Just One Touch (Slow Burn #5)(88)

DANE was standing in front of the television, holding a cup of coffee in his hand, as he replayed the interview that had Jenna's mother pleading for information about her long lost daughter. He didn't know why he was so bothered by it. They'd checked her out, dug up every nonexistent skeleton from her past, and all they'd found was a woman who'd lost everything shortly after her daughter, Jenna, had turned four.

It wasn't personal. It never was. Suspects were suspects until they weren't. People were investigated and either found to be a source of use or not. So why did this woman stick in Dane's craw so badly? What was it about her eyes that bothered him so damn much?

He was about to turn the television off when he heard Tori enter the room. But one look at Tori's mask of horror, the fact that she'd gone rigid and her face had leached entirely of color, momentarily froze him.

"Who is she?" Tori demanded hysterically. "Who is the woman on the television?"

She ran to Dane, fighting him for the remote, kicking and hitting. Never had he seen her react this way to anything. He let go, letting her do what she wanted so desperately as she hit the button to turn the volume way up. But he walked up behind her and enclosed her in his arms, afraid she'd only become more violent and hurt herself.

"Tori, honey, it's me, Dane. Talk to me. Talk to me right now. Tell me what's going on. Who is this woman to you? You don't understand how important this is. If you know something, you have to tell me right now."

She whirled around, her eyes wild with so much fear that he hurt for her. "Who is she?" she screamed.

"Who is she to you?" Dane demanded, still holding her by the shoulders so she wouldn't do anything crazy like run out of the safe house where he was keeping her completely hidden from the public-or private-eye. 

"She's the woman in my dream," she said hoarsely. "Don't you understand, Dane? She's the woman I saw being shot to death but she wasn't wearing that. God, if we can find out who she is, then we might actually be able to save her!"

Dale felt the blood drain from his own face as he stared back at Tori in horror. "Are you sure about this, Tori? You have no idea how important this is. That woman is Jenna's mother, or the woman claiming to be her. Isaac took Jenna to meet her today. The footage you're seeing is from several days ago when she made a public plea for help locating her missing daughter, and Jenna saw it."

Tori's mouth gaped open. "Oh my God, Dane. You have to tell them what I saw. You have to tell them now!"

Dane yanked out his phone, and as he was pressing buttons for the secure line so Isaac would know to answer it regardless of the situation he might be in, he glanced up at Tori again.

"What was she wearing when she was shot? You said that wasn't what she was wearing on the television program. Think, Tori. I need this information."

"Designer blue jeans, spike-heeled boots, long-sleeved white turtleneck sweater. It's why the blood was so vivid in the dream," she whispered. "All the red on her white shirt. So much blood."

Dane wrapped one arm around her, pulling her into his side, and she turned her face into his body, overwhelmed by having to describe the event that had already played over and over in her mind. He hated making her relive it, but now he realized the impact this could have on . . . everything.

"Tori, this time there is something you can do about it-I can do about it-we just have to hope to hell we aren't too late."

Tori stared at him with wide frightened eyes. "I didn't see Jenna or Isaac. No one from DSS. Why did I only see her mother? What could have happened to her-I mean will happen if it hasn't already?"

"I can't answer that, honey. I just have to try to warn them before it's too late."





TWENTY-EIGHT

JENNA was forced upward as she was dragged to her feet and then pushed forward, the gun never far from a vital part of her body. She was violently shaken from the sudden surge of memories and the ugliness revealed in her mother. Jenna recoiled from something so evil, wondering how her mother could have passed off acting with so much sincerity. She'd fooled them all, but Jenna most of all.

"It's not often I get the chance to sell my brat daughter for a fortune not once in my life but twice," her mother sneered. "When Eduardo annihilated the compound, he tracked me down and asked me to help him find you. For a price of course," she added with a chuckle.

"Ah, here he is now," her mother said as she shoved her toward a group of men who'd materialized from the nearby stand of trees that divided the commercial strip from a residential area.

The man she called Eduardo, Jenna only knew as Jesus, or "Jaysus" as Isaac and the other DSS men called him in order to deflate the egotism he'd wrapped himself in by comparing himself to the son of God.