Chapter 6
The indignant expression on Chen’s face nearly made Jack burst out laughing. She seemed to be furious with him for being the person who brought Denver Black to life.
What if she knew that he had helped create the character, that he and his buddy Kip, the other executive producer, had crafted the show and pitched it to a network, never imagining that he would actually play the character?
The only reason he’d gotten the role was that their first choice had dropped out, and no one thought the show would last. Out of desperation, Kip had pushed Jack to take it on.
Best to avoid all such explanations.
“Take it from me. The more time you spend with me, the more you’ll see that I’m not Denver Black and any residual attraction will just,” he snapped his finger, “evaporate. I’m just a guy trying to find his sister.”
He deployed his best self-deprecating goofy grin, the one he used to disarm people intimidated by the fact that he was semi-famous.
He disliked that part of his life. If he could have been on the show without anyone recognizing him, that would have been his preference.
That was one benefit of the over-the-top scar.
Tina Chen whooshed out a breath. “Well, you’re irritating enough that you’re probably correct.”
“Thank you. I’ll do my best.”
“See that you do.”
That stern stare of hers really did something to him. He pushed back a stir of interest. His job here would be to avoid any and all hints of attraction that might turn Chen against him. For Jessie’s sake, he’d try to lean into “irritating.”
“But even if we’re working together, that doesn’t mean we’re joined at the hip,” she went on.
“I do need to discuss this with my client, and you can probably handle those phone calls on your own. Ask them if they noticed anything unusual during their conversations with Jessie, and if she mentioned anything specific about her upcoming plans or who she was spending time with.”
“Hang on, can you repeat that?” He pulled out his phone, pretending to record. “I don’t want to get any words wrong.”
As soon as she realized he was joking, she shook her head and muttered something about “irritating,” then disappeared out the door.
“That’s because I was aiming for irritating,” he called after her. She ignored that.
Out the window, he watched as she hopped into a rusty island pickup truck with a tall blond woman at the wheel.
He didn’t know her, but that meant nothing.
He’d only been back on the island for a few days.
The last time he’d spent any substantial amount of time here was when he’d helped his mother move Granny into an assisted-living home in Harbortown.
With Chen gone, the quiet of the house settled around him. “Settled” was the wrong word; “unsettled” would be better. He felt Jessie’s absence like an aching tooth, something always at the edge of his mind, no matter what else he was doing.
He wandered into the room where she’d been staying, which was the only real bedroom in the house.
The upstairs was little more than an open-raftered, low-ceilinged loft.
That was where he and Jess had stayed when they were kids, on cots crammed between storage boxes and old trunks with brass buckles.
One of those trunks had contained Granny’s favorite pieces of clothing from her days as the biggest flirt on Sea Smoke Island.
Jessie used to love dressing up in those poodle skirts and faux satin gloves.
The downstairs bedroom held Jessie’s current-day wardrobe, heavy on the cozy sweatpants and paint-speckled chambray shirts.
He had no idea if some of her clothes were missing, since he didn’t know how many she’d brought with her. The bathroom sink still held strands of her long auburn hair, but her toothbrush was nowhere to be found.
He’d stayed here his first night on the island, in case she wandered back in the middle of the night. After that, he’d booked the Honeymoon Suite in case that offered up any clues.
“What the fuck, Jessie?” he murmured. “If you were in trouble, why didn’t you say something?”
In his searches, he hadn’t found any of her medications, no pill bottles or the essential oils she used to balance her moods.
He found that reassuring, a sign that she hadn’t been kidnapped.
Would a kidnapper allow her to bring her mood stabilizers or her anti-anxiety meds?
Maybe, he supposed. But at least that meant this hypothetical somewhat-compassionate kidnapper wasn’t intending to end her life.
He shied away from that thought and went to the easel she’d set up in the corner of the bedroom, where the light was diffused by the slant of the ceiling and the lacy curtains left from his grandmother’s time.
He’d been puzzling over the lack of a canvas since he’d arrived.
Every time he’d spoken to Jess recently, she’d been excited about the piece she was working on. “It’s about ghosts,” she’d said.
