“Sometimes.”

  “You don’t need to be,” said Jennifer. “They make you look like, um, a badass,” she had to say the last word quickly, to get it out at all. She must have been beet red.

  Her hands moved up to cup his cheeks and she dipped in to kiss him again. He settled his hands on the small of her back, and her bare spread around his hips, inching up the hem of her shirt.

  A flash of light hit her eye. The sun caught her ring, and it was like her left hand dipped in boiling water. She yelped and jumped up, clutching it to her chest. The itch exploded into phantom pain, throbbing. She fell to the side and bounced on the bed, and curled up in a ball. Jacob sat up Cold fear flooded into her. It was like he was standing behind her, watching. Her husband. She was a married woman in bed with another man, still wearing her wedding band.

  He’s dead, she told herself, he wouldn’t want me to-

  Very convenient, her inner voice said back, and it sounded a lot like her mother.

  Jacob reached for her but she batted his hands away.

  “Not now, please. Just give me a minute.”

  He sighed and sank back into the bed, staring at the ceiling. Jennifer hugged her knees to her chest and rested her face on her arms, and choked back tears.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  She could feel his hand before it rested on her back, hovering above her skin, asking for permission. He rubbed her back, gentle, comforting. She managed to sit up and take a deep breath and stretch her legs out, and finally lie back down. Her ring refused to budge.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to get this thing off,” she whispered.

  “Stop.”

  He took her hand, gently, and laced his fingers through hers, and looked into her eyes with his big green ones.

  “You don’t have to leave Franklin behind for me,” he said. “I know you can’t just turn it off. I just hope you can make room for me.”

  “I want to,” she said, blinking back the sting of tears. “I want to so bad. I can’t control it. I told you, I just want to be a normal person. I want to…” she trailed off. “Um. I want to, ah, you know.”

  “You want to you know,” he said.

  Jennifer snorted. “Oh my God. I sound like I’m twelve.”

  He sighed. “I can’t believe you just blurted it out like that.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “So, um,” he said.

  She rolled over and let out a long sigh. “I can’t. I’m not ready. I’m going to be ready, I promise. Just give me time.”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  “Aren’t you a perfect gentleman. Now go to sleep. And stop moving.”

  12.

  Jennifer woke up to the soft sound of Jacob breathing. He hadn’t moved, or at least he hadn’t moved much. His bandages were all in place. As soon as Jennifer sat up his eyes opened and he put his hand on her back. She pulled her knees up and leaned on them, and sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” said Jacob.

  “I don’t know.”

  Her hands trembled when she looked at them.

  “It’s like everything yesterday was a dream. I’m supposed to be feeling something, but I’m not. I might have killed someone.”

  “Someone who was trying to kill you,” Jacob said, quickly. “You defended yourself.”

  “I couldn’t do it. I had to shoot the tire out.”

  “That was a hell of a shot to make. I told you, you’re good.”

  She choked. “I don’t want to be good at hurting people.”

  “Is that all we did?”

  Jennifer folded her legs under herself and wrapped the blanket around her body. She thought of those girls lying downstairs, and the way she found them in that trailer. She shook her head.

  “No. I think we did the right thing. I want to think that.”

  Sighing, she looked over at the window. Sunlight still poured in.

  Still?

  “What time is it?” said Jacob.

  Jennifer slipped out of the bed and tugged her shirt down to cover herself as she walked over to the table and picked up her phone. The air on her legs made her toes curl and her cheeks heated.

  “Uh, it’s tomorrow. It’s Friday already. We must have slept all night.”

  Jacob sat up. Jennifer almost threw the phone down and rushed over, trying to push him back down.

  “I have work to do.”

  “No, you don’t. Lay down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Jacob,” Jennifer said, and planted her fists on her hips. “You’re not supposed to be moving.”

  “I’ll be fine. Help me with the sling. I’ll go back to bed, I just want to stretch my legs. Please.”

