Jack’s gaze shifted again to the man waiting by the plane. “Is that guy with an entertainment agency?”
“You could say that,” said Sydney.
“Well, that’s just beautiful.”
“You got a problem?” she said.
“Sydney, the trial’s over, the cameras are off, and if you’re smart, you’ll thank God you’ve been given a second chance and live your life. Going out of your way to stay in the limelight is a huge mistake.”
She extended her hand, and Jack shook it. “Thanks for everything,” she said. “And thanks in advance for not writing a book of your own about this case.”
“You definitely don’t have to worry about that.”
“I know. Because if you do, you’ll be all over the X-rated chapters of mine.”
“Are you actually threatening me?”
She flashed one of those pouty, bad-girl looks that had generated so much ink in the tabloids. “And people thought you were representing poor, indigent me for free.”
Jack just shook his head. “Honestly, Sydney, I wish I had a REPLAY button so you could hear how ridiculous you sound. You act like someone who thinks she’s living in a reality-TV show. Stop trying to be someone you’re not.”
She leaned closer, her eyes narrowing. “I really don’t like threatening you, Jack. But I am deadly serious. It’s my story. Not yours. Not the judge’s. Not the prosecutor’s. Mine.”
“All true,” said Jack. “But here’s the thing: You’re the only one who wants it.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Jack wanted to drill some sense into her, tell her to wake up. But there was only so much he could do. “There’s probably not another person on the planet who would admit this, but a part of me actually feels sorry for you.”
“Whatever. Good-bye, Jack.”
She turned and headed for the plane, gaining speed with each footfall on the asphalt, and finally breaking into a run. She threw herself into the arms of the man who was waiting. Jack watched for a minute, until the embrace broke and they climbed into the plane together. He had no idea where Sydney was headed. No idea who had come to get her.
The engine revved, and the plane started down the runway.
Jack wondered if he would ever see her again. He thought about Emma, thought about the Sydney look-alike in the hospital, thought about the devastated parents who had just gotten the dreaded phone call and learned that their beautiful daughter would be “lucky to be alive in the morning”. . and he wondered if Sydney even cared.
He glanced over his shoulder for one last look as the plane left the runway, the taillights disappearing into the night.
Not a chance.
Chapter Seven
It was nine P.M., and Theo was working both sides of the big U-shaped bar. Even on a Sunday evening, Cy’s Place oozed that certain vibe of a jazz-loving crowd. Creaky wood floors, redbrick walls, and high ceilings were the perfect bones for Theo’s club in the heart of Miami’s Coconut Grove. Art nouveau chandeliers cast just the right mood lighting. Crowded cafe tables fronted a small stage for live music.
Cy’s Place was special in Jack’s book. It was the club Theo had always dreamed of owning, and on these very barstools, at the grand opening, sparks had begun to fly for Jack and FBI agent Andie Henning. They’d talked and laughed till two A.M., listening to Theo’s uncle Cy give them a taste of Miami’s old Overtown Village through his saxophone. A few months later, on the second anniversary of Jack’s thirty-ninth birthday, Jack had put a ring on her finger. More than a few pages had flipped on the calendar since then, and still no date for the wedding.
But that was another story.
“Nacho?” asked Theo as he set a heaping plateful on the bar in front of Jack.
“Thanks, man.”
Jack was starving. Since “not guilty,” he’d been paying the sole practitioner’s price for a monthlong trial and countless missed deadlines. He’d caught a few hours of sleep after dropping Sydney at the airport and then headed to the office. Not until he smelled the nachos under his nose did he realize that he’d forgotten to eat since breakfast. He was snagging a fourth chip before Theo could get one.
“Dude, you took the Bacon nacho,” said Theo.
“There’s no bacon on these nachos.”
“Not bacon, Bacon. It’s the nacho that can’t be touched without stealing the cheese from all the other nachos, the nacho that-in a weird, culinary, six-degrees-of-separation way-connects to every other nacho on the plate. The Kevin Bacon nacho.”
“Sor-ree,” Jack said as he put it back.
“You can’t put it back!”
“What do you want me to do?” Jack asked, strands of gooey cheese hanging over the edges of his chip.
A thirsty customer at the other end of the bar signaled for two beers. Theo stepped away to serve him, carrying on loud enough for Jack to hear him say, “Can you believe that skinny piglet over there took my Bacon nacho?”
Jack’s phone chimed with a text message. It was from the other half of the Sydney Bennett defense team. Name of Sydney look-alike is Celeste Laramore, Hannah’s text read.
The victim’s identity had been withheld since the attack. Jack texted back: How do you know?
Turn on F Corso. Dunno how she always gets it first.
The thought of more Shot Mom was enough to bring up his Bacon nacho, but he reached over the bar, grabbed the remote, and tuned to BNN. It was a split screen, with Faith Corso in the studio talking to a BNN reporter who was standing outside the lighted entrance to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Cy’s Place was too noisy for Jack to hear, but the closed captioning sufficed. In fact, seeing the printed white letters scrawl against the black banner gave the word even greater impact.
COMA.
It felt like a punch in the chest. Suddenly, the closed captioning was garbling every other word. Jack reclaimed the remote and raised the volume. The TV was annoying to the couple seated next to him at the bar, but the TV was competing with crowd noise and music, and the report was wrapping up, so he begged their pardon and cranked it up.
Corso asked, “Is the young woman showing any signs of alertness?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the reporter said. “As I said at the top of the report, this is late-breaking news. We are told that Celeste Laramore’s parents arrived from out of town early this morning, but virtually no information had been released about the young woman’s condition until just a few moments ago.”
“What a horrible, horrible thing for those parents,” said Corso. “Tell me this: Do we have any further information on who might have done this?”
“Faith, that is an equally startling part of this development. After BNN broke the news that she is, in fact, in a coma, I immediately followed up with contacts at Miami-Dade Police. While no one in the department is speaking on or off the record about a possible suspect in this attack, sources who would talk to BNN only on the condition of anonymity did provide a shocking insight into how Celeste Laramore ended up outside the women’s detention center last night dressed like Sydney Bennett.”
“Let me stop you there,” said Corso, “and remind viewers that I spoke exclusively with Celeste’s roommate on the air last night; she told me they had been at a Sydney Bennett look-alike contest on Miami Beach.”
“Well, that story may be unraveling,” said the reporter.
“What do you mean?”
The gleam in the journalist’s eye gave Jack cause for concern. The reporter continued:
“BNN has learned that the defense team for Sydney Bennett may have actually hired Celeste as a decoy to distract the crowd. The plan, sources tell us, was for Sydney Bennett to slip away unnoticed while the media and the crowd focused their attention on the look-alike.”