Chapter Twenty-Four

Jamie clutched the book close to her chest as she stared at Marcus. Cookie kept his position close to his friend. The three stood frozen, each taking turns staring at one another. Marcus closed the door behind him and gestured to the two guest chairs opposite his desk. “Why don’t you sit down?”

Cookie and Jamie exchanged a glance, and Jamie’s nod was so small that it was barely detectable. Jamie walked over to claim a chair, and Cookie followed, sitting next to her. Marcus watched them as he moved to his seat.

The three of them all sat quietly, distrust in the air.

Jamie was the first to break the silence. “Why do you have this book?”

He tilted his head, looking more curious than angry about the fact that they had been in his office unattended. “What do you know about it?” Marcus’s eyes moved between hers and the item she kept in her lap.

“I know that I gave it to Kristen a few years ago, so I would like to know why you now have it.”

“How do you know I didn’t just happen to have another copy of it?”

Jamie scoffed at the idea. “This isn’t a very mainstream book. I mean, it was old when I bought it for her at a used bookstore. I doubt it’s even still in print. Kristen was drawn to the title. She just had to have it.” She turned the book over to reveal the small pink bookstore price tag, with a whopping two dollars and forty-nine cents printed on it. “I remember this sticker. I remember when I bought it. Too much of a coincidence.”

Marcus leaned back in his chair, and his hand moved to his face, his fingers covering his lips. Jamie wondered if he was trying to decide whether or not to tell her the truth.

“Kristen gave it to me,” he said simply.

“Why would she do that?” Jamie asked. “You seem like the kind of man who can travel wherever he would like at any time.” She tapped the tome in her lap. “Without a poor girl’s guidebook.”

Cookie leaned forward in his chair, propping his palm on his knee. His posture was casual, his tone anything but. “We’re not here to play games, Mr. Holliday.”

Marcus held his hands in the air, his attention on Jamie. “Kristen didn’t trust many people, and I’m sorry to say, she wasn’t sure she could trust you, which is why she gave it to me.” He pointed at Cookie. “And don’t think I don’t know that you have the other journal. You fit the description security gave me of two suspicious people boarding Chelsea’s Freedom. I know her other journal is gone, and she trusted me to keep that safe too.”

“You aren’t very good at it,” Jamie jabbed. “No offense, but maybe this skill isn’t in your wheelhouse.”

“Well, maybe your trustworthiness isn’t a fair trade for being good at theft.”

Cookie leapt to her defense, his stance moving from sitting to near standing. “You’d damn well better watch your tone here.”

Marcus dug his thumb into his eye socket as if working away the underpinnings of a headache. “I’m not saying these things to hurt you. I’m only relaying what Kristen told me. She was unsure about being able to come to you for help, especially since her father had told her you couldn’t be trusted.”

Jamie inhaled deeply, holding her breath for several seconds before releasing it. A blow to the stomach would have been far kinder than Marcus’s words. It had hurt to read it in Kristen’s own handwriting, and hearing confirmation from Marcus’s lips was akin to rubbing salt in a raw wound.

“Brian told her that?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Marcus nodded. “Yes, and she told me about him, too. What a piece of work. So when you came here looking for information, and you said you were helping him, it just reinforced the idea that you were…”

“Untrustworthy.” Knowing her niece didn’t trust her when she died tightened the knot in her stomach and made it feel as if she were losing Kristen for a second time. It wasn’t often that Jamie had no idea what to do next, but at that moment, she sat, taking in Kristen’s perception of her through Marcus’s account.

Cookie seemed to sense this and took the lead while she worked to get herself back in an investigative state of mind.

“Listen,” Cookie said, “I can tell you that Jamie is one of the most trustworthy and loyal people out there.” Jamie tried to interject, but he continued. “And Brian made sure that Kristen chose him over Jamie because he told her she had to. Jamie tried for years to help Kristen get away from his influence, and Brian knew it. So he made sure to cut her out of Kristen’s life. Parents are good at manipulating their kids, especially in a family battle.”

Marcus leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair. He glanced between Cookie, who held his gaze, and Jamie, whose eyes continued studying the bookcase behind him. She hated to hear Cookie advocate on her behalf, even though she knew Marcus needed to hear it.

Marcus then nodded, his eyes on Jamie. “That makes sense. Like I said, her father seemed to have quite a hold on her.”

Jamie nodded, saying nothing further but directing the conversation back to the pressing matter of the travel guide. “What did she tell you about that book? About the importance of it? Why did she trust you with it?”

Marcus swiveled briefly in his chair, moving it slightly from one side to the other. “Kristen got herself in some trouble, and I was trying to help her get out of it.”

“Trouble with the Deltones?” Jamie asked.

He nodded. “She got mixed up with this guy, and then she started using him for information, which she wrote down.”

“Using a basic code technique I taught her the last time I was still in her good graces.”

He nodded. “She told me that her father had promised a rival family the information and said that she would turn it over to them.”

“The Acuna family?” Jamie asked, not really needing confirmation. No one else came close to claiming significant territory. It was a two-family turf war.

“Bad people, as you well know, I’m sure,” he said. “She was pretty scared, and now she had her father making promises she didn’t want to keep. She knew that she was now compromised with both families, and there would be no way she could prove her loyalty either way. Her father put her in that position, all because some other guy promised him a position within the Acuna family.”

“So, the two books together hold the code to all the notes Kristen had recorded about Deltone daily business?”

“Yes.” He nodded at the book in her lap. “So, now what do we do?”

“I’m going to ask you to trust me with this book,” Jamie replied. “Let me take it and keep both of them somewhere safe.”

“You have no relationship with Brian?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He’s a lying thief and a rotten excuse for a human being. The only reason I agreed to help him was because he was afraid that Kristen was in danger.” She sighed. “He just failed to mention that he was the reason she was in the crosshairs in the first place.”

Marcus considered Jamie’s explanation, sitting quietly with his eyes moving from hers to the book and back again.

Cookie said nothing. He knew when it served the situation best to have Jamie be lead negotiator, and this case in particular called for Jamie to stay in charge.

“I gave Kristen this book, and it’s the only thing I have left of her. Let me take it. Let me figure out how to make some of this right.”

“You won’t hand it over to Brian?”

She shook her head. “I’d run over him with a stampede of Longhorns first.”

He smiled at her comment. “Can I ask where you’re going to keep the books?”

She turned to Cookie and smiled at him; the two shared a knowing look. “Don’t you worry. We have the perfect place.”