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No, no, no.Gabby’s heartbeat turned to a gallop. It pounded through her, in her ears, in every muscle. A tiny warning voice in her head told her not to open that door. Not to go anywhere near Melissa Schone until Jessa called with more information.
Gabby backed away. She’d never ignored law enforcement before, but she was going to this time. The detective was here for the group, not on official business. Jessa repeated that fact in her head as she drifted down the hall, not making a sound and never breaking eye contact with that front door.
Another knock. This time louder.
Liam’s building was the type where people had live-in help. Some of his neighbors or the builders thought the assistants should use a different door than the residents. Gabby thought the whole thing was insulting. So did Liam, which was why he never used that back entrance. No one did... until now.
She walked through a doorway that led to the laundry on one side and a small bedroom on the other. It had been advertised as the au pair suite, and the size felt claustrophobic compared to the rest of the rooms in the spacious condo.
Liam used the area for storage. Knowing she only had a little bit of time, she locked the door to the bedroom behind her and started moving things around. She shoved an old desk aside and some boxes that Liam had probably moved from one house to another as he’d left each of his marriages. She finally unburied the back door, the so-called servants’ entrance, which she viewed as a safety hatch.
After putting her ear to it and not hearing a sound, she opened the locks and peeked outside. Detective Schone’s voice echoed down the floor. She was talking to someone and banging on the front door around the corner. Gabby ignored it all and, as quietly as possible, opened the emergency exit door and followed the stairway down to the lobby.
Three excruciating minutes later, Gabby hailed a cab, the harder transportation option for the detective to trace, or at least she hoped so, and left the neighborhood.
Chapter Seventy-One
Jessa
Twenty minutes later, Jessa still hadn’t calmed down. She called Ellie Bartholomew and her attorney and warned them. Jessa refused a call to the police or an ambulance for help because she didn’t trust either. She couldn’t afford to get trapped in a small room or hauled away to a cell that she’d never break out of again.
No, Darren being out, finding her at an address he shouldn’t have, was a message. Retta was no longer protecting her. The group was cleansing itself. They didn’t care if Darren killed her, so long as she stayed quiet.
Jessa had no idea how her life had come to this. She’d always been so careful. She hadn’t drawn attention. Sure, she’d bent the rules sometimes. She’d let others do most of the heavy lifting in law school and at work. But she didn’t deserve to die for that.
“Here’s another cup of tea. The other one has gone cold.” Faith sat next to Jessa with an arm wrapped around her. “I thinkwe should call that Detective Schone. She knows about Darren, and—”
“No!” Jessa couldn’t slow down her pulse or control the jumping inside of her. She knew Faith was scared for her and trying to help, but Faith didn’t understand. “I told you. We can’t trust her. This is so much bigger than you think.”
“Okay.” Faith squeezed Jessa even tighter. “You’ve been through a horrible thing. Your mind is racing. Those neurons are firing. I need you to breathe.”
The comfort suffocated her. Jessa jumped up from the couch. She needed to move, to burn off the frenzy of emotions bombarding her. “This isn’t really about Darren. It’s about a group of women.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“A vigilante group.”
“Jessa, sit.” The trace of pain in Faith’s voice was hard to miss. “Please.”
“No, no.” Jessa sat down with her hand on Faith’s leg then shot up again. She couldn’t afford to be at ease. She needed this energy. She had to store it up and get to Gabby. “They found me here. I’m so sorry. I should have warned you, but I wasn’t allowed.”
“I don’t understand.”
Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t. “Someone knows I’m staying with you, and that person told Darren.”
Faith winced. “Was it a secret? I think I told—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. This is . . .” Jessa ran through her memories, trying to spot someone following her. She didn’tsee how a camera could have been planted in here, but she looked around anyway. Her gaze fell on her bag, and it all made sense. “They have some sort of tracker on me.”
“We need to get you to a hospital. I’m worried about a head injury.” Faith’s soothing voice contrasted with Jessa’s sharp, staccato one.
Jessa ignored the comment as she dove for her bag. She pulled out her cell phone. The GPS. If the group could uncover all these secrets about the men they targeted, they could trace her. “I need to get the chip out.”
“What?”
“They can find me through this.” Jessa held up her phone, knowing she verged on sounding paranoid. But she was right. They knew too much. She couldn’t make it easy on them to gather even more intel. “I need this one number, but the rest of what’s on there doesn’t matter.”
She repeated Gabby’s number a few times, sinking it into memory. When that didn’t work, Jessa grabbed a pen and wrote it on her arm, then she ripped at her cell, trying to take it apart. Her hands shook, and her muscles ignored the orders from her brain.