“You’re painting ghosts? Do they stand still enough for you to get a good likeness?”
“Idiot. I mean the ghosts that live in your bones and your blood.”
He wasn’t exactly sure what she meant—maybe she was referring to her emotional issues—but that was Jessie for you. Cryptic and poetic. But once the painting was finished, he had no doubt he would understand. Art was her most eloquent way of communicating.
“Well, shit. Those are even harder to paint. Good luck with that.”
“Ha ha.”
So where was this painting? Where were the sketches she might have worked on first?
None of it was in the house. Had she taken her latest work with her somewhere, to a gallery or a private collector?
If so, why hadn’t she told him, or at least answered her phone one of the hundred times he’d called her?
Maybe Seth Baker had stolen it and planned to sell it. Was Jessie with him in that case? And again, why wouldn’t she answer his calls?
His phone rang, sending a jolt of adrenaline through him. Was it Jessie? He answered without even looking at the screen. “Jess?”
Silence on the other end. He pulled the phone away from his ear and saw a number he didn’t recognize. “Hello? Hello?”
He heard a soft squeal, then the phone went dead. He punched the call-back button and waited, his heart hammering. No answer.
Had Jessie made that squealing sound? He couldn’t say. If it was her, why hadn’t she said something? Was someone preventing her from talking? Or maybe it was just a wrong number?
He called Doug Logan’s number—the show consultant who’d been so helpful earlier. “I just got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. It had a Maine area code. Can you trace it down for me?”
“I’m not your on-call crime-stopper,” Doug grumbled.
“Please. It could be Jess. There was a little sound, like a squeak or a squawk. A squeal.” He imitated the sound. “It could have been her. I’m worried she’s being held somewhere against her will.”
“Jesus. Okay. Set visit for my niece? She’s a fan.”
“Of course. I’ll get her a t-shirt too.”
“And one of those fake scars you guys were giving out for Halloween?”
“Fake scar. Done. Here’s the number.” He texted it to Doug and waited impatiently. “How long does it take?”
“Depends on how many other cases I’m working. Happens to be six, at the moment.”
Oh shit. He needed this information right away. Urgency was making the blood pound through his veins. “Sooner is better.”
“I’ll send it as soon as I can.” The call ended, leaving Jack about to jump out of his skin.
Wherever that call had come from, he needed to get there.
If Jess was being held captive, wouldn’t the kidnapper move her somewhere else if he knew someone was tracing them?
He might not have much time to dial this in.
Probably a wrong number.
But it hadn’t felt like a wrong number. Jack knew that if Jessie was in danger, he would be her first call.
Not nine-one-one, not Mom, not any of her friends.
Him. He’d been her protector ever since…
well, not since she was born. Initially, she’d just been an annoying red-faced baby.
And then she’d turned into a watchful toddler who didn’t ever speak—“non-verbal,” his mother called it—but who cried silent tears if he didn’t share his toys.
No, he’d become her protector here on the island, when one day, after he scolded her for playing with his favorite toy race car, Jess had wandered into the woods and gotten lost.
His mother had been frantic, hysterical. “You were supposed to watch her! It was only ten minutes while I took a shower! What is wrong with you?”
“I…I…” He’d been reading the new Batman Gotham Adventures, but he couldn’t admit to that.
“You know she’s not like other children.”
“Yeah, she’s dumb.” In his own panic, he’d lashed out. “She can’t even talk.” He himself talked all the time. He loved to talk, to the extent that he drove his parents nuts.
“She’s not dumb, she’s different. She has special needs.” He’d heard that term bandied about, but never known what it meant. “And she needs better from you.”
The disappointment in his mother’s teary gray eyes had cut through him like a knife. He’d jumped to his feet.
“I’ll find her.”
“No! You’ll get lost! Come back!” she’d yelled after him.
But he’d kept going, determined to redeem himself.
With his imagination filled with all the ways Jessie could be hurt, he’d walked through every inch of those woods, with the towering trees that barely seemed to let any light in.
He’d walked until his feet ached and scratches from pine branches covered his face.
Then he sat down on a pillow of moss and thought, really thought about his sister.
