table as David clenched his fists and staggered toward her.
A.J. was the first to reach him and wrestled him to the floor. David hit it hard, grunting, resisting with everything he had-which wasn’t much. And as A.J. held him there, David let his body go limp and started to cry. Buckets.
Rachel felt a hand at her elbow and turned to find Jack. He guided her into a chair, his grip firm and sure and welcome, steadying her not just physically, but emotionally as well. The shame and anger and embarrassment she felt quickly drained away, and as she watched David cry, nothing remained but pity.
Jack brushed her hair aside and studied her cheek, which felt as if it were on fire. “You’ll be wearing that for a while,” he said. “You okay?”
Rachel nodded.
“I assume this guy is your ex?”
Another nod. “He’s had a little trouble accepting it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Rachel looked at David for a moment. His shoulders shook as he sobbed. Then she said, “Let him go.”
Jack nodded and gestured to A.J. “You heard her.”
A.J. was panting and his face was red. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Do it.”
A.J. frowned, then reluctantly rose and stepped away as Jack bent and grabbed David’s arm, helping him to his feet. David’s eyes were red and rimmed with tears, but he didn’t look at Rachel.
She watched Jack guide him out the door and onto the sidewalk. Watched them through the front window, Jack’s body language revealing only patience and authority as he sat David at the curb. He said something and David reacted visibly, looking up sharply, then slumped his shoulders in resignation as he did what he’d never done with Rachel: listened.
Jack continued talking, took out a business card, scribbled something on the back, and handed it to him. David nodded and glanced back toward the deli. Wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve, he got up and shuffled away, heading down the street.
“Jesus Christ,” A.J. said, storming toward Jack as he came back inside. “You’re really gonna let that scumbag skate?”
Jack patted his shoulder. “Go buy yourself a cup of coffee.”
Later, when she and Jack were alone in his office, she asked him what he had said to David.
“I told him he was lucky,” Jack said.
“Lucky?”
“Lucky he’d had the time he had with you, lucky you were the forgiving kind, because his luck is wearing thin.”
“And what makes you think I’m so forgiving?”
“Because you didn’t make a scene, you treated him with a dignity he clearly didn’t deserve. Even when he gave you that knot on your face, you were more concerned about him than yourself.” Jack looked at her. “Am I wrong?”
Rachel shook her head, knowing that most men-men like David-would never have been able to read her so effortlessly. Something about this new boss of hers, something that went much deeper than his good looks and easy smile, set him apart from the men she’d known.
Anyone else in that restaurant would have taken David down for what he did-A.J. was practically frothing at the mouth. But instead of using his fists, Jack had counseled David. A move that was as unexpected as it was noble.
She later learned that what Jack had written on the back of his card was the name and number of an alcohol treatment facility. She wished she could say that David had used it, but she was pretty sure he never had.
But he didn’t bother her again. Not even a phone call. And that was the last time she saw him.
She and Jack had worked together for two years, their relationship close, sometimes moving right up to the water’s edge. But neither had ever taken the plunge.
There was the job. And office protocol.
And the timing just never seemed right.
Besides, maybe she was fooling herself. Maybe Jack didn’t feel the way she did. She had given him all the signals without actually throwing herself at him, but he had never quite responded the way she’d hoped he would.
So she waited. Because that’s all she could do.
And here she was, still waiting, sitting behind the wheel of another Toyota thinking about David and Jack and of the events of the last couple of years. And the last several hours.
Hope and despair.
Was she witnessing another self-destruct?
Jessie was missing. The man who’d taken her was dead. How long could Jack keep going before he folded under the weight of it all?
And what if they never found her? What then?
Before she could even allow herself to think that far ahead, an ambulance streaked by, siren screaming, then tore around the corner past Tony Reed’s warehouse.
Knowing this couldn’t be anything but bad, Rachel flew out of her car and ran across the rutted blacktop. Following the path of the ambulance, she rounded the side of the building just in time to see Jack and Sidney emerge from a nearby alley, Sidney struggling to keep Jack upright as the ambulance came to a stop and two paramedics jumped out.
Barely able to walk, Jack waved them away. The paramedics ignored him and took over for Sidney, guiding him to the rear of the ambulance. Throwing the doors open, they sat him down on the lip of the doorframe as one of the paramedics pressed a stethoscope to his chest.
Rachel just stood there, holding her breath, wanting to shoot him. Kick him.
Punch him, at the very least.
Maybe he wasn’t technically her responsibility, but he might as well be, because she wasn’t about to waste all this anger on anyone else. He was her jump start, goddammit, and two years exchanging glances and quick smiles and tucking away her feelings was two years too many.
Screw the job, screw office protocol.
Screw the waiting.
And despair need not apply. Only hope.
Hope was essential.
They would find Jessie and things would change-oh, boy, would they change.
That is, of course, if she didn’t kill the bastard first.
36
Donovan wasn’t about to go back to the hospital. Not a chance.
His heart was still doing a dance inside his chest, but it had started to slow and he could already feel his strength returning. Another trip to the hospital would only be wasted time-time he couldn’t afford.
As he sat at the back of the ambulance, arguing this point with Waxman and the paramedics, Rachel walked up and joined the chorus. She looked upset, and Donovan felt a twinge of guilt. But he didn’t back down.
“Look at yourself,” Rachel said as she angled one of the doors to show him his reflection in the window. “You think you’re doing Jessie any good in this condition?”
Donovan was surprised by what he saw. Skin pale. Dark circles under his eyes. Pupils dilated. He looked like a skell, a hype. One fix away from the graveyard.
They told me you were dead.
