Authors: Kasey Michaels
She’d save the Baby in the Dumpster for her coup de grâce, hit him right where he lived. No quarter, as Teddy would crow, no mercy.
So maybe, to kill some time, she’d do a little more work on the Scholar Athlete case, the one she’d chosen when she and Jess and Jolie had first divided up the cold cases. Jermayne Johnson haunted her, the sad, lost little boy still residing deep inside that huge, mostly grown-up body. If she needed closure about Teddy’s death, how Jermayne must have been longing for the same thing in his brother’s case this past decade and more.
Yes, that was what she’d do. She’d take another run at Jermayne, press him to remember more about the friends his brother, Terrell, had run with before he was killed, things like that. People knew, remembered, more than they thought they did. It was just a matter of coming at them from the right angle. You could ask the same question a dozen times and not be happy with the answer,
and then, the thirteenth time, trying yet another approach, you could hit pay dirt.
Court could go with her, since he was feeling so protective of her. She had a feeling he’d be like gum on the bottom of her shoe until Joshua Brainard was arrested.
Then again, Court Becket, rich and powerful, also liked being in control. That was why they’d fought. That was why they’d both won their last argument, just as they’d both also lost it.
Jade had already begun stripping out of her pajamas when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink and stopped, approached the glass.
Who was this woman? Her hair long and straight, with no hint of curl because the curling iron had broken and she hadn’t bothered to buy a new one. When was that? A year ago?
Jade touched a hand to her cheek, her too-thin cheek. She unbuttoned her no-nonsense cotton pajamas and pushed back the material to see the hollows around her collar bone, actual concave scoops. Thin might be in, but not this thin. When was the last time she’d had an appetite?
Tipping her head to one side, Jade continued the inventory. Eyes, huge but dull. Her complexion almost muddy. She leaned in close to the
mirror, tracing what looked to be fine lines forming between her nose and mouth. She didn’t wear foundation or powder. She didn’t even bother with face creams or sunscreen. And it showed.
She was only eleven months older than Jolie, and Jolie looked a good five years younger.
Where was the young, carefree Jade, the girl she had been? Where was the well-loved woman she’d seen in the mirror at Court’s hotel the morning after their first night together? Where had that woman gone?
Was there any way to get her back? Any way to get back what she’d lost?
“It doesn’t matter,” she told her reflection. “Nothing matters now but proving Joshua Brainard murdered Teddy. Nothing and no one can matter. Not me, not Court, not the past and not the future. Just the
now.
You got that?”
Jade turned away from the mirror, unable to lie to herself face-to-face.
Changing her mind about the shower, she returned to the bedroom to pull on cotton-knit shorts and a sleeveless top, and headed down to Sam’s exercise room, intent on running a couple of miles on the treadmill.
If only the treadmill was a time machine, and
the faster she ran, the more the calendar flipped backward, until she’d returned to those first days after she’d met Court. Then, this time, she could move forward without making all the same dumb mistakes.
J
ADE’S RIGHT
running shoe found a shallow, slushy puddle as she was forced to move to the edge of the trail by a quartet of joggers decked out in brand-new jogging gear and iPods, and carrying containers of take-out frou-frou coffees.
Joggerettes, Jade called them, not really here for the exercise, but just to see and be seen. The four women had fanned themselves out across the running trail of the east bank of the Schuyl-kill River, along historic Boathouse Row, paying more attention to the men jogging by in the opposite direction than on where they were going.
“Amateurs,” Jade muttered under her breath as, avoiding any more puddles, she redirected her attention to the asphalt. She touched her gloved right hand to her left wrist to check her pulse, and picked up her pace.
It was cold this morning, typical Philadelphia winter weather, but the sky seemed higher than it had when she first got to Fairmont Park, so
chances were that the snow the TV weatherman had warned of earlier wouldn’t come.
She was good on time, her routine telling her that if she’d just passed the Vesper Rowing Club boathouse, she’d be able to get in at least most of her usual run before meeting Teddy at the diner to discuss how they were going to approach their latest insurance case.
