a horrified Jessie dropped her glass and it crashed on the floor.
She’d seen it in the movies, but never felt it for herself. That moment where the live wire of horrified shock meets the damp floor of reality and the sizzling begins. The background moves toward a person until it becomes more sharp and clear than the foreground, and something far behind begins to swirl—around and around until they can’t stand to focus on it any more. The eyes of the movie character usually rolled back in their heads about then, and a slow-motion shot dollied along with them as they fell to the ground, unconscious.
“What are you thinking?” Piper exclaimed as she jumped to her feet and blocked the way between Jack and the table. “You have no right to come here. Not after all you’ve done.”
Jack had long ago dubbed Piper as a “mama bear,” and Jessie could see from the somewhat amused expression in his eyes that he remembered why.
Raising both his hands in a mock surrender, he told her, “I just came to talk to Jessie for a minute.”
Jessie’s dinner rose halfway to her throat on a wave of burning acid.
“I don’t think so,” Piper said. “Do the police know you’re here? Maybe we should call them and let them know where to find you.”
Jack lifted his pant leg to reveal what looked like a large, square-faced watch strapped around his ankle. “As you can see, the authorities know where I am every minute.”
“And yet you’re roaming around anyway.”
He shifted his eyes from Piper to Jessie as he said, “You have nothing to worry about here.”
Jessie jerked toward Danny, looking up at him with panic and churning emotion. “Did you know about this?”
“I didn’t,” he muttered, just to her. “Steph called earlier and left a message, short and sweet. But I didn’t have time to call her back.”
Danny’s friend Steph worked for the FBI as an intelligence analyst, and she’d utilized her handy connections to help them in their quest to find Jack. She’d revealed to Danny that, along with rolling Jessie’s life up into a tidy little rug and leaving town with it under his arm, Jack had also absconded with a fortune exploited from the accounts of his financial clients. She’d unknowingly shared more than a decade with a younger, more stylish version of Bernie Madoff.
Jessie groaned under her breath and turned her focus back on Jack, who didn’t look any worse for wear now that she took a moment to notice. He wore a casual black blazer over a black sport shirt and jeans. If you could even call what looked to be never-washed, still-creased dark gray denim trousers “jeans.” Apparently, he’d had time to go wardrobe shopping before popping in to ruin her evening with friends.
“Jessie?” he inquired. “Can we talk, please? For just a minute?”
A minute? That’s all you think it will take to explain yourself? Sixty seconds?
She swallowed around the acid that had pooled at the base of her throat. “I can’t imagine that you could have anything worthwhile to say to me, Jack. I think surrendering my car, selling the house, and leaving me nothing but some cheese puff snacks in the cupboard kind of said it all for you.”
He hesitated, taking a few seconds to glance down at his shoes. “Jessie, please,” he finally piped up. Holding up one hand, fingers splayed, he added, “Five minutes.”
“You haven’t even earned five seconds of her attention,” Piper snapped. And with that, Antonio squeezed his wife’s arm and made his way toward Jack.
With a nod from Danny, Riggs got up too, and the two of them rounded opposite sides of the large table and followed Antonio as he escorted Jack to the door. Jessie exhaled the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding and deflated into her chair. An instant later, Piper was on one side and Amber on the other.
“Are you okay? What can I get you?” Piper asked.
“Do you want me to drive you home?” Amber chimed in. “Danny can follow after he takes care of this.”
“I’m okay. I just need to”—she rolled her hand as if to push oxygen into her nose as she breathed in deeply—“recover.”
“It’s a shock. Anyone would be shocked,” Piper said, and she grabbed Jessie’s hand and held it for a moment. As Antonio and Riggs walked back to the table, she gave a sigh of relief. “Look. He’s gone now. It’s okay.”
“Where’s Danny?” Jessie asked them, rising to her feet.
“He said he had to make a call.”
“And Jack?” Piper inquired.
“In his car and on his way,” Antonio replied.
“What did he say?” Jessie said, reeling. “What did he want?”
“He’s under the delusion that he can make things right with you in a few words,” Riggs cracked, sinking back into the chair he’d occupied throughout dinner. “I think we set him straight.”
Jessie craned her neck to get a glimpse of Danny when he stepped into view, then stopped again, his cell phone pressed to his ear. The instant their eyes met, she hurried across the restaurant toward him, touching his arm when she reached his side.
“Is that Steph?” she asked quietly, and he nodded.
“Thanks, Steph. I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”
She waited until Danny tucked the phone into his pocket. “What’s going on? He’s been arrested?”
“They apparently got a tip that the alias he might have been using was flagged on a flight out of Indonesia and into Australia, which is where the authorities caught up with him.”
“Why didn’t someone let me know?” she whimpered. “Instead of letting me be blindsided like that. And how did he know where to find me?”
“It all happened pretty quickly, and Steph didn’t hear about it until after he’d already been extradited. He was only just brought to the States and arraigned last night, and he had to surrender both passports and wear the jewelry provided by the feds.”
“Is Patty with him?”
“I don’t know. Steph is going to gather whatever information she’s free to share, and we’ll meet up tomorrow.”
“I want to be there.”
“Okay,” he said with a nod. “I get it.”
“But if he could find me here at the restaurant, does he know where I live too? Will he just walk up to my front door later?”
“It won’t matter,” Piper said as she joined them. “You’re coming home with us tonight.”
“Oh, Piper,” she replied, “I can’t. I have a blog due to Courtney tomorrow, and I’ve got to finish it up tonight. All my notes are at home and—”
“Danny, will you talk some sense into her?”
“No
