the truth. “Nobody’s called me Pansy since my mom died. It was my dad who always called me Scout. He said he needed me to be strong.”
And that just tore him up.
Jack could just imagine her as a little girl, with her hair all wildly curly. She’d have been the cutest little Pansy Louise ever.
“The people at Steele Street,” she said. “They knew about my mom, and they knew a lot about my dad being a Marine, but they don’t know what happened to him in the end. They didn’t know that, Jack. Con does, I’m sure, but it’s one of those things he won’t talk about ever, so I think the worst, and I look at Con, at how he’s scarred, and I wonder what happened to my dad.”
Oh, man, he couldn’t go there. She was tough, but she wasn’t that tough.
Hell, he wasn’t that tough, and he’d seen it.
“Do you want me to go back in there and see what I can find out?” He would, and she knew it, and maybe he would find something he could tell her, something bearable that would fill in the empty places for her. No matter how much they fought, she knew she could count on him, that he would go straight into the fires of hell for her. That was how they rolled, together, a team.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and looking away, releasing him. “I don’t want you going back into Steele Street, but God, I wish Con was here.”
Yeah, he did, too.
“So what about this Dutch guy you met in London?” He didn’t really want to know, but he could be polite. What he wanted was to pretend she would always just be with Con, taking care of the boss, while Jack ran around the world taking care of business. “Con said his name was Karl.”
“Karl is—”
“Wait a minute,” he cut her off, and was damned grateful for the excuse. “Look at this.” He directed her attention to the television.
Geezus. Two guys had been torn apart over on the west side of Denver. The news stations weren’t identifying them, but from what Con had told him, Jack figured it was King Banner and Rock Howe—but they were dead. Con had left them alive.
Fuck.
Now, who in the hell had dropped them? he wondered. King and Rock had been two of the most skilled scumbags on the face of the earth.
And the hostage Con had talked about was a woman named Jane Linden. The station kept her picture up in the corner of the screen, asking people to call in if they saw her. The rest of the screen was full of cop cars and an ambulance, lights flashing, and lots of uniformed people running around.
“Cripes, Jack. There’s a manhunt going on out there,” Scout said. “These people think Con killed King and Rock and that he kidnapped that woman, and they’re out for blood.”
It didn’t look good, and then the night really went to hell.
His phone rang.
He took it out of his pocket and keyed the receive button. “Go.”
“Are you at the hotel?” Con asked.
“Yes.” Jack still had his eyes on the television. “We’re watching the news, and your party over on the west side is all over it. Everybody out there covering the story is pretty wound up. I hope you’re watching your ass.”
“I am. Stay put at the hotel. I’ll be there in an hour, maybe two.”
An hour? Two? What the hell was the boss going to be doing for an hour or two?
“Why so long? What’s up?”
“Complications.”
“The girl?” Jack was looking right at Ms. Jane Linden, and, yeah, she looked plenty complicated to him.
There was a brief pause before Con spoke again.
“We got what we came for. You keep Scout safe. That’s the job, your only job. I’ll contact you, if I need you.” And he signed off.
Well, hell. Jack looked over at Scout, who was looking at him like she wanted to know what was going on—and all he could think was that so the hell did he.
Standing inside the India Gate suite at the Kashmir Club, Con hung up the phone. There had been no forced entry here, not by him or anybody else, but there had been a struggle.
A streak of blood on the wall looked like somebody had been slammed into it with a fair amount of force. The painting above the smear was hanging crookedly. One lamp had been knocked over in the suite, and a chair had been pulled