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Adam took a deep breath. “Some sort of law enforcement?” Maybe the police had never stopped looking into her after the scandal at the University. Christ, she’d been innocent then. But she was slightly less innocent now. Please God, let her have been good enough to cover her tracks.
Henry laughed. “No way. No cop. This dude is a private hire. Can’t be sure, but I think he mostly does work for the families.”
If Adam thought he’d been cold before, now his blood felt like solid ice. The families. Sedarno. “Fuck.”
**It only took him a few minutes to silently disengage her locks. Jess’s apartment was pitch black at 3:00 am. While he’d wanted to run screaming straight from Henry’s, he played it smart and waited. He doubted Sedarno was physically surveilling her as well, but if so, he certainly didn’t want to be seen.
He passed the kitchen and saw a doorway on the right—her bedroom. Now he had to figure out how to wake her up without scaring her.
But Jess always managed to surprise him. “I know you’re here,” she said from the bedroom. Her voice was quiet and even in the still apartment. He wondered if it was the intense physical awareness between them that woke her up. His own body was completely rigid and cognizant of every breath she took.
He took a step forward and hovered in her doorway. “Hello, Blondie.”
She climbed out of the bed wearing purple pajama pants and a long-sleeved, gray thermal shirt. Her hair was mussed on one side and there were lines from the blanket on one of her cheeks. Adam had never seen anything as gorgeous in his entire life.
Her voice was cold as she walked by. “Back to Blondie, am I?”
Oh, she was pissed. Pissed enough to not even bother with her poker face. Not that he could blame her. And, since he was about to inform her that her life as she knew it was over, she was going to be more upset before he was done. “We’ve got a big problem,” he started.
“Really?” She laughed. He followed her down the hallway, watched as she grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge and took a long sip. “We have a problem? I wasn’t aware that there was any we, not anymore. I have a problem. In fact, I have multiple problems.” She took another drink. “I’m almost broke because I haven’t had a paycheck in eight months and no one will hire me because of the scandal. I’ve applied to seventy-eight jobs—nothing—I’m a pariah.”
She paused for a moment. Oh God, was she crying? But when she spoke again, her voice was angrier than ever. “Let’s see, what else? Oh right, I used to send a third of my paycheck to my dad. He had a little health scare the other day, had to go to the hospital. Turns out he let his health insurance lapse because he can’t afford it without me.”
Adam wanted to reach for her. God, this mess was so fucked up. She put the Gatorade back in the fridge and glared at him. “The one thing that can solve all my problems is clearing my name so I can work again, so I can help my family again. But then you decided that we were done being partners.”
He exhaled. She wasn’t wrong, but... “You always knew we had different end games, Blondie.”
She glared at him. “Understood. But we were supposed to work together until Knoll had the diamonds. That was our deal.”
He knew he had no business being angry with her, but he felt the flame of temper anyway. “I was trying to protect you.”
“Oh really?” She jabbed him in the shoulder. “You were protecting me by vanishing?”
“Yes!” he shouted down at her, a little shocked at the volume. But God, he was tired of doing the right thing. “Do you think I wanted to stay away from you? Fuck, no.” He raked his eyes over her body, wanted his hands to follow suit. “If I could have, I would have been inside this apartment and inside your body every goddamn night of the past few weeks.”
Her lips formed a perfect “oh” and her gaze roved between his eyes and lips. “Then why—?”
He settled back against the wall of the hallway and crossed his arms over his chest. “It didn’t work, but I was trying to keep you out of trouble, you ungrateful little amateur.” The sting of his words was mitigated by the note of exhaustion in his voice. “If you’re associated with me and something goes wrong...at best, you’ll be linked to a thief, a criminal, for the rest of your life. You could go to jail, Jess.”
The words were only a whisper now and he broke their ey
e contact. “I couldn’t survive being responsible for that happening to someone else I care about.”
After a long pause, Jess lifted her hand to his chin and forced him to meet her eyes again. Now she looked more curious than angry. “Why do you blame yourself for what happened to Tony? It wasn’t your fault, Adam. You know it was Knoll’s.”
His mouth dropped open. How did she keep blindsiding him?
Jess just gave him a ghost of a smile. “I’m nosy, okay? You refused to talk about why you wanted Knoll’s diamonds so badly when it’s completely out of your normal behavior. You didn’t want to talk about Tony either. Ta da—turns out they’re linked. I may have hacked into Tony’s court case.”
Adam sank to the ground, put his head in his hands. “Jesus, Jess, you’ve got to stop doing shit like that. Breaking into law enforcement databases? What the fuck’s gotten into you?”
She lowered herself next to him. “You,” she said, so simply it broke his fucking heart. She shrugged. “I know it’s illegal, but it doesn’t hurt anyone for me to look at old case files. Just like it doesn’t hurt anyone when you rob rich, insured assholes.” He almost smiled; he couldn’t argue with that.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
Well, why not? If he didn’t, who knows what the hell she’d do next? “Knoll was one of Tony’s regular employers,” he said. “For years. Knoll’s old-school Chicago. He likes to portray this whole venerable, honorable businessman deal, but he figured out a long time ago how to walk the line between legitimate business...and other stuff. Tony would be muscle, he’d steal for him, whatever. Tony worked for him on and off for more than a decade. At one point, I think Knoll decided that Tony knew too much about him, so he decided to clean house. He tempted him with a huge job, and...”
“It was a setup,” Jess finished. “He was caught red-handed in the robbery. It wasn’t his primary address, but Knoll owned the property where Tony was caught.” She narrowed her eyes. “But why would you blame yourself?”
