are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about finding your father and making sure he’s punished the way he deserves.”
“Revenge?” She spat the word, like a curse. “You want revenge?”
“Call it that if you want. Or call it justice. He’s killed too many people. Someone has to stop him.”
“Well, that someone won’t be me.”
“I’m not asking you to risk anything. I just want you to talk to me. To tell me where he might be hiding.”
“I already gave you everything I could. Why do you want more?”
She had given him everything—her body and her beauty and a willingness to risk that had made his own bravery seem a sham in comparison. “I need your help,” he said again.
“You’re as bad as he is—you only want to use people to get what you want.” Without another glance at him she left the room, the door to the bedroom clicking softly shut behind her.
He stared after her, feeling sick. Maybe her words hurt so much because they were too close to the truth. He did want to use her. She was the only link he had to Sam Giardino. The only way he could do what he had to do.
Chapter Two
Anne leaned against the closed bedroom door, her ear pressed to the wood, listening. The silence in the house was so absolute she imagined she could hear Jake’s heart beating—though of course it was only the frantic pounding in her own chest. Footsteps crossed the room, moving away from her, the heavy, deliberate echo of each step moving through her like the aftershock of an earthquake. She bit her lip to keep from shouting at him not to leave. Of course she wanted him to leave. She didn’t want any part of the kind of danger he represented.
The front door closed with a solid click. She held her breath, and heard the muffled roar of a car engine coming to life. The sound faded and she was alone. She moved away from the door and sagged onto the bed, waiting for the tears that wouldn’t come. She’d cried them all out that night at the hotel, believing he was dead, knowing her life had ended.
Jake. One of the other agents at the Bureau had laughed when she’d called him that. “You mean Jacob? No one ever calls him Jake.”
No one but her. And everyone in her family. It was the way he’d first introduced himself to them. His name—but not his name. Like everything else about him, he’d built a lie around a kernel of truth. He wasn’t really a low-level official with the Port Authority, wanting to get in on the Giardino family business. He was an undercover operative for the FBI. Not even a real cop, but an accountant.
By the time she’d learned all this it had been too late. She had already been in love with him.
So what was he doing back in her life now? Hadn’t he done enough to ruin her? Before he came along she’d been happy. She’d had everything—looks, money, friends, family. She wasn’t an idiot—she’d known her father didn’t always operate on the right side of the law. He’d probably done some very bad things. But those things didn’t concern her. They didn’t touch the perfect life she’d built for herself.
Jake had made her take off the blinders and see the painful truth about who her father was.
About who she really was.
She pushed herself off the bed, pushing away the old fear and despair with the movement. Not letting herself stop to think, she dressed, grabbed her keys and headed out the door. She couldn’t sit in this house one more minute or she’d go crazy.
She drove back into town, to the little gym one block off Main. A few people looked up from the free weights and treadmills as she passed. She nodded in greeting but didn’t stop to talk. She changed into her workout gear, found her gloves and headed for the heavy bag and began throwing jabs and uppercuts, bouncing on her toes the way the gym’s owner, a former boxer named McGarrity, had shown her.
She’d taken up boxing when, shortly after her arrival in Rogers, she’d come to the gym for what was billed as a ladies’ self-defense class. Turned out McGarrity’s idea of self-defense was teaching women to box. Anne had fallen in love with the sport the first time she landed a solid punch. She’d never been in a position where she had to fight back before. Now, at least, she was prepared to do so.
She’d worked up a sweat and was breathing hard when a woman’s voice called her name across the room.
Maggie O’Neal taught second grade in the classroom across the hall from Anne. A curvy woman with brown, curly hair, dressed now in pink yoga pants and a matching hoodie, she was the closest thing Anne had to a best friend. “Maybe I should take up boxing,” Maggie said. “You look so healthy and...dewy.”
Anne laughed. “I’m sweating like a pig, you mean.”
“It looks good on you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I just got out of a yoga class. Marcie Evanston teaches one every afternoon at this time. You should join us sometime.”
Anne had tried yoga once. While everyone else lay still in savasana, her mind had raced, unable to grow quiet. She needed physical activity—punching the heavy bag or an opponent in the ring—to shut off the voices in her head and drown out the fear.
“Can I talk you into a break for a smoothie or some juice?” Maggie asked.
“Sure.”
Anne stashed her gloves in the cubby marked with her name and the two women made their way to the juice bar next door to the gym—McGarrity’s latest effort to squeeze more profit out of the facility. The idea seemed to be working—the juice bar was usually busy, favored by tourists and local office people as well as gym members.
They sat at the counter and ordered banana-berry smoothies.
“Look what Ty gave me for Valentine’s.” Maggie extended her pinky, showing a gold ring with a row of tiny diamonds.
“It’s beautiful,” Anne said. “Was it a surprise?”
Maggie nodded. “We saw it in the window of a store over in Grand Junction last month and I remarked how I’ve always wanted a pinkie ring. When I saw the ring box on my plate this morning, I squealed loud enough to wake the next door neighbors.” She smiled at the ring. “Did I get lucky or what?”
“You got very lucky.” Anne ignored the pinching pain at her heart. In her party-girl days she’d dismissed love as some fanciful notion from novels and movies. She’d liked being with men, but she hadn’t needed one to make her happy. And the thought of wanting to spend the rest of her life with one had seemed ludicrous.
And then Jacob Westmoreland—she’d known him as Jake West—had walked up to her at one of her father’s clubs and asked her to dance. She’d thought he was handsome and a decent dancer, but then she’d looked into his eyes and her world had shifted. A flood of lust and longing and locked-in connection had rocked her like a tidal wave. Nothing had ever been the same after that.
And now he was back. She didn’t have the strength to go through that
