It was just after 11:00 p.m. now, and traffic in this mainly residential area was light to nonexistent. Unlike New York, the city that never slept, D.C. was the city that went to bed early, because all the resident workaholics had to get up at the crack of dawn for jobs or school or whatever. Only street people, teenagers taking advantage of the final days before school started to get up to no good, and a few solid citizens giving their dogs the last-call-before-bed walk were out and about.
“I hear you got offered a promotion.”
Considering the fact that Pearse had only invited her to become a permanent member of his team about six hours earlier, Jess looked at him in surprise.
“How’d you hear that?”
He smiled a little wryly. “Hey, I got sources. You going to accept?”
“Yes.” Although Jess hadn’t consciously decided before the answer left her lips, she realized that somewhere inside she’d made the decision as soon as she’d been asked. “Are you going to tell me who your source is? Because I’d love to know.”
“No. Anyway, you don’t know her.” The quick gleam that accompanied that told Jess she was being teased. She refused to rise to the bait. “Working for Collins, you realize you’re going to be going flat-out, twenty-four-seven.”
The subtext was, henceforth there would be little time in her life for anything except work. Like a social life. Like love, marriage, men. Like him, although he was already out of the picture, of course. Amend that to someone like him.
She faced the truth of it, embraced it, even. After the debacle that had been their relationship, men were the last thing she wanted any part of anyway. In her experience, they weren’t worth the pain they caused.
“Yes.”
“Still hell-bent on being little Miss Overachiever, aren’t you?”
She bristled. “Do you have any idea how patronizing that is?”
“What? That isn’t patronizing. That, from someone who’s seen how you operate close-up, is a simple observation. And for what it’s worth, here’s some advice to go with it: don’t work yourself into an early grave trying to take care of everyone else.”
“And what does that mean, precisely?”
“You know what it means. I know Maddie’s tuition got paid. I know your mother leased a building so she could open a real day-care facility instead of keeping children in her house. I’ve heard about Grace’s brand-new consignment shop.”
“So?”
“C’mon, Jess, this is me you’re talking to, remember?”
“Not … your … business. Any of it.”
“You’re right. It isn’t. How’s the headache?”
Lips firming, Jess didn’t answer. Instead she looked pointedly out the window. Not that there was much to see. Narrow, two-story frame houses crowded together on either side of the street. White was the aluminum siding color of choice, although there were a few tan and gray ones thrown in for good measure. Most, like her mother’s, had black shingle roofs, small porches out front, and a generally run-down air. Even in the dark they looked tired. It was a neighborhood where people struggled, lived paycheck to paycheck, and worried about whether they were going to be able to make next month’s mortgage or rent payment.
She felt fortunate that she was now earning enough to make her family’s lives a little easier. And why shouldn’t she? She was the oldest sister, and she’d always felt responsible for the rest of them. For her mother, too, who had married three times (so far) and unfortunately always seemed to be attracted to the wrong sort of man. They were a unit, she and her mother, Sarah, Grace, and Maddie. They always had been. Whatever happened, good or bad, they stuck together. In a screaming, hair-pulling fight, sometimes, but still, together through thick and thin.
The Suburban turned onto Laundry Street, where, looking down the way, she discovered her mother’s house was one of the few with the downstairs lights still on. Jess said coldly, “You can just drop me off in front of the house.”
“What, you don’t want me to come in?”
“No.”
“Don’t you think you might be getting a little carried away with this whole ‘I hate my ex’ thing?”
“No. Anyway, I never said I hated you. I don’t hate you. I am over you, which is something entirely different.” She was pardonably proud of the conviction in her voice. “You not coming in has nothing to do with that.”
“So what does it have to do with?”
“I don’t feel like explaining why you’re with me, okay? If you come in, Mom will know something’s up. I’ll end up telling her what happened—or you will—and she’ll worry. She’ll tell Grace not to go out at night. She’ll send Maddie over to live with us, because she thinks there’s safety in numbers. For all I know, next time Sarah’s marriage hits a bad patch, she’ll send Sarah to live with me, complete with kids. None of which would help, and all of which would drive me completely around the bend.”
