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He drew a few deep breaths to try to center himself, and his anger started to settle as she smoothed her hands over his.
She continued, “You love me. You will always protect me better than anyone else. I have no doubts about that — and you shouldn’t either. Next time we got to town, okay fine, we’ll be more careful — but today I was never in any danger. There was nothing to monitor or make your spidey senses tingle because nothing was wrong. You follow me?”
“Sorry, what’d you say?” he deadpanned. “You lost me at ‘panties.’”
Jade laughed and smacked him.
She was right. He couldn’t do anything about what happened today. So he would just step up his game moving forward.
“Come on,” Jade said. “I want to cut up these apples for Chester. That chipmunk is going to love me whether he wants to or not. Then this Nerf war is on! You’re going down, Mr. Blue Eyes!”
He smiled. “Bring it, baby.”
Chapter 18
Jade
The sun set hours ago and they snuggled on the couch with Jade’s head on Ryker’s chest, watching re-runs of Ridiculousness on the cabin’s satellite TV.
“Oh, ooooooooooouch,” they said in unison after a particularly cringeworthy clip, then they looked at each other and laughed.
“This is great, Ry. Thanks for bringing me out here. It’s been so much fun.”
“Anytime, sweetness. I love spending time with you. I love you.” Ryker hugged her close and kissed her temple.
She smiled. “Hearing that will never get old. I love you, too.”
The landline phone rang, and Ryker frowned. “Who the hell is calling this late?” It was almost 2:00 a.m.
He got up and crossed into the kitchen to grab the phone.
“Vittroli,” he answered.
Jade watched as his eyebrows drew together and lines creased his forehead.
“Lila, is that you? Hello? Who is this?”
After a brief pause, he hung up the phone. “That was weird. I could hear rustling like someone moving in the background but no one responded. It was a blocked number.”
Ryker came back over and sat on the couch with Jade.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and connected it to wifi. He’d been good about disconnecting and spending his time with her, even though the cabin had internet. He’d instructed his team to call the landline if they needed something or any developments happened, but so far that day he hadn’t heard from anyone.
He flicked through his phone for a minute, then said, “Shit, you’re trending on Twitter.”
“For what?”
Ryker turned his phone toward her and showed her the post he’d pulled up. It featured the picture of Jade and Amy at Walmart, with the words “Where in the world is Jade Lewis?” photoshopped across the top. The tweeter had, thankfully, blurred out the young girl’s face.
“Amy must have posted it on her social media and someone swiped it. That’s shitty,” Jade said. “But why is it trending?”
Ryker read off the tweet. “Behold, the last known sighting of Jade Lewis! She disappeared last week after a suspicious venue fire. What’s she hiding? Go forth and find her, Tweeters! #findJadeLewis #whereintheworldisjade.”
He growled in frustration. “That’s great. A news group picked that up and ran it, now it’s all over the place. It won’t take long for someone to pull the location data in that picture and make the connection with my cabin. We’ll get swarmed if we stay here. We need to pack up and head out.”
The thought of leaving the cabin put knots in Jade’s stomach.
“Who would do this?” she asked.
