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She jerks her hands out of mine as my deception sinks in, and I decide to keep talking in an effort to counter the voices that are probably working things out inside her head.
“Jessa, total honesty. Those guys tried for months to get close to Matteo Sparr. He trusted no outsiders. I was sent in to try something different. It was my job to watch his son, Maxwell. It wasn’t my job to fall in love with you. I did that all on my own. The time we spent together, that was real. That was me. As much as I denied it to the guys around me, I wanted you from the minute I saw you. We were ready to take the whole family down the day you disappeared. I was going to come and find you, to tell you everything after all of the arrests were made.” I keep my hands on her knees in an attempt to maintain a connection with her. I’m thankful she’s allowed me to stay, but her questions keep coming.
“Why couldn’t I find you?” She would know the answer to this question if she were thinking rationally, and I wonder for a moment if this is a good headspace for her to be in.
“Because you were looking for Jack Waters. My real name was Jack McCaskill, but even that is probably wiped out of searchable records by now. My parents died in a boating accident when I was a kid, and I went through foster care until I was old enough to join the military. With no family and no traceable past, I was the perfect candidate for some of the more…secretive missions. That’s how I met you.”
She scans my face, attempting to reconcile the boy she knew with the man sitting in front of her.
“How are you planning to bring down Maxwell?” She fires her next question at me quickly, probably hoping to deter me from asking some of my own, and I tense at his name.
I wasn’t prepared for the shift in topic, and I’m not ready to end the conversation about us.
“We don’t have a plan yet. Jess, we need you and Zane. I think the only way we can end all of this is by working together. But I don’t want to talk about that tonight. I would like to ask you some questions.”
The truth is, I do want to talk about her and Zane, but I know she’s not ready to open up about any of that yet, and I don’t want her to stop talking.
I give her a few seconds to let my last sentence sink in. It’s my turn to ask some questions, and I’m not asking for her permission.
“What happened to you the night your parents died?”
Her nervous smile stays plastered on her face, but the emotion behind it falls away. Sadness fills her eyes as she shifts her focus down to our hands.
“I remember you said yourdadwas mad about something, and you had to stay home.” She reminds me of the lie I had to tell her as we prepared to end our operation. “I decided to do some studying at the library. We had a chem exam the next day. Anyway, I got a call from Travis. He said Dad got a call from a guy at his work, and they were panicking. Something about the Sparr family being corrupt and Dad accessing something he shouldn’t have. He told me that Mom and Dad were running around the house grabbing things and throwing stuff in the car. Travis said Dad wanted to know where I was, and I told him I was in town at the library. Then he told me to stay where I was, that they were coming to get me. I’ve never heard him sound like that.” She mutters, “He was so scared,” to herself as the memory comes to her before she returns to her story.
“I told them to leave. I told them to just take the road straight out of town and I would meet up with them and we would figure everything out. They wouldn’t listen. I waited, and they never came. After forty-five minutes, I got in my car and drove back to our place. We were only fifteen minutes from the library. I was coming around the bend at the bottom of the ravine when headlights at the top caught my eye. I saw their car go over the side at the top, by the bridge.”
Listening to my Jessa replay the worst night of her life leaves me paralyzed.
“I shut off the car and ran down the bank to the bottom, right alongside the river. There were people up at the top with flashlights, but I was far enough down that they wouldn’t have seen me in the dark, and the sound of the water was so loud. The car went under pretty fast. It looked like some windows broke open on impact. I drove downriver to try to find a place to get to them, but the rapids were too strong, and the car was gone. Jack, I couldn’t save them.” Her guilt stitches itself across her face.
She’s lived with a lifetime of what-ifs. What if she left earlier? What if she tried to brave the cold, rushing river? What if she refused to tell her parents where she was? What if she stayed home that night?
Instinctively, I move to her side to pull her out of her trauma. She needs me to help her through this, to shoulder some of her pain, and I won’t let her down.
“Jessa, there wasn’t anything you could have done. No one saw this coming until it was too late. On our end, everything seemed by the book. I was ordered to stay in. We were going in first thing in the morning as backup. When I woke up, all hell had already broken loose. The team knew about your family within the hour. My commanding officer decided not to wake me because he knew how I felt for you. I found out early the next morning. Jess, I thought you were gone. Your backpack was found in the car.”
“I know. I read the police report.”
I take a moment to let everything sink in. Catching up like this and hearing what really happened feels like waking up from one long, drawn-out, hellish nightmare.
“Then you know they never found your brother?” I lean in to console her.
I expect her to lean against me for support, to allow me the chance to finally comfort her in mourning the loss of Travis, but she doesn’t move, setting off all of my alarm bells.
I’m missing something.
I steal a glance down at Jessa, and she won’t meet my eyes.
She’s treading carefully now.
My guard goes up at her apprehension, and suddenly I realize I’ve made some assumptions I need to revisit.
“Do you know what happened to your brother?” Again my question is met with a long pause, and I decide to finish my thought. “Jessa, is Travis alive?” The thought is so far-fetched that I hadn’t considered it before.
She inhales deeply. When she finally returns my stare, there’s a hint of confirmation on her face.
She does know something I don’t.
