Page 98 of Slow Burn (The Boston Beauties)

JESSA

It was nearly three in the afternoon, and I was expecting Jose, the son of one of Drew’s crew members, to show up at any time. He was in high school and we were all trying to keep him out of trouble. He had recently fallen in with the wrong crowd, and while it had been slowly snowballing, last week shit hit the fan. Drew couldn’t afford for Carlos to quit his job to stay home and keep an eye on his teenage son, and he also didn’t want me left alone.

Jose was a little shit and fought it tooth and nail for the past few days. I was hoping that I made some headway with him yesterday during our heart-to-heart of sorts.

I was nominated as his babysitter. Over the past week, Drew had arranged for an Uber to pick Jose up at his school and drop him off at our house where he helped with some of the projects currently underway upstairs.

The entire first floor was now completely finished, and we had curtains covering all of our windows, blocking out our lives to the camera crews that had been stationed at the end of our driveway earlier this week. Thankfully, they had gradually left as of yesterday when it was clear they weren’t going to get anything from us. When I woke up this morning, they were no longer there.

After the renovations, the upstairs would have three bedrooms. Two bedrooms ran along the front of the house and were connected by a shared bathroom, while one of the two master bedrooms took up the entire back of the house and had a large walk-in closet with a master bathroom. The bathrooms had been fully completed and were the only things that were finished upstairs. The bedrooms and hallways had gyprock and bare subfloors.

Jose had been priming the walls and ceilings this week, after having filled in and sanded the caulking last week.

I spent the mornings doing some exercises, followed by lunch and finalizing plans to start moving ahead with my business. Sometimes I had meetings with Abby or the DA over the phone.

In the afternoons, I’d do some light work with Jose, but more often than not, he’d put on his headphones and get to work on the projects that Drew and his dad had assigned him to.

I was in the kitchen starting to prepare a snack to share with Jose when he arrived. The doorbell rang, which I thought was strange, as he typically just knocked and walked in. I questioned if I had forgotten to unlock the door after my shower.

Drew had put up a small curtain the other day, meaning I had to pull it back to look out to see who it was, but I did see that the door was still unlocked. I pulled back the curtain to see Lisa standing at the front door. I let the curtain fall back into place, and I momentarily froze. What the hell was she doing here? I couldn’t very well ignore her, she obviously saw me when I looked to see who it was.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the door. ‘Hello,’ I greeted her.

She looked at me a bit confused. ‘Oh, hi.’ She looked behind me, but not seeing anything, she looked me over. ‘Um...I’m looking for Drew?’

My heart sank, I hated that his ex-girlfriend had shown up at our house. ‘Sorry, he’s at work,’ I informed her as I saw recognition cross her face.

‘Jessa?’ she asked, clearly shocked and looking me over again. ‘Is that you?’

I smiled and nodded, ‘Yeah…’

There were no recent photos of me released to the media, they were recycling the old ones from my disappearance and as I hadn’t left the house yet. The cameras hadn’t gotten any glimpses of me either.

‘Wow.’

I stood there for an awkward moment. Seeing a cargo van drive by and thinking it was a reporter, I moved behind the door a bit, watching it drive away. Lisa looked back over her shoulder and then back to me with a worried expression. ‘Sorry, the paparazzi just left yesterday, and I thought it was them in the van.’

‘I know, I tried to come back the other day but couldn’t get past them,’ she told me.

I opened the door farther and motioned for her to come in, closing the door behind her. ‘Is there something that I can help you with, or did you want to wait for Drew?’ I asked. ‘He’s going to be another few hours yet.’

She reached into her large purse and pulled out a large metal tool. ‘I just wanted to return this to Drew and thank him for dropping it by the bar.’

She held the bolt cutter out and I took it, turning around to place it on the small bench that we had in our entranceway. With my back to her, I saw out of the corner of my eye her hand holding a white rag, and felt her up against my back as she grabbed me, placing the white rag over my face and pushing me into the wall, holding me there with her body. I tried to struggle out of her hold, but she was much bigger than I was. I could smell some kind of chemical on the cloth and was trying to limit my breathing, but the longer it took for me to break from her hold, I started to panic. As a result, my breathing was getting heavier and labored.

If only the paparazzi were still out front.

I needed to calm down to try and buy myself some time. Jose would be here any moment. I was getting dizzy, and I knew I’d never be able to hold out that long. As fear engulfed me, I heard her voice, ‘Just give up already.’

It was the last conscious thing I could remember.

CHAPTER 34

DREW

I was at a job site with most of my crew farther up the Cape, starting a large project on another beautiful home. My phone started to buzz in my back pocket, but I was in the middle of carrying a pile of wood into the back yard, where Joe had questions on a building detail he wanted to go over. A few minutes later my phone buzzed again, and this time it wasn’t just a simple text message, it was an incoming call.

I dug the phone out, still listening to Joe, to see that it was Jose calling and that I also had a missed text message from him. If this kid was bailing again there was going to be hell to pay. Not only from his father, but from me also. I hated that Jessa was left alone. As much as he needed projects at our house to keep his juvenile ass out of jail, I needed him to watch out for Jessa.

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