Jack of Hearts (Aces & Eights Book 1) by Sandra Owens

Author:Sandra Owens [Owens, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503941380
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2017-02-14T06:00:00+00:00

Alex scowled at his laptop screen, frustrated that he’d come up blank again. No matter what keywords he tried, his mother’s trail had gone cold the moment she’d walked down that dusty road, never to be seen again. Not that he had much to go on other than her married name, and with that he’d found his parents’ marriage certificate with her maiden name on it. Neither of those names showed up anywhere since the day she’d left. Wherever she’d disappeared to, she’d done a damn good job of losing herself.

Giving up for the time being, he turned to searching for information on Madison’s father. Since there weren’t any witnesses to the hit-and-run, there wasn’t much to go on. He scrolled down to the interview a detective had conducted with the newspaper’s editor. According to his editor, that night Parker had worked late on a story that he’d sworn would be front-page news. Unlike other stories that he’d shared with his editor before publication, he’d been secretive about this one. That jived with what Madison had said.

“Interesting,” Alex murmured as he read that the editor had claimed Parker didn’t seem as excited as he would have expected a reporter who was about to break a big story to be.

What would make an investigative reporter both secretive and perhaps not particularly happy about the story he was writing? Only one thing came to mind, and he called Nate. After telling his brother what he’d learned so far, he asked Nate for his take.

“Sounds like the story was personal.”

“Yeah, my thinking, too. What if he was on to the Alonzos? That would definitely be personal, and because of worrying about his wife’s reaction, he might not have been all that happy about the story. It would have been a good reason to be so tight-lipped. Think we could get Rothmire to okay Taylor or Rand doing a follow-up interview with that editor?”

“I’ll call Rothmire in the morning. You feeling any better?”

“Yeah, a bowl of chicken soup from the deli and a couple of cold capsules helped.” He was fighting a head cold, and Nate had kicked him out of Aces & Eights when Alex had sneezed on his big brother one too many times.

After hanging up, he leaned forward and punched up his pillows. He took a drink of the hot tea with lemon, honey, and whiskey he’d made. The soothing liquid eased down his sore throat. Leaning back again, he pulled up some of Parker’s previous work. The man had been good, and his stories were hard-hitting, many of them exposing crooked public officials.

He was halfway through a story on a councilman who’d taken bribes to push through building permits for a developer with a history of cutting corners, when his phone buzzed. Thinking it was Nate calling back, he scrolled his thumb across the screen without looking at it.

“What?” he said.

“Alex?”

At hearing Madison’s voice, he shoved his laptop aside. “Yeah. Hi, Grasshopper.” For the past two weeks, he’d checked his voice mail constantly, hoping for a message from her.

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