Their client was convinced that their insured’s employee, one Maude Landers, was faking the debilitating back injury that had them paying through the nose for the past two years. Insurance companies were like that, all of them believing that if a PI just hung out up a tree with a video camera at the ready, he’d be sure to discover the so-called injured party bench-pressing a Buick in their backyard.
Since Teddy was the glad-hand part of the Sunshine Detective Agency, a little too old for scut-type field work, Jade was left to be the one hanging out in that tree.
Jade didn’t realize it, but her feet were pounding the trail harder as her frustration made its way down her body and out through them. Not that she hated her job or hated working with her father. But at times it all seemed so… Stupid wasn’t the right word, but it was close.
She knew she was good at her job. She simply didn’t have the same drive Teddy had, feel the same joy at that
gotcha
moment when a straying husband was caught on tape, or a computer background
check showed up an undisclosed DUI arrest, or a devastated mother had to be told that it was a beloved son who had copped her family-heirloom silver to feed his meth addiction.
There were exceptions. Serving Harvey What’s-His Name the other night had been one of them. The guy had been ducking process servers for six weeks, leaving behind his house in the suburbs as he hopscotched from hotel to hotel all over the Delaware Valley. But she’d found him, she’d run him down, and the check would clear soon, making Teddy happy.
Or as happy as Teddy got during the slow times—now, and again in June—when business always slacked off and he went back to his cold cases from the time he was on the force and took another shot at cracking them. Nobody beat the Irish at being emotional, and Teddy was Irish to his marrow. He could joke better, laugh harder and then turn around and sulk with more dedication than anyone Jade knew.
She checked her pulse again as the last of the ten landmark boathouses were behind her, and was surprised to realize her heart was pounding as hard as it was.
“Don’t think, just run. Run, so you don’t think.”
She repeated her mantra several times as she looked out over the river, noticed the thin skim of ice doing its best to build out from the Schuylkill’s banks. She reached up to adjust her
wool Eagles headband—the one with the famous football-team logo, the bald eagle, emblazoned on both earflaps—more firmly down around her ears, and nearly lost her footing when a patch of black ice on the asphalt seemed to sneak up on her.
“Got you,” she was assured by someone who grabbed her elbow for a moment. “There you go. You’re all right.”
“Thanks, I…” She turned her head to look at her rescuer. “Court?”
He was dressed all in black, light green neon reflecting patches picking up the glint of early-morning sun as he moved along beside her, easily matching her stride for stride. His dark hair was only moderately contained by the plain black headband he wore, and his dark eyes were hidden behind reflective wraparound sunglasses. “That’s encouraging. You remember my name.”
Jade concentrated on the ground ahead once more. “I said I’d call.”
“That was three days ago, Jade. I have to leave town tonight, get back to Virginia. The staff are beginning to look at me funny, thinking I’m here to close the hotel or do mass firings or something.”
“You’re leaving?” She fought against the sudden, involuntary flip of her stomach. “Well, of course you are. You’ve got a… an empire to run, don’t you?”
She could feel his gaze on her. “Are you going to tell me that bothers you?”
“No, of course not. I’m just saying, Philadelphia isn’t your home base, or whatever you want to call it. That’s in Virginia?”
“With the marvels of technology, my home base is anywhere I am at the moment. But Virginia is my home, yes. You’ll love it there.”
Jade shook her head. “You know, Court, you’re beginning to sound like a stalker. Should I be worried?”
“Tell me to go away, Jade, and I’ll go. I won’t like it, but I’ll go. What I couldn’t seem to do was leave without seeing you again. You can pick up the pace if you want. I don’t turn white and clutch at my chest for at least another five miles.”
“Is that right?” She decided to test him. “Do you know how to get
to the Art Museum from here? To the
Rocky
statue? Good. I’ll meet you there.”
“How about I
wait
for you there? Winner gets to pick where we go for breakfast,” he shot back, even as he lengthened his stride, easily pulling away from her before she could mentally shift gears and take off after him.
She watched as his long, leanly muscled body effortlessly sliced through the cold morning air. He wasn’t running at top speed, but pacing himself, probably so he could save something for an impressive sprint as they neared the statue.