  Sighing deeply, Jennifer helped tuck his left arm into a sling and took a look at the bandage on his shoulder. It was good enough, she supposed. He leaned on her as he stood up and she grunted from the weight. When he stood up he steadied himself took a few steps, stopped, and breathed deeply.

  “See? I’m fine.”

  Jennifer folded her arms and scowled, but walked behind him out of the bedroom.

  The house had an odd air to it, like Christmas morning. It was early, before seven o’clock yet. Jacob moved to the room he’d dedicated to his sister’s things and cracked the door, and blinked a few times. Jennifer peered over his shoulder, standing on her tip-toes to see over.

  Three of the girls were curled up together in his sister’s bed, dead asleep. More lay on sleeping pads in the office, and the rest were on cots in the living room. Ana was asleep on the couch, sitting up, Faisal on the other side, leaning over the arm and drooling in his sleep.

  “Back to bed,” Jennifer ordered, softly.

  “If you insist.”

  When she woke up he was already awake and propped up on a pile of pillows, sipping coffee from a cup with a computer in his lap.

  “Where’d you get a laptop?”

  “Rich,” Jacob shrugged, and winced.

  Jennifer sat up and scooted back to sit next to him.

  “Rolling gun battle in Port Carol,” she read from the screen. “Police suspect motorcycle club rivalry is to blame.”

  “We’re in a motorcycle club now,” said Jacob.

  Jennifer snorted. “Right.”

  “We have to watch our backs. If I heard right, there’s a quarter million dollar bounty on our heads.”

  “What do we do?”

  He turned the computer to face her.

  “Senator Katzenberg is holding a major fundraiser next week. Fifty thousand a plate. Rumors are that he’s going to make a major announcement.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like running for a higher office,” said Jacob. “I think he’s going to run for President.”

  Jennifer drew back, eyes wide. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not. I keep tabs, and he’s been making a lot of contacts. He put out a book last year. It sounds like he’s going to announce an exploratory committee. That’s the next step. It explains why he put in a personal appearance here for the kid’s funeral and why things have been so quiet. Can’t afford to have all these problems at home blow up while he’s in the media limelight.”

  “Wow,” said Jennifer.

  “It’s good for us. He’ll keep the Leviathans off our backs. The last thing he’ll want is a motorcycle gang raising hell in his home town. That doesn’t mean we can be off our guard. One slip up and we’re in trouble. It’s already happened once.”

  “You had no way of knowing that Ellison would pull that at the funeral.”

  “No, but I should have been ready. I have a legal team on retainer. I’m moving them here, so the police will think twice before doing something official or semi-official, in front of a crowd of people, like that. If they come after us one on one…” he shrugged.

  “I’m not letting you do anything crazy until you’re healed up.”

  Jacob sighed and rolled his eyes.

  “I can’t sit around here forever. There’s too much to do. We need to get into that lawyer’s office and see what we can find linking the Katzenberg interests together. We need intel on this fracking operation and Cerulean shipping company. We need to go shopping.”

  “Shopping? What for?”

  “You. You don’t have anything to wear to a fifty thousand dollar per plate fundraiser. That comes later. First I want to see about getting those girls in treatment and get as many as we can back to their families.”

  “What about the ones that don’t have anywhere to go?”

  “I’ll figure something out. Help me down to the basement.”

  Jennifer crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. “You are not going to try to exercise in that condition.”

  “No, but you are. Let’s go.”

  Jennifer groaned, but did not argue. When stood up she regretted. Her everything hurt. Gingerly, Jacob brushed her hair aside and closed his finger around the back of her neck. She went stone still, heart speeding up, but let out a slow breath and relaxed as he worked his fingers into the muscle, pressing out the tension. She stood there for a minute, feeling a little queasy as the panic tried to surge back, confused when it didn’t. He ran his hand down her back and pulled away.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes.”

  To prove it, she turned around and helped him up, dipping under his arm. He grunted as he stood and his leg shook for a moment as he found his footing. Jennifer turned and put her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest, and his breath tickled her scalp. He was very big, much taller than she was. She liked that. He put his good arm around her waist.