“Let me get this straight: you’re not planning on telling your mother what just happened?”
“No.”
“What about Grace?”
“What about her?”
“She lives in the same apartment you do. Maybe she should know that you were just violently attacked in your mutual front yard.”
Jess hadn’t thought about that. If by some chance the attacker hadn’t been specifically targeting her, Grace could be at risk, too.
“So I’ll tell Grace.” Knowing that telling Grace was the same as telling her mother, which was the same as telling the whole gang because that was just the way her family worked, she temporized. “Enough to keep her safe.”
“Isn’t your mother going to wonder why you’re showing up on her doorstep wanting to spend the night?”
Good question. Before Jess could think of an answer that had any chance of satisfying her mother, she felt her foot brush against something freezing cold and damp. Glancing down into the footwell in surprise, she realized she had another problem.
“I lost my shoes.” The memory of how they had come to fly off her feet made her heart quicken all over again. You could have died tonight. “They must still be out there in the yard.”
“So add showing up barefoot to the list of things you get to explain to your mother.”
“She won’t notice.” As long as Jess could get inside the house without being spotted, that was, because it was her invariable practice to kick her shoes off as soon as she was inside the door.
“What about the bruises you’re bound to have by tomorrow? She’ll notice that.”
Jess could feel the tenderness just above her right temple, the soreness of her ribs: Mark was right about the bruises, she was sure.
“I’ll cover them with makeup. Believe me, Mom has plenty in the bathroom, and if it’s bad I’ll have to do it anyway to go into work.” She sighed as more difficulties occurred to her. “The bigger problem is, how am I going to go to work tomorrow without any shoes? Or clothes? Oh, well, I guess I’ll just have to get up early and run over to my apartment and get dressed there.”
“I’d be surprised that you’re planning to go into work tomorrow after just escaping being murdered by the skin of your teeth, except, oh, wait, I know you.”
Jess opened her mouth to wither him with a few well-chosen words, but the sight of a red minivan pulling over to the curb and then slamming to a halt in front of her mother’s house and, a split second later, Maddie all but leaping from the passenger side door to the sidewalk distracted her. Five-foot-six-inch Maddie was as slender as ever except for her round tummy, which, at seven months along, looked like a beachball stuck up under her tank top and droopy cutoff sweats. Her long blond braids bounced with the force of her exit. She was clutching what looked like a pillow, and even in the dark and from a distance it was clear she was spitting mad.
“Forget it! Just forget it!” Maddie whirled to scream at whoever had dropped her off. It didn’t require genius to guess the driver’s identity: Brice Wollinski, Maddie’s twenty-year-ol
d car mechanic ex-fiancé and the father of her baby, Jess was all but certain, who, over the last few months, had earned at least a big capital L-O-S on the word loser. This was looking like capital E, and then he’d just have R to go before the whole family turned on him en masse and tore him limb from limb on Maddie’s behalf.
“Stop. I’m getting out,” Jess told Mark, her eyes on her sister. There was just enough illumination, from the moon and the light spilling out from her mother’s windows and a distant streetlight, to allow her to see the bright gleam of tears coursing down Maddie’s cheeks.
Mark braked as the minivan took off with a squeal of tires, leaving Maddie behind. Jess was just pushing the door open when Maddie screamed, “Asshole!” at the top of her lungs, then hurled the pillow after the departing van.
CHAPTER TEN
Give me Black Ops assassins anytime.
That was Mark’s first rueful thought as Jess jumped out of the Suburban to rush toward her furious sister, and he realized that the next item on the night’s already jam-packed agenda was going to be pure domestic drama. Mired in a world of women as he always seemed to be, it was nothing new, but still it was something he preferred to avoid if he could.
