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Torment filled Savannah’s voice. “It made me happy, too, because she was the one person I’d been fighting for my entire life, other than myself. The one person who mattered. The one person I’d promised I would protect forever. It was just her and me.”
My hand flexed against her neck, hit with the urge to gather her up and hold her. Erase the pain that dampened the happiness that had been lighting her face just a few moments ago. I almost regretted bringing it up, but we couldn’t keep this in the background. She needed to know I was here for her, whatever was going on in her life.
This wasn’t just me chasing something that felt good.
The physical.
The good times.
This was me committed.
She trembled as her tongue stroked her bottom lip, and her words grew thin. “It was after I left Bryce…”
That time, when my hand flexed, it was because I was fighting the urge to demand a last name. Overcome with the need to hurt whoever had hurt her. But Savannah didn’t need me to go on a rampage right then. She needed someone to support her.
Stand by her side.
“I’d never been so sure that it was going to be me and Jessica against the world forever than then. Never so sure that we were the only thing the other had.”
Savannah tripped over the confession. “She’d gotten her own apartment during the time I was living with Bryce, which I thought was great because I wanted her to learn to also rely on herself. She was always more…innocent than me. More naïve. But we were still in constant contact. I saw her almost every day and we texted or talked several times.”
Her words dipped in a coil of confusion. “She started acting strange. Became more distant. Didn’t return my calls and would disappear for days at a time. I was worried that maybe she was using…but also…it didn’t quite add up to that. I was sure it was something different.”
Savannah inhaled a shaky breath, and I eased closer. I wouldn’t tell her it was okay because it clearly was not.
“It only got worse when I started to press her on it, demanding to know what was going on because she wasn’t acting like the sister I knew. It only caused her to become more distant. More reserved. Until one day she sent me a text that she didn’t want me in her life anymore.”
Her breath hitched and a tear slid from her eye. She didn’t try to hide it. She looked up at me. “But I knew, Ezra, I knew something was off. I knew it wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t really her who was talking, and when I went to her apartment and found that she’d packed all her things and left, I knew she was somehow in trouble. That someone had gotten in her head.”
“How long ago?”
“Two years.”
Shit. That wasn’t good.
“When I made the missing person’s report, they’d told me there was no evidence of anything nefarious, and it wasn’t a crime for my sister not to want to talk to me anymore.”
“Have you heard from her since?”
Sorrow shook her head. “No, but I got a clue that she might have come here. That she might have been living here.”
Questions spun through my mind, my investigator kicking in. “How so?”
She released a disordered breath, a laugh of frustration and disbelief. “It was just…so random. A few months ago, I got this journal in the mail. It doesn’t even mention her by name, but I swear, whoever had written in it was writing about her. A therapist. And why else would it come to me if it wasn’t talking about Jessica?”
Her voice narrowed to a wisp. “It was vague because I think she was respecting Jessica’s privacy, but I also think that maybe this person wanted me to know that something was going on with her. That she wasn’t safe. So I came here to see for myself. To see if I could find any trace of her.”
Fuck.
That’s what all the sneaking around had been about.
The pond.
The apartment.
The woman putting herself in danger’s way.
Alarm howled as I thought of the motel. If her sister was in trouble and someone knew Savannah was trying to uncover her whereabouts?
I didn’t like it. Didn’t like any of this.
“Did you find anything?”
She almost seemed surprised that I asked it. Like she’d expected me to think she was foolish for trying.
A tremor rolled her throat when she swallowed. “No.”
Unease pounded through my blood. “Would you show me that journal?”
She tried to cover her flinch.
“What is it?”
She hesitated.
“You can tell me anything, Savannah.”
The laughter she let go of was hollow. Both bitter and haunted. “When I received it, I called the police in Houston to make a report. An officer came to my apartment to get a statement, and he basically laughed at me and said there was no proof that it was my sister. That there was no proof of anything really. No proof of a crime. He said whoever it was sounded like they were only begging for attention, the way I was right then, right before he reached out and tore my shirt.”
