Jack of Diamonds Page 4

  “I know Alice wants to speak to you,” she whispered to Jack as she led him toward a hallway, “and I know there is no way to keep you lovebirds apart for long, but we’re trying to adhere to a tight schedule and we’re falling terribly behind. Can you please try to keep it as brief as possible?”

  Brief? I don’t even want to have this conversation. With all of the stress that she’s already under, Alice is going to go ballistic.

  “I’ll make it quick.”

  Erica deposited him in front of a door and scurried off. Jack knocked on the door of the dressing room. “Alice?” he called softly.

  The door opened a crack. Alice kept the light off to shroud his view of her. “Jack, I’m so glad to see you,” she whispered from somewhere in the darkness.

  “Well, I can’t see you. Don’t tell me you’re buying into that superstitious—”

  “Of course not, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise! This dress is amazing.” The door creaked open a little bit more. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, but listen, there’s something I have to tell you. It’s very important.”

  “Hold on, I have a question for you first. Why didn’t you tell me that you invited Marisa?”

  “I didn’t invite her. I thought you did.”

  “Me?” Alice’s voice rose high and then dropped back down to a whisper. “Why would I invite your gorgeous ex-girlfriend to our wedding? I went by the list you gave me. Her cover name and address were on your list.”

  Jack had listed Marisa as “Francis Jones” in his address book, but he never . . .

  “You promised me that you went through every person on the list you gave me,” Alice said.

  Oh, crud. Jack didn’t need to see Alice’s face to tell how upset she was. She’d asked him to go over the list of names to make certain he really wanted to invite these people to the wedding, but he only skimmed it.

  “My bad.”

  “Oh, this is a lot bigger than ‘my bad,’ Jack. Now what are we supposed to do?”

  “Ah . . . I can try to explain it to her.”

  “Explain what? That neither of us actually wanted her here?”

  Jack heard the rustle of fabric and imagined Alice with her hands on her hips, green eyes blazing and lips pouting—he wanted to kiss them into a smile. “I’m just trying to figure a way out of this . . .”

  “. . . mess you got us into?” Alice finished his sentence for him. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. We’ll just have to make the most of it.”

  Jack exhaled. “I cannot believe how understanding you’re being about all of this.”

  “Oh, I’m going to make you pay for this, Jack Stratton. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but you will pay.”

  There’s my feisty Replacement. He’d taken to calling her Alice more and more but sometimes missed the unusual, endearing nickname Chandler had given her. Jack rested his hand against the wall and leaned his face into the crack in the door.

  “Hey, no peeking!”

  “Sneaking a peek at you is the last thing I’m thinking about,” Jack whispered. He reached inside, feeling for her hand. He touched her arm and yanked his hand back in pain. “Ow!”

  A gold-headed dress pin stuck out of his finger.

  “That’s what you get for trying to sneak a feel.” Alice giggled.

  Jack winced and pulled the pin out. “I wasn’t doing that either. That actually hurt.”

  “You’ve got nothing to complain about. I’ve been a human pincushion for an entire week! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been poked and prodded.”

  Down the hall, he heard Erica clapping her hands and calling for the photoshoot to resume. She’d be coming for Alice any minute now.

  “Listen, Alice, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I was up on Buck Mountain and got a radio call for an officer down. I was fifteen minutes closer than the nearest backup, so I responded. It was Donald Pugh.”

  “Oh my gosh! Is Donald okay?”

  Alice started to open the door but Jack held it closed, knowing she’d regret revealing herself later. “He suffered a head injury, but he’s in a stable condition. I’m going over to the hospital later. But there’s more.” Jack took a deep breath. “Inside the house, on the walls, there were pictures—sketches, actually. Of different women.” He said a silent prayer and blurted out, “There was a picture of you next to one of our wedding invitations.”

  The dress rustled loudly and Jack braced himself against the push of the door. “Me? And an invitation? Who is the invitation addressed to?”

  “No one. Remember? Erica insisted we send the same invitation to everyone and personalize only the envelopes.”

  There was a long silence on the other side of the door. Finally, he heard a sigh. “Look, it might not even be someone we invited,” Alice said. “We had a box of them left over and I threw it away in the dumpster behind the apartment.”

  Jack ran his hands through his hair. It still didn’t add up to him. “But whoever attacked Donald sketched your picture from the photograph in the paper and hung it up next to the invitation.”

  “Is Donald alright?”

  “I don’t know yet. Detective Castillo thinks it was an accident, and Sheriff Morrison agrees, but—”

  “Bob thinks it was an accident, too?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Jack, there’s only a week left, and this wedding has snowballed into a gigantic event. Your parents are flying here in a couple of days, and I have no idea how many other people . . . Are you sure you’re not just feeling the pressure and making more out of this than there needs to be? If both Ed and Bob think it was an accident, maybe that’s all it was.”

  Jack ground his teeth and the muscles in his jaw flexed. His gut was screaming at him. There’s something about the pictures, about that place. How could he explain that? How could he make Alice understand?

  “Excuse me?” Erica knocked on the hallway wall as she strode forward. “We really need to get moving.”

