Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [102]
Halfway down the street Jake pulled out his phone again and pushed in a number. “Dylan,” he said a moment later. “Sarah has her memory back. Caitlyn is with someone named Teresa in Santa Barbara. What’s the address?” he said, turning to Sarah.
“Eleven-oh-one Mirada Drive,” she replied.
Jake repeated the address to his brother. When he’d finished the call, he turned to Sarah. “Dylan and Catherine will meet us in Santa Barbara. I told him to give us a head start. I don’t want him to spook Teresa if she sees a stranger at the door.”
She nodded, knowing that there was a lot to be said, but where to start? That was the big question. First she needed to call Teresa. “Let me use your phone. I’ll give Teresa the heads-up that we’re coming.”
“I don’t want her to run with our child. If she thinks someone has a gun to your head, she might do just that.” He shot her a dark look. “Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to have you get her on the phone and confirm that Caitlyn is safe, but at this point I’d rather not do anything that’s going to send Teresa into hiding.”
She thought about what he was saying and then put down the phone. “I’ll wait until we get closer then.” It was hard not to make the call when she desperately wanted to hear Caitlyn’s voice, but she had to think about what was best. “We have to make sure we’re not being followed. We can’t lead anyone to Caitlyn.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Jake snapped. “Give me a little credit, Sarah. I’m not a complete fool.”
“I never thought you were.”
“Obviously you did, or you would have brought Caitlyn to me.”
“Do you want to get into all that now?” she asked warily.
“No.” He shot her an indefinable look. “Because I can’t have that discussion and drive. We’re going to leave it alone until we get Caitlyn back.”
Jake’s voice was tight. She knew he wanted to have it out with her, to get the answers to all the questions he had about why and how she’d left him, but he was right: They couldn’t have this discussion while racing through LA traffic.
“One thing I do want to know,” he said. “Who exactly is trying to kill you? I assume it’s one of the Harvard guys.”
“Victor Pennington. Do you want me to tell you what happened in Chicago?” She figured that part of the story would be less personally upsetting to him, and he needed to know the danger they were up against.
“Go on,” he said, his gaze on the road.
It was easier when he wasn’t looking at her. “You already know some of it. My real name is Jessica Holt. When I was twenty years old, Teresa and I decided to drive across country one summer. We were headed to New York to meet up with Catherine, but our car broke down in Chicago. We didn’t have any money to fix it, but we were young and had no roots, no families to worry about us, so we got jobs and lived in a shelter for a couple of weeks until we had enough money to get an apartment. It was a dump, but it was something. I got a temp job working in a law office. Victor Pennington was one of their clients. He came into the office one day and he invited everyone, all the secretaries and clerks and attorneys, to a party at his art gallery. I thought I was Cinderella, and I’d just gotten an invitation to the best ball in town.”
She paused for breath. When Jake didn’t comment, she continued. “Victor and his friends were handsome, smart, rich blue bloods, everything I wasn’t. They’d all gone to Harvard. One of their grandfathers was a state senator. Another was a billionaire. When Victor asked me out, I couldn’t believe my luck. I thought he lived in this beautiful world, a world I’d never thought I could belong to. For a while it was great. He wined and dined me; he swept me off my feet. He told me I was beautiful and desirable and that he’d never met anyone like me.” She’d been so stupid, so easy to manipulate.
“Teresa didn’t like Chicago and decided to go home. After that it was