Authors: Kristi Lea
Jess had never mastered a poker face. Charles used
to tease her that he she had a billboard for a forehead. She was great on
stage, but that was her work face. The one with the pouty lips and the wide
eyes and that little half-smirk that she had perfected in front of a mirror.
She could fake drunkenness or an orgasm or desire. She couldn’t fake calm.
After the way he had shut her out last night, Jess
doubted Noah would be distracted by bedroom eyes.
So she sat, shivering in cold and fear, while his
eyes bore into hers, knowing that she looked guilty as hell and scared to death
of his reaction. There was a small chance that he hadn’t found anything in the
bag. Lightning struck every day, and runaway girls turned into Hollywood
success stories.
Her reached into the open top and withdrew a
padded manila envelope.
Some chances were just too small to count on.
Out of the envelope, he pulled a necklace. Set in
gold with four large circular stones, each surrounded by four smaller ones and
a tear-drop dangling from the center. “You have exactly three minutes to
convince me not to turn you in on charges of obstruction of justice and
insurance fraud.”
She licked her parched lips. “Don’t forget
extortion and money laundering. Isn’t that what you’re really investigating me
for?”
His eyes narrowed. “If that’s a confession, I
recommend you save it for the judge.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why haven’t you turned me in
yet?”
He pointed at his bandaged shoulder. “Because of
this. I was given a personal order to sit and watch your gate the night I got
shot, and now I’m on probation for whatever supposedly happened in that alley. Internal
affairs has the video recording from my car locked up tighter than Fort Knox.
Someone’s after my life or my career, or both. And it all started because of
your necklace. What the hell is so damned important about this thing? You have
two minutes left.”
Jessica squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block
the image that came to mind of Noah lying face down in the alley, not
breathing. She couldn’t bear the thought of the death of another good man. Not
because of her.
“It’s a fake.”
His eyes shuttered at her words. No anger, no
surprise. Instead, he tipped his chair back and reached for his cell phone.
“I’ve seen your insurance records after that make-believe theft. I
know
it’s a fake. One minute left.”
Jessica shook her head, panic gripping her
midsection. “No. I mean yes. They’re both fakes. There were two copies of that
necklace. The one from the safe had real stones. Real diamonds. The one in that
envelope is a complete phony. It’s all cubic zirconium and lab-created junk.”
He seemed to digest that for a long moment. “This
is what Senator Wilson’s thugs were after, isn’t it?”
Close enough
. She nodded.
He straightened, and the legs of his chair cracked
hard on the ceramic floor.
Jess jumped at the sound, but he didn’t seem to
notice.
He leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. “I
don’t buy it, Jess. Why didn’t you just hop your plane to the Caymans?”
“I don’t trust the staff.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Down in the Caymans. They aren’t permanent
employees, just from a local service, and there are different workers there
every time I’m there. One of them would have sold me out. You saw the rabbit in
my dressing room. That wasn’t the first threat I’ve had the last few weeks.
Someone
wants to kill me.”
“I saw you running for your life in that alley. If
Wilson wants the necklace bad enough to threaten you, why bring it right to
him?” he fired back
“I didn’t bring the necklace with me. It was here
all along.”
“What is the point of all this? You ride halfway
across the country in a bus to collect a piece of worthless jewelry while
trying to avoid your lover and his thugs who want to steal it from you. Do they
even know the necklace is a fake? What the hell were you planning to do next?
Hop another bus back to LA and pretend you never left? What are you going to do
with a copy of a fake necklace anyway?”
She pushed back from the table and stood up. “I
just want to leave. To go somewhere where Grant Wilson, and the Enquirer, and
the FBI, and everyone else in this god forsaken country can’t find me. I am
tired of the games. I am tired of the media circus. I just wanted a normal
life.”
“You have three hundred fourteen dollars in cash,
plus a single change of clothes and a piece of costume jewelry. How far do you
think you’ll get? Louisville?”
