Afraid of the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

be there in twenty minutes.”
    He hung up and ran to his car. He was speeding down the ramps from the roof of the garage when his phone rang again. This time, however, the word PRIVATE appeared on the caller-ID display, and the timing brought a much needed sense of calm.
    “Andie?” he said, answering.
    “Hi, babe,” she said.
    Andie Henning was Jack’s fiancée. He’d popped the question at the surprise birthday party she’d thrown for him last month. Andie had accepted on the spot—and disappeared eight days later. When people asked him what it felt like to be engaged, Jack honestly couldn’t tell them. He didn’t know where Andie was, didn’t know when she was coming back, and had no idea when she would call next. She made him promise not to come looking for her, refused to share her new cell number, and wouldn’t tell him who she was living with. He didn’t know what she looked like anymore, though he was certain that the gorgeous long hair that had once splayed across his pillow had changed entirely. Jack didn’t even know her new name.
    Andie was unlike any woman Jack had ever known—and not just because she was an FBI agent who worked undercover. Jack loved that she wasn’t afraid to cave dive in Florida’s aquifers, that in her training at the FBI Academy she’d nailed a perfect score on one of the toughest shooting ranges in the world, that as a teenager she’d been a Junior Olympic mogul skier—something Jack didn’t even know about her until she rolled him out of bed one hot August morning and said, “Let’s go skiing in Argentina.” He loved the green eyes she’d gotten from her Anglo father and the raven-black hair from her Native American mother, a mix that made for such exotic beauty.
    He hated being away from her.
    “When are you coming back?” he asked.
    “You know I can’t answer that,” she said.
    He knew. But on days like today, he couldn’t help but ask. Funny, he’d been divorced for years, perfectly fine with living alone. But Andie’s enthusiastic “yes” had been like the flip of an emotional light switch. The thought of being away from her tonight was almost too painful.
    “I can’t talk long,” she said. “Just wanted to check in, say I love you.”
    “Love you, too.”
    “And Jack?”
    “Yeah?”
    “I’m not at liberty to say much about this, especially over the phone. But . . .”
    He waited, then prodded. “But what?”
    “Do yourself a favor,” she said. “Stay away from the Jamal Wakefield murder case.”
    Jack gripped the phone. It had been one of their express understandings—a solemn pact to ensure a happy marriage between a criminal defense lawyer and an FBI agent. He didn’t tell her how to do her job—whether to take this undercover assignment or that one—and she didn’t tell him what cases to handle. He knew it wasn’t a rule she would have broken lightly.
    “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
    “Good,” she said. “I’ll call again when I can.”
    One more “I love you,” and she hung up.
    Jack tucked the phone away and stopped the car to pay the teller at the exit to the Flipper-flamingo, string-bikini, piña-colada— whatever —garage. He tried to take Andie’s advice in the spirit in which it had been given. It was eating at him so badly, however, that he almost missed his exit for the Dolphin—what else?—Expressway. A cabdriver gave him the horn and the finger as Jack cut across two lanes. His train of thought switched to his grandfather shouting out random letters while trying to break out of the Alzheimer’s bed restraints, but he was also thinking about Andie’s advice. Warning. Whatever it was.
    “Stay away from the Jamal Wakefield murder case.”
    He knew her concern had nothing to do with the fact that the accused was a former Gitmo detainee, or that the victim was a sixteen-year-old girl. It wasn’t even the fact that the attempted murder charge involved the blinding of a cop named Vincent Paulo. It