And he understood her need to put that out there. Having lost a parent himself, he knew how important it was to protect their memory. “His daughter obviously takes after him.”
The tension drained out of her, and she softened against him. “You know”—she sighed—“I’d like to think so. I try hard to live my life in a way that would make him proud.”
“Samantha.” He loved the feel of her pressed along his side, loved her, wished there was a way he could make her love him too. “I’m sure if your father were here right now, he’d tell you he couldn’t be prouder.”
“If my father were here right now, he’d probably grab my ear, haul me up, and tell me to get my clothes on.” She laughed. That was the thing about Samantha. Her sense of humor was never far from the surface.
“True,” Ozzie admitted. “I’ve never been introduced to anyone’s father, but if I ever was, I’d like to think I wouldn’t have my wedding tackle hanging out.”
Her tone turned theatrically seductive, like she was auditioning to be the femme fatale of a really bad film noir. “But it’s such nice wedding tackle.”
“Right back atcha, sweetheart.”
“Aw, look at us, a mutual appreciation society of two.”
“Two hearts are better than one,” he told her. “At least that’s what the Boss says.”
“Boss said that?” There was a heavy dose of skepticism in her voice. “He doesn’t strike me as the sentimental sort.”
“Not Boss as in Frank Knight.” He laughed, trying to imagine the curmudgeonly dude who ran Black Knights Inc. spouting anything other than mission parameters or weapons specifications. “The Boss. Springsteen, baby.”
“Oh right,” she said, then fell silent for a while. Her fingers continued to toy with the tattoo over his heart. And he knew she was working herself back up to continue her tale. He waited patiently. Something this important, this painful couldn’t be rushed. Finally, she said, “So my father had been nuts about cars his whole life. Worked most of it as a mechanic at a dealership. It was steady pay, enough to keep us decidedly lower middle class. But it had always been his dream to open his own repair shop. By the time I was a freshman in high school, he’d socked away enough to do just that. Man, I can still remember the look on his face the first morning he opened for business. It was like…” She stopped and searched for the right word. “Incandescence,” she finally said.
A puzzle piece fell into place. “The Mustang… It was your father’s.”
She nodded. Her cheek was warm and wonderful as it brushed over the skin of his shoulder. “He rebuilt it from the frame out. After me and the shop, he always said that car was his pride and joy.”
“And by keeping it, you’re keeping a piece of him.”
Her breath caught. “You understand.”
Better than you could possibly know. “Go on.”
For a moment, she gathered her thoughts. Then she said, “You’ve lived in Chicago long enough to realize the local government is famous for being rife with corruption, right?”
“Sure. The city of big shoulders and big swindlers.”
“Yeah, well, our ward out on the South Side wasn’t any different. We had a horrible alderman. And by horrible, I mean every bone in the man’s body was crooked. He was taking kickbacks from wealthy businessmen in exchange for favorable zoning. When a slum lord who made millions putting up cheap housing took a shine to the corner my father’s shop was on, the alderman was quick to get the space rezoned for residential use instead of commercial use.”
“Oh, for the love of Montgomery Scott,” Ozzie muttered, having seen the worst of humanity, all the violence and suffering and greed. In war, those things were normal, expected even. On the streets of the Midwest? It was a damned travesty.
“My dad was desperate to save his shop.” Samantha’s voice shook when she continued. “He tried for months to block the zoning change, but he was one little man going up against these pillars of the city. He finally decided the only way he could stop this alderman was to expose him as the corrupt asshole he was. Dad made a few anonymous tips to the police that ended up going nowhere, and he came to believe that a lot of the local cops were in on the racket. He didn’t know who to trust, and things were coming down to the wire. The rezoning was about to go through. In a strange twist of fate, he’d just fixed the car of a fresh new reporter for the Trib. And he thought, aha! A tell-all in the paper. The reporter’s name was Donny Danielson, by the way.”
“Ah, yes.” Ozzie nodded. Samantha had talked a lot about Donny over the weeks and months, but this morning was the first time Ozzie had the pleasure of meeting the man. And he got why Samantha loved him. Donny struck him as honest and true and, above all, straightforward. “Mr. Boyfriend Material.”
He could feel her mouth curve into a smile. “None other. Anyway, Donny told Dad he couldn’t write an exposé without irrefutable proof that the alderman was on the take. So, my dad being my dad, he bought a camera with a zoom lens and followed the alderman around for a week getting evidence of his malfeasance. Stuff like handshakes with criminals, money exchanges, that kind of thing. Then one night, Dad didn’t come home.” Her voice thickened. Hearing it, a lump formed in Ozzie’s throat.
“His body was found in the middle of the sidewalk in front of a coffee shop the following morning. He’d been shot through the heart. His camera was broken. All his film was missing. And there were no…” Her voice broke. Ozzie was pretty sure his heart followed suit. “No witnesses,” she finished.
For long moments, the only sound that intruded on the silence of the gym was the R & B drifting in from the speakers outside. Otis Redding crooned about when a man loved a woman. For the first time in Ozzie’s life, he understood the line about a man trading the world for the good thing he’d found. If Samantha would only love him, he would trade it all, trade—
“I was eighteen when it happened. A senior heading off to college to major in English on a scholarship. I was going to write the next Great American Novel.” She chuckled as if amazed at the na?veté of her younger self. “Like you said, I’ve had a killer instinct from the beginning. I was going to massacre those bestseller lists. But”—she blew out a breath—“Dad’s death… It…changed everything. It changed me.
“Suddenly, I wasn’t satisfied with fiction. I wanted to uncover truths, to expose corruption. But I still loved the written word, and then there was Donny. Even though he never advocated for my father to go all vigilante and try to gather the evidence against the alderman on his own, he still felt responsible for Dad’s death. So he sort of took me under his wing. He became one part mentor and two parts friend.” She lifted a hand, let it fall back to his chest. “So here I am, all these years later. An investigative reporter.”