Two Hearts

by Maggie Shayne

  “This is ridiculous!” Grace said. “Listen, my sister and my best friend are in that…that hovel with guns to their heads. Don’t you think we can save all this for later?”

  Jack looked at JW and JW looked back at him. They both nodded.

  “How many are in there, Grace?” Jack asked her. “Besides the leader,” he added with a nod at the guy on the ground.

  “That wasn’t the leader,” she said. “Someone inside was giving him orders. I heard at least two other voices, but there could have been more.”

  “Shh!” JW put his finger to his lips, tipped his head to one side. “What is that?”

  Jack listened. There was watery noise. Lapping, a splash. Then suddenly a motor.

  Swearing, Jack scrambled out of the bushes and raced around the house full-tilt. But he only got there in time to see the small boat’s lights vanishing steadily in the distance.

  “No!” Grace cried. She stared at the open door to the shack, even went toward it, calling for Hope and Charlie. But it was no good. It was obvious they’d been taken.

  And before they ever found the note left inside the house, Jack knew what it would demand. But he read it, anyway.

  “‘If you want to see the women alive again, you will release Havilar—’” Jack looked up. “That must be the guy Grace kicked into oblivion.” Then he read on. “‘Release Havilar, and drop the investigation of Paulo K. Darius, officially.’”

  Jack looked from the note to JW. He smiled, and Jack smiled back.

  “What’s so damned funny?” Grace demanded. “That maniac has Hope and Charlie.”

  “Yeah, but we have two bits of information that we didn’t have before.”

  “Oh, well, in that case…” Grace tossed her head.

  “First, we know our drug lord isn’t any too bright. And second—” JW nodded at the note “—we know his name.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Her husband—or, the stranger who looked like her husband—stared at Grace, sighed deeply and took her hand. “We’ll get them back, Grace.”

  She studied him, his tanned face, his square jaw, the gray of his eyes, and she realized she didn’t know this man at all. She’d been married to him for all of two weeks, and she didn’t know the first thing about who he really was. “How?” she asked, without thinking first.

  Jack held her eyes. “It’s what I do. I do it well.”

  Confident, his tone. Strong. As strong as his hand around hers. She believed him. And that simple reassurance made her feel slightly less afraid. As little sense as that made…and she knew it made damn little. Still, she sensed he was being completely honest with her for the first time since she’d met him. “Okay.”

  Jack started walking, still holding her hand, back down the dark path that passed for a road out here. “My car’s right here,” she said.

  “I’ll send someone back for your car. I think you ought to ride with me. We can…talk.”

  “Something we haven’t done enough of.” To her own ears, her voice was low, wary. And for a long time she searched his eyes, trying to see the man she’d seen before. The staid, reserved man who went to work every morning in a nice suit and carried a briefcase. But instead she saw only this stranger, his clothes rumpled, his hair uncombed, his strong jaw lined with stubble. And a big black gun that still smelled of hot sulphur clutched in his hand.

  “JW?” Jack called.

  Grace looked around, saw JW handcuffing the still-unconscious man, rolling him over. “We’ll get the cars and toss him in on the way back. He ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

  Jack looked at her, and a grudging half smile tugged at one side of his mouth. “Where’d you learn all that, Grace?”

  She shrugged, saying nothing. “Where’s your car, Jack?”

  “Back here.” He led her onward, JW bringing up the rear. When she saw the two vehicles sitting on the little pull-off alongside the dirt road, she frowned. “That’s not your car.”

  Jack sighed. “I couldn’t drive the Lexus on the job,” he said. “I’m supposed to be stopping crime, not volunteering to play the victim.”

  She nodded slowly, thinking as he spoke. “You, um, must work in some pretty rough neighborhoods.”

  He licked his lips, a little nervously, she thought. “Not for much longer, Grace.” Then he looked right into her eyes. “I promise you that.”

  Tilting her head to one side, Grace asked, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  She thought about that for a moment, but couldn’t come up with a single answer. Instead there were a dozen pecking at her mind. Why was he going to quit? Why had he lied to her? Why had she never known about this old car of his? Where had he been keeping it? What else had he been hiding from her? She gave her head a shake, deciding there was no time for all of this now. Later, though, they were going to have to have some serious discussions. She yanked open the passenger side door of the car—a mid-seventies model Ford Mustang—and got in.

  A second later Jack was behind the wheel, and the car roared to life. The stick shift was on the floor, in between the leather bucket seats. New carpet covered the floor—in fact, the inside of the car had been totally renovated. Right down to the CD player in the dash.

  “So…you’ve been…what? Restoring the car bit by bit?”

  “Hmm?” He glanced her way, then nodded. “Yeah, for a couple of years. Most of the parts are original.”

  “Looks like it’s almost done.”

  “Just need a set of white-wall tires and a paint job.”

  “What color?” she asked on impulse.

  “Black,” he said without hesitation.

  Black. She swallowed hard. She’d have expected her husband to be more of a beige kind of a guy. Or maybe powder-blue. But black?

  She had a suspicion that this car was one of his passions. One he’d kept hidden from her. But it was reassuring to know that he did have some. Passions, that is.

  “Where are we going?”

