The Best Revenge

by Justine Davis

  But she wanted to know how he did it, where he’d gone, and she only realized how desperate that desire was now that the chance she might never know was looming over her.

  “He’ll be back. He wants to beat his father too badly to give up,” she told Maui, who was sprawled beside her on the office floor.

  She turned her attention back to the paperwork on the desk. She’d come in here to work, not dwell on things she had no control over.

  Her mother had gone to bed early, so Jessa had grabbed the chance to do some paperwork. The store was dark, the single desk light in the office and the glow of her laptop screen behind her the only sign that someone was here. She went at the papers methodically, sorting, making notes from each order on the chart she kept on their regular customers. It was something her father had started, and she liked the idea of always knowing what their best customer’s preferences were, but she knew there had to be a better way than her father’s voluminous handwritten notes barely kept together on a clipboard. She—

  “Need to computerize.”

  She jumped up, her heart slamming in her chest as a shadow loomed over her. She knew in an instant who it was, but oddly, her heart didn’t calm. It just seemed to race in a different way, her pulse pounding along too quickly, the heat of that acceleration flooding her as she stared at him.

  “Sorry,” St. John said.

  “You should be,” she said, and then, looking down at Maui, added, “And so should you. Some watchdog you are.”

  The big golden simply looked from her to St. John, that plumed mood-indicator of a tail telling her that the dog was delighted at the late-night visit. And to be fair, as she’d been working she’d noticed, vaguely, that the dog had lifted his head and made a tiny sound moments before, and she could hardly expect him to bark at someone he’d been properly introduced to as a friend.

  Or someone his DNA told him was a friend, she thought, laughing inwardly.

  Laughing at herself over the dog’s reaction, so she didn’t have to deal with her own? she wondered.

  She looked down at the papers she’d been working with, afraid that he would see her heated cheeks. Because she couldn’t deny the truth of that assessment; every time she saw him—or even thought of him—she reacted as if she were that long-ago child, half crazy about him in too many ways to count.

  Not that that wasn’t perfectly understandable. Once you got past the terseness of his conversation, if you could call it that, the man who called himself St. John was nothing less than a presence. He made most of the men she’d known seem like pale imitations of men, made them seem like they were simply existing while he was vividly, almost violently alive.

  Perhaps that’s what barely surviving did to you, she thought.

  Never mind what he was doing to her.

  And never mind the fact that, deep down, she was all too well aware that there was nothing childlike now about her reaction to him. Nothing childlike about the jump of her pulse, the rush of heat or the quickening of her breath. Even the man she’d been engaged to in college hadn’t done this to her.

  It was just the shock, she rationalized. The shock of finding out he was alive, after years spent telling herself she was crazy, spending any time longing for someone long dead. Remembering was fine, appropriate, fitting for the boy she’d cared so much about. Mooning after a ghost had been something else, something she’d told herself countless times she should give up. “Still should.”

  Her heart slammed again as he seemed to read her innermost thoughts. And then she realized he was looking from the stacks on the desk to her open laptop, and had returned to his original statement about computerizing the store’s process.

  Get a grip, Hill. With an effort she managed it, and answered evenly enough.

  “I’d like to. I just can’t find a software program that will do all I want it to.”

  “What?”

  “There are tons that will keep books, or do inventory or track purchases, all that, but I want one that will coordinate all that, tell me where some of our more obscure stock is stored, plus keep track of individual customer preferences and cross-reference them with other data, without having to input everything two or three times. I’d like to be able to let people who buy certain products regularly know if I come across a bargain on those, so they could stock up at a lower price. That kind of thing.”

  “Good service.”

  “That was my father’s trademark.” She sat back down wearily. “But I’ve been looking for nearly a year, ever since I finally convinced Dad it would be good for business, for a program that would do it all. It doesn’t seem to exist.”

  “Could.”

  “Should,” she said, earning a twitch upward at one corner of his mouth.

  “Know someone,” he said.

  She frowned, working it through. “You know someone who…?”

  “Could write it.”

  She lifted a brow at him, waiting silently.

  There was no doubting the near-smile then. And for an instant, just an instant, a glint of humor in his eyes told her that he understood perfectly that she was turning his own methods back on him.

  That glint, that flash of amusement, nearly took her breath away.

  She’d often wondered, back then, what Adam would be like if he’d had a normal life. Wondered how he survived a life without the simple things she enjoyed: love, happiness, laughter. Somewhere, somehow, he’d learned to laugh, even if he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—let it show. The thought flooded her with relief; perhaps his life hadn’t stayed the crippled, twisted thing it once had been. Perhaps he’d truly managed to have a good life in the years since he’d escaped his father’s clutches. It had been twenty years, after all, plenty of time to…

  Find someone to help him along that path? He wore no ring, but that meant nothing. On the heels of her earlier acknowledgment of the effect he had on her, the idea was a jolt.

  It’s been twenty years, she told herself. Why wouldn’t he have found someone, some caring woman who would see the true person he was, who would help him get past the scars, the pain, and find some peace?

