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.
Before anything else could be done or said, Jaysus pulled out a gun and quickly fired off two, silent shots at her mother, hitting her first in the chest and then right through her head. She crumbled to the ground, her white top now crimson with all the blood erupting from the enormous wound in her chest. Jenna slid to her knees, covering her ears and shutting her eyes as her silent screams echoed through her mind over and over. She wasn’t a healer with a beautiful, miraculous gift to save life. She was dirty, tarnished, a bringer of blood and death, disguised by something that appeared to be good. She should have never left the compound. Every single innocent person who’d made the mistake of protecting her and being kind had been marked for death. She was nothing more than a death sentence and she was to blame. This was her penance for daring to dream of a better life and for wanting so many of the things that had been denied her.
“Get up,” Jaysus ordered, grabbing Jenna’s arm and hauling her to her feet. “You’ve cost me far too much time and delay as it is. All you’ve done is earn the deaths of every single person who came to your aid.”
“Hands up, Jesus! Back away from the woman or you and every one of your men will die.”
Jenna heard Isaac’s voice in the distance, but she was too in shock to register how close he was. All she could think was that her own mother had betrayed her not once but twice. Her mother had killed her father, the one person who’d loved her when she was a child. And now she had put Jenna in the position of losing the only person who loved the woman she’d become. She was going to lose everything and be sentenced to hell again.
Jenna found herself roughly hauled up against the muscled body of Jesus, whose stench reeked of death. To her horror, he seemed to be looking for someone among the DSS agents who’d given pursuit. Then she saw the look of triumph spark in his eyes as he held up his gun, and Jenna began screaming and kicking and fighting as hard as she could.
Jesus merely knocked her away, instructing his men to handle her while he took careful aim and shot.
A cry of pain rose from the distance and a roar of rage and grief bellowed from Beau.
Oh no. Oh no! Jenna turned, scrambling against her captor’s hold as she watched a barrier being formed around Ari, but it was too late. She was lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
Beau’s gaze found Jenna’s through the chaotic turmoil, his eyes begging her. “She’s pregnant,” he said, his voice cracking. “We only just found out. Please help her. You have to save her and our baby.”