Chapter 38
The name hit her like a slap.
Ellie.
Dale said the name as if he’d known who she really was all along.
Maybe he had. Richard had probably told him. Still, hearing him say her real name aloud made her feel off-balance.
Jenna held perfectly still. She’d learned how to do that—how to keep her face smooth while everything underneath came apart. She didn’t let her expression shift. She didn’t look at Luke.
If she looked at Luke, she’d give it away.
He went rigid beside her.
She didn’t have to see his face to sense the anger coming off him in waves. He was holding back his fury by sheer will. His hands had curled at his sides. His breathing had gone slow and deliberate.
He didn’t move. He didn’t say a word.
She understood why. There were cameras in the corners of the ceiling. A bailiff stood near the courtroom doors. And Dale would love nothing more than for Luke to do something foolish in a building full of witnesses.
Dale had said her name to get a reaction, to watch one of them crack.
Neither of them gave it to him.
Something shifted behind Dale’s eyes. Disappointment, maybe, that the scene he’d come for hadn’t played out.
“Well.” He straightened and stepped back, easy as ever. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”
He turned and sauntered down the hall.
As Jenna watched him go, cold settled into her bones.
She knew that walk. She knew that ease.
Dale hadn’t come here today to win.
He’d come because he’d already won, and he’d wanted them to know it. He had a plan. He had money. He had people in his pockets.
He thought this was a slam dunk.
“Jenna,” Luke murmured.
She turned and realized she was gripping his sleeve. Quickly, she let go. “Sorry.”
He didn’t seem to hear her as he asked, “You okay?”
She wasn’t. But she nodded, because the alternative was falling apart in a courthouse hallway, and she’d promised herself a long time ago she’d never do that again.
But hearing her real name in Dale’s mouth made it real in a way the morning hadn’t.
Jenna and Luke left the courthouse the same way they’d come in—fast and close together, no lingering on the steps. The rest of the family was with them. They’d agreed to talk about things once they got back to the house.
Luke held the truck door for her, and Jenna climbed in and kept her eyes moving the way she always did now.
Old habits.
They’d kept her alive, and she didn’t know how to switch them off even when she wanted to.
Wes’s truck pulled out behind them as they left the square.
She was glad he was there. He knew how to watch a road, and after everything he’d traced this morning, she trusted him to catch the things she might miss.
Jenna sat in the passenger seat and tried to believe everything was okay.
Three blocks out, Luke’s phone buzzed in the console.
“It’s Wes.” He answered on the hands-free.
“Don’t speed up.” Wes’s voice came through flat and careful. “Don’t change anything. Just listen.”
Luke’s hands tightened on the wheel. Beside him, Jenna’s own instincts came online—every nerve going quiet and sharp at once.
“There’s a gray sedan two cars back,” Wes said. “Picked us up at the square. He’s matched every turn since.”
Jenna’s pulse climbed at the news. Someone was following them?
Had the Barones found her again? And, if so, just what were they planning?
Luke checked the mirror. The gray sedan was still there, two cars back, exactly where Wes had said it would be.
“Take the next right,” Wes said. “Onto Sycamore. It’s the wrong way home. If he follows, we’ll know.”
Luke signaled and turned.
The truck rolled down a quiet residential street.
For a moment Luke let himself believe Wes was being careful for nothing.
Then Jenna murmured, “He turned with us.”
Luke’s gaze went to the mirror. Sure enough, the gray sedan had made the turn behind them and had settled back into the same distance—close enough to keep them in sight, far enough to look like nothing.
“We’ll run a box,” Wes said. “Left at the stop sign, then another left, then a third. Four turns, and we’re back where we started. Most drivers won’t make that loop. If he’s still with us at the end of it, he’s on us.”
Luke worked the turns. Left, then left again.
The sedan stayed with them through the first turn.
Then, at the second, it didn’t.
Luke watched the mirror as the gray car slowed at the intersection behind them, sat there a beat—and then turned the other way.
Luke let out a breath. “Did we lose him?”
“No.” Wes’s voice had gone hard. “We didn’t lose him. He left.”
The distinction landed like a dropped stone.
“The Barones and their lackeys already know where I’m staying,” Jenna murmured as she stared out the windshield. “That guy wasn’t trying to find out where we were going.”
“The driver was making sure we knew he could.” Wes finished the thought for her. “That’s a message, not a tail. Same as the photo. They’re telling you there’s nowhere you go they can’t reach.”
“Then why didn’t you go after him?” Luke heard the edge in his own voice and didn’t bother to hide it. “Get a plate. Run him down.”
“With Jenna in the truck? No.” Wes didn’t hesitate. “You don’t leave the person you’re protecting to chase the man hunting her. That’s how people get hurt.”
He supposed that made sense. It did make sense. He just wanted some answers, however.
“I got a partial plate,” Wes continued. “I’m calling Micah now. He can run it. Though if it’s like the last one, it’ll come back stolen out of some lot two counties over.”
Luke’s jaw clenched until it ached. “Wes, stay on us all the way back.”
“Already planned on it. I’ll loop Micah in and catch up.”
Luke ended the call and pulled the truck back toward the road that climbed home. He kept his eyes moving—the mirrors, the cross streets, the cars at the gas station as they passed—and found his hands had gone tight on the wheel again.
Neither of them said anything else.
There wasn’t anything left to say that the afternoon hadn’t already said for them.
So they drove the winding two-lane up toward Refuge Cove in silence, the gate and the gold evening light still a long way off—and the weight of being hunted riding in the cab between them the whole way.