by Kim Foster
But it was more than my lonely bed. I had too many questions in my head. Too many things to worry about—my mother, this new job, Ethan . . .
I tossed and turned until my pajamas knotted in a sweaty mess around me. The LED numbers on the clock display stared at me. It was just past midnight. Was that all? I felt like I’d been lying awake for hours.
I got up, pulled on a pair of sweats, threw my hair into a ragged ponytail, and walked out of my apartment. A quick glance in the mirror of the elevator proved to be a mistake. I had neglected to take off my makeup before going to bed, so there was mascara smeared around my eyes and a generally shiny, smudgy look about my face.
It didn’t matter. Who was I trying to impress? All I needed to do was walk a little. Clear my head, then get back to sleep.
If it were a more reasonable hour, I’d have called my girlfriends to meet for coffee or a glass of wine. I really could use some therapeutic girl talk. Or a distraction, at least. But neither Mel nor Sophie would appreciate me waking them up in the middle of the night to talk about my problems.
Cool night air tingled my nostrils as I stepped outside. At least the neighborhood was familiar. It was the same one Jack and I had lived in.
I strolled, hungry and wondering what would be open after midnight. But I wasn’t going into a bar or restaurant looking like this. Corner store it was.
I stepped inside the fluorescently lit space that smelled of stale coffee and lemonade slushies. I shuffled down the aisles in search of suitable snacks. Chocolate—yes, I was definitely in need of some chocolate. I also grabbed a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream. And a huge bag of pork rinds. And a People magazine with a picture of the latest Bachelor. Then I noticed a sale on mega packs of tampons, and also toilet paper. Might as well stock up, right?
I felt sheepish putting all this stuff on the counter in front of the very young and quite cute guy with deep blue eyes working the cash register, but really, what did I care? I didn’t know him. And I needed this stuff. Especially the pork rinds.
The door chime jangled and I heard a man and a woman enter. The woman laughed flirtatiously as the man finished the tail end of a story.
My heart stopped in its tracks. Even though I hadn’t turned yet, I knew the man’s voice. It was Jack.
My head turned on an irresistible swivel. Sure enough, Jack Barlow was entering the store with a woman on his arm. They were both in cocktail attire.
Jack looked drop-dead gorgeous, as always. Tall, dark, broad shoulders, great hair. Jack was the kind of man who would look perfectly at ease in lumberjack attire; he had the rugged look of an outdoorsman. But he cleaned up like nobody’s business.
The woman I didn’t know. She was young, early twenties. A slender, leggy blonde in a nude, sparkly cocktail dress that showed a lot of smooth, glowing skin. Jack’s arm was around her waist as they walked in.
My chest pinched. Fortunately, they hadn’t seen me as they entered. I had to get out of there, fast. I turned my face away from them, back to the clerk.
“That comes to eighteen sixty-one,” the blue-eyed clerk said, tallying my purchases.
I rummaged in my wallet and quickly produced my debit card. He rang it through and I heard the woman’s laughter from behind me, deep within the aisles of the store. I didn’t turn to look.
As I stood at the counter I wondered if Templeton had been right about Jack. I hadn’t fully believed him. It was so out of character for Jack. But it was harder to dispute now. The whole badly behaved playboy thing had never been Jack’s scene, even though he certainly had the means.
A knot of guilt centered in my stomach. If he really had changed for the worse—was it my fault?
I heard their voices moving closer to the counter. I hastily punched in my PIN. The clerk looked down at the machine and said, “Nope, didn’t work.”
In my urgency I must have punched it in wrong. I tried again, on the edge of frantic. I had to get out of there.
“Sorry. Declined again.”
I closed my eyes and tried to relax. Jack and his companion were right behind me now and I didn’t have a lick of cash on me.
“Okay, never mind,” I said quietly to the clerk. “I’ll—um, come back.” I would just leave, abandon my items on the counter.
“Cat?”
My heart sank into my tennis sneakers.