  “JW’s already called for search units to be sent out here. He’ll head back to headquarters with his charge…maybe with a side trip to Memorial, depending on how hard you kicked the poor slob.”

  “Not that hard,” she interjected.

  “Here.” Jack leaned over the backseat, brought out a huge contraption and set it in her lap. Upon closer inspection, she identified it as a spotlight. “Shine that out your window as we go. See if you can spot anything out there on the swamp.”

  She found the on button, aimed the thing and hit it. It sent a powerful, wide shaft of light out onto the swamp as the car rolled slowly onward.

  “We’ll drive around the perimeter, see if we can spot any sign of that boat, or a car waiting somewhere along the edges.”

  She strained her eyes to see, and realized she was hanging on his every word. “Will we find either of those things?”

  Jack glanced sideways at her. “I doubt it. I imagine they had a car hidden somewhere on the far side, and are already heading back down the highway by now.” He reached over, clasped her shoulder, closing his hand around it. “He won’t kill them, Grace. He wants to use them. Obviously, he knows this guy we took can give us information on him. Testify against him. That’s why he wants him back. Otherwise he would leave the poor bastard hanging out to dry. That’s the way his kind work. But as long as it’s a risk to him, he’ll do what he has to in order to get his buddy back—and right now, that means taking good care of Charlie and Hope.”

  She turned to watch his face as he spoke. He looked at her, taking only quick fleeting glimpses of the road, but for the most part, looking her right in the eyes. As if he knew, somehow, that helped her to believe him. She could see in his eyes that he was saying what he honestly believed.

  “Will you trade this…this witness to get them back?”

  For the first time his gaze flickered. “It won’t come to that.”

  “But if it does?”

  “It won’t be up to me, Grace. I would do it in a minute, but it
won’t be up to me.”

  He stopped the car and took the light from her, flicked it off and set it on the dash. Grace licked her lips, blinked at the tears that threatened, but Jack gripped both her shoulders now and stared straight into her eyes.

  “Even now, they’re punching this guy’s name into a computer back at headquarters, Grace. Within the hour we’ll know where he lives. We’ll have the names and addresses of his friends, relatives, lovers, ex-lovers, enemies and casual acquaintances. We’ll know where he eats, where he walks, what he drives, where he hangs out and how many times a day he goes to the bathroom. We’ll have his driver’s license number, his credit card numbers, his Social Security number and his shoe size. We’ll get him, Grace. And we’ll get your sister back safe and sound.”

  Swallowing hard, she nodded.

  “Say it,” he told her.

  “We’ll get Hope back safe and sound.” Then she closed her eyes and the tears she’d been fighting all night long finally broke free. “God, we have to, Jack. I love her so much…”

  His arms slid around her, and he pulled her close to him, held her gently. “I know, I know.”

  “No, you don’t.” Sniffling, she rested her head on his shoulder and twisted her arms around his waist. “I never told her. I’ve wasted my time being petty and jealous of her and teasing her for being all the things our mother wanted…things I thought were silly and foolish…until I met you.”

  Jack’s hands stroked her hair. “You know I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, don’t you?”

  Sniffling, she nodded against his shoulder.

  “You never had any reason to be jealous of your sister. Never. But it doesn’t matter, because she knows you love her. You hear me?” Another nod as she burrowed closer. “But even if she has the least little doubt about it, Grace, it doesn’t matter. You can tell her when we get her back. And we will. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He squeezed her one last time, and set her away from him. “Now fasten your seat belt. I’m gonna take you to your parents’, and then I’ll—”

  “No!”

  Jack blinked and looked at her.

  “I need to be looking for my sister, and for Charlie. God, Jack, I couldn’t just sit by the phone and wait to hear.”

  He tapped his palm on the steering wheel, pursed his lips. “This is filth we’re dealing with, Grace. I’m liable to be up to my elbows in it before I tug Charlie and Hope out again. This is no place for you.”

  She sat back and buckled up. Then she grabbed up the light and resumed shining it on the murky swamp. Jack put the car into gear and drove slowly.

  “You don’t have a clue what kind of place is for me, Jack. I’m not afraid of getting dirty. I’m not afraid of much of anything.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Jack, if you take me home, I’ll just come after you. Wouldn’t you rather know where I was, than have me stumbling into situations the way I did tonight?”

  He let his chin fall almost to his chest, then quickly brought it up again. “You’re right, dammit.”

  “I know I am.”

  “Grace…you’re going to see things…that might change the way you…”

  “The way I what?”

  His face, shadowed and lit in turns by the interior lights and the movements of the steering wheel, seemed tense and taut with concentration. “The way you feel about me.”

  “It works both ways, you know.” She kept her eyes on the water, the swamp, the creatures writhing around in the mud and slime. “Now that the masks are off…I suppose I’m going to be telling you a lot of things about me that you didn’t know before. You thought you married a delicate socialite, Jack. But you’re going to know, pretty soon, just how wrong you were. And maybe I’m not the wife you had in mind at all.”

  “That’s not gonna happen.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  He lowered his head. “And I guess you can’t either, can you, Grace?”

  “I guess not.”

