Midnight Run (10 page)

The laugh that escaped her contained an edge of hysteria. “I’ve finally wigged out. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I should have known it would involve you.”

Jack grimaced. “I’m sorry I put you in that situation. I shouldn’t have let you come. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

Landis didn’t miss the lines of strain in his face or the tight set of his mouth. His eyes went repeatedly to the rearview mirror, to the road, to her. Always back to her. She watched as he raked a trembling hand through his hair, and she suddenly knew she wasn’t the only one who was scared.

“You didn’t drag me into anything,” she said quietly. “I came of my own free will.”

He cut her a hard look. “I manipulated you. I used you.”

“Jack, we made it out. We’re okay.”

Cursing, he rapped his palm against the steering wheel. “I nearly got you killed!”

Jack wasn’t prone to emotional outbursts. He was distant and aloof and damn hard to read most of the time. Even during the dark days of his trial, when he was fighting for his life, he’d done it with a cool stoicism. She knew that stony facade had to do with his childhood. That he’d learned to deal with the pain of being shuffled from foster home to foster home by locking his emotions down tight. But she knew he felt things deeply, that he bled just like everyone else.

Landis had seen a glimpse of his emotional side only once in all the time she’d known him. The night Evan died he’d opened up to her. They’d held each other and cried that night. They’d never discussed it since, but she’d never forgotten it. She knew there were plenty of emotions buried deep inside him. That he would show them now gave her pause.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” she said firmly.

He shot her a sideways glance, his jaw flexing. She wanted to know what was going on inside his head, but knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t say.

“You don’t think he made out the license plates, do you?” she asked after a moment.

He shook his head. “I switched your plates with the ones on Chandler’s truck before we left the cabin.”

“You think like a criminal.”

“Keeps you one step ahead of the bad guys. That’s what made me such a good cop.”

The wistful tone of his voice struck a chord within her. And with sudden clarity, she realized the full scope of everything he’d lost. That he’d endured so much hardship, so much unfairness—and never lost hope—touched a place inside her that was battered and raw. A part of her ached for him because she was finally beginning to understand what the last year had done to him.

Closing her eyes, she leaned against the seat and tried to shut off her mind. But her mind refused to obey. She wasn’t exactly sure when it happened, but she no longer believed Jack had murdered Evan. He might cross lines and push limits, but she knew deep down he wasn’t capable of murdering his partner. Maybe that was why she’d risked everything going into that office with him tonight. Maybe because a small part of her thought she’d owed it to him.

Troubled by the repercussions of that, she looked out the window and watched the lights and mountain terrain fly past. She could no longer deny the connection between them. A connection that hadn’t been severed by time or circumstance. And she knew it was long past time for her and Jack to have a serious talk. Not about Evan or Cyrus Duke or the dangerous situation they were embroiled in. But about the bond between them.

She found it ironic that of all the things they needed to discuss, their relationship was the one that frightened her the most. Jack had made it clear that he wanted her on a physical level. But a one-night stand with an escaped convict wasn’t an option. Even if he were able to prove his innocence, Landis refused to give her heart to a man who would hand it back to her in pieces.

The only question that remained was how she was going to keep that from happening.

It was 1:00 a.m. when Landis and Jack arrived at Chandler’s cabin. A full moon cast pearlescent light over crystalline snow, illuminating the mountains to the east. The temperature hovered around zero, and Landis felt the chill all the way to her bones.

Anxious to get a look at the file, she sat at the table and opened the file while Jack built a fire. She spent ten minutes organizing police reports, court transcripts, witness statements and general correspondence. The appeal documents were stored neatly inside a smaller brown folder. Setting the other paperwork aside, she put the appeal file in front of her and began sifting through it.

It was obvious Aaron Chandler and his army of paralegals, interns and junior attorneys had been working fervently on Jack’s case. Like her, Chandler had been a perfectionist. His work was thorough and succinct, trademarks of a good lawyer.

Jack approached the table with two mugs. “Coffee?”

