“Needs investigating.” Jack checked his watch. “Quinn’s meeting is this morning. Wait for his call. See what he can add. Then we go check out Koss.”
When Quinn called, he was hyper-chatty, excited, and flying high. The meeting had been everything he’d hoped for, and I was happy for him.
Did I miss him a little when I heard him that way? I won’t deny it. But there was no niggling voice that said I’d made a mistake. I was just happy he was happy, and glad we were able to carry on a normal conversation again. Right now, he was working on gaining their trust. With the information we had on Koss, he could nudge things in that direction. He’d say he did a lot of business in Chicago, and he’d express a particular interest in sexual abuse cases. He’d also ask about recent work they’d done, barring any details, of course, but he’d like to get an idea of the type of cases they handled. Take that and add his professed interests, and he might get us enough to confirm Koss’s membership and the Aldrich hit.
It was going to take a while to pan out and longer still to determine who’d put the hit on me . . . and whether the threat had ended. That’s why, when Quinn called, Jack and I were already in the car, heading for Chicago to see Sebastian Koss.
CHAPTER 33
Jack hated my plan. I knew this, not because he said, “I hate your plan,” but because after I told him what I intended, we spent the next half hour driving in silence. That wasn’t unusual. It was the quality of the silence that told me he was pissed.
“I don’t like it,” he said finally.
“I know.”
His mouth tightened as his gaze stayed on the highway. “So that doesn’t matter? You’re doing it anyway?”
“Did I say that?”
“I fucked up with Aldrich,” he said.
When I said nothing, his gaze swung my way. “You hear me?”
“It would be kind of hard not to. We’re in the same car.”
Another tightening of his lips. “But you’re not arguing. Why? Because it doesn’t fucking matter. Whatever I say. You’ll do what you want. Just like with Wilkes. During the parade.”
He was referring to our first “case” together, when I’d intentionally put myself in the killer’s path. It had not gone as well as I’d hoped.
“You don’t get to bring that up here, Jack,” I said, straightening now. “If you want to hash it out again, we can, because I still think I made the right decision, however much it pissed you off—”
“You nearly got killed.”
“But I didn’t.”
Suddenly, Jack veered onto an off-ramp. He drove to the first parking lot he saw and turned in, hitting the speed bump hard enough to make my teeth rattle. He pulled into a spot at the far side, got out, slammed the door, and stalked off.
I watched him go. As I did, I remembered the first time I’d seen Jack lose his temper, after the parade incident. I could hear Evelyn telling me to go after him, to talk to him.
“I know, I know,” I murmured.
I waited a minute, in hopes it might give Jack time to cool off. There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought Jack even had a temper. Nothing seemed to faze him. But there was a rage there, tamped down so tight that when it exploded, it was like a flash fire, impossible to predict, burning out of control and out of proportion.
I eased the door open and headed in the direction I’d last seen him. I walked across a scrubby field, littered with trash. I found him on the other side of a broken armchair. He had his back to me. I knew he could hear me scrabbling over the rough and rocky land, but he didn’t turn.
“Are we going to talk about this?” I called as I approached.
He turned then, his dark eyes blazing. “Why? You’ve made up your mind.”
“Did I say that? No. I believe I told you a potential plan, and you lost your temper.”
“I did not—”
“Really?” I waved around us. “You’re seriously going with that, Jack? We’re in the middle of a field. Something tells me we didn’t stop here for a piss break.”
He glowered at me.
“Well?” I said.
“You want to discuss it? Fine. You nearly got killed over Aldrich. The guy who set that in motion? Sebastian Koss. Now you want to meet him? No disguise. Just walk up. Say, ‘Hi, I’m Nadia Stafford. You may have taken out a hit on me—’”
“That’s not—”
“I nearly got you killed. Do you understand that?”
I sighed. “Jack, you didn’t—”
“Do you understand what that’s like?” He started bearing down on me. “For me.”
“I’m sor—”
“Do not say you’re sorry! Goddamn it, I don’t ever want to hear that again. Apologizing to me. Thanking me. Making sure I know you appreciate it. Doesn’t matter what it is. Give you a fucking bag of candy? Gotta let me know you appreciate it.”
I glared at him. “I’m sorry, Jack—and yes, there’s that phrase again. I’m sorry if it bothers you to be thanked and it bothers you when I apologize, but that’s how I was raised. It’s called being polite—”
“It’s not being polite. It’s acting like you don’t deserve it. Gifts. Time. Attention. Thank me for a gift. Apologize for a so-called inconvenience. Make damned sure you pay me back somehow. I don’t want gratitude. I don’t want apologies. I don’t want payback. You think I do things for you because I’m being nice?”
He spun on his heel and stalked off again. Before I could even think to go after him, he wheeled again, facing me now.
“I got cocky,” he said. “Arrogant. Fuck caution. I can handle this. I can look after you. You say you don’t blame me. Not arguing that. But I’ve fucked up before. Got cocky. Got arrogant. Lost everything. Were you almost killed by that moron? No. Not even close. Doesn’t matter. I fucked up. You get that?”
Now I did. I opened my mouth to say so, but nothing came out. I just nodded. When I did, he deflated, the stiffness leaching from his shoulders. I waited a moment, then said, “Tell me what you want to do, Jack.”
The problem with nixing my plan? As much as Jack hated it, there wasn’t really a viable alternative.
Sebastian Koss was speaking in Chicago late this afternoon. The lecture was open to the public. So I wanted to go. As myself. I’d listen, and then I’d speak to him afterward, in a public place.
Sebastian Koss knew who I was. He knew from the Aldrich case and he knew from the Franco incident. Now the man that initially bound us together—Drew Aldrich—was dead. He’d committed suicide and admitted to the murder. I was understandably shocked and trying to figure things out. I’d spoken to my cousin about the case. I’d discovered Koss had been on the defense, and I remembered him from when he’d reached out after Franco.
If I was “in the area,” wasn’t it plausible that I’d stop at his lecture in hopes of speaking to him about Aldrich as I tried to deal with this sudden upsurge in painful memories? Koss understood victims. He’d made a career of understanding them. He would know, better than anyone, that my quest for answers was a perfectly normal part of the process. He would not question my motive in coming to see him.
If I went in disguise, I’d lose all that. And I’d lose the chance to see his face when I introduced myself. Were we right that Aldrich had told him that he thought he’d seen me in Newport? Did Koss have anything to do with hiring the man who had tried to kill me? The best way to find that out was for me to appear, unannounced, right in front of him.
Jack knew that. Or he realized it, after two cigarettes and nearly an hour of hashing it out. He still didn’t like it, but as long as I was willing to take every possible precaution, he would allow that it was our best chance of inching closer to the truth.