Dr. Gant's office at the university was the second door down a well-lighted hallway in St. Joseph's Administration Building. Jack lingered at the entrance and examined the small, crowded office.
The woman bent over a file drawer, her light gray sweater riding up from the waist of a black skirt to expose a strip of smooth flesh. From an ancient boom box resting on a corner file cabinet, James Brown crooned about not wanting to be alone tonight. The view and the music jarred some ancient, buried memory that Jack briskly put aside as he rapped on the open door.
He recognized her the second she turned to face him. A giant fist squeezed his heart, his throat spasmed and choked off air, and the soul he'd been sure he no longer had shriveled with momentary shock. He saw at once the gangly girl inside the self-possessed woman who turned to greet him, and another long-suppressed image slammed him with gale force. The young girl who'd whispered his name in the night. Bundled in layers of clothing that she removed one item at a time, all sad innocence and sure purpose. The soft pleading in her voice when she begged him to…
Shit.
For an endless moment, his feet riveted to the spot. A sickening fear smacked him in the gut. Fear that every dirty misstep of his life dangled in plain view – hung out like so much soiled laundry – and barred any hope of salvation.
Not that he'd believed in heaven or redemption for a long time. But still…
"Oh my God," Olivia said, her pretty face a mask of stunned confusion.
Not pretty, he thought, but striking, interesting. High cheekbones and clearly defined brows. Green eyes set far apart, wide and large in a smooth face. Dark hair now wound tightly in a knot at the back of her head, but which he remembered tangling riotously around slender shoulders. A small woman, with fragile bones covering a steely determination.
Time resumed as Olivia sank into the worn office chair behind a utilitarian desk and regarded him with a wide-eyed expression. "Jackie Holt."
Astonishment, bewilderment, and another indefinable emotion crossed her face until she shut it down. Shut it down hard, he could see by the set of her jaw and the flash of those brilliant eyes sharp as cut glass. Impossible that the full, soft lips he remembered now thinned to taut rubber bands, stretched so tight they threatened to snap back viciously.
"Jackson Holt," she repeated.
Under the visual indictment, he remembered with regret the throb of his youthful desire. But God, she'd been so desirable. So sure as she'd insinuated herself into his life in a way neither of them realized would change him forever.
Anger flashed across her face before she narrowed her eyes and shut that down too. "What do you want?"
As the facts clicked into place, Jack berated himself for being the worst kind of idiot. He wondered if his subconscious had deliberately tricked him. But he hadn't known an Olivia Gant. Only Livvie Morse, at a time when the sun rose and set in a fourteen-year old, too-skinny girl with doe eyes and a haunted look.
Had the organization discovered Professor Gant was the same girl from Jack's childhood? Impossible to think the Judge wouldn't check every small detail. No coincidence then that they ended up here together. But why?
He looked around the room, at the desk, the bookshelves, the order surrounding Olivia. If he had any decency left, he'd march out the door and leave her to her neat, organized life. But Invictus training was too deep. He told himself he could use their former friendship, use her for the mission. After all, that was probably what Warren intended all along.
Yeah, the Judge knew exactly what he was doing when he sent Jack to California.
Olivia seemed to recover, stood, and braced her knuckles on the desk top. "Answer me. Say something." Her voice was ice even as it rose several decibels. "Why are you here?"
She stumbled over the last question, but he suspected the urge to shred him to pieces lay just beneath the cold, composed surface of her perfect face. He tried to look unaffected, despised himself for thinking that if she'd forgiven him, his task would be easier.
"I came to see you," he said simply after staring at her another long moment. He sat down and laid his Invictus badge on the desk.
Her brilliant eyes widened, and for a moment she looked confused. "Invictus? You're with the government?" Her eyes cooled even further.
"I've risen in the world," he joked with a wry twist of his mouth. "I have friends in high places."
"Oh, those friends." She drew the words out, giving them a lethal edge as understanding dawned on her.
Jack shrugged. "See, you already know why I've come."