Jessica crossed her arms over her chest and hugged
herself, trying to calm the chills that ran up her spine. She didn’t trust Noah
not to arrest her, not yet. True he had driven her across the state and fed her
and generally treated her well. But he was still a cop. And she was still a
criminal. “There is a safe deposit box here in town. It has my passport and some
money in it. Charles insisted that we keep it just in case. If I can get to the
box, I can leave.”
“They will be watching the borders. Passport or
no, you’re not leaving the country without someone knowing about it.”
“You mean Jessica Kingsbury isn’t leaving the
country without you knowing about it. Please let me go. What possible good will
it do to arrest me? Any trial will be a media spectacle, right up until they
find my body floating in the Pacific.”
“This is where your story falls apart. Why would
the Senator want to kill you? Your affair is yesterday's news. If something did
happen to you, then the press would drag that whole mess out again.”
Jess's whole body shook so hard that she was
afraid the chair would begin rattling underneath her. “I don't know if Wilson
is the one trying to kill me. But I do know why he wants the necklace.”
Noah leaned in closer. Close enough that she could
smell the crisp scent of hotel soap, and the hint of coffee on his breath. His
brown eyes were lit up, focused. The excitement of the chase, she thought. On
some men, that expression terrified her, but on Noah it fascinated.
He won't
stop until he solves this case.
“I will make you a deal. Take me to my safe
deposit box, and I will tell you the secret of that necklace.”
“Just this necklace? What about the other two?”
She gathered her remaining scraps of bravado like
so many hairs pulled from a brush. “If you let me leave and don't come after
me, I will tell you the secret of all three.”
***
From the narrow strip mall cell phone shop, Noah
could see most of the discount women’s' clothing store across the walkway where
Jess rummaged through racks of clothes. If he was going to take her to the
bank—still a big “if” in his mind—then she needed to at least have something
clean to wear.
He idly checked out the display of pre-paid
phones. “Try Before You Buy” shouted the orange and purple sign over a
Plexiglas stand with a demo model leashed to the table.
He pulled out the sheet of hotel stationary where
he'd scribbled Cole's sister's phone number. He had yanked the battery out of
his own phone, and hadn't dared to call from the hotel.
It took no time for Analise to get her brother on
the phone.
“Tell me you're back in LA.” Cole’s voice sounded
tight, his words clipped.
Noah hesitated. “Well...”
“Shit.” There was a sound in the background like a
door slamming.
“What's going on, Cole?”
“Cutlass has been pacing around the office looking
like warhead about to explode. He says he's left a bunch of messages for you.
Wants you in the office to give a statement for the investigation.”
“Did you remind him that I’m on leave?”
“Do you think it would have helped?
Noah snorted. “What did you say?”
“Only that you'd mentioned heading for the
mountains for fresh air. He about went ballistic when I couldn't produce a
hotel room number.”
“Huh. Sounds like him. The guy has a coronary if
someone takes thirty seconds too long to piss.” Noah scanned across the walkway
into the store. Jess had an armful of clothes on hangers and seemed to be
inspecting price tags.
“There's more. A friend of mine from the academy
works in internal affairs. He asked me what all the secrecy was about your
file. Turns out, no one's been given clearance to investigate anything. Cutlass
has everything sealed up tight. So the line about wanting you to report for a
debrief is utter bullshit. And he put in a request for your phone records. I
assume your cell is off?”
A chill settled over Noah. “Uh, yeah.”
“Noah, man, I don't know what kind of shit pile
you fell into. And I don't want to know where you are, OK? How's your
shoulder?”
“It’s been better, but I'll live. Can you look
into something for me?”
“Depends on what it is.”
Jess had piled her choices on the counter and
pulled out the small roll of cash to pay.
Time to get off the phone.
Noah motioned to the sales clerk and pointed to the phone he was talking on,
then held up three fingers. He pulled cash out of his wallet as the clerk
reached under the counter for three small boxes.
“Remember how Cutlass was making a big stink about
his DC connections?”
“Sure.” Cole's voice sounded doubtful.
“Can you track those down? Figure out who he might
be trying to impress. See if you find any familiar faces.”
“Done. What should I do if I find something?”
Noah smiled at the cell phone clerk as he accepted
the plastic package with his new phones in it. “Nothing. If my vacation takes
any...interesting turns, I will give you a call. Maybe we could compare notes.
