Page 9 of Two Hearts
“Just know this, little sister.Eventually the truth has to come out.You can pick the time, and the place, if you’re lucky and don’t wait too long.But if you don’t, it will.The truth doesn’t stay hidden forever.No matter what.”She looked very serious, but then she smiled.“Come on.We’ll get Daddy to let us take the Jag.”
“I’m driving,” Grace shouted.
“Not if I beat you to the keys, you aren’t!”
They ran into the massive hall, footfalls echoing, laughter ringing.
CHAPTER 3
So he went to the party, and the first thing he did was spend ten minutes in the curving driveway wondering if he could find a hole in which to hide his car.Hell, his car wasn’t bad.He’d been restoring it for most of the time he’d had it, but it still didn’t look like much more than a thirty-five-year-old Mustang in sore need of a paint job.
These people lived in a mansion, surrounded by a tall fence, with automatic gates at the end of a driveway filled with Porsches and Beamers and Benzes.And in the middle of that looping, luxury-lined drive, there was a fountain.
Afountain,for crying out loud.
Jack was out of his league, and he damn well knew it.And if he’d had a lick of common sense he’d have kept on driving right around the loop and back out the front gates.
But he didn’t.Because he made the mistake of looking up, and he saw this face at an upstairs window.And it was her face.And he couldn’t look away, even when the lacy curtain fell in front of her to block her from view.
So he gave in.He let the valet have the Mustang to park it, and prepared himself for his snooty sneer.But apparently, he was new to snootiness, because the valet said, “Wow, is this a seventy-five?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Ni-ice,” the valet said, drawing out the word.
Jack tossed him the keys, feeling marginally better.
He was an idiot, though.He felt like an idiot.He had gone to one of those swanky menswear shops downtown and bought a new suit.It had cost him almost a week’s pay, not to mention that he’d spent his entire lunch hour with some foreign guy’s tape measure in his crotch.The suit felt good, though.It looked good, too.
But hell, did he really think he was going to fool anybody?Class wasn’t something you put on with a new suit.It was something that was bred into you.Well, it hadn’t been bred into Jack.He’d spent his life with the scum of the earth, doing jobs that would make Little Miss Gracie Phelps’s skin crawl.She was different.Above all that filth.Clean, and she ought to stay that way.Jack got the feeling that if he touched her he’d leave handprints.Stains.
But he was there, anyway, walking into that swanky mansion, into that crowd of what Harry had called “pretty boys,” and waiters with trays full of snacks too pretty to eat and too small to do you much good if you did; and women with their hair sprayed unnaturally stiff and their nails unnaturally long and their waists unnaturally small.They reeked of money—all of them.Jack stood in the midst of them all, eyeing young men who probably had bigger bank rolls at twenty-five than he’d have when he hit seventy.And for a minute or two, he just watched.
The cop in him, he guessed.You served long enough, you started bringing it home.It wasn’t just a job, after all.Jack could no more walk into a room without sizing up the occupants first, than he could let a stranger handle his gun.And when he watched, he was not a half-interested observer.He saw it all.
It was only a minute before he thought he understood a little better why Harry didn’t want men such as these for his daughter.They had something in their eyes, in their faces—a competitive little mask that could go from gloating gleam to sneaky slant to petulant pout in about two and a half seconds.There was so much petty jealousy floating around the room that the air was damn near green with it.And everyone pretending not to notice.They talked about jobs and cars and housing and golf in roundabout ways meant to assess the other guy’s net worth rather than his personality.And they lied.Jack was a cop; he knew how to spot a liar.And he was surrounded by them.
“Jack!”
Harry’s shout cut through them all like nobody’s business, and when he shouldered through the crowd to clasp Jack’s hand, Jack thought the looks flying their way could have sliced through his mamma’s meat loaf.Sizing him up.Seeing right through the spit shine he’d slapped on for the party.That was okay.They’d taken far more pains than Jack had, and he saw through them, too.
He should stick the .44 in their smug, superior faces, he thought.Let ’em sizethatup.
Stupid thought.
“How you feeling, Harry?”
“Good as new,” he said.“And yourself?”
“Frankly, I never did get your statement yesterday.”
“I’ll come by tomorrow morning, get that taken care of.But no business talk tonight.Come on, I want you to meet some people.”
Well, he dragged Jack on through the crowd, introduced him to some of his big business buddies, telling them Jack was some kind of expert security consultant.Jack didn’t have a clue what that was supposed to mean.So he damn near stammered when one of them asked him what, exactly, an expert security consultant did.
But Jack caught himself, saved himself, by simply telling the truth—a solution that he’d found usually worked.
He sipped his drink and leaned on the leather chair’s soft back as if he belonged there.“When there’s trouble afoot, they call me in.I…assess the situation through several means.Observation, interviewing the involved parties, and often times, gut feelings.Once I’ve decided on the best course of action, I…and, um, other members of my team, carry it out.”
