Jess and I slide into seats near the front of the many rows of chairs, sitting side by side. “This is it,” she whispers, grabbing my hand again.
She’s very touchy-feely tonight, and I wonder if that’s Jess’s version of nerves. I wouldn’t know. In all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never actually experienced any insecurity in her unrelated to daddy triggers.
Jess’s award is one of the biggest of the night, which ensures we’ll sit through many others before her name is called. We’re almost to the end of a long ceremony, at least per the schedule I’d found in my seat, when there are inappropriately timed murmurs in the room. I glance about, noticing a number of people eyeing their cellphones. Curious, I grab mine and allow my Apple alerts to flash across my screen. One such alert has me sucking in a breath as I read: Big Davis killed in a car accident.
My hand goes to my neck with the certainty that Adam has struck again, that Adam knew before I knew that my father signed with Big Davis. I show the headline to Jess, who shocks me by shrugging. “At least your father’s fake security blanket is no more.”
That’s when her name is called. She hugs me, and I hug her back, but as she walks to the podium, an icy-cold sensation slides through me. Security blanket. She said it. Adam said it. Adam knows everything about me. Jess knows everything about me. It’s an insane thought, but my mind goes back to pasta-and-wine night with my two Js, when Jess had lectured me and Jack: “I’m going to say it again, as I’ve said it ten thousand times,” she’d stated. “You are both”—she’d waved her fork between me and Jack—“what you choose to be. If you feel invisible, you are invisible. And you both feed this in each other. You use each other as security blankets.”
If I’m right about any of this, Jack is the next target. I feel it in my gut.
And what if next means now, right now?
I text Jack: Where are you?
Still at work. How is the ceremony?
Jess is at the podium speaking, and I reason that Jack has security at the library. He’s safe. And Jess is not Adam. She’s not Adam. And yet, for reasons I cannot explain, I need out of here now. I’m near the end of the row and quickly ease my way out of the seating arrangement. I don’t look at Jess. I just walk and walk as fast as I can. I know only one thing. I need to get to Jack. I need to see him alive and well. I need Jack to talk sense into me.
I need him to tell me any idea that Jess is Adam is impossible. I’ve seen Adam. I’ve seen him, and yet when I exit the building, and I’m only a few blocks from the library, I find myself saying high heels be damned. I’m running in that direction. I’m running toward Jack.
Chapter Eighty-Six
It’s nine when I arrive to the library in a huff of heavy breathing, a rage of wild thoughts, and a general feeling of falling apart. The time forces me to enter through the back-parking-lot door and key in my security code for entry. I do so and hurry up the stairwell that will lead me directly to the back room where Jack and I often escape to work, where he’ll be working tonight.
My feet pinch in the fancy shoes as I climb the stairs, clinging to the steel railing, relieved when I exit to a hallway and follow it to the records room.
“Jack,” I say, stepping into the doorway to find him missing, but his cup is on the desk, files sitting about here and there.
Exhausted but relieved to be here, to know he must be here as well, I just need a minute. I round the desk and drop into the seat, my purse plopped on the desk next to the coffee mug. My phone rings and not for the first time. I open my bag and reach for it, eyeing the screen. Jess has called me ten times and texted me just as many. The messages are not kind: Why would you leave? How could you do this to me? This is such a bitchy thing to do. I swear I thought you were my sister. Instead you’re no better than a piranha who is using me and wearing my dress and shoes.
I do a double take at the nasty words that seem as if someone else is typing them, not her, not Jess, not my best friend I consider a sister. Why would she be this angry without talking to me? Unless . . . unless she knows I came here, that I came to Jack when I was supposed to be with her. Did she talk to Jack? Did she assume my destination when I left? Is she jealous? Even then, the accusation that Jess is involved in all of this feels over the top. Unless, I think again, unless Jess is somehow Adam. No. No, I’ve seen Adam on video. I adjust the thought to a more logical view. Unless Jess hired Adam.
The sound of a door opening and closing has me reaching for the letter opener and setting it on the desk, just in front of my purse.
“Jack?!” I call out.
Crickets and more crickets, while blood rushes in my ears.
“Jack?!”
Jess appears in the doorway, holding her trophy, of all things, considering it looks heavy and rather large with a big gold world at the end of a tower. Her hair is in disarray, as is never the case with Jess, her dress torn at the bottom as if she caught her heel in it, her expression pure anger. I don’t recognize this as the person I know and love. I pop to my feet. “Jess?” I ask tentatively, though I don’t have to inquire as to how she got into the building. Jess has brought me dinner here when I worked late several times. She has my code.
“What is this?” she demands, storming toward me.
A moment later we’re standing at this side of the desk, facing each other. “Why aren’t you at your event, Jess?”
“Why aren’t you at my event?” she counters. “Why did you leave and come here of all places?”
“I thought I figured something out,” I say. “It was silly, but I wanted to know Jack was safe.”
“You left for Jack?! Are you serious? Tonight was my night. Tonight was our night.” Her words are a hiss and punch all at once, and I swear she grips that award a little tighter, like it’s a weapon she intends to hurl at me.
She is not okay, and in that moment my adrenaline soars, and everything comes together for me. I was right. God, I was right. It’s as if some part of me knew even before tonight. “Are you Adam, Jess?”
She laughs this bitter laugh, throwing back her head in this jerky fashion before her eyes meet mine. “I have never touched all that money my family left me for anyone but you, Mia. Just you. Do you know that?”
The impossible has happened. I’m afraid of Jess. Not only is she not okay—now I’m worried I won’t be, either, if I don’t get out of here and do so now. I want to reach for the letter opener, but it’s slightly behind me. I’m terrified if I make the wrong move, I won’t get my hands on it, and I’ll trigger her in a way I do not presently want to trigger her. “How?” I ask, trying to keep her talking, trying to buy time to figure out what to do. “How did you spend it on me?”
“I wanted you to love yourself. I wanted you to let go of that damn victim act that you and Jack just freaking perpetuate in each other.”
“Because he’s my security blanket?” I snap, allowing anger to win, when my anger is not the way to calm her down.
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
“Where is he now?” I demand, afraid for him. Afraid he ends up dead just like Kevin, afraid he already is.
“Thankfully he doesn’t seem to be here,” she snaps, her tone dripping with disdain. “If I saw him right now, I might kill him myself.”
Ice slides down my spine with the absolute hate for Jack etched in her face, in her voice. I believe her. I believe she’d kill him. I’m afraid of my best friend, the person I considered a sister until right now. Now I don’t know her at all. Will she kill me, too?
Talk to her, I tell myself, trying to calm myself first, then her. If I can understand her again, maybe I can bring her back to her right mind. “How did you spend your money on me, Jess?” I press.