Chapter 29
29
JAYDEN
Present Day
I stare at the ceiling long after Cole and Jo fall asleep. I’m covered in a cold sweat as if I ran a mile when I literally just lay here.
I heard their whole whispered conversation. The L Word was thrown around, and it made me sick. Jo trusts him. I mean, she doesn’t fully, but she will. I know she will. Cole is anything, if not persistent.
It’s disgusting.
I roll over, huffing out a breath. She’ll never talk to me like that. I know why she doesn’t. I’m not like Cole. I can’t be. It’s not my nature to be soft, even though I’ve also watched her closely. Memorized every video she made so I could repeat it line by line. I knew her favorite thing to make was mac ‘n cheese. She always made videos about it between the ramen videos when she seemed down.
Fucking hell, I might be getting soft. I can’t be soft. When people are soft, they get hurt.
I feel a drop of sweat roll down my forehead, and I throw the covers off me and get out of bed.
When Cole and Jo started whispering, I wanted to run. I wanted to fight. To shove my hand over Jo’s mouth and shut her up. But I didn’t. I froze, unable to move as I listened to them. Stuck. Frozen. Trapped. Like I have been my whole life.
My heart races as I think about it, and hot anger sparks inside me.
What the hell is wrong with me? I pace back and forth. I wanted to sleep. Need to. I haven’t slept much since we picked Jo up a few days ago. I can hardly think straight.
But I need to plan. Need to nail down where we’re going and how we’re getting there.
Maybe a shower will help wake me up.
The shower doesn’t help. My head is still just as foggy, and the only shampoo is some stupid, flowery soap that makes me smell like a walking Bath and Body Works. It clouds my head even more.
It’s three AM by the time I storm out of the bathroom. I stalk to the living room, where I spotted a laptop earlier. It’s password-protected. I snatch Marian’s purse off the counter and find her birthday. It works on the first try.
I smirk. When I worked as a cop, I could guess people’s phone passwords nine times out of ten. If it wasn’t 1111, then it was some variation of their birthday, their loved one’s birthday, or their social security number. Idiots.
I bring the laptop back to bed and hop on the dark web, searching for ways out of the country. It takes me a minute to figure out what to search for. I know for a fact that the feds crawl all over the dark web, hence why people talk in code. The listings themselves are difficult to trace, but the people listing their services don’t want to advertise their location.
Which is fucking important when it comes to travel.
I stare at the words on the screen until they swirl in my head, and I can’t see straight. I think I find a few listings and message the vendors. They all want an insane amount of Bitcoin for three passengers. It’s like they can smell the desperation.
These goddamn dirty thieves.
Ralph better have the kind of money I think he does, or he and I are going to have an interesting talk with the end of my gun. My dick twitches.
Yes, I think that’s exactly what I need. A little violence to wake me up out of this fog.