Page 137 of Girl Between
“Will you call me tomorrow?” Dana asked. “I want to know if Fontera talks, or if Lena or LaSalle uncover any new leads.”
“I’ll keep you in the loop,” he said. “And you let me know if you need that ride.”
Dana looked down at her phone and frowned. “Thanks, but I’ll just order a car.”
“Still no word from Shepard?” George asked, reading between the lines.
She shook her head.
George took her hand. “He’ll be here. Shepard always shows. Even when I wanted to hate the guy, he had my six. No man left behind is kinda his thing.”
Dana met his gaze. “Yeah, but when I keep saying I want to be left behind, at some point he takes the hint, right?”
George squeezed her hand. “If you asked him to come, he will.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
He shrugged. “You already know I’m a good dancer, so I’d say you’ve got yourself a pretty great alternative.”
“You deserve to be somebody’s first choice.”
“So do you.”
Dana smiled. “Thanks, George. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
120
Back in her room,Dana paced, trying to release her restless energy. She was exhausted in every sense of the word, but sleep remained out of reach. She’d tried twice, only to end up tangled in her sheets from her relentless tossing and turning.
She blamed Jake. Maybe George, too. His words were the ones rattling around in her head. Because he was right, Jake always showed up.
So where is he?
Dana couldn’t stop the question from assaulting her mind. She didn’t like the dark answers that came to her. All of them pointed to something being wrong.
She padded barefoot to the vanity, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were shadowed again, haunted by the ghosts of sleepless nights. And there would be more in store if she didn’t hear back from Jake.
After a futile attempt to bring her lifeless skin back from the dead with her skincare routine, she gave up and returned to her bed. She sank onto the edge of her mattress and tried to block out her unrealized fears.
The silence was deafening. She picked up her phone again. Theunanswered text was a stark reminder that even the most dependable people could falter.
Her parents, Meredith, Claire … so many whom she’d counted on were gone.
If Jake met that same fate?—
Dana refused to finish that thought. Instead, she opened her text app. By this time, she knew it was a fruitless exercise. He hadn’t replied, but that didn’t stop her from reading the timestamp on his last message.
He had a few more hours until he owed her proof of life.
Jake had been the one to initiate the rule, but Dana found herself grateful as she stared at the last message he’d sent. One word. That’s all he’d given her.
Good.
Dana tossed her phone on the bed and continued pacing.
She knew why Jake had chosen the word. And she knew she deserved it. It was what she’d sent him every day after leaving his bed. The thing that worried her was that she had most definitely not beengood, but she’d said so anyway.
