Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

“So you’ve made your decision?”

“I like Private. I like my job.”

“Stay, Justine. I’ll match their offer and more.”

“Thanks. Let me think about it overnight.”

“You’re mad at me, Justine. I understand. But will you please talk to me? I want to talk about…us.”

Justine gave me the subzero look that I remembered well from fights we’d had when we lived together.

“There is no ‘us,’” Jack,” she snapped, “and I’m not sure there ever was. But I still give a damn. So as your friend, I want to say don’t ever take your eyes off Tommy.”

After the memorial service, I’d tailed Tommy’s car from his office to his house, watched him tinker with a sprinkler and then go inside for his home-cooked meal.

His phone was tapped, his car was bugged, and right now, Mo-bot was monitoring the live feed from the “spy eyes” I’d personally trained on his home.

I said, “Short of implanting a device in his skull, there’s not much more I can do.”

“Tommy hit on me again, Jack. I don’t take him seriously, but you should.”

Again?

Tommy had hit on Justine again?

I felt a knife slide into my gut. Not just because Tommy was still trying to beat me at girls, but because Justine had filed the edge of this news so that it would really cut deep.

I said, “Did you go out with him?”

“When you were in prison. Strictly business. At least it was for me.”

“Nice one, Justine. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

Justine said, “See you tomorrow,” then she took the outside rail and walked past me.

I stood on the staircase until I could no longer hear the sound of her heels striking metal treads.

Point taken, Justine.

Parting shot duly noted.

CHAPTER 99

I DRANK DOWN a Red Bull in the break room while I waited for coffee to brew. I thought of a few comebacks for Justine—mostly why she should forgive my completely unpremeditated good-bye tryst with Colleen.

I’m human. I’m sorry. I couldn’t possibly be more sorry.

Why couldn’t she forgive me?

I went to my office, booted up my laptop, opened files in the “Colleen” folder, and revisited facts that Colleen had never told me.

Item: Right out of high school, Colleen had married a man named Kevin Molloy. The marriage was annulled six months later, but Colleen had kept her married name. In the year that Colleen and I had dated, she’d never mentioned an ex-husband, not once.

Had Molloy followed her to LA?

Did he still love her?

Item: A businessman named Sean McGough had paid Colleen’s way to the USA in 2009. McGough was still in Dublin, had not left Ireland in three years. Who was McGough to Colleen? And why had she also failed to mention him?