Friend, Lover, Protector. Sharon Mignerey
on, committing to memory everything about it. The vehicle was remarkable only in that it was completely unremarkable. The driver, though—Jack would remember him. Thin face and a long thin nose.
A second later a city bus stopped in front of Jack, and a couple of people got off. He fished some coins out of his pocket and boarded the bus.
As he’d done more than once since his buddy Ian had called yesterday afternoon, Jack reviewed what he knew about the situation—the key to keeping ahead of and out-thinking his adversary. Dahlia’s sister, code name Linda, had witnessed an execution-style murder and had been placed into custody after the defendant—a businessman with organized crime connections—began making threats on her. His buddy Ian had taken the woman’s child to Alaska to be with Dahlia’s other sister, code name Rachel. Only, their cover had been blown, and they had been forced into hiding. A guy with connections back to the defendant in the murder case had assaulted Dahlia’s parents, and they now had police protection.
Ian had called Jack after he’d been unable to convince the local police that she needed protection, figuring that Dahlia could be a target.
“This whole thing has blown up in the past twenty-four hours. Rosie and her folks didn’t know anything about all of this until I got here,” Ian had said. “Rosie doesn’t know I’m calling you, and I want to keep it that way. She’s got enough on her mind.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Name your price.”
“Hell, man, don’t insult me. You know I don’t want your money,” Jack said.
“Okay, then. Call it expenses.”
They had talked awhile longer, and Jack had finally agreed to let Ian deposit the funds he wanted into Jack’s account. Not that he planned on using a single penny of the thousands of dollars that had shown up in his account when he’d gone to the bank to withdraw travel money.
Ian had the good fortune to have won a huge lotto. “Friends” had shown up by the truckload, all with some reason why Ian should part with his cash. He’d been generous to a fault, funding everything from the delivery of babies to ski vacations. Jack was determined to be the same kind of friend to Ian he’d been before—one who couldn’t care less about his money.
Jack had first become friends with the man when they were assigned as buddies in Ranger school. That sometimes seemed like a thousand years ago. It had been hate at first sight, and they had to immediately get past their differences. The training was set up to reinforce teamwork, and if they didn’t work as a team, they both would fail. Ten years later, and he didn’t have a closer friend than Ian.
Jack would have preferred going to Alaska to protect Ian’s flank, but if being here was what his best friend needed, Jack would do the job without a second thought. He had a month of accrued leave that he had just begun. With nothing but time and regret on his hands this was a way to fill his time. He had a year left on his hitch, and he’d been given several choices of how to spend that time. None of them appealed to him a bit.
Ian had tried to convince Jack that he could pass himself off as a student, which would provide the cover to protect Dahlia until her sister testified. Jack had been a decade younger the last time he was in a college classroom, and one thing he knew for sure. He didn’t look like a student.
As for the professor—he had imagined an old-fashioned woman who would match the old-fashioned name of Dahlia Jensen, Ph.D. and figured that he’d be spending boring days at the back of a classroom. Until he had arrived last night and had gone to the university, he hadn’t known she chased storms. He would rather jump out of airplanes with a faulty parachute than be anywhere near a thunderstorm. It was an aversion he’d acquired when a tornado flattened the trailer park where he and his mom had lived.
The ride back up University Boulevard wasn’t that long, but along the way Jack kept worrying about all the things that could go wrong. At the top of the list was someone catching up with her before he did. If Dahlia had gone to the cops, he would arrive back at her office on campus before her.
When he got back to his car, he fished the keys out and slid behind the wheel, hoping that Dahlia would arrive soon and head for her office. He moved the car to where he could keep an eye on the faculty parking lot behind the building. By the time a half hour passed without her arrival the dull gnaw in his gut grew into full-fledged worry. He got out of the car and headed for Dahlia’s office. According to the student assistant, she wasn’t expected back.
Jack hurried back to his SUV and headed for her house with the address that Ian had given him and the map he had picked up when he arrived last night.
The trip to Dahlia’s house was a scant fifteen minutes from the campus. He figured her for a condo kind of gal, so the Victorian-era bungalow that matched her address came as a surprise. He liked the lines of the house and the big shade trees that sheltered it. The front door, sitting at the back of the wide porch, was nearly invisible. At night, you could hide a platoon on that porch unless the porch light was on.
Her yard was well kept but plain compared to the vivid flower beds of her neighbor’s. As Jack drove by he looked for her van. It wasn’t in the driveway or beneath the carport. The old guy working in the yard next to hers waved as he came by, and Jack waved back. His concern for Dahlia’s safety came to the surface even as he cautioned himself that she might have gone to the grocery store or somewhere else.
Jack went around the block, then parked beneath a huge shade tree about a half block from her house, where he had a clear view of her driveway.
Dahlia arrived about ten minutes later. She didn’t notice him. He would have preferred it if she had been a little more aware of strange cars in the neighborhood. Deciding the more he knew about her routine, the better, he sat in the car and watched. She parked her van under the carport, then came back to the mailbox at the street, waving to the old man next door. Her dog trotted along at her heels.
Dahlia was taller—a lot taller than he’d thought. He’d noticed earlier that she was stacked. A man would have to be blind not to notice. She had layered a tailored shirt over a T-shirt. The khaki pants were on the baggy side, which made the curve of her hip and the length of her leg all the more tantalizing. The conservative outfit was a hell of a lot more sexy than a blatant display would have been, though he admitted he wouldn’t have minded that, either.
She wandered over to the fence separating her property from her neighbor’s. They stood talking while the guy cut her a bouquet of tulips. When he handed them to Dahlia, she leaned across the short fence separating them and gave the man a lingering hug. She pressed a kiss against the old guy’s cheek.
A memory slammed through Jack, so vivid that instead of Dahlia he saw his ex-wife, Erin.
They had been married maybe three months, and already her pregnancy was showing—but it would, since she was more than five months along. She had come home, waved to him and stopped to give his grandpa a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Jack clenched his hands around the steering wheel and shook his head. Ten years and a hell of a lot of water had passed under that particular bridge. His grandpa had died before the baby was born. And as for the baby and Erin…neither of them had turned out to be his. Everything Jack had thought to be true about his marriage had been a lie.
Since then he’d lived by a simple credo. He didn’t do permanent. He didn’t make babies. He didn’t have sex with a woman he couldn’t walk away from.
He stared at Dahlia and the old man. Deliberately he reminded himself that just because his ex-wife had betrayed him didn’t mean others would. In his head he knew that. In his gut, where he made the important decisions, he didn’t believe it. Memories or not, he was here to do a job. That’s all. No matter how hot she was, no matter how much she drew him.
Okay, he thought. She’s off-limits. Because I’m being paid to protect her, and I sure can’t do that if I’m thinking…about stripping off those baggy clothes and discovering what she’s hiding. Irritated, he hauled his thoughts back. I don’t do permanent. And there she is, permanent