I should go.”
“Take care, man.”
***
Jessica caught a glimpse of herself in the glass
doors of the bank. With a pair of plain business-like trousers, loose fitting
short-sleeved cardigan, high-necked shell, black shoulder tote bag, and
flat-heeled loafers, she could almost pass for an average career woman on her
lunch break. Dear heaven, she hoped so. With a stop at a discount hairdresser,
the type where you can walk in without an appointment, she had her quick
chop-job of a mane evened up and the color changed. She didn't look bad as a
dusty blonde.
Her hands were cold with sweat and her stomach
churned as she was led to the private room where she could view her safe
deposit box. She caught furtive looks from some of the tellers, and tried to
smile at them as though this particular bank service was as routine as cashing
a Friday paycheck.
They had to know that it was anything but routine.
Most of the boxes kept in the special division here were anything but routine.
The box had no key and she had no ID. Thankfully,
there was also no account number to memorize.
Charles knew her, knew how numbers seemed to shift
and rotate when she looked at them, and had found a safe place where all she
had to produce to the staff was her own private code phrase. “Cadmium red and
phthalo blue”. Paint colors, she could keep straight.
As she closed the door of the viewing room behind
her, she felt alone for the first time in two days. Noah and his car waited in
the parking lot. Like the getaway driver in a heist.
She figured he had his buddies on speed dial. She
had fifteen minutes to re-appear or he would call her in.
The safe deposit box sat on a wooden table, and
looked like a hotel safe. It wasn't very big—maybe a foot wide by a
foot-and-a-half deep. She took a deep breath and looked at the hardest part:
the combination lock. This part did involve numbers, though there were letters
printed above each key on the keypad. Carefully, she typed in the letters of
her last password, “rose”.
With a small metallic click, the lid released.
Inside, there was another box, this one a sturdy black hardboard with a metal
tag holder, just like Charles used to have in his office for organizing papers.
She lifted it out and opened the lid, ignoring the lump that formed at the back
of her throat.
Inside were three different passports—two American
and one South African, all with her picture. One even had a stamp inside, as
though the make-believe Jessica had traveled to Thailand with it. She stuffed
those in the bottom of her purse, along with a small manila envelope full of
cash. There was another envelope full of legal-sized papers, a USB thumb drive,
a jeweler's box that contained a pair of diamond stud earrings that she didn't
recognize, and a sealed letter with her name on it.
Charles' handwriting.
She glanced at the inexpensive watch on her wrist.
Two minutes until Noah called in the cavalry. She would read the letter
later—on her way to freedom.
Jessica slid into the front seat of the dark gray
rental car and buckled her seatbelt. Noah didn’t say a word as he pulled out of
the lot. She fiddled with the hem of her cardigan and stared out the window as
the small city scenes passed her by. Grocery stores vied for frontage with
pharmacies, liquor, discount clothing. A hunting supply place offering
two-for-one on shotgun ammunition.
It was the kind of shabby lower-middle-class
neighborhood that she had spent her teenage years resenting. The kind of place
where folks spent their days slaving in a factory or waiting tables or driving
trucks, and their nights blowing their modest paychecks on cigarettes and booze
and cheap discount store junk, and wondered why they never got ahead in life.
The kind of place she’d fled.
And if it hadn’t been for her late husband, she
would have landed somewhere far worse.
They passed a green highway exit sign but kept to
the main drag. Surprised, Jess glanced at Noah. He drove one-handed, keeping
his hurt arm down. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. “Don’t you
want to know what I found in the safe deposit box?”
“Later.” He slowed to a stop at the traffic light
and scanned the cross street.
“Do you need me to look up where the airport is? I
think there’s a map in the glove box.”
“Not yet.” The light turned to green and Noah put
on the blinker to move the right hand lane.
The commercial district was thinning out, with
longer stretches of grassy lots in between parking lots and retail changing to
warehouse and light industrial buildings. The busy thoroughfare stretched into
a divided two-lane highway winding its way toward the mountains.
