Don’t Love, Don’t Lose

And it was comforting to know that she had.

Jasmine changed, gave the cat a treat – a special diet treat – and denuded her face of makeup before getting into bed, hoping that she wouldn’t spend the night thinking of it.

Ruthless Rick. The moniker was stupid, frankly. Nobody in real life should go around calling themselves Ruthless Rick. But it suited him. Nobody could deny that he lived up to it.

He had nearly ruined her life, gleefully.

And now she had the chance to destroy him. She’d just have to abandon values she’d held dear all her life to do that.

And she would have to trust Anthony Malone. How different was he from Ruthless Rick, anyway? She would have to trust somebody she knew nothing about.

Jasmine wasn’t sure she knew how to do that.

Anthony stood on the balcony of his penthouse apartment and looked out. He remembered this view. It had changed a lot from the time he had climbed up the clock tower and looked down, but the spirit of the city was the same. There were always good guys and bad guys, and people who were somewhere in the middle, like him. There were always things happening.

There would be violence, and happiness, and joy and grief down there. He was above it all, but he could feel the pull. The tug was strong.

It was because of Jasmine Turner. He knew that.

Something about her had touched him, and something in her had awoken his protective instincts. He didn’t like that.

He had admired her dedication to her ethics, even if he couldn’t help her stick to it. He had liked how she’d stood up to him. But she would help him. And he needed to know why she had agreed so abruptly. He needed to find out who she was.

But more than that, she had made him feel alone, and that wasn’t sitting well with him.

What was it about her that had drawn him to her so much? It wasn’t just what she could do, even if she was as good as she said she was.

He knew what he had to do. He had to make a call and make sure that she could back up her claims with solid results. He knew whom to call to find that out.

Roger Vickley was one of the few people in the world who Anthony Malone trusted. The trust hadn’t come easy. But sometimes, bonds formed at eighteen were the strongest. They had depended on each other. They had always helped each other, without questions if need be.

Roger was now a very respectable lawyer, but he was also an expert at digging up dirt on people. He’d done it for a long time, to survive. There weren’t many respectable ways to get a college fund going if you had nothing and nobody.

Roger would find out everything in her past for him. Really, if Roger had had the time to spare, he would’ve asked him to find this mole for him. But that would take time, and Roger now had something fulfilling in his life. He had his work.

But this was one thing. Finding out the connection between Richard Sanders and Jasmine Turner was just one thing. That was a reasonable favor to ask, wasn’t it?

Roger would do it. He knew that.

So why was he reluctant to make that call? Why did he feel like he didn’t want to intrude and invade her privacy and her life? She didn’t matter to him. She wouldn’t matter to him.

Deliberately, he turned away from the view and walked back inside. He barely noticed how beautifully and sleekly decorated it was, or the selection of cold cuts and salad on the sideboard. There had been a time when his stomach would’ve rumbled with hunger when he saw it, because he hadn’t had anything to eat except what he could scrounge up from the garbage. Oh, he knew what it was like to be poor and alone in the world. Everything he had, he’d made on his own.

He would not soften now.

He got his phone out and he made the call.

A few miles away, Jasmine made a call, too. She too called the one person she trusted above everything and everyone else. She too called the one person who would always be there for her.

But unlike Anthony, she didn’t make the call out of determination to bury the discomfort that had been brought out in her. She made the call because she knew she could turn to her for comfort, always, and she would never be turned away. She sought warmth, and she let herself be helped.

“Rita?”

Her voice was small and uncertain.

“Jas? What’s wrong?”

“I… Aunt Della.”

“Mom is fine, Jas.”

“No, it’s… The guy she’s working for now. He has an enemy. Aunt Della asked me to help.”

“Is she trying to get you to be a vigilante hacker again?”

“Rita, it’s Ruthless Rick. I have to go after Ruthless Rick.”