“What I understand, and what you need to understand, is that I fucking care about you, Rachael. And when I care about someone, I don’t sit around watching them suffer. I do something to fix that.Youhave no idea…” Jake put his hand to his forehead, thumb on one temple, index finger on the other, and shielded his eyes.
“You have your own blackbirds.” Rachael reached across the desk and took Jake’s hand in hers.
Jake studied her face. “What do you mean? Whatareblackbirds to you?”
“They are the regrets that haunt you. They remind you of the time when you didn’t…when you couldn’t…” Rachael brushed at her eyes. “They remind you of the times you weren’t strong enough.”
Jake nodded. “Mine show up at the worst times.”
“Mine, too.”
“When you hesitated going on stage.”
Rachael nodded. “Blackbirds, a whole flock. They come at night, too, in the dark. My mom, she tried to…never mind.” Rachael looked Jake in the eye. Here was that good man who actually understood her, the same one who’d done what he could to set her free, then protect her. “I believe you. About downstairs.” She watched relief flood his face. “But, it was wrong to do. It got you this.” She flicked her hand at the paperwork making Jake the head foreman.And more.
The corner of Jake’s mouth quirked up in a smile, a humorless one. “Worth the price if it means I can keep you safe.”
No. “You don’t know what you’re saying, what you’ve signed up for.”
“I don’t care.” Jake moved his hand so that he was holding hers and squeezed. “Anything to keep you safe. To set you free. Let’s go tonight.”
Rachael pulled her hand out of his. “What?”
“To The Hideaway. Let’s just go. I’ll take you. Bill might try to get you back onstage, but that’s up to you. I want to talk to you, Rachael, away from here,” he gestured around, indicating the office, the meatpacking plant, the town. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Do you trust me to keep you safe? To set you free?”
Rachael took a deep breath and nodded. “I trust you,” she said, but bit off the rest of her words before she could say them aloud:I just don’t trust theotheryou, Jake Spiro.
Seventeen
Jake picked Rachael up in the truck this time. He’d never driven it to work and kept it parked a block down from his apartment, so he hoped that when he pulled up to Elena’s house where they’d agreed to meet, no one would know it was him. He cut the engine, but Rachael was already halfway out the door to meet him. Damn, the little black dress she wore clung to all her curves as she took long, fast strides to the truck. Jake reminded his dick that he was on the job no matter how much he wanted her.
Elena stood in the doorway and fixed Jake with a look he recognized from his own mom during his sister’s teenaged years whenever an unvetted guy came around—do not fuck with my girl. Elena had seen his display at the meatpacking plant earlier, too.
No worries, Elena Martinez, I’ve got Rachael’s back, just like you do.
To the point where the recording he uploaded when he got home did not include most of today’s office conversation with her. The next upload might be missing a few things from tonight, too.
He could have pushed Rachael when they talked earlier; she even gave him an opening when he asked about the blackbirds again and she told him they were regrets. He should have asked what hers were, gone for something incriminating, but, goddamn, her words, her voice, her face. He’d been flooded with his own worst memories of when he’d been helpless, when he’d found his mom lying unconscious, broken, a warning to every other female actor who dared fight back. How he’d changed his life’s course after that, to one that made him a better man, but that he sometimes regretted. Still, it had led him here, waiting for the most beautiful, most desirable woman he’d ever met to jump into his truck so he could roll her away.
Instead of walking to Elena’s door as he’d planned, Jake started to get out to go around the truck and open the passenger door for Rachael, until she waved him back while looking around. With a little training, she’d make a decent agent herself—constantly paranoid, and rightfully so. Jake didn’t have to be a genius to know that she’d turned on the radio in her office to drown out her father’s bug. Daddy had been busy bugging Jake’s apartment earlier in the day—the camera Jake had installed there when he moved in showed one of Deal’s men wiring Jake’s apartment around noon. Another guy tossed the place in the meantime—carefully enough that a civilian probably wouldn’t have noticed anything out of place—but they left empty-handed.
I guess they did it during lunch hour because he knew where I was, and bonus—Daddy wouldn’t have to pay them overtime.Jake wondered what the second guy expected to find. Was this standard operating procedure, was Deal on to him, or was it something else?
Rachael got in the truck and gave Jake a bright, unguarded smile, unexpected and more beautiful for that. At the plant, she always seemed older than her years. But away, she looked her age, more at-ease, and that ease would only grow as they put Ross in the rearview mirror.
“Whew,” Jake said as he looked her over. “I am so outclassed.”
Rachael shook her head, and blushed. “You are not.” She looked him up and down. “Nice shirt and jeans. You clean up well, though you always look good no matter what.”
“As do you. But tonight, wow.”
All Jake wanted to do was lean over and take Rachael in his arms, kiss her down to her soul. But after her initial smile she seemed shy, so he didn’t think she was in a place for that, not at the moment. She would be later, if Jake had anything to say about it.
The radio stations in this part of the world weren’t to Jake’s liking, so he had to settle for the old truck’s tape deck. When he was a kid, he’d tease his dad about the ancient boom box he listened to in the garage as he worked on the Indian, especially when he’d played a tape so much the music warped.Broadcast from Atlantis, Jake would say, and his dad would pretend to be offended, but he couldn’t keep the smile out of his eyes. The joke was on Jake though, when he had to humble himself to ask his dad if he still had any old tapes lying around Jake could borrow for his latest assignment.
He put one in the tape deck after they hit the highway, an old favorite his dad had turned him on to, Robbie Robertson. The shimmery sound of strings over a lonely horn preceded the first jazzy beats of “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”.
Rachael’s shyness flew out the window. “Oh! I love this song. I didn’t think anyone knew this guy besides me.”
