Hot Rocks

you, to sort it all through. I’m so damn tired right now, I can barely think straight.”
    “All right. Whatever it is, I’m on your side.”
    “I hope so.”
    She walked out without another look, without another word for Max.
     
     
     
    She wasn’t going to break. She’d worked too hard, she’d come too far to break over a good-looking man with a dreamy southern accent. A charmer, Laine thought as she paced around her house.
    She knew better than to fall for a charmer. What was her father but a charming, smooth-talking cheat?
    Typical, she thought in disgust. Typical, typical and so embarrassingly predictable for her to fall for the same type. Max Gannon might do his lying and cheating on the legal side, but it was still lying and cheating.
    Now everything she’d worked for was at risk. If she didn’t come clean with Vince, he’d never really trust her again. Once she came clean . . . how could he trust her again?
    Screwed either way, she thought.
    She could pack up, move on, start over. That’s what Big Jack did when things got rough. So she was damned if she’d do the same. This was her home, her place, her life. She wouldn’t give it up because some nosy PI from the big city tramped over it and left her smudged.
    And heartbroken, she admitted. Under the anger and anxiety, her heart was broken. She’d let herself be herself with him. She’d taken the big risk, and trusted him with herself.
    He’d let her down. The men who mattered most to her always did.
    She flopped down on the couch, which caused Henry to bump his nose against her arm in hopes of a good petting.
    “Not now, Henry. Not now.”
    Something in her tone had him whimpering in what sounded like sympathy before he turned a couple of circles and settled down on the floor beside her.
    Lesson learned, she told herself. From now on the only man in her life was Henry. And it was time to close down the pity party and think .
    She stared up at the ceiling.
    Twenty-eight million in gems? Ridiculous, impossible, even laughable. Big, blustering Jack and sweet, harmless Willy pulling off the big score? Millions? And out of a New York landmark? No possible way. At least not if you went by history and skill and background.
    But if you threw the believable out the window, you were left with the fantastic.
    What if Max was right? What if the fantastic had happened, and he was right? Despite all the years between, she felt a quicksilver thrill at the possibility.
    Diamonds. The sexiest of takes. Millions. The perfect number. It would have been the job of a lifetime. The mother of all jobs. If Jack had . . .
    No, it still didn’t play.
    The affection inside her that wouldn’t die for her father might let her fantasize that he’d finally, finally, hit it big. But nothing and no one would convince her Jack O’Hara had any part in a killing. A liar, a cheat, a thief with a very flexible conscience—okay, those attributes fit him like a glove. But to cause anyone physical harm? Not possible.
    He’d never carried a weapon. The fact was, he was phobic about guns. She still remembered the story of how he’d done his first stretch, before she was born. He’d hit a cat while driving away from a B&E and not only stopped to check, but took the injured cat to a vet. The local cops spotted the car—stolen, of course—in the lot.
    The cat recovered and lived a long, happy life. Big Jack did two to five.
    No, he wouldn’t have had any part in the murder of Jerome Myers.
    But the con could be conned, couldn’t he? Had he gotten roped into something that was bigger and badder than he’d believed? Had someone dangled a shiny carrot and had him hopping along after it?
    That she could believe.
    So he’d sent Willy to tell her something, or give her something, but he’d died before he could do either.
    But he’d tried to warn her. He knows where you are now .
    Had he meant Max? Had he seen Max and panicked, ran into the street?
    Hide the pooch? What the hell had he meant? Could Willy have placed some kind of dog figurine in the store? Laine tried to visualize the store after Willy’s visit. She had personally arranged all the displays, and she couldn’t think of a single thing out of place. And neither Jenny nor Angie had mentioned any strange items.
    Maybe he’d meant “pouch.” Maybe she’d misunderstood. You could put gems in a pouch. But he hadn’t given her a pouch, and if he’d had a bag of gems hidden on him, or in his things, the