Page 94 of Girl Betrayed

I can’t tearmy eyes away from the clock. It moves so slowly, its incessant ticking wearing on my nerves. Everywhere I look, they scurry, worry and hurry. All trying to find me. But they never will.

Time may be moving slowly, but it is moving all the same. Just like grains of sand falling through an hourglass, what shall come is inevitable.

I tilt my head from side to side, stretching my skin. It prickles with my desire to see this through. To kill again.

Not yet, I remind myself.

I must follow the plan. It’s all laid out so perfectly.

Now is the time to wait and watch.

Soon it shall be time to reap and sow.

80

The tacky paperstuck to Jake’s palm as he crumbled the note in his hand. He’d been staring at it long enough that he had the number memorized. The country code was France, but the rest was a mystery. One that would remain that way unless he worked up the nerve to dial the number.

This was ridiculous. It was just a phone call. Jake had been toIraq, Afghanistan, and places people hadn’t even heard of.

So why was making this call so terrifying?

You know why,his subconscious chided.

He did … but admitting that was easier said than done.

The moment he made the call, he could no longer avoid the inevitable. He would find his father, or he wouldn’t. Either way, he’d be failing his mother.

If he called and it turned out to be another dead end, then Jake was back to square one and his mother would be out of time, never getting the closure she deserved.

But if he called and managed to track down his father, the results could be even more disastrous. Jake might not be able to persuade him to come, or if he did, his father’s presence might just make things harder for Jake’s mother.

Jake cursed Dana for putting him in this position. She’d gone behind his back and now he was forced into a corner. Even if she’d done it for the right reason, she’d done exactly what he’d asked her not to. Just like he did to her time and time again.

He stared at the note, wondering if they’d ever truly be able to change their habits?

Jake checked the time, annoyed with himself for how long he’d been debating this.

“Screw it,” he muttered. It was time to get this over with.

He punched the numbers into the phone and hit call. The phone rang repeatedly until finally, the mechanical click of an answering machine kicked in. Jake squeezed the phone tighter, pressing it to his ear as the voice on the other end filled the space between them.

“Bonjour, vous êtes arrivé à la résidence Berger. laissez un message s'il vous plait”.

The language was foreign, but the voice … Jake would know that voice anywhere.

It was the voice of a ghost.

One who haunted his dreams as a child and sometimes even now as an adult.

Jake hung up the phone, his father’s voice cutting through him, a draft so cold it sliced bone deep.

81

Dana rushedin the front door, eager to discuss all she’d learned about the D.C. Reaper with Jake, sure he would have some keen insights she’d missed. But when she saw him, she stopped short.

He sat on her couch, shoulders hunched, elbows on knees, head in his large, scarred hands. His gaze was fixed on his cell phone, which sat unassumingly on the coffee table in front of him.

The scene was peculiar enough, but stranger still, Jake hadn’t even looked up when Dana disarmed the security system. She took a tentative step toward him, then thought better of sneaking up on the ex-soldier with killer instincts.

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