Total Immunity Read Online Free PDF Page B

remembering the days when he had snuggled with his son. There were no happier moments.
    â€œCome on, Dad. I’m not a kid anymore.”
    â€œI know,” Jack said, looking at his perfect skin, his bright brown eyes. “You okay?”
    â€œYeah, I’m fine,” Kevin said. “Just fine. Dad, look, I gotta get back to sleep.”
    â€œRight,” Jack said. The coldness in his son’s voice was like a knife through his chest. He patted him on the arm and then slid out of the room as Kevin turned over and went back to sleep.
    As he walked softly in the hallway, he had a thought . . . that if Steinbach really wanted to get him he might come after Kevin. The thought was so grave — so unsettling — that he couldn’t bear it.
    What the fuck was wrong with him? Late-night jitters, that was all. Fucking Steinbach wasn’t going to come after anybody. He was in the can and would be for a long time. All the bad guys made those kinds of threats, but Jack had never known even one of them to carry them out.
    Nah, he was just tired, a little drunk . . . stressed.
    Still, who was the bearded man, and how come he’d followed Jack on the freeway? Or was that, too, just coincidence?
    He opened the bedroom door and saw Julie sleeping in the barred moonlight.
    She was young, beautiful. In bed they were so right for one another. But they hadn’t known each other all that long. Eight months. They’d met online: Match.com . . . Oscar had talked him into joining. Jesus, he’d had some weird dates at first. A woman who had an amazing picture in a bikini, but who, when she showed up, was twenty-five years older, and so drunk Jack was tempted to arrest her for DUI. Instead, he had one drink with her, drove her home himself, then took a thirty-dollar cab ride back to his car. Another woman, who looked fine, but had Tourette’s syndrome, and cursed him under her breath as they had lattes at Starbucks. Then there was the woman who had said she was “curvy” in her online profile and weighed in at about three-ten. She had a wild, cackling laugh, and talked all about “changing her meds,” the mere thought of which made her want to eat an entire pizza at lunch.
    Jack was about to give up the whole thing when he met Julie Wade. A teacher, beautiful, kind, and in touch with both him and his son . . . she seemed too good to be true.
    They had clicked from the first night . . . though they didn’t sleep together until the fourth date.
    Now, eight months later, Julie slept at Jack’s a couple of nights a week . . . using the excuse that she had to get to work early in the morning and her own apartment was closer to her school, The Willows, in Culver City.
    But Jack knew that wasn’t the whole story. Julie said her last boyfriend, a Marine who’d come back from Iraq, had burned her and gone nuts with stress syndrome. She was gun-shy, something Jack understood only too well. He didn’t want to get caught up with another wrong choice, either. His divorce was tough on him, but really murder on Kevin, who still couldn’t understand why his mother, Linda, had left him and moved back East to Baltimore. Jack didn’t want to tell him that his mother had turned out to be an alcoholic, failed actress, the kind of beautiful girl who gets off the bus in Hollywood filled with hopes and dreams of stardom, only to end up working as an assistant to a guy who makes low-budget thrillers for a while, until the day he gives that up, and starts doing porno movies down in the San Fernando Valley. Linda hadn’t made that trek, the last stop for a flunked-out actress . . . but couldn’t find any legitimate work, and soon lost her agent.
    When Jack met her, she was waitressing at Dantana’s. They had a whirlwind love affair. She was still beautiful and fun, and at the restaurant she was a star. Jack wanted her more than anyone he’d ever met . . . and when