Page 10 of Tracking Safety

She didn’t.

The fact she was running only confirmed his suspicions that she was up to no good.

He lengthened his stride, determined to reach her.

He was only fifteen feet away.

Ten.

He was close enough to see the tension in her shoulders, the deliberate way she wasn’t looking back.

“Wait!” he called again. “I just want to talk.”

She kept going.

He couldn’t let her get away. It was time to end this.

It was time to finally get some answers.

Before Luke could second-guess himself, he surged forward, reached out, and grabbed her arm.

CHAPTER 2

Luke watched as the woman stopped.

She didn’t fight him. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t turn toward him.

Instead, she froze. Tension stretched across her entire body.

“Why are you following me?” he demanded.

She remained motionless another moment.

Then she slowly turned.

Luke’s hand dropped as her face came into view.

When he saw the shape of her jaw. The way she held her shoulders. The small scar at her left temple.

Jenna. This woman was Jenna.

His wife. The one who’d left two years ago. The one he hadn’t seen since then.

She was thinner than he remembered. Her face had lost some of the softness he’d once known. The angles were sharper now, and her cheeks hollower.

Her eyes, the ones he spent every day trying not to think about, were the same hazel green. But somehow they looked emptied out. The warmth that used to live in her gaze had disappeared.

“Jenna.” His voice broke as he said her name.

She held his gaze, her eyes wavering with emotion. “Luke.”

His hands closed into fists at his sides.

So much time had passed since he’d last seen her. Jenna had simply been there one day, and she was gone the next.

Then it had just been him standing in their kitchen at six in the morning trying to figure out how to tell their children that he didn’t know where their mother was. Whether she was coming back. Whether she was even alive.

He’d tried to keep it together because his kids needed him to keep it together. He’d had no other choice.