Midnight Vengeance Read Online Free Page B

Jacko. Holding his arm felt good. Really good.
    She looked up at him and smiled and he flinched. Okay. She was relaxed, but clearly he wasn’t. Somehow she made him uneasy. But still, he wasn’t running away screaming, so she tugged him toward the west wall. She knew it was the west wall because it was painted blue with gilt letters in cursive writing on the top—
West Wall.
The east wall was taupe, the north wall salmon and the south wall mint. Gilt letters proclaimed each wall. Suzanne had chosen the frames according to the colors of the walls.
    They walked. Walking with Jacko in a crowded room was a very interesting experience. She’d bumped shoulders with about twenty people before. The room was full of people and everyone was intent on something else—food, drink or someone more interesting than she was. She’d been jostled and stepped on and shouldered aside.
    Instead, now, it was like Moses parting the Red Sea. Everyone somehow made way for Jacko, shifting out of his way as if that were the natural order of things. Those who didn’t instantly move got a glare that—once they saw it—made them scramble. No one jostled her; no one stepped on her toes; no one crowded her.
    “Have you seen the works already?” she asked.
    Jacko had been scrutinizing the crowd as if they were enemy insurgents, carefully and coldly. He looked down at her. “Yes, ma’am. Lauren. I helped hang them.”
    “So which ones do you like?”
    His dark eyes met hers. “All of them. Every single one.”
    She faked a smile. Wrong answer.
    “But the Morgenstern series is amazing,” he said. “And so is the Lachland residence. Never seen anything like it.”
    Okay. Right answer.
    “I’d really like to see up close what she did with the frames.”
    “Sure thing.” He looked down at her and if she didn’t know better she’d say that was a
smile
lurking in his eyes. Jacko smiling? Nah.
    But he walked her to the appropriate wall, people parting for them. Jacko snagged a couple of flutes of champagne off a passing silver tray and held one out to her. It was very deftly done, considering the size of his hands.
    It had amazed her during drawing lessons, too. The number 2 pencil looked like a stalk of straw in his huge hands, yet that hand sketched the most delicate images imaginable. He was an expert on hand-drawn maps, and his own were exquisite.
    They stopped in front of the Morgenstern series. Suzanne had gone all out in the presentation. Over the series was a long acrylic rectangle with
Morgenstern residence—24 hours
laser-etched across the top. The watercolors were framed with a gold passé-partout within an elaborate wrought iron frame holding the entire ensemble together. She’d had the idea of the Morgenstern series as she sat on a park bench across from the façade of the home. It was a Belle Epoque building and by some miracle of light and shadow, each part of the day—sunrise, noon, late afternoon and dusk—highlighted different parts of the façade.
    So she’d done watercolors of the four parts of the day, each a slightly different hue, each shift of the sunlight highlighting different aspects of the ornate façade.
    “Suzanne did a really good job framing them.”
    That earned her an odd look. “The works are yours. Not hers.”
    There was nothing to say to that.
    She sipped the excellent champagne, holding the flute up so it caught the light. The crystal felt good in her hand, catching the light of the overhead chandeliers, so fine it was almost as if the bubbles were caught in air instead of glass.
    She twirled the stem. Her family had had flutes just like this in Boston. Fifty of them. Three lifetimes ago.
    For just a fleeting second sadness descended over her. She’d trained herself,
schooled
herself against it. Thinking of the past not only did her no good, it was actively dangerous. She had to be present, fully in the moment, every second, because danger could come leaping out of the darkness at any time.
    The