that she was being studied as thoroughly as a biologist might study a smear on a slide. No one had ever looked at her quite this closely back in Ohio. It made her wonder it she’d put her dress on inside out.
And then she made the mistake of looking into Jack’s eyes directly. They were steel-gray, cool and very intent. Where in the world had she gotten the idea that he was charming? Without the dimple and the smile to distract her, she could see that this was an intense and driven man who watched and measured everyone. He reminded her a little of a Brontë hero—Rochester right after he’d nearly run Jane Eyre down with his horse.
Jack’s friend was the first to recover. Holding out his hand, he said, “Franco Rossi, at your service. I’m Jack’s landlord and yours, too. Welcome to San Francisco.”
Pulling her gaze away from Jack’s took some surprising effort, but Corie managed it, then beamed a smile at Franco. “Thank you, Mr. Rossi.”
“Franco, please. We’re going to be neighbors.”
The moment Franco released her hand, Corie extended it to Jack. “What is it that you should have told—” The minute his hand clasped hers, her heart felt as if it had turned right over in her chest. Perhaps it was because she was drowning in those eyes. The longer she stared into them, the more they reminded her of fog hanging thick and dark over the cornfields in Ohio. It wasn’t until he released her hand that she felt the weakness in her knees.
“Are you all right?”
It took her a moment to realize that Franco had asked the question, and another minute to grab on to a thought. Those Brontë heroes might have been short in the charm department, but she was sure her mother would have included them in her first commandment.
Gathering her scattered wits, Corie managed to drag her gaze away from Jack’s and smile at Franco. “It must be jet lag. I felt a little dizzy there for a minute. But I never faint.”
“Good to know,” Jack murmured.
She risked a quick look at him and was pleased to note that this time her heart stayed right where it belonged. “What was it that you were going to tell me, Mr. Kincaid?”
“Jack, please.” He smiled at her. “It’s just some of the evidence that I told you about. We can talk about it over lunch.” He glanced at the nearby beltway that had begun to move. “If you’ll just point out your luggage, we’ll be on our way.”
Very smooth, Corie thought but she knew it was a lie. She was almost sure that Franco had been pressing him to tell her about Benny Lewis’s past.
“This is my luggage,” she said, indicating the duffel she was carrying.
Franco took it from her. “Then we’re off to lunch and after that to Lorenzo’s. He does my hair.” He gave her a little shove into the revolving doors.
When Jack joined her on the street, he said, “Franco says Lorenzo is the top choice of the Hollywood starlets when they come to town. And I told him that if you end up with spiked hair, I’ll have to kill him.”
She couldn’t prevent the laugh. And this time when she met his eyes, it was her stomach that seemed to lurch and then tighten. She threw all her effort into dragging her gaze away from his, and that was the only reason that she saw the man with the gun.
Later, she would recall the other details—that the man holding it was standing by the open door of a car, that he wore a hat and dark glasses and a dog sat patiently next to the white cane he was holding in his left hand. But, at the moment, all that fully registered in her mind was the gun.
A woman screamed. “He’s got a gun!”
“A gun!”
There was another scream and people at the curb began to scatter. As they cleared, Corie had enough time to see the man raise his hand and point the gun into the air. Then someone pushed her into Jack. It was like colliding with a brick wall.
“Get down,” she said.
The sound of the shot split the air, drowning out her words, but Jack was already shoving her to the ground.
3
“LORENZO WILL SQUEEZE YOU IN AT TWO,” Franco announced, closing his cell phone and signaling a waitress. “When Cameron Diaz was late for an appointment, he made her wait three days before he rescheduled.” Pausing, he leaned closer to Corie. “Thank heavens I knew him when he was Billy Lawrence from Trenton.”
Jack leaned back in his chair as a waitress slapped down three menus.
“Three Irish coffees,” Franco ordered before anyone could speak. Then he turned to Corie. “It’s the house specialty. They claim credit for originating the drink here in the U.S., and a shot of strong Irish whiskey will do us all good after that unfortunate incident at the airport.”
Unfortunate incident? Jack studied the two people at the table and stifled the urge to pinch himself. Franco punched more numbers into his cell phone, and Corie stared out the window of the café, looking for all the world like Eliza Doolittle getting her first glimpse of Henry Higgins’s world. Was he the only one who was worried about the “blind” gunman who had shot at them at the airport?
Both Franco and Corie had gotten a look at the shooter. Franco had noticed that the shooter had been wearing a fedora and a tan trench coat. Corie had described the gunman as an older man wearing sunglasses with a white cane and she’d caught just a glimpse of a small, fluffy dog.
The moment she’d spoken the words white cane and dog to the policeman, the hairs on the back of his neck had sprung to attention. Could it have been the same man he’d seen earlier at Pier 39—and later in the car that had backfired in front of his apartment building? That was the question that had been plaguing him as Franco had bundled them into his SUV and driven them to Fisherman’s Wharf. Jack wished that he’d gotten a look at the shooter, but he’d been so focused on getting Corie out of the line of fire, he hadn’t been any help at all. What were the chances of seeing two older men with sunglasses, white canes and dogs in one morning? Ordinarily, Jack didn’t believe in coincidences, but in this case the incident was so…bizarre.
And it had all happened so fast. Even now, his memory of the shooting came in flashes—the deafening sound of the shot, the fear he’d felt when Corie crashed into him, screams and then the screech of tires. He hadn’t seen the gunman at all.
Was he crazy to think that the “blind” man had been shooting at Corie? She’d told the police that the man had fired straight into the air, and several other witnesses had corroborated her account. However, his instincts—the ones that seemed to be operating overtime when it came to Corie—told him not to exclude the possibility that Corie might be in danger. But he didn’t have one shred of evidence, and the police were going with the theory that the gunman was a crackpot who’d fired blindly over the heads of the crowd. That was the slant that Jack had taken when he’d phoned the story into the Chronicle. The afternoon headline would read Blind Gunman Causes Havoc At Airport.
Franco flipped his cell phone closed with a flourish. “Mission accomplished. Marlo, my friend at Macy’s, is rescheduling your fashion consultation for five. That will put a little pressure on Lorenzo, but he’s a genius.” He beamed a smile at Corie. “By tonight, you won’t recognize yourself. We’ll go out on the town to celebrate. There’s