She'd refused the Invictus offer twice, he remembered. He should move on to a backup name on the Judge's list and leave her the hell alone. But now that he'd seen her, he couldn't and realized he didn't want to.
"Knowing you, I'm surprised you rejected Myron Higgins' offer," he said.
"You don't know me at all," she snapped, her eyes level and unreadable as she sat down heavily.
He shrugged again, conceding. "Maybe not."
"And really, Jack," she continued sarcastically. "You don't see why I'd like to avoid living other people's nightmares?"
"Livvie…" he murmured, and Olivia heard the chagrin his voice.
Collapsed in her chair, she felt light-headed and disoriented, but deliberately forced out the helpless feeling and sat up straighter. She searched the face she barely recognized. Took in the height he'd grown into, the weight he'd gained, most of all the darkness that surrounded him.
She'd thought he was dead, had mourned for him.
His rugged face had lost the gentleness of boyhood, the soft mouth and kind face that he'd once had. Now the harsh facial lines spoke of experience and pain, and the faint lift of his lips failed to soften the calculated look in his eyes. Maybe he was dead, after all.
She cleared her throat, afraid to trust her voice as suspicion wormed its way into her mind. Avoiding his dark, penetrating eyes, she stood and stepped to the window overlooking the grassy campus quad. "Jackson Holt, a government agent." She hated that his name on her tongue was still a warm satisfaction. "You bastard."
When she turned from the window to face him, the prickle of unease at the back of her neck increased and a warning chill slipped down her spine to meet the squiggle of distrust.
"How did you find me?" She infused her words with sarcasm. "I take it you didn't stumble on me in the yellow pages."
"Were you hiding?" His large body shifted in the plastic molded chair as he flashed that slow smile she remembered.
She crossed her arms and leaned against the window sill, dug her fingers into her palms because she wanted to rake them across his face. He acted as if she were a casual acquaintance he'd run across by accident. As if they hadn't once meant everything to each other.
She reminded herself they'd been little more than children. What had they known of love and loyalty? By sheer will she forced a casual tone into her voice. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing how much his unexpected visit upset her.
"There's no way I can help you or your organization." She stared into those hard obsidian eyes as she returned to her seat and folded her hands on top of the desk.
"Even if I fill in the last seventeen years?" he bargained.
She wanted to snort, but since she'd never snorted in her life, she remarked, "What would be the point?"
"Right." He contemplated the tip of a polished shoe crossed over one long leg. "Well, I'll have at it then."
She lifted her brows and remained silent, an action she'd found very effective in quelling students.
"I've just come from Maryland," Jack recited. "Sent by the Invictus Director. It's critical that you lend your expertise in a government matter." He spoke the words with such little emotion that they acted like a wet slap in the face.
She frowned, concentrating to remember the letters she'd gotten and dismissed so easily. "That Higgins fellow," she said flatly, "sent you all the way across the country to recruit me. To use me." She laughed without humor. "What a waste of your valuable time, Jack."
"Livvie – "
Olivia held up her hand like a traffic cop, barely controlling her fury. "Don't call me that name. Don't." She swallowed hard, feeling the sick rush of warm water fill her mouth and hoped she wouldn't throw up. She took several deep, cleansing breaths. "You're the one person who knows I have enough fodder for bad dreams."
"Roger," he said quietly.
She nodded imperceptibly. She'd concede that much, but she wasn't going to let him use that careless charm to worm his way back into her life. She felt her cheeks color. She wasn't going to let him love her and abandon her again.
Jack leaned across the desk. "Roger was a monster and he deserved the worst kind of punishment." He paused, looked down at his hands. "And I'm sorry for… what happened."
But it was Jack's betrayal that hung between them, not Roger's fumbled attempts to molest her. She let him see the accusation in her eyes. The distrust, the rancor, the long-simmering desire to retaliate.
He shoved out of the chair and examined her massive rows of books lining the right wall, his back angled toward her. "But that doesn't mean that the man we're chasing should get off. He's a monster too, and we need the kind of help only you can give us."
"You think I owe you?" Her voice sharpened with disbelief.