She could live with that. If he ran up the steps to the Art Museum, then danced around in a cheesy Rocky Balboa imitation as so many others did, however, she might have to pretend she didn’t know him.
Which, she told herself, wincing inwardly, she didn’t. She’d slept with him, but she didn’t know him. She’d called Jolie out in California, but her sister had never met Sam’s cousin, so that had been no help.
The Internet, however, had filled in a lot of blanks.
Court Becket was a man with his fingers deep in many profitable pies, not just the Becket Hotels. Age thirty-three, never married, graduated near the top of his class at one of Virginia’s best universities, where he’d also played first base on the baseball team. Served on the board of directors of a hospital, a bank and a historical preservation not-for-profit organization.
Add a perfect example
of tall, dark and handsome
to that, along with those fantastic eyes, his sincere-looking smile and his expertise as a lover, and was it any wonder that Jade hadn’t called him? He was so far out of her league, they didn’t even exist in the same universe.
For a moment, as Court disappeared around a bend in the trail, Jade considered stopping, turning around and heading back the way she’d come. But that was the coward’s way out. Besides, if he’d found her here, he could probably find her anywhere.
So now she knew he was tenacious. And competitive. Traits she admired in herself, but sometimes not in others. Court Becket liked to win. He might even expect to win.
“But not today, buddy,” she gritted out from between clenched teeth as she put everything she had into catching Court before they got to the
Rocky
statue.
She would probably never know if she’d actually outrun him, or if he’d let her win, but she made it to the statue a good ten seconds before he did, to stand there, bent over, her palms on her knees, trying to regulate her breathing. “I’ll have… I’ll have orange juice and a… and a cinnamon raisin bagel from the cart at the other end of Boathouse Row. No cream cheese. Your treat.”
The man didn’t look as if he’d even broken a sweat. “That’s not breakfast, Jade. That’s not anything even remotely
like
breakfast. We still have to get back to where we started. By then, I expect nothing less than eggs, bacon, potatoes and two pieces of toast.”
Jade lifted her head, her ponytail slapping around her neck, and smiled at him. “You run, and then you stuff yourself with all of that saturated fat and cholesterol?”
“I run so that I
can
stuff myself with all of that saturated fat and cholesterol,” he told her as they began to jog back the way they’d come. “Did I mention that I’d really like some pancakes to go
with the eggs and bacon and potatoes? I’ll get some blueberries on top. Blueberries, you know, are very good for you. So the one pretty much cancels out the other, or at least enough to fool my conscience.”
“I hate to say this, but that all is beginning to sound pretty good. All right, you’ve convinced me. Now you pick the restaurant.”
“Food quality and service are the hallmarks of Becket Philadelphia And I hear the room service is outstanding.”
Jade shot him a quick look as they kept their pace measured, not too slow, but not fast enough to keep them from speaking to each other. “Nice try. No. Besides, I have to get to work.”
“And I’m scheduled to fly out of here at three, so I’m not going to back off now, Jade. Besides, it’s New Year’s Eve. Nobody works on New Year’s Eve.”
“The Sunshine Detective Agency does. I’m wrapping up a job today.”
“Then I’ll help you. We need to talk, Jade. I could follow you home while you shower and change.”
“Not really. Today, these are my working clothes. And thanks, but you wouldn’t like the job. Hey, would you like a short history lesson on Boathouse Row as we pass the boating clubs? All ten buildings are on the National Historical Preservation list, or whatever it’s called.”
“Good for them. I want to kiss you.”
She kept her eyes averted, concentrated on
the boathouses as they jogged past them, each with its own distinctive architecture. “Twenty-five years or so ago, the boathouses were getting pretty run-down, and there was talk that they should all be replaced.”
“All over. The only question is, where to start?”
“But this guy, this architectural-lighting-designer guy—I forget his name—he came up with the idea of outlining all the boathouses with white lights. Lights around every pitched roof and dormer and window. At night, those lights reflect in the Schuylkill. You’ve seen it, right, how this whole area looks at night?”