  “I’ll be right there, Erica, but I need to finish speaking to my fiancé.” Alice’s hand snaked out of the dressing room and gave Jack’s arm a quick squeeze. “Everything’s going to be fine, babe. I’ll be done in a couple of hours and I’ll see you at home.”

  “No, I’m driving you home,” Jack said.

  “But you can’t see me now, and we won’t be done for a while.”

  “I’ll wait in the car.”

  Erica jumped aside as Jack stomped down the hallway.

  Alice had taken the news much better than he had expected, but that brought him little consolation. He didn’t want her to be upset, but he did want her to be cautious. There was something very disturbing about those pictures—whoever drew them wasn’t just some random artist making sketches.

  When Jack had been in that room, he had felt a presence, a strange intention behind the hand that drew those women. There had been something evil in that vacant house, and it had eyes on Alice.

  6

  I should have brought some popcorn. Sitting here in my car, wrapped in the shadows, watching them through the window . . . it’s the best show I’ve seen in a long time. Jack is still pacing around the living room while Alice is doing all she can to reassure him that “everything is going to be fine.” Or so I imagine. I can’t hear her words, but I can see her expression.

  She’s wrong, of course. Everything isn’t going to be okay. This is just the beginning of little cracks in the dam that should be taken very seriously. And the only person who sees the signs is Jack. This was expected, of course.

  The police and the sheriff didn’t find anything suspicious. To them, the incident is as good as forgotten. Just a bit of paperwork as a reminder it ever occurred. That and an injured officer.

  The homeowner sent me an email, asking to speak on the phone. I ignored it. The identity I gave him when I rented the place was an alias, of course. And he only has himself to blame. He’s the one who rented out his home via the
internet without performing a thorough background check. Bet he won’t make that mistake again.

  I have nothing to worry about. I’ll slip away again before the dam breaks. No one will ever know it was me.

  Alice is getting upset now. Even though Jack towers over her, Alice’s back is stiff, defiant. Like a Chihuahua against a Doberman. Jack intimidates most people, but she’s spunky. She’s had a hard life and it made her tough. But that’s not why she can stand up to Jack.

  It’s because she loves him.

  Unconditionally. There is no fear there. She knows Jack would never hurt her.

  What she doesn’t understand is that Jack can’t protect her. He’s human. Limited. He’ll try. He’ll fail. And when he does . . .

  A shiver courses through my body. Thrill or disgust, I can’t tell. Part of me doesn’t want Jack to fail. The other part can’t wait to push him over the edge. After all that he’s been through, he’ll never survive losing Alice. His rage is too strong. He’ll rip himself apart.

  There’s a beast inside of him. But he tries to cage it and lock it away. That’s the wrong approach. The beast needs to be treated right and learn to trust its handler. The beast always gets free; that’s why I let it out from time to time. It’s not a pet—it’s wild and dangerously feral, I know that. But I can control it if I let it free when it needs to feed.

  And now, its hunger is growing. In Jack, too.

  Because I’m so close.

  I look down at my hand. I didn’t even realize it, but I’m caressing the sketches on the seat next to me. I close my eyes and see their faces. Before I take Alice, I’ll need to get the others. They need to pay for what they’ve done. How many chances have I given them to repent?

  Too many. Too long.

  It’s finally time.

  Jack’s alone in the living room, staring at her bedroom door, a vacant look plastered on his face. It’s so cute that they haven’t made love yet. Ever. They sleep in separate bedrooms like in some old black-and-white fifties’ TV show.

  I’ve parked where I can see a small slice through Alice’s window, too. She’s brushing her hair. Staring at the mirror. The smile’s returned to her face. She’s thinking about her wedding—I’m sure of it. Imagining the perfect day.

  Or is she letting her mind go there? Is she thinking about that first night?

  She’s walking across the room now. Reaching for the door handle. But she’s hesitating. Why? Why not go to him?

  She flicks off the light. She’s going to wait. She’s saving herself for him.

  How sweet.

  But that will never happen.

  I won’t let it. I can’t.

  Jack walks to her door. He knocks. He’s apologizing. Tipping his chin down. Rounded shoulders. He presses his palms against the door. He’s telling her that he loves her. I can almost hear the longing in his voice.

  A smile spreads across his face. She forgave him, as always. He’ll be able to sleep now, at least for one more night. But there will soon be a day when he won’t be able to remember what a good night’s sleep was—my dream will play in an endless loop in his mind and my art will be on display eternally.

  I clap silently at the thought of the never-ending exhibition of my art. My dream finally fulfilled.

  But Jack’s twenty-four-hour nightmare is just beginning.

  7

  Jack had downloaded the video from his body camera and the still pictures from his phone, and it took him most of the day to review it all. He’d taken hundreds of photographs, and most of them were pretty blurry and unusable since he’d been shooting them covertly, but he had enough to put together a 360-degree panorama of the room.

  There were thirteen sketches of women still left on the wall, plus the bloodied one on the floor that Lady had pinned with her paw. Most of the subjects appeared to be in their twenties; only two looked to be in their thirties. And they all appeared posed, smiling, as if sitting for a professional photographer or portrait artist.

