Even the Score(89)

I looked straight at her and let out an exhausted sigh. “I love you, El, but that was not a smart question.”

“Well, I just meant—yeah, you’re right. That was dumb.” She hooked her arm in mine, and we walked toward the door in silence. Jerry was talking to a police officer, but it appeared that they were wrapping it up, so I hung back and waited for him. He walked over with a dazed look on his face.

“How are you?” I asked him.

He just shook his head back and forth. “I don’t really know, Mr. Shaw. I’m running on pure adrenaline right now.”

“I bet.” I patted his shoulder. “You were the one who stopped the attack?”

He nodded, and his eyes dropped to the ground sadly.

“Thank you, Jerry. You saved her life.” I held my hand out to him, and he shook it weakly.

“I just don’t get it.” He pulled his brows in tight and shook his head. “I never sent her a text. I don’t even have her number.”

“Wait. What?”

“Ellie said that Dani told her I sent her a text about her car, but I didn’t. If something had happened with her car, I would have called the police, not her. She walked right past my desk, but I was in the bathroom. If only I would have been sitting there—”

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down. Say all that again.”

“He texted her, pretending to be Jerry,” someone said from behind me. I turned and Detective Larson was walking toward us. “Sorry,” he sighed, “I got the call, and I was still at home. Got here as fast as I could.”

“What about a text?” I asked him.

“We have Dani’s phone.” He took a notepad out of his suit jacket pocket and looked down at it. “She got a text six minutes before the call came in about the attack. It said . . . ‘Danicka, this is Jerry from downstairs. Someone is messing with your car again. Get down here fast.’” His eyes lifted back to mine. “But Jerry never sent that text.”

“I never call her Danicka,” Jerry added. “I always call her Ms. Douglas. I don’t even have her cell phone number.”

“The guy obviously found out Jerry’s name, which isn’t a hard thing to do, and texted her to get her to come downstairs,” Detective Larson said as he put his notepad away.

“If only I’d been sitting at that desk—” Jerry’s voice cracked and trailed off.

“Jerry.” I rested my hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t your fault. Not at all. You saved her life, don’t ever forget that.”

“I’m gonna go call my boss,” Jerry said in a somber tone as his shoulders slumped. “You know where to find me if you need anything else.” His feet scraped along the concrete as he shuffled back into the lobby.

I turned back to Detective Larson. “What now?”

“Well, now I go grill this guy for the next twelve hours and try to figure out why the hell he’s been doing this.”

“Will you keep me in the loop?”

The corners of his jaw popped as he clenched it. “I will. And you keep me posted about her, deal?”

“Deal,” I agreed. The red-and-blue lights of the ambulance glowed and started spinning. “I gotta go. I’m following it.” I turned and started toward my car.

“Hey, Shaw!” Detective Larson called after me.

I spun around but kept creeping backward toward the street where my car was still parked.

“You noticed it wasn’t Cole Woods, right?”

I stopped moving.

Yeah, when I was bashing his face in.

“Yeah, I did. It doesn’t matter at this point whether she was right or wrong, though, right? He’s caught and this is over,” I hollered back.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and pressed his lips together. “Let’s hope so. I’ll be in touch.”





CHAPTER 34

Danicka

“Dani? Dani? Can you hear me?”

Barely.

“Can you open your eyes, baby girl?”

Dad?

“Honey, if you can hear me—open your eyes.”

I gathered up every cell in my body and had a quick powwow, begging them to work together just enough to lift my eyelids. Thankfully, they responded. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but I slowly opened my eyes. Everything was a still a little blurry, but I was worried that if I closed my eyes to blink everything into focus, I wouldn’t be able to open them again. After a couple of seconds, my eyes adjusted, and I was able to blink.

My dad was sitting on the side of the bed, wearing the biggest smile I’d ever seen.

“Hi, princess!” he said through a cracked voice. His eyes glassed over as he bit his top lip to keep from crying.