J Saint - Collateral Damage

Turning on the map light, she re-read the letter. "I honestly don't have a clue as to what he's trying to tell me. The only thing that I can make a remote guess at is what he wrote about Vegas. About me going with him and his buddies. Maybe I'm supposed to contact them, or meet them."

"That would be my guess. Maybe Bill sent them letters too. The woman on the phone said she'd sent what Bill had asked. Sent it to his family and friends."

"That's right. She said that. I missed that detail."

"Tell me about them."

"I don't know a lot. I've only met them and some of the wives a couple of times. Bill kept me and the kids out of that loop. Maybe we embarrassed him or something. I don't know why."

Jack bit down on his temper as Lauren gave him a few sketchy facts about Thomas Ettinger, Edward Weiss, Conrad Gardner, Bob Cantrell and Ray Branson.

"We'll pay Thomas and Edward a surprise visit tomorrow and hopefully make more progress," he told Lauren. "There wasn't much information in the condo. I've rarely met someone who possessed practically no personal belongings. For that place to be his principle residence, the condo was like a museum. I imagine the fake cop won't find much either."

"You think he's impersonating a law officer?"

"Either that or corrupt. No legit cop would enter a residence alone and without a search warrant."

"I know I didn't like his tone of voice when he told the old landlord he'd been unable to get his hands on me. It freaked me out."

It had made Jack see red too. Lauren spoke before he could tell her.

"Bill didn't keep much. He hated clutter. Said he was born for the electronic world. Did everything online. All financial transactions were done online and all of his records from personal to work were stored in databases and on his laptop that, I now realize, he never let out of his sight."

Jack changed lanes, wondering what life with someone like that would be. Not fun. "The place made me feel as if I were in a sterile bubble."

"Good assessment." Lauren directed her gaze out the window.

Jack sensed there was so much she wasn't saying about her life with Collins. "From my experience, kids and dogs don't fit in bubbles, they pop them."

She nodded. "Guess that was part of why he flipped. Maybe the chaos was more than he could handle and something he always blamed me for. To him normal was being perfectly ordered at all times. He didn't see the boys often after we separated."

Jack bit back his anger and disgust for Bill and directed it toward himself as he saw his divorce from Jill in a new light. He understood parenting wasn't for everyone, but once a kid was born, both parents had to step up to the plate. Instead of doing just that where his daughter was concerned, he'd let Jill cut him out of the game. What the hell? Why was he just seeing that now? They were back at the hotel before he knew it.

When they opened the door, the boys, still awake and going strong, raced up to him and Lauren, excitement shining in their eyes. They spoke to him at the same time, in a wild rush that he couldn't decipher.

Angie looked done in. "I made the mistake of letting them up to have one pretermed race before going to sleep."

Lauren frowned. "What's that?"

"Don't know."

"We need a pretermed track, Mr. Jack." Matt's brow was creased with a serious frown.

"Please, sir," Mitch added, eyes pleading as if his world hung on the answer.

Realization dawned. "They're talking about a predetermined race track. So everyone has the same advantage." Jack looked at Lauren. "I don't mind. It's up to you."

"Just one race," Lauren told the boys. "Then it's bedtime."

"Okay." Jack rubbed his hands together with enthusiasm. "You two go sit in the chairs over there until I get my racing gear ready. I won't be more than two minutes." The boys nodded and dashed to the chairs, scrambling to sit down.

Angie laughed. "I've been trying to make that happen all night."

"Watch NASCAR," Jack said as he went through the adjoining door, to store his gun safely out of the reach of little hands. "The guys racing aren't much different than the twins, and there're all kinds of rules racers have to obey or get penalized for."

Lauren laughed. "Smart man."

Jack returned with some hastily gathered supplies. He told the twins about his Pinewood Derby racing days in Boy Scouts as he set about constructing an agreed upon route that employed just about every surface in the hotel room from a luggage rack to the bed pillows, excepting the table and chairs in which Lauren and Angie now huddled. He made a quick checkered flag, a red flag and a yellow flag out of paper and borrowed clothing, and set himself up as judge. The race was on. He had no doubt the twins could have run the Daytona 500 by foot and beat the drivers with the amount of energy they had. He and Livy used to have fun times like these and he realized he ached deep inside that they'd disappeared with the divorce.

The race was over too soon and there were no fights when he declared Mitch the winner. But he'd made a grave mistake. The boys were begging to join the Boy Scouts in the morning so they could make Pinewood Derby cars and race.

"When you start school in a few weeks," Lauren told them. "Meanwhile you had better get a good night's sleep or you'll be too tired to win the races."

"Pomise," Mitch asked.

"Your solid oak," Matt added.

"My solid oak." Lauren smiled. "Now brush your teeth and hit the sack."

The boys rushed to the bathroom and Jack laughed. "What's solid oak mean?"

The warmth of love in Lauren's eyes as she explained made her unbelievably beautiful and knocked him for a loop. "At first the boys mistook the words solid oak for solemn oath, but once they learned what it was supposed to be, they chose to stick with their own method of promise. Solemn oath doesn't have any substance to it, whereas the big solid oak tree in the backyard means something really important."

Jack nodded. He could remember just how huge promises were to him at six years old and it also made him remember who the most important man in his life was at the time. His father.

Matt and Mitch's father would never walk through the door and speak to them again because Jack had killed him. An iron fist closed around Jack's heart and squeezed hard. He hurt for them and for the part he'd played in Bill's death.

Maybe he didn't have the right to be here. Maybe it was wrong, and maybe it would only intensify the collateral damage of reveling the truth to Lauren later, but he was incapable of walking away from their emotional needs any more than he could have left them under gunfire in a battlefield-an apt description of life at times.

"I'll say good night now." Jack quickly left the room, shutting the adjoining door. All reasons aside, he shouldn't be playing with Bill's sons. Protect them yes, but build their hopes into thinking Jack was something more than the glorified killer he was? No. Nor should he be lusting after Bill's widow.

With his insides all twisted in knots, he showered and mulled over his conversation with Lauren, getting his ducks in a row. He had to call Commander Weston before he hit the sack and he was not looking forward to the event.

Turning on his phone, he was surprised to see he had only one text from Weston.

Jack opened the message and stared at it a moment, stunned, simply because he expected to read an ass-chewing. Call me. Mari is in trouble. He hit the speed dial.

"About time you surfaced," Weston said, his voice almost a whisper.

"What's wrong with Mari?"

"Hold on. Let me step outside so I don't wake her. She's finally resting."

"Outside where?" Jack demanded. "Damn it. What's happened?"

Jack heard Weston's description of the attack on Mari, about Neil's car being stolen and his house shot to hell. "Please tell me they've nailed the bastard to a tree by his yellow balls."