Absently, Landis nodded, her attention focused on the documents in front of her. It felt good to be back on familiar ground. She was much more comfortable with legal documents and court exhibits than she was with breaking into buildings and dodging bullets.

“What exactly do you hope to find in this file?” she asked.

Putting his elbows on the table, Jack rubbed his hands over the dark stubble of his jaw. He looked worn out, she thought, and wondered how long he could keep this up. How long would he try before giving up on clearing his name and making a run for it?

“The last time I met with Chandler,” he said, “he was working on getting copies of wires from a bank in Salt Lake City to an account in the Cayman Islands. The Cayman account was in Evan’s name. The checks were coming from Duke’s restaurant payroll account.”

“Evan was too smart to put an account in his own name,” she said.

“I’m just telling you what Chandler told me. I haven’t seen any of the statements or transaction docs myself.”

“If they exist.”

“Why would Chandler lie?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed in frustration. “It’s not like this case makes a whole lot of sense to begin with.”

“A lot of what happened in the last year doesn’t make sense.”

“It seems like the more we dig, the more confusing this mess becomes.”

The intensity of his gaze unnerved her. She told herself it was because she was tired. Because Jack was in deep trouble and she didn’t know how to help him. But she saw the question in his eyes. A question she had no desire to answer.

“You know I didn’t murder Evan, don’t you?” he asked quietly.

Not quite sure how to respond without venturing down a very dangerous path, Landis looked down at the document in front of her, hating that she couldn’t meet his gaze. “I’ve seen enough to know your case warrants looking into.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer I’ve got.” She saw a flash of anger in his eyes an instant before she looked away. It bothered her that she couldn’t hold his gaze. But she didn’t want him to see the uncertainty she knew her eyes would reveal.

She blew out a sigh. “When was your last meeting with Chandler?”

“A couple of weeks ago. He came to the prison. We went into an interview room. He updated me on my case and stayed for about an hour.”

“Did he actually show you any of the evidence he had on Evan?”

Jack’s eyes hardened. “No. But he assured me he was close to proving Evan had taken money from Duke. That one of Duke’s men had pulled the trigger. Landis, for God’s sake, Jimmy Beck told me as much before he got stabbed to death in the shower.”

Reaching into her bag, she extracted her glasses and shoved them onto her nose. “I want to go through everything. Every piece of paper. Notes. Documents. Billing hours. If there’s a grocery list in this file, I want to see it.” She felt his gaze on her, but she didn’t risk looking at him. He was watching her too closely, and she was still feeling the remnants of adrenaline. The combination was doing a number on her ability to concentrate.

“Hopefully, he wasn’t the kind of lawyer who kept everything in his head,” she finished.

“When did you start wearing glasses, Red?”

Annoyed that she was suddenly concerned with the way she looked, Landis set the file aside and glared at him over the rims. “They’re reading glasses, and I got them the last time I went to the eye doctor.” Her voice was firm, but she felt like squirming beneath his scrutiny.

“You look really good in them,” he said.

She knew better than to be flattered. But she was. Ridiculously so. “We don’t have much time, Jack. It’s late, and we’ve got about four hours of paper to go through. I’d appreciate it if you’d just—”

“Shut up and get to work?” One side of his mouth pulled into a smile.

She couldn’t help but grin back. “Well, yeah.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Landis handed him a stack of paper, then set to work. She tried to concentrate on the documents in front of her, but her attention kept drifting to Jack. She watched him covertly as he peeled off his coat and draped it over the back of his chair. Elbows on the table, he opened the file and began to read. The hard-edged desperation she’d seen the day before had been replaced by cool determination. Even with the cut above his eye and the bruise on his cheek, he was attractive. He was tall and lean, and it was damn near impossible for her not to notice how good he looked in the flannel shirt and faded jeans. She’d forgotten a man could look that good.

Unhappy with the direction of her thoughts, Landis rose and refilled her cup. At the table, Jack scowled at a particularly complicated-looking legal document.
He still looks like a cop,
she thought. A career-minded detective hell-bent on solving a case. Taking in the tough facade, she never would have guessed his life was the one on the line. Or that the odds of the situation working out in his favor were slim to none.

