I took out my gun and crept toward the half-open door. I could see Jack’s feet on the bed, atop the covers. He was still wearing his boots. I shifted my gun into position, both hands around it as I approached the door, ready to kick it open. With another step, I could see Jack. He was staring at the television. His gaze was unblinking, empty. Ice trickled into my gut. Then he glanced toward the door.
I shoved my gun into my waistband and walked in. He nodded. I looked at the TV. There were zombies.
“What are you watching?” I said.
“No fucking idea. Whatever was on.” He flicked it off and swung his feet over the side of the bed. Then he seemed to realize he was still wearing his boots and bent to unlace one.
“You didn’t need to wait up,” I said.
“Wasn’t. Just . . .” He shrugged and stood. “Giving it a while. Before I lock up.”
“Well, it’s locked now, so you can go to bed. I’m going to stay up and read the journal. I haven’t gotten far.”
He caught the back of my shirt before I reached the door. When I turned, he let go but stood there, studying my face. I glanced away.
“Didn’t go well?” he asked. “With Quinn?”
“I think the fact that I’m here answers that question.” I could hear the snap in my voice but couldn’t bring myself to regret it.
Jack shrugged and stepped back.
I started for the door again.
“I figured you should find out,” he said.
I glanced back. He was still standing in the middle of the room, hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Find out what?” I said.
“If it was over.”
“Well, it is.”
He nodded. I swung the bedroom door shut behind me. As I made for the couch, I thought I caught the faint murmur of a voice. Had he turned on the TV again? I slumped onto the sofa, stretched out on my back, and stared at the ceiling.
A moment later, Jack came out. He lifted my legs, sat at the end of the couch, and lowered my feet onto his lap. And I wanted to jump up. Tell him to stop doing this. Stop giving signals that weren’t signals at all. Stop confusing me.
I did try to pull my feet back, but he only laid his forearms on them, as if he hadn’t noticed.
“Did he do something?” Jack said. “Quinn?”
I shook my head.
“What happened?”
I resisted the urge to glare at him. Did he really expect me to share the details? Confide in him? Cry on his shoulder?
Yes, he did. Because he hadn’t done anything wrong. Not intentionally. If he’d been sending mixed messages, it was partly because I was open to receiving them and partly because, let’s face it, Jack wasn’t exactly an expert on relationships. He had contacts and clients. He didn’t have friends. Certainly not female ones. So he didn’t realize that what he saw as giving me comfort, I might see differently. And he didn’t realize that I might feel awkward discussing my relationship woes with my hitman mentor.
If I was pissed at Jack, then that really was my own problem. I might be good at interpreting his speech patterns, but I still had a long way to go before I figured out how to interpret the man himself.
“What happened?” he asked again.
I shrugged. “It didn’t work. It’s not going to work. And I feel shitty about it.”
“Why?”
“Because this wonderful guy that I care about wants to spend his life with me. After all the mistakes I’ve made in the past, I should count my lucky stars that someone wants to give me a picket fence and babies.”
“Bullshit.”
I sighed. “I know. It’s not the nineteenth century. I’m not sitting on a shelf, anxiously watching my best-before date. I don’t feel that way at all. But part of me thinks I should. I like Quinn. I could spend my life with him and be quite content.”
“Like? Content?” He snorted. “Those your goals?”
“I don’t mean it that way. I . . . I feel as if I’m giving up something valuable, and it should bother me more than it does.”
“So it’s over?”
I nodded. “I’ll keep feeling bad about that, but it won’t change anything.”
A knock sounded at the door. I scrambled up.
“Just room service,” Jack said, rising.
I checked my watch.
“Twenty-four-hour menu,” he said as he walked to the door. “Hold on.”
So that’s what he’d been doing in the bedroom after I stormed out? Thinking, Huh, you know, I’m kinda hungry, and ordering food?
I shook my head. Sometimes, it’s best to not question.
He signed the bill. Then he brought the tray over and set it on the table beside me. It was a plate of cookies and a glass of milk.
“Bedtime snack?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t figure you for the milk-and-cookies type.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s for you.” He headed to the minibar, got out a Coke, and popped it. “This is mine.”
I looked at the tray.
“It won’t bite,” he said. “Long night. Didn’t eat much at dinner. Sure Quinn didn’t feed you. Figured you should have something. Lost a lot of blood.”
I took a cookie and held it out for him.
He hesitated.
“I’m not going to eat all six,” I said.
He took the cookie and settled onto the sofa with his Coke. “Got something else for you. Possibly. Not much but . . . One of those charges laid against Aldrich? Girl goes to college here. In Pittsburgh.”
I straightened. “Really?”
“Happened in New York State. Girl’s parents pressed charges. He bolted. Changed his name. That’s when he became David Miller.”
“It’s a recent one then.”
“Almost four years ago. Anyway, looked it up in the journal. Trying to cross-reference. Think I found it. Pretty standard. Nothing useful. But then I checked into the case. Through a contact. Girl claimed it wasn’t Aldrich who seduced her. Said it was a younger friend of his.”
“What?”
“Police didn’t buy it. Parents said she was blaming some imaginary partner—”
“Partner?” I turned to face him. “If we’re looking for who might have killed him and put out a hit on me, a partner-in-crime tops the list.”
“Yeah. I know. Take a trip tomorrow then? Talk to her?”
“Absolutely.”
As I drank my milk and ate my cookies, Jack gave me more details on the case. Shannon Broadhurst had been fourteen at the time, eighteen now. He didn’t know how she’d met Aldrich or how long the relationship lasted, because she refused to cooperate with the police and give any details. That’s not uncommon when the charge is statutory rape. If a girl is willingly having sex with a guy, she’s not going to be thrilled when Mom and Dad file charges against him.
The charge was actually second-degree rape. “Statutory rape” is a catchall term used for cases where the charge stems from the age of the girl, not whether she gave consent. The actual charge varies. Most places also allow for the so-called Romeo and Juliet exception, meaning it’s only an offense if the guy in question is above a certain age himself, so you don’t end up with a fifteen-year-old boy going to jail for having sex with his fifteen-year-old girlfriend. If the guy is over twenty-one, though, and the girl is under fifteen, that’s when the charges get serious, like this one. If convicted, Aldrich could have spent seven years in jail.
But he’d bolted and she’d refused to talk, except to insist that her parents were wrong, that it wasn’t Aldrich she was sleeping with but a friend he’d introduced her to. Who might be exactly whom we were looking for. A “friend” who knew Aldrich’s past and vice versa. A friend who’d panicked at the thought that Aldrich was about to be caught. A friend who’d killed him and was now trying to kill me.