I steeled myself and turned, staring into the faces of Jack and his perfect date. There I was with my unwashed hair, smeared makeup, and grubby sweats attempting to buy a jumbo pack of tampons and pork rinds, but seemingly too broke to do so.
I wanted to crawl inside that jumbo pack of tampons and die. Instead, I applied a bright smile and said, “Oh! Jack! Didn’t see you there. What a . . . coincidence.”
New goal: extract myself from this situation as soon as possible, ideally with my self-respect somewhat intact.
“Yeah, small world,” Jack said. He was holding a bottle of Prosecco. This corner store, surprisingly, had a decent selection of wine.
There was something different about Jack. Something less cautious, somehow. He’d always been the hero, the warrior, the guy you could count on to do the right thing. Now, here, he looked a little more rogue. A little more don’t-give-a-shit. But perhaps it was my imagination.
I tried as hard as I could to keep looking in his eyes. But I was drawn to his companion, whom Jack hadn’t introduced yet.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jack said, seeing my gaze shift. “Let me introduce you. Cat, this is Madison. Madison is an undergrad at UW, in political science.”
I briefly wondered if this was as uncomfortable for her as it was for me. I also wondered if Madison was someone he was dating casually—or was she a more serious girlfriend? They looked very familiar with each other, very comfortable. This whole line of thinking threatened to excise my heart with a dull spoon.
I grasped onto the only part of the conversation I could. “Oh, I’m a student at UW also,” I said. “I’m doing my master’s in French lit. But Jack probably told you about that.”
As soon as the words were out, I wanted to take them back. It was a ridiculous thing to say. Why would he have told her that? Why would he have mentioned anything about me at all? An awkward silence blossomed.
“Oh, did you two used to date?” Madison asked, finally piecing it together. There was surprise and a certain amount of doubt in her voice.
This was a punch in the throat. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the door, which was like a mirror because it was dark outside. I looked like I hadn’t showered in a week.
“So,” I said, giving a small chuckle, “I was just out for a run.” I glanced down at my outfit, and my generally disheveled appearance, by way of explanation. Not that they were asking for an explanation, but I couldn’t help attempting to give one.
“You run at this hour of the night?” Madison asked. A hint of disbelief curled the edges of her tone.
“I didn’t know you were a runner,” Jack said. “When did you start doing that?”
Crap. I should have said hot yoga. That would have been much more believable. And fashionable.
I needed a way out of there.
The store clerk cleared his throat. “Miss, are you going to pay for these things?”
Oh God, the tampons and ice cream and pork rinds. “Um, that’s okay, I don’t really need that stuff,” I said weakly.
“Here, do you need cash?” Jack asked, reaching into his wallet.
“No!” I said, more vigorously than was necessary, placing my hand on his arm to stop him. Then I quickly withdrew it, which Madison noted with a perfectly penciled, arched eyebrow. “Thank you, Jack—but I’m okay.”
In truth, I was anything but okay. I quickly mumbled something vague about seeing them again sometime and bolted toward the exit.
Even before I reached the door, I knew there were stinging tears waiting to come out. I was a cautionary tale, an Aesop’s fable about the dog with the bone. I had no r
ight to be upset because the fact was . . . I’d had him. He had been mine. And I’d messed it up. In trying to figure out which man I loved the most, Ethan or Jack, I’d lost them both.
I burst out the door and the second I was out of view started sprinting down the street.
See? There. I was running, now, wasn’t I?
Chapter Five
Jack’s housekeeper, Evelyn, woke him a few minutes past noon. He was alone in his bed. After the corner store incident the night before, instead of bringing Madison back to his place to share the bottle of Prosecco like they’d planned, he’d dropped her off at home. He wanted to be alone.
Evelyn threw open the curtains, and harsh sunlight poured into his room. Jack groaned and covered his eyes with a down pillow. His head throbbed.
“It’s the afternoon,” Evelyn said plainly, a statement of fact, no judgment tucked inside.
