Page 25 of Parker

The voice in her head was right. She’d been in worse situations…or at least, other bad ones she preferred to forget. If this call was a dead end, that didn’t mean she gave up.

If she did that, Justin would win. And Quinn refused to let that happen.

She opened the app she used to make her phone number appear as the sequence of her choice. Another added layer of protection she’d added after receiving that first note. Just in case.

Typing in the phone number she prayed he’d still recognize, Quinn tapped the next screen and dialed the number she knew by heart on the illuminated keypad.

She pressed the green button and brought her phone to her ear, praying he hadn’t blocked her or changed his own number.

The air in her lungs became static, her heart slamming against her ribs so hard she felt as though it would burst free any minute. It started to ring.

Once. Twice. Three times. Four…

Quinn’s shoulders fell as she moved to end the call. She’d try back in a bit, not trusting a voicemail to reach him in time.

With the ringing still traveling through the phone’s speaker, she started for the button to end the call. The tip of her index finger was a centimeter away from the screen when a deep male voice came on the line.

“Jinx?” The familiar rumble brought tears to Quinn’s eyes. “Jesus, is that you?”

Her nostrils burned, and her throat became clogged, and for a second she couldn’t speak.

“Sweetheart, talk to me.” A slight pause. “Jinx?”

After another hard swallow, she forced the knot down, choking out a broken, “H-hey.”

“Oh, thank God.” A forceful exhale filled her ear a heartbeat before a clipped, “Christ, woman. Where the hell have you been? Actually, scratch that. Doesn’t matter.” Tone softening with what sounded like unfeigned concern, he switched to, “Are you okay?”

The man’s show of relief from simply hearing her voice again—along with the fact that he still cared enough to sound worried—brought a fresh round of welled tears to Quinn’s eyes. Her chin quivered, but she bit her lip to keep her face from crumbling into a bawling mess.

Blinking the moisture from her eyes, she finally found her voice again. “Yes,” she lied out of reflex. Almost immediately, however, Quinn added a quiet, more truthful, “No. I-I don’t know.”

You’re not okay, Quinn. You need help.

“Okay, let’s start with physically.” He waited a beat. “Are you injured?”

“No.”

Another breathy exhale was followed by the rough clearing of his throat. “Good. That’s really good, Jinx.” He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Next question, and I need the truth. Are you safe?”

Quinn squeezed her eyes shut, a tight roll of her lips preventing an audible cry from escaping as she searched for a calm her body fought to accept.

“Jinx?” ByteMe69 spoke sternly that time. “Sweetheart, I need an answer. Are. You. Safe?”

The unexpected bite in his words made her flinch. A forceful blink sent a collection of trapped tears streaming down her cheeks, but Quinn used her free hand to wipe them dry.

Her voice quivered with the whispered, “N-no.”

Everything changed with that simple, two-letter answer.

One minute, she was talking to the same sweet, worried friend she’d desperately missed. The same ByteMe69 who listened with a caring ear and made her laugh when she needed it most.

But with the very next beat of her anxious heart, a different man took his place. Physically, Quinn knew it was the same person. But there was a change to his voice. An edge she’d never heard before.

“Where are you?” His tone was serious, its pitch impossibly deeper.

More than that, the clipped delivery of his no-rebuttal demand, the typically laid-back man sounded almost…Deadly.

“It’s okay, Jinx.” A rumbled vow. “You can trust me.”

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