Big Jack

“Recognition. Keep going.”

“I think he’s used to getting what he wants. Taking it if it isn’t given. Maybe he’s stolen before. There was probably a safer way to get information, but he chose this way. It’s more exciting to take something that isn’t yours in the dark than to bargain for it in the light.”

“I certainly used to think so.”

“Then you grew up.”

“Well, in my way. There’s a thrill about the dark, Eve. Once you’ve experienced it, it’s difficult to resist.”

“Why did you? Resist.”

“I wanted something else. More.” He took her wine for a sip. “I’d built my way toward it, with the occasional and often recreational side step. Then I wanted you. There’s nothing in the dark I could want as I want you.”

“He doesn’t have anyone. He doesn’t love. He doesn’t want anyone. It’s things he craves. Shiny things that gleam in the dark. They’re shinier, Roarke, because they already have blood on them. And I think, I’m damn sure, some of that blood runs in him. They’re more valuable to him, more important to him, because of the blood.”

She rolled her shoulders. “Yeah, I’ll recognize him. I’ll know him when I see him. But none of this gets me any closer to where he is.”

“Why don’t you get some rest?”

She shook her head. “I want to look at the matches.”

Steven Whittier sipped Earl Grey out of his favorite red mug. He claimed it added to the flavor, a statement that caused his wife, who preferred using the antique Meissen, to act a

The match between them-the builder and the society princess-had initially baffled and flustered her family. Patricia was vintage wine and caviar, and Steve was beer and soy dogs. But she’d dug in her fashionable heels and ignored her family’s dire predictions. Thirty-two years later, everyone had forgotten those predictions except Steve and Pat.

Every year on their a

They’d built a good life, and even his early detractors had been forced to admit Steve Whittier had brains and ambition, and had managed to use both to provide Pat with a lifestyle they could accept.

From childhood he’d known what he wanted to do. To create or re-create buildings. He’d wanted to dig in his roots, as he’d never been able to do as a child, and provide places for others to do the same.

He’d structured Whittier Construction from the ground up, through his own sweat and desire, his mother’s unbending belief in him-then Pat’s. In the thirty-three years since he’d begun with a three-man crew and a mobile office out of his own truck, he’d cemented his foundation and added story after story onto the building of his dream.

Now, though he had managers and foremen and designers on his payroll, he still made it a habit to roll up his sleeves on every job site, to spend his day traveling from one to another or burrowing in to pick up his tools like any laborer.

There was little that made him happier than the ring and the buzz of a building being created, or improved.

His only disappointment was that Whittier had not yet become Whittier and Son. He still had hopes that it would, though Trevor had no interest in or talent for the hands-on of building.

He wanted to believe-needed to believe-that Trevor would settle down soon, would come to see the value of honest work. He worried about the boy.

They hadn’t raised him to be shallow and lazy, or to expect the world handed to him on a platter. Even now, Trevor was required to report to the main offices four days a week, and to put in a day’s work at his desk.

Well, half a day, Steve amended. Somehow, it was never more than half a day.

Not that he got anything done in that amount of time, Steve thought as he blew on his steaming tea. They would have to have another talk about it. The boy was paid a good salary, and a good day’s work was expected. The problem, of course, or part of it, was the trust funds and glittery gifts from his mother’s side of the family. The boy took the easy route no matter how often his parents had struggled to redirect him.

Given too much, too easily, Steve thought as he looked around his cozy den. But some of the fault was his own, Steve admitted. He’d expected too much, pi

Pat was right, he thought. They should back off a bit, give Trevor more room. It might mean taking a clip out of the family strings and setting him loose. It was hard to think of doing so, of pushing Trevor out of the nest and watching him struggle to cross the wire of adulthood without the net they’d always provided. But if the business wasn’t what he wanted for himself, then he should be nudged out of it. He couldn’t continue to simply clock time and draw pay.

Still, he hesitated to do so. Not only out of love, for God knew, he loved his son, but out of fear the boy would simply turn to his maternal grandparents and live, all too happily, off their largess.

Sipping his tea, he studied the room his wife laughingly called Steve’s Cave. He had a desk there as he more often than not preferred to hunker down in that room rather than the big, airy office downtown or his own well-appointed, well-equipped office in the house. He liked the deep colors of this room, and the shelves filled with his boyhood toys-the trucks and machines and tools he’d routinely asked for at birthdays and Christmastime.

He liked his photographs, not only of Pat and Trevor, of his mother, but of himself with his crews, with his buildings, with his trucks and machines and tools he’d worked with as an adult.

And he liked the quiet. When the privacy screens were on, the windows and the doors were shut, it might very well be a cave instead of one of the many rooms in a three-level house.

He glanced up at the ceiling, knowing if he didn’t go up to the bedroom shortly, his wife would roll over in bed, find him gone, then drag herself up to search him out.

He should go up, spare her that. But he poured a second mug of tea and lingered in the soft light and quiet. And nearly dozed off.

The buzzer on his security panel made him jolt. His first reaction was a

He rose out of his wide leather chair, a man of slightly less than average height, with the bare begi

He looked his age, and eschewed any thought of face or body sculpting. He liked to say he’d earned the lines and gray hair honestly. A statement, he knew, that caused his fashionable and youth-conscious son to wince.

He supposed if he’d ever been as handsome as Trevor, he might have been a bit more vain. The boy was a picture, Steve thought. Tall and trim, ta

And he worked at it, Steve thought with a little twinge. The boy spent a fortune on wardrobe, on salons and spas and consultants.

He shook off the thought as he reached the door. It didn’t do any good to poke at the boy over things that didn’t matter. And since Trevor rarely visited, he didn’t want to spoil things.

He opened the door and smiled. “Well, this is a surprise! Come on in.” He gave Trevor’s back three easy pats as Trevor walked past him and into the entrance hall.

“What’re you doing out this time of night?”

Deliberately, Trevor turned his wrist to check the time on the luminous mother-of-pearl face of his wrist unit. “It’s barely eleven.”