Reckless

“Will you stay in London for a while?” Jeff asked.

She nodded. “For a while, yes. Maybe for good. I’m still thinking. How about you?”

“I’m still thinking too.”

The love hung in the air between them like a living thing, a ghost.

Tracy looked up into Jeff’s eyes and said what they were both thinking.

“I don’t know if we can go back. I love you, but . . .”

He stopped her with a kiss.

“We can’t go back. We can only go forward. But we don’t have to do it alone.”

For a moment, Tracy let herself hope that he might be right. “I should go.”

Jeff stuck out his hand for a cab and helped Tracy inside.

“Don’t disappear on me now.”

“I won’t.” Tracy smiled. “I promise.”

“Tomorrow’s the great adventure, Tracy,” Jeff said, tapping the door as the driver pulled away. “And it’s coming whether we want it or not.”

He watched as Tracy’s taxi eased into the London traffic and drove out of sight.

EPILOGUE

JEFF WAITED IN THE darkness.

It was very late, almost two A.M., and the parking structure was deserted.

He started to panic that he wasn’t coming. That this would be the one Saturday night when the bastard didn’t come here, to this rundown out of town mall, to meet his informant. But just as Jeff was giving up hope, he appeared, perfectly dressed as always in an expensive suit and tie. He waited until his “source” crawled in, ragged and dirty and desperate for the drug money he was about to earn for betraying some underworld figure or other. Then he glanced around briefly and made his approach.

The two men spoke for five minutes. Then the suit handed over a crisp white envelope, just as he always did, and the addict scuttled away.

He was almost at his car when he felt the cold metal of Jeff’s gun pressed against the back of his ear.

“Who are you?”

He was trying to sound calm, but Jeff could hear the fear in his voice and smell it on his skin.

“What do you want?”

“The truth,” Jeff said. Reaching into the man’s pocket, he extracted his gun. “Turn around.”

Milton Buck did as he was asked.

“Back up against the wall.”

Buck took two steps back, glaring at Jeff defiantly. The FBI agent had always loathed Jeff Stevens. The man clearly viewed himself as some sort of a Robin Hood, when in fact he was nothing more than a common thief. “What’s this about Stevens?”

“I saw you. On the hospital CCTV feed. You were there the night Nicholas died.”

Milton Buck shrugged. “So?”

“So it was you. I went to Steamboat Springs. I did my research. You were the one who sabotaged that truck. You expected Nick to die, but when he didn’t, you went to the hospital and tampered with his anesthetic. You killed a decent man and an innocent child. You murdered my son.”