Worse, however, was the knowledge that she cared a lot more than was wise—and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about any of it.

Chapter 8

“N
obody said this was going to be easy.” Jack slid the last document into the file, shoved away from the table, and rose. Needles shot up his calf where his leg had fallen asleep. His shoulder ached dully where the bullet had grazed him, keeping time with the headache thundering behind his eyes.

Across from him, Landis lowered her face into her hands and rubbed her eyes. “That appears to be the theme we’ve been keeping.”

Jack watched her flame-colored hair cascade down and felt the familiar tightening in his belly. She’d worked alongside him through the night, guiding him through some of the more complicated legal documents. Her knowledge and attention to detail impressed him, and he couldn’t help but think if he ever needed a lawyer, he wouldn’t mind having her in his corner.

Too bad she was the prosecutorial type.

He stretched and looked out the window. It was still dark, but dawn was only a couple of hours away. Exhaustion and frustration and the very real fear that he wasn’t going to find the proof he needed to clear his name taunted him with renewed vigor. They’d gone over every piece of paper with a fine-toothed comb right down to Chandler’s documented telephone conversations and handwritten notes. After risking their lives breaking into the lawyer’s office, the file had yielded exactly zilch.

The disappointment came with a vengeance, a rabid animal tearing into him with sharp teeth. He hated feeling so hopeless. But he was getting damn tired of hitting brick wall after brick wall.

Landis leaned back in her chair and sighed. “There’s no proof of anything in this file. There has to be another one that we missed.”

“Even if there is another file, we’re not going to be able to get our hands on it,” he said. “Not after what happened. Chandler’s office is going to be locked down tighter than a prison.”

“Maybe the police confiscated it. Maybe Chandler was working on it and took it home—”

“We’re running out of time.”

“Maybe I could go to the presiding judge and—”

“I need to get some air,” he cut in, sudden anger at the situation making his voice sharper than he’d intended.

“Look, I know you’re frustrated, but—”

“That’s not the right word for what’s going on inside me right now.”

“Jack—”

“For God’s sake, Landis. You’re a prosecutor. You know good and well what I’m facing. Think about it!”

Her expression turned fierce. Never taking her eyes from his, she rose and approached him. “If there’s something to be found, we’ll find it. You have to believe that.”

“Forgive me if I don’t share your optimism right now.” Snagging his coat off the chair, he started for the door.

“Jack?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even pause as he crossed through the mudroom. He needed a few minutes alone. A few minutes where he didn’t have to sit across from a woman who made him want all the things he knew he could never have.

He went out through the back door. The cold sank in all the way to his bones, but he welcomed the diversion. Anything was better than the hopelessness and utter bitterness churning inside him. He walked to the old pickup parked beneath the carport a few yards from the cabin. Because he didn’t want to go back inside any time soon, Jack figured now might be a good time to see if it ran.

Climbing into the truck, he stuck the key in the ignition and twisted. The motor groaned like a sick cow. Cursing, he pumped the gas and tried again. On the third try the engine sputtered to life. White exhaust billowed into the cold air.

He should have been relieved that at least he had transportation. But the knowledge did little for his frame of mind. If the truck was registered, the police would soon know about it—if they didn’t already. If luck was on his side, he figured he had another day before they started looking for it.

He sat in the truck and watched the moon set over the jagged line of trees to the east, and tried not to think. He tried not to think about the injustices that had been inflicted upon him. Of what those injustices had done to his life.

It seemed as if he’d spent his entire life on the outside looking in. As a young orphan, all he’d wanted was a family to love him. To be like other kids, with parents that cared. But shuffled from family to family, Jack had learned the sting of abandonment at a very early age. Then along came police officer Mike Morgan and his wife, Pat. Two good people who’d taken in a troubled boy and turned his life around.

