Paradise Falls (Paradise Falls #1-5)(32)

Jennifer swallowed.

“Tortured you how?”

“They cut me. My cellmate was a doctor, or I’d be dead. He patched me up. I think they did it in purpose. He had information they wanted and it was too valuable to risk killing him for it. He talked to me while he worked on me. Told me things.”

“What kinds of things?”

He sighed. “The doc worked for the Ba’ath party. He came into possession of account numbers and access codes. Anyway, I was there for about nine months. They were going to start in on my face. That’s where this came from,” he drew his finger down his cheek.

“Oh my God.” Jennifer could almost feel the knife.

“I lucked out there. They bombed the compound. The Air Force, I mean. It was a British unit that actually found me. I was in the hospital for another two months before I was sent home. They did their best to patch me up, but…”

“But what?”

“Can I show you?”

Jennifer nodded.

Jacob stood up, took a deep breath, and pulled off his shirt by the collar. The shocking sight almost caused her to dump the plate of food on the floor.

His entire body was covered in scars. There was a smooth, tight scar across his entire stomach, probably a burn, but there were others. Dozens criss-crossed each other in silvery ridges on his chest and back, and he touched a crater that puckered his right shoulder.

“I took a bullet after the explosion. It went right through. If it hit the bone they’d probably have cut off my arm.”

She swallowed. “Do those hurt?”

“Every day.”

He pulled the shirt back on and tucked the hem around his waist.

She had an overwhelming urge to reach out to him, but kept her hands still.

He looked away. “Not pretty, I know.”

“When I ran off, it wasn’t that. I have problems with people touching me. I got scared.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I know it’s not rational, but I can’t make it go away. I’m trying. I like you.”

She just blurted it out.

“Christ,” she muttered. “I sound like a twelve year old. I didn’t run off because I felt your scars. I went too fast. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”

“I’d say you should have.” He was looking at the floor, but she could see his smirk until he drew in a breath and let out a deep sigh.

“I didn’t plan on any of this. I thought you’d have moved away by now.”

“Why did you come back here? I want the real reason, not something about giving back or some nonsense like that.”

Jacobs shifted on the bed and rubbed his hands together. “After I was discharged I went to the Caymans. The money was still there. I opened my own accounts and transferred it over. From there I went to Switzerland and then on to a dozen other tax havens. All numbered accounts. The total was… the total was impressive. Enough for me to do whatever I wanted. I wanted to know what happened to my family.”

“We all already know that.”

“Do we?” he said.

Cold flared through her chest. “Yes. There was an accident. They died. That’s what happened.”

“Wait here.”

Her injured legs didn’t have much of a choice anyway. Jacob returned to the bedroom with manilla folders tucked under his arm, and walked to the other side of the bed to sit next to her. He propped the folders on his outstretched legs, and held one open to show her photocopies of a book.

“What’s that?”

“The annual report of the Association of American Civil Engineers. It’s from five years before the bridge collapsed.”

“I’m, not much of an engineer.”

He sighed. “I’ll give you the gist of it. There were a lot of issues with the bridge, but the main one was fairly simple. It was an eye-bar chain suspension bridge, built when this town was a lot smaller, there was less traffic, and the trucks were much, much lighter. The civil engineering report recommended it be torn down and replaced.”

The chill deepened. Jennifer set the tray of pancakes aside. She didn’t feel like eating anymore.

“There was a problem with the load bearing cable on the south side of the bridge, but there were other problems. The footing on the east side was unsound. The soil beneath it had shifted and the shift put a kind of torque on the footing and it made the concrete crack. The pressure built and built. When one part of the system failed, all the rest failed. The weight of the cars on the bridge combined with snow and ice from the bad winter was too much. The cable snapped and the footing couldn’t hold the weight, so it collapsed.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t want to know the details. It was an accident. That’s good enough for me.”

He dropped another folder on her lap. It was a Senate bill.

“Look at the list of sponsors.”

Above all the legal gibberish was a list of names, and the first one listed was her father-in-law, James Katzenberg.

“That bill was passed a year after the report. Senator Katzenberg managed to secure appropriations to repair the bridge.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred and twenty million dollars.”