He erupted in a quick shot of anger. "Hell, no, Olivia. You don't owe me a thing. I'm the one that left."
She smiled grimly. "That's right. You did." She walked to the door and held it open in dismissal. "But that's ancient history that I have no intention of revisiting."
Olivia stood by the door long minutes after Jack had left, feeling as if she'd fallen down a rabbit hole and everything that appeared one way, wasn't what it looked like. She felt relieved, she told herself, as if she'd escaped a seismic tidal wave.
Gathering materials for her next class, she couldn't stop thinking of that long-ago summer she'd turned fourteen.
Her mother never kept track of her so Olivia escaped the house as often as possible, particularly when Roger began drinking. Jack and she and Ben were always together. Like three peas in a pod, her mother had claimed derisively. The guys had taught her how to pitch quarters against the school's brick wall, shoot marbles with a steelie, and hit cans at fifty paces with a.22 rifle. Self-defense, too, because Jack knew how much she needed protection from the monster.
She smiled sadly at the distant memory and glanced at her watch. Scooping up her lecture notes, she stuffed them into her briefcase and hurried out the door. She almost bumped into Ted Burrows, reminding her uneasily of his unsolicited call this morning.
Not yet used to the settling noises of the old house and the outside whispers of street sounds that permeated the thick old walls, she'd slept badly and awakened as the first rays of weak fall light sifted through the long, narrow windows of the second story bedroom. She'd just programmed the coffee maker when the kitchen land line rang. She couldn't think of anyone she'd given her new number to and stared stupidly at the phone for several moments before picking up the receiver. "Hello?"
"This is Ted, Ted Burrows, in your post-grad seminar for teaching assistants."
How had Ted gotten her private number?
"Yes, Mr. Burrows. I know who you are. How did you get this number?" Charmed some university secretary, no doubt.
"Oh, yeah, sorry." He'd flung out the words sheepishly.
Her bull-shit detector had been honed with years of teaching and the meter jumped into the red zone, but she'd sighed into the receiver. "What do you want, Ted?"
She remembered how he'd stumbled over the words. "Well, uh, I talked to Dr. Randolph last night and he was pretty hot about being my doctoral advisor and me teaching one or two of his courses."
"Good," she'd said. "I'll talk to you later." She'd hung up before he could respond, thinking that was one more thing on her to-do list – get an unlisted phone number. Ted was a little twerp, going around her like that, but what did it matter? She'd already decided to assign him to Randolph.
Little harm done, she thought now, eyeing his classic good looks.
Ted grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. "Sorry, Oliv – uh, Dr. Gant."
"My fault, Ted. I'm late for class. Were you coming to see Dr. Randolph?" She glanced toward Howard's desk which occupied the prime spot by the window.
Ted waved the paper in his hand. "I just finished my doctoral proposal for Randolph."
"Already? Well, leave it on his desk, why don't you? He's not in today."
A furrow creased the high forehead where a lock of chestnut hair fell artfully. "Darn, he was in a hurry to get the proposal today," he complained. "I stayed up all night working on it."
Olivia smiled. "That's the life of a college professor," she said, tossing the words over her shoulder.
Ted watched the slender legs and firm ass of Olivia Gant as she rushed out the door and headed down the corridor. As she turned the corner, he admired the light bounce of her breasts under the sweater. Wouldn't he enjoy getting a piece of that?
Entering Randolph's office, he jammed the paper into the professor's in box. Damn! He shouldn't have bothered working all night. Now the old fart wouldn't get his proposal until at least tomorrow. Fucking waste of time. He could've taken the brunette up on her invitation last night. The girl lived in the apartment over him and wore tight belly-baring skirts and low-necked tank tops.
He'd just have to make up for it tonight. The pretty blonde in Randy's Monday-Wednesday Medieval History class would do nicely. She sat on the front row and crossed and uncrossed her legs, flashing quite a view. He wondered if she knew what she was doing, but quickly amended the thought. Of course the little bitch knew. She liked playing with fire, liked seeing how close she could get without burning.
They all liked to play that game.