“I made my plan the day I started my sentence,” Jack said, taking a drag and holding it in his lungs for a second before exhaling a plume of smoke towards the open window. “At least, I knew at that point that, no matter what, I was going to get out and investigate. It took me a month of watching how things worked there, and another month of getting my shit together, before I managed to get out.”
“What did you do?”
Jack shrugged, and Cassandra took another drag of her cigarette.
“Prison guards are human beings,” Jack explained. “Wherever you have people, there are weak links. Not everyone working there is committed to the job. Some of them are just punching a time card, you know? The trick is, you have to figure out who those people are without tipping your hand; if they start suspecting you’re trying to find a chink in the armor, they’re down on you in a heartbeat. Full isolation, meals through a slot in the door; they keep you in cuffs and shackles for your one hour of exercise per day.” Cassandra nodded, frowning. “If I ever get clear of this,” Jack said musingly, “I’m going to write my congressman about the conditions in prison. The one I was in wasn’t even all that bad, really, but it still sucked. They all suck.” Jack paused. “Especially if you’re wrongly convicted.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Cassandra pointed out, a teasing note in her voice.
“Anyway,” Jack said, flicking ash through the opening in the window, “I figured out who the weak links were, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I got a weapon off of one of the dipshit guards, and got him to escort me. He was too scared to raise the alarm, I guess.” Jack chuckled again. “Or he just didn’t care enough. He led me out towards the gate… Next thing you know, I’m on the other side of security, making my way towards the city, and your apartment.”
Cassandra was fascinated by the combination of intelligence and violence that had gone into Jack’s escape. She would have thought, based on Hardy’s career in the military and then as a bounty hunter, that he would have taken someone down, stolen their uniform, and gone from there. The fact that he had spent so much time planning his escape told Cassandra that he was even smarter than she had realized.
A question rose up in Cassandra’s mind, and she took another drag of her cigarette before flicking the butt out through the window, debating whether or not she had the courage to ask it. She exhaled the last of the smoke from her cigarette, and took a cursory glance in her mirrors, checking to make sure the traffic around her was clear, when she took in a sight that made her stomach turn over and her heart start hammering in her chest.
“Oh God, not now,” she murmured, as the car sped up behind them.
“What?” Jack’s voice was sharp.
“State trooper,” Cassandra said, unable to take her eyes off of the car behind her. “Maybe he’ll pass me.”
Cold dread crept down her spine. Cassandra knew that when she’d failed to show up to work, her coworkers would have been concerned—especially when they realized that Jack had escaped in the night before, and she hadn’t even called in sick. Her phone had flashed with missed calls—she had put it on airplane mode once the first few had come in. Cassandra had considered calling the office, or sending an email to let someone know that she was okay, but she had been too wrapped up in the tumultuous events of the day. By the time they had reached Lenny’s apartment in the city, the concern had slipped her mind altogether.
Cassandra hoped against hope that the trooper would pass her by; but just when she was certain he would get bored of following her and change lanes, she heard the sound of the siren starting up, and saw the bubble light on the top of the car light up, spinning in lazy flashes behind her.
“Shit. Shit. Shit—he’s pulling me over.”
She took a quick, deep breath and tried to force her tired brain to think. Considering that she was basically missing in action, it was likely that her colleagues would have filed some kind of report.
Cassandra knew that under most circumstances, it took twenty-four hours for the police to accept a missing person report. On the other hand, when there was a fugitive on the loose and the missing person in question had been involved in putting that fugitive in jail, Cassandra thought the cops might make an exception. Had the trooper run her license plate? Did her coworkers even have that information? Would the police need that, or would a simple BOLO on her name and appearance be enough? Cassandra began to slow down, knowing that if she tried to evade the cop now, he’d started the siren and lights, and she would be screwed.
“Shit,” Jack said. He shifted slightly, and Cassandra glanced down in the rearview mirror to see him rummaging amongst her things. “Pull over, but take your time. I need to get under cover.”
“I’ll try,” Cassandra said. Her palms felt slick. Her heart started pounding in her chest for what seemed like the tenth time that day. If they reported me missing, it would be by name. If he hasn’t already scanned my tag, I can’t let him see my license.
Cassandra slowed down and made her way over to the shoulder, using her signal to indicate that she was complying with the nonverbal command the officer had given her. It helped that while traffic was relatively light for the time of day, there were still other cars to navigate around; it made her slow maneuver seem more natural, and gave her time to think of some kind of excuse in case the office asked to see her ID.
If he’d already figured out who I am, he’d be doing more than the courtesy flash of the lights and regular siren. I’d be surrounded by cops in minutes.
Jack was taking his own precautions. Cassandra caught glimpses in the mirror as he grabbed up the detritus in the back seat: an abandoned beach towel, a throw she’d stowed on the back shelf for those nights when she stayed at the office too late and needed to grab a nap before driving home. He slithered down behind the front seats and into the floorboards, covering himself with the throw and scattering things around to make it look like a messy back seat instead of a hiding spot for a fugitive.