  “You’re not wearing pants.”

  “Oh. Right. Give me a moment to change.”

  “Meet you downstairs. Faisal will help me.”

  She nodded, and after he left she changed into sweats, and jogged down the stairs. The girls were waking up. Faisal and his sister raced around the house, doing a dozen tasks at the same time. There were fewer girls now- some needed trips to the hospital. The others were awake, sitting around eating bowls of cereal and plates of eggs. The sisters were in the corner, huddled up against each other against the walls. Kirsten waved weakly at Jennifer.

  Ana was in the kitchen.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We are converting one of the safehouses into a crude clinic,” said Ana. “We had to move some of the girls. Their withdrawal symptoms will be too severe.”

  “Move them where?”

  “To a hospital.”

  “Will they be safe there?”

  “Yes,” said Faisal, ascending from the basement. “Mister Kane owns it.”

  Jennifer just looked at him.

  “He has a lot of money,” said Faisal.

  Jennifer shook her head softly to himself and walked down the stairs, pulling the big door shut behind her. Jacob was at his computer, hunched over they keyboard, grimacing as he hunted-and-pecked with one finger.

  “Can’t type one-handed,” he muttered. “Stretch.”

  She nodded, moved to the mats, and started her stretching routine. Jacob was engrossed in what he was doing, so she did some exercises of her own until he noticed her. As she rolled through a cartwheel, she spotted him staring at her, open-mouthed.

  “It all comes back with practice,” she panted. “Like riding a bike. You need to get me some rings.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  Under Jacob’s direction, she ran through a new set of exercises, similar but different from before, and came out the other side just as winded and achy, and that was before he had her practice punches and kicks and pummel the speed bag with her fists. The protein shake gloop was no more pleasant than before, but oddly satisfying. She was drenched in sweat when she finished, her chest heaving as she sat down next to him at the computer, picked up the practice handcuffs, and started working on the lock.

  “I’ve been working on this Cerulean company,” he said. “They’re definitely connected to the Katzenberg operation. There’s something big here that I’m not seeing. I want to run an op. Find one of these trucks. We put a tracking device on it and see where it goes.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Yeah. They’re used by the FBI and DEA to track vehicles with the global positioning system. Very sophisticated and expensive.”

  Jennifer popped the cuffs open. “Won’t somebody notice? I mean, don’t they track who buys tracking devices and super armor and stuff?”

  “Yes,” said Jacob, smirking as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I can play the shell company game, too. Somebody might notice if I ordered one, so I order ten thousand and sell them to police departments. A few of them go missing. Guess the box fell off the truck.”

  He jerked back, a grin spreading on his face.

  “It’s coming today.”

  “What is?”

  “I’ll show you. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  Faisal opened the basement door and stood at the top of the stairs.

  “Sir, there are two men here to see you. The vice principal from the school and the policeman.”

  Jennifer and Jacob looked at each other. Jacob got up and hobbled up the stairs. Jennifer couldn’t fit next to him on the staircase so she walked up behind, hands on his back as if she could actually stop him from falling. When they stepped out on the front porch, the two men stared at them. Jennifer pulled the door shut as Brock Edwards, the school resource officer, tried to peer through the opening and frowned. Howard was dressed casually rather than his usual brown business suit, and Brock was in a t-shirt and jeans. He looked like someone’s favorite uncle, except for the bulky revolver on his hip and the badge clipped to his belt.

  “Where the hell have you been?” said Howard. “Everybody has been going crazy looking for you two.”

  “The locals,” said Brock, the words dripping with disdain, “said they questioned you for an hour and released you, no charges filed. You haven’t been answering your phone, Jennifer.”

  “Um,” said Jennifer.

  Edwards was already looking at Jacob. “What the hell happened to you? Don’t tell me you fell down the stairs.”

  “Cut myself shaving,” said Jacob.

  “Right,” Howard sighed. “Jenn, I don’t want you getting hurt, but that’s not why we’re here.”

