Over the Line (21 page)

"Janey," he prompted. "Do these names mean anything to you?"

She glanced at the sheet of paper. Recognized her mother's handwriting but not the names.

Kathy (Simpson) Wallace, Candice (Becker) Richards, Lana (Jensen) Fredrickson, Tammy (Quigley) Smith

"No. I don't know. I don't think I know any of those women."

"Your mother must have." He kept digging through the box. "The question is, why would she keep their names under lock and key?"

"The question," Janey said, as she stared at the money, "is what in the hell is going on?"

"Janey ... this guy look familiar to you?"

She glanced up to see him holding a photograph.

Without a word, he handed it to her. She took it with a shaking hand, sensing on some instinctive level that what she was about to see might change her life forever.

It was an old Polaroid snapshot, faded and cracked and grainy. And as she stared into a face that looked vaguely familiar, into eyes that were deep set, hair that was dark brown, she didn't have a clue who he was.

Or did she?

She closed her eyes as her heart stumbled. Opened them again as her breath stalled while she studied, studied, studied the photograph.

Her fingers felt stiff and cold suddenly. And her face felt flaming hot.

She'd never met her father. Had never known his name.

Could it be ... could it
possibly
be ...
that after twenty-seven years of knowing nothing about him, she was finally looking at his face?

"Do you think it could have been Grimm? The guy at the bank this morning?" Janey clarified when Jase looked across the booth top at her. "Do you think that Lemans was actually Grimm?"

They were sharing a booth in an out-of-the-way mom-and-pop barbeque restaurant on the south side of Tupelo where Jase was certain they hadn't been followed. The place smelled exactly like a rib place should. Of barbeque sauce, wood smoke, and age.

Jase could have used a beer. Instead, he had ordered a Coke for himself, water for her. And two dinner specials.

"It's possible." He studied Janey's face across the worn red oilcloth covering the booth top. Not that it was his job, but he was worried about her. "Hell yeah, it's possible, but..." He stopped. Shook his head.

"But what?"

"But why? Grimm's fixation is on you. Getting close to you. Why would he be here? Seems like he'd be in New York. Or on his way to Boston and your next concert."

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. "Besides, how would he have known about the money?"

She'd been thinking the same thing. He could see that in her troubled eyes.

"Then who?"

He grunted. "Wish I had an answer. All I've got are more questions. Still topping the list is who killed your mother. I know—," he interjected when she would have interrupted. "I know we've been looking at Grimm for that, but this money . . . hell. It puts another motive on the table. Whoever killed her might have been after the cash."

They'd put a lot of spins on things since leaving the bank and checked into a motel to spend the night, since their return flight wasn't until tomorrow morning. They'd talked about everything except that photo Jase had discovered along with the list and the cash in the lockbox.

It was safer for her, he supposed. Safer and easier for her to talk about and think about who had tried to access her mother's lockbox. Safer to think about the $1.3 million Mr. Haley had verified was inside and had already wired to her bank in L.A. than to dwell on the photograph Jase had found.

She had to be thinking the same thing he was. Was it a picture of her father? Why else would Alice Perkins keep the guy's picture in a bank lockbox? He had to have been important to her. So important, she kept the photo under lock and key. Along with the names of the four women. None of whom lived in Tupelo. Or if they did, they had unlisted phone numbers; Jase had already checked the Tupelo phone directory back at their motel, where they'd showered and changed before coming here.

"The four names on the list," she began, her thoughts evidently paralleling his, "what do you think that's about? Do you suppose they were ... I don't know ... maybe women in need? Maybe she was planning to give them the money."

Hope was an amazing thing. Hard to explain sometimes, easy to latch onto. It was a little sad that Janey still had hope for her mother. Hope that a woman who had been a helluva drinker but not much of a mother might have had some redeeming quality. Charity. It was a stretch and Jase didn't believe it for a second. But Janey needed to believe it.

"Sure. Yeah. It's possible," he said. "Look, we're not going to find any concrete answers tonight, so why don't you just eat your ribs?"

He nodded toward her plate when he realized she'd done little more than toy with her food. She hadn't eaten anything but fruit at breakfast and she'd eaten damn little of that. "You need fuel. And you need to just not think for a while."

"Oh, right. Not think. I'll get right to work on that," she said, but at least she managed a small smile.

It had been several hours since they'd left the bank with Officer Rodman, who had questioned every employee who might have gotten a look at Lemans. Of course, Jase had no doubt that Lemans wasn't the guy's real name—and as he'd suspected, "Lemans" had been very careful to avoid looking at the security cameras. They'd gotten very little from the tape.

Jase had driven Janey to a budget motel. "You expected the Ritz? In Tupelo?" he'd asked when she'd given him a "you've got to be kidding" look. "We're trying to keep a low profile, remember?"