When Cassandra was mostly certain that Jack was as concealed as he could possibly be under the circumstances, she completed her movement onto the shoulder and rolled to a stop, parking the car.
As she waited for the state trooper to pull up behind her, Cassandra closed her eyes for a moment, inhaling slowly as she attempted to calm down the rabbit-rapid fluttering of her heart. She swallowed against the lump that was forming in her throat and opened her eyes just in time to see the trooper get out of his car. He reminded her faintly of an older version of Riley, though it was obvious from the bulges in his uniform that he wasn’t at the peak of his physical fitness.
The man’s hair was in a high and tight, the scalp underneath a little sunburned. He strode up to the driver’s side door with a slight swagger in his step.
Why do they always have to do that? Some of Cassandra’s fear dissipated in her irritation. They walk up to you like they can tell you to do whatever they want, like they own the world.
She suppressed her annoyance; it wouldn’t do her any good to give the man an attitude.
Cassandra rolled down the window and kept her hands in view, tugging the hem of her blouse down just a tiny bit as a kind of instinctive insurance.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” the man said, peering into the window.
She gave him a tense smile, turning to face him. “Officer,” she said, keeping her voice as level as she could manage. “Is something wrong?”
Only a few hours before, she would have begged him to help her—she would have dropped the dime on Jack in a heartbeat if the trooper had come up behind her on the way to Riley’s house. The officer’s gaze trailed over her, and Cassandra briefly regretted showing a little more cleavage at the neck of her blouse.
“Were you aware that your left taillight is out?”
Cassandra felt relief wash through her. “No, officer,” she said, her lips twitching into a nervous smile. “I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry.”
“You should get that fixed,
sweetheart,” the leering officer said. He rested his arm against the roof of her car. “It can be pretty dangerous if both go out on you. Normally I’d issue a warning for that, but you seem like you’re pretty much on the up-and-up, so I’ll let you go on your way.”
Cassandra fought back the urge to laugh at his evaluation of her situation; there was only one other person in the car who was less on the up-and-up than she was, and he was an escaped convict.
“I appreciate it, sir,” Cassandra said. She tried to keep her voice as sincere as possible, deeply relieved that he didn’t seem to be asking for her ID. If she could just keep him from having some kind of conscientious twitch, she might just be able to get back on the road and put some distance between herself and the officer before he sensed that something was up.
“Be careful out there,” the officer said, giving her a mock-stern look. “And you get that taillight fixed as soon as possible, all right?”
“As soon as I can get it to the mechanic,” Cassandra assured him, giving him a bright smile.
“All right, then,” the trooper said. He gave her chest one final, lingering look, smirking slightly as he turned away, then starting back towards his patrol car, apparently putting their interaction behind him.
Cassandra took a deep breath and sighed with relief, pressing the brake and shifting the car out of park.
“Thank you, God,” she said, taking her foot off of the brake and starting down the shoulder while the trooper maneuvered around her and onto the highway, leaving her behind. In the back seat, Cassandra heard Jack moving around, pushing the detritus that had covered him off to the sides.
“That wasn’t God, that was you,” Jack said as he pulled himself back up onto the seat.
“The trooper could have asked for my ID and registration,” Cassandra pointed out. “He could have just decided to look around my car a bit. If not God, there was definitely a good bit of luck in what just happened.”
She pulled off of the shoulder and back onto the highway, finding her way into the flow of traffic. For a moment, it was difficult to remember where she had been going. She was so relieved at having not tipped the trooper off that it was difficult to think of anything else.
“I’m a little surprised that you didn’t tell him outright who you are and who was hiding in the back seat,” Jack said.
Cassandra grabbed for her pack of cigarettes and took one out, lighting up as Jack did the same.
“You haven’t figured out by now that I’m not going to snitch?” Cassandra raised an eyebrow, glancing into the back seat. “I’m kind of insulted.”
“You had an out,” Jack said, taking a drag of his cigarette. “You could have gotten help right then and there.” He shook his head, smiling slightly. “I didn’t exactly give you a choice about helping me out—I’d understand if you wanted out of this road trip by now.”
Cassandra shrugged, her cheeks warming slightly at the truth in what Jack had said.
“Why didn’t you out me when you had the chance?”
“I think I might know who murdered Laura,” Cassandra said, looking around to make sure that no other troopers were coming up behind her. “I can’t…I can’t quite call it to mind, but there’s something at her house that I know I’ll see if I go back there.” Cassandra took another drag of her cigarette and coughed slightly as she exhaled. “Besides, the truth needs to come out. I’m partly responsible for you getting thrown in jail, and the courts damn sure aren’t going to help you get to the bottom of it now.”
“It’s not your fault I was convicted,” Jack said, shaking his head. “You were doing your job—reporting on the investigation, passing on the information you found as you tracked the case. You weren’t the one who killed Laura, and you damn sure didn’t frame me for it.”
“I still feel responsible,” Cassandra insisted. “If there was something I missed—something the cops kept out of the record that I should have known about—then I played a part too, even if I didn’t mean to.”