It was a ridiculous hour of the day to be crawling out of bed, but Jack couldn’t find it in himself to care. All he wanted to do was nurse his hangover. Just because he’d taken Madison home didn’t mean he’d stopped drinking.
He dragged his sorry ass out of bed and into the bathroom. In the mirror, Jack barely recognized himself—face pale and slack, dark smudges under his eyes. He looked away in disgust and twisted the shower nozzle on.
After his shower, starting to feel more human, Jack dressed and went into the kitchen to find that Evelyn had food waiting for him—eggs and bacon and hot coffee. For the hundredth time he wondered what he would do without her. The thought triggered a pang of guilt. He knew the only reason he had the means to afford a housekeeper and this penthouse was because of his father. Or more specifically, his father’s illicit and lucrative lifestyle. Jack had inherited a fortune because of it.
Evelyn bustled around the kitchen as he sipped coffee and left the food untouched. Then, she came over and stood in front of him. He looked up to see her glaring down at him, hands planted on her hips.
“You need help, Jack,” she said to him flatly. Jack said nothing. He continued sipping his coffee.
But Evelyn wasn’t to be deterred. “Ever since you came back from Paris you’ve been different.”
He put his mug down on the table and looked up at her. “You mean ever since my career went down the drain? Yeah, you could say that’s when things went to shit.”
“It’s not only about your career and you know it,” she said.
He grumbled. He knew she was talking about Cat.
“This isn’t you. This kind of lifestyle—it’s not worthy of you.”
Jack ignored her and pretended to read the newspaper. But he wasn’t focusing on the words. He was thousands of miles away, back in Paris.
After Cat had left Jack on the banks of the Seine three months ago, crushing his heart into the cobblestones, he’d pretended to be okay with it all. Pretended he felt only respect for her decision.
After a week of moping around at home, brooding on the whole thing, he’d decided he was done with relationships. Never again would he let someone destroy his heart. From then on, he’d just have fun. Nothing complicated. So he started dating, with a vengeance. He soon discovered it was a great distraction.
Especially after everything else went to shit, too. Shortly after returning home from Paris, Jack had been dismissed from the FBI. Well, not exactly. His supervisor, Victoria Sullivan, had filed a formal report recommending his dismissal. Jack had known what would come next: a long and drawn-out procedure, during which they’d scrutinize Jack’s behavior. His transgressions, his tendency to do things not exactly by the book.
Jack just didn’t have the stomach for it. So he voluntarily surrendered his badge.
Evelyn’s voice pulled him back to the present. “Wesley called again,” she said pointedly.
Jack remained stony-faced. “I’ve already told you. I’m not calling him back.”
He was not getting dragged back into all that again. Wesley was the AB&T operative who was heading up the search for the Fabergé egg that contained the Gifts of the Magi. For a long time the Fabergé quest had given Jack drive, supplying him with a purpose that made it worth getting out of bed in the morning. But Wesley and Jack had failed so far in every attempt to recapture the Fabergé egg. It had slipped through their fingers and now it was gone.
Wesley had tried to involve him in the search for the Gifts again and, more importantly, for the lost portion of gold that had become separated from the other two Gifts at some point. It was something they’d learned about from Esmerelda, a French agent with the enigmatic Department of Antiquities who had helped them with the Louvre job.
But after everything that had happened with Cat in Paris, Jack had turned his back on anything remotely connected with Cat’s world. He didn’t have the heart for it.
After that, he’d grown restless and idle. Rudderless. Not long afterward he’d started drinking. Gambling a little more than usual. But Jack would get all that under control . . . eventually.
“Just think about it, Jack,” Evelyn said. “You need to find your direction again, or you’re going to destroy yourself.”
After breakfast, Jack left the apartment and went out for a walk. He stopped to get a coffee at Starbucks and then strolled downtown. The Seattle streets were the epitome of Northwest cool. Laid-back, nobody in a major rush to get anywhere, everyone carrying steaming paper cups. The sidewalks were unusually dry; it hadn’t rained in days. A freshening sea breeze came in off Puget Sound.
