Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [41]
“Why Chicago?” he interrupted.
“That’s where Jessica was living at the time.”
He shook his head, thinking this trip was going to be a waste of time, but then he reminded himself that no one knew where Sarah had been living before she arrived in San Francisco. Chicago was as good a town as any. “Never mind, go on,” he said.
“I went to Jessica’s apartment and the law office where she worked as a receptionist. No one had seen her in days. And no one seemed to know anything about her personal life, if she had a boyfriend, what she did after work. Jessica hadn’t confided in anyone, which wasn’t all that unusual, but her innate sense of privacy didn’t help when she went missing.” Catherine paused. “Jessica had told me a few weeks earlier that she’d met someone—the kind of man she’d always dreamed about. In fact, that’s why she stayed in Chicago. She was originally only going to be there a few days. Jessica and this other friend of ours, Teresa, were driving across country—they were going to meet up with me in New York, but the car broke down. They didn’t have any money, so they got jobs until they could fix the car. Then Jessica met someone and decided to stay.”
“What happened to the other girl?” Dylan asked.
“Teresa didn’t like Chicago all that much. She decided to go home to California. At least, that’s the last I heard from Jessica. At any rate, I spent two weeks in Chicago, hoping Jessica would show up, but she never did. Eventually the police told me to go home. They said they’d contact me if anything came up. When I got back to New York, the dreams began to come every night. Jessie was calling to me, reaching for me, and she was so scared. I couldn’t sleep for months. I kept thinking about how she hated the dark. I used to be the one she’d climb into bed with when she got scared, and that was a lot of the time. She didn’t have it easy when she was a little girl.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Jessie’s parents died when she was nine years old. She had no relatives willing to take care of her, so she went to foster care. I met her when she was eleven. We ended up in a home together in LA. We were there for almost four years, from the time Jessica was eleven and I was thirteen until we were fifteen and seventeen. Then the foster parents ran into hard times, and they split up all the kids in their care and sent us to different homes. I aged out of the system about six months later. We tried to keep in contact during the next year or two, but I had to work and Jessie was still in school. The next year I won a scholarship to an art school in New York, so I wound up moving across the country.”
“And Jessica attempted to meet up with you a couple of years later, but got sidetracked in Chicago and disappeared,” Dylan said. “And you think she looks like my friend Sarah. Is that pretty much it?”
“Yes.” Catherine shrugged. “I might be wrong. Her hair color is different. Jessica’s hair was blond. The woman on TV last night had dark hair.”
“Sarah’s hair used to be blond. Do you have any other pictures besides this painting?”
Catherine shook her head. “Sorry. No one takes pictures of foster kids, and even if they do, you usually don’t get to keep them.”
Her tone was matter-of-fact, but he could hear the edge of bitterness in her voice. “What happened to Jessica’s parents?”
“They were killed in a car crash. It was a shock to her to suddenly wind up an orphan. She’d actually had a happy childhood until they died. She had a lot farther to fall than the rest of us when it came to expectations. I had to teach her a lot about survival. But I guess I didn’t teach her enough.”
Dylan frowned. Sarah had told Jake that her parents had died in a car crash. It was a small connection, but a connection nonetheless, and he had to admit the painting of Jessica bore a striking resemblance to Sarah.
“You’re starting to think that your friend and mine are the same person,” Catherine said.
“I don’t know that I’d go that far.”
“Because you’re very guarded. You like to unravel other people’s secrets, not your own.”
He didn’t like the way