Jess bit her bottom lip. He drove like a man on a
lazy Sunday afternoon, in no hurry to pass anyone. But where was he going? Was
he driving her to the feds now? Had he changed his mind about taking her to the
airport?
“Hang on.” He ground the words out half a breath
before yanking the steering wheel hard to the left and jamming on the
accelerator.
The jolt shoved Jess into the door despite her
seatbelt as their car squealed through a vicious U-turn cutting across three
lanes of traffic to the other side of the grassy median. Angry horns blared
around them as he gunned the engine and wove them through the traffic at what
had to be twice the speed limit.
Noah craned his neck around briefly and muttered
something under his breath. He sped up even further, jerking Jess towards the
center console fast enough to make her seatbelt lock.
Stomach roiling, head pounding, breath coming fast
and hard. Jess tried to get her bearings, but the streets were flying by too
fast. “What’s happening?”
“Get down. We’re being followed.” He had his gun
holster in his lap.
He jerked the car to the right, turning down
another side street. Jess squeezed her eyes shut and hunched down in her seat,
hanging on to the door handle as hard as she could.
Something scratched against the side of the car
and she peeked up only to see low hanging branches slapping her side of the
front windshield for a moment before the hot blue sun replaced it. She closed
them again.
“Come on. Come on.” Noah jerked the steering wheel
around another wild turn, and then skidded the car into reverse. Pavement
turned to gravel, crunching and pinging off the bottom of the car.
Finally the car jolted to a stop and Noah killed
the engine.
Jess took in a ragged breath and pushed herself
back up with shaking hands. They were behind a metal building on a weedy gravel
parking lot. A line of scrub brush hid the view of the road where Jess could
hear traffic sounds. She let the breath out, but the blood still pounded in her
ears. “Where are we?”
“Hidden, I hope.” He had his gun out and ready.
Not aimed at the window, but his fingers wrapped around the handle had a light
tension that she sensed meant business. She licked her parched lips with a
tongue that felt like glue, and glanced away from the weapon up to his face.
“How do you know we were being followed?”
He took off his sunglasses and wiped the sheen of
sweat from his forehead with his sleeve before answering. “Well, for starters,
they followed us through that U-turn.”
Jess gulped. “Do you think you lost them?”
Noah blew out a breath. “About three blocks back
was an exit to the freeway. With a little luck, they’ll think we are on our way
to Knoxville.”
“We need to get out of Tennessee.”
He quirked one side of his lips. “Working on it.”
She shook her head. “No, Now. Wilson is too well
connected. He has friends on every major police force, state troopers, you name
it. It’s a good ol’ boys network down here. They trade hunting lodges and their
wives serve on each other’s charity committees. If we stay here, he will find
us. If he finds us, he will kill us.”
The hum and rattle of a car engine on the road
beyond the bushes slowed to a stop not twenty feet from where they sat parked.
They couldn’t see it, but Jess could hear the crunching of tires on dirt. She
held her breath. Noah held the gun.
A car door slammed. Voices, arguing back and
forth. Jess fought a wave of panic that curled around her chest and squeezed.
Noah tossed a look her way. In his eyes she
recognized the steel-edged focus shadowed by something. Concern? Surely not
fear. He jerked his head briefly to the floor, motioning her down.
There was a sound of leaves rustling, and Jess
crouched lower in the car, eyeing the door handle. Inside the car, they were an
easy target, nothing to do but sit. Outside, there was no cover. Nothing to do
but run.
One of the voices made a sound like a groan, and
Jess made out a sound like a hiss or like running water? After a long moment,
they heard the car door slam again, and the car motor revved as it pulled away.
Jess slumped. She barely registered Noah putting
his gun in the car’s center console.
“Why does Senator Wilson want you dead?’
***
Noah waited, his question hanging taut between
them. Jessica’s face was too pale around the edges with bright spots of pink on
her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell with a rhythm that was too fast and too
irregular. And when she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes were slightly
unfocused. Haunted by the thought of her own death, or by memories, he wasn’t
sure.
He was becoming less and less sure that he wanted
to hear her answers.
