Water sloshed over the rim, splashing her lips, as another tremor shook her. She gasped, startled from the impact, and the clarity it brought. “Jon,” she whispered. Her gaze locked onto the bottle—to the clear, packaged water within. “I want Jon.”
God, he was probably mad at her for the way she’d treated him the night before. He hadn’t deserved it.
“Jon?” Ella repeated with a note of curiosity.
The water Jenna hadn’t looked away from rippled subtly before a string of bubbles formed in the middle, as if there were an air-breathing person beneath the surface. The visual lasted only seconds before tapering back to what it had been, but it was familiar all the same. It was the signal he’d always given her when they were younger to assure he’d heard her call for him.
He had never once not come when she’d called.
That was part of why she’d refused to let herself call—in any form—when her bad decisions had landed her in a hospital, and eventually a police station. They were long over by then and either she would be wrecking his life or it would be the one time he let her down, and either way, someone would have felt resentment. She hadn’t wanted that.
Jenna gave her head as hard a shake as she dared, lifted the bottle to her lips, and gulped some down. Too much, based on the immediate churning in her stomach.
“Hey, hey, slow sips!”
Jenna lowered the bottle and pushed it back toward Ella. The cap had fallen from her lap without her noticing, but it was hard to care. “In case it’s not obvious,” she managed, “no, I don’t feel safe now.” The words choked her.
Ella lowered to rest properly on her knees.
“How”—Jenna coughed in search of her voice—“how did you find me?”
A smaller smile lifted Ella’s lips. “It’s kind of what I do.”
Jenna frowned. The answer felt like bullshit, but then, what experience did shereallyhave in disappearing? Her idea of hiding had been to run home. To the small town where she had been raised from the age of five to eighteen, and where her parents had resided—received their mail, including bills—until she was in college. Her mother had even worked in Misty Glades for a few years. All of that created some type of trail. Her parents would never have outed her, but in hindsight, Jenna could see where any familiar location had been less than smart.
She’d only been thinking that it was unfamiliar tohim.
Ella let out a soft sigh. “I’m taking it you weren’t notified?”
A rough scoff tore from Jenna’s throat before she could catch it. “Does it look like I already knew?”
“Well,” Ella said, picking up the cap and twisting it into place on the water, “it seems to me you might need to make a call ortwo. Lodge a complaint, and demand at least a temporary order of protection or something. There’s a threat on record, isn’t there? From the time you and a lawyer went to see him right before his sentencing.”
Again, that old memory played through Jenna’s mind, drowning out the sounds of the world for several seconds. Was that something a reporter for some rando-publication should already have learned? She didn’t know. She didn’t have the strength to dwell on it. It was effort enough to shift just to raise her knees somewhat, so she could latch her shaking hands onto her thighs. “Yeah,” she responded aloud. Her voice was dull to her own ears. And even as the yelling in her mind petered out again, the undercurrent of rumbling remained.
Different. Closer. More physical. Until it, too, cut off.
“Oh,” Ella said, but she sounded distracted. “This must be—”
A door slammed. “Jenna!”
She blinked, feeling as if she’d been free-falling through a haze that echoed old nightmares, and then without warning her body was pulled into another. But her brain didn’t plunge into a panic. She barely even tensed up. She recognized the strength of the grip surrounding her, the unyielding muscle, and the glimpse of a dark green truck she could see in her periphery. “Jon…”
He pried her fingers off her thighs with one hand and encouraged her to twist toward him. “I’m here. I’ve got you.” He squeezed her shoulder and moved his other hand to brush over her knees, where the denim was obviously freshly scuffed. “What happened?”
“She collapsed,” Ella declared from behind Jon.
Urgency spiked a sharpened awareness through Jenna’s system. It was bad enough she’d probably have to tell him. The last thing she wanted was for him to hear the same news she’d just heard—but worse, because he didn’t know the heart of it—from a stranger. “Interview’s over, Ella,” she managed to call over Jon’s half-formed response.
Ella ambled into her line-of-sight, tablet and water bottle in-hand, still smiling. “I can see that. Thank you for speaking with me. So sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” Her gaze flicked to Jon. “So nice to meet you, Jon.” There was an odd flare of mischief in her tone, matched in her blue eyes, before she turned and flounced from sight.
Jon was oddly silent for five whole seconds. “Did you say her name was Ella?”
“That’s what she called herself.” Jenna let her head rest on his shoulder. “My door’s locked and I’m supposed to be halfway to La Pine to meet Q about an old, roadside bar, but I don’t have it in me.”
“You can tell me all about that, I’ll call whoever you need to make an excuse to, and they can bitch at me if they feel like bitching.” Jon dipped his hand into her purse and snatched her keys as if he’d done it a dozen times before. “Then you can tell me the rest of this. Be right back.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, set her upright on the lawn, and was across the short distance to the door before she had time to miss his warmth.
Which was just as well, because the less time she had to think over everything he’d just said, the better.