  “It’s like starting over, isn’t it?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, nodded and attempted to smile. “Hi, there. I’m Grace Phelps. Pleasure to meet you.”

  He smiled back, but it was strained. “No, hon. You’re Grace McCain. And the pleasure’s all mine.”

  * * *

  He did know her. Or…he thought he did. So she’d taken a few karate lessons or a self-defense course at college. So what? And according to Jack’s know-it-all buddy, she’d played some team sports, as well. He could see why she might have wanted to keep all that to herself. Hell, her mother was intimidating at best, terror-inducing at worst, and she was pretty clear about what she saw as acceptable and what she did not. She would have thrown a fit if Grace had told her about the sports thing.

  So it had been a secret, and Grace had carried that over to Jack—for some reason decided to keep it from him, as well. Maybe she thought he wouldn’t approve or something. He didn’t know. And yes, it was a revelation to him…but it didn’t change what he already knew about his wife. That she was sensitive, well-bred, a lady through and through.

  He had never wanted this kind of garbage to touch her. Now it was.

  “I’m sorry, Grace.”

  She shook her head. “We messed up,” she said. “Both of us.”

  But it was worse than that. Jack knew it was. Oh, she was dealing with it all well and good right now, but he knew.

  He’d been born under this star. He’d been destined for police work. He’d always known that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. But Grace hadn’t been born to this. Nor had Jack’s mother, and it had damn near destroyed her.

  One day, after a particularly stressful week, Jack’s mother had quietly suffered a breakdown. And it had scared Jack to death. His dad retired after that. He sat Jack down and told him that being a police officer’s wife was too hard on a fragile woman. That it was his job that had driven Mom over the edge, and that he wouldn’t let that happen again.

  Jack’s mother had spent a month in a hospital. His father had taken a job as a night watchman. But the trauma of that time had stayed with him.

  Damn, he didn’t want to see the same thing happen to Grace. But it wouldn’t. Because this sham of a marriage wouldn’t last that long. Maybe Jack had fooled her into thinking he was up to her standards for a little while, and it had been a beautiful fantasy. But it was over. She had seen the truth. There was no more to be said.

  Once Jack got his wife’s sister and her best friend back home, safe and sound, he would more than likely have to pack up his fake possessions and head back to his real life. His apartment over the bar. His crass friends and their poker nights and football games and pizza and beer.

  He wouldn’t miss the spit polish all that much.

  But damn, he was sure going to miss Grace.

  They skirted the swamp as they headed back to the highway, but despite Grace’s efforts with the light, they saw nothing. Then they waited in a turnaround for the troops to arrive. And they did, by the dozens. Carloads of them, with spotlights and motorboats. JW filled them in, and Jack was left without much to do but wait for the information to come in on their felon. That and…talk to his wife.

  “We’re going to need to tell your parents what’s happened,” he told her as men scurried around like ants, talked into radios and leaned over maps.

  She lowered her head at once. “They’ll blame me.” Then, shaking it slowly, “Hell, they should. It was all my fault.”

  Jack cupped her chin, made her look up at him. That face of hers, tilted up toward his like that, made him shiver. “You never told me,” he said. “Why did you follow me out here tonight?”

  She closed her eyes. “You got a phone call in the middle of the night,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So…you whispered, ‘Why are you calling me here?’ And then you sneaked downstair
s to call them back. It was pretty obvious you didn’t want me hearing that conversation.”

  “Well, I didn’t. But I still don’t see what…” Jack stopped there, and his stomach lurched. “You thought it was a woman, didn’t you? My God, Grace, you thought I was sneaking off to meet some woman?”

  She pulled away from him. “Well, what was I supposed to think? It was so obvious you were keeping secrets, Jack. And there were all those late nights. And the way you are with me when we…” She bit off the rest, but Jack saw it, saw it clear in her eyes.

  “Damn,” he whispered. “Baby, if you only knew.” He shook his head slowly.

  “McCain?” JW called.

  Jack turned, hating like hell to leave things that way with Grace right now, but knowing he had no choice. Hell, it was starting to rain. A fine mist, coming down, gently coating them without them even noticing or feeling the drops. JW handed him a cell phone, and Jack snatched a notepad out of his pocket as the female officer on the other end read him off a list of names, addresses and other pertinent information that might help in tracking Hope and Charlie’s kidnapper. Jack wrote quickly, filling two pages, top to bottom.

  Then he flipped the phone shut and took his wife’s hand. “Now we can get to work. We’ll call your parents on the way.”

  She nodded, started to pull free of him, to head to her side of the car, but on impulse, Jack held on. When she turned to ask why, he pulled her close. “I never cheated on you, Grace. Never even thought about it.”

  The mist on her face made her skin shiny and moist. “Do you believe me?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “No, you don’t. And I know why.” Jack let his hands slip lower, cupping her rounded backside, and pulling her tight to him. Then he arched against her just a little, leaned down and kissed her, briefly, quickly, and not nearly the way he wanted to. But even then, he tasted her lips, closing his around them, and suckling just a little. She went stiff with shock. He’d never kissed her like that. Not even on their wedding night. When Jack let her go, she just stood there, staring at him, blinking in the misty rain.