Glancing in the mirror, she caught Jack grinning. “You know, for someone as tough as you are, you’ve still got a pretty strong conscience. Not a common thing in the media—at least not in my experience.”
Cassandra chuckled. The question she had been thinking of before she’d spotted the trooper rose to the surface once more.
“I do have one question for you,” she said, changing lanes to avoid a slowdown. “I feel like I can ask you now—now that you know I’m not going to turn you in.” She caught his eye, looking at Jack in the rearview mirror as he reclined across her backseat.
“What’s that?” Jack’s lips twitched with amusement.
“Were you sleeping with her? Laura, I mean.” Cassandra licked her lips and brought the end of the cigarette up to her mouth, taking a final drag before she flicked it out through the window. She exhaled, feeling her face warm even more as her blush deepened.
“No, I wasn’t,” Jack said, his voice becoming serious once more. “I never had sex with her—I barely knew her, for God’s sake. I kept telling them that, right from the start, but no one believed me.”
He sighed, tossing out the butt of his cigarette. “It was the goddam dog tags. I have no idea how she got her hands on them—how they ended up at her place. I lost them a few weeks before the murder; I woke up after spending the night with some girl I met at a bar, and they were gone.” Jack shook his head, and Cassandra saw the look of bitterness, of tightly controlled rage on his face. “At the time I just figured the girl had snatched them as some kind of souvenir.”
For a moment there was a look of embarrassment on Jack’s face, but it dissolved in the next instant, replaced by a scowl as impenetrable as any Cassandra had ever seen on him. “If I ever find out who put those tags in Laura’s hands, I’ll make them pay.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cassandra felt a low buzz of apprehension as she turned onto the street where Laura Granger’s home stood, memories of the investigation and trial flooding her mind.
She had come to the house more than once while she had been covering the murder, and there was something about the place that her brain associated with a kind of bleak hopelessness, something that made her feel depressed just turning onto the street. It was dark outside—it was starting to get late, and Cassandra’s hands trembled a little on the steering wheel as she made her way down the street.
They had taken a break a few hours before, risking discovery to get some food into their bodies. Cassandra had gone through a drive-thru with Jack hidden in the back seat, doing the best she could to get through the line and order enough food for two starving people without raising suspicion. They’d found a deserted rest station and parked at the far end of it, devouring their over-salted, overcooked meals in near silence. Cassandra had taken another quick nap, for no more than an hour, and then they had gotten back onto the road, taking advantage of the darkness of the advancing night to make their way towards the suburb where Laura had lived.
“We’re here,” Jack said.
Cassandra glanced at him in her mirror. He was shaking his head, peeking out to look through the windows.
“Laura’s neighborhood.” He sighed. “Bad vibes here for years to come.”
“Bounty hunters believe in vibes?” Cassandra raised an eyebrow at the comment.
Jack snorted. “There’s a lot in this world that can’t be explained,” he pointed out. “When you work a job that puts your life in danger, you have to kind of believe in something bigger than yourself. Luck, God, intuition—something that makes you feel like you have some kind of edge over the random chance in the world.”
“So even though you know it’s just a way to psych yourself up, it still works?”
Jack chuckled. “Somehow, it does,” he said.
Cassandra slowed down as she neared Laura Granger’s house, taking a moment to look around. The street was quiet in the late-night hour; a couple of lights were on inside the houses either side of the victim’s home, but t
here wasn’t much movement, and plenty of the rooms of the houses were dark.
In the months since her murder, Laura house had started to take on the look of the horrific crime that had happened within it. Without a resident inside to take care of it, the lawn had become completely overgrown. It had been months since anyone had done anything about the grass, and it came up high enough to make Cassandra worry fleetingly about snakes. The little house had looked nice before, but now it looked undeniably spooky, standing in the dark, lit only by the automatic security lamps that went on at night and turned off in the morning.
Cassandra wondered who was paying for the electric in the house; she tried to recall if Laura Granger had some kind of estate. If she did, wouldn’t they want to sell the house as soon as possible? Unless the police still have their hands on it, of course.
“I’m not going to park here,” Cassandra said, speeding up slightly as she came to the edge of the property. “I’m going to find a side street.”
“There’s a little community park round here,” Jack said, nodding. “It’d be deserted this time of night.”
“We hope,” Cassandra countered.
Cassandra turned the corner at the end of the block and followed the intersecting road down one street. She found the community park; as Jack had suggested, it was deserted, without even security guards to check for teenagers doing drugs in the playground. Cassandra found a parking spot back from the entrance, shielded from casual observation, and pulled into it, shutting the car off as soon as she was parked.
She hadn’t told Jack her suspicions. On their journey from Lenny’s apartment, Cassandra had slowly pieced together what she knew about the case and how it related to the information that Jack had uncovered that day; she was now even more convinced that the answer to her questions was in Laura’s house.
Steal The CEO's Daughter - A Carny Bad Boy Romance Page 21