No such luck.
Keeping one eye on Jess, who was focused on her pillow-tossing sister, Mark pulled the Suburban over to the curb, which was not a problem out here on the raggedy fringe of the city. Not that he was in any hurry to rejoin Jess. In fact, he welcomed a moment or two alone to regain some perspective. The idea that Jess could have died tonight was making him nuts. And the fact that it was making him nuts confirmed something for him. No matter how hard he had tried, no matter what he had told himself to the contrary, the woman still had a stranglehold on his heart.
A few scant weeks after meeting her, he’d found himself proposing to her. The speed with which he’d fallen in love had been totally contrary to his nature. After the breakup of his marriage years before, his MO had been to play the field and keep it light. Finding out that his then-wife had been sleeping with a fellow agent had cured him of the marriage bug forever. Or, at least, that’s what he’d thought until he had encountered Jess.
Their relationship had been forged in danger. He knew from his military experience that things can get intense pretty quickly when your life is on the line, and so it had proved with him and Jess. As special agent in charge of First Lady Annette Cooper’s security detail, he had rushed to the scene of the car crash that had killed Mrs. Cooper, her driver, and the Secret Service agent who had accompanied her that night. He’d been the one who’d found the fourth occupant of the burned-out car, the lone survivor who’d owed her life to the fact that she’d been thrown clear. That survivor was Jess, and from the moment he’d discovered her lying dazed and broken on the dark hillside the car had tumbled down, he’d thrown in his lot with hers, making it his mission to keep her safe from the rogue operatives who were determined to finish the job they had started and kill her, too.
They’d come within a heartbeat of dying half a dozen times. In the fraught process of staying alive, they’d fallen head over heels in love. The speed with which it had happened, the intensity of it, had caused him to panic a little, he saw now. Hearing himself propose marriage, which he’d had no idea he’d meant to do until the words left his mouth, had ramped that panic way up. So what had he done? How had he coped? Almost immediately found a way to fuck the relationship up.
When MJ Cates, an old girlfriend, who, as fate would have it, had turned out to be Jess’s boss, had surprised him by coming on to him while he’d been waiting to take Jess to lunch, he’d reacted just as he would have pre-Jess, letting MJ kiss him, kissing her back. Done that when he had known Jess was there in the same building, on the same floor. On her way to meet him, yet. Had he done it on purpose? He wasn’t much for psychology, didn’t spend a lot of time delving into his own motives, but looking back now with the useless benefit of hindsight, he almost had to say yes.
He’d known Jess. He’d known she wasn’t going to tolerate finding the man she loved kissing another woman.
He’d been right. After that, there had been no going back. No apologies accepted. No second chances handed out. Truth was, he’d almost been relieved when she’d told him it was over, had almost been relieved to have been kicked out of her life.
Until he’d tried to go back to the way his life had been before he’d met her, had tried to live his life without her in it, and had found that nothing had felt right.
He’d buried himself in work, too stubborn to face the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he’d made the mother of all mistakes. But as the weeks had passed, he’d found himself missing her more, not less. The hole he’d torn in the fabric of his existence had just seemed to keep getting bigger, more ragged. The hottest, brightest summer day had felt a little cold, a little gray.
Without Jess.
He’d still been getting his head around the implications of that when he’d gotten the call from a buddy at the FBI about Leonard Cowan’s suicide.
Supposed suicide.
Because he wasn’t buying it. Not so easily. Not yet.
Burned out in the aftermath of Mrs. Cooper’s death, Mark had left the White House security detail to work for the Secret Service’s investigative branch. That afternoon he’d walked out on a scheduled interrogation of a suspected money launderer to go in search of Jess. He’d found her in court, had waited until she had come out.
He’d lied, though. As of this moment, he wasn’t under any kind of official orders to keep her safe. He’d come for her on his own initiative, because the one thing he knew for sure was that he wasn’t going to let her get killed. Hasbrough would almost certainly issue such an order once he learned what had happened, but Mark hadn’t been about to wait.
