Game (Jasper Dent #2)(31)

Finding the right phone, he flipped it open, and before he could say anything, the voice at the other end said, almost saucily, “Guess who’s in town?”

And then told him.

And Billy Dent’s smile grew even wider.





CHAPTER 16


The pounding at the door woke Jazz from a deep slumber that morning, gasping awake as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. Connie bolted up in the other bed, startled.

“Who—” she started.

“NYPD!” a voice barked. “Open up! Now!”

“NYPD?” Connie whispered. “What?”

Jazz shook sleep from his head and rolled to his feet. Was Hughes playing some kind of joke? Or…

Or was he being Fultoned again?

He left the chain on the door, opening it just enough to peer out. Two uniformed cops stood there, along with an older white guy in a suit and tie. The white guy pushed at the door. “Jasper Dent,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was more like a command, as though he were ordering the kid at the door to be Jazz.

“Let me see some ID,” Jazz said, but before the words were even out of his mouth, he was looking at the name card and badge for Detective Stephen Long.

“Homicide,” Long snapped. “Brooklyn South. Open the door.”

Brooklyn South. Homicide. The same division Hughes came from.

Or claimed to come from. The badge and name card looked similar to Hughes’s. How hard would that be to fake? Probably easier than Jazz thought, but harder than made it worthwhile.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” Jazz asked, stalling. He could hear Connie behind him, throwing on clothes, no doubt.

“I said open the goddamn door. Do it now or we’ll bust it down. Seriously.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

Long blew out an annoyed breath. “Okay, we’re knocking it down.”

“Wait, wait.” Connie had stopped moving around. Jazz unchained the door and stepped back. “Come in. What can I do for—”

“You can come with us,” Long said as he and the other two cops came into the room. Long looked around, spied Connie, who was in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. The detective raised an eyebrow. “You guys,” he directed the uniforms, “check the room and the girl. Dent, put on some pants. You’re coming with me.”

“What’s going on here?” Jazz asked.

Long looked at his watch. “You have thirty seconds to put on real clothes. Dressed or not, I’m taking you with me.”

Bristling, Jazz grabbed his clothes from the previous day and retreated to the bathroom to change. Outside, he could hear the cops going through the dresser and desk drawers. One of them must have started to go through Connie’s suitcase because he heard her shout, “Hands off the panties, you perv!”

He emerged from the bathroom, dressed, to find one of the cops triumphantly brandishing the iPad and papers Hughes had brought over the day before. From the crestfallen expression on Connie’s face, Jazz realized that she had hidden them in her suitcase while he’d stalled at the door.

“We’re done here,” Long said, and tipped an imaginary hat to Connie. “Ma’am,” he fake-drawled, and grabbed Jazz by the arm and led him out the door.




Connie handled the cops dragging Jazz away with an aplomb that both surprised and impressed her. Good for you, she thought. You totally didn’t do the whole shrieking girlfriend thing while they hauled your boyfriend out of here. That would have been pretty low-class.

Then again, Jazz had a history of being dragged away by the cops, and it always worked out. He had been arrested once a couple of months ago during the Impressionist case, at the same time that Howie struggled for his life after being knifed. And she had been there in the school auditorium when Deputy Erickson had pulled Jazz out of play rehearsal one afternoon, all because Jazz had done too good a job predicting the Impressionist’s next victim. Both times, he had returned safe and sound.

As she did at home every morning in her own room, she switched on the TV to listen to the news and weather while she got dressed. She would have to figure out where he’d gone, of course. Even though he always came back to her, that didn’t mean he didn’t need help. After all, the Impressionist had managed to hold Jazz hostage in his own home, and only Connie and Howie’s last-minute heroics had saved him.

Or had they? Maybe Jazz could have saved himself. Put that one up there on the list of things she would never know. She sighed. You could have chosen an easier life for yourself, Conscience Hall, than falling in love with a guy who packs the kind of baggage Jazz packs.

Nah. She was kidding herself. It hadn’t been a choice—she had fallen desperately in love with Jazz early on. Tried to hide it. From her father especially, but even from herself. In love with the son of the world’s most notorious serial killer? For reals? Maybe he’s not nuts, but you sure are, Connie!

The first time they kissed, though…

God, that first kiss!

Connie’s driveway. Evening bleeding into an unusually cool summer night. She was sixteen at the time and he wasn’t the first boy she’d kissed, but he was the first one to make her feel cold and warm all at once, the first one to make her want to dissolve into him.

He’d groaned somewhere deep in the back of his throat as they kissed, and she thought that groan was surrender.