Mike had taught Jack how to be a man. He’d taught him what was important in life. Family. Career. Love. Mike had taught Jack not only how to give love, but how to receive it. Mike had believed in him when no one else had. Jack had worked hard for that love, even harder for Mike’s respect. Sitting in the truck with the world crashing down all around him, he wished like hell Mike were alive today to tell him what to do.

He watched a silver cloud skid past the moon, and his thoughts shifted to Landis. A dangerous topic considering the electricity that snapped between them every time they were within shouting distance. He’d known he would have to deal with his feelings for her sooner or later.

It was then that Jack realized that Landis was at the root of his despondency. As hard as he’d tried not to let her get to him, she had, like a sliver of bamboo being shoved slowly under a fingernail. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. She’d influenced his life in ways she would never know, pulled him back from a dark edge when he’d needed it badly. Landis was decent and kind and still saw that indelible line between right and wrong; she still believed in doing the right thing. She represented light and laughter and proved to him that good still prevailed over evil.

Jack had known she would help him. He’d known she would risk everything to do it. And just as he’d known it was wrong of him to manipulate her and drag her into this mess, he’d done it anyway. He’d used her. He’d just about gotten her killed.

He couldn’t ask her for anything more.

As much as he needed her—as desperately as he wanted to be with her—he knew that asking her to do more was a line he would never cross. He had to send her away. Before he ruined her life. Before she got hurt.

The thought cut him with unexpected sharpness. The pain that followed came so hard and fast that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. A week ago when he’d been lying in his cell planning his great escape, he’d believed fate would cooperate, that he could make it happen.

Reality had proven him wrong.

The best he could hope for was a safe trip through Mexico to a country where nobody spoke English. There weren’t extradition laws in Colombia. He’d give himself another twenty-four hours. If he couldn’t turn up any solid evidence, he’d drive the truck as far south as it would take him and try like hell not to think of all the things he’d left behind.

The cabin smelled of coffee and burning pine when he entered. He hung his coat on the rack in the mudroom. Mild surprise rippled through him when he found the kitchen empty. He walked into the main room fully intending to tell Landis to get in the Jeep and forget she’d ever seen him. But the moment he caught sight of her curled on the sofa, his mind blanked.

She’d loosened her hair at some point, and it spread out in a halo of shimmering silk. Her lashes lay dark and thick against her pale complexion. He noticed the dusting of freckles on her nose, and a rush of affection engulfed him. She’d always disliked her freckles. He couldn’t imagine why when they charmed him so completely.

His eyes traveled to her mouth and a different kind of tension quivered through him. Her full lips were slightly open and wet. The memory of the kiss they’d shared the night before drifted through his mind and he went instantly hard. He remembered every sigh, every touch, every subtle shifting of hips with stark clarity. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that in the end, she’d wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.

The sudden need to touch her, to run his fingers through her hair, to hold her lovely face in his hands and kiss her mouth was as powerful as his need for his next breath. But because he couldn’t do any of those things, he simply stood there, aching for her, and put every detail to memory because he knew that all too soon it would be all he had left.

Jack didn’t want this to go any further. It was bad enough wanting her on a physical level. But to care for her was something else altogether. He didn’t want his emotions getting in the way of what he had to do.

He closed his eyes against a sudden, wrenching pang of loneliness. As much as he wanted to go to her, as much as he wanted to touch her and lose himself in the soft warmth of her body, he knew that for sanity’s sake he couldn’t. He wouldn’t do that to her. Wouldn’t do it to himself.

Logic told him to wake her and send her back to her cabin right now. But the part of him that wasn’t feeling quite so logical wanted just one more night. Acquiescing to that stronger side, Jack walked into the bedroom, pulled the quilt and pillow from the bed and carried them to the living room. He covered Landis with the quilt, then eased the pillow under her head.

He had every intention of going back into the bedroom. Of climbing into the cold, empty bed, and getting some badly needed sleep. But his willpower failed him. Kicking off his boots, he lay down beside her. Hands laced behind his head, he watched the fire flicker against the ceiling and tried to concentrate on the dull pain in his shoulder, on all the things he needed to do the next day. But nothing could take his mind off the sweet ache of being so close to her. Of feeling the soft warmth of her body next to his.

