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“There you are, darling,” Arlene purred. “I thought you’d been avoiding me.” She sat down.
“Nope, just busy making a living.”
“You and me both, sweetie,” she said with a wink.
No fewer than five men offered to buy her drinks in her first ten minutes at the tiki bar. The woman continued to flirt with all of them, including him, before moving to a private lounge area where he knew she would be waited on by one of the other staff members.
Ten minutes after she’d left, Jade showed up.
“Is Josie working out here today?” she asked, looking around.
“No, she’s inside today.” He set a glass of wine down in front of her. “Are you doing okay?”
Jade sighed heavily then took a large swig of the wine before answering. “I am now.” She reached across the bar and took his hand. “Thank you for… everything,” she said softly, and he felt the chains he’d locked his heart up with years ago fall away at the look in her eyes.
Just the thought of losing her had his hand tightening around hers. Then he realized that for the first time since Kaley, he’d found someone he would do anything to protect.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Aday after Carol and Tom had been hauled away, Jade received word that the pair had been moved back to the States. They had been released from FBI custody but were still cooperating with the authorities.
Wyatt didn’t know much more than that, and she figured that it would take time for everything else to come to light.
With every day that went by, she was growing more worried that Wyatt would be pulled away. If Carol and Tom had been the ones to lure the kids away from the resort, didn’t that mean that whoever they had been working with knew that the FBI was onto their operation?
Worse yet. What if they weren’t the ones and they had just spooked the real culprits away?
She went about her daily business as if nothing had changed. Each night she waited for Wyatt to get off work and meet her. She was coming very accustomed to having him in her bed. So much so that when he didn’t show up one night, she woke with a start and called him.
“Sorry,” he answered. “I didn’t want to wake you. I needed to make some adjustments with the cameras. A few of them got knocked down in the rain last night.”
“That’s okay.” She relaxed back into bed.
Just then Josie burst into her room. “Sorry,” she said quickly, but then she rushed over to turn on Jade’s television. “Is that Wyatt on the phone?”
“Yes, what’s—” She stopped when she saw Amber’s face on the screen. “Shit.”
“What?” she heard Wyatt say into her ear.
“There’s a report on the television about Amber,” she told him. “This is from yesterday.” She sat up. “What…”
“I’ll be right up,” Wyatt said before hanging up.
“We’ve been so busy with… everything here.” Josie sat next to her in bed. “Wow, she really does look like you,” she said, glancing at Jade.
“Yeah,” Jade said, trying to listen to the report. The day after she’d talked to Amber for the first time, the news in the States had reported on her sister and how she’d found her family.
Jade had listened along with the rest of the world about the man, Simon Jones, who had kidnapped her sister. She’d listened in horror to the details of Amber’s abduction by the serial killers and how she had been found in a shipping container with dozens of other women who hadn’t been so lucky.
She’d had no fewer than ten calls with her sister in that short time. However, now, the news reports were claiming that Amber had been abducted yet again, this time by a copy-cat serial killer who had murdered two other women and a waiter at the restaurant where he had poisoned several people to get to Amber. They detailed how Amber had escaped the killer by breaking out of the trunk of the car she’d been shoved into and hitting the eighteen-year-old over the head with a tire iron.
“My god,” Josie said under her breath.
“At this time, Amber Oswald is resting comfortably at home,” the news anchor said. “She is expected to make a full recovery.”
“I have to call Amber,” Jade said. “I need to call my parents too.” She punched Amber’s number, but it went to voicemail. Amber had given her Brock’s number, and she tried that one.
“Hello?” Brock answered.
