Page 399 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

Addie sent a couple of emails. She’d had a stilted conversation with her SAC earlier after she missed her meeting because she’d been trapped with Jacob in that fire.

No, don’t think about him.

Her mind was like a broken record.

Or she was an addict in her own way, looking for a fix.

Considering her history with alcohol, she might have replaced one vice for another. Her personality hadn’t changed, she just found something less obvious to obsess over instead. Yet another thing she needed to fix about herself.

Sometimes it felt insurmountable. She would never be the person she wanted to be because she had too many issues that had to be fixed.

Not for the first time she considered quitting the FBI to save them the embarrassment of her not being a good agent. Maybe every agent felt like they didn’t measure up. But she’dmet plenty who thought they were God’s gift to the bureau. Given the confidence she’d had in herself that got her crowned homecoming queen had been the same thing that led to her being the victim of a deadly killer—and nearly losing her own life? Addie wasn’t all fired up to think she was all that. Not ever again.

Her cell phone rang.

She grabbed it and looked at the screen, but it wasn’t Jake. It was that same unknown number. She steeled herself, then swiped to answer. “Special Agent Franklin.”

Silence greeted her.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” She exhaled.

Was she assuming the same killer was whoever tried to run her off the road and then burn her and Jake in his studio? She couldn’t prove it was, but she had a theory.

“Nobody has noticed, have they?” She needed him to answer her questions.

But he never did.

She gripped the phone. “Youwantme to find you.”

The line went dead.

Only the ticking of the clock and her own exhale could be heard.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Jacob’s phone buzzed. He had a coupon for the local sub sandwich shop, valid tomorrow. It was after midnight, so he didn’t want a sandwich. But he was food shopping. The grocery store wasn’t empty. He sidestepped a couple headed for the chips, and went for the freezer section at the back.

It wasn’t hard to assume the stares he was getting from staff and customers were about the fingerprint. Except the police probably hadn’t released that information. Not much different from the normal attention that came with his high school yearbook photo, enlarged and currently on a book display by the registers. He never used self-checkout, just so he didn’t have to walk by it.

Then again, Addie was on the cover right beside him, along with Hank and Becca.

If he wanted to see his friends, maybe he should go look at the book. It was the easiest way to feel that connection and not deal with the drama. As if the dust jacket on a book was anything close to a relationship.

Jacob blew out a long breath.

His life had been fine for years. He’d been content with his work and his quiet home. Why would that be a bad thing? Exceptit left him wide open for someone to plant his fingerprint on a body and frame him for murder. As if he should be the type of guy to spend the night with some woman he wasn’t married to, just for the sake of an alibi. The police understood that he was single, didn’t they?

Addie was the only woman he’d…another sigh.

That wasn’t worth dragging up in his memories. Church had shown him that he didn’t need to feel guilt or shame over the choices they’d made simply because they thought that was what they were supposed to do. Because it was what everyone else did. Instead, there was a better way. One they’d had no clue about, but he did now.

The last thing he wanted was to fall back into that old trap and those old ways of thinking.

This whole situation would test his resolve not to be that guy who relied on his emotions far too much. He wasn’t perfect now, but he had the resource to be at peace and stand firm even when he was being accused of murder.

His phone buzzed again. Probably another sandwich coupon. But it was an incoming call, one he answered. “Addie?”

Silence greeted him for a second. “You sound better than you did earlier.”

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