She wanted nothing more than to hear his voice, to tell him how sorry she was for not being honest with him. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Jessica had been a needy baggage of instability for the past three and a half years. No matter how insane she’d felt or how hopeless things had become, Owen had been by her side through it all. But Jess had broken him. She’d seen it in his eyes…heard it in his voice.
Owen deserved better. He deserved someone stable, someone capable of intimacy and passion. Not some mentally unstable individual who saw spirits and painted images of the dead.
Dropping her forehead against the steering wheel, Jessica allowed her tears to flow. She cried for Jacob, for little Terry Dayton and his parents. But most of all, she cried for Owen. Jasper Dayton may have lost his only son, but he still had his wife. Poor Owen had no one. He’d lost everything that had ever mattered to him.
“I love you, Owen. I’m so sorry…”
Jessica wasn’t sure how long she sat there, crying in the rain before she gathered her resolve and lifted her head.
She pulled the gearshift down to drive and eased away from the curb. She would go back to the motel, gather her things and head back to Chicago where she couldn’t hurt Owen any longer.
With her mind made up, Jessica switched on the defrost, squinted through the rain at the oncoming headlights and took a left at the stop sign.
Chapter Forty-One
Owen paced along the foot of his bed, a bottle of whiskey dangling from his hand.
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror on his next pass across the carpeted floor. He looked like hell.
Turning up the bottle, Owen reveled in the burn of the whiskey as it slid down his throat. It told him two things. He was still alive, and he’d be in a comfortable state of numbness in the next thirty minutes.
His gaze touched on a photo of Jessica, perched on his nightstand in the pale wooden frame he’d carved for her some years back.
He rounded the bed and plucked up the photo. “Ah, Jess. My beautiful Jessica.”
Tears of sorrow gathered in his eyes. He’d lost his wife just as he lost his son. She might not be gone in the same sense as Jacob, but she’d left him nonetheless.
He dropped his weight onto the mattress, hugging the image close to his chest and took another long pull of the blessed whiskey.
Thunder boomed in the distance, drawing his attention to the window. The Dayton house sat in his line of sight, silhouetted by the flash of lightning streaking across the sky.
Owen laid the picture he held on the bed next to him and stood. He moved closer to the window, unable to take his gaze from the desolate looking house that stood before him.
Jessica had become obsessed with that place—obsessed to the point she’d broken into it to reach a boy that had been missing for over a decade.
Lightning flashed again, illuminating the upstairs windows. But nothing appeared save for the rain washing down its panes.
Pushing away from the sight, Owen meandered off down the hall to stop at the door to the office. He flipped on the light and moved into the room.
Setting the bottle of whiskey down on the corner of the desk, Owen opened the lid to Jessica’s laptop.
It booted up to the sign on screen, prompting him for a passcode. He typed in JACOB, knowing without a doubt that Jessica would choose their son’s name as her password.
The computer quickly loaded to the last page Jessica had visited. Seven-year-old Terry Dayton went missing on January tenth…
Owen continued to read, somehow feeling closer to Jess with every word he consumed.
A thought occurred to him the longer he sat there reading about the missing Dayton boy. He immediately visited the computer’s history.
Every page that Jessica had loaded could be found there, including one that read STEVEN RUCKLE.
Owen clicked on the name, stunned to find the face of the man he’d seen in the elevator with Jess.
Anger and jealousy warred inside him the longer he studied the image of the man before him. Anger won out.
He snatched up a piece of paper, along with a pen and jotted down Steven’s name.
Clicking out of that screen, Owen did a reverse name lookup on the computer and pulled up Steven’s address. He entered it into his phone’s GPS.
With phone in hand, he jumped to his feet, closed the laptop lid, and rushed from the office to grab his keys from a hook in the kitchen.
Owen opened the side door in the living room and pressed the button on the wall in the garage. The garage door instantly began to rise, revealing the pelting rain now flooding his drive.
He rounded the front of his car, hopped inside, and inserted the key into the ignition. The engine revved to life with the flick of his wrist.
Owen eased out of the garage, switching on the windshield wipers as he backed down his driveway and entered the street beyond. He would pay Mr. Ruckle a visit. If the ex-reporter thought to take Owen’s wife from him, he’d better be prepared to fight, because Owen wasn’t giving up on a Jess without one.
The rain picked up to the point Owen had to slow his speed or end up in a ditch somewhere. He could barely see two feet in front of the car. Still, he pressed on. He wasn’t returning home without Jessica, no matter what he had to drive through to reach her.
Holding his cellphone in a death grip, Owen followed the prompts from the GPS and took a left at the next intersection. Five minutes later, he pulled into a circle drive of a two-story brick home.
The house appeared dark and no vehicles were present that Owen could see.
He snarled a few curse words and laid on the horn. Nothing moved inside the house.
More than a little furious, he slammed the palm of his hand against the steering wheel, his mind spinning with unimaginable scenarios. Where could they be?
Owen swiped his finger across the screen of his cellphone and selected Jessica’s number. Of course, it went straight to voicemail.
Pressing the end key, he pulled up her number once more and sent her a text. Jess, please call me. I love you.
He lowered the phone to the console, unsure of where to go next.
Maybe she’s at a motel, he thought, snatching up the phone once more. He touched the icon for their personal banking and waited for it to load. After entering the expected information, he scrolled through the charges until he found what he sought. Country Inn Motor Lodge.
With determination and more than a little fear of what he’d find, Owen sped out of Ruckle’s drive and shot down the street in the midst of the torrential downpour. Jessica was coming home with him if he had to drag her kicking and screaming. If she wanted him to beg, he would beg. He would do whatever it took to get her back, even if that meant he had to take out Ruckle to make that happen.
Chapter Forty-Two
Jessica’s cellphone vibrated, telling her that she had a text message. Without taking her gaze from what little of the road she could see, she felt around on the seat until she gripped her phone in her hand.
Swiping her finger across the screen, she opened the text to find a message from Owen. Jess, please call me. I love you.
Relief swept through her. Owen still loved her, no matter what she’d done or how crazy she had acted.
She pressed reply and lifted her thumb to the phone’s digital keyboard.
Bright lights suddenly shot up behind her, momentarily blinding her.
Jessica dropped her phone, gripping the wheel with both hands as the lights grew rapidly closer.
An ear-piercing sound vibrated through the car as the fast-approaching vehicle slammed into the back of her.
The airbag exploded in her face, sending excruciating pain shooting through her skull.
She had a split second to silently cry out before the car went airborne and her world turned black.
Jessica moaned in pain as her body was jostled around on a hard surface. She attempted to open her eyes, but something held them closed. It took her a moment to realize they were swollen shut.