  She scrambled to cover what she very much feared had shown too clearly on her face.

  “You know a software writer?”

  “Good one. Barton. I’ll ask.” His mouth quirked. “Tear him away from his fiancée.”

  He looked oddly bemused for a moment. Something about the expression jabbed at her, because it spoke of the life he’d left to come here, and the people in that life. The life she knew nothing about. She wanted to ask where he worked, what he did, what he had been doing since the last day she’d seen him. She wanted to know everything. But she was afraid if she asked too much too fast, he would close up again.

  And she couldn’t think of a way to do it without betraying that she knew who he was.

  She settled for an innocuous question. “You work with computer people?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. Which could be, she thought wryly, true of almost everyone on the planet.

  “They’d be lost here,” she said. “Cedar is pretty low-tech.”

  “He says he’ll fix that.”

  She knew he was no longer talking about his computer person. “Sure. He’ll put computer terminals in the library, in the town offices, even the post office. Only problem is that we’re still stuck on dial-up. We’re too far from the phone company central office to get DSL service, and cable hasn’t come out this far yet, so the only alternative is very expensive satellite service, the cost of which he conveniently leaves out of his plan.”

  He nodded at her, as if she were a student who’d done a good job on her homework. For some reason that irritated her.

  “Just because I don’t want to be mayor doesn’t mean I haven’t thought it through.”

  “Never said that. Just need to tell people.”

  “They all know that already.”

  “Listen to dreams enough, forget reality.”

  She barely managed to
refrain from pointing out that that had never worked for him. But then, his reality had been much, much uglier than most.

  Unable to look at him any longer, she turned around as if there was something she needed to check on her laptop screen. Which, she realized, there was.

  “That reminds me,” she said, more to herself than him, “I need to go online and set up a payment.”

  She plugged the phone line into the laptop’s modem and started the connection process.

  “Slow,” he said after a minute went by.

  She shrugged. “Takes forever, but now I have to do it this way. Can’t risk another problem with the bank.”

  “Problem?”

  “A couple of payments got there late even though I mailed them five days in advance and they only had to go to River Mill. And one didn’t get there at all. They started making nasty noises. Don’t know what’s up with the mail, but I don’t trust it anymore, not for this anyway.”

  The connection finally made, she logged on to the bank’s home page and waited again for the slow process to complete. He walked closer, looking over her shoulder. “What bank?”

  “River Mill Savings and Loan,” she answered as she entered the payment information and sent it. “So far this is working. If it happens again, I’ll be hand delivering it, and standing there while they post it. But I can’t really afford the time to drive up there and back every month, especially now. Never had a problem in all the years we’ve dealt with them, but lately…” “Pattern.”

  She looked up at him then. “What?”

  “Phone calls,” he muttered, looking suddenly a million miles away.

  Before she could ask what he was thinking, she had to turn back to the screen so she could watch and confirm the transaction had registered. When it did, she saved a copy of the confirmation number. Finally finished, she set her mind to the task of interpreting yet another set of cryptic comments, and turned to look at him.

  He was gone.

  Chapter 12

  St. John paced his motel room, as he had been doing most of the night. He didn’t require much sleep—in fact, he tended to look upon it as a waste of time, and the necessity for it annoying. On some level he suspected he was trying to regain all the time he’d lost to fear and cowardice, but he never spent much time anymore analyzing why he was the way he was. He’d found a balance that worked, kept him going, and he was, if not happy, content with that.

  At least, he had been, until he’d come here and found himself buffeted on all sides by a past he’d thought too deeply buried to matter.

  He paused before the window, although he could only make out vague shapes in the darkness, and there was no moon tonight to glint off the river.

  He’d made some calls, some to Redstone people who were used to his oddities and some to people who had been irritated by the nighttime disturbance, until they realized who was calling. The people he dealt with outside Redstone might not always be fine, upstanding citizens, but they always cooperated with him. Of course, he made it worth their while, in one way or another.

  Then he’d settled in to wait for the required information to return to him. It shouldn’t take long, he thought. He knew what was happening, he just needed confirmation.

  And it would come. This was a skill he’d gained after his life with Albert Alden. Assessing what the people you encountered could do for you, if not right now, then down the road. Then it was making sure they either owed you or knew it would be worthwhile if you owed them. And in the years of his young life that he’d spent in the darker, shadow-filled places, before Josh had pulled him back into the light, he’d acquired quite a collection of contacts that served him—and Redstone—well to this day. He could still move in that world if he had to, and sometimes did, since it paid off so well.

  He spun away from the glass, wondering why he was standing there. It was this place again, he muttered to himself. He hadn’t spent so much time dwelling on who he was or how he’d gotten here in years. It was this damn place making him think too much about such useless drek. And Jessa.

  The little voice in the back of his head refused to be silenced this time.

