TailSpin - Catherine Coulter [124]
She repeated it. Finally, she accepted it enough to allow her built-up fatigue to get a toehold in her manic brain.
Rachael lifted the blue patterned quilt to find beneath it a blue-and-white striped duvet cover. It was sharp, elegant. This was very serious, very cool coordination. A former girlfriend? His mother?
Where was he?
She lay down and closed her eyes. She’d called Uncle Gillette and told him the plan, about which he was markedly silent, then her mother, lying cleanly yet again. She’d listened to her half brother, Ben, tell her about how buff he was getting for the upcoming football season. She hadn’t known there were grade school football teams. Life didn’t just continue, she thought, marveling, it galloped forward. She remembered Ben at eight years old, tossing a Frisbee to her, rolling on the ground with his dog. The last time she’d seen him, he was fishing with his dad at Lark Creek Lake.
Her own life wasn’t galloping. She was lying in a strange bed with nothing happening, nothing resolved, and no Jack. She closed her eyes and her brain sped up again and she remembered:
“It wouldn’t do you any good to announce to all of them that you’ve decided not to tell the world about what your father did, Rachael,” Dillon said, Jack nodding in agreement. “You wouldn’t be believed because there’d always be the chance you would change your mind. It no longer seems to be about that, anyway. We have no choice but to go forward.”
Forward it was, she thought. No other direction, really. She was very grateful it might all end tomorrow night at the Jefferson Club. She prayed it would.
Where was Jack? For that matter, where was his house?
Then Greg Nichols had called her cell.
“Hello, Rachael, where are you? I went by the senator’s house, but no one was there. Well, there were some FBI guys wandering around in the backyard, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. What’s going on? I can’t find you. Where are you? I’m worried.”
“I’m preparing my speech for tomorrow night at the Jefferson Club. I hope you’ll be there, Greg. I know it would mean a lot to my father.”
“What about Jacqueline and your sisters?”
“They sent their regrets.”
She was deeply asleep when Jack found her an hour later in his bed, a small smile playing on her mouth, her head turned slightly to the side. Her braid was lying against her cheek.
He eased down beside her and kissed her.
She didn’t jerk away, only turned her head toward him and slowly opened her eyes. She looked up to see him leaning into her, not an inch from her nose. “I’m sure glad you’re not the bad guy,” she said, and raised her hand to smooth his hair, “or I’d be in big trouble.”
“When I was a little kid,” he said, stroking her hair, “I always wanted to be the robber, wanted to be the major badass when we played, but my big brother said I couldn’t snarl and talk jive well enough, so I had to suck it up and be the cop. I guess I got used to it.” He kissed her again. “So that means you’re not in big trouble.”
“Where have you been?”
“I was doing that old-fashioned police work I told you about, and I talked to some people. I stopped off at Feng Nian, brought us some Chinese.”
He saw the spark of panic in her eyes.
“Absolutely no one knows you’re here with me. No one followed me, believe me, I checked often enough. You’re safe. Tomorrow night, this will be over.”
Will it? she wondered, and let him help her up. It was all too simple, too straightforward, too planned. She knew Laurel wasn’t simple. She didn’t know about Quincy and Stefanos.
Rachael smiled when he turned to smooth down the covers. Her mom would pronounce him a good man.
“You’ve got a lovely apartment.”
“Thank you. My mom was my interior decorator.”
A mom supplying bling was okay.
“But the photographs are yours.”
“Yes,” he said, “they are.”
“You might not snarl and growl enough for a badass, but you’re an excellent photo artist.”
“Ah,