Who Do You Love?

by Maggie Shayne

  Grace spun and headed back for the house. A gun barrel poked out a broken window, and Jack barely caught up to her in time to holster his gun and tackle her from behind. They hit the ground as the shot went off. Jack’s wife flipped him off her like a dog flicking off a flea. He hit the ground beside her. She rolled onto her back and started to sit up, and Jack pounced on top of her again, grabbed her wrists and held her flat. “Stay down, dammit!”

  Grace’s eyes went wide, and she stared at him. “Jack? My God, Jack, what are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? Jeez, Grace, don’t you think that’s kind of a screwed-up question?”

  Another shot exploded from inside the house, and Jack reached for his gun, pulled it out and fired one off over top of the house. The gun in the window withdrew.

  “Stop!” Grace said. “Hope and Charlie are in there!”

  “What do you think, I’m an idiot? That was cover fire.”

  “What the hell are you doing with a gun?” she demanded.

  “Where the hell did you learn to beat the hell out of an armed felon?” Jack shot back.

  They lay there, blinking at each other in the darkness. And Jack realized for the first time that she’d been keeping as much from him as he had from her. And it stung, dammit. It hurt. He wanted to be furious with her, but how the hell could he, when he’d done the same damned thing?

  He gave his head a shake. None of it mattered at the moment. What mattered was getting her out of the line of fire, keeping her safe. Not the puzzles in his head or the sudden feeling that he’d just been harshly slapped out of a pleasant but nonsensical dream. And certainly not the way her body felt, long and firm, beneath his, or the way her heartbeat thudded steadily against his chest. Or how close her mouth was…

  Dammit.

  Jack kissed her. Suddenly, and without warning, quick and hard. And then he rolled off her, grabbed her hand and pulled her into a run.

  She tugged back. “We can’t leave them!”

  He was ready for that, and holding on tight, pulled her onward. “We won’t.”

  “Over here!” JW called, and they headed for the sound of his voice, ducking behind a clump of some bush or other that smelled like garbage.

  Only when they were there, invisible to the guy in the house, did Jack start to breathe again.

  “Hey there, Grace. Nice to see you again.”

  Grace eyed JW, the gun in his hand, and shook her head. “So I take it you’re not in the professional security business, either,” she quipped.

  “Sure I am,” JW told her. “I’m a cop. If that’s not professional security, I don’t know what is.”

  Grace lowered her head, lifted it again after a long moment. “You, too?” she asked.

  Jack could only nod. He saw her eyes growing damp. “Jack, why? Why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie to you… Hell, Grace, I knew damn well you’d react this way.”

  “What way?”

  “It’s over. I’m quitting just as soon as JW and I wrap up this case, taking a job offer from one of Harry’s friends, and then everything I ever told you will be the truth.”

  She bent her brows until they touched. “You can’t make a lie into the truth! What kind of twisted logic are you—”

  “Ah, don’t be too hard on him, Grace,” JW said. “Or…should I say, Amazing Grace?”

  Grace’s mouth slammed shut and her eyes widened. She swung her head around. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Well, it was your nickname in college, wasn’t it?”

  Grace seemed to glare at JW, and JW just grinned and went silent.

  Jack just sat there, hearing faint traces of Twilight Zone music in the hum of the swamp bugs. “Why did they call you ‘Amazing Grace’ in college, Grace?”

  She waved a hand as if it were unimportant. “I…played a little bit of…basketball. It was just a team nickname.”

  Jack blinked. “You played college basketball.”

  “It was nothing. I mostly warmed the bench.”

  But it was so totally opposite to everything Jack knew—or thought he knew—about his wife. That she’d even want to be involved in sports, no matter how little playing time she’d had. “And you knew about all this?” Jack asked his alleged best friend.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “Well, shoot, you wouldn’t let me tell her you were a cop! I figured fair was fair. Figured she’d tell you herself when she was ready. Besides, it’s not like she’s been sneaking out every day to shoot hoops while telling you she’s at the office, now is it, Jackie, my boy? Hmm?” Then JW looked at Grace, and so did Jack, and neither could have missed the guilty look on her face. “Or have you?” JW asked.

  “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 clo
thes 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 thin
gs…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.