Jack sipped his coffee as he walked past the Seattle Art Museum.
There was a delivery truck parked outside in the back lane, in the loading bay, with the back door rolled entirely open. Inside the truck lay paintings wrapped and packed for shipping. Two deliverymen were bringing them in one by one, and they looked like they were in a rush. As they worked in tandem, there was a moment, each time, when the precious cargo was left unattended, the back of the truck open. Jack overheard them arguing about it. It wasn’t protocol to leave the truck unguarded, even for a second, but it sounded like the man in charge was keen to finish early.
Jack knew he could use those slivers of opportunity if he wanted. He could stroll over, pluck a painting from the truck, and walk away. He glanced around—he was having fun now, imagining, playing this game—and he mapped his escape route. Yes, that alley there. He could make it to that alley before they saw him. And from there, he could escape through the neighboring building.
He glanced up. No CCTV.
Definitely doable.
The art in the truck was not likely to be Rembrandt or anything. But it must have had value. The SAM wasn’t some crummy local gallery. It would be so easy; it required just the right amount of panache. A large part of him was tempted to do it.
Jack thought of his father, John Robie. A career criminal, one of the best jewel thieves the world had seen. It might have been something to be proud of—if it hadn’t ruined Jack’s childhood. If it hadn’t meant their estrangement, and his father’s death before they’d had a chance to reconcile. Layers of complicated emotion pressed down on Jack, clouding his vision. He pushed it all away, shoved it back in the dark corner from whence it came.
Jack hovered. He waited by the truck for the next moment of opportunity, pretending to be reading a text and sipping his coffee.
The moment came. The truck was unattended again and Jack walked over. He knew nobody was watching as he climbed up easily into the cargo compartment and plucked the nearest canvas from the stack. It felt good in his hand.
The urge to take it right out of the truck was intense, like a powerful ocean current. Like a seductive beckoning.
Then Jack put the canvas down, returning it to exactly the same spot. He hopped down from the truck and strode quickly away. The delivery guy returned just as Jack rounded the corner out of the alley. He didn’t cast Jack the slightest glance.
As Jack strolled away, he tossed his coffee cup in the trash. He turned south on Union Street toward the waterfront, catchin
g glimpses of Puget Sound between the city’s high-rises.
Jack had put the painting back because he didn’t need it. What he did need, however, was to feel alive. And for a moment, when he had picked up that canvas, he had.
Chapter Six
Kenya
Ethan swung the hammer. The last nail. There. The frame was done. Now they could take a break. The schoolhouse would be finished before the end of the week.
The sun baked his neck, and blow flies hovered and buzzed around his sweaty bandanna. Ethan wiped his forehead and looked to the horizon, where the packed earth of the village gave way to the grassy savannah of the Maasai Mara. The hint of a dusky mountain range rose above it in the distance.
Ethan made his way to a nearby picnic table, grabbing a sandwich and a bottle of water from the cooler printed with the NGO’s logo and name: Global Life. He sat down beside two other men. One of them was a new guy—a young hipster with muttonchop sideburns and long bow legs, like a cowboy. Gary was the other, older man. During the three months Ethan had been there, Gary had become his friend. He was balding, with droopy puppy-dog eyes and the hint of a beer belly, but he was sharp as an arrowhead.
The new guy, Ryan, was talking about where he’d been before this. He’d done a stint with Greenpeace in the Congo, and before that with the Peace Corps in Colombia. He wasn’t the first such person—a lifer—Ethan had met, but it never ceased to amaze him that there were people who spent their whole lives nomadically volunteering.
Ryan asked Gary about his previous life. “Schoolteacher,” Gary said.
Ethan knew the story. Gary had worked at a private school in a privileged neighborhood of New Hampshire. Until one day he got fed up with all the bratty, snotty kids—and their even worse parents—and signed up with Global Life. That had been three years ago. He had no intention of ever going back.
“So how about you?” Ryan asked Ethan. “What did you do before coming here?”