She clicked on the phone but didn’t say hello. She couldn’t—it was stuck in her throat.
“Jade.” Jody’s voice dissolved into tears. “Oh God, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Jade, listen. I know you don’t want to, but I have to tell you how sorry I am. How stupid I am. It’s my mom, you know that, right? She’s got cancer, and no insurance. Tomas promised me he’d give me everything I could ever want, and I was stupid enough to fall for it.” She began to sob. “He just dumped me off on the side of the road. Like yesterday’s trash.” Her voice faded a bit, as if she was looking around her. “I think I’m somewhere off the 5 South, somewhere just past San Diego. I was thinking . . . maybe you’d come get me. Jade?”
So she was safe enough, certainly safer than Jade. Knowing that, Jade simply turned off the phone. “Mario didn’t kill her.” There was real relief in that. It left her free to feel as angry as she wanted. “I need some light.”
“Soon.”
“No, you don’t understand. I need the light.” She closed her eyes, pretending to herself that all she had to do to see was open them.
It didn’t work.
“You know I’m right here.” He put his hands on her arms, drew her close. “You’re safe.”
For now. But how long could that last?
Helluva day. She’d fallen for the wrong guy, had been betrayed by a friend, and now found herself in the middle of two different sides she didn’t understand anything about except that her safety hadn’t been predetermined.
“Jade. Talk to me.”
She licked her dry lips but kept her eyes closed. “I’d rather see.”
“I know.” As if he knew she was a breath from freaking out again, he stroked his hands up and down her arms. “Soon, I promise. Talk to me instead.”
“Why?”
“It’ll pass the time.”
It might. She could ask him questions, too. Find out about him, his life. Get a better picture of the man who’d kissed her so passionately. Maybe they could have a real conversation, one that went both ways for a change, and she’d find herself opening up . . .
“Tell me about Mario.”
Jade bit back her disparaging laugh at that, and had to shake her head at herself. When would she get it? In this nightmare she’d found herself in, she didn’t matter. She wasn’t even a person.
She was the pawn.
Chapter 6
“We should call the police,” Jade said.
“Yes,” Will agreed. “As soon as we can tell them where Mario is.” He kept his hands on her. It seemed to help her beat back the fear of the dark she had, the one that was trying to swallow her whole. “Come on,” he said softly. “Talk to me.”
“There’s nothing much to tell.” Her voice was low, and still a little trembly. “Tomas and I met at an antique function two months ago, and he asked me out. He was persistent when I said no.”
He tensed at that. Wendy had said the same thing, and yet she’d opened up to Mario shockingly fast, scaring Will, scaring the rest of their family and friends.
Wendy had brushed off their concerns, and a month later, Will had gotten that panicked late-night call he’d never forget, with Wendy in fearful tears, saying Mario had done a bad thing and she was scared.
With murder on his mind, Will had raced to her place, only to find her gone. She’d shown up in the Los Angeles River the next day, dead, about the same time the gems had been discovered missing.