  “What’s going on?” said Jennifer.

  Howard scuffed his shoe and looked down at the stained wood.

  “Everything, pretty much. First off, you two are suspended from work.”

  Jennifer’s stomach dropped. “What?”

  “You were arrested in connection with a murder, and you’re cohabiting. That’s enough for Elliot to put pressure on the board to bring you under contractual review. You’re not tenured, Kane. Your chances are pretty bad.”

  “Cohabiting?” said Jacob. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Our contract hasn’t been substantially updated since ’76,” said Howard. “The union got their cost of living adjustments to the pay scale, so there was never a serious threat of strike. So the contract was never rewritten. There’s some pretty old language in there, including a moral turpitude clause. Our teachers can’t been seen drinking in public, engaging in behavior that, and I quote, ‘casts a negative light on the profession of education’ or constitutes moral turpitude. One of the clauses specifically mentions female teachers living with a man that is not her husband.”

  Jennifer’s jaw dropped, but no sound came out.

  “Bullshit,” Edwards muttered.

  “It gets worse,” said Howard. “They’re putting the entire school under review. They’re going to hang the drug incident around our necks. I talked to Bruce, over at the school board, and he says they’re talking about closing classes for a month to reorganize and merge the high schools right away. Everyone at No. 2 would be fired. Including us.”

  “Everybody?” Jennifer croaked.

  “Yes. Everybody.”

  “I’m going to put you in touch with my legal team,” said Jacob. “My assistant will call you later with the details.”

  “Thanks,” Howard shrugged. “Fat lot of good it’s going to do. The board are all James and Adam Katzenberg’s toadies. There isn’t anybody in the politics of this town that ain’t in bed with them.”

  Jacob scratched his chin.

  “We’ll be in touch,” said Jennifer. “I need to get him back in bed.”

  Howard’s eyebrow raised.

  Jennifer felt a strange urge to stick her tongue out at him.

  “Wait,” said Jennifer, as Howard turned. “How are Krystal’s parents?”

  “Leaving,” said Howard. “They put the house up for sale. Or they’re going to, anyway. I talked to the mother yesterday. She said some charity group showed up at their house and offered to cover their moving and housing expenses, pay off all their loans and cover the girl’s funeral. She didn’t have life insurance.”

  “Why would she?” said Jennifer.

  Howard looked at the floor. “This is some shit, Jenn. I’ll be waiting for that call, Kane.”

  “It’s not over,” said Jacob. “They’re not closing my school.”

  “Your school?” Howard laughed.

  He walked back to his old Ford, got in, and rolled off down the hill. Edwards remained on the porch, arms folded over his broad chest.

  “Newspaper says a rival motorcycle club raided the Leviathans.”

  “Yeah,” said Jacob. “Shame about that.”

  “Put a bunch of their guys in the hospital. One lucky he wasn’t killed. Somebody shot his tire, knocked his bike right out from under him. Broken leg, broken arm, chipped pelvis, pretty bad road rash. He makes it, he’ll be messed up.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Jacob.

  “The hell it is. I’ve been making phone calls about that fucking place for years. Half those girls are underage. Everybody knows it, nobody cares. The higher ups tell me it’s an ongoing investigation.” He looked around the porch and shrugged, pulling his belt up at the same time. The badge dragged on his waistline like a lead weight.

  “Once upon a time me and a couple other guys thought about raiding that place on our own,” he said. “When my father was on the PFPD that’s what they’d have done. They’d never have run a thing like that in the first place. You know what? We were too old. Couple of my buddies joined the FBI. Couple other are retired. One died in the line of duty- in a car wreck. Drunk in an old Trans-Am sandwiched him against the side of a semi-trailer he pulled over to check the driver’s logbook. I remember when I used to feel like I was part of a community and I knew people I could trust who would do the right thing. Now I don’t know who the hell I can trust. It’s getting dark around here. My family lived here since the coal days, but now I walk down the street and feel like a stranger.”