Page 120 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name

She glanced at him, her stomach twisting. She knew what she had to say to him, but making the words leave her mouth took a tremendous effort. “Ryan, your wife. Kylie.” She swallowed hard, then just forced them out. “She’s dead.”

The ball of his jaw tightened again, and he inhaled. When he looked at her, his expression was stoic. “I know. I found out on the news.” He looked down at his feet. “The guy on the phone, he told me they’d let her go if I gave them what they wanted.”

Me, she thought.

“And I got a text from her right after, saying she was sorry.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I guess she never really sent that text. I guess she was probably already dead at that point.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her, and his face suddenly crumpled. The stoic expression was replaced by a look so anguished, so despairing, that she desperately wanted to go to him and wrap her arms around him.

It took all her strength to stay where she was.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “For everything.”

She swallowed down a bubble of rising tears. Because she couldn’t trust herself to speak, she just nodded.

When she finally felt like she was on top of her emotions, she cleared her throat and said, “The FBI agent who took my statement told me she had a son. A little boy called Noah. He said they’d contacted Kylie’s mother, and that she was going to take him back to Tennessee to live with her.”

Ryan nodded. “Diane’s a good woman. She’ll take care of him.”

Jessica glanced down at her suitcase, then back at him. “The agent also told me you caught two flights and drove all day to get to me before they did. He said that there really is a safe house in Baton Rouge, and that you insisted on being the one to take me there, despite the hurricane warnings.”

She stared at his face, but he gave no reaction. “But if you think that somehow doing any of that somehow makes us square?—”

“I don’t think that,” he interrupted softly.

“Good. Because it doesn’t. Not by a long shot.”

He looked down, and she couldn’t see his expression. Couldn’t see if her words had hurt him or snuffed out some hope he’d been clinging to.

She didn’t want to do either of those things. But she had to tell him the truth. No matter how much it pained her.

When he looked back up at her, his face was carefully neutral, and she was reminded how good he was at concealing himself behind that cool facade.

“Where will you go?” she asked.

He paused before answering, like he was still weighing his options. Or maybe weighing how much he could trust her with his answer. Finally, he said, “South.”

“Mexico?”

He didn’t reply. Just nodded at her suitcase. “What about you?”

She lifted it off the bed. “I guess I’ve realized running away isn’t the same as moving on. Sometimes you actually have to go back to move forward.” She turned to look at him. “So that’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re going back to Illinois?”

She shook her head. “San Francisco first. To see my sister. Then after that, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll enroll in that dance therapy course.”

He nodded and gave her a brief smile, like that genuinely made him happy. Then he reached his hand into the pocket of his hoodie and took something out. “Well, there’s one place you might want to consider going first.”

He held it out to her. It was a small piece of folded paper.

She stayed where she was and just stared at it. Then, when it became clear he wouldn’t come any further into the room, she crossed the space between them, reached out and took it from him.

When she unfolded it, she saw a handwritten name at the top and underneath, an address in Texas.

She looked up at him and gave a little shake of her head. “What is this?”