Game (Jasper Dent #2)(40)

She tried to pretend that nothing had happened, that nothing had changed. She started to tell Jazz about her mini-tour of the crime scenes, but he clearly wasn’t focused. He kept interrupting to bring up something about Long or Hughes or the captain guy—Montgomery—who’d kicked him out of New York, and she eventually realized that he just needed to vent. So she listened as he told her about his encounter with the NYPD. And Special Agent Morales of the FBI.

“Do you think she was serious about helping you kill your dad?” she asked in a low voice. They were at their gate, and it was crowded. She didn’t want anyone to overhear.

Jazz shrugged. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and had bought a Mets cap, which he kept pulled over his forehead. Being recognized would—in a word—suck. “I don’t know.”

“Would you…” She stopped herself. This was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. The amount of hatred in her heart for Billy Dent surprised her, though. She felt an immediate and powerful kinship with Special Agent Morales, whom she’d never even met. Any woman who wanted Billy Dent dead badly enough to risk her career—for surely if Jazz reported what she’d offered to a superior, she’d be out of the FBI—was a woman Connie could learn to love. Conscience Hall was well named by her parents, but even her conscience had its breaking point. The man who had mauled the childhood of the boy she loved definitely occupied a spot beyond that breaking point.

So she wasn’t surprised to find that she wanted Billy Dent dead. What surprised her was how happy the thought made her, how liberated it made her feel, even though she knew that Jazz killing his own father would send her boyfriend into a darker place than even he could imagine.

But if Jazz didn’t do it… If this Special Agent Morales was the one to do it…

Well, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? The world would be rid of Billy Dent. More important, Jazz would be rid of him, without adding to the burden already on his too-full back.

Maybe this FBI lady is a gift from God, Connie wanted to tell Jazz.

She settled for squeezing his hand. After a moment, he squeezed back.




Jazz said nothing on the flight, staring moodily out the window instead, as though answers or resolutions had been inscribed in the billowy curves of the clouds. Connie, for her part, stared just as moodily at him, willing him to turn and look at her.

She so badly wanted to discuss what had happened the night before, in the hotel room. She still didn’t know who was being more unfair to whom, but one thing was certain—she wouldn’t figure it out until they actually opened their mouths and talked about it.

Had it been presumptuous to bring the condoms to New York? Probably. She could admit that. But she couldn’t shake the memory of the giddy, stomach-twirling elation she’d experienced at the drugstore when she’d bought them. They’ll have condoms in New York, she had thought. Why buy them here, where someone you know might see you? Then she dismissed it. She didn’t care if someone saw. She was in love. So what if people knew she was having sex with the man she loved? Her parents were both at work, so they wouldn’t see her—it would be a friend or an enemy, and it just didn’t matter.

She’d bought them and packed them and thought of them on the flight to New York. This was the right way to do it. Responsible. She and Jazz were both virgins, and they would do this the right way. The adult way.

It was time.

She knew in her head and she felt in her heart and in other, more primal, parts of her body. She was ready. When this state of readiness had been obtained, she couldn’t say. But after the Impressionist nearly killed Jazz, and after Jazz finally faced the demon of his past—his father—she sensed a change in their relationship. A growth. A maturation. They were ready for the next step, and once she knew that, she was desperate for it.

Still. She hadn’t planned on springing it on him the way she had. A late-night/early-morning grope-fest gone manically passionate. Blurting out that she had protection. Wrong way to go about it, she thought. I should have brought it up before. Been cool about it. Like, “Hey, I think it’s time. I think we’re ready. How about you?” And when he said, “Yeah,” then you say, “Great, we’re covered; let’s go.”

All of that was true, but no matter how badly she’d bungled it, his reaction—his refusal to talk, his sulking in the other bed—pained her. Intellectually, she knew that it was fear driving him, that it had nothing to do with her. But emotionally and with all the yearning in her body, she felt rejected. Harshly.

When the plane landed, she hoped that maybe they could talk while waiting for Howie to pick them up, but to her absolute mortification, her father was waiting as they passed through security.

“I just need a second—” she started.

“You had a first, a second, and a third,” her father said with barely concealed rage. “No more chances. Come with me. Now.”

“But, Dad—”

“No buts, Conscience.”

Jazz cleared his throat. “Mr. Hall, if Connie and I could just have a minute to—”

“To what?” Dad said, rounding on Jazz, that rage now no longer concealed at all. “To do what, Jasper? Abduct her to Chicago this time?”

“I didn’t abduct her,” Jazz said with amazing calm. “In fact, I told her not to come at all.”