  All right, face it, he ordered himself. She was the one clean, golden, beautiful thing in your life. The only bright spot amid all the darkness and pain. Did you really expect to face her again and feel nothing?

  The sad answer—sad because he’d been so incredibly wrong—was yes. He had expected just that. He thought he had crushed those old feelings into not just submission, but nonexistence.

  Finding out that he hadn’t was beyond disconcerting. He was sitting here, aching inside in a way he hadn’t felt since the night he’d sat on that rock, watching the ferocious rush of water below him, knowing that this was his one chance, his best chance, and realizing with a matching flood of shame that he was too big a coward to take it. Jessa.

  An image of her slammed into his mind, not from those days, but now, when he’d stood on the corner where he could see the house she’d grown up in, and he’d seen her throwing a tennis ball for the big dog. She’d always had an athlete’s grace, and still did. Heedless of the dirt accumulating on the ball the dog tirelessly chased, she kept the game going, cheering when he caught the once yellow ball in midair, and laughing at the animal’s limber doubling back on himself when he inadvertently overran the treasured object.

  Even now she could laugh. She’d always had that, that sense of joy, of pleasure in life. Something he’d never had. Something he wasn’t capable of. He wondered if he would have been, had he grown up as she had.

  He walked over and sat on the bed, stretching out his legs and leaning against pillows propped up against the solid wood headboard. Seemingly unable to resist, he let another image unwind in his head, of the night they’d spent mapping out a true campaign, of the moment when he’d stood over her as she sat at the office desk, when he’d caught himself staring down at the slender nape bared by the tousled cap of her hair. Delicate. Vulnerable. Beautiful.

  Little Jess, who had been his lifeline, was now disrupting that life in ways he’d never experienced and didn’t quite know how to deal with.

  When his cell phone rang, it jolted him out of a sleep he hadn’t been aware of drifting into. It also interrupted a dream the likes of which he hadn’t had since teenage hormones had been running high.

  He seized on the call as distraction from the unaccustomed ache of his body. He was as subject to early morning hard-ons as the next guy, but this, this was different. This wasn’t just the usual surge, this was specific. This was for Jessa, who had been the vivid, sexy star of that crazy dream. Jessa, the child of his memory, now the woman who haunted him. Because she was definitely that, a woman. All woman.

  “St. John,” he muttered into the phone, shifting to sit up on the edge of the bed.

  “Crankier than usual, are we?”

  He blinked. “Josh?”

  “I figured you’d be up.”

  Depends on your definition of up, St. John thought with a grimace.

  “Didn’t expect you.”

  “Just called to say my theory has now been proven.” Josh’s drawl was laced with humor, and St. John braced himself. “Theory?”

  “It takes three people to do what you do, and not nearly as well.”

  Guilt jabbed at him. He shouldn’t have just abandoned Redstone like that, he—

  “That was true, but a joke, my friend. Stop feeling guilty about taking some time for yourself for the first time in…nearly forever.”

  Josh knew him too well, St. John thought ruefully. That’s what happened when you let people get close—they could see right through you, to your darkest, most hidden corners. Like Josh. Like Jessa.

  “Can do some from here if—”

  “No, we’re struggling through,” Josh interrupted. “For a change I have some info for you.”

  “You?”

  Josh chuckled. “Without your…more interesting contacts, we had to go through more direct channels
to find out what you needed.”

  Meaning, St. John realized, that Josh had used the considerable weight of the Redstone name and himself to get the info St. John had asked for. He felt worse now; he knew very well that Josh didn’t, as a rule, trade on his own prestige and power.

  Unless it was for one of his own.

  And you’re one of his own.

  “Mac’s wife has some connections in the animal feed industry,” Josh was saying.

  Emma, St. John thought. Emma McClaren and her Safe Haven animal shelter. Of course she would.

  “She made some calls, found out you were right. Alden’s been subsidizing the store in River Mill, enabling them to undercut on price.”

  He’d known he was right, but it was good to have it proven.

  “How involved?”

  “Apparently the whole idea was his. The advertising, the pricing. The owner needed a loan, couldn’t qualify at a bank, and Alden gave him a personal loan with those conditions.”

  Exactly what he would have expected. Some things never changed, and his old man’s techniques definitely qualified. Business or personal, control and coercion was what it was all about.

  “Nice way to do business,” Josh said. “Can’t beat them honestly, on product or service, so set out to destroy them underhandedly.”

  St. John just stopped himself from pointing out how much of the world did business that way. He knew that Josh knew it. Knew it so well that Redstone had been founded—and had grown into the global force it was—on the opposing principal; hire the best to do the best, and get out of their way and let them do it.

  “Seems Alden also has a mole of sorts in that bank. Ryan managed to…get a look at some records.”

  Guilt jabbed him again. Ryan Barton, one time hacker and now resident Redstone computer genius, had sworn off his more illicit activities when Josh had hired him after he’d hacked Redstone’s own system. Unless it was to help one of the Redstone family. And now he’d had to dust off those not so legal skills, and it was his fault.