Run From Fear (25 page)

“She’s got me right where she wants me, all right,” Danny said with a rueful shake of his head, “but at least she’s mine.” When Jack ignored the pointed comment, Danny shrugged out of his jacket and pointed his chin at the ice swan, which was on its side on the flagstones. “Help me get that thing out of the way.”

Jack shrugged off his own jacket and followed Danny’s lead. “Where do you want to take it?” Jack waited as Danny did a quick consult with one of the caterers.

“Kitchen.” Danny scored several cloth napkins from a server and handed some to Jack.

The swan was mostly intact, though the spindly neck had snapped. Jack wrapped his hands in napkins to block some of the cold. He righted the thing and squatted on one side as Danny took position on the other. Grunting, he and Danny stood with the sculpture, which had to weigh at least one hundred fifty pounds, balanced between them.

The crowd that had gathered parted as they made their way slowly and carefully toward the door.

“Speaking of girls who aren’t yours, do you have any leads about who’s bugging Talia?” Danny said, his voice straining a little under the weight of the ice.

At the mention of her name, Jack did a quick scan of the crowd. He didn’t see the bright greenish blue of the dress or the honey glow of her skin, and figured she must still be helping Alyssa. Probably for the best, considering he was going to have to concentrate to maneuver the block of ice through the house and Talia in that dress was hell on his equilibrium.

“Not really,” Jack said, swearing a little as one of the napkins wrapping his hand slipped and the side of his right palm went flush with the ice. He blocked the discomfort,
carefully stepping through the sliding glass door that led into the Taggarts’ living room as he waited for the numbness to set in. “We know it has to be someone connected to David Maxwell—everything goes back to him.”

“Except that fucked-up DVD.”

“Yeah, but since David’s connection to Nate Brewster was what got Talia on Nate’s radar in the first place, it’s still connected.” But Danny had a point. Up until the DVD, the tokens, or whatever you wanted to call them, weren’t related to the violence. Like the giver had suddenly snapped, losing patience for the light torment and going straight for the jugular.

Still, escalation wasn’t unusual when you were dealing with predators. Jack knew too well a man could go from giving a woman flowers to stabbing her in the heart in the blink of an eye.

“The obvious one to look at is Margaret Grayson,” Jack continued, referring to David Maxwell’s widow, released from prison after serving only eighteen months because she agreed to give up all of the details of her husband’s illegal activities, which spanned the globe. “Cole’s been checking up on her but she’s keeping a low profile, hiding out at the family estate on Bainbridge Island.”

“Doesn’t mean she didn’t hire muscle to harass Talia.”

Jack paused as a guest squeezed past them in the hallway that led to the kitchen.

“True, but so far we haven’t been able to find any links,” he said as they finally backed through the door of the kitchen and sidled up to the sink.

“On three,” Danny said, and started the count. On three they lifted the bird over the lip of the sink and lowered it carefully into the stainless-steel basin.

Danny grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge and offered one to Jack. Jack shook his head. “Until we find this fuck, I’m on the clock twenty-four-seven.”

Danny just rolled his eyes and took a long pull on his bottle.

“Thanks for letting us use Toni, by the way. I know she doesn’t have much time, with the baby and all, but with her digging around in Margaret’s dealings, if there’s something to be found, she’ll find it.”

Danny tilted his beer at Jack. “It’s not generosity. I need you to figure this shit out so you can get back to work. The Blankenthorns are covered, but I’ve had five calls from clients in the Seattle area that I’ve had to turn down.”

Jack felt a surge of guilt. “You know I don’t want to let you down. But what would you do? What if it was Caroline?”

Danny cocked a dark eyebrow and folded his massive arms across his chest. “Caroline’s my wife. I love her more than anything. But as far as I can tell, you and Talia aren’t even bumping uglies so—”

Jack was on him in a second, the collar of Danny’s shirt twisted in his fist as he shoved him up against the stainless-steel refrigerator. “Don’t fucking talk that way about her.”

