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Brody didn’t want to push. But she needed to know what was at stake.
“I understand. I want to give you more time, I really do. But—”
She froze. “Please don’t say it.”
“I have to. Your grandmother is eighty-two. She’s still feisty, but she’s spent the last twenty-five years waiting for you to come home. She has no other family.”
The color bled from her face. “I need to think. I can’t make this kind of decision in an instant. I need to go.”
She gathered her things and pushed herself away from the table and slid out of the booth. When she stood, she glanced at him. “Look, I’ll call you when I’ve made my decision and then we’ll go from there.”
“Hold on.” Brody stood. “I’m walking with you.”
“You folks have a nice night,” the woman behind the counter called out. “Stay safe out there.”
Brody walked Jenna out to her car. “At least let me follow you home. After today and everything that’s happened, it’s the least I can do. Let me have the peace of knowing that you got inside your house safely.”
In the streetlamps in front of the restaurant, he saw her eyes sweeping the parking lot. Her shoulders tensed. She bit her lip, then nodded. “I know it’s probably my imagination, but I feel as though someone is out there watching me.”
He didn’t think it was ridiculous. Someone had tried to kill her hours before. But he didn’t want her to live in fear.
“I think you’re wise to be cautious.”
Her gaze flashed to his. “Which means you agree. Fine. You can follow me home. I’d feel better if you made sure it was safe. But I am making no promises. I still need time before I agree to travel four states away with you.”
He waited until she’d got into her vehicle before hopping into his own. When she pulled from the parking lot, he followed, staying far enough back so if she stopped suddenly he wouldn’t rear end her, but close enough to keep her in sight and prevent other vehicles from getting in between them.
As they drove, he prayed for wisdom. He needed her to go visit Claudia Ellis. The woman deserved to meet her granddaughter, to see that the only surviving child of her son and his wife, had grown up happy and thrived, before she succumbed to cancer.
Time was running out.
She was adopted.
Not only that, but she’d been kidnapped. Oh, sure, she’d argued against that. And Brody hadn’t explained how they knew she hadn’t been the daughter of the woman killed in the accident. Yet.
She would get all the explanations.
But not tonight. She’d been through enough in the past six hours. Pain pulsed behind her eyes. A stress headache in the making. Great.
She just couldn’t handle anything more. That was the real reason she’d postponed the decision. Once she agreed to go meet this woman Brody claimed was her grandmother, she’d be fully accepting that her parents weren’t her biological parents and that they’d lied. Maybe not directly, but by omission, which amounted to the same thing.
At the stop sign before her street, she slid to a stop, her vehicle nearly rolling into the intersection.
She needed to watch out for black ice.
Once she knew no one was coming from either direction, she proceeded to turn onto her street. She had a desperate need to go home and reclaim her life, to prove to herself that she was still the same person she’d always been.
An unexpected surge of grief swamped her. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Jenna blinked away the tears threatening to fall. Even after several years, she still missed her parents. But now the grief of mourning was tinged with the color of betrayal.
Even the house she’d lived in all her life seemed different. She pulled into the snow-covered driveway and sat behind the wheel for a moment, staring at the house almost as if she’d never seen it before. She knew every corner of this house. She’d laughed, cried, been angry, stubborn, rebelled and complied here. All the things normal teens did in their lives. Yet now it all felt like a deception.
Lights flashed in her rearview mirror as Brody swerved into the driveway behind her, neatly blocking her in. What if he wasn’t who he claimed to be? He’d trapped her. Jenna’s breathing hitched. Then her heart rate sped up.
What was it about this man that engendered her trust so easily? Now that she knew anyone could lie, why did she feel he was the exception to that rule? For all she knew, he’d been in with the person who tried to kill her.
His engine shut off. In her mirror, she watched his SUV door swing wide open. In the dim light of the moon, he appeared nothing but a shadow stalking toward her. His movement triggered the light on the house.
She breathed easier now that she could see his face. You can’t stay here all night, Jenna, she told herself. It’s time to get moving. She refused to call herself Jordyn, even if she had been Jordyn at one time in her life. While she hated to admit it, she now believed it was possible. But that person no longer existed.
