He was working up a sweat but barely noticed. The prospect of seeing Gia again made him almost giddy.
Images, pieces of the past, flashed through his brain as he walked. Gia's big smile, her azure eyes, the way her whole face crinkled up when she laughed, the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin...all denied him for the past two months.
He remembered his first feelings for her...
With almost all the other women in his life the most significant part of the relationship for both parties had been explored in bed. It was different with Gia. He wanted to know her. He’d thought about the others only when there had been nothing better to think about. Gia, on the other hand, had a nasty habit of popping into his thoughts at the most inopportune times. He’d wanted to cook with her, eat with her, see movies with her, listen to music with her, be with her. He’d found himself wanting to get in his car and drive past her apartment house just to make sure it was still there. He hated to talk on the phone but had found himself calling her at the slightest excuse. He was hooked and he’d loved it.
For nearly a year it had been a treat to wake up every morning knowing he was probably going to see her at some time during the day. So good...
Other images crept unbidden to the fore. Her face when she learned the truth about him, the hurt, and something worse—fear. The knowledge that Gia could even for an instant think that he would ever harm her, or ever allow harm to come to her, was the deepest hurt of all. Nothing he’d said or tried to say had worked to change her mind.
Now he had another chance. He wasn't going to blow it.
8
"He's late, isn't he, Mom?"
Gia DiLauro kept both hands on her daughter's shoulders as they stood at the window in the front parlor and watched the street. Vicky was fairly trembling with excitement.
"Not quite. Almost, but not quite."
"I hope he doesn't forget."
"He won't. I'm sure he won't." Although I wish he would.
Two months ago she’d walked out on Jack. She was adjusting. Sometimes she could go through a whole day without thinking about him. She’d picked up where she’d left off. There was even someone new creeping into her life.
Why couldn't the past ever stay out of sight where it belonged? Take her ex-husband, for instance. After their divorce she’d wanted to cut all ties with the Westphalen family, even going so far as to change her name back to the one she’d been born with. But Richard's aunts had made that impossible. They adored Vicky and used every imaginable pretext to lure Gia and their niece over to Sutton Square. Gia had resisted at first, but their genuine affection for Vicky, their insistent pleas, and the fact that they had no illusions about their nephew—"a bounder and a cad!" as Nellie was wont to describe him after her third glass of sherry—finally changed her mind. Eight Sutton Square had become a second home of sorts. The aunts had even gone so far as to have a swing set and a wooden playhouse installed in the tiny backyard just for Vicky.
So when Nellie had called in a panic after she’d discovered Grace missing on Tuesday morning, Gia had come right over. And had been here ever since.
Grace Westphalen. Such a sweet old lady. Gia couldn't imagine anyone wanting to harm her, and no ransom demand had been made. So where was she? Gia was frightened and mystified by the disappearance, and she ached for Nellie who she knew was suffering terribly behind her stoical front. It had been only out of love for Nellie and her deep concern for Grace that she’d agreed to call Jack this morning. Not that Jack would be much help. From what she’d learned of him, she could safely say that this was not his sort of job. But Nellie was desperate and it was the least Gia could do to ease her mind.
Gia told herself she was standing here at the window to keep Vicky company—the poor child had been watching for an hour already—yet there was an undeniable sense of anticipation rising inside her. It wasn't love. It couldn't be love.
What was it, then?
Probably just a residue of feeling, like a smear on a window that hadn't been properly wiped after spring cleaning. What else could she expect? It had been only two months since the breakup and her feelings for Jack until then had been intense, as if compensating for all that had been missing from her aborted marriage.
Jack is the one, she’d told herself. The forever one.
She didn't want to think about that awful afternoon. She’d held the memory off all day, but now, with Jack due any minute, it all rushed back at her...
She was cleaning his apartment. A friendly gesture. He refused to hire a cleaning lady and usually did it himself. But to Gia's mind, Jack's household methods left much to be desired, so she decided to surprise him by giving the place a thorough going-over. She wanted to do something for him. He was always doing little things for her, yet he was so self contained that she found it difficult to reciprocate. So she "borrowed" an extra key to his apartment and sneaked in one day when he was out.
She knew Jack as a gentle eccentric who worked at odd intervals and odd hours as a security consultant—whatever that was—and lived in a three-room apartment stuffed with such an odd assortment of junk that she had attacks of vertigo the first few times she visited him. His latest "neat stuff"—an original red and green Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine shake-up mug and an official Tom Corbett Space Cadet badge—lay on the round oak table. That was another thing about the apartment: the hideous old furniture. And he was crazy about movies—old movies, new movies, good movies, awful movies. He was the only man she’d ever known who did not have a bank or credit card. He had such an aversion to signing his name that he didn't even have a checking account. He paid cash for everything.
The cleaning chores went smoothly until she found the loose panel at the rear of the base of the old oak secretary. She’d been polishing it with lemon oil to bring up the grain and make the wood glow. Jack loved oak and she was learning to love it, too—it had such character. The panel swung out as she touched it.
Something gleamed in the darkness within. Curious, she reached in and touched cool, oiled metal. She pulled the object out and started in surprise at its weight and malignant blue color. A pistol.
Well, lots of people in the city had guns. For protection. Nothing unusual about that.
She glanced back into the opening. There were other gleaming things within. She began to pull them out. As each gun was delivered from the hiding place, she fought the growing pang in the pit of her stomach, telling herself that Jack was probably just a collector. After all, no two of the dozen or so guns were alike. But what about the rest of the contents: the boxes of bullets, the daggers, brass knuckles and other deadly-looking things she’d never seen before? Among the weapons were three driver's licenses, and sundry other forms of identification, all with different names.
Her insides knotted as she sat and stared at the collection. She tried to tell herself they were things he needed for his work as a security consultant, but deep inside she knew that much of what lay before her was illegal. Even if he had permits for all the guns, there was no way the licenses could be legal.
Gia was still sitting there when he came back in from one of his mysterious errands. A shocked, guilty look ran over his face when he saw what she had found.
"Who are you?" she said, leaning away as he knelt beside her.
"I'm Jack. You know me."
"Do I? I'm not even sure your name's Jack any more.” She could feel the terror growing within her. Her voice rose an octave. "Who are you and what do you do with all this?"
He gave her some garbled story about being a repairman of sorts who "fixes things." For a fee he finds stolen property or evens scores for people when the police and the courts and all the various proper channels for redress have failed them.