  In addition to the fourteen sketches, there were twenty-three pieces of tape on the wall where Jack could only assume more sketches had once hung. And there were also empty spaces where, assuming the pictures had hung in rows, several more were missing. Jack estimated that there could have been close to four dozen sketches.

  Forty-eight women. But only one wedding invitation. His.

  Erica had sent him the list he’d requested of everyone invited to the wedding. He really should have checked his list over more carefully before he gave it to Alice. There were lots of people he hadn’t seen in years on the list. But with Alice throwing away a box of invitations, anyone could have found them . . .

  His phone rang. It was Morrison.

  “Sheriff, have you located the homeowner?”

  “We have, but . . .”

  Jack stood and braced himself.

  “They rented it out, and it was all done online,” Sheriff Morrison explained. “We’re working on tracking the renter now.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Not much yet. He’s from out of state, so I’ve reached out to their jurisdiction, but the owner was short on due diligence and didn’t do some of the background verification the rental website suggested. The homeowner has scans of all the docs—license, credit cards, everything—but they could all be fakes.”

  Jack started pacing, a habit as natural to him as breathing. “You’re keeping the details pretty vague here, Bob. You haven’t told me the homeowner’s or the renter’s name.”

  “You noticed that, huh?” There was no mirth in the sheriff’s voice. “That’s on purpose. I don’t need you to start hunting these people down on your own. Castillo is handling this. If you want to protect Alice, your best place is by her side.”

  “Fine. That’s fine.” Jack stopped pacing; his pulse pounded in his ears. “The last thing I would do is get in the middle of an ongoing investigation.” His tone betrayed his words.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No. I’m serious, sir. I’m not going to get involved . . . proactively. But—and I’m sure you would agree—I feel that for her own safety, Alice should know the name of the person who had her sketch and wedding invitation taped to his wall.”

  “Not going to happen, Jack.”

  “This is about Alice’s safety!”

  “Right now, as far as the sheriff’s department is concerned, this is about an injured officer, and—”

  “I’ve already checked with the hospital twice, sir. Donald is awake and they’re running tests. They expect him to make a full recovery.”

  “And you’re itching for the moment when they allow him to have visitors, aren’t you?” Morrison knew Jack all too well. “You’re dying to get a statement from Donald. That’s exactly why I’m not giving you the name, Stratton. You’ll make a beeline straight for the homeowner, and then the renter, and who knows what’ll happen when you start asking why there’s a picture of Alice on his wall.”

  “It’s a legitimate question, sir. If he has my wedding invitation, he should be a friend. I have the list of everyone that we sent an invitation to in front of me right now. You know you should run the name by me.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. Jack forced himself to keep his mouth shut.

  “Do I have your word that you won’t contact him?” the sheriff said at last.

  “I won’t reach out to him,” Jack said.

  Morrison muttered something unintelligible, and there was another delay before he said, “Renter’s name is Carson Murray. He lives in Dublin, New Hampshire. Thirty-two. Single. Do you know him?”

  Jack flipped through the wedding invitation list. He had no listing for a Murray and no recollection of a friend named Carson.

  “No. We didn’t send an invitation to anyone of that name. Alice threw a box of unused invitations away in the dumpster behind my apartment. She thinks it’s possible someone went dumpster-diving and grabbed some, but I doubt it.”

  “Maybe he’s a date of s
omeone coming?”

  Or maybe he’s some psycho who hung sketches of women up on his wall and attacked Donald.

  “Either way,” Morrison continued, “the Dublin police are heading to the guy’s house now. I’ll keep you up to date, and you remember your promise.”

  “Thank you, Bob. I will.”

  But as he hung up, Jack was thinking of a different promise, one he was about to make to Alice. She’d wanted them to write their own vows, and they had. Well, mostly she had. Jack had agreed to what Alice had come up with. But he’d changed one part. On their wedding day, he would promise to love, cherish, and protect her “till death do us part.” That’s one promise I’ll never break, Alice.

  Jack sat down at the computer and pulled up everything he could find on Carson Murray. Alice was way better at finding information on the internet, but she’d been slowly teaching him some of her tricks, and within an hour and a half he had a full background report on Murray, including three previous addresses and four past employers.

  Never been married. No arrests, no bankruptcies. He had a profile on several dating sites—the exact same wording on all of them—and it seemed honest enough. No mention of being an artist, just the usual babble about walks on the beach, good food and wine, old movies. Murray also had social media accounts. They had been active at one time, but everything stopped six months ago.

  Jack’s phone buzzed with a text from Alice.

  HUGE FAV. FORGOT PURSE. CAN U PLS BRING 2 PHOTO STUDIO?

  Jack rapped his knuckles against the desk in frustration. The last thing he wanted was to stop what he was doing.

  Groaning as he stood, he stretched and looked at the clock. It was after six o’clock. He’d been going all day and hadn’t eaten anything besides a handful of pistachios. He found Alice’s purse, then grabbed a protein bar and the keys to the Charger. Maybe a break would help him see things a little more clearly—that and a cup of coffee. Besides, he was happy to help Alice. So far, she was doing pretty much everything to make their wedding perfect. The way things were going, all he had to do was show up.