She wasn’t just an annoying baby anymore.
She was “special,” but not in the way his mother meant.
Who else laughed at his clowning the way she did?
Who else looked up to him like she did? He was older and therefore responsible for her, but not in a bossy kind of way because she didn’t like that.
“Jessie, I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said out loud. His words sounded echo-y in those quiet woods. He heard a soft squeak and wondered if it was Jess. Was she close enough to hear him?
“Why’d you run into the woods? You aren’t even scared of them, are you?
I wish you’d tell me why. I wish you’d tell me why you don’t like to talk.
Is it because I talk so much? Mom always says I make her head hurt.
Do I make your head hurt too? I promise I’ll shut up if you just come back, and then maybe you can say something. ”
Those forlorn words drifted into the silent forest and vanished as if he’d never spoken them.
He imagined her curled between the gnarled roots of a pine, hands over her ears.
Why hadn’t he been nicer to his little sister?
Why was she so annoying? If she came back, he’d never ignore her again. He’d protect her the way Mom wanted.
He buried his head on his arms, which were propped on his bent knees and prepared himself to head back and face everyone’s wrath. Then a soft tap on his shoulder made him look up.
Jessie stood before him, her eyes wide and grave. “Are you crying?”
She asked the question in a soft but perfectly clear voice. He gaped at her. Then swiped the tears off his face. “Where’d you go? I looked all over for you.”
“There was a ghost.”
“Huh?”
“He wanted to tell me something but I couldn’t understand. Why are you crying?”
“I thought you were lost! I was really scared.”
Her expression told him how silly she thought that was. “I’m not lost. I’m here.”
“Yes, but…I couldn’t find you.”
“I was busy.”
“With the ghost?”
What even was this conversation? He’d wanted to snap at her, but he remembered his promise to himself. Listen. Don’t snap.
As Jessie nodded, her eyes wide and wary, he stopped his automatically scornful words from forming. “What did the ghost tell you?”
“He said to be careful ‘cuz he won’t always be here to keep me safe.”
“Well, that’s all right, then, because I can keep you safe when he’s not around.”
She smiled. “He said that too.”
So his little sister talked to ghosts. Was that weird? No weirder than Batman, he decided.
“Are you done now? Can we go home?”
She seemed to check with an invisible someone, then nodded. A shiver swept down his spine.
“Okay. Let’s go then.” As he stood up, she slipped her hand into his. She’d never done that before.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
“A little,” he admitted. “Just because I was scared. Next time, you can tell me if a ghost wants to talk to you. That way I’ll know if you’re actually lost or not.”
She agreed to that, and they walked along the mossy path back to their grandparents’ house, where Jessie ran straight to the upstairs cots without saying a word to anyone.
As if she’d never spoken in the woods at all.
No one believed him that she could speak, because it had taken another year for Jessie to talk to anyone else. After a while, he stopped insisting that she could talk, she just chose not to. It was up to her, when to talk. His job was to protect her whether she spoke or was silent.
Ever since then, he’d taken that job seriously, even when she’d told him at the age of twenty-one that he could stand down, that she was a grown woman and could handle herself. They’d both known that he’d always have that role, no matter what she said.
So if she was now in trouble, yes, he’d be her first call. And just like in the woods that long-ago day, he’d felt her presence on the other end of that phone call.
Jack returned from that memory to find himself in the kitchen, staring at the refrigerator.
His grandmother used to pin Jessie’s drawings to the door with little magnets shaped like vegetables.
Sometimes they’d jar loose if someone closed the door too firmly.
The drawings would waft to the floor and get kicked under the fridge.
It became a running joke—“the Sunderland Fridge Gallery.”
He knelt on the floor and peered under the fridge.
Sure enough, a piece of sketch paper lurked there in the dust. He fished it out and brushed it off.
It was a watercolor of a beach scene, two young children crouched on the sand building a sandcastle.
Was it him and Jess? He didn’t think so, because they were both blond, unlike either him or Jess at any age.
Did it mean something? He had no idea, but if she’d wanted to hide it where he might find it, and no one else would, the Sunderland Fridge Gallery would be the perfect place.