Page 17 of Girl Betrayed

Back inside,Jake turned his attention to the most important women in his life. Both sat on the couch, draped under thewarmth of an orange blanket. What he wouldn’t do to crawl under there with them and sleep for a day straight. Or maybe longer.

His gaze washed over Claire, picking up the imperceptible differences that only surfaced when reunited with someone after a long period of time apart.

Claire was the same, yet different. It wasn’t the weight she’d lost, the slightly darker circles under her eyes or the emptiness in her gaze … but something below the surface he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

He was suddenly reminded of his mother. Jake hated drawing that parallel and hoped he was just projecting his own fears into the current situation—the very thing the FBI had trained him not to do.

For a fleeting moment, Jake wondered if his lifestyle was finally catching up to him. He’d been running from one thing to another since the day his father walked out on him. First it was the Army, then the FBI, but none of it seemed to make a difference. He still felt that unfathomable void no matter what he did, except for now, in the quiet moments when he was with Dana and Claire.

All he wanted to do was to keep them safe and make the moments they had together stretch long enough to carve out some normalcy. It was something he’d never craved before and that scared him because it meant he had something to lose.

Dana caught him staring and the crease between her brows deepened with worry. Shifting the blanket so it was only covering Claire, she stood up and joined him in the kitchen.

13

They both leanedon the kitchen island, mugs of steaming coffee in their hands. Jake stared into his mug, but Dana kept her eyes fixed on Claire, wishing she’d had a bag of decaf in her freezer instead of the high-octane blend now caffeinating her bloodstream.

Truthfully, Dana preferred tea, but she could tell Jake was running on empty, so she brewed a pot of the stale beans she’d found shoved behind the vanilla ice cream in her freezer. It only made her feel more on edge after they discussed what Jenkins said.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Dana muttered again. “What was Meredith doing at Claire’s clinic?”

“Could she have been transferred?” Jake asked.

Dana shook her head. “I would’ve been notified.”

“When was the last time you saw Meredith?”

Guilt stabbed Dana. She’d been keeping herself busy with work to avoid worrying about Jake, and Meredith paid the price. “Two weeks.”

“We’ll call over there first thing in the morning.”

Dana nodded, but something else was bothering her. “The police said Claire was acting possessed, but she’s been nothing but catatonic since she got here.”

Jake shrugged. “It was just an interpretation. Possessed, catatonic, does it matter?”

“Yes. That’s the thing, Jake. Catatonic states disrupt a person’s awareness of the world around them. If Claire was like this when she left the clinic, she never would’ve found her way to my neighborhood.”

“What are you saying? You think she was fine when she left, and she saw something that put her into this state on her way here?”

“I think there’s more to the story than the officers told us,” Dana insisted.

“Maybe so, but we’re not getting to the bottom of it tonight. Let Claire sleep off the shock and see how she is in the morning.”

“Jake, this is more than shock or PTSD.”

He scrubbed a hand over his tired features. “We’ve been down this road with her before. If it’s more, we’ll get through it. I’m sure we’ll hear from Dr. Dvita tomorrow. Until then the best thing for all of us is rest so we can come at this clear-headed.”

Dana knew he was right, but patience felt impossible with so much restless energy coursing through her. The coffee was definitely a mistake. Dana set her mug down and drummed her fingers on the black soapstone of her kitchen island, her mind flipping through endless occult accounts of catatonic cases she’d studied over the years, but Jake refused to let her spiral.

“Hey,” he spoke softly, his warm touch distracting her as he clasped her fidgeting fingers. “We’ve got this.”

She bit her bottom lip to stop herself from arguing, nodding instead.

Jake’s thumb freed her pinned lip, a wry grin gracing his face. “Not good enough. Let me hear you say it.”

Dana rolled her eyes. “Jake … I’m not a child.”

But he doubled down. Taking both her hands and pulling her toward him, he squatted until he was eye-level. “Say it, Doc. We’ve got this.”