Annabelle never ceased to amaze him. Though he’d hoped differently, he couldn’t really be shocked over the fact that she’d known all along of the danger involved in befriending a professional killer. She wasn’t stupid. But the fact that she accepted it so devil-may-care was beyond him.
He, on the other hand, had never come to accept it.
Six years ago, when she stumbled in on him and his mark during a job, he’d nearly had a heart attack. He’d quickly finished the job, right in front of her, and then absconded her and left the state. Like the trooper that she was, Annabelle hadn’t put up a fight. She’d simply remained silent and let him explain. He rented them a room in a Wisconsin hotel and went about telling her his life story. Or most of it, anyhow. The parts she needed to know.
And while she sat there in relative calm, surprised but understanding, he’d been internally killing himself. How could he have slipped up so badly?
Two days later, they returned to the Twin Cities and Annabelle went back to work and school, a little shook up, but dealing with the situation amazingly well.
He, however, immediately contacted a man in Cuba and had the bullet-proof-clothing, along with several other protective items, created for her.
And then, as he waited for them to be shipped, he got cold feet. If he gave her the clothes, he would be admitting to her that she needed them. And, if she needed them, then it meant that people were going to shoot at her. People were going to try to kill her – just to get to him. How would she react to such news?
Annabelle Drake had a stubborn streak, true, but could their friendship and her tenacity stand up to something like that?
What if it didn’t?
What if she ran? Left the city – the state – the country?
He could never let her go. He’d realized that only shortly after meeting her for the first time in that bar on her twenty-first birthday. She completed him. He had never, in his life, experienced peace and calm until that night. Just sitting there beside her at the bar, looking into her eyes, laughing at the ridiculous things she said… He’d known happiness.
And he wasn’t about to give it up. Some days – some nights – it was all that kept him going.
So, he reconsidered and hid the clothes away. Instead, he took a different approach to the situation. He assigned a permanent delegation of pickets to watch over her twenty-four-seven. His men watched her go to work, and they watched her while she was at work. They watched her go home and they stood as sentinels outside of her apartment complex while she slept. It wasn’t cheap, but he’d never regretted it.
They’d been watching for six years and, thus far, Jack had thwarted three attempts on her life. Attempts that she was utterly unaware of.
He knew it wasn’t right. He knew he was a bloody coward. But there it was. Even cold-blooded paid assassins were afraid of something.
Jack cursed himself under his breath and reached up into the top cupboard. A store of food had been stashed there long ago. But, as he pulled it down, he realized his mistake. Beef jerky, Canned chili, Spam… There was little to nothing that Annabelle would find appetizing. Most of the stuff contained meat, and she wasn’t a particularly big fan.
“Just hand me the crackers and the peanut butter.”
He turned. She’d followed on his heels and was standing right behind him. He blinked and handed her the requested items. She took one in each hand and headed back toward the couch.
He followed.
“So, where does one get clothes like these made anyway?” she asked as she sat back down and pried the top off of the peanut butter.
“Cuba.”
“Oh?” She raised a brow, dipping a Saltine into the top of the container and scraping a big brown glob of crushed peanut and hydrogenated fat onto her cracker. “They just make them there like someone would make tie-dyed t-shirts here, huh?” She asked, not a little sarcasm lacing her words.
Jack’s gaze narrowed. “A man in Cuba makes suits for important, but threatened political figures. They’re bullet-proof. One of his workers is willing to supply people in the private sector.”
“How did you get such a perfect fit?” she asked.
“I sent him an old pair of your jeans and a long-sleeved shirt for reference.”
Annabelle stopped eating and looked back up at him. “You took some of my jeans? I never noticed any missing.”
Jack suddenly realized his mistake. He swallowed and leaned back into the cushioned seat. He was treading uncomfortably close to the truth with this new line of conversation. But there was no way out of it now. “They were a pair that you donated to Goodwill. As was the shirt.”
Annabelle didn’t say anything for a long time. She watched him carefully and it was his turn to become uncomfortable under such scrutiny. She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment and her gaze narrowed.
She was figuring it out. He could tell. Her next question would be how he had managed to find just those clothes, and he would have no way of answering. No way but the truth, that is. One of his men had pulled them from the black bag she’d dropped off – after watching her make the drop. Just like they watched everything she did in public.
But, again, Annabelle surprised him. Instead of questioning him, as she had every right to do, and putting him on the spot that he so deserved to be on, she remained silent. She looked down at her crackers and peanut butter and continued to eat quietly.
He wasn’t sure whether he should be grateful. He had a feeling that the subject would come up again and that there would be no such easy escape from it the second time around.
“I found it!”
Annabelle and Jack both jumped as Dylan charged through the hidden door in the corner of the room. Annabelle’s cracker crumbled all over her mouth and shirt front as she accidentally crushed it. She stood and brushed herself off, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Dylan stood in the doorway, a small white piece of paper in his left hand.
Left handed, Annabelle thought. Like his father.
“You found what?” she asked then, brushing the last bits of cracker away from her jeans.
“This,” he said, coming into the room. His eyes were wide and red-rimmed and his color was still pale, but his expression was hopeful. Expectant. Excited.
Annabelle took the paper and looked down at it. She scanned the lines several times, in silence, before finally reading them aloud.
“Fourth S-S plus T, colon, underscore R, A, underscore G, underscore R, A, N, underscore, underscore, and then CUMC.”
Annabelle looked up from the paper and met Dylan’s gaze. “Dylan, this is what was hidden in the pink on pink?”
“Yes. That’s all of it. I checked and double-checked.”
Annabelle turned and looked up at Jack. His expression was once again unreadable. Their earlier conversation would have to wait, but Annabelle would be damned if she would forget about it.
She sighed. “Okay, so it looks like some kind of word puzzle.”
“Right up your alley,” Jack said.
Annabelle looked back down at the sheet of paper. It was true that she loved word puzzles. She did Mensa word puzzles while sitting on the toilet at home. It seemed to be the only extra time she had of late.
And Max had known she was good at them. But how had he even had time to pull all of this together before the bad guys had reached him? She and Cassie hadn’t been gone all that long…
“Jack, how is Cass? Is she still okay?”
“She’s on her way here, actually. Alex went to pick her up.”
Annabelle’s eyes widened. “Is Alex the guy who was here earlier?”
Jack nodded.
“My God, she’s going to flip out. Jack, she has no idea what’s going on. What do you think she’s going to do when Mr. Dressed-In-Black with a goatee shows up on her front doorstep and tells her to get in the car with him?”