And then he pressed his forehead against mine and squeezed his eyes shut, like he was trying to get hold of himself.
“Whowashe?” I asked for the third time. “I mean, he said his name was Julian, but…”
Jack took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said, and then he pulled back a little, one arm still around me. With his other hand he took my chin and looked over my face. “You’resurehe didn’t hurt you?”
“I’m sure,” I said, wincing, “but I’m still bruised, remember?”
He let me go at once. “Sorry.” He stared at me for another second before running his hands through his hair until it stood out at all angles. “I’m sorry, Trouble. I’msosorry. I should never have left you. I should’ve been much smarter about everything, and most of all, I should never have let you get into this in the first place.”
It was way too late to be worrying about that. “Is this Julian someone you’re hiding from?” I asked curiously.
He blew out a long breath and started the car again. “No. Well. Yes, now, I guess I am. God knows what the Boss is going to do to me when he finds out I held a fucking gun to his son’s head.”
I took that in as Jack drove back out of the street. “I thought Sandro was your Boss’s son?” I asked, as he turned north.
“Julian’s his other son.”
“And you just attacked him.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…that can’t be good, right?”
Jack gave a short laugh. “That’s a way of putting it. Call your buddy Nate again and tell him you’re coming to his place for the night.”
“Okay, butlisten,” I said, completely ignoring his direction. “I have so much to tell you, JJ. I forgot about it in all the, uh, terror. But Emma Dempsey called me.”
He did a double take. “She called you?”
“Yep. And I got the whole story about Harper Connelly, and—even better—Emma’s giving me access to all of Annie’s private socials.”
It took a few minutes to explain to Jack how that had happened. He just couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that you could nominate someone to take over your social media accounts if you died.
“I mean, itwasfast,” I admitted. “Usually you have to jump through hoops with those companies, but Craig Wyatt—Annie’s manager—was on it right away. Sent in the death certificate. Lost his shit at them when they each told himhewasn’t the digital executor. He’s been harassing Emma’s PR folks about it, but she dug her heels in and saidIshould have them.” I couldn’t hide my admiring smile. Emma took no shit, even from a man as powerful in Hollywood as Craig Wyatt.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Whatever. She got access to them, and she’s giving them to you.”
“Right. She said she’d email me all the logins right away. Publicandprivate.”
“So…we’ll be able to see what your sister was posting behind the scenes,” Jack said, catching on.
“Right! And all her DMs, too. And knowing Annie, either the passwords will all be the same, or at least one of them will be the same one she used for her emails, too.”
“Holy shit,” Jack murmured. “This is why I stay off fucking social media.” He shook his head. “And the thing with Harper?”
“That’s a longer story. And—JJ, I didn’t get a chance to call Nate yet to talk to him. Plus, I don’t think we should stay out there with him. Brent might be back, and he’s just, ugh.” I sighed. “He’s painful. And besides all that…” I took a breath, understanding for the first time how Jack felt every time he said what I was about to. “I don’t want to put a target on Nate’s back.”
Jack gave me a fond smile. “Okay. We find the kind of motel that doesn’t ask questions, and we stay there for the night.”
* * *
It took a while to find a motel that Jack decided was, in his words, “defensible enough,” and we didn’t talk much as we looked, although Jack kept his hand on my thigh for most of the way there, as though reassuring himself that I was safe.
There was a 7/11 down the end of the block, and we went together to choose a few slightly stale sandwiches for dinner.
“Hey, it’s better than ramen,” I murmured to Jack as we looked at them bleakly, and then we smiled at each other.
We got back to the room, where Jack opened his laptop and we each took a sandwich. “Tell me the Harper story,” he said, and took a huge bite out of his triple-decker club.
