Chapter 24
Jenna was heading downstairs when she heard the back door open.
She paused as Luke, Caleb, and Max stepped inside, bringing the cold night air in with them. She scanned Luke’s face, trying to read his expression.
What had they discovered out there?
She couldn’t read him. But at least she knew he was okay. Nothing had happened to him or the other two men outside.
She hadn’t realized that was her fear until now.
She exhaled. Danger isn’t around every turn or lurking in every shadow. The lights going out could have been a fluke. It could have been the storm.
She didn’t really believe that, however.
“Cora and Liam woke up, but they’re back to sleep now,” she told Luke. “Cora took a few minutes.”
An unreadable emotion flashed through his gaze before he said, “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Max slipped away, heading back into his room.
Caleb pulled off his jacket and looked between them, seeming to sense they needed a moment. “I’ll let Mom and Naomi know what we found.”
He disappeared toward the main room without waiting for a response.
When he was gone, Luke ran a hand across the back of his neck, exhaustion lining his gaze.
Jenna’s first instinct was to reach for him. To touch his face. To try to offer him comfort.
But she reminded herself that wasn’t her right. Not anymore.
Sorrow echoed through her heart at the reminder.
She tucked her hand into her pocket so she wouldn’t be tempted.
Instead, she asked, “What did you find outside?”
“Main breaker was tripped. We found boot prints heading toward the back of the property. Whoever cut the power is gone.”
“So it wasn’t—” She stopped, wondering if her words would sound out of touch. So it wasn’t the contract killer who’d taken a shot at me earlier?
“We don’t know who it was.” His eyes met hers. “Could have been the Hendersons. Could have been someone else. Caleb and I are going to pull the security footage tonight and see what we’ve got.”
She looked at the floor and then back at him. “Luke—”
“Jenna.” He looked at her for a long moment—at her face, at whatever he found there—and when he spoke again his voice had lost some of its edge. “It’s been a long day. For both of us. I think we need to leave the rest of it until morning.”
She understood. She did. The day had held more than most people weathered in a month, and they were both running on empty.
She knew he was right. “Okay.”
He started toward the main room and then paused without turning around. “Did Naomi show you where you’ll be staying tonight?”
“She did.”
“Perfect.” He moved into the main room.
Jenna stood in the entryway alone a moment, her hand resting on the post at the bottom of the stairs.
She’d told herself that coming back would be hard. She’d told herself that a hundred times in the past month. She’d thought she’d accounted for all the ways it could hurt.
But she hadn’t accounted for the ache of standing in a house full of people she loved and still feeling the distance. For Luke being kind and careful and completely unreachable all at the same time.
Standing here was doing her no good. Maybe rest was the best medicine.
With that thought, she climbed the stairs and headed toward her bedroom.
Luke lay in the dark and listened to the house settle around him.
Before coming upstairs, he and Caleb had checked the security footage. The camera covering the utility box had captured the image of a figure at the edge of its range—a man wearing a dark jacket, with a ball cap pulled low. He’d been moving fast and deliberate along the side of the house.
The footage was grainy, and the face was angled away, but the man’s build could fit Travis Henderson. They’d sent a screenshot to Micah and left it at that.
Luke put his arm behind his head and tried to make his mind go quiet.
It didn’t.
In one day, all his explanations had all fallen apart. He tried to put it back together and found that he couldn’t. The pieces didn’t fit the same way anymore.
Jenna hadn’t left because she stopped loving them. She hadn’t left because something in her had broken or because she’d chosen a different life over her family.
She’d left because of a man who terrified her.
Luke had thought he knew her. But he hadn’t even known her real name.
What else didn’t he know?
He pressed his eyes closed.
The question underneath all the others was the one he kept circling and couldn’t quite bring himself to land on directly.
Could he trust her?
He believed her explanation. But trust was an entirely different thing from belief. Trust was built over time out of small consistent actions, and Jenna had spent twelve years being someone he thought he could trust completely.
He didn’t know anymore what those twelve years were worth.
He didn’t know if that conclusion was fair. He suspected it wasn’t. But fairness and feelings were different things, and right now his feelings weren’t interested in being fair.
He didn’t know what to do with any of it.
He didn’t know if there was a version of this that worked—that got his children their mother back without costing them something worse if it fell apart again.
He didn’t know if Jenna was staying or what staying would even look like or whether he had any business hoping for something he wasn’t sure he was ready for.
He didn’t know anything except that it was after two in the morning and he needed to sleep, and he couldn’t.
He lay there in the dark for another long stretch.
Then he heard it.
A footstep in the hallway. It sounded careful and slow, like the deliberate quiet of someone trying not to be heard.
He went still and listened.
Another step. Then another.
Whoever it was, this person was moving toward the stairs.
He climbed from bed and crossed to the door, opening it just a sliver.
The hallway came into view.
Then he saw a figure creeping toward the stairs.
Jenna.
His heart leapt into his throat.
She was dressed. Not in the clothes she’d borrowed for sleep but in the dark jeans and jacket she’d been wearing earlier.
He watched her take the first step down.
Then the second.
The breath left his body.
She was leaving, wasn’t she?
Of course, she was leaving. Even after her reunion with the kids, even after she’d felt Cora’s arms around her neck. Despite those things, she was walking back out the door the same way she’d done two years ago.
White-hot anger washed through him.
Some part of him had known this would happen.
But this time, Jenna wouldn’t leave without a conversation.