"Low, lower, lowest," she'd said, glaring at the motel, where the most appealing features were its $29.95 a night rate and free HBO.

"It'll be good for your character."

"If we'd taken my Gulfstream instead of flying commercial, we could have been in Boston by now," she'd pointed out.

"Yeah, and if we'd taken your jet there'd have been an army of sleazebag photographers waiting at the airport when we got here. Think of it as a trade-off."

After they'd checked into adjoining rooms—which were surprisingly neat and clean, if not luxurious—they'd both showered and changed into fresh jeans and T-shirts, continuing the low-profile look. Jase had insisted they go out to eat instead of ordering in.

For one thing, he didn't need to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary in close quarters with her today. Plus, she needed movement. She didn't need to sit in a motel room and brood about all the weird things happening in her life.

Too weird,
Jase thought as he dug into his ribs. And she was too wired. He wished she could work up a little more enthusiasm for her own meal. And then it came to him. He was going to be so, so sorry, but he knew exactly how to get her to eat.

"Tell you what," he said, knowing he'd regret it. "I'll make you a deal."

She slumped back in the booth. "What kind of a deal?"

"You were pretty hot to ask me questions on the flight down here. So here's the plan. You can ask me anything you want. But for every question I answer, you have to eat something."

Her eyes brightened marginally. "And if I'm not hungry?" She cocked a brow in challenge.

He lifted a shoulder. "Then you're not hungry."

Hell, she wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to play twenty questions; he knew that. "But my money's on you finishing that plate of ribs before it's all over."

"You think you know me that well?"

He gave her a "get real" look. "No woman I know can resist an open invitation to pry."

She smiled. Not offended. And some of the tension left her shoulders.

"Okay, smart-ass, you're on."

God help him. "Hit me with your best shot."

Chapter 12

Jase figured she must have had a list already made out in her mind, because she jumped right in. "So ... you went to college before the military. What did you study?"

He looked straight ahead. "Law enforcement."

"So why aren't you on a police force somewhere?"

"Same reason I'm not still in the Rangers." He turned to look at her, working hard not to let her see what he was feeling. "Hearing loss—big booms will do that. Just enough that I can't pass the physical."

"I'm sorry," she said, and he realized that she really was.

He shrugged it off. "It happens. Not a big deal." But it
was.
It was a very big deal.

"How long have you been a bodyguard?"

He grunted. "You might not like the answer."

"Backing out already?"

"Nope. Just warning you. Today's what? The eighteenth?"

She nodded.

"Then it's been twenty-nine days. If you count my three weeks of OJT."

She blinked. Sat up a little straighten "You mean—"

He cut her off with a wave of his fork. "Unh, unh, unh. Another bite. Then another question." He liked it that she dove in with her fingers and made quick work of the meat on a rib bone.

"You mean you just started?"

"You're my first field assignment," he admitted after she'd swallowed. "Told you that you might not like it," he added, reacting to the shocked look on her face. "Look, if it's the hearing or lack of experience that worries you—"

"No," she cut him off. Shook her head. "No. I'm not worried about any of that. I figure ... well, I figure what you did in the Middle East more than qualifies you for the job. How long did you say you've been out of the service?"

He glanced pointedly toward her plate. It was either that or get fixated on the little smudge of barbeque sauce clinging to the corner of her mouth—and how tempting it was to lean across the booth and lick it off.

She rolled her eyes but pulled another meaty rib bone off the rack and started munching.

"Six months," he told her when she'd finished it—and dabbed her napkin to the sauce, thank you, Jesus.

He didn't have to prompt her the next time. She ate a forkful of salad. "And for those six months ... you, what? Trained to be a bodyguard?"

He could lie to her. He probably should lie to her, but what the hell. Lying had never been a part of his MO. He couldn't think of a reason compelling enough to change that now—not even embarrassment.

"I knocked around a month or two. Hung out in a few too many bars. Drank way too much beer. Got in too many fights."

"You don't strike me as the brawling kind—unless you had good reason."

He finished off a rack, considered how much to say. In the end, he just told it like it was. At least like it was for him.

"For five years I'd been part of a rapid deployment team. Wherever there was action, we were there. Always in the hot zones."

He paused, shrugged. "So much adrenaline pumps through your body then ... it becomes like a drug, you know? You start to ... I don't know. Crave it. Even after you come home it eats at you. And you look for ways to get a fix. So I drank. And I fought. Then one night I got the shit beat out of me."

"You were hurt?"

Okay. So she looked alarmed. So he liked it that she was concerned for him. Most of all, he liked it that she was loosening up. For a while anyway, her mind wasn't dwelling on all the crap that was happening in her life.