Danny’s mouth tilted into a half smile. “Nice to see you got that temper of yours under control.”

Jack felt a vein pulse in his forehead and forced himself to release his grip on Danny’s shirt as he stepped back. As he returned to awareness, he realized several of the servers had frozen, eyes wide as they wondered if the two men were going to throw down.

Danny rolled his shoulders and smoothed his shirtfront. “You want to go, we’ll go, just not at my dad’s engagement party.”

Embarrassment heated Jack’s face as the full magnitude of what he’d been about to do hit him. Shit, he’d been about to start a brawl with his best friend at a party celebrating Joe’s engagement.

“And I shouldn’t have talked like that,” Danny conceded, “but you’re not some dumb fuck just out of basic anymore. You can’t throw everything away on some woman who doesn’t even appreciate you. Look at what happened with Gina—”

Jack closed his eyes, trying to block out the memories. “She’s not Gina. It’s nothing like that.”

Danny was silent for a few seconds. “Maybe not. All I know is I remember how you were then, and I remember what happened after, and I don’t want to see you fucking yourself all up again for another one of your broken birds.”

Jack flexed his hand. He didn’t want to argue with Danny about how what he was doing for Talia had nothing to do with his mother or with Gina, or how he wasn’t using her to fix anything that had gone wrong in his past.

It was about Talia herself, and keeping her safe and whole so she could have the life she’d worked so hard to build.

Even if all indications showed she didn’t have any interest in that life including him. “There’s more to it than the gifts. A cop came to see us the other night.” His gaze darted around the kitchen. The catering staff was bustling around, loading trays up with food and exchanging broken martini glasses—from the swan fiasco, no
doubt—for undamaged ones. “Let’s go someplace a little more quiet.”

Danny nodded and led Jack into the living room. Through the sliding glass doors on one wall, they could look out and see the party in action, but no one would hear their conversation. “The cops find something? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t specifically about Talia’s case, and they told us this in confidence, so you have to keep it to yourself.”

Danny nodded. “No problem.”

“Seriously, you can’t even tell Caroline, or Derek and Ethan. If any of this leaks out, it could fuck up their investigation.”

“I’m a vault. Now spill it.”

“Have you heard about the rapes that have happened in the last few months?”

Danny grimaced. “You mean the dude who kidnaps the women and keeps them for a while before dumping them? Yeah, and that’s the reason none of the wives go anywhere alone after five p.m. until they catch the fucker.”

“He doesn’t just kidnap and rape them. He cuts them too.” He closed his eyes and fought back a shudder at the memory of the pictures Nolan had showed him. And hot on its heels, the memory of Talia, helpless, her blood covering her and him as he desperately tried to stop the flow. “He slices up their backs, not enough to kill them but enough to scar them up pretty bad. At first they didn’t notice the pattern, but when they took the DVD from Talia, they realized it’s a perfect match. Whoever is doing those girls, he’s using Talia’s wounds as his blueprint.”

Danny grimaced and went to the full bar tucked in the corner of the living room. Without a word, he poured two
fingers of scotch and took a long drink. “You sure you don’t want some of this? To take the edge off?” he asked as he topped off his glass.

Jack shook his head.

“Do they think the rapist is the one targeting Talia?”

Jack shrugged. “They know about as much as we do, which isn’t much, but we’d be stupid not to assume it. Though kidnap and rape is a little out of bounds for a thug for hire.”

Danny waved him off. “Not necessarily. A lot of these guys get into it because they get off on hurting people. He wouldn’t be the first to do some things on the side for the pure pleasure of it.”

Jack swallowed back a wave of nausea and took a seat on the edge of the wood-framed sofa. “The pictures of the women… We’ve been to some bad places, Danny, and seen some bad shit.”

“The worst.”

