Kelley Armstrong - Wild Justice

“Get in the car.”

My hand instinctively slid under my jacket to my gun.

“Get in the fucking car.”

I heard the faint brogue and stopped walking.

The car was a nondescript economy model, the cheapest kind you can rent. Through the lowered passenger window, I caught the smell of cigarette smoke, a familiar brand, and I thought . . . You’re not supposed to smoke in a rental car . Quite possibly the stupidest, most irrelevant thing I could worry about at the moment.

“Nadia?” The door slammed. “Get the fuck in the car.”

I glanced over, my mind still swimming upward toward full consciousness. I saw a man. A couple inches under six feet. Average build. Angular features. Wavy black hair threaded with silver.

“Jack?”

I stepped backward.

“Nadia . . .” His voice was low. Telling me not to bolt. Warning me he sure as hell didn’t want to have to run after me, not after he’d come from god-knows-where to find me.

You’re not real, I thought. You can’t be. I’m hallucinating.

His hand caught my elbow, holding me still, dark eyes boring into mine, the faint smell of cigarette smoke riding a soft sigh.

“Fuck.” Another sigh. “Nadia? Can you hear me?”

He took me by the shoulders and steered me to the car. The next thing I knew, I was in the passenger seat and he was pulling the car back onto the road.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The tires chirped as the car lurched off the shoulder. “Things went south last night? Should have called.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.” I looked out at the passing scenery and hiccuped a short laugh. “Which I suppose would have been a lot less bother than this. I’m sorry.” I paused. “Was it Paul?”

“Paul called Evelyn. She called me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.” A hard look my way. “What the fuck were you thinking? Didn’t even tell Quinn.”

“Evelyn called Quinn?”

“I did.”

“I’m sor—”

He cut me off with another look. I was sorry, for this, of course, and especially for him having to call Quinn. I’ll be generous and just say they don’t get along.

“Why didn’t you call Quinn?” Jack said. “Thought you and him—”

“Not anymore.”

He looked over sharply. “Since when?”

I shrugged. “About a month ago.”

“Fuck.” He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Didn’t know about that. Don’t know about this. Never even knew you had a hit. Why?”

“Didn’t think—” I stopped myself and started again, trying not to copy his speech pattern. “I’d have told you about Quinn the next time you called. As for the hit, it seemed straightforward.”

“And last night? After it went south. You didn’t think to call?”

Yes, I did think to call. You’re the first person I thought to call. But getting in touch with you isn’t like just picking up the phone and dialing. It’s a process. Call, leave a message, wait—sometimes days—for you to get your damned messages. And even then, I might as well be talking to voice mail. I’d tell you the hit went bad and you’d say, “Not your fault.” Three words. That would be the entirety of the conversation, and I’d hang up feeling foolish, like I’d bothered you.

A half hour later, the car turned and I looked up to see we were pulling into a roadside motel.

“Oh,” I said. “This isn’t my—”

“Yeah. Found yours. Twenty fucking miles back. Brought your stuff.”

“I hid my passport—”

“Got it.” He nodded at the motel. “Gonna check in. You need rest. I come back, you’ll be here?”

“I wasn’t trying to run away from you before, Jack. I was confused.” I rubbed my face. “I don’t need to rest. I should head home. If you can just take me back to my rental car—”

“Car’s gone. Phoned it in.”

“Then I’ll rent another and—”

“You’ll stay here while I check in. You bolt . . . ?”

Normally, I’d joke, “You’ll shoot me?” and he’d make some wry retort. He glanced at me, as if waiting. When I said nothing, he reached over and opened the glove box, then tossed a pack of cigarettes onto my lap.

“Have one. Won’t be long.” He opened the door, then glanced back. “Can smoke in here. Already did.”

I fingered the package of cigarettes. Jack’s brand. Irish imports. I used to wonder if it really was his brand, or an affectation, like the slight brogue, presenting a fake background. He really is Irish, originally, at least. The brogue only comes out with those he trusts. Same as the cigarettes.

He’s also usually careful about doing things like smoking in rental cars. It makes him memorable, like the cigarette brand. If Jack had a hitman motto, it would be “stay invisible.” With fewer syllables, and maybe a “fuck” thrown in for good measure.

So smoking in the car meant something. So did the plastic drink cup lid overflowing with butts—he’s been down to a cigarette or so a day since I’ve known him. Jack was stressed. Worried I’d gone off the rails and now I’d do something stupid and put him at risk. He’d been driving around for hours, looking for me and working his way through a pack of cigarettes.

I emptied the makeshift ashtray. I’m not good with messes. When I’m already anxious, I’m really not good with them. As I returned from the garbage, he was coming back.

“I really should go home,” I said as he approached. “I’m fine. Crisis averted. If you’ll just take me to—”

“Room twelve. Go.”

I leaned on the car roof, looking at him. “I’m serious, Jack. I know you have better things to—”

“Nope. Got nothing. Room twelve. Go.”

Once inside I took off my jacket. Jack noticed my gun with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Yes, even during a meltdown, I don’t wander empty roads unarmed.” I sat on the end of the bed. “I know you don’t want me to keep telling you I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else to say. You shouldn’t have had to do this.”

“Didn’t have to. Chose to. Owed you anyway. You did it for me.”

“At least you had the sense to stay in your motel room.”

“No choice. Wouldn’t have gotten far.”

Last May, I’d been the one getting a call from Evelyn. Jack had broken his ankle on a job and was holed up in a motel outside Buffalo. He was too stubborn to ask for help, so she wanted me to fetch him back to my lodge to recuperate. I’d walked into a room full of cigarette smoke, and thought something had gone wrong on a hit. It hadn’t. Jack only hurt his ankle in the escape.

The problem was what it meant: that this was a job for young men and he was almost fifty. Retirement was coming. That was tough. A contact of his had retired too late, his reputation shot to shit by the time he went. Jack didn’t want that. Yet he understood the impulse to keep working. This was his life. There wasn’t a retirement plan.

“So we’re even.” He pulled a chair toward the bed. “Wanna talk about it?”

I shook my head.

“Too bad.” He settled in. “You didn’t do anything wrong. What happened to his wife and little girl? His fault. Wilde’s. Not yours.”

“I could have taken the shot. It was a failure of nerve—”

“Not in front of the kid. Even at my worst, I wouldn’t have done that.”

“I could have shot him after they left. If I hit the girlfriend, well, that’s her own fault for hooking up with a guy like Wilde.”

He gave me a hard look that said he wouldn’t dignify that with a response. I would never have taken that shot.

“I didn’t even call Paul until I was back to the car,” I said. “I phoned Emma first, and chatted away about the lodge while Wilde was going after his wife and child. Her father could have gotten there and saved her—”