The woman sitting in his car had greater depths
than any photograph could ever hope to reveal. Her body was beautiful, no
doubt. Even wearing ordinary clothes and no fancy makeup, she moved like a
woman who knew her body. Knew the swing of her own hips, the subtle bounce of
her breasts, the tilt of her chin. It was obvious to him that she spent her
life in front of one camera after another.
The touch of her fingers as she changed the
bandage on his arm had revealed so much more than any picture ever could. She
was skilled, confident, caring, but practical. She had engineered her own
escape from the FBI and the paparazzi. No mean feat.
If he could get her safely on a plane to
obscurity, and himself back to LA to face his boss, maybe he could pretend none
of this had ever happened. Cutlass had already taken him off the assignment. He
could apply with another division, another city. There were plenty of other
agents who could clean up the pieces.
Jess opened her mouth to speak and closed it
again. She clutched her purse strings in one hand, and hauled it clumsily into
her lap, cradling the cheap leather like a toddler’s favorite baby doll.
“I know you think—that everyone thinks—that I had
an affair with Wilson.” Her voice wavered, and she kept her eyes focused on the
gravel lot in front of them, avoiding his gaze.
Avoiding him
.
The realization gnawed at him. He was one of the
good guys, protecting the public from criminals. Here he sat with a beautiful
woman on the run for her life, and she was afraid of
him
.
“The tabloid pictures were staged. Fakes. I never
cheated on my husband.”
Noah made a noise that was somewhere in between a
snort and a grunt.
She gulped audibly and continued, “Charles and I
arranged for the pictures together, and Wilson’s own staff leaked them to the
press.”
A chill ran over Noah. Every instinct screamed
that she was telling the truth, but simple logic kept him from believing her.
She was an actress. A liar by definition. “Why the hell would he do that? What
possible reason can you give for a Senator to admit to a fake affair with a--”
“With a what?” Her voice was arctic.
Noah sputtered for the briefest second, grasping
for a word. What the hell was Jessica? An actress? A temptress? A whore? He
shied away from that word. It served no one. He had arrested hookers and Johns
in both seedy parts of town and five-star hotels. Every last one of them had a
story, a reason, a motive, for their actions. Drug addictions, starving kids, a
simple lust for money. The woman next to him was like all of them and yet like
none of them. The truth was, he didn’t know who she was underneath her public
facade.
“Woman. I meant to say, ‘a fake affair with
another woman’. Why would he pretend to have an affair and jeopardize both his
marriage and an election? And why would take revenge on you, now? It’s been
almost five years since that story hit the press.”
“He was having an affair, just not with me.”
“Then with who? What could be worse than sleeping
with—“ He gulped as her gaze narrowed on him again. “—a married celebrity?”
Their eyes met. Her eyes overflowed with caution,
hope, weariness. She took a breath and some steel knot seemed to uncoil inside
her. “Wilson was having an affair with a man.”
Noah whistled.
“His wife suspected it, thinking her husband had a
regular mistress. Charles already knew the whole truth. He always knew that
kind of thing.”
Noah caught the furtive look she cast him under
her eyelashes. “Your husband was blackmailing the Senator?”
Jess only shrugged one shoulder. “We arranged for
the private investigator to catch us on film in what looked like suggestive
poses. Wilson groveled publicly to his wife, and the voters never learned the
real truth.”
Noah sat back and mulled over her words. There
were a few public figures who were openly gay. But Wilson was not just in the
closet, he was married. And came from a conservative Southern state. Jess
called it a “good ol’ boys network”. If the good old boys found out that Wilson
was shagging his pool boy, they might not be so open with their pocketbooks at
campaign time. “I still have a question. Why come after you now? Are you still
blackmailing him?”
“No.”
The answer came fast. Too fast.
“I haven’t talked to the man since the night of
the photos, five years ago,” she said.
“But you have a guess as to what he is after this
time.”
She nodded. “Next year is an election year.”
“If he was re-elected once, why would he fear
another election…” Noah let his voice trail off as his thoughts caught up with
him. Grant Wilson wasn’t campaigning for Senator in the next election.
He had his eye on the Oval Office.