“And I still can’t wrap my head around the idea of someone actually getting off on doing that kind of thing to someone who can’t even fight back.”

Danny’s big paw settled heavily on his shoulder. “And God knows Anna drives me batshit on a daily basis, but I can’t imagine how a father could point a gun at his own kid and pull the trigger. But we knew one of those too.” He gave Jack’s shoulder a squeeze. “There are a lot of fucked-up people on the planet. I just don’t want to see you taken down.”

Jack didn’t either, but he’d let himself get taken down before he let some psycho get near Talia. “But do you get it now, why I have to see this through?”

Danny lowered himself into the armchair across from Jack. “And after that? What happens then?”

Jack didn’t really want to think too far ahead. Didn’t want to think about the fact that once they caught the sick fuck who was tormenting Talia, he’d have no excuse to live in her back pocket.

He could continue checking up on her without her knowing, but ever since she’d pointed out how his unsolicited upgrade of her security system bore similarities to the cameras David Maxwell had used to monitor every move she made in Club One, his under-the-radar surveillance of her—no matter that it was well intended—had left a bad taste in his mouth.

There was a lot he wanted from Talia, but he wasn’t going to take anything she wasn’t willing to share.

Talia sat with Toni and Caroline and Alyssa at one of the dining tables set up on the lawn. Toni, who was feeding little baby Joey under a wrap, had sent Ethan to get her a plate while Derek did the same for Alyssa.

Talia half listened as they expounded over little Joey’s seemingly endless appetite.

“I swear to God I thought my nipples were going to fall off in the first two weeks,” Toni said matter-of-factly.

Caroline had her hands full keeping little Anna in line. Talia offered to keep an eye on her so she could get dinner but Caroline demurred. “Being this pregnant is like having lap band surgery. I ate, like, two shrimp and a couple of those cheese puff things and I feel like I ate half a cow. I’ll let everything settle while I wait for Danny.”

Talia was too anxious to eat, her brain buzzing with curiosity after the snippet of conversation she’d overheard
between Jack and Danny in the kitchen. She’d ended up there after getting turned around on her way back outside to join the party.

She’d been about to make her presence known when she heard Danny say something about getting Jack back to work in Seattle.

She listened quietly to hear Jack’s reply, her stomach sinking when he didn’t make any protest about heading back up north once her tormentor was caught.

Which was completely expected. So why did she feel so disappointed about the idea of Jack leaving, especially when she’d done absolutely nothing—other than attract the attention of another psychopath—to encourage him to stay?

Then Danny said something about her and Jack “bumping uglies.”

Disgusted and embarrassed, she took that as her cue to leave when Jack slammed Danny up against the refrigerator. Unsure of whether to interfere, she’d ducked behind the pantry door and waited to see what happened.

The intense, cryptic conversation that followed raised about a thousand new questions about Jack.

She looked past Toni’s shoulder but didn’t see any sign of him.

“Sorry, Talia,” Caroline said, reaching out to snag Anna before she made a beeline for the cake table. “I know we’re probably totally boring you with all of the baby talk.”

“I’m not bored. Just looking for Jack. And if I ever have a baby, I know who to come to with my questions.”

Caroline grinned. “Weddings, pregnancy, and babies. Three things guaranteed to cause diarrhea of the mouth in any woman who’s experienced them.”

Talia’s answering smile faltered a little as she felt a little pinch somewhere in the region of her heart. Once upon a time, she’d dreamed about all of those things. Her parents’ horrible relationship—with her father’s drinking, screaming, and the occasional knocking around before he finally left for good—didn’t sour her on the idea of falling in love and getting married someday.

And then when Talia was eight, Rosie had come along, a souvenir, Talia was reasonably sure, from the affair Talia’s mother had had with the neighbor’s husband. Mama had called her a mistake, but from the very beginning, Rosie, with her pink mouth that was too full for her face, giant doe eyes, and cheeks made for kissing, had become the center of Talia’s world.