He didn’t know why he was subjecting himself to this.

But for a few short hours, he would be with her. And in the morning, he would tell her goodbye for the last time.

Fog rolled over the casket like a billowing, white blanket. Landis watched as two police officers donned in full dress uniform folded the American flag in a neat triangle and handed it to Evan’s widow. Her two nieces stood quietly by their mother’s side, their young faces confused and streaked with tears.

The twenty-one gun salute shattered the morning air until Landis thought the blasts would never end. Her mother’s high-pitched keening punctuated the profound silence that followed. Across from her, Jack LaCroix stood stone-faced, his dark eyes never leaving the glossy wood coffin.

Only when the lid panel of the casket began to open did she realize this wasn’t how she remembered Evan’s funeral. Horror engulfed her when the silhouette of a man inside the coffin came into view through the swirling fog. Not Evan, she thought. It couldn’t be her brother who now sat bolt upright within the plush interior of that dreadful box. Evan was dead.

Her heart thudded painfully as she strained to identify the impostor. A break in the fog revealed a man with dark hair, steel-blue eyes, an angular face that would have been handsome if not for the glint of cruelty. Recognition dawned, followed by a flash of disbelief. Cyrus Duke…

Her blood ran cold when his eyes met hers. She saw evil in the depths of his gaze, felt it grip her like a clawed hand. Shock enveloped her when he raised the pistol and leveled it at her chest. When he grinned, she suddenly knew he was going to pull the trigger. He was going to kill her. That he would enjoy it.

Landis turned to run, but her legs seemed to be weighted. A scream bubbled up from inside her. She braced for the hot punch of agony in her back. The blast deafened her. Her scream echoed in her head as pain streaked up her spine. Oh, God, she didn’t want to die—

“Landis!”

Heart pounding, she fought the hands that held her.

“Easy. It’s me.” Jack’s voice cut through the fog.

Landis jolted awake. The scream in her throat died as the nightmare receded. Awareness of her surroundings rushed in to calm her. She was in Aaron Chandler’s cabin. On the sofa. With Jack. She must have fallen asleep….

Shaken and embarrassed, suddenly aware that he was leaning over her, touching her, Landis pulled away and sat up. “I’m okay,” she said quickly.

“You cried out.”

His hands gripped her biceps. His fingers were warm and incredibly reassuring against her chilled flesh. For a crazy instant, she wanted to lean against him and let him hold her. It had been such a long time since anyone had held her. Since Jack had held her.

Knowing they were dangerous thoughts at a moment like this, she shook off his hands and pulled away. “Just a nightmare,” she said.

“Must have been a bad one.”

She remembered the hot punch of the bullet in her back and shivered. “It was…vivid. I never dream like that.”

“The last couple of days have been stressful.”

Slowly, her nerves began to steady. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m not the one who’s scared.” When she shot him a look he added, “you’re still shaking.”

Because she didn’t want him to know just how rattled she was, Landis rose and walked to the hearth without looking at him. The room had grown cold during the night, so she tossed a log onto the embers. Thin light floated in around the heavy drapes, and she realized with mild surprise that it was dawn.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked. “Sometimes it helps.”

She looked over to see him folding the quilt he must have covered her with at some point during the night. His hair was tousled, and he had that disheveled look about him usually brought on by a rude awakening. His jaw badly needed a razor. He shouldn’t have looked appealing, but he did.

“What would really help,” she said, “is a break in your case.”

He crossed to her. She tensed when he reached out, jolted when he set his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Red. I think you know it, only you don’t know when to give up.”

A tremor went through her, but she knew it had nothing to do with the cold or the nightmare and everything to do with the way he was looking at her, the warmth of his touch, the finality of his words. “It’s too early in the game to give up.”

A wan smile touched his mouth. “I’d wanted to talk about the other thing before you go, but I think we both can agree that it’s best if we don’t at this point.”