Page 72 of Threat of Danger
Helen hugged Rose, then Jess again. “We should go see Chuck.”
Derek looked back from the door and captured Jess’s gaze, his expression dark and troubled. “I need to talk to you. I’ll come by the house later.”
Talk about what?He was gone before Jess could ask or protest.
By the time Jess made it downstairs, an hour later, the Daleys were gone. Since it was Friday and no school the next day, Kaylee asked if she could be the one to stay overnight with Chuck.
“Nobody has to stay,” Chuck protested. “What are you gonna do? Watch me sleep?”
Jess understood Kaylee, though. The girl felt helpless. She’d already lost her parents. Chuck was her only living relative left. She had no control over his heart attack or recovery, but she wanted to do something.
So Jess shot aLet her staylook at Chuck. And, after a moment, Chuck nodded.
“Fine. We’ll play cards. I slept so much, I’m not sleepy. But if you cheat, I’m telling the nurses. Believe you me, there are a couple of scary ones you do not want to mess with.”
Kaylee snorted. “In case I haven’t mentioned it before, high school is a battlefield. Nurses don’t scare me.”
When Zelda and Jess left them, Chuck was demanding to know who was giving Kaylee trouble at school, while Kaylee was explaining that she was talking in generalities about the battlefield of teenage existence.
Zelda stayed quiet on the way home. Her eyes were closed, her hands folded in her lap as she silently prayed.
Traffic was sparse, and it trickled to pretty much nothing by the time they were in the home stretch. Jess slowed when she spotted the police cruiser on the shoulder up ahead. As she pulled closer, she saw a Ford Fiesta pulled over in front of the cruiser. Deputy Muller was leaning to the window giving the third degree to someone. As Jess passed, she could see a teenage girl behind the wheel, scared and crying.
Just as Jess stepped on the brake, a late-model Corolla pulled up behind the cruiser, and a woman in her midforties jumped out, probably the girl’s mother. Jess moved her foot from the brake to the gas pedal.
“I never liked that man,” Zelda said. No matter how upset she was, the woman still didn’t miss a thing.
They weren’t home five minutes when Derek strode in. “All is well in the sugar shack. How is Chuck doing?”
Jess couldn’t kick him out again. He’d worked all day to help her family. Still, she was prepared to shoot him a look that would clearly tell him she was nowhere near forgiving him for the book. Then she caught the grim expression on his face and stopped in her tracks. “What happened?”
Zelda hurried from the kitchen. “Did Kaylee call you from the hospital?”
Jess’s breath caught.
“It’s not Chuck,” Derek hurried to say, but his expression didn’t lighten.
“What is it?”
He looked as if he’d rather swallow his own tongue than say the words, but then said them anyway. “Before I drove my mother to the hospital, I popped over to the police station to ask if they had DNA on the bone fragments yet.”
Everything inside Jess went deadly still. “And?”
“I doubt they would have told me, but the results literally came in while I was standing there, and I caught snatches of conversation in the back office.” He paused for a tension-filled moment. “It’s Hannah Wilson.”
A harsh sob escaped Zelda as she sank onto the couch. Jess’s legs held her, but only just.
Derek stood with his feet firmly planted, shoulder-width apart, arms at his side, ready to fight, ready for anything. “The sheriff went off to notify the family just as I was leaving. It’ll probably be on the news tonight.”
“Oh God, Emma.” Zelda sniffed. “This is goin’ to kill her. Henry too. Hannah was their baby. Their youngest.” She drew a shuddering, shocked breath. “What can we do?” She slumped back, but only for a second or two. Next they knew, she was pushing to her feet. “I’ll make a casserole.”
Jess headed for the kitchen too. “You were at the hospital all morning. I can make something. Why don’t you take a break?”
“Can’t. Need to keep movin’. I need to do somethin’.”
Jess said, “I’ll help.” But her mind was in a frozen daze.
Another girl dead.