“Your job is to handle the survivor.” That’s the way it had come down in the beginning, and that’s the way it had to stay, world without end. Because he was the only government operative he could be sure didn’t have a secret agenda. His sole purpose was to protect Jess.
Although he had downplayed it to Jess, a cleanup operation on the order of what he suspected had happened to Leonard Cowan was his default explanation for the attack on her, which luckily, he had been on hand to thwart. If that was the answer, then she was in deadly danger still. Once activated, those guys never gave up, and they never forgot. The best he could hope for was that having temporarily failed they would decide to lay low for awhile.
Nobody came after me.
There was that, so maybe he was wrong. Maybe the attack on Jess wasn’t a follow-up to what had happened to Cowan after all. Maybe it was random, just D.C. being D.C. Or maybe it was something else. Because if they came after Jess, they must know they had to take him out, too.
The only intelligent thing to do would be to take him out first. Unless, of course, another fed on the kill team had an aversion to eliminating one of his own kind. Still, it would be dangerous to the point of foolhardiness to kill her and leave him alive.
Although if they knew the two of them had been an item, knew she had dumped him, they might assume he wouldn’t care.
Stupid assumption.
Frowning, Mark stared into the darkness beyond the windshield, weighing the possibilities.
“Maddie.” The fear in Jess’s voice was enough to make him refocus in a hurry. He saw Maddie folding toward the sidewalk as if her knees had turned to water, and he was out of the car in a flash. Alarm jangled his nerves, which was kind of funny, because his nerves never got jangled on his own behalf. Bullets flying past, knives slashing toward him, bombs blowing everything in his vicinity to smithereens—any kind of physical danger just tended to make him go colder and calmer.
But women in distress got to him every time.
He heard Maddie’s sobs almost as soon as he was on the ground, and he slowed his steps accordingly: his worst fear, that something had happened to her, that she’d been shot or stabbed in another attack maybe, was immediately
assuaged. As the father of a daughter who changed moods more often than she changed her clothes (and that was damned often), he recognized furious weeping when he heard it. He had the same reaction to it that he always did: he wanted no part of it. But sometimes there was no help for it and you just had to deal.
Fortunately, right now Jess was the designated dealer-in-chief.
She leaned over her sister, who was kneeling on the pavement with her face buried in her hands. Maddie was a pretty girl, big blue eyes, fine features, a hint of Jess’s square jaw, but Mark was unsettled by the juxtaposition of long schoolgirl braids and the same kind of funky teen clothing and flip-flops Taylor might wear with a swollen-with-child belly.
Probably because he kept thinking that if a girl as smart as Maddie could get herself into a fix like that, what chance did he have of keeping his own way less academically inclined, already rebellious and defiant daughter on the straight and narrow?
Pure dumb luck might not be enough, and the thought scared him cold.
“He didn’t even care,” Maddie wailed. “I can’t even count on him for that. What a fucking asshole.”
Mark didn’t hear Jess’s reply, mainly because, in reconnoitering the area for possible danger, he spotted the pillow Maddie had thrown and used the need to retrieve it as a way to take himself out of the hot zone. Then he backtracked to the Suburban to fetch Jess’s purse and briefcase, which she would surely want. By the time he returned with the pillow tucked under his arm and Jess’s bags slung over his shoulder, Maddie was talking and crying at the same time and Jess was helping Maddie to her feet. Maddie was some four inches taller and, just at present, no telling how many pounds heavier than bird-boned Jess. Jess had just suffered through the severe physical and psychological trauma of a would-be murderous attack, but nobody would have guessed it watching the two of them. Jess was every inch the protector. She wrapped her arm around Maddie’s waist and the younger sister leaned on the elder, resting her head against Jess’s, soaking up sympathy and support as they headed up the short concrete walkway that led to the porch. Watching, Mark’s lips compressed.
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