The Debt 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

said.
    “Who are you to tell me about my son?”
    “I’m a veteran too,” Jake said.    
    The man’s face looked like crumpled
paper, his features straining.   “You’re nothing compared to him,” he choked.   “Nothing.”
    Jake smiled.   “I would never want to hear you say
anything else, sir.   He’s your boy
and nobody can take that away from you.   And I’m glad you came in here and told me this.”
    The man was shaking still.   “I should fucking punch your lights
out.”
    But Jake held the man’s shoulders, and it
was as if the anger couldn’t stand up to Jake actually being there and being
willing to listen to the man spill his guts.
    And then the angry father was somehow
crying, sobbing, his shoulders shaking, and Jake was soothing him.   “It’s going to be okay,” Jake told
him.   “I promise you.”
    Finally, the man stopped crying.   “I’m just so angry.”  
      “This isn’t for television,” Jake told a
woman at the bar who was trying to surreptitiously record the whole incident on
her cell phone.
    That woman put her phone away, and Raven
couldn’t believe it.   Jake must have
known that if video of this had gotten out, it would have made him look a
million times better.   He’d shown compassion
to that hurting father.   That was
the compassion nobody saw in the video from when Jake was younger.
    “I’m sorry I disturbed your lunch,” the
older man said, taking a napkin Jake handed him.   He blew his nose loudly.
    “No need to apologize.   I don’t accept,” Jake laughed.   “You stood up for your son today, and I
believe he was lucky to have a proud father like you in his corner.”
    The old man gratefully stared at Jake for
a long moment.   “You mean that?”
    “I do,” he said.   “I really do.”
    And then the most amazing thing happened.
The formerly enraged man held out his hand for Jake to shake.   “I think I misjudged you,” he said, his
eyes still leaking.
    “Maybe, maybe not.   You just take care of yourself and
remember that your son is a hero, and nobody—not me, not anyone—can
take that away from him or you.”  
      “Jake, you should have let that woman at
the bar film you,” Raven said softly, after the older man left and Jake sat
back down at the table.    
    “No,” Jake told her.   “Not this time.   He deserves better than to be a
publicity stunt.”
    She saw once again that when it came to
veterans, Jake had a totally different demeanor than he did with anything else.   He’d cared about the man’s son and he’d shown
it.
    The waitress brought over their burgers
shortly after that.
    “This is totally bizarre,” Raven told him,
as she picked up her burger.   “What
are we doing here?”
    Jake licked his fingertips.   “We’re eating a delicious burger in
Times Square.”
    “Yeah, but this is just nuts.   You don’t really think this is going to
work, do you?”
    “It is going to work,” Jake said,
slinging his arm over her shoulders.   “And I thought you believed it too.   You seemed pretty sure of yourself when you pitched the idea to me.”
    She shivered a little bit at his
touch.   His body was pressed close
to hers now, and she could smell his cologne.   Beneath that was the smell of his body,
the scent of his skin that she remembered from the night before.
    “I’m afraid,” she admitted.
    “What are you so afraid of?”
    Raven knew it wasn’t time to tell him the
truth about Kurt.   “I’m afraid of
everything.   I’m nervous about
Skylar, and I’m nervous about what the media’s going to say when the pictures
of us come out everywhere.   I’m
worried about you cancelling your Boston shows.”
    Jake frowned.   “I never told you about cancelling
Boston,” he said.   He looked closely
at her.   “How’d you know about
that?”
    “I read about it,” she said hastily,
hoping he wouldn’t doubt her cover story.
    “Wow, news does travel fast,” Jake replied.