“If we weren’t trying to train the newbies,” Crawford warns, “I’d fire your ass.”
“She’ll be safe but uncomfortable.”
I might, if I had enough scotch, be able to admit that I’m part of the reason Jenna seems like such a scared rabbit about coming upstairs to my penthouse. I should have been more delicate about reeling her in.
I’ll fall in love with you…
I want to see it happen. Something about that kind of power over her—it’s all-consuming. I want her to fall in love with me.
That desperate kind of love that she thought she had for Nathan and the rest of the fiancé mongrels.
She’ll love me more.
Not that I’m going to fall in love with her. I’d never do that. Nor do I want to put a ring on her finger, let alone marry her or anything. I just want that power over her, to know I’m her everything.
“Do you think I’m evil?” I ask Crawford abruptly.
He looks up from where he’s making notes on the folder. “Absolutely. You and Salinger. I never trust any of you.”
After my brother leaves, I feed the photo into various databases I have access to, to see what I can get from the information.
While it runs, I print out the photos of Jenna’s incest-dates and pin them on the whiteboard.
Stepping back, I stare at the collection of headshots.
If it was just one man, I’d make him disappear, and we’d be done.
But it could be any of them, or a man not even up there.
“I am going to find who sent her that text message.”
Then it hits me.
I groan, running my hand through my hair.
Jenna’s mother had a parade of men coming through her and her daughter’s lives. I need to dig up all her stepfathers.
I sit at my desk and start sifting through social media and the sporadic blog posts her mother has made, keeping a running spreadsheet.
One of these men is going to burn for this.
I’m not letting anyone take what’s mine, take something I love.
I’m not a child, not anymore.
29
JENNA
“Ihate my life.”
The parking garage is dim the next morning when I wake up in McCarthy’s car, reeking of him and tasting his mouth, my panties somehow still damp.
I can still feel his fingers inside of me as I make the walk of shame to the elevator.
There’s a guy waiting, slouching against the wall near the parking-garage elevator lobby. He’s got McCarthy’s coloring and that same sly smirk as he types something on his phone.
I stare at him.
