Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [31]
His words were so pragmatic, but the actions he described were romantic, passionate, whirlwind, and not at all cautious. “That fast?” she murmured.
“You said I swept you off your feet,” he replied, his voice now laced with disbelief. “In retrospect you must have had an ulterior motive.”
“Like what? Are you rich? Was it about money? Did I steal from you when I left?”
“You took a couple hundred dollars out of the dresser drawer in our bedroom, but you didn’t have access to my bank account.” He leaned forward, his gaze darkening. “The thing is, Sarah, I wouldn’t have cared if you had taken every cent I had, if you’d left Caitlyn with me.”
She wanted to defend her actions, but she couldn’t.
“I kept thinking you’d have second thoughts,” he continued, “that you’d come back or call or write me a letter. A couple of weeks after you left I received some hang-up calls, breathing on the other end, but no one would talk. It drove me crazy, but I didn’t want to change my number in case it was you or it was someone who knew about you.” He paused. “And then there was the break-in.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “What are you talking about? What break-in?”
“About two weeks after you left, I came home and the back window of the apartment had been broken. Someone had come in, tossed the furniture, stolen some petty cash and my laptop computer. The police couldn’t lift any fingerprints. They never figured out who did it.” He took a breath as he met her gaze. “I know what you’re thinking, that it was connected to your disappearance. I thought so, too, but another apartment in the building was also broken into. In the end, the police believed it was just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill burglar.”
“It seems odd to me,” she murmured, especially since she now knew that someone was trying to kill her. Had they been trying to kill her when she was with Jake, too? Was that why she’d run? Had they broken into Jake’s apartment to find out where she’d gone, or to see if she’d left something important behind? If she’d cleaned out the apartment before she left, had she been trying to hide something?
“The timing felt coincidental,” Jake admitted. “But the fact that two apartments were broken into made it seem more random.”
“Which might have been what they wanted you to think.”
“It’s easier to see that now. At the time I didn’t have any idea you had a secretive past or were in danger. All I had was a note saying our relationship wasn’t working and you were leaving.”
She sighed at his unforgiving tone. “Is there anything you can tell me about myself that’s good? Just one little thing, like maybe I squeezed the toothpaste from the bottom up, or I made really great popcorn, or anything?”
Jake didn’t look eager to comply with her request. “I can’t remember.”
“I’m sure that felt good to say. A taste of my own medicine, huh?”
He tipped his head in acknowledgment. “It’s hard to swallow, isn’t it?”
Silence fell between them. She couldn’t bring herself to beg for more information, and it was clear that Jake couldn’t get past the anger he felt toward her. It radiated off of him in thick, pulsing waves, making the air between them tense and uncomfortable. It was going to be a long night.
“You liked to take pictures,” Jake said finally.
“Of what?” she asked.
“Buildings, landscapes, flowers, animals, pretty much whatever grabbed your interest. Not people, though. You never shot people. Even when Caitlyn was born, you seemed reluctant to take photos of her. I have no idea what you did with the ones you did take. They disappeared with you.”
“What else?” she asked, eager for as much as he could give her. “What about your family? Do you have other siblings besides Dylan? Parents? Grandparents? Did