Never Go Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

reached for the dark one. She looked
disappointed.
    “I can take the
other,” I said.
    “How about we
share?” she said.
    I nodded. She
grabbed a chair, dragged it around and sat down next to me.
    “Your father’s
going to think we’re a couple,” I said.
    “Nah, he knows
I can’t sit with my back to the front door. He’ll figure you can’t either.”
    Four more
barstools now had occupants. “Looks like the bar does good business.”
    She nodded.
“Those men have been coming here since I was a girl. Four or five nights a week
you’ll find a familiar combination of locals littering the place. Daddy’s
always treated them right, and they do the same for him. And don’t let the
empty tables fool you. It’ll fill up around the time we leave.”
    I tapped my
finger in time with the song playing. An old Coltrane piece. Dark, sultry and
rich.
    “Told you
before I got my love of jazz from him.”
    I smiled, said
nothing. My thoughts had drifted back to Jessie. We used to lay on my bed as
teenagers listening to my father’s jazz collection. He’d get bent out of shape
about it from time to time, but I knew he enjoyed the fact that we shared a
love for the same kind of music.
    “You’re really
going to go, aren’t you?” Sasha said.
    “Probably,” I
said.
    She sighed,
reached for her mug and took a drink. Foam coated her upper lip. She used the
back of her sleeve to wipe it away. “There’s nothing I can say to change your
mind?”
    “Most likely
not.”
    The door to the
kitchen opened. A waitress emerged carrying a small tray. She headed toward our
table. I caught a whiff of the steaks on the grill. The waitress’s perfume
drowned it out. She smiled at Sasha, gave me a look, and dropped a basket of
chips on the table.
    Sasha grabbed
the basket and placed it between us. I slid it away.
    “You don’t like
chips?”
    “They’re fries.
And they have too many carbs.”
    She laughed.
“Americans.”
    I sipped on my
carb-laden beer and said nothing.
    “Marcia is
going to keep insisting that you take over her security.”
    “You know how I
feel about this.”
    “I do, Jack. At
the same time, she had a point. You were the only one who knew. You were smart
enough to call everyone off. If we’d all been in there, it could have been even
worse.”
    “You call that
smart?” I said. “I nearly died. One of her men did die. Another is paralyzed.
Another took a shot to the gut. The only reason the guy in the bathroom didn’t
get hurt is because he’s got a weak bladder. In fact, his need to piss is the
reason the back of my head is stitched up.” I looked away, took a moment to
calm down. “If I’d have had one more person in there, it could have turned out
differently and she wouldn’t be going on and on trying to hire me.”
    Sasha said
nothing. I didn’t need a bunch of lights to know that her cheeks had turned
red.
    “And where’s
she getting this money? Offering me two million for four weeks? Is she crazy?”
    “I’d say the
answer to that lies in the fact that she keeps pushing on despite all these
attempts on her life.”
    “That’s another
thing,” I said. “There must be more to this than I know, because I don’t see why
they are going after her this hard.”
    Sasha’s gaze
drifted away. I followed it. A man stood in front of our table. He had slicked
back white hair. Looked to be in his sixties, still in good shape, too.
    “Yes?” Sasha
said.
    “Not you,” the
old man said. “Him.” He aimed a knobby finger in my direction.
    “What?” I said.
    “You better sir
me,” he said.
    I said nothing.
    His cheeks
turned red. “Stop yelling and start treating the girl with some respect.”
    I looked at
Sasha. “Relative?”
    She shrugged.
    “OK,” I said.
“Now go back to your dinner.”
    The man
wandered off to his table. He sat down facing us. He didn’t take his eyes off
of me after that.
    “Anyway,” Sasha
said. “Look, Jack, I understand if you feel you need to go back.