"But all these guns and knives and things...they're for hurting people!"
He nodded. "Sometimes it comes down to that."
She had visions of him shooting someone, stabbing him, clubbing him to death. If someone else had told her this about the man she loved, she would have laughed and walked away. But the weapons lay in front of her. And Jack was telling her himself!
"Then you're nothing but a hired thug!"
He reddened. "I work on my own terms—exclusively. And I don't do anything to anybody that they haven't already done to someone else. I was going to tell you when I thought—"
"But you hurt people!"
"Sometimes.”
This was becoming a nightmare! "What kind of thing is that to spend your life doing?"
"It's my job."
"Do you enjoy it when you hurt people?"
He looked away. And that was answer enough. She felt as if he’d shoved one of his knives into her heart.
"Are the police after you?"
"No," he said with a certain amount of pride. "They don't even know I exist. Neither does the state of New York nor the IRS nor the rest of the US government."
Gia rose to her feet and hugged herself. She suddenly felt cold. She didn't want to ask this question, but she had to.
"What about killing? Have you ever killed someone?"
"Gia..." He rose and stepped toward her but she backed away.
"Answer me, Jack! Have you ever killed someone?"
"It's happened. But that doesn't mean I make my living at it."
She thought she was going to be sick. The man she loved was a murderer!
"But you've killed!"
"Only when there was no other way. Only when I had to."
"You mean, only when they were going to kill you? Kill or be killed?"
Please say yes. Please!
He looked away again. "Sort of."
The world seemed to come apart at the seams. With hysteria clutching at her, Gia began running. She ran for the door, ran down the stairs, ran for a cab that took her home where she huddled in a corner of her apartment listening to the phone ring and ring and ring. She took it off the hook when Vicky came home from school and had barely spoken to Jack since.
"Come away from the window now. I'll tell you when he arrives."
"No, Mommy! I want to see him!"
"All right, but when he gets here, I don't want you running around and making a fuss. Just say hello to him nice and politely, then go out back to the playhouse. Understand?"
"Is that him?" Vicky started bouncing on her toes. "Is that him?"
Gia looked, then laughed and pulled on her daughter's pigtails. "Not even close.”
Gia walked away from the window, then came back, resigned to standing and watching behind Vicky. Jack appeared to occupy a blind spot in Vicky's unusually incisive assessment of people. But then, Jack had fooled Gia, too.
Jack fooled everyone, it seemed.
9
If Jack had his choice of any locale in Manhattan to live, he'd choose Sutton Square, the half block of ultra-high-priced real estate standing at the eastern tip of Fifty-eighth Street off Sutton Place, dead-ending at a low stone wall overlooking a sunken brick terrace with an unobstructed view of the East River. No high-rises, condos, or office buildings there, just neat four-story townhouses standing flush to the sidewalk, all brick-fronted, some with the brick bare, others painted pastel colors. Wooden shutters flanked the windows and the recessed front doors. Some of them even had back yards. A neighborhood of Bentleys and Rolls Royces, liveried chauffeurs and white-uniformed nannies. And one block to the north, looming over it all like some towering guardian, stood the graceful, surprisingly delicate-looking span of the Queensboro Bridge.
He remembered the place well. He’d been here before. He’d met Gia's aunts while on that job for the UK Mission. They’d invited him to a small gathering at their home. He hadn't wanted to go but Burkes had talked him into it. The evening had changed his life. He’d met Gia.
He heard a child's voice shouting as he crossed Sutton Place.
“Jack-Jack-Jack!”
Dark braids flying and arms outstretched, a little slip of a girl with wide blue eyes and a missing front tooth came dashing out the front door and down the sidewalk. She leaped into the air with the reckless abandon of a seven-year old who had not the slightest doubt she would be caught and lifted and swung around.
Which is exactly what Jack did. Then he hugged her against his chest as she clamped her spindly arms around his neck.
"Where you been, Jack?" she said into his ear. "Where you been all this time?"
Jack's answer was blocked by a lump in his throat the size of an apple. Shocked by the intensity of feeling welling up in him, he could only squeeze her tighter.
Vicky!
All the time he’d spent missing Gia, never realizing how much he’d missed the little one. For the better part of a year he and Gia had been together, Jack had seen Vicky almost every day, becoming a prime focus of her boundless store of affection. Losing Vicky had contributed much more than he ever could have imagined to the emptiness inside him these past two months.
Love you, little girl.
He hadn’t truly known how much until this very instant. Over Vicky's shoulder he could see Gia standing in the doorway of the house, her face grim. He spun away to hide the tears that had sprung into his eyes.
"You're squeezing me awful tight, Jack."
He put her down. "Yeah. Sorry, Vicks."
He cleared his throat, pulled himself together, then grasped her hand and walked up to the front door and Gia.
She looked good. Hell, she looked great in that light blue T-shirt and jeans. Short blond hair—to call it blond was to say the sun was sort of bright: It gleamed, it glowed. Blue eyes like winter sky after all the snow clouds have blown east. A strong, full mouth capable of a wide, dazzling smile. High shoulders, high breasts, fair skin with high coloring along the cheeks. He still found it almost impossible to believe she was Italian.
10
Gia controlled her anger. She’d told Vicky not to make a fuss, but at the first sight of Jack crossing the street she’d been out the door and on her way before Gia could stop her. She wanted to punish Vicky for disobeying her, yet knew she wouldn't. Vicky loved Jack.
He looked the same as ever. His brown hair was a little longer and he looked as if he’d lost a few pounds since she last saw him, but no major differences. Still the same vitality, making the very air around him seem to throb with life, the same feline grace to his movements, the same warm brown eyes, the same lopsided smile. The smile looked forced at the moment, and his face was flushed. He looked hot.
"Hello,” Jack said as he reached the top step. His voice was husky.
He leaned his face toward her. She wanted to pull away but affected sublime indifference instead. She would be cool. She would be detached. He no longer meant anything to her. She accepted a peck on the cheek.
"Come in," she said, doing her best to sound businesslike. She felt she succeeded. But the brush of his lips against her cheek stirred old unwanted feelings and she knew her face was coloring. Damn him. She turned away. “Aunt Nellie's waiting."
"You're looking well," he said, staring at her. Vicky's hand was still clasped in his own.
"Thank you. So are you." She’d never felt this way before, but now that she knew the truth about Jack, the sight of him holding hands with her little girl made her skin crawl. She had to get Vicky away from him. "Honey, why don't you go outside and play in your playhouse while Jack and I and Aunt Nellie talk about grown-up things."
"I want to stay with Jack!"
Gia started to speak, but Jack raised a hand.
"First thing we do," he said to Vicky as he guided her into the foyer, "is close the door behind us. This may be a ritzy neighborhood, but they still haven't got around to air conditioning the street." He shut the door, then squatted in front of her. "Listen, Vicks. Your mother's right. We've got some grown-up stuff to discuss and we've got to get down to business. But I'll let you know as soon as we're through.”