long slide of falling for Tori. Which was probably why it had ripped him up so badly to hear her dismiss him like that to her friend, and why he’d pushed things further than he probably should have with her.

Well, she’d had some time to take a breath—they both had. Maybe it was time for round two. “The task force is meeting in fifteen,” he said with a nod. “I’ll see you in there.”

The corners of Tucker’s eyes crinkled. “Good luck.”

“Thanks, I’m gonna—” He broke off at a shout from out in the hallway, which was followed by a volley of questions, and then more shouts, unintelligible but urgent. “What the hell?”

Jack spun for the door as Tucker got up and moving, and both of their phones started going off simultaneously. The yelling got louder, the ringing kept up and things were
teetering on the brink of chaos when Tucker tossed his phone to Jack with a terse “Take this,” and stepped out into the hallway to bellow, “Quiet!”

The bull pen went dead silent. Even the on-loaner feds clammed up, although they made it look like they were just playing along. The phones stopped ringing, dumping to voice mail.

Pointing at a grizzled veteran who still wore his uniform because he’d had no interest in being promoted to soft clothes, Tucker said, “Twenty words or less. What the hell is going on?”

“The prints came back from the brake and steering lines of Detective Williams’s car, sir. He didn’t even wear gloves, cocky bastard.” The sneer in his voice made it sound personal.

“Who did the prints ping to?” Tucker prodded.

It was Jack, in the middle of checking their voice mails, who cursed and said, “It was Proudfoot.”

Tucker whipped around. “The mayor? Seriously?” But he was more surprised than disbelieving. He, like most of the others, was plenty ready to pin something on the slick bastard.

That it had turned out to be this big…well, yeah, that was a hell of a surprise.

“Son of a bitch,” Jack muttered under his breath as it started to sink in. “The bastard tried to kill me and Tori personally. Why, because we were getting too close to the drug operations? Is that why he’s been making it so damned difficult to get choppers and supplies up to the Forgotten?” All of a sudden, a bunch of things that had seemed like old-fashioned penny-pinching started to seem more like part of a larger, more insidious whole.

“War room, now,” Tucker snapped, waving them all in that direction. As an aside to Jack, he said, “Sorry, you’re going to have to postpone the semi-groveling.”

“Duty calls.” And there was no way he was missing out on this takedown, especially knowing that Tori was safely tucked away downstairs, with a whole layer of cops between her and their enemy…aka one Percy Proudfoot, slimeball mayor of Bear Claw City.

The task force meeting was brief, mostly because they couldn’t afford to give any leaks time to warn the mayor. Although the information flow had been kept as tight as possible, there was always the risk, especially when politics were involved. The plan was simple: lock down the mayor’s office, his mansion and the private residence he’d kept hold of when he moved into the mansion. The warrants were being issued, the evidence being lined up and vetted by the prosecutors. The moment the task force had the go-ahead, they were moving in.

That meant, though, that Jack had a few minutes before he needed to be rolling. As he headed for the door, he caught Tucker’s eye and got a nod, along with a gesture that he thought meant
Good luck.
Or maybe it was more along the lines of
Don’t get too caught up in the little stuff when the big picture works so damn well,
which was what he was starting to tell himself. Because Tucker was right: if he and Tori worked together as a couple—and it sure as hell seemed like they did—then they could make the other stuff happen, one way or another.

That was a big “if,” though. Because despite Tucker’s optimism that she, too, had been in mid-freakout over how fast things were moving, she’d been pretty damn clear that she had been in it for the fun. So the question was, had
that been a defense mechanism or was that really the way she felt?

He was about to find out.

“It’s me,” he called as he hit the bottom step. “We need to talk.” Then he stopped dead, his stomach sinking as his instincts warned him that he was alone in the basement lab. Still, though, he called, “Tori? You in here?” and did a quick walk-through to be sure.

With each empty room, though, a hollow pressure built in his chest, because those same instincts said she hadn’t been upstairs. He would have seen her if she had been. Moreover, his gut said she was all the way gone.

The realization filled him with a turbid mix of emotions. Disbelief, dismay, resentment, betrayal, grief…all of them mixed and mashed together until they formed the inevitable one-two punch of conclusion: one, he was too late to stop her from leaving. And two, she hadn’t wanted him enough to stay.

“Damn it,” he said softly, not sure which of them he was madder at just then—himself for not pushing harder when he’d had the chance, or her for not pushing at all. Not that it really mattered right then—she was undoubtedly headed for the airport under police escort, although he would double-check to make sure she hadn’t gone off on her own. Either way, she was back on the road, he was back on the Death Stare case and the task force was about to move out and go after their primary suspect. Maybe things had turned out the way they were meant to, after all.

“Forget that,” he muttered under his breath, and pivoted on his heel. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but
he knew one thing for sure: he wasn’t ready for them to be over. Not by a long shot.

He was halfway across the room when he saw what should have been obvious to his detective self from the very first moment—namely that she’d left her knapsack behind.

And Tori would never, ever leave her knapsack behind.

Blood running suddenly cold in his veins, he backtracked to the computer station where she’d been sitting. That was definitely her knapsack, and when he tapped the mouse to awaken the computer she’d been using, her email was still open on the main screen. He scanned quickly, didn’t see anything that jumped out at him as being a reason for her to take off without her stuff. And yet… Digging into his pocket for the small flashlight he carried there, he clicked on the light and shined it at an oblique angle onto the waxed lab floor.

There were scuff marks. Lots of them. All right near where she’d been sitting.

“Damn it,” he grated, gut knotting on a surge of self-directed bile as the worst-case scenario—that she’d been taken—suddenly got way more plausible. “You rotten… Tucker!” he bellowed up the stairs, already moving in that direction. “We’ve got—” His phone rang, interrupting him.

Thinking it was Tucker calling to tell him that she’d been spotted or, better yet, brought back in safely, he flipped open the phone and said tersely, “This is Williams.”

“Jack?” The one small word, a single syllable uttered in a trembling version of Tori’s usual sass, nearly brought him to his knees.

Heart thudding double time, he clutched the phone and rasped, “
Tori,
baby, are you okay? Where are you? How did you—”

“No questions,” a man’s voice broke in, clipped and no-nonsense. “That’s rule number one. Rule number two is that you don’t let on, not even with a twitch, that you’re talking to me. If I see your people anywhere near me between now and when I get what I want, then the woman dies.”